Could this be in Severance Hall’s future? (Severance photo: Richard Scheinin; composite by the author)

Once upon a time, success in classical music, as in business, was pretty straightforward. If an orchestra played good music well, and infused it with commitment and emotional involvement, people came to their concerts.

A few ads in the newspaper, on the radio, and maybe (if the ensemble were well-heeled) on television, sufficed to remind folks of their previous good experiences in concerts, and keep them returning. Now and then the ads reminded somebody that he or she used to like concerts, say, back in college; or even persuaded a neophyte to give classical a try. The classical audience expanded. Success!

When these listeners decided that they liked the way the orchestra played most of the time, they became subscribers. Then the orchestra could assume that they’d attend most of the concerts, and count on their yearly payment as part of the budget.

Most orchestras had modest PR staffs (staves?). The folks on the artistic side of the operation spent their time between concerts researching history and interpretation, preparing the score, practicing, and rehearsing. Now and then, they took time out for an interview in the newspaper, or on the local classical radio station.

Life was pretty good.

Along came the world wide web, and soon every well-connected orchestra had to have a website.

Nearly instant information about programs surely made it easier for concertgoers to make last-minute decisions about which concerts to attend and which to skip. Online ticket sales made impulse purchases easier: you’re suddenly free tonight? Why not go to a concert? It worked that way for me, and still does. I can’t help but think that this may have had a hand in the trend away from subscriptions and toward a la carte concert attendance. (So did hectic lives and personal schedules.)

That first generation of the web brought us a flood of information. As "Web 2.0" arose in the early 2000s, the internet evolved from a chaotic public library to an equally chaotic two-way communication medium. Blogging became the thing to do, and the savvy orchestras joined in. Following the example of their kid brothers, the rock bands, they posted audio and video clips.

In this interactive, nearly-universal-access medium, orchestras’ management, and even the music director and musicians, now can be — in some cases, almost have to be — "accessible." That means at least blogging about upcoming concerts, posting on events in the music world, and responding to the inevitable comments and questions. Some have become podcasters.

Now the interactive buzz is moving from blogs to social networks. These make it even easier for "friends" to respond. The Chicago Symphony, to name just one, is on Facebook. So is the Cleveland Orchestra, though they’re not as active as Chicago. During their recent US tour, members of the London Symphony kept fans at home apprised via Twitter. British conductor Ivor Bolton "tweets" about his recording sessions.

I don’t think anybody doubts that this new, more direct involvement gives concertgoers (and potential concertgoers) a more solid connection with orchestras. But the downside is that it takes chunks of budget to pay for web development, produce audio and video, and handle rights issues. It takes orchestra staff time to do all the writing. If musicians join in the fray (and if I were an orchestra player I’d be sorely tempted), every hour they spend typing or recording is an hour they can’t spend on rehearsal, practice, program preparation, and research.

But what can the orchestras do? The media din is getting denser. They have to shout louder, and more effectively, if they want to be heard.

Are the new media really working for orchestras? Does all this activity bring in more listeners? Has it really made a significant proportion of their audiences more satisfied, more connected? Putting it in blunt economic terms, has the investment returned measurable and attributable increases in attendance, ticket sales, and subscription renewals?

I obviously don’t work in an orchestra’s office, but my impression is that trying to answer these questions isn’t easy — and like the new media effort itself, it doesn’t come free. It means yet more labor hours, more software, more surveys, and more contracted services. That represents still more resources that aren’t going to the core business of making music — but it seems to me that, even in the best of times, well-managed arts organizations have to be sure they’re using their limited resources effectively.

Meanwhile, the commmunication revolution continues apace at the other end. No longer are the consumers of all these tweets, blogs, and podcasts — the listeners, we hope — tethered to their desktop and notebook computers. Now they can interact with "content providers" anywhere, thanks to smartphones and wireless PDAs.

And here is where I get uneasy.

It used to be that listeners moved by a concert would talk about it with their companions on the way home, and with their friends the next week. But who needs friends and companions when the whole online world is hanging on your moment-by-moment responses, delivered wirelessly via Twitter as the orchestra plays?

