800 Words: Evan and Hauptmann Rinderherz Discuss the Berlin Philharmonic (part 2)

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Zo, who do you think are the world’s great conductors?

Evan: It depends on how you define greatness.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Nein, there is only one way can we define greatness. Nur performance.

Evan: That’s not true at all. Greatness is how much they give to music, rather than how much music gives them. When conductors collect thirty thousand dollars for a one-week engagement during which they perform a piece both the conductor and the orchestra barely need to rehearse before they perform to an audience which knows no more about the wonders of this piece of music by the end of the performance than they did at the beginning, that’s not greatness. I don’t care how effective or affecting the performance is, that’s cultural evil.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: OK. Ich habe nicht the energy fur this fight. What conductors you think give the best performance?

Evan: Well… Let’s see… The ones whom I think have totally mastered the art of performance?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Ja. Who gives the best performance?

Evan: Of what composer?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Any.

Evan: You can’t do that.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Warum nicht?

Evan: Because lots of conductors give great performances of some composers and are terrible in others.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: That is not true! I find that many conductors who are good in one composer are good in them all.

Evan: That’s because you only like five composers.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Untrue! I like sixteen!

Evan: But some of them you don't love passionately, like Mendelssohn, Mahler, Handel, Gluck...basically the one's who aren't German enough to be loved.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Ja! But I still like them!

Evan: The only composers I'm convinced you love are Bach, Weber, Wagner, Schumann, and Richard Strauss. And sometimes I even have my doubts about Schumann and Strauss. 

Evan: Alright, enough from me. So who’s consistent over a huge number of composers…well, I have to include Riccardo Chailly,…

Hauptmann Rinderherz (interrupting): Schrecklich!

Evan: Vladimir Jurowski,…

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Scheisse!

Evan: Gennadi Rozhdestvensky,...

Hauptmann Rinderherz: O weh!

Evan: maybe Manfred Honeck and Daniel Harding,…

Hauptmann Rinderherz: O Gott!

Evan: and perhaps Ivan Fischer and Paavo Jarvi,…

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Ach Gott!

Evan: and I suppose I could include Semyon Bychkov and Andris Nelsons and Kirill Petrenko and David Zinman and Herbert Blomstedt…

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Mein Gott!

Evan: Oh! Don’t forget Franz Welser-Most and especially Neeme Jarvi.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Um Gottes willen! You are an enemy of music!

Evan: I’m sorry you feel that way.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Und I’m sorry you feel this way. Warum do you?

Evan: Because I like my music fast and Russian.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: How do you sleep at night?

Evan: I don’t. I’m too wired from the fast Russian music.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Aber you listen to Schubert and Otis Redding late at night!

Evan: OK, you got me. I think these conductors make orchestras really responsive to what they feel the music wants, they inspire the orchestras they stand in front of to consistently give viscerally exciting performances, they never neglect any of the most crucial musical elements, they can be extremely expressive without compromising the music's formal elements, and most importantly, they don’t bore me. But except for Nelsons and maybe Jurowski, none of them are serious candidates for the Berlin Philharmonic.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Und you’re sure of that?

Evan: Riccardo Chailly is a star in Leipzig and he’ll be 65 when Rattle retires. Daniel Harding is a protégé of both Rattle and Abbado, and that will disqualify him even though he’s a completely different sort of conductor than either. Paavo Jarvi will be knee-deep in Frankfurt and Paris and god knows where else by the time Berlin opens up. Welser-Most will still be in Vienna and possibly in Cleveland too, and even so, half the world already thinks he’s a mediocre conductor. Ivan Fischer will be 67 and is already the director of the Berlin Konzerthaus Orchester. Bychkov will be 66, and he could be a stopgap, but in five years he may well be the director of any major orchestra who offers him. In 2018, Zinman will be 82 and Blomstedt will be 90. The others are just too small time.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: What about Daniel Barenboim?

Evan: Daniel Barenboim is awesome when he realizes that he’s a Jewish kid from Argentina who loves to perform and not trying to be the most profound German musician who ever lived.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Zo you do not like even his Beethoven?

