What follows is a bit of a treasure. It is an  interview with Hans Gál, done in 1971. It is unknown who the interviewer was, or if , when and where it was published. Nevertheless, it contains some of Gál’s most extensive commentary on his own creative work, his activities as a performer. He shows his wit in several places, notably saying of conducting that “But I am afraid I could not have been a professional conductor, properly speaking; I am all but physically unable to perform music I dislike. Doing music is, as I see it, an act of love. Doing it without, resembles dangerously the oldest trade in the world.”

The interview was published in the Gál Society Newsletter in 2010, and is reproduced here by permission.

Q: A general question: what do you regard as most fundamental regarding the art of composition?

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How music speaks to power? The doubtful legacy of Theodor Adorno

Readers of this blog will know that Ken is a great enthusiast for composers like Shostakovich, Sibelius, Elgar and Schumann – among many others. His taste is catholic, and he is even open to composers found on the fringes of musical history like Hans Gal and Havergal Brian. And why not? These are unusual talents who, in other circumstances, might have reached much greater prominence. But there is one influential personality who, if he were alive today, would consider such taste highly regressive, and that person is Theodor Adorno (1903-69) the German philosopher and occasional composer. His influence was keenly felt by a whole generation of composers through texts such as Philosophy of Modern Music and his short book on Mahler. His polemic in favour of Schoenberg and against Stravinsky set the agenda for much academic debate in musical circles after 1945. He drew the ideological battle-lines which still to some extent persist today. Composers are meant to be either avant-garde or traditional, and only the former was considered politically correct. Adorno’s endorsement of serialism as the only morally legitimate method of composition ensured that Schonberg and his music would remain centre-stage through the latter part of the 20C.

Adorno’s views grew out of the deeply pessimistic outlook of the German Naturalistic movement, which was a philosophical approach derived partly from Hegel and Schopenhauer. This Weltanschauung was best represented by Büchner’s play about the tragic everyman Woyzek, later realised to perfection in Berg’s opera, Wozzeck. Adorno had been taught composition by Alban Berg and had great respect for him, although he was uncomfortable with the lyrical side of his music. The Naturalistic School looked at Nature objectively and, while not denying its spiritual aspect, they observed that Man was essentially Nature’s victim. Vast impersonal forces, hostile and brutal, create a world devoid of any feeling and compassion, where beauty is routinely crushed and the individual inevitably misunderstood. The human predicament is thus hopeless, because our struggle for survival warps truth, warps society and warps our souls.

It is an unpromising basis for musical aesthetics, but Adorno argued that new music must reveal this repugnant social order. He believed that we live in a society corrupted by greed, lies and the abuse of power. Vulgar commercialism, manipulative sentimentality and empty fantasy thus obscure our understanding. We are all addicted to these distortions because we cannot bear to face the truth they conceal about our moral emptiness and soulless lives. In his opinion, only Schonberg really had the courage to tell us how it really is, because he was willing to accept the humiliation and aesthetic failure which would inevitably follow from speaking truth. Adorno sets the bar very high in defining what it is takes truly to affront common taste. Even music as harrowing as Shostakovich is dismissed as a “feeble mixture of compositional facility and helplessness”. Stravinsky, Britten and Sibelius are dismissed in the same way, while Elgar is beneath contempt. Adorno argued that music which achieves any kind of popularity or critical consensus must by definition be flawed, because it can only succeed by succumbing to bourgeois values. Writing symphonies in traditional forms, using tonality and making extra-musical references were ways to appease the collective. For this reason, he made no apology for preferring Schonberg’s “inhuman coldness” to Berg’s “magnanimous warmth”.  Adorno was the condemning voice of the puritan; Moses berating Aaron with his tablets of stone.

Adorno of course was a Hegelian and a Marxist, who liked a good argument and believed that there could be no middle way. Blandness, he suggested, i.e. the spirit of compromise, was evidence of exactly the feeble mindedness which makes human society a mess. As a Hegelian, he believed that the artist of genius had to adopt an extreme critical stance, because progress could not otherwise be made. His motivations were idealistic, even Utopian, in aspiration. Like all demagogues, Adorno held out a vision of the perfect music which would be written in the perfected society, and condemned the rest.

Adorno was at the height of his influence just after the Second World War, when German culture was still in shock after the Nazi debacle. His case for a polemical kind of new music was very much part of the soul-searching of the day. The German people were asking – where did it all go wrong? His diagnosis was simple. Beneath the veneer of high civilisation lurked ugly barbarism which needed only a little encouragement to come to the surface. The pleasing veneer of popular Romantic music – with its worn out formulae and beauty of sound blunted the critical faculties and encouraged delusion. Hitler could listen to Parsifal and dream absurd visions of racial purity but validated by great art.  Adorno, like many Germans, felt considerable guilt that the nation’s wonderful tradition of music had not saved the German soul from calamity. If music had given Hitler a picture of his damaged soul instead of filling his head with Romantic fantasies, then perhaps he would have seen the error of his ways. Yes, this all seems very convincing, playing upon collective guilt and our general distaste for many aspects of the contemporary world. There is plenty to provoke misanthropic feelings, and if you are a German, the Nazi experience would trouble your conscience indeed. Adorno felt justified in his belief that music should express anxiety and despair, because it was the natural human condition. Any hint of optimism, any harmonious resolution or positive conclusion would thus have been a falsification of reality. The composer, he argued, must be resolute in standing against consensus and be prepared to suffer accordingly.

