Classical Music Consulting
Classical Music Consulting
Date posted: 28 Feb 2013
In the 1960s Van Cliburn’s music making and his status as a musical ambassador in the depths of the Cold War opened new worlds of understanding to my teenage, budding love of classical music. At age thirteen I started to work as a part-time salesman for Ann Arbor Michigan’s Liberty Music Shop. Cliburn was then at the zenith of his career. His newest recordings were eagerly anticipated and his television appearances, while not rivaling the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show were must see events.
It was his piano sound, along with Horowitz and Rubinstein that formed my personal world-view of grand, Romantic pianism. Oddly, I did not hear Cliburn, the youngest of these three idols ‘live’ until 1989 At The Mann Center in Philadelphia, long after I’d been fortunate enough to hear both Rubinstein and Horowitz at close range at home. No matter, even in late middle age, that roar of sound Cliburn produced at the keyboard was still electric.
Thousands of living musicians and music lovers will be posting recollections and reminiscences of Cliburn the artist and Cliburn the man. I offer just a couple of vignettes dating from the year I finally met him, in the spring of 1989, at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. I had been chosen to produce a multi-part national radio series about the Competition. WFMT, Chicago sent me there to collect interviews, broadcast the finals concert ‘live’ and begin preparing a series of programs that would examine piano repertoire and pianism through the prism of the Competition, its performers and performances.
Fort Worth, Texas, home to Van Cliburn and the Competition goes piano mad in those quadrennial weeks. Where else can you go into a simple coffee shop at 8AM (before the ubiquity of Starbucks) and hear piano music playing the background. When I complimented the cashier (who looked a bit like my Aunt Fran) on having classical music playing, she replied: “Oh The Wanderer Fantasy? We’ve got the Arrau recording here but I prefer Kempff!!” You get an idea of the depth of love of this instrument and its music that Van Cliburn imparted to the town he called home for so many decades.
Part of my assignment that spring was to interview the man himself. It wasn’t easy. Cliburn wasn’t exactly coy, but he was hard to pin down. Four or five dates were set and cancelled. Finally, word came from Richard Rodzinski, the long-time and infinitely patient Director of the Competition in those years that Van Cliburn would see me the next evening at 1AM at his home! Cliburn was a night-owl and also preferred interviews on home turf.
Not knowing what to expect I arrived promptly at 1. A small party was in full swing, subdued, but still a party. Van was entertaining three or four friends and his mother, the formidable Rildia Bee O’Bryan Cliburn, then a spry ninety-three. I was invited to come into the spacious kitchen, large enough to cater a party for 100. There, at a commodious table groaning with food Rildia Bea sat at the one end, Van at the other and the rest of us gathered around the table as courtiers.
Fifteen minutes into this gathering I realized the real interview was happening right there. Van and his mother traded stories going back to his boyhood. At one point when Van was regaling us with a humorous incident in Russia, Rildia Bea, who seemed to have nodded off at her end of the table instantly corrected her son on a precise date-something that had happened thirty years prior!
Eventually, Van got comfortable enough with my presence to suggest we go into the ‘drawing room’ and conduct the recorded interview. Over the next hour, slowly but surely, the platitudes fell away and while Van never completely let his guard down, the excessive formality and politesse that clouded so many of his other interviews relaxed. I don’t think I came away with any real revelations into his artistic persona or his private life, but I did leave that morning (at 3:30!) with a deep appreciation of how difficult it must be to have been in the public spotlight relentlessly for so long. A certain cautiousness, a polite wariness creeps into your public utterances.
First and foremost I was reminded that Van Cliburn was a man of the South, with everything that implies. Polite to a fault, gracious to one and all, and private. But once in a while in that interview I got a glimpse of the passion for music that drove him to work so hard in his youth to achieve that sound, that musical drive and above all that poetic utterance that seemed to be his alone in many generations of American pianists before and since.
