Kenneth Woods- A View From the Podium

An interesting follow-up, one of what I assume will be hundreds, as the Philadelphia Orchestra begin looking to the future. 

I don’t know Eschenbach’s work there at all, and wouldn’t comment on it anyway, but I do think music director search issue is one of the biggest bugaboos facing orchestras anywhere. 

Don’t believe the hype- there are some wonderful, wonderful musicians out there who could do stunning work in Philly or anywhere else. When one can only come up with one or two possible names of viable candidates for one of the greatest jobs in music, you’re not dealing with a musical problem, you’re dealing with a huge set of institutional problems, one that extends way, way beyond the orchestra. It would be wonderful if some of our gifted music writers would get inside these issues. Why aren’t we finding talent that is out there? 

A view from the podium, Music and Media

I thought I might wade in and try to slightly de-mystify the question of score marking by conductors. Orchestral players and audiences alike can often be quite overwhelmed by, and even suspicious of, the complex systems of red and blue, circles, highlights and so on that appear in many conductors scores.

Score marking has grown out of a simple fact- a page of a score for full orchestra is an incredibly dense and complicated set of symbols, and very, very few human beings can actually take all of that in simply from looking at it once.

That said, not everyone does mark their scores. Leonard Slatkin told me that he used to as a young conductor, but that he now prefers to work from clean scores. Erich Leinsdorf was completely against marking of any kind- he felt that anything put into the text of the score by the conductor was a defilement of what had already been put there by the composer. My own teacher, Gerhard Samuel had conflicting feelings about marking. On seeing some of my heavily marked scores, he told me (rather emphatically) that I shouldn’t need all those marks if I actually learned the music well enough, but I later discovered he himself often marked his scores almost as thoroughly. On the other hand, I’ve known conductors who wouldn’t know how to study if you took their red and blue pencils away from them- for them, marking is studying.

There are a few reasons why one puts a marking in a score.

One, and certainly the rarest, is to make a non-performable approach to notation performable. Gerhard did many of the earliest performances of Penderecki’s early orchestral works in the US, and later told he that he always went through score and parts adding bar lines, rehearsal numbers and so on. This used to make Penderecki quite annoyed- he always felt that his music could and should be performed as he’d written it. However, back in the late 60s/early 70s, when Penderecki was finally starting his own conducting career I understand he sent an SOS to Gerhard requesting that he send copies of all his edited and annotated Penderecki scores, and the composer ended up using all of those “spurious” bar lines. Once he was working as a conductor, Penderecki radically changed his whole approach to notation, becoming much more mainstream. He learned from his own experience what musicians had been trying to tell him for years. There are quite a few mid-20th century works that need a bit of help along these lines.

A second reason is somewhat similar, which is to create a performing edition which captures as vividly as possible a given conductor’s approach to a piece. This is not just a matter of score marking- this process also extends to detailed editing and marking of the parts. The Mahler “versions” of the Schumann and Beethoven symphonies are famous examples of this approach- these were not made for publication but for his own performance. Beecham was famous for not needing rehearsal- this is largely because (according to myth) his long-suffering wife had put all of his performance instructions carefully into each part. Certain composers almost beg for this approach, especially Beethoven, and to a lesser extent Haydn and Mozart. I’d say many busy conductors have their own sets of parts and matching score to some or all of the Beethoven symphonies. Most of what goes into the parts is detailed marking of what would have been assumed practice of the day- brass releases on long notes and so on, but some conductors go much farther. David Zinman got a lot of great press for being one of the first conductors to record the Beethovens with the new Del Mar critical edition, but he told our conductor’s class at Aspen that his parts looked like “a fucking Mahler symphony.” Chances are, if you’re hearing tons and tons of very specific detail in a performance, especially in terms of articulations and dynamics, you can guess that the players are working from the conductor’s parts, which are quite marked up. Schumann is another composer that most conductors feel the need to have their own parts for. Szell and Toscanini (both known for their fidelity to the score!) used to use their own parts full of small textural tweaks. Some conductors go way too far with this, really crossing the line into re-orchestrating works of the masters (and really, Stokowski was not that bad- a few of today’s big names are bolder), but the vast majority of conductors use this resource not to change but to clarify, and to save time. Why explain this, this and this, when you can write it in the music?

The third reason for marking a score is really the most common, and that is to facilitate the conductor’s study, mastery and performance of a score. There have been some very famous conducting teachers who insisted on a very rigorous and inflexible marking method (you can tell their students from a mile away by looking at their scores for a second “hey, purple highlighter for the secondary thematic material! How did you like studying with Bob?”), but most conductors, over time, develop their own personal marking technique. One early teacher of mine insisted that you could use any system you liked, but that you should never, ever change it once you develop it, but that is advice I continue to ignore.

