As readers of this blog must be aware – perhaps with interest, perhaps with mounting annoyance – I have become obsessed with the elusive phenomenon of “feeling it.” It’s my impression that orchestras are feeling it less and less. And that the human condition, these days, is less and less susceptible to feeling it.
The responses, both public and private, have been exceptionally thoughtful. A range of opinion is in play. But the responses I receive from orchestral musicians, especially via email, practically without exception confirm that something has gone missing. I tried to define that something a week ago as “diminished motivation: as if the music fails to impel a commanding physical and emotional response.”
My ruminations have focused on broadcast recordings from the post-World War I decades – in particular, performances conducted by Serge Koussevitzky in Boston, by Leopold Stokowski in Philadelphia, and by Arturo Toscanini, Ettore Panizza, and Artur Bodanzky in New York. In their different ways, these recordings document a degree of engagement I rarely encounter nowadays.
Some readers have expressed surprise that the name George Szell does not figure in my narrative. Beginning in 1946, Szell famously created and sustained a singularly refined ensemble in Cleveland: a tabula rasa he made his own. He was a conductor who experienced an epiphany when he heard Toscanini’s New York Philharmonic on tour in Prague in 1930. He subsequently wrote: “The clarity of texture; the precision of ensemble; the rightness of balances; the virtuosity of every section, every solo-player of the orchestra – then at its peak – in the service of an interpretative concept of evident self-effacing integrity, enforced with irresistible will power and unflagging ardor, set new, undreamed-of standards literally overnight.”
Szell’s perfectionism was a New World ideal, sidestepping Old World lineage and tradition. Concurrently, under Fritz Reiner, the Chicago Symphony acquired a comparable reputation for precise virtuosity: a perfection not only of notes and intonation, but of calculated balance and timbre. I first heard the Cleveland Orchestra under Lorin Maazel. I first heard the Chicago Symphony under Georg Solti. The deep imprints of Szell and of Reiner remained evident. I found something missing on the inside.
The other day I explored Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra recorded in live performance. I wound up with a tremendous 1968 reading of Brahms’ First Piano Concerto with Rudolf Serkin. The opening tutti is precise, intense, and engaged. The entire performance sustains these virtues. And I still find something missing.
There exists a 1960 studio recording (embedded above) of the same concerto with Claudio Arrau, Carlo Maria Giulini, and the Philharmonia Orchestra. It’s all about the inside of things – to a degree that doubtless frustrates and annoys many listeners expecting a more straightforward account. I experience the opening tutti with my gut. When Giulini lands on the big downbeat reprising the first theme (measure 10), my response is physical. (Intensified by an infinitesimal retard, it bears a slight but crucial agogic accent.) When Giulini reaches the second theme (piano, espressivo), we enter another realm of feeling, pierced with pain. A vast emotional landscape has been placed in play.
My first book was a study of Claudio Arrau. The prevailing topic is interiority – of Arrau the man, of Arrau the pianist. It was a capacity that increasingly isolated him. He profoundly remembered, from his pre-World War II Berlin days, the performances of Wilhelm Furtwangler (“all that he touched became gold”) and of Edwin Fischer (“he had this divinatory quality”). A stray comment, about the E minor theme in the first movement of Beethoven’s G major Piano Concerto: “It’s the first time the music goes into a minor key. I’ve performed this concerto hundreds of times, and the only conductor who did it exactly right – with a really deep melancholy – was Eugen Jochum. We didn’t even have to talk about it.” A “really deep melancholy” is what Giulini finds in the second subject of the first movement of Brahms’s D minor concerto. I remember Arrau using the term herzereisend.
Arrau was a gentle and endearing man whose dapper persona barely cloaked a volcano of feeling the sources of which are a major topic in my book. We made an agreement that I would show him the manuscript when it was finished and invite his comments – but that I could feel free to ignore them. He made a total of three comments. Two had to do with his personal life and I honored them. The third comment had to do with his recordings of the two Brahms concertos with Carlo Maria Giulini. He was painfully disappointed that I found them studio-bound and self-conscious. What he was telling me was that he discovered in Giulini a profound partnership.