When orchestras were merely diverting resources from making music to making PR, the most dedicated music lovers might have worried about declining musical standards (or not, depending on how well the orchestra handled the logistics). But how many are going to sit still while some cretin three seats over clicks the keys on his smartphone during a pianissimo passage?

You don’t think it will happen? It already has in rock concerts. Increasingly, bands find themselves playing to cameras, while the fans chat on their mobile phones and wirelessly tweet about the concert. Worse, this trend seems to be headed our way.

To my astonishment, our own Cleveland Orchestra is, in a sense, actually encouraging this.

They’ve just announced "Trivia Challenge." You don’t even need a smartphone or wireless PDA; an ordinary mobile phone will do. Take it to their community concert at Public Square in Cleveland on Thursday (2 July 2009) and "text" (when did that noun become a verb?) the word BLOSSOM to the phone number the orchestra provides. During the concert — yes, while the orchestra is playing — you’ll get to answer trivia questions about the orchestra via your phone. "Every participant will be a winner," they say. The prizes? Tickets to Blossom concerts, where I fervently hope they will NOT use their mobile phones.

(UPDATE: The folks at the Cleveland Orchestra contacted me Thursday (2 July, the day of the concert) to say that despite what the news release said — "Fans can play the trivia game on their mobile phones throughout the Festival and Concert" — they didn’t really mean to suggest that listeners in the Public Square audience should answer these questions during the performance. However, they say they think it’s OK for folks listening live on the radio to do so. Presumably they submit the questions to the different groups at different times, though they didn’t say how that works. I’m not familiar with the system they’re using, so I emailed them for clarification. When I hear back, I’ll post it.)

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m all for anything that expands the audience for classical music. I’m all for increasing attendance at Cleveland Orchestra concerts, and for listening to listeners. (I have to admit, I was impressed at the caliber of the audience dialogue that I saw on the Chicago Symphony’s Facebook page.) And to be fair, the Public Square concert is after all a very casual setting, far removed from the elevated mood of Severance Hall.

But I wonder what their core audience will think of this. These are the folks who attend concert after concert, year after year, because they know they can expect outstanding interpretations of great music. Many ante up something close to (or in) the three-figure range for a pair of Severance Hall seats. How will they react to someone nearby clicking keys, or engrossed in a brightly glowing screen? Just as importantly, how much of the concert is that tweeter really hearing?

Maybe I’m concerned about nothing here. Maybe this experiment is a one-time deal. Maybe it won’t encourage more concert distractions. Maybe the response won’t be strong enough to make it worth pursuing.

Maybe it’ll even lead to positive uses for this technology — for example, transmitting program notes, translations of sung texts, even bar-by-bar interpretive guides, to listeners’ wireless devices. Now that would be a good use of new media.

Still, it seems to me that when the folks at the Cleveland Orchestra suggest that their listeners need to stay busy with gadgets while they perform, they’re not exactly demonstrating confidence in the power and value of the music. If they don’t, will their listeners?

Further reading:

Orchestras and New Media: A Complete Guide at Dutch Perspective

Detroit Symphony Unmasked at the League of American Orchestras

Are Cellphones Ruining the Concert Experience? at the Dallas Morning News

Horns Up, Bows Ready, Cellphones On at New York Times (registration may be required)

Chicago Symphony at Facebook

Cleveland Orchestra at Facebook

Spiegelgasse today (Franz Jachim, Vienna)

Mozart’s 40th symphony is one of his most emotionally charged (dare I say Romantic?) works. It’s one of only two major symphonies he composed in dark minor keys (the other is #25, also in g minor). And it’s one of three late, lonely symphonies that he actually meant to be played in a casino.

The wonder is that he wrote the fortieth at all.

Over a period of 16 years (he started at age 8!) Mozart composed well over 3 dozen symphonies, and several more that were really slightly tweaked opera overtures. But once Archbishop Colloredo’s literal kick in the pants had launched Mozart into his life as a freelance musician in Vienna, he had little further use for symphonies. In the nine years he had left in this world, Mozart created only a half-dozen more.