Finally, later in the summer of 1989 at the Mann Center in Philadelphia I got to see and hear what it was all about, something I had only been able to intuit from countless hours of listening to his recordings. Van, like so many artists of his generation was a personal friend of the charismatic Freddy Mann, the Philadelphia impresario whose name was memorialized on a splendid concert pavilion in West Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, one of the summer homes of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Van’s connections to the Mann and to the Philadelphians ran deep. He performed and recorded with Eugene Ormandy and was a regular presence at first at the Robin Hood Dell and after 1976 (he played in the inaugural season) at The Mann many summers from the beginning of his career.
I stood in the wings (there was not seat to be had in the 4,000 seat pavilion) but it was no hardship, because I could watch Cliburn play from a great vantage point. If there was a ‘secret’ to his playing it was a concentration of power whose focal point was his fingers. Cliburn was not all that demonstrative at the keyboard. Not unlike Horowitz, he squared his shoulders and created a flow of energy using his whole torso as the piston that drove his fingers.
It was not a note-perfect performance, but that did not matter. Some musicians have an aura about them. They seem to be able to connect to what they are playing or singing or conducting in a way that permits them to seem at once larger than life and nearly invisible. The sound, the contours of their interpretations seem inevitable just as the music of Bach seems inevitable-what you are hearing is exactly the way it should be heard in an ideal world. I know that sounds a bit wooly because it is difficult to put the aura certain artists create into words. ‘Presence’ doesn’t do it justice. ‘Charisma’ is over-used. To the best my ability the word I prefer is ‘channel.’ Those rare gifted artists apply all their skill to making themselves the most potent intermediary between the composer and the listener. Cliburn, at his best, had this. Effortless technique, a depth of sonority and a gift for making that percussive instrument called the piano sing like the opera divas he so loved.
He is gone but lucky are we to have the recordings of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Schumann, Brahms, Chopin and so much more to treasure for as long as recorded sound can be shared. I don’t know if he was ever truly happy with his work. I am reminded of a portion of a letter from Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille. To me it sums up the questing soul of any great artist. It seems to fit my lasting impression of Van Cliburn:
“There is a vitality,
a life force,
a quickening
that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all time,
this expression is unique.
And If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.
The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine
how good it is
nor how valuable it is
nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly
to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate YOU.
Keep the channel open...
No artist is pleased...
There is no satisfaction whatever at anytime
There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction
a blessed unrest that keeps us marching
and makes "us" MORE alive than the others”.
Martha Grahm
Date posted: 3 Feb 2013
From January 24th to February 1, 2013, Thom and I visited Ireland for the first time. Though we lived in London for nearly a decade and frequently visited Scotland and Wales, Ireland eluded us. That oversight was rectified in fine fashion with an invitation to adjudicate the 7th Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition.
When the Competition’s charming artistic administrator Dearbhla (pronounced DER-vlah) Collins told me my fellow judges would include conductor Richard Bonynge, Lenore Rosenberg of the Metropolitan Opera, Henning Ruhe of the Bavarian State Opera, Christian Schirm of the Paris Opera and Ireland’s beloved soprano Suzanne Murphy, I said yes immediately. Clearly Ms. Dunne commands great respect in Europe.
The Competition was a model of how these events can be run when the organizers understand what they are trying to accomplish. The purpose of the Veronica Dunne Competition, as reiterated by Ms. Dunne herself in a beautiful welcoming address, is to identify talent worthy of promoting and worthy of further encouragement. Veronica Dunne (she insists everyone call her ‘Ronnie’) repeatedly reminded competitors to sing from the heart and to enjoy their performances.
The 80-plus entrants were a fine cross-section of singers 34 and under. Asia, North America, Scandinavia, Great Britain, Israel, South Africa, Eastern Europe and of course Ireland were well represented. Right away, in the preliminary round we judges got a sense of the state of singing today, both its merits and its challenges.