Evan: Oh no, I think a lot of his Beethoven’s wonderful. I just don’t like it when he performs every slow movements at half Beethoven’s speed. But I think his Liszt and Bruckner are magnificent and he almost makes me love Wagner.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: But you think faster than the metronome like Harding and Jarvi is alright?

Evan: At least I’m not bored…

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Disgusting!

Evan: Whatever works for you…

Hauptmann Rinderherz: What about Riccardo Muti? He does the faster.

Evan: Another conductor who thinks seriousness is the same thing as intelligence. He’s a much, much better conductor during those few moments a decade when a major key score lightens him up and stops him from flopping his hair.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: And even Mariss Jansons you don't like?

Evan: I used to like Jansons a lot more when he was a younger man, but he’s been spoiled. Too much success made him kind of bland. He still has the same intensity, which I love, but it’s just intensity without any character.  But what are we talking about these guys for, they’ll all be over 75 by the time Rattle leaves. What about real candidates?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Barenboim is real.

Evan: If Barenboim becomes the next director, the Berlin Philharmonic will be a joke – no different then any other orchestra which throws its future away with a high prestige name who has no future with them.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: But he should be the music director now!

Evan: I’m sorry to say that you’re probably right. They should have made him director after Karajan, but imagine appointing Herbert von Karajan as the director in 1984 if Karajan were the director of La Scala and the Philharmonic's crosstown rival. That's how dumb a Barenboim appointment would be. 

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Still better than Abbado…

Evan: Oh really?

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Abbado stopped being great when he got to Berlin. He destroyed the Philharmoniker!

Evan: Actually, you’re probably right about the first part of that, but it’s not because Abbado destroyed the orchestra. The orchestra was a shadow of a great orchestra under Karajan, turning music into a luxury item while other orchestras did the important work of introducing new music and finding new ways to perform old music. If anything, Abbado improved things quite measurably. But Claudio Abbado was always a delegator, and he got increasingly bored as his career went along. There was some point when he stopped caring about rehearsal or conveying any serious wishes to his musicians, but at every point in his career, he was lucky enough to face the world’s greatest orchestral musicians and in recent years they've all loved the fact that he makes no real demands. Sometimes I wonder if he isn’t just the luckiest conductor to ever step onto the podium, yet sometimes he snaps back into focus and pull an amazing performance out of his pocket.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Ja, then so you hate Haitink too?

Evan: I don’t hate Haitink, but I do often find him astonishingly dull. I don’t hate Abbado either. But I do think they’re both amazingly overrated in comparison to a number of contemporaries who are demonstrably better. Not just Blomstedt and Rozhdestvensky but others like Mackerras and Dohnanyi and Colin Davis, all three of of whom can be extremely dry but also can turn on the excitement far more often than either Haitink or Abbado.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: What about a junger conductor like Vasily Petrenko?

Evan: A one-trick horse who doesn’t seem to conduct anything but Russian music, which he performs extraordinarily well in that virtuoso way which tells you he’d be not much good in anything else.  He’ll probably end up inheriting the St. Petersburg Philharmonic after Yuri Temirkanov collapses off the podium dead drunk after his third bottle of vodka.

Haputmann Rinderherz: Then what about Yannick Nezet-Seguin?

Evan: Oy. Leonard Bernstein sans le talent.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: How can you say that?

Evan: He’s like a kid up there with a permanent sugar rush, but that’s when he isn’t trying to do the super-profound us to sleep in Bruckner. But he has no sense of the long-range structure or how to keep an orchestra together. But he’ll have a great career as the new ‘great conductor’ in this part of America. He arrived at just the right time to be the knight on the white horse who ‘saves’ the Philadelphia Orchestra and he’ll probably have the same lucky timing when or if he becomes director of the Metropolitan Opera. But I don’t understand how he got there or how people think he’s a great conductor.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: But you like the fast tempos!

Evan: I like fast tempos when they make musical sense and the conductor gets the musicians to play in them well!

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Then you must hate der Gergiev.

Evan: Sometimes I love Valery Gergiev. When his orchestras catch up to him, his performances can be amazing. But they can also suck, and sometimes his performances are both in the same piece. Like Furtwangler.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: I give up, you are ein musicalisches schweinegrippe! But how about der Dudamel? He too is fast.