My own approach has changed a lot over the years, although perhaps not in ways that would be obvious to others, and I often do conduct without any markings at all. Leonard suggested that a young conductor might learn all the standard works with lots of markings as a young man, then later return to clean scores when he or she has more experience, and this makes lots of sense. On the other hand, in recent years, I’ve tried the opposite, which is to learn, rehearse and perform a piece without any marking at all, but then to take a couple of days after the performance to mark in everything I’ve learned and discovered about the piece.

In any case, there are two kinds of marks you might make. One is analytical- things you mark to clarify your understanding of what is going on. The other is practical- things you mark to remind yourself of what you need to be showing when in front of the band. Analytical marks might include harmonic analysis. Symbols showing the actual sonority (G7) or the function (V7 in C Major) of a chord in the score are useful, as are markings of overall key areas (A minor- relative minor), pedal points and so on. You might also mark certain key notes that have long term formal importance.

Motivic analysis is also useful to mark. I’ll often bracket motives and their constituent parts in a very systematic way, and then I can trace their development by showing when a new idea is actually and inversion or a mirror or an extension of an earlier motive. In large structures, I’ll often make notes to myself showing where an idea has come from (Last movement theme e-d-f is mirror of first movement theme f-d-e).

I find it very helpful to mark the lengths of each phrase or sub-phrase. So much music falls into four bar units it is helpful to know exactly where those patterns are, as well as where they change. I’ll also then extend that analysis up in levels, so that I can easily see the phrase structure of an entire section of a work in a glance. We often do mark entrances (I use capital letters for thematic entrances and lower case for non thematic ones), which we can then use in connection with the motivic marks. This means you can quickly see that the bassoon is entering with the cellos on the third beat of the bar on an e half-diminished chord, playing the second half of the second theme in augmentation over a b pedal.

Also important to some, especially in 20th century music, is marking how you are beating things- is this 5/8 2+3 or 3+2? You don’t want to run the risk of doing it differently each time. Some conductors highlight every meter change- I was taught to do this, but rarely do it at all anymore. However, if there is a choice between putting in a big, ugly, yellow highlighter mark or fucking up a concert, I find that is an easy choice.

One well-known teacher, who’s not known as a subjective guy, suggested we try actually writing in descriptive words. One might cringe at the thought of what is written in his score of Tristan, but it is a powerful tool, as long as you keep it to yourself- these are not things you shout at the players (“Transcendent, people!”)(never say “people!” when addressing people), but things you might think of when conceptualizing your gestures. I rarely do this, which gives it quite a power when I turn the page and see a particularly vivid word there waiting for me.

Some conductors, including Furtwangler, also do a lot of analysis off of the score using charts and reductions. Furtwangler was a keen student of Schenkerian analysis, and made extensive charts of everything he conducted. His perceived spontaneity, and subjectivity was rooted in deep and careful study, as was that of Celibache.

I think a conductor is wise to put his or her ego aside when deciding how to mark or whether to mark a score- you’re there to facilitate performance, not to show everyone how smart you are. If Solti and Bernstein needed to mark the crap out of their music, I think anyone can get away with it.

At the end of the day, when you’re preparing a piece you are so involved in it, it is easy to manage without much marking if you put the hours in, but it is so helpful to have a written record of your ideas and discoveries when you come back to the work many years later. Sometimes it is a life-saver, for instance when you get called to do something last minute, those markings can save the day. Sometimes, it is a matter of recording your whole experience with a piece: I’ve also got years of notes from observations of other conductor’s rehearsals and concerts (Ivan Fischer in two here, James Conlon in four, Gunter Wand uses alternate version from 1905 for this movement, Jesus Lopez-Cobos all down-bows).

Likewise, we can learn a lot from the way other conductors mark their music. At the Cincinnati Symphony, I often had the chance to look at the markings of the music director or of other guest conductors and study their markings. Richard Hickox told me that when he was getting started, Collin Davis used to loan him his scores to major pieces so that Richard could study his markings, and Richard has done the same for me. Gerhard’s collection is full of scores of Milhaud, Copland and Stravinsky with ACTUAL COMMENTS FROM THE COMPOSERS! How cool. These things need to be preserved.

If I have some time next month, I’ll post a follow up with some pdfs of different kinds of markings from me and some other conductors.

UPDATE- Click here for a nice response from Steve Hicken at Listen.

c. 2006 Kenneth Woods

A view from the podium, Nuts and bolts gerhard samuel, ivan fischer, library, penderecki, score marking

A view from the podium

There are few new audio items spread around my website, including the mock mini metal-opera “Mr. Potatohead” and the Berio Serenata for Flute and 14 Instruments.

I can’t imagine anyone has ever put those two works in the same sentence before.

KW

A view from the podium

Concert Announcements

Sunday, November 5^th, 2006
3:15 PM Vert Auditorium
Pendleton Oregon
Oregon East Symphony
Oregon East Symphony Preparatory Orchestra

Program-
Mendelssohn- Overture “Die Schone Melusine”
Mozart- Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, Mvt I
            Brandi Brown, violin
(winner, senior division, OES 2006 Young Artist Competition)
Schumann- Piano Concerto in A minor, Mvt I
            Benjamin Walley, piano
(winner, junior division, OES 2006 Young Artist Competition)
Mendelssohn- Symphony no. 5 in D minor “Reformation”
            Oregon East Symphony and Oregon East Symphony Preparatory Orchestra

Monday, November 6, 2006
10 AM – 2 PM Vert Auditorium
Oregon East Symphony, Young People’s Concerts

Program
Excerpts form the above, as well as a selection of Joplin Rags.