But how should music speak to power? How should composers speak to power? It has never been an easy question with a simple answer. Only in the Romantic period did composers begin to imagine that they had the right to speak to power at all. Before that they were hired lackeys, who might only dare, like Haydn, occasionally to make a joke at their patron’s expense. But generally, whether a composer’s salary was paid by Church, State or an aristocratic patron, he did as he was told. But then came Beethoven, who rewrote the contract between composer and society, adopting a more visionary and critical stance. By the end of the 19C, the tensions between the individual artist and society had reached a point of rupture. Oddly, it was the breaking down of old power structures that finally set the artist adrift. He had once had a clear focus for his rebellion, but in more liberal societies, there was often just incoherence and aimlessness to attack. New freedoms descended into the vulgarity of consumerism; probably a worse settlement for the composer than working as a hired hand. In a society governed by market economics and the interests of the masses, holding up high aesthetic values became increasingly difficult. This was the problem foreseen by the Naturalist movement and which Adorno used as the basis of his moral arguments.

But let us lay the ghost of Adorno to rest. Some of his assumptions are just wrong. The most glaring error is the assumption that music has to be moral at all. That was something grafted on to it by Beethoven and the Romantics. Music can certainly be used in that way, but moral music is not a guarantee of good music. Debussy and Chopin were morally neutral in expression, yet their music is still wonderful. Sibelius’ music became greater, the more he moved away from expressing nationalistic aspirations, turning a distinctively national voice into a profoundly personal one. Shostakovich often expressed deep ambivalence about the society around him, yet he was a patriot in a time of war. Still there was plenty of nihilistic feeling in his music and a not-so-hidden agenda of social critique. Yet Adorno could hear in this music only evidence of pandering to popular taste and fatuous traditionalism. But is that in any way fair? Composers are not superhuman. They have to exist in the real world, and it is often a mean real world. This means making compromise, sometimes quite cruel compromise. There are limits to what any individual can do to redeem the flaws of the society around them. If they want to communicate with the public, they have to speak intelligibly, but if they end up banned, in jail or dead, then their voice will have been very effectively silenced. Music may well need a higher purpose to justify itself in our modern world, but it cannot be judged by moral absolutes. Composers and artists are not solely responsible for the moral condition of their society, nor is it necessarily their job to change it. The composer as Messiah bearing a Utopian vision has a strange echo of Hitler’s desire to redeem a nation. Arguably Shostakovich’s very human stance – full of equivocation and inner torment, or Berg’s “magnanimous warmth” are much more appealing to us than any abstract idealism, because we can share compassion for their predicament. We recognise in them our own flawed humanity, for they do not wag the finger at us, chiding us for our impotence before authority. This is closer to our experience. We struggle to know what is right – and sometimes survival has the greater priority.

Moral absolutism can become as much a tyranny as any lack of morality. That is the message of Schoenberg’s opera Moses und Aron. The same applies to our judgements about the relative merits of composers and the saintliness or otherwise of their lives? Hans Gal and Schoenberg were both Viennese Jews forced into exile. Gal was humiliated by internment, but went on to have a long and successful life as a musicologist and composer living in Britain. Gal did not succumb to serialism, but is he then to be accused of being a regressive bourgeois? Are we to say that Gal was feeble-minded for holding to tradition, despite his suffering, while the saintly Schoenberg risked all? Yet their day to day lives were more or less the same, for Schoenberg was also a university teacher in California, bringing up a family and playing tennis with Gershwin. So for all his angry protests against bourgeois values, his hair-shirt was worn only part of the time. He thoroughly enjoyed his notoriety, just as Gal was content with his obscurity. Schoenberg‘s music has its place. He explores a territory of psycho-pathology which is unique and very much of its time, but there is also a lot of posturing mixed up with it. In his complexity and self-contradiction, he is no different to Shostakovich. The problem with Schoenberg is his claim to martyrdom, when in truth he was just as vain and just as fond of bourgeois comforts as everyone else. Perhaps Gal was just less ambitious and more honest about what kind of life he wanted to lead.

It is perhaps inevitable as creative artists are no longer tied so closely to social authority, that they find themselves speaking for marginal voices in complex societies. Yet composers and musicians are not obliged to be social activists, great political leaders or heroic resistance fighters. Our society is nothing like the totalitarian world of Shostakovich or Germany under the Nazis, and it is wise to remember that before we criticise Richard Strauss or any number of artists who ever became badly entangled in the rotten politics around them. Our own times reveal a society made up of many backgrounds, shades of opinion, levels of experience and stages of development. From these groups we may define many possible audiences for new music. Adorno’s branding of all but the most intellectually enlightened as enslaved to false consciousness is a tad judgemental and not likely to win many converts. If Adorno were correct, then there would be no appetite for tragic works of art at all, because audiences would want only diversion, entertainment and blandness. There are a lot of people who do, but the current high level of interest in music by Mahler, Shostakovich, Britten and Sibelius shows that there are many individuals grappling with deep questions who consider music one way to explore them. Labelling all listeners as vacuous is just an angry gibe diverting from awareness of one’s own moral failings by projecting them upon others. The puritan is usually a hypocrite.