Evan: Well in most ways he’s just like Gergiev. An amazing conductor at inspiring the orchestra and getting a rich sound, he’s also musically smarter than Gergiev and much more curious about music. But even if he stays this inspirational, he’s gonna be erratic as hell and he could still be just another Zubin Mehta and completely check out musically by the time he’s 40.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Zubin Mehta is better than people say.

Evan: I agree with you, but that’s a pretty low bar to clear. In any event, La Scala clearly wants Dudamel to replace Barenboim, and if he takes it, he will have as terrible a time managing that house as every other director they’ve ever had.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: But then why should he not go to Berlin?

Evan: Because he will and should demand they play all sorts of music which they hated to play under Rattle. As a conductor, Dudamel’s like Gergiev, but as a music director he would be Rattle redux.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: But he venerates our traditions!

Evan: Well good for you that you think you found someone who does!

Hauptmann Rinderherz: You’re hopeless.

Evan: I’m not hopeless. I just think the traditions you love are unbelievably stuffy and reactionary.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: You’re hopeless because you hate music!

Evan: I don’t hate music. I love it more than anything short of herring in wine sauce and a pastrami sandwich.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: These traditions are what made the music you love. If you do not honor them, the music will disappear along with it. And everything in kultur you love except herring and pastrami will be gone.  

Evan: The age in which these compositions were produced will soon be completely dead and gone. We currently live in the most revolutionary era since the dawn of Romanticism. And the true test of whether or not these works are true classics in the sense which Homer and Sophocles are is if they still demand to be heard when the tradition of how they’re meant to be heard is entirely broken and a new one begins with no knowledge of how it was once presented. Will people still want to hear Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven’s music if they can only be heard live in an arrangement for Rock Band; or a synthetic orchestra, because in 150 years, or perhaps much sooner, that may be the only way people can hear the music we love.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: Such an age approaches too quickly for me.

Evan: Well, we may all live to see that day.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: For music to die before me is a death from which I want nothing.

Evan: So long as our minds stay open, music will never die.

Hauptmann Rinderherz: What mind is there in this other music?

Evan: This is gonna take a while…

800 Words: Boston Symphony New Music Director Sweepstakes Semi-Finals Part I

No classical music organization ever did more for America than the Boston Symphony, and no classical organization’s decline has been more tragic. The list of works the Boston Symphony is responsible for birthing in its Golden Age reads like a retrospective of its period’s masterworks: some of which include Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, Britten’s Peter Grimes, Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony, Howard Hanson’s Romantic Symphony, Copland’s 3^rd Symphony, Roussel’s 3^rd Symphony, Roy Harris’s 3^rd 5^th and 6^th Symphonies, Prokofiev’s 4^th Symphony, Barber’s 2^nd Symphony, Martinu’s 1^st Symphony, Martinu’s 6^th Symphony, Hindemith’s Konzertmusik for Strings and Brass, Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Stravinsky’s Orpheus, and Poulenc’s Gloria. Is there any orchestra of that period with similar excellence in the work it commissioned?

But what does the BSO have to show for the fifty years since Charles Munch left?...not very much I’m afraid. Like all the Big Five orchestras (except Cleveland), the glory days are long since passed and these once progressive institutions have turned into sad nostalgia acts – playing concerts high on prestige yet low on musical substance. All the while, the most artistically satisfying concerts on the orchestral scene have been found in California for the past twenty years. The Los Angeles Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony are orchestras far readier for, and far more understanding of today’s challenges  - with lots more (and better) world premieres of new compositions, far better community outreach, and much more integration into their communities. If the LA Phil or SF Symphony folded tomorrow, the cities would truly change because their subscriber base is younger and their outreach programs affect more people. But at any point in the last half-century, a Boston without their symphony orchestra would fundamentally be the same place.

And if that wasn’t enough, no orchestra fell quite as precipitously as Boston has in the last few years. Until recently, the BSO could at least console itself that it was not subject to indignities any different than those of New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. But as James Levine cancelled concert after concert, his dates fell mostly into the hands of no-name assistants, none of whom proved up to the job’s demands as Michael Tilson Thomas did when William Steinberg fell ill in the early 70’s. There were reports of open giggling by musicians during their performances. One would think that in such a situation a new music director, even a mediocre one, would be especially crucial. But no such announcement was forthcoming, nor have they even seemed to try to get one.  Like Chicago and Philadelphia before them, the Boston Symphony is too proud to settle for 2^nd best.