If you would like to bring your child and they are not already attending as part of a school group, please contact the OES office at oes@uci.net

A view from the podium, Announcements and reviews

I’m happy to call your attention to a new blog, My Second Act, especially as the author had the good sense to use one of their first posts to call attention to my post on Mendelssohn- Felix Rocks. 

The Balance of All Things

Just as nature is said to abhor a vacuum, so I believe that the universe needs balance across its vast spaces. I recognize that this is a very seventeenth-century concept, complete with a soundtrack by Old Bach. Yet I find this a comforting thought, especially when I am confronted by the continuing dissolution of culture and mores within the traditional press, as evidenced by the wall-to-wall coverage of Mlles. Hilton, Lohan, and Ritchie.

Today, balance has been restored. While catching up on posts on some of my favorite sites, I happened on a link to Kenneth Wood’s blog. Scroll down and read his thoughts on Mendelssohn, and see if you – like me – didn’t find yourself searching your own musical soul.

I think I will spend the afternoon listening to “Elijah.”

KW Conducts Mendelssohn Symphony No. 5 and Overture “Die Schone Melusine” with the Oregon East Symphony on November 5th, 2006. Details on the OES website.

A view from the podium, Performing Life

“To be truly contemporary we must use the best of the past to influence the present, not mindlessly disregard it.”

Horn player Julian Baker, principal Royal Opera at Covent Garden 1977-1996

A view from the podium

Sticking with the idea of “organic” music, here is a link to the website of the New Queen’s Hall Orchestra in London. I’ve had the great pleasure of getting to know their playing in concert and they are definitely on to something. Their tale is both inspiring and cautionary, as they are still fighting valiantly to find an economic model that will allow them to actually do the concerts and make the recordings that they should be doing and making.

I wrote a little testimonial about the orchestra for their website at the request of their director, John Boyden, who is, among other accomplishments, a former director of the London Symphony.

Here is one of the more innovative, and certainly one of the most exciting orchestras around- they are more than capable of playing at a truly world class level (Carlos Kleiber was considering a concert with them before his death), and yet they’re currently doing very little concert work. We talk about the need for innovation and fresh perspective, but we’re not very good at making room for it in our arts economies.

There’s plenty on their website about their philosophy- playing on old instruments is part of their approach, but only a part. Do check it out. 

Below is the text of the testimonial I wrote for them abouta year and a half ago:

The New Queen’s Hall Orchestra – Real Innovation

A conductor’s perspective

Almost since the first permanent, professional orchestras came on the scene, there have been periods in which their viability and relevance have been questioned. Often, these periods of doubt have paralleled cycles of economic downturn or social disruption, but in the last ten years despairing of the future of art, music has become a cottage industry for many and a lucrative career path for some writers on music. In these times is there any hope that Cassandra will stop wailing and let us get on with our work?

In a world obsessed with fads and youth, and a mass media utterly disinterested in artistic merit, truth or beauty, the symphony orchestra might seem the ultimate anachronism. However, there are more orchestras, more students studying music at a professional level, more people attending concerts and more recordings of symphonic music available worldwide than at any time in history. The last decade has seen the construction of new halls for the orchestras of Philadelphia, Birmingham, Manchester, Seattle, Los Angeles, Newcastle, Dallas and major restorations of halls in London, Chicago and now New York. The internet and new advances in digital recording mean that we are entering an era in which orchestras can make and distribute their own recordings without the corporate interference of international conglomerates. Things are not, then, all bad.

Still, there are serious concerns about the health of the field, even among those who are secure in their belief of the continued viability and relevance of the orchestra. Orchestras and opera companies are blessed with an incredibly rich repertoire stretching back over 250 years, but in constantly revisiting the classics, there is a risk of reaching a point of artistic stagnation. Pierre Boulez once wrote of Indian classical music that it had achieved formal and aesthetic perfection, and, in doing so, had become a dead art form. Could such a fate await western classical music? Critics are often keen (and right) to point out the need for a bigger place for contemporary music in concert programmes, but the core repertoire is too big and too important to push to the side. Just as we must continue to re-learn and re-interpret Shakespeare each generation, so we must re-learn and re-interpret Beethoven and Brahms. Surely Mozart and Ligeti are no more at odds than Checkov and Mamet or Vermeer and Warhol. Art has no expiry date nor has the creation of great new art stopped.