Finally, while anxiety and despair are frequent experiences for modern Man, they cannot be considered his natural condition. We instinctively seek harmony and balance, and it is not surprising therefore that art which claims to speak only of an unbearable truth finds little sympathy with the public. Mahler, who speaks to power with great eloquence, may show us despair, but also the path that leads away from it – with the single exception of the Sixth Symphony. But in that work, the tragic outcome elicits our compassion and not simply horror, because Mahler resists the onslaught so stubbornly. To sing of life’s pain with such heroic defiance requires that he does not abjure the possibility of redemption, until his last energy is spent. After all, it is the totality of human experience which feeds creative impulses, not just the positive or the negative in isolation. So we should lay the ghost of Adorno to rest, and speak to the divisive power of his polemical writings. Let music be a humane art, expressed honestly between flawed creatures. May it be filled with as much “magnanimous warmth” as we can muster!

Peter Davison

In the comments for my previous blog post on the Real Top 20 C Major Symphonies of All Time“, I assembled a list of the greatest “C minor symphonies that end in C major.” The first four pieces I thought of were

Beethoven 5

Brahms 1

Bruckner 8

and

Shostakovich 8

When I saw the two great Beethoven and Brahms works alongside the Shostakovich, I was hugely struck by the contrast in affect.

For Beethoven and Brahms, the move from C minor to C major was probably the ultimate musical embodiment of affirmation, of triumph. C major to them was the key of Earthly celebration, defined by the rumbustious trumpet-and-drums music Mozart and Haydn loved to write. The move from tragic C minor to the joyful purity of C major symbolized the most unambiguous possible resolution to struggle and uncertainty.

This paradigm is not unique to these two works. Mendelssohn and Schubert both wrote extraordinary C minor symphonies early in their careers which end joyfully in C major (albeit without the element of weight and drama present in Beethoven 5 and Brahms 1).  Bruckner used the transformation from C minor to C major as the lynchpin of no less than three of his symphonies, including the epic Eighth, a work which seems to take this kind of affirmative journey from darkness to light about as far as it can possibly go.

Mahler seemed to sense that after Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner, a new solution to the “problem” of C minor had to be found. Perhaps for him, the darkness of C minor was so powerful (it’s hard to think of a darker, bleaker movement than the opening funeral march of the Resurrection) that his C minor symphony (the 2^nd) needed to travel further- not just to C major, but to E-flat major.

If Brahms 1 and Beethoven 5 are as certain in their affirmation of triumph over adversity as their troubled creators could make them, Shostakovich 8 makes a quite shocking contrast. Although it ends with a long stretch of C major, it is a deeply troubling and troubled work. Mahler was a modern enough man to see that C major was far to simplistic a solution to the problems of a C minor world. He believed there was a more nuanced answer to be found- that we could escape and transcend suffering and despair, but that the solution would always be complex and messy- the solution to C minor might be E-flat, or the solution to C-sharp minor might be D major. Life doesn’t neatly tie up all loose ends like a Victorian novel.

But if Mahler came to see that C major wasn’t quite an adequate solution to C minor, Shostakovich sometimes seems to hint at something far darker- that C major may actually be, if not the opposite of heavenly resolution of life’s C minor problems, at least a kind of musical Purgatory. A static world without hope, where battles have stalled but no peace has been made nor victory won. It’s as if Shostakovich tells us “be careful what you wish for- a simple solution to a complex problem is no solution at all. Ask for C major, and you may be trapped there forever.” The last five minutes of Shostakovich 8 are an unsettling mixture of cold, aimless wanderings and moments of heart-wrenching lyrical vulnerability. By the end of the piece you don’t know if that 2 minute long C major chord in the violins is the happiest or the saddest thing you’ve ever heard. Which is more troubling- the C minor ending of the Fourth or the C major ending of the Eighth? It’s the Eighth that makes me cry every time.

How the sheen of innocence has fallen from what was once the most pristine of keys.

What happened to C major? How could it come to express such existential  twilight and despair?

I think the process began with Schubert. To me, the C major of the Cello Quintet exists in a different spiritual realm than the pomp and earthiness of Mozart’s version of the key (or Beethoven’s). To me, the C major of the Cello Quintet is very much of the next world- the sound of the next chapter of existence beyond this life. Brahms, ever conservative, needed C major to be the same point of reference it was in Beethoven 5 and Mozart’s Jupiter. He needed it to be a solid rock, from which he could build. Schumann, the radical, unearthed new complexities and ambiguities for C major in his Second Symphony. Where Beethoven used C major to celebrate the end of struggle, Schumann uses it to embody struggle, writing of the first movement of his C major 2^nd Symphony that “I sketched it at a time when I was ailing, and I may well state that it was, as it were, the power of resistance of spirit that has influenced my work, and by which I have tried to prevail against my physical condition”.