There was much to commend in the precision and presentation of many of the singers. And one always hopes that there will be a few moments of revelation: a phrase beautifully turned, a new talent discovered, or even a performance from a singer who may not make it to the finish line but whose artistry causes you to sit up and take notice. Even after fifteen performances of Je veux vivre from Gounod’s Romeo and Juliette, there were many such moments for me. These included a tenor who did not pass from the Preliminary Round who sang David’s tricky monologue from Die Meistersinger with superb storytelling ability; a mezzo, just barely twenty who sang Dido’s Farewell from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with wisdom and pathos beyond her years; and a baritone whose very first phrase signaled a talent I hope we’ll hear and see on the stages of the great opera houses soon.
We also heard a number of singers with shortcomings including over-embellishment of Baroque music, a lack of proper musical style (especially in bel canto repertoire) and performing pieces not suited to their developing voices. To address these challenges the organizers of the competition gave us judges the opportunity to have one on one sessions with any competitor who wanted feedback.
As the competition drew towards the finale our discussions as judges were lively but always respectful of different points of view. The competition had chosen its panel of judges, comprised of singers, impresarios and conductors, wisely. In addition to those already mentioned, Patrick Ringborg, General Music Director of the Kassel Opera, joined us for the final rounds and conducted the finals concert. The irrepressible Jane Carty, herself a passionate champion of young singers, chaired the jury and provided clear-eyed leadership in helping us achieve a fair result.
The Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition is a hidden gem. They could do with more visibility on the international competition ‘circuit’ since the prize money is serious and the opportunities that can arise from winning are considerable. In these still-shaky times of financing the arts all over the world, but perhaps especially in Ireland, what is most impressive is the level of commitment from the Irish citizens and organizations that support the undertaking. Even the Irish President Michael D. Higgins is Patron of the event and personally gives the prizes at the finals. The funds to put on this triennial event come from a relatively small number of individuals and institutions. Every penny must be raised. As Ronnie reminded us, these singers may have God-given voices but He did not give them money!
Dublin itself, even in rainy January, is filled with treasures, from the superb collection at The National Gallery (including a priceless trove of Turner watercolors on display only in January) to Trinity College with its awe-inspiring Book of Kells, to the churches filled with art and the Georgian architecture that stands out in high relief much more so than its counterparts in London where it may be abundant, but obscured by the sheer density of that city.
A word must be said about the incomparable Irish hospitality. They show a kindness towards strangers, who remain so only briefly, before being enveloped in the warmth of friendship. They are passionate, voluble and keen to regale you with the delights of Dublin, Ireland and its people. They are proud of their small island country, their capital city, their independent nature, and their support of the arts and young artists.
We heard many an Irish welcome during our stay. My favorite will remain, since it encapsulates the sincerity and generosity of its people: "Céad míle fáilte" – A thousand welcomes! We enjoyed every one of them.
For a list of the winners and more details about the competition, go to: http://www.vdiscompetition.com/
Date posted: 19 Aug 2012
Two or three times a year I’m asked to produce a recording. The most recent journey to the studio has been with violinist Frank Almond, our third collaboration since 2006. As it was in our first disc, pianist William Wolfram brought his lustrous tone and fiery technique to the party as well.
It’s been gratifying on many levels. First and foremost, to be able to help a colleague and a friend realize his or her artistic vision is at the heart of what I try and do in all my professional work. In addition, recording production keeps the producer’s musical ‘chops’ in shape. As I spend much of my life making plans for concerts and operas into the future, it is valuable to get into the trenches, so to speak, and listen as carefully as is possible, participate directly in the music-making process.
And so, I’ve spent the last few days in Milwaukee (Frank is also concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony) cloistered in one of the performance spaces of the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center making a disc of familiar and rare pieces associated with Frank’s priceless ‘Lipinski’ Stradivarius. All four compositions have a direct connection with this ‘fiddle’ which was once owned by Giuseppe Tartini, author of the ‘Devil’s Trill’ sonata.