No wonder. By 1781, when Mozart descended on Vienna, symphonies were falling out of fashion there. What the Viennese clamored for, at least at first, was Mozart at the keyboard. They filled the theatres for his operas, and for a while they even were willing to pay him handsomely - in advance, no discounts or refunds, thank you very much - for music lessons. His purse jingled a happy tune. Symphonies? There was no money to be made from them, so why write them?

He did knock out a few symphonies for specific occasions - in seven years, all of three. But the big symphonic revival came 1788. Mozart composed three more, his last, all in that one year. They’re the ones we call numbers 39, 40, and 41.

Why symphonies? Why then?

Seven years on, Vienna had begun to drift away from Mozart. The needy composer had mined the virtuoso vein voraciously, and it was nearly played out. Then there were matters over which Mozart had no control. The emperor’s reforms - exactly what Mozart admired about him - had taken money out of the pockets of the wealthy, so they were less interested in concerts and commissions. The reforms had benefitted the rising middle class, and they’d filled seats at Mozart’s concerts a few years before. But the Turkish War had sapped everyone’s resources and enthusiasm.

Mozart’s operas were still doing decent box office, but rumors circulated that the Opera would soon be disbanded. It was running a deficit, and the imperial treasury was rapidly draining away into the war. In the end, the Opera survived, but the whispering (and some actual pink slips) drove away some of the best singers - and the audiences.

Mozart’s income was sliding. But Mozart had rubbed elbows with nobility! Surely he deserved to live just as graciously as his musical colleagues - Salieri included - who had steady salaries from their court positions.

So he did. Between his profligate ways and Constanze’s worsening health (no surprise, since he kept her in a nearly constant state of pregnancy), Mozart was spiraling downward into debt. He wrote to his fellow Mason J M Puchberg, “Life becomes impossible when one must bide one’s time between various odd bits of income.”

Mozart was writing to ask Puchberg for - what else? - money. Nor was Puchberg the only one. By 1788 Mozart’s letters to his sister Maria Anna speak ever less of his full datebook, and ever more of his empty pockets.

Finally, desperate for some income, Mozart made plans for an autumn concert series. Phillipp Otto had just opened a new casino in the Spiegelgasse in Vienna. A couple of years before, Mozart had had some success with a "concerts in the casino" series at Trattner’s casino. Maybe Otto’s would work even better.

Initially Mozart sketched out a piano concerto for this series. He gave it up, though, maybe realizing that Mozart at the keyboard wasn’t quite the draw it had been. Instead, perhaps ready to try anything that might attract the jaded and uneasy Viennese, Mozart turned back to the symphonic world he’d mostly neglected.

Mozart had moved yet again, trying to cut his expenses. Although the new digs were cheaper, he now he had an idyllic garden in which to put pen to manuscript paper. There Mozart composed the turbulent 40th, along with its sunnier neighbors the 39th and 41st, during a 2-month period that summer.

Legend has it that Mozart never heard the 40th symphony performed, but that’s very unlikely. It’s tough to be certain, because Mozart’s letters, usually our best map of his musical life, are maddeningly thin on details. However, it appears that he did succeed in mounting at least one of the autumn concerts: Mozart wrote to Puchberg, offering him tickets. Alas, there’s no date on the letter. Although we’re pretty sure that Salieri used it in a benefit for the Tonkünstlersocietät in April of 1791, we may never know for sure whether Mozart’s 40th symphony was actually played where he intended it to be - in the casino in the Spiegelgasse.

Beaux Arts Trio

Over a half-century on, the ensemble that was arguably the world’s most famous piano trio is no more. In August of 2008, when this article first appeared, they played their finale where they made their 1955 debut — the Tanglewood Festival.

It was a poignant moment for me, as a classical announcer and music director. "Beaux Arts" was one of the first names I learned to pronounce when I first started announcing classical music almost 35 years ago! But of course what I really remember them for is their unflagging musicianship. They brought Haydn’s trios to my attention, infused Schubert with an unmatched poetry, and captured the anguish and intensity of the Shostakovich e-minor trio like no one else ever has.

