Kenneth Woods- A View From the Podium

The Bridgewater Hall- Mahler in Manchester

Today we continue our discussions of Mahler’s 7th Sympyony, which the BBC Philharmonic will be performing on Saturday, April 24 under the baton of their principal conductor, Ginandrea Noseda at the Bridgewater Hall, 7:30 PM.

In the Gramophone’s recent “Mahler” issue Valery Gergiev revealed that he had found Mahler’s 7^th Symphony to be among the most difficult works he’d ever conducted.

He’s not the only major maestro to decide that it is on another level of difficulty from the rest of the Mahler cannon- one orchestra I’m friendly with has been doing a Mahler cycle with their beloved and very, very able laureate conductor at the leisurely pace of one-symphony-per-year for some time. However, when it came time for the 7^th, this conductor, a musician of great intelligence and a conductor with a seemingly unlimited technique, bowed out, saying that Mahler 7 was “too hard” for him.

Then there is the story of the recording that never was- when one of those lucky few major, major conductors to record the complete Mahler cycle got to number 7, disaster ensued. “He just couldn’t get the transitions to work in the Finale,” the producer of the ill-fated disc told me. Fortunately for him, being a star means getting 2^nd chances, and recording in those halcyon days when discs made money meant your record company could afford to give you another shot at the work. The conductor in question went on to make something of a specialty of the piece.

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First, let me say hello to the many new readers who have found their way here from the BBC after my chat (which you can hear here) with Nicholas Kenyon on yesterday’s Today programme. In that very brief segment, we managed to touch on a few topics very dear to my heart, so let’s follow up a bit.

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Judy, a young conductor in Baltimore, has looked up to Marin Alsop for many years “more because I love her programming and her passion for connection with audiences than because she’s also a woman,” so she’s assembled a repertoire report for Marin to see just how that programming breaks down.

A great and interesting list! I suppose it is not surprising that Marin’s list has the most in common with Leonard’s, but at 77 works it’s quite a bit shorter. There is a huge amount of music by living American composers, mostly done at her festival in Cabrillo of Contemporary Music (my teacher, Gerhard Samuel, was the festival’s first music director back in the day).

I wonder if we can look forward to some Dvorak symphony recordings from Marin soon? Doing no’s 5-8 in one year doesn’t look like an accident. Interestingly, unless we’ve overlooked something, Marin is the first conductor we’ve come across to go a year without conducting a Beethoven symphony (no Haydn either, nor Mendelssohn, Schubert, or Schumann and one Mozart- her interests seem much more on late Romantic and 20^th c. repertoire than on classics, early Romantics or even Baroque composers).

I’m looking forward to seeing more lists of major conductors like Marin and Leonard, but it would also be great to have lists from some young conductors, university conductors and some more mid-sized orchestra’s like Patty’s.  I’d love to see a repertoire report or two from some freelancers: what does a freelance violist get through in a year? I know some of you keep track of these things (you know who you are- don’t make me send my research assistant to your website!). What did you play this year, and how many orchestras did you go through?

What about composers? Many of you combine composition and performing- what did you write/perform/organize this year? Whatever you do, what did your artistic year look like?

Meanwhile, on to Marin Alsop’s 2009 Repertoire Report.

1-       Tray Anastasio ??????

2-       BARBER: Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Op.24

3-       BARBER: Violin Concerto, Op.14

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One piece on my desk this month is Brahms’ Piano Concerto no. 1 in D minor.

I fell in love with the piece as a young teenager when my parents bought an LP of Krystian Zimerman’s recording with the Vienna Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein. The purchase of the record coincided roughly with that of a new, very awesome stereo system, and I played that record so many times at such high volume that I not only actually wore out the record, but probably did permanent structural damage to the walls of my parents’ living room.

I’ve had a fair bit of contact with the piece over the years, having played it many times in orchestra, and rehearsed it for other conductors as an assistant. It’s fun but difficult to conduct. Most recently, I taught it at last summer’s conducting workshop in Portland, where the astounding Rick Rowley played the solo part.

Still, in all those years and many wonderful recordings, nothing has ever quite equaled the impact of that feeling of electric discovery I felt with that Bernstein/Zimerman disc so long ago. I replaced the LP (which I stole from the folks- sorry, guys) with a CD when it wore out, which taught me a tragic lesson. One cannot comfortably play a CD as loudly as an LP- the PCM waveforms have a jagged characteristic which means the sound becomes hard edged and tiring at high volume. SACD is much better than CD if you really want to upset the neighbors with your Brahms, but LPs are still the best.

A few months back, I saw that DG had released the performances on that LP on DVD. Of course, I ran out and bought it.

It’s still wonderful, but not at all what I pictured- somehow, even in the Musikverein, it’s not as glamorous as I expected. Bernstein, it turns out, did not stand 50 feet tall and was not wearing a yak skin loincloth in the performance, and Zimmerman has only two arms, is not bathed in grizzly bear blood and at no point actually eats the piano. I was also disappointed that the orchestra were not wearing any of the traditional Amazonian make associated with “the hunt.”

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Erik K has suggested we compile a list of the top orchestra/conductor collaborations of all time. This list is the result of literally minutes of careful contemplation in the car yesterday on my way to work. I’m hoping some of you brave souls will offer your own lists via the woefully underused “comments” function (or use your own blogs)! Do you have a Top 20 or Top 5? Do you think I’ve got some undeserving characters on here? Somebody I missed out? Want to know why I left off so and so with such and such? Make your voices heard!

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