There has been much written in recent years about the need for orchestras to re-invent themselves, but the vast majority of what has been said really only refers to marketing, not music making. We’ve all heard the platitudes about “reaching out to the community” “serving and engaging a more diverse audience” “going beyond the old-fashioned image of the orchestra” “adopting a more informal concert style” and others. I’ve often used them myself. These catch phrases seem to go down well with politicians and administrators, but they tell us nothing about how the art form can move forward, or about how concerts themselves might sound better or more interesting.

Yet it is this very lexicon of orchestra-speak that seems to be the operational blueprint for a distressingly large number of orchestras. Throughout the western world, orchestras have become so obsessed with relevance, outreach, engagement, partnership, diversity and the “all important” youth market that many have put their artistic identities to one side. Orchestras once known for the beauty of their string sound, their conductor’s matchless interpretations of Strauss or their virtuoso first oboist are now most known for their “Exciting New Blue-Jean Thursdays!” concert series or their new education project where local children get to chant slogans in time with a new work by an out of work film composer, or even their cutting edge website. All of this is probably worthwhile, but certainly has nothing to do with music.

In fact, through some perverse combination of the influence of recordings, a tendency of industry insiders to look to a tiny handful of influential teachers for new players and conductors, or the corrupting influence of a society permeated with chain restaurants and ready-made meals, many major orchestras, keenly aware that they have the most to lose these days, have never sounded so indistinguishable from one another. Leading orchestras often insist on using the same parts and bowings they’ve been using for decades, playing works with the same outlook and approach year after year, conductor after conductor, generation after generation. Identical and unchanging, reactionary and risk-averse, is this what we want orchestras to be in the coming century?

It’s not what many musicians want. Most players in major orchestras want their own voice, want to take chances, want to develop a more distinctive way of playing as an ensemble. Older generations of orchestra musicians may have seen an orchestra job as a fall back career when their solo aspirations didn’t pan out, but the younger generation of players have grown up knowing that a position in a professional orchestra is one of the most prestigious and coveted positions in the world. Competition for a full time chair as a solo trumpet or principal clarinet is fiercer than even for the elite positions in sport. media and movies. They’ve all made a huge investment in developing themselves not just as violinists or oboists, but as orchestral musicians, and they are passionate and knowledgeable about the repertoire. They want to take chances, and they want to be bold, but the culture of avoiding error and controversy is so strongly entrenched in the field, that some orchestras aren’t ready to let them experiment and take risks, or won’t encourage them to try new approaches.
Fortunately, some organizations are ready to buck the trend, and to put their energies and emphasis into being artistically daring, innovative and distinctive. Such a group is the New Queen’s Hall Orchestra.

The reader of this article may know a little of the NQHO’s philosophy, such as their use of instruments and performing practices from the early 20th century, but as a conductor and music lover, I can’t help but see them as a courageously innovative and daring group.

The early music movement has brought us many new groups, some wonderful some not, but so much of their work seems founded on a misplaced sense of orthodoxy, of a new need to be definitive or correct. Surely we can be grateful for the interesting and sometimes glorious recordings, but do we really want to simply replace orchestras that vibrate every note with ones who never vibrate at all? Does following metronome marks alone constitute a real approach to the music of Beethoven? A new catch phrase (“we’re not historically authentic, we’re historically informed” is my favourite) or a switch from steel to gut strings does not make a new aesthetic philosophy by itself.

Orthodoxy and political correctness are not the point of the NQHO. What could be less orthodox than French bassoons in Brahms? Yet, here is an orchestra with an immediately and uniquely identifiable sound world all its own. For the world weary conductor who hears hundreds of performances and recordings around the world every year, what could be more refreshing than to hear new colours, new articulations, new balances and new ways of phrasing? The strings of the NQHO orchestra are making sounds that you won’t hear anywhere else in the world, and it is a beautiful collection of sounds, too. Where else can you hear these distinctive woodwind colours, or the true power (as opposed to ear-splitting volume) of a well balanced, virtuosic brass section playing on narrow-bore instruments.

Even more importantly, this is a group that encourages risk taking, innovation, individuality and collaboration. It’s a group where a player can go for a dangerously soft entrance or ephemeral colour in concert, even if it means risking a mistake. It is an orchestra where section players take initiative, where there can be a genuine exchange of ideas and energy between conductor and players during the concert.

Is this the way forward? No, I hope that we can avoid looking for “the way forward,” which only leaves us looking for the latest bandwagon to jump on. The NQHO is something better, an orchestra that actually sounds like itself, plays like itself and responds like itself. It is artistically creative and forward looking, fearless, and works at a tremendously high standard, the very qualities that we need on the concert platform today. Yes they are innovative, but more importantly, they are distinctive. I call your attention to the NQHO because it is just the sort of group that should be flourishing as an inspiration to administrators, conductors and musicians world wide to look for their own voices, develop their own artistic visions and create their unique musical identities. I call it to your attention because it is a joy to hear them play. It is most certainly a way forward.

