Posted by Erik on February 17, 2003 at 02:51:01:
This was sent to me today and I figured I'd pass it along.
Erik
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CLASSICAL MUSIC
The best years of orchestras' lives: Now or then?
Conductors weigh the gains and losses over time
By Richard Dyer
Boston Globe Staff
2/2/2003
At 94, conductor and violinist Harry Ellis Dickson has heard it all.
The Boston Pops associate conductor laureate has been associated with
the Boston Symphony and the Pops since 1938, and he played in the
orchestra for 49 seasons.
One of the things Dickson likes to say is that player for player,
today's BSO is - like any other contemporary orchestra - stronger than
ever. Paradoxically, though, Dickson believes that orchestras today do
not invariably play as well as orchestras of the past did.
Over the last few months we asked five eminent conductors to comment on
Dickson's observation: BSO music director-designate James Levine, James
Conlon, Marek Janowski, Joseph Silverstein, and Christoph von Dohnanyi.
Most of them agreed with the first half of Dickson's point, that
individual players today are technically stronger than ever before. Most
of them disagreed with Dickson's second proposition, advancing different
and complementary reasons for doing so.
Contemporary players are more versatile than their predecessors for
several reasons. Composers have enlarged the repertoire with works that
pose new challenges and demand new skills. Pieces that one generation of
musicians finds difficult or even unplayable become standard student
fare before long.
There have also been shifts of emphasis in musical training. More
players are experienced in chamber music than before, a trend that leads
to improved musical standards. There is today, for example, a
substantial literature of chamber music for winds and for brass that was
created in the last century.
In that period, also, there was an expansion in the number of
institutions offering advanced musical education, and consequently, a
larger number of players compete for positions in orchestras.
Dickson recalls that when he joined the BSO 65 years ago, there was no
contractual audition procedure. ''I came in and played for Serge
Koussevitzky in the conductor's room; Arthur Fiedler played the piano
for me. Koussie asked me to come back and see him at the end of the
season, and then he offered me a contract. Today only the very best
players can get into one of the major orchestras.''
(Timothy Tsukamoto, BSO orchestra personnel coordinator, says there were
400 applicants for four violin positions last year; 187 for two current
cello openings; and 150 for the principal timpanist's job.)
Charting the difference
Silverstein has another way of measuring the difference. He recalls how
back in the 1960s, George Szell would rehearse the Cleveland Orchestra
in certain pieces by Paul Hindemith and William Walton ''until the
players couldn't stand it any more.... Frankly, today, Szell could get
the same performances with half as much rehearsal.''
Levine's point of view on the improvement of individual players is that
musicians ''from the old period wouldn't and couldn't have done what
modern players can do - although we sometimes miss the idiomatic
subtleties the great instrumentalists and orchestral sections of the
past brought to the music they played.''
As for the question of whether today's orchestras are the equal of their
predecessors, Levine points out that most music lovers know older
orchestras and conductors mostly through recordings. ''People tend to
idealize the recordings and the performances they heard when they were
young; the performances that introduced them to the repertoire. Anything
that differs from what they grew up with sounds wrong.''
Levine draws a parallel between the orchestral world and the operatic
world he knows so well from his decades at the Met.
''There are obvious differences between the present and the past that do
not resolve themselves into a matter of `better' or `worse,''' he says.
''The strengths and deficiencies of today's singers, like those of
today's orchestras, are different from those of an earlier generation.
We no longer have a lot of stand-and-deliver Verdi singers, the way we
did when I was a kid. But those singers could not have sung some of the
other operas that today's singers perform so well.''
Levine identifies what many think of as an ''orchestra problem'' as a
conductor issue instead. ''When people talk about the problems of modern
orchestras, I think they are really thinking about the problems of
modern conductors. Much of what I hear is either dull and anonymous or
pointlessly eccentric, and both qualities drive me crazy.''
Sound and imagination
Many of the other conductors answered questions about the quality of
today's orchestras by talking about the quality of today's conductors.
Janowski flatly says, ''The sound of any orchestra is the product of the
conductor's imagination.''
Silverstein points out some of the special conditions lying behind
legendary performances of the past - and draws an important distinction
between a hit-and-run guest conductor and an old-time music director.