In retrospect, I do not know what ears I deployed in 1980, because I now discover in their performance of the First Concerto (not so much the Second) a consummated collaboration. I would call it a performance deeply felt. Both these artists, Arrau and Giulini, were mysterious in ways that Szell and Serkin were not. Szell’s rigorous aspirations are evident: “The clarity of texture; the precision of ensemble; the rightness of balances; the virtuosity of every section, every solo-player of the orchestra . . . in the service of an interpretative concept of evident self-effacing integrity, enforced with irresistible will power and unflagging ardor.” He once said of his Cleveland performances: “We calculate the inspiration.” Daniel Majeske, his Cleveland concertmaster from 1969, testified: “He spelled out everything in millimeters and micrograms. He certainly could have been a pharmacist.” Szell was a conductor who spoke of perfecting a rendering of the score, then “adding” interpretation. Giulini and Arrau began with feeling.
Returning to my Arrau book, I discover myself asking him: What happened? He replied: “Artists are afraid. They are scared of any kind of commitment. And the young people are all afraid of emotion.”
I write about George Szell and Rudolf Serkin embodying stripped New World performance templates, imbued with “Werktreue,” in “Artists in Exile: How Refugees from Twentieth-Century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts” (2008).
How do the audiences react emotionally when they SEE the emotion on the faces of the musicians and the conductor when they watch the performance on the Digital Concert Hall? Does that added visual element enhance the emotional reaction of the viewer/listener? Or does it replace the emotional reaction or interrupt it?
It seems to me that the extremely subjective point of view about whether or not an auditory only performance has emotion could lie in the psychological makeup of the listener’s opinion. What if a performance has the executional perfection of a Szell or Petrenko and their respective orchestras have emotional content along with the musical execution that reflects the score? In my experience in listening and watching the Berlin Philharmonic, the obvious gold standard of today’s orchestras, on the Digital Concert Hall, many of those performances have both – emotion and incredibly accurate execution.
I agree with you about the Berlin Phil. I try not to watch too much in a concert, because it can affect what my ears are telling me. Many love Makela – he looks extraordinary on the podium, dashing, handsome with elegant movements and an obvious passion for the music. Technically he seems very good indeed. However, listening to the love music in Heldenleben it was apparent to me that he had no clue how to really shape a long paragraph, the loud bits were great mind you. I went home and listened to Reiner to prove myself correct.
A few years back when the VPO were in NYC I cornered one of the players and asked him (it’s usually a him in the VPO!) “how come you make a significantly bigger string sound in ensemble than the same number of players from the Philadelphia Orchestra?” It’s not the instruments! He simply said “it’s our tradition” – which could also be said of the Berlin Phil going right back to Furtwangler. A big sound. A Stokowskian sound (“you play like misers – do better”).
So my contention is that Mr Horowitz is definitely onto something in terms of the lack of “full on committed playing” but you won’t find that lack in Berlin, Vienna or the Bavarian Radio orchestra to pick just three ensembles.
I can’t help being curious: what do you make of certain conductors who are clearly sincere but mean to lower the temperature and approach the orchestra the way a pianist would a recital in Wigmore Hall? Somebody quiet and austere but warm: like Blomstedt or Dohnanyi or Haitink or Davis near the end of their lives. I hear no lack of involvement with them, but the spirit is so serene and glowing that some people might think it dull.
Or Giulini or Leinsdorf or Boult. I believe the maturing into old age tends to lead many conductors to slower tempi and a serenity that you identify. Does this make them less exciting? Yes. But the performances have other qualities. Sometimes though, they can just be boring.
I can certainly understand Giulini and Boult, but Leinsdorf at the end was still relatively high-strung by any standard but his own. Dorati also got a lot more relaxed at the end, but Dorati was (in my never humble opinion) a much better conductor than Leinsdorf.