The Beaux Arts Trio I remember best is that group — Menahem Pressler, Isidore Cohen, and Bernard Greenhouse. They’ve been through several personnel changes since, most recently landing the promising young violinist Daniel Hope in 2002.

It was partly Hope’s career trajectory that helped to seal the trio’s fate. It certainly wasn’t Pressler’s. At 84, founding pianist Menahem Pressler is still going strong and is forging ahead with a full performance and teaching schedule. But Hope left to pursue his developing solo career. Pressler and cellist Antonio Meneses said they couldn’t face "breaking in" yet another violinist.

I’ll miss them, and I’m sure you will too. But every end has its concomitant beginning. With luck their departure will spur reissues of the trio’s voluminous older catalog on CD, or at least on downloads.

Further reading:

Beaux Arts Trio Bids Farewell at NPR.org

A Trio Winds Down at the New York Times (registration may be required)

Listening with the Beaux Arts Trio:

Tanglewood Farewell Concert at NPR (includes downloadable music file)

Complete Haydn Trios at Arkivmusic

Schubert Trios at CD Universe

Shostakovich Trios at Amazon

Note: The vendor links above are provided solely for your information. WKSU doesn’t endorse these suppliers, nor does it receive any financial benefit from your use of the links.

This article was originally published on 22 August 2008.

Royal Fireworks (Wikimedia Commons)

The War of the Austrian Succession sapped Europe’s prosperity and will from 1840 to 1848. As soon as the ink was dry on the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, England was ready for a celebration. It was set for 27 April, 1749, and it was to be a magnificent party with fireworks and music provided by none other than the great Handel.

For some reason, though, apparently King George wasn’t too keen on the idea of having any music at all! Or so we read in a series of rather huffy letters which flew among Handel, the king’s Master General of Ordnance (who had the say-so over military music), and Charles Frederick, who had been assigned the remarkable title of Comptroller of his Majesty’s Fireworks for War as for Triumph. However, once Handel had assured the King that the music wouldn’t be overly long, "he was better satisfied."

But he "hoped there would be no fiddles."

There were none.

Handel did try a few times to sneak a few violins into the band, but in the end (perhaps placing some significant value on his own head) he bowed to George’s wishes — and to practicality, since for outdoor performance in such a situation, strings wouldn’t really have added much. His ensemble was as "warlike" as they come. And it was big: 9 trumpets, 9 horns, 24 oboes, 12 bassoons, 3 pair of kettledrums, and an unspecified number of side drums. What a magnificent amount of volume it must have made!

A public rehearsal of Handel’s music on 21 April in Vauxhall Gardens drew a record crowd of 12,000, causing a 3-hour traffic jam on London Bridge. Maybe the tie-up was more newsworthy than the music; the press tells us much more about the rehearsal than about the actual performance at Green Park on the 27th. However, one report identifies Handel’s music by its alternate name — A Grand Overture of Warlike Instruments.

Though we know it today as Music for the Royal Fireworks, it appears that Handel’s music didn’t actually play during the fireworks display. That was a good thing for the musicians. The display was apparently a bit disappointing: "The rockets and whatever was thrown up into the air succeeded mighty well; but the wheels, and all that was to compose the principal part, were pitiful and ill-conducted, with no changes of coloured fires and shapes: the illumination was mean, and lighted so slowly that scarce anybody had patience to wait the finishing." But more significantly, one of the pavilions — almost exactly where Handel’s band had been playing the hour before — caught fire during the fireworks and burned to the ground.

Not one to let good music lie, Handel programmed his Grand Overture of Warlike Instruments on many other occasions, including a performance at the Foundling Hospital a month later.

And yes, he often added strings.

Russian Julius Block was a music-lover. His German ancestors left him with a prosperous international business, and he built on it as he travelled the globe. Block loved the newest inventions — he introduced his country to the bicycle and the escalator. When he read in the papers about the phonograph, he had to go New Jersey to meet Thomas Edison and see it.