As a rather pathetic concession to the fact that bad authority is better than none, Chicago and Philly decided on ‘Principal Conductor’ appointments that at least saw a consistent authority figure preside over concerts for 6 weeks of the season until they could find a first-rate director, and however dumb the idea of a ‘principal conductor’ appointment is, even that’s better than what Boston did has seen fit to leave the inmates in charge of the asylum. In Boston, there’s no music director, no principal conductor, not even a principal guest, nothing to signal that there’s a figure at the helm except a grab-bag of guests to take the place a music director should have. The sense of entitlement is simply shocking, especially considering that their last music director was barely present for the last two years of his tenure.

Even if a David Robertson or a Robert Spano is perhaps too dull or mediocre for such a major appointment, surely either would be better than five years without a figure at all to guide the orchestra. To insist on a ‘great’ music director or none at all is to cut off the nose to spite the face. In music, as in life, we all have to settle. Whether in Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, or Washington, a decent conductor who’s there 15 weeks of the year makes for far better music than a good-to-great one who’s there for 4 to 6. It’s a lesson that the New York Philharmonic finally learned, and with the intelligent-but-dull Alan Gilbert at the helm they’re at least in better long term shape than the rest of the Big Five (save Cleveland). Why shouldn’t David Zinman, Leonard Slatkin, James Conlon, Robert Spano, David Robertson or Marin Alsop get Big Five appointments? They might not be the world’s greatest conductors, but they surely understand what makes an orchestra successful in America better than the foreign also-rans who usually beat them out. Is there really so much difference between the quality of James Conlon’s music making and Kurt Masur’s? The only reason which conductors like Masur get taken more seriously is the distinction of their accents – because no American could possibly conduct European music with the profundity of a European…could they?

It would seem from this year’s schedule that the BSO is finally getting at least little serious about finding a real music director. Around this time last year year, I wrote that the BSO was clearly staking its claim on either Riccardo Chailly or Andris Nelsons, and clearly had nobody else in mind. As I predicted, this was a horrendous error, because it could backfire on them so easily. Both Chailly and Nelsons had to cancel, and there passed not only another year without a new music director, but another year without so much as an audition for a new music director.

This year is at least a little better. There are a few young conductors on this list, some of whom are genuinely promising. Riccardo Chailly is, sadly, nowhere to be found. Chailly would have made a respectable choice: his performances are like the man himself – energetic, intelligent, and warm-hearted. In many ways, they remind one of James Levine (only Chailly is even more gifted), and I don’t doubt that their similarities are why Chailly was considered. He shares with Levine a great love for Italian opera and a dramatic feel for the ‘big tune,’ along with absolute comfort in the more knotty complexities of modernism. But Chailly’s one great fault as a conductor is also one of Levine’s, a freeze-dried lack of spontaneity – the sense that the interpretation we hear was planned thirty years in advance, with no concession made to what the situation of the moment requires that isn’t absolutely necessary to preserve the ensemble. For all his hyper-control, Chailly never fully gives himself to either a performance or an organization, and his legacy will one day be as a curator of great orchestras rather than as a creator of his own performance tradition. Chailly left his post as director of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam for a rather slight provocation. By signaling interest in the Boston Symphony, he seemed to be indicating a willingness to leave his current post as director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus for something equally slight. In the last thirty years, a conductor as talented as Chailly could have been another Toscanini – remaking the entire concept of Italian opera by running any one of a dozen opera houses in Italy. But instead Chailly became a mere custodian to great orchestras, injecting them with just enough innovation to keep the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and Leipzig Gewandhaus fresh without actually changing them. Chailly would have been a ten year appointment in Boston (probably ten turbulent years); just long enough to give them respectability again, but not long enough to begin a second golden age.

