Saturday Afternoon in the Hall with KFUO

At my observation post, when I wasn't making sure scheduled guests were in the vicinity at their appointed times, I noticed that everybody wants to be a conductor. Whenever the music was playing, at least four guys with headphones were waving their imaginary batons in the air, bringing the "New World" or The Planets to their inspiring conclusions. Could there be a new interactive game devised, on the lines of Guitar Hero, You're the Maestro or something as such?

The first call-in guest was Alex Ross. Although there is always that moment of tension wondering if people in New York know that Central Time exists, Alex was on time and on point, saying wonderful things about the SLSO. I didn't have head phones on during the interview, but I know he said wonderful things because my colleague Adam Crane was grinning happily the whole time.

Johnny Robertson, David's second-oldest son, helped me in the musician/interviewee hunts. I remember Johnny as a youngster playing the drums on the Powell stage after an orchestra rehearsal one afternoon. As youngsters sometimes do, Johnny has grown into a charming young man, smart, affable, a good person to share a sidewalk with while waiting for the Post-Dispatch critic to arrive (impeccably on time). Johnny still plays drums; sports a long, blond pony tail; goes to Horace Mann in NYC; and spent the early part of his Saturday in St. Louis helping with the gardening around City Hall.

While Johnny and I were outside we missed the first glitch of the day. Leonard Slatkin, calling from Milan, could not connect for one reason or another, so Fanfare for the Common Man substituted as filler. But Leonard called back later in the afternoon. He could hardly hear the folks in St. Louis, so, Leonard being Leonard, he just talked. I've interviewed Leonard before, and it doesn't surprise me at all that Leonard could interview himself as well as anyone else could. He even brought in a surprise guest, guitarist Sharon Isbin, and left room for Ward Stare to talk up Casual Classics at the end of the segment.

The Powell Hall doors were opened, the audience streamed in, and the broadcast continued. I remember one man standing next to me near the broadcast team. "What's going on?" he asked me. I told him. "Oh, KFUO! I couldn't live without that station."

At concert time--the full concert was broadcast live--I took up an SRO position on the orchestra level for Thomas Adès' intoxicating Asyla. A man standing next to me couldn't contain his appreciation when it was over. "Who is this composer?" he asked me. "Is this his only work?" I only had time to tell him, no, Adès is actually pretty prolific; but it was another example of the value of playing the music of living composers. I suspect the man standing next to me was there for the Beethoven 9, but he got much more than he bargained for; he was introduced to another musical world.

At intermission I had to rush backstage to help escort David Robertson to the seventh floor, where the staff lunch room had been re-made into a temporary studio, with Jim and Ron and crew waiting. Powell Hall--so much space and so little room. (Yes, it takes at least two people to get David swiftly from one part of the hall to another.)

I remember the first time I interviewed David, the morning his appointment as Music Director was announced. I've done many interviews over the years, and when people asked me how it was to interview David, I said, "It was like riding Secretariat." And, as Ron concurs, it still is. David continues to amaze me at such moments. He had just come off the stage conducting an intensely difficult and fiercely beautiful work, and then was thoroughly engaging for almost 20 minutes talking about one of the most talked about works in the history of music. The "haunting" impact of Furtwängler's recording of the B9 for Hitler's birthday; Bernstein's substitution of "Freedom" for "Joy" in the famed concert following the fall of the Berlin Wall; how many hertz an A chord produces; the distinction between experiencing a recording of B9 (or anything else) and experiencing it live--which is the distinction between reproduction and the real, the van Gogh self-portrait on the wall of the Art Institute of Chicago and the poster in your dorm room, a distinction that remains vital in life and art, and in the life of art. David eloquently spoke about all of this and much more.

And then the five minute call to the stage was heard. David wished Orli happy Mother's Day and was off for a brief stop at his suite, where he grabbed a banana for sustenance. Backstage the solo vocalists were mingling, and Jennifer Dudley took a whiff of some peonies as a last preparatory act before she stepped onstage to the welcoming applause.