Kenneth Woods

The author is Music Director of the Oregon East Symphony and Chorale, and a regular guest conductor of orchestras throughout North America, Europe and the UK
 

BTW- The NQHO’s record label was originally called “Organic Classics”

A view from the podium, Music and Media

I want to share some interesting thoughts from Greg Sandow  via email on my analogies of orchestras and organics……
“Ken,
 
Those are really good points…
I love the organic food analogy. Made me ruminate a bit, and I came up with two thoughts.
 
1. If the entire classical music business is organic food, then it’s got to shrink. There just can’t be enough market (at least on the organic food market) for huge, highly paid orchestras, glossy expensive soloists, and 3000-seat halls.
 
2. But maybe only some classical music is organic food. Just as a supermarket can sell regular and organic produce, an orchestra could do regular and organic concerts. The orchestra, in other words, would have more than one product line, which in fact is a way of thinking that’s beginning to take hold. So I can imagine an institution that does big glossy performances of The Planets, and then has its organic line of early music, and also its hip boutique line of new music concerts. Or something like that!
 
Thanks for getting my brain working,
 
Greg  — one last thought: in pop, the organic food genre would be acoustic music (of course).”
Two more thoughts from me
1-       3,000 seats is awfully big, although the Albert Hall (6,600) can sound and feel intimate. Still, it would be great if there were a viable economic construct where orchestras could offer programs that were leaner in venues that brought the audience as close as possible.
2-       I’m not sure pop needs to be acoustic to be organic. I’d say compression (or at least excessive compression) is definitely the toxic insecticide of pop music, along with excessive sampling in place of real musicians, songs written by marketing departments (see the tomato bred for shipping rather than flavor), and pitch corrected/generate vocals. One reason that we now have so many pop stars with no musical interest or aptitude is that they no longer need any musical skill to make an album as a “singer.” If the pop star in question can speak the words, even out of time, a good engineer can pitch and time correct them into something usable. Definitely not organic. Jimi Hendrix is a good electric organic artist.

 UPDATE- Be sure to read the great comment from hornist Rebekah Shaub

A view from the podium, Music and Media

This just in-  Christoph Eschenbach has resigned as Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra and will be concluding his tenure at the end of the 2007-8 season. 

More thoughts to follow. 

UPDATE-

This from Adam Shatzman suggests that Eschenbach has goten a raw deal in the press and from some musicians.

David Patrick Stearns wonders if the Philly musicians are getting a reputation as the new “conductor eating orchestra” 

Peter Dorbin offers his thoughts here

 Here is what the Gramophone had to say After reading this-

 ”Eschenbach, 67, was said to be at his home in Paris and unavailable for comment, but Kevin Kleinmann, his spokesman, said the conductor had decided he no longer wanted to be tied down to a major orchestra. “He has too many other plans and projects — opera, youth orchestras, festivals, the Internet.”

 in the Washington Post news item by Tim Page, I called Eschenbach at his home and suggested a “career swap.” I’m delighted to report that, as of 2008, I will be the new music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Christoph will be working with a number of my favorite youth orchestras, and will take over authorship of A View from the Podium.

Good times!

More serious thoughts to follow

A view from the podium

Just a quick reminder that I’ll be performing tomorrow, October 21^st, with the Nottingham Philharmonic at the Albert Hall in Nottingham. I’ve heard from quite a few of you around the Nottingham area who’ve found out about the blog from the NPO website or their press release- do come say hi after the concert. It’s always nice to have a human face to put on the email address.

It’s a program built around two of the greatest pieces of the early 20^th Century- Sibelius 5 and Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto. Either work can warp your fragile little mind- they have mine.

When I played cello in the Taliesin Trio we did a lot of school concerts, and I always noticed that our performances improved a lot once we had gone through our informal discussions about what to talk about with the kids in each piece. Years later, I remember Allan Gilbert saying the same thing a different way during a conducting seminar at Aspen- he said he knew he was getting to know the music well when he started to have strong opinions about it. I’d even suggest that trying to articulate those opinions helps drive the process of internalizing the music. That’s one thing I like about this blog- it gives me a reason to verbalize my feelings about pieces, which I always find helpful in developing a performance.

Here are a few opinions about this program-

Sibelius 5-

Tempo molto moderato, not largo for the first movement. I bet most of you have never heard it even close to Sibelius’ metronome marking of 66 (most take it between 36 and 52). I think the composer was right- it should certainly  be in the Mr Rogers Neighborhood of moderato, not adagio.*

In the whole opening movment(s), from the down beat to the end of the scherzo-like section, the phrasing should grow out of the overall form of the movement. The whole thing, on every level, is a series of ever-expanding, ever-intensifying waves of energy. Each gesture, each phrase is part of this great effort to generate forward motion.

The second movement (the Andante con moto, quasi Allegretto) sounds like the most straightforward bit of the piece, but in many ways it’s the most elusive, the deepest, the weirdest. Anytime Sibelius writes something that sounds harmless and carefree, be sceptical.