If Schubert’s use of C major opens a window into the next dimension, Sibelius’s take on the key seems even more complex. His Third Symphony seems to be a relatively innocent work- at least it begins and ends innocently enough. However, the Finale is strangely ambivalent. It starts with seeming naivety, but quickly dissolves into some of the strangest and most harmonically wayward music he ever wrote, and the triumphalism of the very ending seems designed to ring just a little hollow. It’s as if he is saying “things may be absolutely terrible, but if we celebrate long enough and loudly enough, we may get to the end in one piece.” Heard in context, the triumphant C major ending almost sounds like a critique of triumphant C major endings.

But it is in his Seventh Symphony that Sibelius’s vision of C major is most troubling and haunting. I once explained his use of C major in this piece to a student when he wondered why I found the piece so tragic when C major was, after all, such a sunny key? I argued it is “still a key of light, of sunshine, but it’s the last 20 minutes of twilight at the Arctic Circle before the endless night of winter sets in. When that last C major chord finally resolves it is like looking into the sun, as it boils in the horizon, never to return.” In Sibelius 7, C major is light, and light is music, and the piece is kind of a farewell to music, at least to the symphony.  If Beethoven 5 and Brahms 1 use the key of C major to portray the ultimate in certainty, Sibelius uses the same key to evoke the ultimate mix of joy and despair.

And what of Mahler? Two of his symphonies end in C major. Is his C major the same worldly celebration as Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, or something more complex and ambivalent, as in the work of Schubert and Sibelius?

The Finale of his Seventh is very much C major trumpet and drums music- obviously harking back to the symbolism of the key as understood by Mozart in the Jupiter and Wagner in Die Meistersinger (which he quotes).  In its hyper-complex virtuoso writing, it could almost be a parody of those two works. Wagner used C major to symbolize communal celebration- I think Mahler does the same thing in the 7^th, but his community is more realistic. The Finale of Mahler 7 is a village party full of real, noisy, smelly complicated people.  It’s not so much that he doesn’t believe in the joyful, Mozartian side of C major, it’s that he wants to show the complexities, and flaws of a C major world. It’s C major without the Disney treatment. C major with ugly people, with dog crap on the streets, with farts and out of tune village bands, seedy street vendors and bullying cops. It’s like musical Mardi Gras- a great time is had by all, but you wouldn’t want to come back the next morning to clean up the vomit.

Mahler’s other great C major Finale is Der Abschied from Das Lied von der Erde. In this great movement, Mahler makes explicit what Schubert implies- that you’re never going to have the pure radiance of C major transcendence in a C minor world. Real C major, real freedom from suffering comes not from victory in earthly struggle, but in acceptance that life is struggle, acceptance of the finality of life, and the embrace of need to discover what comes next. I’m sure that Shostakovich had the ending of Das Lied in mind when he wrote the final pages of his Eighth Symphony. Was he daring to hope for Mahlerian transcendence? And is the end of the work a fulfilment of that hope, or does the beautiful image of  C major simply die away when he can no longer sustain its dying light? Does it meld into eternity, or simply die away into silence. A pessimist might point out that the last word in the score is morendo.

As another great 20^th. C. composer once said- there is still a lot of great music to be written in C major.

And so there is.

But what will C major mean 100 years after Shostakovich 8?

A big thank you to Jason in Iowa, who alerted us to the fact that the eminent musicologist and Brahms scholar, Bernard D. Sherman,  picked Orchestra of the Swan’s recording of the Third Symphonies of Hans Gal and Robert Schumann as one of his top 10 best Classical CDs for 2011, as listed on his website.

Get your copy direct from Avie

Download from iTunes

From Mr. Sherman’s website:

Dec. 5, 2011- Talk-show host/interviewer supreme Charity Nebbe is having me on her show, Talk of Iowa, tomorrow to review the top classical CDs of 2011. Here’s what will cover, as well as some others that probably should have made the list:

