on the recordtag:www.artsjournal.com,2008-02-19:/ontherecord//322009-10-30T14:54:09ZExploring America's orchestras... with Henry FogelMovable Type 4.31-enFarewelltag:www.artsjournal.com,2009:/ontherecord//32.230162009-10-30T14:51:59Z2009-10-30T14:54:09ZI remember a moment during the summer of 2002, when I looked at my wife and told her that I needed to make a change in my professional life. I had been managing the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for seventeen years--a...on the recordhttp://www.artsjournal.com/ontherecord/ That is no longer the case. I've found myself struggling to find topics that I have not already covered, and when I have tried to write about them with a fresh look, what I've written did not look so fresh to me.
And so it is that I've concluded it is time to bring this particular blog to an end. I do so with some sadness, as I have enjoyed the interaction with many readers who have posted comments along the way, or with acquaintances and friends who have sent me private comments about what I've written. I am extremely grateful to Artsjournal for having generously provided this forum, and I will continue to read the work of others at this site. I hope those of you who have read this blog with some regularity have found it helpful, provocative, stimulating, or at least interesting. And I thank you for spending some of your time with me.
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Declining Arts Participation: A Topic for Broad-Based National Dialoguetag:www.artsjournal.com,2009:/ontherecord//32.229042009-10-23T14:12:50Z2009-10-23T14:41:47ZEarlier this year the National Endowment for the Arts released its 2008 Arts Participation Survey, and the picture it paints is worrisome. The study was done in May, 2008, six months into the recession, and certainly we can draw a...on the recordhttp://www.artsjournal.com/ontherecord/
Earlier this year the National Endowment for the Arts released its 2008 Arts Participation Survey, and the picture it paints is worrisome. The study was done in May, 2008, six months into the recession, and certainly we can draw a conclusion that some of what it tells us was probably affected by the economy. But I think we would be hiding our heads in the sand if we argued that the economy was the sole cause of what looks like a continuing and increasing decline in attendance at all arts events, particularly classical music, in this country.
Delving further into the survey, one finds that the cliché about classical music audiences getting older is true--and may be escalating. According to the NEA study, the median age of classical music attendees was 40 in 1982, and is now 49! And there were significant drops not only in the 18-24 age group (a 37 percent decline), but even in the 45-54 age group (a 33 percent decline).
Adding to this is the economic pressure being faced across the country by orchestras and other performing arts organizations--I know the orchestra world better, so that is the one to which I can refer--and the picture is not encouraging. As attendance declines, so will contributed support, particularly as donors begin to feel that there is a growing estrangement between classical music and the American culture as a whole.
One retired orchestra administrator recently posited that there should be a big national meeting about the future of orchestras, and that anyone who ever managed an orchestra should be barred from attending, because we can't keep doing the same old things. While I agree that we must seriously consider change, that is clearly too drastic a way to do it. People who have managed orchestras do, in fact, know a lot. However, it may well be time to bring people who have managed orchestras together with a wide range of experts from other areas of life in America. That might include those in universities who study the consumption of culture in our country, and in universities that are educating the next generation of citizens. And it might include representatives from other art forms, as well as from areas of popular culture at whom some of us may instinctively (and wrongly) turn up our noses--areas such as broadcasting, electronic media, films, and the sports world. What's needed is an ongoing dialogue among all voices, exploring all ideas with an open mind, with provocative and even weird thinking to prod that dialogue.
If we believe that experiencing art has the possibility of being life-changing, we had better start working to assure the continuation of a healthy, vital, varied artistic life in America. I love the John Updike quote that the NEA puts at the head of its survey:
Whatever art offered men and women of the previous eras, What it offers our own, it seems to me, is space - A certain breathing room for the spirit.
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The Case for Subsidizing Ticket Pricestag:www.artsjournal.com,2009:/ontherecord//32.228032009-10-16T14:32:08Z2009-10-16T14:33:27ZIf you go to symphony concerts in Europe or South America, you see audiences that tend to be more diverse than ours in the United States--more young people, more ethnic diversity, more apparent diversity of economic and demographic background. Since...on the recordhttp://www.artsjournal.com/ontherecord/
If you go to symphony concerts in Europe or South America, you see audiences that tend to be more diverse than ours in the United States--more young people, more ethnic diversity, more apparent diversity of economic and demographic background. Since the criticism often leveled at American orchestras is their lack of such diversity, one certainly starts wondering just why it is different here. I was most strongly struck by this in São Paulo, where the São Paulo Symphony plays to almost sold-out audiences night after night and there are enormous numbers of young people--as well as racial and ethnic diversity that an American orchestra manager would die for. But the same tends to be true to a large degree in Amsterdam or Moscow or Hamburg.