Edison thought of his invention mainly as a way to record voices, especially famous ones. However, Block didn’t want to limit this new contraption to being a simple voice recorder or dictating machine. He wanted to do more. Block was a good pianist, and knew Anton Arensky, Anton Rubinstein, Alexander Taneyev, and — most importantly — Peter Tchaikovsky. He wanted to record these people not just speaking, but performing.

After Block passed away in 1934, his recorded cylinders ended up in an archive in Berlin. When that city was almost totally destroyed at the end of WWII, it was thought that the recordings had been lost. Even Block’s own son had no idea they might have survived. But the Soviets didn’t let that happen. The cylinders were removed to the Pushkin House — where they’d originated in St. Petersburg.

Enter Ward Marston. Marston plays the piano and conducts his own orchestra, and is known for his restoration of old recordings. He lives outside of Philadelphia with his service dog, Vinnie, and nearly 30,000 records. Marston travelled to Russia and was able to access Block’s archives. He’s issued some of Block’s recordings on 9 CDs.

Today (Friday 12 June 2009) you’ll hear a recording made in 1890. In order of their appearances (or sounds, if you like), the voices are composer Anton Rubinstein, singer Elizaveta Lavrovskaya, composer Peter Tchaikovsky, pianist and conductor Vassily Safonov, pianist Alexandra Hubert, and our host Julius Block. Expect to hear Tchaikovsky speak after each time you hear someone sing. He is the one you hear whistling at the end — and Peter Tchaikovsky is the answer to our Friday Quiz.

Ward Marston’s website

A photo of Tchaikovsky taken about the time of the recording (1890)

In musical news this week:

• Bloomberg’s, poking through the New York City Opera’s tax returns, berated them for their eleven million dollar 2008 deficit.
• London mayor Boris Johnson will distribute 31 free pianos to public places round the city, complete with laminated songbooks, in the hopes of encouraging impromptu sing-ins.
• The Basel Schola Cantorum used computer analysis to make a modern reproduction of an 8-foot-long trumpetlike medieval instrument, the lituus, of which no examples survive.
• Philadelphia Orchestra musicians volunteered to take a pay cut of almost five percent.
• The Cleveland Orchestra’s assistant director of choruses, Betsy Burleigh, started her new gig as music director of Boston’s Chorus Pro Musica.
• Kempton Park in Sunbury announced that they’d engaged England’s Royal Philharmonic to play Rossini’s William Tell Overture at a July horse race, to see if it would encourage the horses to run faster.

Stanley Drucker (World Clarinet Alliance)

But the big news is that this weekend the New York Philharmonic’s principal clarinetist, Stanley Drucker, will play his last concerto performances with the orchestra.

The clarinet and I go back a long way. It was the first orchestral instrument I ever heard and saw up close; I wasn’t even yet in school. In the half-century since then, I’ve grown to love the clarinet’s split personality, its dark chocolate low register and its scotch-on-the-rocks high register.

Few composers have exploited that timbral flexibility better than Aaron Copland did in his clarinet concerto, swinging the instrument from his trademark spare lonely-open-plains sound to a jazzy Chicago speakeasy jam and back again. Our own Cleveland Orchestra’s principal Franklin Cohen played it at Severance Hall almost exactly a year ago (May 2008), but the performance I’ll never forget was a Blossom concert in the early 1980s. Cohen was perhaps a half-dozen or so years with Cleveland then; he’d signed on in 1976. The season was late, the night cool, the audience a bit sparse, and that was exactly the right setting for the Copland. Unforgettable.

So I nodded when I read that Drucker would be playing the Copland for his last Philharmonic solos. Not only is it the clarinet personified, it’s one of Drucker’s trademark works. Stanley Drucker’s been an almost unprecedented 60 years with the Phil, and when he steps off that stage for the last time, he’ll have played the Copland in concert at least once for every one of those years.

Sixty years, 10 music directors, over 10,000 concerts. Stanley Drucker has played every one of them with enthusiasm and joy, and I’m betting he’ll apply the same attitude to his post-Phil musical life. (You don’t really think a musician stops playing when he retires, do you?)