1) J.S. Bach’s Partitas 3, 4, and 6 played by Jeremy Denk, who gets so many of the movements so amazingly and uniquely right that it will be on my Bach top-ten list (TK) alongside records by the like of Gidon Kremer and John Butt.(Azica)
2) JS Bach et al. by Heinz Holliger with the Camerata Bern and Erich Hobarth (ECM)
3) LV Beethoven’s Symphonies and Overtures by Riccardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus - as great as everyone’s saying (Decca)
4) Hector Berlioz – “The Ghost of a Rose,” sung by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson; such a genius (PBP)
5) Franz Liszt – The Lake of the Wallenstadts played by Nelson Freire - bewitching. Liszt CDs kept showing up all year, but this one I’ll return to. (DG)
6) Nico Muhly, “Seeing Is Believing” - Hearing is believing. What a gift.(Decca)
7) Maurice Ravel, complete piano music played by Steven Osborne on Hyperion
8 ) Scarlatti sonatas played by Alexandre Tharaud (Virgin)
9) Franz Schubert’s Unfinished Sonata in C, which Paul Lewis plays as if he’s composing it then and there. Moves forward completely naturally, and yet sounds like he’s discovering those magical modulations on the spot. (Says Lewis: ” it is a piano redaction of an unfinished orchestral score, much of it un-harmonised, so you have to realise the implied symphonic harmonies; there are colours you have to realise.” He does.) Two CDs full of great music and great playing. (Harmonia mundi)
10) Robert Schumann’s “Rhenish” Symphony by the Orchestra of the Swan led by Kenneth Woods. The Gal is a real find, especially the slow movement; and the Schumann is a joy after the many punched-up but four-square performances I’ve suffered through.  (Avie)
11) Charles Ives – the Violin Sonatas, for the glorious violin playing of Hillary Hahn and her incredible new teammate, well-known in Iowa, pianist Valentina Lisitsa (DG)
12) Trio Mediaeval. “A Worcester Ladymass” (ECM)
13) NPR ADDS: Mahler Symphony no. 2 with the London Philharmonic led by Vladimir Jurowski (sounds alluring!);
14) The Maltese Tenor, Joseph Calleja;

Hey- we beat Hillary Hahn and Joseph Calleja!

Sherman’s wonderful book Performing Brahms (written with Michael Musgrave) is a gem, and is something I refer to often. It’s stacked on top of my Brahms 2 score for March right now. Every conductor should own it. It’s always nice when people note your work, but especially when they really, really know what they’re talking about.

The Bobby and Hans project depends on the generous sponsorship of music lovers and friends of the Orchestra of the Swan. Without your help, the orchestral music of Gal will remain unheard. We hope you will give what you can to keep the music playing.

 

Magicians of the orchestra: revealing the conductor’s art

On Sunday 20 May 2012 the Two Rivers Festival (ww.tworiversfestival.co.uk) will present a special day-long workshop at The Bushell Hall, Birkenhead School working with an ensemble of players from the Orchestra of the Swan directed by Kenneth Woods.

Magicians of the orchestra: revealing the conductor’s art
Lecture, masterclass, concert and live recording session
including a performance of movements from
Brahms Serenade No.1 in D (arr. Boustead)

From 14.00-17.00 members of the public will be able find answers to some intriguing questions. What do orchestral conductors do? Are they wizards with magic wands or overpaid time-keepers? How can we know if they are good, bad or indifferent? What musical techniques must they master? Is success down to personality, skill or both?

In a three-part exploration of the maestro’s craft, principal guest conductor of the Stratford-based Orchestra of the Swan and founder of the Rose City International Conductor’s Workshop in the USA, Kenneth Woods will discuss the work of some of the great conductors of the past in a video-illustrated lecture. Then,  a group of young conductors are put through their paces in a masterclass. Afterwards there will be a chance for several members of the audience to try conducting for themselves. The event will end with a performance of several movements from Brahms’ delightfully lyrical first Serenade. This will be recorded live as part of a commercial CD, offering a fascinating opportunity for the public to glimpse behind the scenes of the professional musical world. Members of the public wishing to attend the session can find booking and other information here.

Two Rivers Festival is seeking to recruit for the day two or three young conductors. Selected candidates will get to conduct excerpts from Brahms’ Serenade op. 11 (in the reconstruction of the original nonet version by Anthony Boustead) which will be played by Orchestra of the Swan in a public masterclass. Successful candidates will also have the chance to observe and assist in the day’s recording sessions for the Somm label.  This is unique opportunity to gain experience working with leading professional orchestral musicians, and to experience first-hand the process of making a commercial CD for an established recording company.

When: Sunday, 20 May 2012, 09:00 – 22:00

Where: The Bushell Hall, Birkenhead School, Wirral CH43 2JD

What: Conduct in a public masterclass directed by Kenneth Woods, observe and assist during a full day of recording sessions for Somm with Orchestra of the Swan

Repertoire: Brahms Serenade op. 11 (arr. Boustead, published by Josef Weinberger)

Costs: All tuition costs for the day are generously underwritten by Two Rivers Festival and Orchestra of the Swan. Participants are responsible for their own travel costs and accommodation.

How to apply: Please submit a short CV and a video of yourself conducting to masterclass@kennethwoods.net . Applicants are strongly encouraged to send videos digitally via file-transfer service, or to link to on-line videos on personal websites, YouTube, Vimeo or similar servers. If necessary, DVD’s can be sent to: VFTP, 20 Trevethick Street, Cardiff CF11 6EB

Deadline: 21 February 2012 Applicants will be notified of their status by 21 March 2012

C major. The white keys on the piano.

The Symphony has been good to C major, and C major has been good to the symphony, even though there are no Brahms, Mahler or Bruckner symphonies officially in C. Brahms 1 ends in C major (as does Beethoven 5 and Bruckner’s 8th) and C major is hugely important in Mahler’s 7th Symphony (it ends there) and Das Lied von der Erde. Still, even without Brahms, Mahler and Bruckner, C major has given us some of the greatest symphonies in the literature.