One detail about Edwin Fischer’s biography (Wikipedia) caught my attention:
“In 1932, he returned once again to Berlin, succeeding Artur Schnabel in a teaching position at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik after Schnabel had emigrated from Germany because of increasing anti-Semitism. In 1942, Fischer moved back to Switzerland.”
This raises an obvious question: Why did Fischer choose to return to Berlin at a time when the Nazi regime was consolidating its power—a regime of dictatorship and systematic crime?
He remained in Berlin from 1932 to 1942, a period during which concentration camps were established and expanded, Jewish musicians were expelled from orchestras and conservatories, and the persecution and mass murder of Jews began. How could an artist of his stature continue living and working there throughout those years?
For me, this casts a profound shadow over his legacy. His decision to remain in Berlin during that decade fundamentally affects the way I hear and judge his artistic achievements. Whatever the greatness of his musicianship, I find it difficult to separate it from what appears to have been a serious moral failure.
The most charitable conclusion I can reach is that Edwin Fischer was a tragic figure—an artist of exceptional musical gifts whose moral judgment failed him at a decisive moment in history.
As a listener looking for the elusive “something more” I venture to suggest that you would not typically find that with either Maazel or Solti. I heard Maazel numerous times. While a technical master, he was a conductor I could never “love” (as I loved Tennstedt for example). Tennstedt would seize the listener by the throat and it was as if he were screaming at us “you have to listen to this!!” Maazel never did that. He gave performances. When he wasn’t being perverse he was often boring. I remember a Mother Goose Suite that was uttterly charmless, but also a Miraculous Mandarin that will never be bettered.
Solti aka the “Screaming Skull” was not a “heart guy” or what David Hurwitz would call a “chord guy”. He was a “rhythm guy” like Szell. I once read that while rehearsing a slow movement of a Mahler Symphony he semi-yelled at the CSO “why can’t you play more SERENELY!”
These conductors are not going to move you. The music might but the interpretation won’t.
Speaking of Szell, one of Carlos Kleiber’s favorite records was Szell’s Dvorak Slavonic Dances. Give it a try. It’s marvellous.
I just attended two concerts by the National Youth Orchestra age 16-19 (NYO) and the NYO2 (14-16). I saw nothing but passionate excitement from these young players. Wonderful performances and I must say Karina Canellakis gave a Concerto for Orchestra every bit as good as any I’ve heard and much better than most. The NYO sounded fully professional but they were so enthusiastic as well.
I guess Curtis and Julliard are making our young musicians into uninvolved cynics. Or are they?
This is an interesting POV re: NYO. When I lived in Seattle, one of the most scintillating performances of Mahler’s 2nd symphony I ever experienced came from the Seattle Youth Symphony. It was a blood and guts, let it rip sort of performance. The kids really dug into the music.
There wasn’t much nuance, but there was a really high level of technical skill. For the musicians who went onto to create some sort of career in music, I imagine they learned to better control their skill, without ever living the music.
I’m sorry if I sound like an “oldster,” but my perspective now includes more than six decades of involvement with orchestral playing (as orchestra librarian, broadcaster and writer). Horowitz’s essay is extremely important; I wish every music student could be given a copy. The key word in this piece is “calculated,” and I believe the lack of expressiveness, emotional intensity and spontaneity in much of today’s playing stems from the podium. Driven, passionate, and subtly moving performances are, I feel, latent in today’s orchestras, waiting to be released by conductors who feel the emotions and have the technique with which to draw them from the players. Today, I often find myself being grateful for even a single measure—a few seconds—of playing that deeply moves and transports me.
Ms Shear, you and I are in agreement. 90% of this is down to the conductors.
As a thought experiment, I sometimes wonder if we would be better off as listeners and consumers if music was less available, if we didn’t have 100 years of recordings. I often feel cynical about music because everything I hear today is colored by what I can hear with just a few taps on my cellphone. It’s robbing me of my ability to encounter music.
Yes, by all means let’s blame the conductors for the attitude of tenured players who are over-worked and no longer love music.