In Chailly’s place seems to be another middle-aged Italian. Daniele Gatti, who is scheduled to conduct for a full three weeks of the season – and as he is the only conductor under 75 to receive that honor, he must be considered the clear favorite for the job. In many ways, he is Chailly’s polar opposite. If Chailly is all restraint and consistency, then Gatti is all emotion and volubility. In many ways, he is simply not as good a conductor as Chailly – neither as consistent, nor as curious, nor perhaps as intelligent (who is?). But he has the one quality which Chaily lacks in spades – the ability to give of himself completely. For fifteen years, Gatti directed London’s Royal Philharmonic, and gave this by no means top-flight orchestra a sense of direction which bigger name orchestras in London lacked. His agent, Ronald Wilford, told him he could have his pick of appointments twenty years ago, but Gatti told him he’d go at his own pace.  Gatti does not seem much loved in his position as director of the Orchestre National de France, but a number of the world’s most prestigious orchestras and opera houses seem to find him among their most cherished guest conductors. In fact, rumor holds that when an informal poll was taken of Berlin Philharmonic musicians of whom they would like to replace Simon Rattle during a period when it seemed doubtful that Rattle’s contract would be renewed, Gatti was the clear favorite to replace him. Gatti is a romantic through and through – with a temperament to match. Whereas Chailly seems to play the flake, always finking out on commitments, Gatti seems a genuine hothead – known for tantrums that would even make Riccardo Muti blush. A Gatti appointment would not necessarily be a disaster, but it’s far from advisable. Gatti is a thoroughgoing traditionalist, and his musical conservatism would make an unlikely fit for the most intellectual town in America. I’ve heard a number of performances under his baton in which the playing was near-disastrous. Unlike Chailly, Gatti is no orchestra builder, he is merely a conductor who sometimes gets visceral performances. Yet that ability alone is so lacking among many top-flight conductors that more prestigious appointments may come calling for him very soon. Chailly is eight years Gatti’s senior, and probably missed his chance to be La Scala’s director, but whenever Daniel Barenboim and Stephane Lissner leave (they can’t be there for more than 5 years, can they?), Gatti could easily take over. He would be a well-loved music director at La Scala (for a time), doing the standard Verdi/Wagner fare and doing it quite well – Boston cannot compete with that kind of allure. But with all those provisos, there’s a chance – however small – that Gatti could have a very fine tenure in Boston. He could last twenty years, and remake Boston into a great conservative organization that does romantic repertoire as well as any orchestra in the world. My only problem with this is that an orchestra like the BSO would be setting the bar far too low if they didn’t go for a true innovator. But then again, life is about settling…

Concert Minis #5 (Mahler Minis from Leipzig)

This is a series of reviews of the relays from the Mahler Festival in Leipzig. Every concert of which you all can listen to here.

Mahler Symphony no. 2 - Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra dir. Riccardo Chailly

Go here for Mahler-Mini 2

For sheer craftsmanship, there is no conductor in the world more masterly than Riccardo Chailly. A Chailly performance emerges with perfectly calibrated dynamics, rhythms, and balances, and it does so only rarely at the expense of the music's energy and emotional content. The only thing missing in Chailly's makeup is a sense of exploration. A knowledgeable listener can guess exactly what a Chailly interpretation will sound like without having to hear it.

Back in 2002, I heard Chailly perform the Resurrection Symphony live in Washington DC with his old orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. A few details aside, this was virtually the same virtuoso account I remember nine years ago, but with one major difference: While the Royal Concertgebouw has been the world's pre-eminent Mahler orchestra for the century since his death, their Mahler performances can also smack of a routine they know all too well. For over 200 years, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra has been one of the great German orchestras. But excerpting Bruno Walter's brief pre-Nazi tenure, none of their directors until Riccardo Chailly were great Mahler champions. This performance had all the excitement of a new discovery. The Gewandhaus Orchestra tore into Mahler's apocalyptic passages with relish, and played the quiet passages with a truly rare level of expression. Ever the secure guide, Chailly elicited more nuance from the orchestra than most conductors can dream. For once, Mahler's sprawling (and occasionally dull) score emerged as something constructed with the rigor of Beethoven's symphonies. The combined forces of the Berlin Radio Chorus, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Choir and the Central German Radio Choir gave better choral work than perhaps I've ever heard in this piece. Soprano and Mezzo Christiane Oelze and Sarah Connelly, gave distinguished contributions, particularly Oelze, that couldn't help being obscured by the excellence of everything else.
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