C major is where we all started when we took our first piano lessons. Perhaps this is why it is so often a key in which great composers come full circle, summing up their life’s work in the genre, as did Schubert, Mozart and Sibelius. It’s apparent simplicity can be a perfect metaphor for innocence, like the innocence that is totally and utterly shattered in the course of Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony. It can be festive or it can be suffused with struggle.

What is your favorite C major Symphony? Do let us know.

20- Mozart- Symphony no. 34

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Small-scale Choral Symphony draws large crowds

Surrey Mozart Players – Holy Trinity Church – 19^th November 2011

When Beethoven conducted the première of his Choral Symphony in 1824 to rapturous applause the forces deployed were not much different from those used in the Surrey Mozart Players’ conclusion to their Beethoven symphony cycle last Saturday [19^th November]. It was the inspired idea of conductor Kenneth Woods and long-standing (and just retiring) Chairman, clarinettist Alan Dewey, to invite the Guildford Chamber Choir to join them in this venture.

Any fears that the forty-strong choir would be swamped by the orchestra, which extended well into the nave of HolyTrinityChurch, were soon dispelled. Emma Curtis lent her beautiful, strong, and wide-ranging contralto voice to a superb performance of Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody, which begins with strikingly questioning tones, and moves through a soulful aria into a wonderfully soothing dénouement in which the contralto is supported by rich choral sounds from the men’s voices. The balance was superb, contributing to an excellent performance.

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony begins with three massive orchestral movements. The first, stormy, questioning, but full of decisive melodies, requires a bold approach, which it received from Kenneth Woods’s forces. Particularly striking in this smaller-scale performance was Beethoven’s use of the classical harmonie or wind band, and for the most part the performers played excellently.  And the concluding build-up of fanfares over an insistently recurring bass was beautifully done.

The scherzo and trio were well defined and dramatic, and the contrasting instrumental groups came over well.. The beautiful Andante received a delightfully expressive performance, again with fine contributions from individual instrumentalists.

And so to the finale, beginning with that chaotic introduction; the probing of previous themes, interrupted by the insistent recitative from cellos and basses; the introduction of the great (if sometimes hackneyed) ‘Ode to Joy’ theme; and the baritone’s invocation of Beethoven’s own words to forget the sadness and break out into joy. That baritone was Michael Druiett, and he, together with Sarah Helsby-Hughes, Emma Curtis, and Ronan Busfield, made splendid individual contributions and moreover blended beautifully in passages where they all sang together. The choir sang with excitement and cohesion coupled with superb discipline, and was a fine match for the orchestra. This was a wonderful ‘Ode to Joy’.

Shelagh Godwin

for the Surrey Advertiser

Next up in the 2011 Repertoire Reports is Assistant Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, Sasha Mäkilä.

I first became aware of Maestro Mäkilä when a couple of comments on VFTP led me to his excellent blog- to the best of my knowledge, Sasha was the second conductor to start and maintain a blog (VFTP was the first to survive beyond a handful of posts).  Sasha was also the clear star of the first #askaconductor event on Twitter last year.

Finnish conductor Sasha Mäkilä is gaining recognition as one of the most prominent rising talents of his generation in both the operatic and symphonic fields. He joined the conducting staff of The Cleveland Orchestra as Assistant Conductor under Maestro Franz Welzer-Möst in September 2010 after completing a three-year tenure at Orchestre National de France as Maestro Kurt Masur’s assistant.

Originally a cellist, Sasha Mäkila studied conducting at the Sibelius Academy (Finland) and at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory (Russia). He was nominated a Conducting Fellow at the American Academy of Conducting in Aspen (2009) and he was also a prize winner at the Sixth Vakhtang Jordania International Conducting Competition (USA, 2006) as well as finalist in the Suwon International Conductors Competition (South Korea, 2005).

I was particularly keen to get a Report from Sasha because his workload is a perfect demonstration of the myriad challenges faced by a staff conductor at a major orchestra. In addition to his own busy conducting schedule, Maestro Mäkilä has covered 105 classical works and 51 pops pieces for the Cleveland Orchestra in 2011. That’s a huge amount of studying and preparation- he has to know every one of these scores well enough to conduct any of them with the Cleveland Orchestra at the drop of a hat.

SASHA MÄKILÄ

REPERTOIRE REPORT 2011

REPERTOIRE CONDUCTED (CLEVELAND AND GUEST CONDUCTING)

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I feel a little sheepish about writing a blog post of my personal performing highlights from 2011. It could all-too-easily read like the notorious episode of Desert Island Discs when a famous diva picked all her own recordings.

But that’s not what this list is about- I’m not claiming these were the “best” concerts I did this year, or that others would have necessarily thought they were particularly good gigs. These are the concerts where I most enjoyed the contributions of my colleagues, where I felt most intensely the sense of shared purpose and mutual understanding that music-making promises but so often fails to deliver. These were the gigs were I felt most like I was part of something bigger than myself- nights when we all spoke with one voice and a shared sense of commitment and involvement. Writing this post has been an exercise in thinking about what is important about a concert.  These were not all the most “important’ or prestigious dates of the year, just the nights were something special happened.