The instrument gets it sobriquet from a later owner, the Paganini rival Karol Lipinski. The full story of this amazing violin is on line at Wikipedia and elsewhere. Suffice it to say, Frank chose wisely and as always, assembled a disc that I think will be a delight from beginning to end-the fine Schumann D minor sonata, the aforementioned ‘Devil’s Trill, plus two rarities, a fiendishly difficult caprice by the violin’s namesake and a sonata by the German-Dutch composer Julius Röntgen. To the best of our knowledge, this will be the first recording of the Röntgen Sonata, quite something in this age of Naxos!
Making a recording can be like that saying about the making of sausage and politics-you can enjoy the end product but you don’t want to see the process! Making this disc was quite different. I often say to music enthusiasts that I wish they all could attend rehearsals or recording sessions for concerts and opera from time to time. The process is exhilarating. Watching superbly gifted musicians find new things in the music with each passing moment, sharing in the often-electric atmosphere of rehearsals and recordings is a privilege. This was the case with the disc Frank is calling ‘A Violin’s Life’.
The biggest challenge is the instrument itself. Singers often give their voices an identity apart from their own bodies. How many times have I heard: “the voice is acting up today” as opposed to the more correct possessive “my voice". A Strad is the same, even though it is genuinely inanimate and outside the player’s own body. It still possesses a personality, quirks, temperament and a power that needs taming. Frank has been using the Lipinski Strad as his main instrument for several years now, but Mr. Lipinski can still be something of a wild stallion with no saddle.
Frank tells stories of days when it seems the devil of the ‘Devil’s Trill’ sonata must be inhabiting the violin! It takes a combination of coaxing, command and infinite patience to release the grandeur of this ‘Golden Period’ Stradivarius. And lucky for us, Lipinski, Tartini and all the other previous owners of this amazing fiddle seemed to be pleased we were making this recording as the instrument was in as fine a form as its player for these days. It purred, soared, growled (when need be) and roared when the grandeur of the romantic pieces called for it.
Be on the lookout in a few months when this disc becomes available through the enterprising AVIE label. Play it on a dark and stormy night and then maybe in your own subsequent dreams an apparition will come to you too, dictating a new masterpiece like the Tartini!
August 19, 2012
Milwaukee
Date posted: 25 Jul 2012
I keep only a few photographs on my desk. Memento clutter is not my style, so I choose the images I look at nearly every day with care. You can imagine perhaps several of them: my partner Thom, my mother, and something funny to keep me grounded and remind me I’m not doing brain surgery or rocket science. Not much else. One photo that has long held pride of place was taken in the Music Hall Green Room several years ago. I treasure it today more than ever. In it, I’m kneeling alongside Louise Nippert, the now late doyenne of arts philanthropy in Cincinnati.
She had just been to a Cincinnati Opera performance and had come back to the Green Room, as was her longtime practice, to greet and welcome the artists. In recent years, she was confined to a wheelchair and sparing in her speech, but her presence was cherished by the artists and her warm smile spoke volumes. Mrs. Nippert died this week, and with her passing an era comes to a close. She was the last in a line of formidable women in Cincinnati history who made Cincinnati arts institutions matter at home and famous abroad.
Both the Symphony and the Opera were founded primarily by women. Though their fortunes began with their husbands, those men were wise enough to know that successful philanthropy always needed the mental and emotional balance only a woman can bring to the table when it comes to sensible and passionate artistic stewardship. In Cincinnati, those names are legendary: Anna Sinton Taft, Mary Emery, Patricia Corbett, Irma Lazarus, Elizabeth Wohlgemuth Herschede, and of course, Louise Dieterle Nippert.
Patricia Beggs, our Cincinnati Opera General Director and CEO, was close to Pat Corbett, as well as “Bee” Herschede and Irma Lazarus. Patty also knew Mrs. Nippert for nearly three decades, and from what Patty tells me, I would have loved knowing all these women in the high noon of their years. As it is, I have been fortunate to know Mrs. Nippert for all eight years of my tenure as Artistic Director at Cincinnati Opera. Patty made certain that Mrs. Nippert (‘Liesel’ to her family and close friends) was one of the first people I met after my appointment.