The finale is about struggle. The opening is NOT a scherzo- it shouldn’t sound playful but alive, vibrant, driven and very caffeinated. It’s not a release of tension but a return of tension. The struggle goes through the whole movement- even when you get to the big swan tune. In that whole opening section up to the first appearance of the swan theme, and in it’s return afterwards, Sibelius keeps you constantly off balance by using very irregular phrase lengths. Then, he keeps interjecting little three bar groups, most of which go against the overall phrasing of the main melody. It is as if he is trying to will the music into a more stable shape, and finally succeeds in the swan theme, where everything falls into three.

The whole symphony is about three- each movement deals with three-ness in a different way. Can you think of another symphony that is all in meters built on threes? I’m not sure what it means, but it’s cool.

Opinion on Prokofiev 2^nd Piano Concerto-

Best Piano Concerto written in the 20^th Century (including Rachmaninov)

Hope to see you there KW

 * Everything you need to know about music you can learn from children’s literature. Tempos don’t have to be exactly at the metronome markings, but like Mr. Rogers, they need to be somewhere in the neighbourhood. Dynamics and intonation are like Goldilocks and the Three Bears- that was to sharp, that was too flat, and that was just right. Critics, audiences and performers would be wise to remember Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham. Old-school versus New-School performers (HIPster non-vibrato bands vs “Modern” nouveau Hollywood sounding orchestras and ensembles) would be wise to remember the Butter Battle Book, where the end of the world is brought on by two cultures who can’t agree whether to eat their toast with the butter side down or up.

c. 2006 Kenneth Woods

A view from the podium

I was just writing this morning in another venue about the rewards of learning to love music you hate. I believe any great work of art has to have aspects which get under our skin, which frustrate us, which piss us off. That’s part of the difference between entertainment and art- art gives pleasure (even more so than entertainment), but it also confuses us, annoys us, surprises us. That is part of how it digs its way inside you.

Anyway, the tragic side effect is that, depending on our individual backgrounds, all of us have works where we can’t get past the things that annoy us, even though they are strengths of the piece and not failings. I know it’s the nature of our times to just say that we’re all entitled to our opinions, and so on. The point is not that you have to like Messiaen or Bellini or Coltrane or Schoenberg or CPE Bach or whatever it is you hate, or everyone else will think you’re an idiot. You may well learn to love them, and we’ll still think you’re an idiot J

No, the point is that when one finally gets something new, it is one of those moments when your whole life gets better. Why are we so resistant to finding ways to understand and love art which initially confounds us? So- I’m proposing a great movement!

Why not designate February 2007 as World Learn-to-Love-Something-You-Hate Month. Try Something New Month?  Here’s the deal- partner up with someone you really respect but with whom you don’t always agree. Take turns. You each have the chance to guide each other to an epiphany- just try to be open minded and don’t be an ass. Pick things you really don’t like, but that probably do have some merit. If you only like classical music, see if you can swap with a jazzer or a world-music nut.

Can you persuade a friend to love Webern if the price is listening to Adams for a week? Do you know anyone who will spend a week listening to Wagner airchecks in exchange for you going to a Japanese drumming concert?

You can go to shows, you can send youtube links, you just argue. You may reach agreement only after consuming large amounts of alcohol late at night while watching a video for the 20^th time, or you may never agree.

Maybe we should challenge everyone in the blogosphere to list four kinds of music, pieces or composers they hate and see who offers to help you get it?

Okay- I’m not usually Mr. Follow-through, but the idea is out there.

A view from the podium

I’ve been a bit surprised to find how totally polarizing the whole electroacoustic issue has been- it’s been more controversial than anything I’ve dealt with before. I have to admit I spent much of last weekend wishing I’d never thought of posting on it.

Funnily enough, I feel like I came up with a metaphor that really works for me to express how I feel about it on the plane coming home. I had planned to keep it to myself in hopes of letting the discussion pass into memory, but decided to go ahead once I wrote it out in an email today…. It’s as if I know the horse is dead, but I just thought of a better way to beat it.

When it comes to “fixing” the problems of a so-so hall with amplification, I was reminded Monday of fresh vegetables (no, I’m not thinking of other bloggers).

We all know that fresh vegetables have serious flaws- they go off, they have to be prepared (peeled, washed and so on), and they’re hard to transport. In the 20th century we developed means of addressing those flaws through freezing, canning, freeze-drying, and even breeding and genetic modification. Just in the last ten years, it seems like society has woken up and decided that it’s all well and good having frozen corn in your freezer, but that it doesn’t taste nearly as good or do as much for your health as the fresh variety.

Amplification, however sensitively done, to me is kind of the same thing- it solves some problems, but creates others. The debate should be over whether that is a good trade-off? I think it’s not, but I’m perfectly open to the fact that others think it is.

Where I get worried is when people say there is no trade off, and that you can funnel an orchestra in to a PA system and back out again without losing anything- I’m the son of a physicist and I just can’t accept that as a matter of science…. Canned food doesn’t have to be bad, any more than canned music does, but it’s not the same thing as fresh food. Likewise amplified symphonic music is not the same thing as truly live acoustic music. Some vitamins and nutrients are lost in preparation. I think musicians have good reason to point out the difference between fresh and canned music, just as farmers have good reason to point out the difference between fresh and canned veg. I’d rather have canned tomatoes than rotten tomatoes, but is there another option? (fresh, non-rotten tomatoes?)