I do not advocate the levels of government support that one finds in these countries. (Government provides around 80 percent of the São Paulo Symphony's operating budget, for example.) One always worries when a huge percentage of an orchestra's revenue comes from one source. If that source ever changes its mind, there's big trouble ahead.
On the other hand, it continues to be a scandal to me that governments in the United States do not see the arts as worthy of support in any truly significant way. Wouldn't it be wonderful if, at the local, state, or national level--or through some combination of the three--there was a move toward a truly significant increase in government support, and it was tied directly to a concomitant decrease in ticket prices? I know that some of my former colleagues in orchestra administration are likely to get upset with me for suggesting that support have a condition attached to it, but in this case I dig my heels in. Look what happened in Baltimore when PNC Bank gave the Baltimore Symphony a major grant conditional on ticket price reductions. Attendance increased dramatically.
There is no question in my mind that ticket prices are a barrier to entry for many people. Orchestra administrators keep tickets priced at the level they do because they all struggle to balance budgets. I know--I did it in Chicago for eighteen years, although I tried hard to keep increasing the spread between the lowest and highest prices. In our current system of arts support, we have no choice but to maximize earned revenue. Many orchestra board members will push market-economy thinking on us, saying that we should price concerts at what the market will bear. But we do in fact receive both public and private funding--and, indirectly, more public funding than we admit, thanks to the tax advantages enjoyed by our donors--in order to make our art available to as many people as possible.
At the very least, one wishes that we could have a meaningful national dialogue, led by intelligent people from the NEA and from our state and city arts agencies, on the place of the arts in American life. Such a dialogue, bringing all viewpoints into a higher level of visibility, would be an extraordinarily healthy development for a country that still does not seem to consider its artistic and cultural achievements as a meaningful priority.
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Artistic Authority in Orchestras: A Tricky Balancetag:www.artsjournal.com,2009:/ontherecord//32.227012009-10-09T17:38:27Z2009-10-14T20:26:59ZI appear to have caused some confusion in the past with my comments about orchestra board members who try to wield too much authority in programming decisions, and conversely about conductors who adopt an autocratic, almost dictatorial stance, saying, "I...on the recordhttp://www.artsjournal.com/ontherecord/ ]]>
Certainly one doesn't want a board artistic advisory committee telling the conductor to program the Brahms Second instead of the Brahms Third. The key word in that committee's job description is "advisory." It is more rational for such a committee to function as a feedback mechanism about big-picture programming, reflecting what it believes the community thinks about the orchestra's programming, and at the same time learning why the music director does what he does, and acting back in the community to represent that music director and the orchestra's point of view.
But the conductor who doesn't want to listen to anyone, who says "all artistic decisions are my province," is a conductor who should buy his own orchestra. The fact is that there is almost no such thing as a purely artistic decision. Programming decisions have marketing implications as well as artistic ones, and may have fund-raising components too. They also have expense ramifications, if the decisions result in a need to hire extra players or hold extra rehearsals. Any conductor who insists on an unfettered right to spend the institution's money is a conductor who does not understand how orchestral organizations work; they are not personal fiefdoms, not even for wonderfully talented conductors.
In my years of traveling around the country and visiting orchestras, this balance of artistic authority has come up over and over gain as a source of institutional tension. Conductors who insist on the right to choose guest conductors, and the right to choose programs for those guest conductors; who insist on doing more difficult new music than the audience is willing to tolerate; who insist on expensive tours that are more valuable to the development of their careers than they are to the actual mission of the orchestra--all of these are signs of a conductor who needs to have controls built up around him.
On the other hand, boards and/or managers who do not even want a conductor's input into guest conductors and other artistic choices, who insist on "approval" of all pieces on all programs, who do not recognize the artistic leadership role of the music director--"leadership" is different from "total control" or "unfettered authority"--also need reining in.
Getting the balance right is tricky, and when the discussion turns to the question of "who has the power" instead of "what is the right way to do this for our organization," one can say that the orchestra is already going in the wrong direction. This should not be about power. And generally, when I have participated in discussions and they have been about power, they have been that way because someone was truly more interested in power than in art.
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The Music Director Search: Integrity and Commitmenttag:www.artsjournal.com,2009:/ontherecord//32.225812009-10-02T16:34:40Z2009-10-13T15:51:51ZIn last week's blog, I began a discussion of some of the questions I am most frequently asked by orchestras engaged in music director searches. This week, I am continuing that subject.What do we do when we start getting local...on the recordhttp://www.artsjournal.com/ontherecord/ What do we do when we start getting local pressure for a candidate? It is shocking to me how often this happens. Sometimes it's a relative, sometimes it's a close friend, sometimes it's a well-meaning person who just loves the work of one conductor and pushes that name over and over again. It is really up to the music director search committee to hold firm, to apply identical standards to all candidates being looked at and discussed, and not to bend those standards just because someone (even a big donor) wants them bent. Once you start down that road, you'll never get off it. If you are involved in a search, you will easily find dozens, maybe hundreds, of people who are 100 percent certain that they know the right next conductor for you. They don't. Only a well-functioning committee that does its homework, and that rigidly applies the same standards to all potential candidates, is going to come up with the right decision. It takes a strong search committee chair, backed by an equally strong board chair, to resist the various pressures that will be applied on behalf of people's favorites.