It seems like yesterday that I first entered her drawing room at Greenacres, her beloved home and farm in Indian Hill. The room is bright, airy, filled with loving photographic and painted memories of her husband Louis, her friends and the countless artists whose lives and careers she helped over seven decades. A piano is prominent in the room, appropriate for a woman who sang with professional skill for many years.
She was a patient listener as I (slightly nervous) explained my background and my enthusiasm for the job I was about to undertake. I did not come empty-handed. Two of our Young Artists of that season came with me to serenade her. Her smile at the end of the first aria sealed the deal. I was OK. As it would be for the next seven years, two or three times each year, our mini concert for her was always followed by tea, elegant crustless chicken salad sandwiches and Greenacres signature mango raspberry tea - a Louise Nippert specialty. I understand that had I attended such an event a few years earlier, Mrs. Nippert would have prepared the repast herself.
If I have a singular happy memory of Mrs. Nippert, beyond regular encounters at the Symphony, Pops, CCM and of course, Cincinnati Opera performances, it is one important afternoon at Greenacres. Mrs. Nippert had given a substantial gift to help us create a Cincinnati-inspired production of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger for our 2010 Ninetieth Anniversary Season. When the economy tanked in 2008, we had to abandon the original concept of a brand new production, and purchase a set from Germany at a savings of nearly one million dollars. However, we still needed Mrs. Nippert’s substantial gift to make Die Meistersinger possible in the ‘new’ economy.
Her loyal associate Carter Randolph said that the best way to approach this was to simply speak directly to Mrs. Nippert. So, off to Greenacres Patty and I went, with my wonderful colleague, Marcus Küchle, whose fluent, native German was always a pleasure for ‘Liesel’ to hear. We walked her through the plot of the opera, and just when I got to the point in the story where Beckmesser unknowingly makes a total ass of himself in front of the entire population of old Nuremburg, Mrs. Nippert pealed forth with the most hearty laugh I’ve heard in a long time. She smiled and said: “I love it” and our production was secure.
That was the essence of Louise Nippert. She knew herself so well. She knew what mattered in being a philanthropist. Her generosity to Cincinnati Opera, Cincinnati Symphony, Cincinnati Ballet, May Festival, CCM and countless other institutions in our city carried on the legacy of those great women who came before her.
Will we see her like again? Probably not. The way in which money is made and given has changed. So many worthy causes vie for the precious philanthropic dollars in any city. It is my hope, however, that if you are reading this, you will remember her example and perhaps if Dame Fortune smiles on you, man or woman, you will think about this: the arts in a community help define its value not only to the world at large, but to those who live within its boundaries. Louise and Louis Nippert not only paid it forward, they kept it at home, where it could do good for those close and dear to them personally. Give. Please give to worthy national and international causes, but save some of your largesse for ‘home.’ For those gifts, your children and their children after them will thank you.
Date posted: 15 May 2012
In anticipation of Renée Fleming’s opening night appearance for the 2012-13 Cincinnati Symphony season on September 18 (get your tickets now!) I’ve been musing on my good fortune in having known Renée Fleming for over twenty years, as an artist, a colleague and a friend.
There are no accidents and looking back on my first meeting with Renée Fleming in the summer of 1991, I should have sensed then and there that I was supposed to work with this gifted artist from the get go. It was a ‘Mozart Year’-this one the 200th anniversary of his death. Seiji Ozawa had planned a summer of Mozart at Tanglewood and I had the happy task of bringing his ideas to life. It was a rich menu- piano concertos, symphonies, chamber music and a staged version of Seiji’s favorite Mozart opera Idomeneo. We had a starry cast for that time: Frederica von Stade as Idamante, Hildegard Behrens as Elettra and Anthony Rolfe Johnson as Idomeneo.
But, just two weeks before our very short week of rehearsals began the manager of the soprano scheduled to sing Ilia called with bad news. His client had decided that the role no longer suited her! However, this enterprising manager, the late Merle Hubbard had an ace up his sleeve, he told me…a young American named Renée Fleming. There was no time to have her come and audition, we took her on faith and boy did she deliver.