Actually, the whole world of organic food, micro-brews and boutique wineries may have a lot to teach us about marketing classical music. Just when classical music seems to be backing off from talking about how good (and good for you!)  our music is and admitting that what really matters is how sexy your violin soloist is (bearing in mind, I’m all for sexy), small farmers and brewers have found a model for competing with Kraft and Budweiser. In doing so, they’ve completely turned the tables on public perception. 30 years ago you would have been square to prefer organic vegetables to McDonald’s, but now corporate food has become associated with being backwards and micro-production with being hip. Better food used to be marketing death, now it’s the future, and plastic food is on the ropes for the first time in 50 years.

Look at the US wine industry now versus 30 years ago and versus that in France today:

Thirty years ago, Americans were making sketchy, mass-produced wine, because everyone thought that the old world model of fine, small batch wine, was doomed and made no sense economically. Today, Americans have reinvented the small winery- while the French have lost market share because they’ve been too conservative in responding to changing tastes and markets, the US and Australia have made big progress by making better wines, and by creating a marketing approach that combines elitism (or shall we say, the pursuit of excellence) with freshness and innovation. Right now, the conversation seems to be whether the classical world ought to be going the 1970s Gallo model or the modern French model. We seem to be being told we either have to choose between marketing wine with the same tools and values as one markets Coke, or sticking with an antiquated image and marketing approach, and demanding the consumer come to us because, damn it, this is good shit and we deserve their business.

Why not be more aggressive about telling people why Mahler is better than Timberlake, while also letting classical artists be seen as people and personalities of our time, rather than artifacts of a dead era? Can we make a case that listening to music in an intimate and focused environment is not a burden but a blessing? That it is a better way to hear music?

Can we throw off the stuffy image without losing quality (including the quality of the concert experience as well as the quality of the music)? I hope so! Can we improve our position if we don’t continue to grow artistically? I don’t think so….

I like my orchestras organic, I like my music locally sourced, I like my sound straight from the producer.

c. 2006 Kenneth Woods

A view from the podium, Favorite posts, Music and Media amplification, dead horses, rotten vegetables

Is it possible for a piece of music to be so effective that you can no longer tell that it is a great piece of music?Sounds like a contradiction in terms? Perhaps you might remember Ravel’s comment about Bolero: “I have only written one masterpiece, and unfortunately, it contains no music.” Consider then the case of Gershwin’s “An American in Paris,” which we performed this week with the OES. Is it a masterpiece, and does it contain music or only melody?Well, I’m a believer.We all know it is a great audience favourite, that it’s full of memorable tunes, and that it’s fun to play. How many of us really have a sense of what a great piece of classical music it is?

Classical music?

Yes- classical music. I would suggest that what makes Gershwin’s blend of jazz and classical so much better than everyone else’s (except Berstein’s) is that he ultimately writes classical music (not because classical music is better than jazz, but because classical musicians are, in general, better at playing classical music than jazz)- that is music which, regardless of its jazz style, embodies the core attributes of the classical tradition. If you’ve read my postings on other works, like Shostakovich 5, Mahler 2, Sibelius 5 and so on, you’ll already have a sense that one thing I find most compelling about all these pieces is the sense of unity and wholeness that each of them possesses. Is American in Paris as tightly constructed as Beethoven 5? No, but it is a work in which form and content are intimately linked- where the overall structure of the piece seems to grow from the character and implications of the musical material. It’s certainly more perfectly constructed and less episodic than any Liszt tone poem, and on par with most of Richard Strauss’s better orchestral works (this from a big Strauss fan)- not only in terms of being attractive and exciting, but also in terms of being formally satisfying.It’s easy to miss this quality, specifically because it is so attractive and exciting. The very catchiness of his tunes can make it hard to hear the piece as a coherent whole (Beethoven knew that a great melody can make it hard to hear “the music,” hence his avoidance of catchy tunes, which he certainly could write), but the piece does have that rare combination of beauty and brains.

In fact, Gershwin knew full well that his tunes were sufficiently catchy that he didn’t really need a form- Rhapsody in Blue works perfectly well, even though it is, in the end, just a collection of fantastic tunes. From this point of view, American in Paris has to be recognized as a huge step forward for Gershwin as a composer (not to mention the fact that he had much larger hand in its orchestration than he had in that of Rhapsody in Blue, which was mostly the work of Grofe. The official word is that Gershwin did all the orchestration for Paris himself, although I would not be surprised if there were some other hands in it).