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What is the appropriate contract length for a music director? I continue to believe, again particularly for the small and mid-sized orchestras, that three years is the right length--though nothing is carved in stone here, and your orchestra may wish to vary that a bit. That is the length that has been fairly traditional, and I think it continues to make sense.
What should we do if our first choice is not available and we are not thrilled with the other choices? Keep searching. If there is a single person involved with a symphony orchestra about whom the majority of people should be "thrilled," it is the music director. And if you start out not being thrilled, it's likely to go downhill from there. But the likelihood is that if you do your homework carefully and thoroughly you will have more than one candidate who will thrill you. For the smaller and mid-sized orchestras in America right now, the supply and demand ratio favors the orchestras, not the conductors. Orchestras like those in Boise (Idaho), Lafayette (Indiana), Columbia (South Carolina), Chattanooga (Tennessee) and similar communities have all received between 200 and 300 applicants in recent years (some of them even a bit more than 300)--and that is without doing recruiting, which you should also do. With a pool like that, thorough research will bring you a selection of final candidates that are all on a high level.
Should the music director conduct all concerts? I think the answer to this depends to a large degree on how many concerts your orchestra gives. If it is quite a small orchestra that gives four concerts a year, a case can be made that the music director should do them all. But once the number gets much above that, I feel that it is always advisable to have one guest conductor a year--and if the number is much more than a dozen, more than one guest conductor. The variety is good for your musicians, for your audience, and for your institution. And the music director should not choose the guest conductors; the executive director should do that. Find conductors whose musical strengths are different from the music director's. Remember that you are starting your search for the next music director the minute you hire your new one!
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The Music Director Search: Residency and Balance of Skillstag:www.artsjournal.com,2009:/ontherecord//32.224682009-09-25T14:28:27Z2009-09-25T14:34:39ZI've written about the subject of music director searches before, but I continue to encounter the same questions when I work with orchestras that are engaged in such searches. So perhaps there is some value in repeating points that were...on the recordhttp://www.artsjournal.com/ontherecord/
I've written about the subject of music director searches before, but I continue to encounter the same questions when I work with orchestras that are engaged in such searches. So perhaps there is some value in repeating points that were made in earlier blogs. The points covered here apply mainly to American orchestras--the community, education, and fund-raising work required of music directors in the U.S. differs significantly from Europe and other countries--and also for the most part to smaller and mid-sized orchestras. Those orchestras attempting to hire conductors with international careers have to operate in a different market, and while much of what I say here will be relevant, some things will not apply.
What is a reasonable amount of time to expect from a music director? Why can't he be a full-time resident of our community? In many ways, hiring a music director is going to be a trade-off between musical ability and talent on the one hand, and willingness to spend non-conducting weeks in your community on the other. There is no getting around this reality. It is important to remember that conductors need to conduct, and they cannot do it at home with a mirror or five friends. They can only do it standing in front of an orchestra. If your orchestra plays six concerts a year, to expect a conductor to be satisfied with that and spend the remaining 46 weeks going to meetings and functions is unrealistic. A conductor can only grow by conducting--it's like any other performance art: the more you do it, the better you get at it. If your orchestra insists on even twenty or thirty weeks of residency each season when you're only giving six or eight concerts, you will very seriously limit the talent pool available to you. You have every right to do it if you choose, but be aware of the consequence--talented conductors have every right to say "no thanks." In my view, it is appropriate to ask for a commitment of one-third to 50 percent more weeks than you have concert weeks. So if your music director is expected to conduct, for example, eight programs a year, you might contract her for eleven to twelve weeks a year. Thus there are three or four non-conducting weeks.
How can our community feel the conductor is "theirs" with only eleven or twelve weeks of presence each year? This is a case where quality of time is more important than quantity. It is up to the board and the executive director to ensure that the time spent in town is effective--including time for planning, programming, and administrative work (auditions, personnel issues, etc.) and some community, social, and education work. Determining the right balance is up to your board and executive director--and then they have to manage the music director so that this balance is actually achieved.