Thanks for the long run, Mr Drucker. Thanks for the music. Thanks for the Copland, the Mozart, the Brahms, and much more. Enjoy your free time. And may our own Franklin Cohen give Northeast Ohio as many years of his artistry as you’ve given New York.

Further reading:

NY Philharmonic Bids Farewell To Clarinetist at NPR

Betsy Burleigh (Chorus Pro Musica)

This month (June 2009), the Cleveland Orchestra’s assistant director of choruses begins her newest gig, as music director of Boston’s Chorus Pro Musica. She succeeds Jeffrey Rink, the ensemble’s director of 17 years.

In addition to her eleven years with Cleveland, Burleigh is music director of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh — a position she inherited from the great choral director Robert Page — and is professor and coordinator of choral and vocal studies at Cleveland State University.

Betsy Burleigh also directed the Akron Symphony Chorus from 1997 to 2002, and the Canton Symphony Chorus from 1997 to 2000.

Classical music remains deeply unfashionable.
That’s why it has lasted.

Further reading:

Is classical music trying to be fashionable? in the Financial Times

Christopher Wilkins

Christopher Wilkins, the well-regarded music director of the Akron Symphony orchestra since 2006, has signed up for another 3-year tour of duty, through 2012.

Wilkins says he’s "thrilled" — as are concertgoers. Under his direction, the orchestra has drawn critical accolades, including a review from Daniel Hathaway of Cleveland Classical for their early May performance of the Brahms German Requiem with the Akron Symphony Chorus and soloists.

The Thomas Hall podium, however, comes with a thinner pay envelope this time round. Wilkins calls his ten percent salary reduction part of the "new reality" in the difficult times facing arts organizations everywhere. Indeed, according to board president Thomas J. Clark, it’s part of an across-the-board $400,000 budget trimming effort. Clark says that "everyone, from the music director, to the musicians, to the office operations, has shared in these cuts."

The upcoming season’s classical series shows little evidence of the belt-tightening. The September season opener includes Canadian-born pianist Philip Thomson performing the Grieg concerto. Benjamin Zander, who led the Akron Symphony Orchestra and Chorus’s memorable performance of Mahler’s "Resurrection" Symphony in early 2008, will return in March 2010 to guest-conduct the Mahler Ninth. Expect an all-Mozart program in January and Carl Orff’s bang-up "scenic cantata" Carmina Burana in May. Three vocal soloists will appear in a November opera gala. The February concert will include a concerto for steelpan (steel drum) by Illinois-born composer Jan Bach. Other symphonic repertoire on the list includes Beethoven’s Third and the Sibelius Second.

Louise Farrenc was a student of Ignaz Moscheles and Johann Nepomuk Hummel, and later studied with Anton Reicha at the Paris Conservatory.

In 1842, when she was 38 years old, Farrenc started a nearly 30-year career as Professor of Piano at the Paris Conservatory. Hers was considered one of the most prominent musical positions in all of Europe. That made her the only female professor of music to be hired in the nineteenth century at the famous Paris Conservatory.

One day in late 1884, after his daily walk to the railway station in Prague, Dvorak said "The first subject of my new symphony flashed into my mind on the arrival of the festive train bringing our countrymen from Pest." The Czechs he was talking about were in fact coming to the Prague National Theatre for a concert. But there was a darker side of the event. The concert was in support of the political struggles of the Czech nation. That night, Dvorak resolved that his new symphony would reflect this struggle.

Erich Kunkel (prx.org)

Cincinnati Symphony and Pops conductor and Telarc recording artist Erich Kunzel will be undergoing chemotherapy for pancreatic, liver and colon cancer.

"It was totally unexpected," Kunzel said. He was in Naples two weeks ago and thought he might have food poisoning, but tests revealed the disease. Kunzel says he feels fine now, "but there’s a devil inside of me."

"I’ll stay as active and strong as possible. I’ve taken nothing off my calendar. I’m full blast ahead," Kunzel said.