Understanding of Gershwin’s accomplishment in American in Paris benefits from stepping back and seeing how beautifully structured the work is- basically a four movement symphony in one span (see Sibelius 7 or Schoenberg Chamber Symphony No. 1 for interesting comparisons), where the finale joins up all the thematic and musical strands of the previous three movements. However, I actually think it is a piece that you can’t fully appreciate until you’ve heard it rehearsed, and had a chance to get to know the marvellous touches and incredible subtleties (yes, subtlety in Gershwin, and tons of it), in every bar. The piece absolutely overflows with astonishing bits of harmony, color, and wit. There’s never a literal repeat of an idea, never a moment of empty rhetoric, and never a harmony that could have been more interesting.

Still, this is probably a hopeless cause- the whole work is so infectious and fun that I think it will remain impossible to convince audiences that it is a serious work of art, or musicians that it is not a pops piece. They’ll all go home humming the big trumpet tune (fantastically played in Pendleton by our principal, James Smock), never stopping to think about how much music they’ve actually heard.

That’s okay. Maybe we need a classical masterpiece that can fly under the radar of the modern culture-phobe.

 PS- I could easily write another entire post on how full of mistakes the parts are, how hard they are to read, as well as how expensive they are to rent. When copyright protections mean we have to play a standard repertoire piece from materials that you would normally never accept, that’s very sad. I can’t think of another composer (other than the odd Frenchman like Debussy or Ravel, whose works were often mangled by their original publishers, who seemed to put a low value on readability and no value on proofreading) who is less well-served by his publishers. We need a critical edition of the piece, but we’re not going to get it soon.
 c. 2006 Kenneth Woods

A view from the podium

Upcoming Concert

Nottingham Philharmonic Orchestra

Kenneth Woods, guest conductor

Daniel de Borah, pianist

7:30 Saturday, Oct 21st, 2006

Albert Hall, Notthingham

Sibelius- Symphony No. 5, Finlandia, Prokofiev- Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Grieg- Wedding Day at Troldhaugen

Official NPO Press Release:

PRESS RELEASE    PRESS RELEASE   PRESS RELEASE 

American conductor and blogger directs first NPO concert of the season
 
Albert Hall, Nottingham
Saturday 21st October   2006 at 7.30pm
 
American conductor Kenneth Woods will be conducting the inaugural concert of the 2006/7 Nottingham Philharmonic Season which has a distinctively north European favour, celebrating the music of Sibelius, Grieg and Prokofiev.
 
His performances described as “brimming with personality and affection” by the Washington Post, Kenneth Woods will be sharing the season as one of the candidates for music directorship of the Nottingham Philharmonic Orchestra. He says “I’ve been looking forward to working with the Nottingham Philharmonic since we first started talking about doing something over a year ago. Without question, they are the gold-standard of non-professional orchestras in the UK, perhaps in the world. I’m doubly excited that we ended up with such an exciting and challenging program- the Sibelius Fifth Symphony is one of the great classics of the 20th Century, and the Prokofiev G minor concerto is a monster- a beautiful monster, but a monster nonetheless. “   
 
Hailed by the Washington Post as an “up-and-coming conductor” and a “true star” of the podium, Kenneth Woods is quickly becoming recognized as major talent on the international scene. He has worked with many orchestras of international distinction including the National Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Budapest Festival Orchestra and the State of Mexico Symphony Orchestra. 

In addition, his regular cross-Atlantic career  combines musical directorship of  Oregon East Symphony and Chorale with that of the Lancashire Chamber Orchestra and several other professional, university and youth orchestras on both sides of the pond.   

While many of today’s conductors seem to be cagey to a fault, preferring to be seen as the mysterious maestro, Ken Woods has taken a different path- he has recently taken up the challenge of joining the blogosphere, writing regularly on subjects ranging from interactive programme notes to arts funding and economics . He also gives entertaining accounts of his holidays, life on a youth orchestra course (yes!), and lots of totally engaging background information to his programmes, including Sibelius Fifth Symphony- check out his website at www.kennethwoods.net ! 

The soloist in Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 2 in G minor is the young Australian pianist Daniel de Borah, 3rd Prize winner of the 2004 Sydney International Piano Competition and winner of the 2005 Croydon Concerto Competition. Of the work and the soloist, conductor Kenneth Woods says “It’s the one piece in the repertoire that really still sends world-class soloists running from the room in terror because it is so difficult- we’re lucky we found Daniel de Borah, who’s played it several times now with great success”    

Sibelius’ patriotic tone poem Finlandia and Grieg’s Wedding Day at Troldhaugen complete this very exciting programme.  

The concert is on Saturday 21st October  2006 in the Albert Hall, Nottingham, and will start at 7.30pm and is held in aid of the charity Remember Chernobyl.

Tickets (Price £5 – £12.50) can be obtained in advance from the Royal Concert Hall box office, tel. 0115 989 5555, e-mail tickets@royalcentre-nottingham.co.uk, or from  the NPO Box Office, 34, Selby Road, West Bridgford, Nottingham NG2  7BL, or on the door.
 
For more information, please contact Stuart Bower at: stuart_bower@hotmail.com  or phone 07779-633268 or view our website:  www.nottinghamphilharmonic.co.uk/npooct.html  

A view from the podium, Announcements and reviews