How do we balance musical and conducting ability with community engagement, education, and social/fund-raising skills? The musical and conducting ability is basic--that is the foundation, and it's essential. But it is perfectly possible that the best conductor among of the candidates you see will not be the best choice for music director. Your best choice might be the second or even third best conductor--as long as the musicians of your orchestra (and on your search committee) believe that this person's conducting is at the level of technical skill and communicativeness that you need. I have seen many cases of orchestras hiring music directors solely on conducting ability--and dealing with a disaster two years down the road because the conductor treated musicians horribly, was rude to donors, refused to engage in any social functions, or programmed a ton of experimental and atonal music against the wishes of the audience and board, arguing that "artistic decisions are mine to make, and I won't have any interference in those." Or simply because the conductor could not in fact work collaboratively with the board and management and musicians. I have found that the musicians involved in the search--including a polling of the whole orchestra about various candidates--are a very effective guide on the musicianship issue.
How do you know how good a conductor will be at the off-podium parts of the job? They'll all say the right things in interviews. One of the most important parts of music director searches--and the part most often botched, or at least not done as thoroughly as it should be--is research and reference checking. There is an established track record of behavior for every conductor, unless you are hiring a kid just out of the conservatory (and you might do that if you find an extraordinarily talented one, but even in that case there will be people who know her personality). The musicians on your search committee must speak to musicians where the conductor has worked. The executive director or staff must speak to the managements with whom she has had exposure. And the board members must speak to board members who have experienced the candidate. You cannot do enough of this--and in fact must be careful to do a lot of checking, because one "enemy" with a grudge can easily give you a falsely negative impression. Every conductor will have alienated some musicians--just by trying to improve the orchestra, for example. So everyone doing the questioning must probe, and probe deeply.
There's more--and next week I'll continue this subject.]]>
"Historically Informed" Performance: Who Says, and Why Must It Be So? tag:www.artsjournal.com,2009:/ontherecord//32.223482009-09-18T15:49:57Z2009-09-17T15:59:49ZRecently I went on a spate of listening to recordings of Mozart piano concertos. For about 50 years I have not been able to get enough of them--they seem to me to be Mozart's "operas without words," the highest form...on the recordhttp://www.artsjournal.com/ontherecord/
Recently I went on a spate of listening to recordings of Mozart piano concertos. For about 50 years I have not been able to get enough of them--they seem to me to be Mozart's "operas without words," the highest form of his non-vocal art. The recordings I chose to hear were mainly those I grew up with, and a few others accrued along the way--recordings by Rudolf Serkin, Edwin Fischer, Daniel Barenboim, Alfred Brendel, and Clifford Curzon, among others.
The HIP movement, as it has become known, is without question a valuable development in music performance practice. It is a great benefit for us to hear the music of Bach or Mozart or other pre-Romantic composers as they may have envisioned their music to sound. I stress "may have" because we do not, in fact, know--and therein lies the problem for me. I have a growing intolerance for those who insist that music must be played as we believe it was played two hundred years ago--those who proclaim that a richer, more romanticized version of Mozart is a crime against nature.
There are two reasons for my intolerance. One is that despite all the musicological research, we truly do not know, and can never know, how Mozart played the piano. But more important is the fact that we cannot create the original audience. Mozart's audiences never heard Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, Shostakovich, or airplanes, car horns, recordings, or a whole bunch of other stuff, musical and otherwise. What was a normal instrumental sound for them is not a normal instrumental sound for today's audience.
What this purist streak has actually done is remove from the orchestral mainstream the music of Bach, Handel, and other Baroque composers (remember when Hamilton Harty's "old-fashioned" suite of Handel's Water Music was standard concert fare?), not to mention fun hybrids like Stokowski's brilliant Bach transcriptions. I can tell you from personal experience that important conductors, those you would like to think were immune from worrying about what critics would say, refused to perform Bach's "Brandenburg" concertos or his orchestral suites, not to mention the B Minor Mass, because they did not want to subject themselves to critical ridicule. (That's silly, I know--they should be worrying about that. But who said that performing musicians were the most secure beings in the world?) The point is they should never have been put in that position: it is simply not "wrong" to perform Bach through the ears of today, or even the 19th century. Anyone who has heard Klemperer's recording of the Saint Matthew Passion, or even Mengelberg's, should understand the beauties of those approaches. Different from "HIP?" Absolutely. Equally valid as a musical experience? Utterly!
The thing that the purists ignore is that composers of the 17th and 18th centuries did not think like they did. Mozart re-orchestrated Handel's Messiah to make it more suitable for the audience of his time. Bach constantly re-arranged his own music and the music of others. Wagner wrote arias for insertion into standard operas such as Norma. Mahler, who re-orchestrated Beethoven and Schumann symphonies, is today subject to those who want to determine the "critical edition" of his scores so that we reproduce them precisely the way he would have. I would imagine that these composers would be either amused or horrified at the "purist" trends in today's music world. Or possibly both.