He’ll be treated in Cincinnati.

Further reading:

Kunzel diagnosed with cancer at the Cincinnati Inquirer

Akron Symphony Orchestra & Chorus

A year ago, the Akron Symphony Orchestra announced that executive director Margo Snider, on the job since 2006, would step down this spring. The Greater Akron Musical Association (GAMA), the orchestra’s parent organization, immediately set about finding a replacement. This week, they named Phil Walz as their new executive director.

Walz has years of experience in arts management. He’s served as director of development for the Island Institute in Rockland, Maine; executive director of the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts; director of development for Plymouth State University; executive director of the New Hampshire Music Festival; and assistant and acting manager of the New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra.

Walz also has a solid musical background. The Akron Symphony’s music director Christopher Wilkins says, "Having trained first as a concert pianist, he knows music well. He will be a terrific advocate for our artists and programs."

According to GAMA executive vice-president Ted Good, "Mr. Walz rose to the top of our list due to his extensive experience in fundraising and development, his demonstrated business acumen in running successful arts organizations, and his status as an award-winning orchestra manager."

Walz will assume his new duties in July of 2009.

Further reading:

Phil Walz at Linked In

Just One More Season for Margo Snider at WKSU Classical

Krystian Zimerman (Middlebury College)

Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman stunned his Los Angeles audience Sunday evening (26 April 2009) when he announced that he would no longer perform in the US.

According to this piece in the UK newspaper The Guardian, this is the second time Zimerman has renounced performing in our nation. In 2006 he vowed not to play another US recital until then-president George W Bush had left office. This time he expressed his opposition to the current administration’s plan to construct a missile defense station in his native land.

Audience members reacted predictably. Some walked out, some booed, some applauded. That’s interesting but academic: Zimerman is welcome to express his opinion in this way — or any other he chooses. That freedom is one of the great strengths of our nation.

What I find unsettling is some of the history behind Zimerman’s earlier performances in the US, as revealed in this article.

In 2001, security officials at JFK Airport confiscated and destroyed Zimerman’s Steinway piano. The officers reportedly thought the piano’s glue "smelled funny" and might be explosive.

In 2006, airport security again held up his instrument. This time they returned it to him, but five days later — too late for him to adjust it to his satisfaction in time for his concert.

I realize that airport security officials have a job to do. I don’t know whether they may have later issued an apology and financial compensation for the destroyed piano (a new customized Steinway grand can easily run into six figures). Regardless, I can hardly comprehend such an action. Did they not know who Zimerman was? Did they not know the value of his instrument, not just in dollars but in musical terms? What on earth were they thinking?

That Zimerman even returned to our country at all after such a heartbreaking experience is almost unimaginable. Would you? And with such a background it’s not at all difficult to imagine that a point of political disagreement could easily become a reason to never set foot in the US again.

Let’s hope the situation changes. Zimerman is a powerful and compelling musical presence, and his absence from these shores will be both our loss and Zimerman’s.

Further reading:

Polish pianist stops show in The Guardian

Krystian Zimerman’s controversial appearance in the LA Times

Steven Witser (photo: Cleveland Orchestra)

Steven Witser, principal trombonist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, died unexpectedly Monday night (27 April 2009), of an apparent coronary accident.

If Witser’s name and face seem familiar to you, it’s because until joining the Philharmonic in 2007 he was a member of the Cleveland Orchestra. There he served as assistant principal, acting principal, and assistant personnel manager.

Witser also played in the Center City Brass Quintet.

Steven Witser was born in Oakland and studied at the Eastman School of Music. Christoph von Dohnanyi tapped him for the Cleveland Orchestra in 1989.

Cleveland Orchestra media relations manager Jennifer Schlosser says, "Steve was a pillar of strength and support over his years here in Cleveland and helped people in countless ways. After joining the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2007 he continued to touch people with his selfless sacrifice of personal time and energy and genuine good humor that we all loved."

The Los Angeles Philharmonic concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall on 30 May 2009 will be dedicated to Steven’s memory. The orchestra will perform the opening work in his honor.