My heartfelt thanks to all my colleagues who helped make them possible.

Were you at or in any of these performances? We’d love to hear your memories of the occasion, be they good or bad. Share your thoughts in the comments section.

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Conductor Semyon Bychkov has been a stalwart of our annual Repertoire Reports for many years. This year’s Report was culled from his very-user-friendly website by Monty in Phoenix.

This year’s Bychkov Report is remarkably consistent with past years- as always, he conducts quite a small number of works over the course of year: 41 this year, 30 in 2008, 50 in 2010. But what a schedule, and what works.

Frankly, when you look at the listing of programs on his website in detail, you can see what an extraordinarily intense year Maestro Bychkov has had.  One might very well question how any man who conducts Mahler 6  18 times in a year can maintain his physical health and emotional well-being. Perhaps, you might think, he balances the apocalyptic intensity of the Mahler with lighter, less draining repertoire?

Less draining repertoire like the 10 performances of Strauss’s insanely intense psychodrama, Elektra?

Or the five performances of Britten’s War Requiem?

Six performances of Shostakovich’s titanic 11^th Symphony?

Eight performances of Schumann 2, Bobby’s most intense work?

And one-off’s like the Verdi Requiem.

I really envy Maestro Bychkov’s opportunities to live with and repeat great works with great orchestras- he does so much touring (this year with La Scala, Vienna Philharmonic and the Concertgebouw), which is where the greatest music-making often happens. In difficult economic times, it’s important to remind patrons and funding bodies that touring is not just an essential part of cultural exchange, but an essential tool in raising orchestral playing and interpretation to the hightest possible level.

In the course of 2011, I had three friends in various orchestras (NYO and BBC SO) refer to Bychkov as the “greatest living conductor.” The only other conductors I heard described that way all year by anyone who knows anything about anything were Haitink and Weller. I’m not sure it’s possible to say who is the greatest living conductor, but I think this repertoire list and the way in which he schedules repertoire through the year offer some instructive clues as to why great orchestral musicians might conclude Bychkov is working at the highest possible level. Younger conductors can learn a lot from how he manages his study time and his performance schedule.

Carlos Kleiber is often referred to as something like “the greatest conductor of all time, in spite of his limited repertoire.” I’m surprised how few people make the right connection between the size of his repertoire and the quality of his work. Perhaps Kleiber’s work is so electric and essential and profound because he lived with a select number great works throughout his career, and focused on developing his ability to bring those few works to life as vibrantly as possible.

By comparison to Kleiber, Bychkov’s repertoire is positively vast, but you can bet that when a maestro is only dong 41 pieces in a year, most of them ones he will have done many times before, he’ll have plenty of time to prepare each work, whether for a single performance like the Verdi or the 18 performances of the Mahler. It’s a great demonstration of the value of quality over quantity.

2011 REPERTOIRE REPORT- SEMYON BYCHKOV

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Repertoire Report season continues here at VFTP, with the first of the really big names. Kristjan in Los Angeles has been kind enough to collate this years’ Report from the listing of programs on Paavo’s website.

You can see Paavo’s Reports from past years here (2010, 2009, and 2008) and comparisons and analyses with other conductors here (2010 and 2008). He’s a busy guy, but remarkably consistent in his workload, sticking pretty consistently to just over 100 works per year.

I’ve followed Paavo’s career with interest ever since I covered his first concert with the Cincinnati Symphony. My boss, the designated cover for that concert, bowed out and left for the week after watching the first 10 minutes of PJ’s first rehearsal and declaring he was “not music director material.” Live and learn- Paavo has had a tremendous 10 year run at the CSO since then, and now moves on to a new chapter of his career with three of the best orchestras around- the Orchestre de Paris, Frankfurt Radio Symphony and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen.

It’s a vintage Paavo list- a huge swath of the most interesting corners of the standard repertoire, some Scandanavian and  Baltic composers old and new and a range of “projects.” I’ll be first to give him a huge pat on the back for doing a good chunk of Faure, a composer we don’t hear enough of. On the other hand, I was a little disappointed to see him doing Dvorak’s Carnival Overture on its own- the piece should really only be played as part of the Triptych- Nature, Life and Love alongside Nature’s Realm and Othello.  No opera or ballet for Paavo this year, which is typical for him.  Aside from our different tastes in the music of our time, as always, Paavo’s is probably the list I would be most happy and comfortable to step in to without notice- lots of repertoire I love and do often.

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Now in his sixth season as Music Director of the Seven Hills Sinfonietta in Cincinnati, OH, Maestro Michael Wheatley has established a reputation as a builder of orchestras. During his tenure with this ensemble the orchestra has nearly doubled in size, relocated to an expansive new concert venue, formed significant new relationships with grant-giving organizations, and has greatly expanded its orchestral library. With each season, he has led this orchestra to perform ever more substantial and challenging works of the orchestral repertoire.  Recently, the orchestra was featured in a film for the Sundance Channel. Michael’s popular Twitter feed can be found here. His 2010 Repertoire Report can be read here. 