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A Superb Trio of Russians, Alive Again on CDtag:www.artsjournal.com,2009:/ontherecord//32.222422009-09-11T15:07:59Z2009-09-11T15:09:25ZI rarely blog about a single recording, or set of recordings, but in recent months I have been immersing myself in an utterly remarkable demonstration of great chamber music playing, and I can't resist sharing it with you. It is...on the recordhttp://www.artsjournal.com/ontherecord/ Then comes one of the greatest 20th-century chamber works: the Shostakovich E Minor Piano Trio, a tortured, haunting piece that the group recorded in 1959 near the end of its existence. It is one of those performances that leaves the listener emotionally exhausted and drained--a truly transformational listening experience. Remember, all three of these musicians knew Shostakovich and loved him deeply.
Doremi has added a disc to the set of other chamber performances--a Fauré Piano Quartet with Barshai joining the trio, a Borodin Piano Trio with Gilels and two different string players, and a Brahms Horn Trio with Gilels, Kogan, and Yakov Shapiro.
The word "historic" gets bandied about a lot, and far too many recordings have been labeled as historic when in fact they are merely old. But it is performances like the ones heard on this set that define the importance of having recorded documentation. Gilels, Kogan, and Rostropovich play every piece with a focus and intensity that make us feel privileged to be allowed to listen in. It is true greatness, preserved for all time, so any generation in the future can know what is possible by way of human achievement. ]]>
Classical Music: Transformative, Not Tranquilizing tag:www.artsjournal.com,2009:/ontherecord//32.221452009-09-04T17:11:28Z2009-09-04T17:14:11ZOne of the problems that the classical music world faces is the different ways that people experience music. The truth is that classical music is not meant to be background music. It is often not meant to "soothe," should in...on the recordhttp://www.artsjournal.com/ontherecord/
not meant to be background music. It is often not meant to "soothe," should in fact shake you to your roots frequently. But if you look at some of the marketing that is done by the recording industry, even by some orchestras or presenters, you'd think that we were closer to Montovani than Monteverdi. ]]>
Clearly, those of us in the business of presenting classical music cannot take any listeners for granted, and in fact should welcome any kind of listening. And I don't say that because it is economically good for us (though I'll admit that it is). I say it because any approach to listening means that the listener is at some level appreciative of the music, and most of us are in this business because we are proselytizers. We believe in this music. We believe in its transformative power, its ability to fundamentally reach human beings on a level way beyond words. And therefore any listener, however he or she approaches the music, is something we cherish.
However, it is also our job to make clear that there is much more to this music than lush, rich sounds. And yet much of our industry has encouraged the "just let it wash over us" approach--almost presenting it or talking about it as high-quality background music. Classical music radio in much of the United States is perhaps the prime casualty of this kind of thinking. Having visited more than 200 cities in the past ten years, and being an habitual searcher for classical music on the radio, I find myself deeply depressed at the proliferation of stations that identify themselves as "classical music" outlets but won't broadcast vocal music, modern music, or even full-length symphonies. I remember once driving with my wife and hearing the announcer intone "Next we'll hear the 2nd movement of Brahms's Symphony No. 2." I turned to my wife and said "Wow! All of it?" I dare say that the U.S. now has more so-called classical stations of this kind than stations that are actually meant to be closely listened to. Even more depressing is hearing those stations promote themselves. "Spend relaxing hours with WXYZ," or "Let the soothing sounds of classical music accompany you through the day on WXYZ." Station promotions of this nature are horrifyingly common.
I'm trying to imagine Beethoven thinking this way about his late quartets or "Eroica" Symphony, not to mention Shostakovich about his Eighth Symphony (not that these are works one is even likely to encounter on a station like that). Would it be a wry smile or deep anger that such descriptions would engender in them?
Those of us in the business of presenting and promoting music need to do a better job of explaining and clarifying the transformational qualities, the deeply moving potential, of our music. We need to remember that while a part of what we do is related to "entertainment"--and I have no gripe with entertainment; Suppé's overtures have their place in our lives--what we do is also much, much more than entertainment. It is up to us to manage the expectations of our audiences and potential audiences, and to explain why it's a good thing that you shouldn't let the music wash over you.