The fact is, there are few music directors today who choose the
long-term commitment that marked the historic collaborations of the past
- between Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony, between Eugene Ormandy
and the Philadelphia Orchestra, between George Szell and the Cleveland
Orchestra. It is no accident that many people believe the Metropolitan
Opera Orchestra is the finest in America today - and point to Levine's
longtime primary commitment as the reason.
Silverstein says, ''One of the reasons there was such a marvelous
situation with Szell and Cleveland for 24 years [1946-1970] is that
there was a large repertoire that was Szell's alone - the guest
conductors didn't touch those pieces. Some personal qualities of
interpretation have disappeared today because so much of the repertoire
is no longer exclusively the territory of the music director in his
unique relationship with the orchestra.''
Silverstein served 22 seasons as concertmaster of the BSO before leaving
to concentrate on conducting, chamber music, and solo engagements; he
has traveled widely in America's orchestral world.
''The artistic possibilities one finds even with orchestras of modest
reputations are grand,'' Silverstein says, ''and the depth of physical
competence is extraordinary. Not long ago, I conducted the Albuquerque
Symphony in Stravinsky's `Petrouchka.' The things that caused rhythmic
problems for the BSO in my early years, they ate up like breakfast
cereal. I think orchestras are better than ever, and in cities where
there was barely a professional orchestra 20 years ago there is talent,
enthusiasm, and a broad demographic in the audience.''
Like many other musicians, Silverstein is keenly interested in Levine's
efforts to change the now-standard paradigm that decrees, ''This week we
rehearse only for this week's concert.'' A guest conductor has no other
alternative; a music director doesn't need to be bound by this approach.
''There are many times when we simply need to live with the music a
little longer before we bring it before the public,'' Silverstein says.
Distinctions blurred
Over the past 50 years many of the individual, national, and cultural
qualities that characterized orchestras have begun to disappear - which
disappoints music lovers who once could distinguish among the particular
sounds and stylistic characteristics of German, French, Czech, Austrian,
or Russian orchestras.
Janowski, a favorite BSO guest conductor who has spent most of his
career in Europe, says that orchestras today tend to have a ''global
sonority that you find all over,'' and attributes the difference to the
influence of recordings, which have also contributed in other ways to
how orchestras sound.
''The pressure from recordings and live broadcasts has put an emphasis
on precision,'' Janowski says. The technology of recording has
reinforced this effect: Some orchestras try to sound live the way they
do on their recordings.
Janowski also points out that orchestras of today now play a much larger
repertoire than those of the past, and much of that repertoire has been
contemporary. ''Playing new music influences the way you approach
Beethoven, Brahms, and Bruckner. Because of the demands of 20th-century
music, playing today is definitely more precise than it was 50 years
ago, and the basic level on which you start rehearsing is a lot higher
than it ever was before.''
Dohnanyi, who just completed a distinguished tenure as music director of
the Cleveland Orchestra, contributes a characteristically philosophical
perspective on this question.
''We have to look at the priorities of the repertoire in different
periods. The priority of the 19th century - and most of the music
orchestras play comes from the 19th century - was certainly not
precision. The emphasis was on the humanistic, idealistic, and emotional
side of music. What we are trying to do today is combine the priorities
of that period with our own emphasis on facility and technique. If the
qualities of today can be added without losing the qualities of the
past, then you have an evolution and an advance.''
Conlon, an American conductor who has held prominent posts in Europe for
two decades, chimes in on this point.
''All of us today are in places where our minds and fingers can run so
much faster than our hearts and our emotions,'' he says. ''In all
spheres of activity, technology has gone at such a speed that it has
thrown humanity into a crisis; we have to develop spiritually,
emotionally, and morally to keep pace with this.''
Applying this point to the situation of orchestras today, Conlon says,
''What we need to be concerned about - and please, I am not talking
about the Boston Symphony now - is that it is possible to do so much on
automatic pilot. Orchestras can create a product without making the
necessary emotional and spiritual commitment to it. I don't want to go
backwards, but what I want and demand is music-making that is physical,
emotional, and spiritual all at once. That's the only kind of music that
means anything to me.''