In 2010, he was named the new Associate Conductor of the Southern Illinois Symphony Orchestra at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois.  A scholar in Russian music performance practice, his ballet debut of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker in December set a new record for attendance (a completely sold out performance in Shryock Auditorium).  This year, he followed with SISO premiere performances of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6, Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique, and celebrated Gustav Mahler’s double centenary years with a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4.

2011 Repertoire Report for Michael Böhnert-Wheatley

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Conductor Michael Seal has established a reputation as one of the UK’s most versatile conductors, his career going from strength to strength, conducting orchestras in the UK and internationally.

In March 2011, he was appointed Associate Conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. The appointment recognised his work as Assistant Conductor, the first in the CBSO’s history, and the special relationship he has built with the Orchestra.

Michael has conducted the CBSO in many prestigious concerts, appearing with them at the Aldeburgh and Malvern Festivals, as well as venues in London, Manchester and the Midlands. He has given World and UK premieres of music by Richard Causton, Jonathan Girling and Bent Sorensen with the CBSO. Michael appears annually in the CBSO main season at Symphony Hall, Birmingham and has also stood in at very late notice for Sakari Oramo, Richard Hickox, Ilan Volkov and Vasilly Sinaisky to much critical acclaim.

Michael’s vast repertoire list makes for a vivid demonstration of the myriad challenges faced by a “staff” conductor at a major orchestra. One must be able to dispatch industrial quantities of film music, educational arrangements, new works and pops pieces at the highest level, while bringing to core works like Sibelius 5 or Nielsen 2 the kind of gravitas expected by  orchestras that regularly work with the best in the business.

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Up next- our first ensemble Repertoire Report from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Youth Orchestra. You can compare it with their 2010 report here.

CBSO Youth Orchestra

incorporating the Midland Youth Orchestra

2004 saw the launch of a new youth orchestra for the Midlands.

Founded in 1956 by CBSO General Manager Blyth Major, the Midland Youth Orchestra was for nearly half a century one of the UK’s leading independent youth orchestras. Now it’s joined with one of the world’s great professional orchestras to become the CBSO Youth Orchestra, giving young musicians from across the Midlands the chance to experience professionally-supported orchestral playing at the highest level.

Open to all Midlands young musicians, aged 14-21, of the necessary standard, the CBSO Youth Orchestra gives its members an unmatched opportunity to be part of an internationally famous orchestral organisation, playing challenging music in prestigious venues with top professional conductors. Intended to complement the region’s existing Youth and Schools orchestras, the CBSO aims to have a youth orchestra like no other – dynamic, challenging, and filled with young players who share the CBSO’s own passion for music.

, our programme for engaging audiences and the community: the CBSO Youth Orchestra is part of the wider CBSO family of ensembles drawing their members from across the region – including an adult chorus and four youth choruses.

Visit the CBSO website.

The Youth Orchestra is run by the CBSO for young people (age14-21) of all social backgrounds from the West Midlands, and we have a policy of booking leading professional conductors and soloists for them: we only use artists who’ve already worked with the “big” CBSO. We’re immensely proud of its achievements  and looking forward to 2012, which will include works by Berg & Bartok, Bruckner 4, the Shostakovich / Barshai Chamber Symphony Op.110a, Schubert Great C Monster and a complete “Nutcracker” in concert! Full details here: www.cbsoyouthorchestra.com

Happy New Year, VFTP Friends and Fans

The old year is out and the new one has arrived, which means it is Repertoire Report season at VFTP.  Our crack research team has spent literally minutes upon minutes combing through my programs for the year now past, assembling the annual listing of repertoire.

2011 was a very different year for me on many levels- more touring with the trio, which means more repeat performances of core works, and lots of time spent on recording projects. A great deal of time in the first half of the year went into getting the post-production details of my recordings of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and Schumann and Gál’s 3^rd Symphonies right. There were edits and masters to listen to and check, program notes to write and lots more. I recorded 3 more CD’s in 2011. First up in June was  a fantastic disc of new works for Japanese traditional instruments and orchestra in collaboration with my Orchestra of the Swan colleague David Curtis and my inspirational colleagues at Kyo-Shin An Arts. Then, in December, there were two more Gál projects- the Orchestra of the Swan recording of Gál 4 and Schumann 2 followed by the first recording of my string trio, Ensemble Epomeo, of the complete string trios of Gál and Hans Krasa. So, all in all, more repeat performances, more prep time and post production for recordings and fewer works getting a single outing.

I point this all out because on first glance, this repertoire report makes it look a bit like I had a slow year in 2011, when nothing could be further from the truth. Numerically, Repertoire Reports are incredibly prone to statistical distortion. Some projects, like the Rose City International Conductor’s Workshop (which took a hiatus in 2011), the Harlech workshop I did in 2010 or any Viennese New Year project can add 10-20 works to a list in a week. On the other hand, huge works like Mahler 6 or Shostakovich 7 take up a lot of space on programs and in rehearsal time. This past year definitely tilted towards bigger, long-term projects.

As in past years, we’ll save detailed discussion, analysis and comparison with past years and other conductors for future posts

You can see my 2010 repertoire report here. 2009 here.

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