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Symphonic and Opera Conducting: An Unhealthy Separationtag:www.artsjournal.com,2009:/ontherecord//32.219562009-08-28T14:26:11Z2009-08-25T14:29:08ZI've written about this subject before, but the older I get the more baffled I am by the wall that seems to exist in this country between symphonic conducting and operatic conducting. It is not necessarily true at the highest...on the recordhttp://www.artsjournal.com/ontherecord/
I've written about this subject before, but the older I get the more baffled I am by the wall that seems to exist in this country between symphonic conducting and operatic conducting. It is not necessarily true at the highest level, where conductors operating at both major opera houses and major orchestras are not at all uncommon (James Levine, Andrew Davis, Donald Runnicles). But in smaller and mid-sized communities, there seems to be very little crossover, even in cities that have both an opera company and an orchestra. Furthermore, I have often talked with people involved in music director searches for symphony orchestras--not only lay people, but even orchestra musicians--who have said, "Oh, he's an opera conductor," with a tone of disparagement and an implication that the orchestra wouldn't be interested in him.
Where has this separation, this pigeonholing, come from? And why is it uniquely American? One reason is the vast difference in musical life, particularly operatic life, between Europe and America. Because of government support, there are not only more opera companies in European cities, but they perform far more frequently. Once you get into the smaller communities in America, even mid-sized cities, you get opera companies that do two or three operas a year. In Europe, particularly in Germany, the opera companies operate year-round, and produce a dozen or more different operas each season. Often, the opera orchestra in a European city is also the symphony orchestra. The result is much more opportunity for cross-fertilization, for music directors and even assistant conductors to work in both venues. Here, the opera companies in our smaller communities are small and tend to operate in their own world, with more of a sense of competition for local audience and contributed revenue. All of that leads to less synergy, less working together artistically. This can be true even if the symphony orchestra serves as the opera orchestra.
I continue to believe that there is almost no musical training as valuable for all conducting as the opera house. First, it teaches flexibility--it forces a conductor to be aware of what is happening on stage and with voices every single evening, and to react to it quickly and naturally. Second, the music is based on singing--not a bad basis for most music-making. Third, it opens a conductor to many different musical perspectives besides that of the orchestra itself--those of the singers, the stage directors, and the requirements of the theater on any given night. This too is valuable.
I hope I live long enough to see the day when no one says, with a tone of disparagement, "Oh, he's just an opera conductor." Then I'll know we've grown up.
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Whither the Transcription? tag:www.artsjournal.com,2009:/ontherecord//32.219072009-08-21T19:04:41Z2009-08-21T19:06:13ZAn absolutely delightful compact disc that was issued recently made me wonder whatever happened to the transcription. The disc (Naxos 8.572050) is José Serebrier's second CD with the Bournemouth Symphony of Bach transcriptions, and half of it consists of transcriptions...on the recordhttp://www.artsjournal.com/ontherecord/
An absolutely delightful compact disc that was issued recently made me wonder whatever happened to the transcription. The disc (Naxos 8.572050) is José Serebrier's second CD with the Bournemouth Symphony of Bach transcriptions, and half of it consists of transcriptions by Leopold Stokowski of music by other composers: Palestrina, Byrd, Boccherini, Haydn, Jeremiah Clarke, and Johann Mattheson.
Listening to this recording caused me to realize what the purists have inflicted on the rest of us. First of all, organ recitals are rare things. In fact, even good organs are rare things. The transcription offers us a way of hearing great organ music that we might not ever encounter in a live performance. But the transcription is more than that. It is an alternative version, decked out in different colors. (Some of Stokowski's transcriptions of music other than Bach's are not of organ or even keyboard music.) Just as a play or movie derived from a book is a perfectly valid other way of experiencing the book, so a transcription is a perfectly valid way, in and of itself, of experiencing music that is based on an original that sounds different.
Listening to different transcriptions--there are wonderful Bach transcriptions by John Barbirolli, Ottorino Respighi, Lucien Caillet, Edward Elgar, Walter Damrosch, Dmitri Mitropoulos, and many others--is not meant to be a substitute or replacement for the original. But it should be a valid, alternative artistic experience, and that was the case back in the first half of the twentieth century. A look at concert programs from the 1930s and 40s, and even into the 1950s, shows a reasonably regular appearance of a range of transcriptions.
Then, from the 1960s on, it drops precipitously, clearly a result of the purist movement that seemed to say we can only perform music in the way it was written--an aesthetic that would be shocking to Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Mozart, and others. I hope we lose this puritanical streak soon, and can once again bathe ourselves in the bold colors of a good transcription. Until then, our gratitude to José Serebrier for producing two wonderful CDs.
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The Classical Recording Industry: Revitalized, Not Deadtag:www.artsjournal.com,2009:/ontherecord//32.217972009-08-14T15:05:37Z2009-08-14T15:08:00ZA variety of recent recordings have caught my attention, and they've made me think about the cliché that the classical-music recording industry is dead. It most certainly is not dead. It is changed....on the recordhttp://www.artsjournal.com/ontherecord/
not dead. It is changed. ]]>
don't have any longer are huge, giant labels dominating the record industry. We have a growing recognition among musicians at all levels that the purpose of recording is no longer to make gobs of money, but to document their art. That strikes me as a very healthy development.