For the next two years I kept tabs on Ms. Fleming and saw her nearly outshine far more starry colleagues at The Met in the revival of John Corigliano's Ghosts of Versailles. And then in my first months as Senior Vice-President for Artists and Repertoire at Decca Records in London, my second ‘accident’ occurred. Not unlike Tanglewood, there was a Mozart opera involved and this time the stakes were even higher. It was a live recording of Cosi fan Tutte with Sir Georg Solti and sure enough two weeks before the concerts, the soprano due to sing Fiordiligi pulled out, saying the role was too heavy for her! Sir Georg called me and in his inimitable Hungarian/German/English patois said: “My Dee-yahr, zhere is zhis American zhoprano, called Flehmink, do you know huh?” My affirmative answer and endorsement put her on the next plane to London.
Two weeks later while the crowds in the Royal Festival Hall were still screaming at the end of the concert their approval for Ms. Fleming’s performance, I was bounding back stage to meet her manager. When I asked him point blank if she had a record contract, he smiled like The Cheshire Cat and said: “not yet.” I signed her to Decca within a couple of weeks.
I offer all this as a somewhat lengthy prologue only to emphasize that Renée at that point was not an unknown artist. Instead, she was a tremendously gifted hardworking soprano with pretty terrific credentials already; Royal Opera, Glyndebourne, a recording of Strauss’ Four Last Songs with Christoph Eschenbach, and so forth. But, she needed that one last push to the top that (in those days) an exclusive recording contract could provide.
For nearly seven years we worked closely on building a catalog of recital discs and opera recordings and every one of them is a joy to recall-The Beautiful Voice, songs of Schubert with Eschenbach at the keyboard, Sir Georg’s first ever disc accompanying a singer in arias, Night Songs with Jean-Yves Thibaudet, American Arias with James Levine and the Met Orchestra, and for me, the finest of them all, the now-definitive recording of Dvořák’s most masterful opera Rusalka, recorded in Prague with an all-star cast and the superb Sir Charles Mackerras on the podium.
But more than the recordings themselves was, and is, the opportunity to watch Renée at work. In those years and to this day, I attended her concert and opera performances both at home and abroad. Her La Scala debut, a fraught affair, no fault of her own. It was a performance in Lucrezia Borgia that blazed to the rafters of that historic theater. An all-Schubert recital in Salzburg (that takes REAL guts) that had the audience cheering for nearly thirty minutes. Her triumphant Met Opera seal of approval in opening the season as Desdemona to Domingo’s Otello, only six weeks after the birth of her second child. And the list goes on.
What is the constant? Sheer hard work, total dedication, an iron will to succeed and standards that she sets for herself that are pretty darn high. We used to laugh at the fact that she lives by a famous Martha Graham quote which reads in part: “No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever, at any time There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than others.”
It is perhaps a peculiarly American idiosyncrasy, that small amount of insecurity in the wider international world of music. An American in Paris (one the cities that would like to claim her as native) has to sing in French better than any Frenchman. A soprano in Bayreuth or Berlin, has to have echt Deutsch and she does. Her Italian and Czech and Russian and of course, American English aren’t bad either.
Blessed with a hard won and rock solid technique bequeathed to her by her beloved teacher Beverly Johnson, Renée has turned her celebrity into a tool to advance the art form of opera overall. She is the worthy successor to America’s favorite diva of an earlier generation, Beverly Sills. With her Met HD broadcast hosting, her new role at The Lyric Opera of Chicago as a creative consultant and still singing at the absolute top of her form, Renée is poised to make her next decade of artistry even more important and significant for opera than ever.
When she comes to Cincinnati in the fall, you will hear a voice in its prime, an artist at the zenith of her interpretive powers and if you are fortunate enough to meet her, a woman who is as down to earth as the soccer mom she once was, while raising her kids as a single mother in Connecticut and New York. Renée is the real article, that rare artist whose personal and real radiance comes through her music making and obliges her to share it with younger singers as a mentor and exemplar and with all of us as well.