At the time I wrote this article, Arkivmusic.com was listing 251 recordings of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony that one could buy! Even more impressive for someone who grew up in an era when finding a recording of a Bruckner or Nielsen symphony could involve research and hard work, there were 61 recordings of Bruckner's Fifth, and 39 of Carl Nielsen's Fifth. Want further proof that the recording industry is alive and vital? There were, at the same time, two different recordings of George Antheil's Fifth Symphony.
Call it a tale of Fifth Symphonies if you wish, but when I started collecting and broadcasting classical-music recordings in the 1960s--the so-called heyday of the recording company giants--I did not have anywhere near the kind of mind-boggling choice I do today. Those who have sounded the death knell for recordings, including critic Norman Lebrecht, simply do not know what they're talking about. They do not understand that a major change in a business model doesn't mean its death. It actually means a revitalization of an industry.]]>
Language Barriers: Foreign Titles Intimidate the Uninitiated tag:www.artsjournal.com,2009:/ontherecord//32.216512009-08-07T14:38:22Z2009-08-11T16:11:07Zon the recordhttp://www.artsjournal.com/ontherecord/ When I managed the Chicago Symphony (and I believe it is still the case there) our policy was to use English unless the piece was so well known in the original language that it necessitated using that language. Debussy's La mer would be an example of the latter. Obviously, that is a judgment call, but I would urge always erring on the side of English. For example, "A Hero's Life," rather than Ein Heldenleben. If you don't know classical music, and are reading an ad in a newspaper, or hear an ad on the radio, or have even managed to get yourself to the concert and are reading the program page, you are likely to ask "What's a Heldenleben?" I would much more welcome an all-English policy--even to the point of rendering Debussy's work as "The Sea"--than an all-original-language policy. The point of printing titles is to render information, not to show how smart we are.
Whether we want to admit it or not, this use of foreign language titles is an act of distancing: it creates a barrier, a sense that you need extra knowledge to even understand the name of the piece of music. Le nozze di Figaro, Ein Deutsches Requiem, La gazza ladra--all of these are titles known to already committed music lovers, but incomprehensible to people who feel left out of this art form. In other cases, the original language might even befuddle some experienced concertgoers: Tableaux d'une exposition is far less clear than "Pictures at an Exhibition," and the same is true of "Nights in the Gardens of Spain" vs. Noches en los jardines de España. I cannot see a single rational justification for insisting on using foreign-language titles, other than to demonstrate the line between those "in the know," and those not. We need to think about everything we do, every way in which we speak about and present music, and examine whether what we are doing is taking down barriers, or erecting them.
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A Board's Effectiveness Lies with its Leaders tag:www.artsjournal.com,2009:/ontherecord//32.215702009-07-31T14:21:02Z2009-07-31T14:23:39ZI have written previously about the crucial importance of good boards of directors (or boards of trustees--the terms seem to be used interchangeably in orchestra governance, though they probably should not be). A well-functioning board is absolutely essential to a...on the recordhttp://www.artsjournal.com/ontherecord/ ]]>
leaders. In fact, a good board will become less good if its leader is not strong and effective. As boards change makeup over time, it is too easy for a good board to slip into mediocrity or worse. It is the board leadership that must prevent that.
This starts, of course, with the board chair--but extends to the leadership team, whether it be vice-chairs, committee chairs, or the executive committee. It is whoever really guides and shapes the agenda and direction of the board, and it has to do with tone.
What do I mean by "tone?" It might be easier to define that by using negative examples. A board that constantly revisits the decisions it has made because a few strong-willed (and strong-voiced) members of the board will not accept that decision is a board with a serious problem of tone. Tone, to me, means that at all times the discussion and deliberation of a board are constructive, mutually supportive, and honest without being mean-spirited. And once a consensus is arrived at, it is accepted by all. (Those who absolutely cannot accept it may resign from the board; what they may not do is continue to raise the same issue at meeting after meeting.) It is the chair of the board, supported by other leaders, who must prevent this from happening--who must rule such discussions out of order and find the polite but firm way to do so.
Similarly, it is the leadership of the board who must devote serious time to thinking about how the board works, how meetings actually happen, whether committees are truly functioning. It is the leadership of the board who appoint committee chairs--and when they are good leaders, they appoint those chairs according to ability, not according to people's desires. (Yes, ability and desire may match--and that is lucky--but they may also not match.) As longtime readers of this blog know, I'm a huge fan of the business guru Jim Collins, and one of his principles of the successful organization is that the right people are on the right seats on the bus. Committee chairs must have a natural aptitude for the subject matter their committees are responsible for. Board recruiting must be done to specifically recruit those skill-sets. But then it takes leadership, and courage, to not appoint someone to chair a committee that that person very much wants to chair, if you know that he or she actually lacks the knowledge and skill to do it. Committee chairs must have the same skills as board leaders: getting the most out of people, directing agendas and meetings toward a constructive conclusion, creating the right atmosphere for conversations that matter. People who must dominate a room, or who have little patience for process and for a wide range of views, are not natural committee chairs or leaders.
One of the biggest problems for nonprofit boards is that people join them in hopes of doing good, but also having fun. There is a natural tendency to avoid unpleasantness of any kind--even if it would be constructive unpleasantness to keep a discussion focused. One result of this, ironically, is that one or two people who do not play well in the sandbox can, in fact, make the experience of a board quite unpleasant for the rest, and because no one wants to say anything, the quality of meetings deteriorates. This is where leaders must lead. I have experienced, sadly, more than one board that disintegrated into something approaching helplessness because firm leadership was not exercised by the chair.
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Essential Skills of an Orchestra Executive Directortag:www.artsjournal.com,2009:/ontherecord//32.214632009-07-24T14:21:13Z2009-07-24T14:34:43ZLast week I wrote to encourage young people with an interest in music, and with a reasonable business head, toward a career in orchestra administration. As a follow-up to that, I write today about the skill-set that is required for...on the recordhttp://www.artsjournal.com/ontherecord/
Last week I wrote to encourage young people with an interest in music, and with a reasonable business head, toward a career in orchestra administration. As a follow-up to that, I write today about the skill-set that is required for success in that profession. This is a question I am often asked, either by search committees seeking an executive director or by young people pursuing a career in orchestra administration. Here are qualities that I believe are essential to success in orchestra management. I hope this will serve those who might be interested in such a career, as well as those search committees who are looking for an executive director.
Empathy. Empathy is often mistaken for sympathy, but it is not that at all. It is the quality of being able to understand why other people are thinking in a certain way, particularly when it is different from the way you are thinking. If you lack this skill, you will find yourself arguing senselessly for a specific position, without ever getting to the underlying issue that might be separating your position from someone else's. If you are, in fact, empathetic, you can understand what underlies someone's position on any given issue, and you might find a common ground that allows you to solve the issue. This goes for musicians, music directors, board members, donors, other staff members--for everyone. Being able to truly understand why people are thinking in a certain way is essential to building consensus, which is what managers of all nonprofits have to do. Jim Collins, the brilliant writer on management and business success, notes that the principal difference between the for-profit corporate CEO and the nonprofit CEO is as follows: the for-profit CEO's job is largely executive, the not-for-profit CEO's job is largely legislative. You do not go into your office, put your fist on the desk, and say "this is the way we're all going to do it, because I said so." Migod, does it not work that way. Our job as leaders of not-for-profit organizations is, in fact, to build consensus from our huge range of stakeholder--much bigger and more diverse than that of any corporation. We have donors, deeply involved board members, volunteer organizations, staff, musicians, audience, critics, and, oh yes, the music director. Rarely do all pull in the same direction, and our job is not unlike herding sheep. We have to get everyone pulling in the same direction.
• Musical knowledge, and the ability to balance it with fiscal judgment. I believe that at least a reasonably complete knowledge of music, and of the orchestral repertoire, is important as a quality of someone who would lead the management of an orchestra. But equally crucial is the ability to balance that with fiscal sense. There is no such thing as a purely artistic decision, and no such thing as a purely fiscal decision that won't affect the artistic. The executive director's job is to balance those. Or, as my mentor Nick Webster once said, the job of managing orchestras is the job of "losing money wisely."
• Strength of character to stand up to strong personalities when you have to. I have seen many otherwise talented, gifted orchestra executives fail because they were intimidated either by the music director, the chair of the board, or musicians. Self-confidence is a crucial characteristic in orchestra management. Telling the conductor that you simply cannot afford to take Strauss's Alpine Symphony on a three-week tour because salary, per diem, travel, and hotel equals about $175,000 for the eighteen extra players takes some strength of character when the conductor really wants to do that piece. But it is the executive director's job to determine whether that is a wise investment of organizational resources, a decision that depends, at least to some degree, on the financial climate of the year in which the tour is happening. If it doesn't make sense, your job is to make it not happen. Negotiating with an orchestra committee, or telling a board chair why he is wrong about an important issue (and doing it in the appropriate manner and place) all take strength of character and self-confidence.
• A thick skin. Between musicians, board members, volunteers, donors, and the music director (not to mention the local critic), executive directors must be strong enough to withstand criticism, whether delivered constructively or not. One's inner confidence must not be shaken by emotionally delivered brickbats.
• Sense of humor. Orchestra management should come with a warning label: Do not enter this profession without a sense of humor.