Menahem Pressler (l), Philip Thomson (r)

The orchestras of Akron and Canton will kick off their 2009-10 classical series seasons with guest pianists performing concertos.

The Canton Symphony welcomes Menahem Pressler as part of their "American Living Legends" series. Pressler made over 50 recordings (most of them for Philips) as pianist for the Beaux Arts Trio, arguably the world’s best known piano trio. After over a half-century of acclaimed music making, Beaux Arts disbanded late last year (see Beaux Arts Trio Bows Out in WKSU Classical), and Pressler vowed to continue performing as a soloist. The Canton Symphony will accompany him in Mozart’s 17th piano concerto (K453).

Pressler hails from Bloomington, Indiana, but the Akron Symphony found their soloist right in their own back yard, so to speak: though Canadian-born, Philip Thomson is currently on the faculty of the University of Akron. Thomson is recognized for his interpretations of Liszt’s music and has recorded for Hungaroton, Naxos and Ivory Classics. He will join the orchestra for the Grieg concerto.

The Akron Symphony’s opening concert will be on Sunday, 13 September at E J Thomas Hall. Canton’s is set for Saturday, 10 October at Umstattd Hall. Tickets are available at their respective websites, or by phone at 330 535-8131 (Akron) and 330 452-2094 (Canton).

Further reading:

American Living Legends Concert at Canton Symphony

Northern Lights Concert at Akron Symphony

Menahem Pressler’s website

Philip Thomson’s biography (pdf) at University of Akron

Erich Kunzel

"The world has lost a musical giant and we have lost a dear friend." Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra President Trey Devey speaks for all of us in his statement.

Erich Kunzel, the longtime conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony and Cincinnati Pops — he ruled the podium for 44 years — died this morning at a hospital in Bar Harbor, Maine, near his home on Swan’s Island.

In late April Kunzel was diagnosed with pancreatic, liver and colon cancer. "It wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t on the schedule," was his response.

Kunzel was famous as one of the world’s busiest conductors, and he refused to let the disease halt his music making. Even as he was undergoing first one round and then another of chemotherapy, he maintained a full schedule.

However, Kunzel appeared drawn and thinner on the first of August (2009), when he conducted his last Cincinnati Pops Orchestra concert at Riverbend Music Center. Kunzel handed the baton to associate conductor Steven Reineke for the first half of the concert. He then led the remainder of the program from a stool onstage, with Reineke close by.

Among Erich Kunzel’s many legacies in Cincinnati are the Pops’ 38 year series of public park concerts. Through these performances, Kunzel introduced thousands of Cincinnati area residents to classical music.

Kunzel also recognized that young people are the future of classical music. He took a personal interest in promoting the now nearly finished School for Creative & Performing Arts, the nation’s first K-12 performing arts public school. It’s set to open in the fall of 2010. And his last recording, just released by Telarc Records, showcases soloists — and even a composer — under the age of 20.

Kunzel was a faculty member at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music from 1966 through 1972, where he taught orchestral conducting.

The Cincinnati Pops has set up a memorial Web page, and is accepting cards and notes for Kunzel’s family. Write to Cincinnati Symphony, 1241 Elm Street, Cincinnati OH 45202.

Erich Kunzel is survived by his wife of 44 years, Brunhilde.

Further reading:

Erich Kunzel dies at 74 at the Cincinnati Enquirer

Erich Kunzel’s website

Review of Erich Kunzel’s Last Concert at the Cincinnati Enquirer

Erich Kunzel Tribute Page at the Cincinnati Pops

Discussion of Erich Kunzel’s Health at Film Score Monthly’s Message Board

Mozart in 1777 (Wikimedia Commons)

Mozart died in the early morning hours of 4 December 1791. He was two months from his 36th birthday. Official Viennese documents listed the cause of his death as "hitziges Frieselfieber" — meaning very high fever with rash, which describes the symptoms, not the cause. Over the centuries since his death, medical experts have tried to analyze exactly what it was that took Mozart’s life.

On Monday (17 August 2009), researchers from the University of Amsterdam added their theory to the list. They think it may have been complications from strep throat. They say that in December of 1791, Vienna was experiencing a minor epidemic of strep throat, and that it may have begun in the city’s military hospital.

This is the latest chapter in an ongoing mystery story. In fact, the public began second-guessing Vienna’s official paperwork and news reports almost immediately.

One newspaper account from late in December 1791 held sway for generations. It suggested that the real cause of Mozart’s death was poison — that someone did him in. Everybody loves a good conspiracy theory, and the early 19th century was more than ready to believe it.

They were able to find some corroboration, of sorts. In 1829, for example, an English music publisher interviewed Mozart’s widow, Constanze, then 67. She claimed that, though she herself didn’t think Mozart had been poisoned, Mozart had been convinced of it. She said he’d told her 6 months before his death that "someone has given me acqua toffana." Acqua toffana was an arsenic-based preparation.

Death notice, 1792, unidentified newspaper (Mozart Forum)

Mozart’s second son, Karl Thomas, was also sold on the poisoning story. He wrote years later that the painful and extreme swelling that Mozart experienced was a likely symptom of poisoning. He also pointed to Mozart’s acute foul odor around the time of death — he claimed this is the reason that the coroner didn’t carry out an autopsy — and to the fact that Mozart’s body allegedly didn’t stiffen after his passing. (It’s worth mentioning here that Karl was all of 7 years old when his father died.)

If Mozart really was poisoned, whodunnit? The most common answer: composer Antonio Salieri. Salieri allegedly confessed to the deed while ill and despondent; Beethoven’s conversation books (in which his guests wrote to him after he’d lost his hearing) contain exactly this report.

But other accounts suggest that these were nothing more than wild, unsubstantiated rumors. Certainly Salieri wasn’t prosecuted as Mozart’s murderer. Besides, what motivation would he have had? "Professional jealousy" gets the rap, but by that argument it would have made more sense for Mozart to have poisoned Salieri. After all, Salieri had a steady (and lucrative) court job, and Mozart had to scrape together pennies to pay his rent. Sad to say, by then Mozart’s career was on the wane.

If not Salieri, then whom? There was no shortage of other theories. Most of them tell us more about the writer’s attitudes than about Mozart. One rumor suggested that the Freemasons were somehow offended by The Magic Flute and its Freemasonry theme, and came after its composer. (Why not the librettist Schickaneder, too?) Others attributed his death to various alleged sinister cabals of Masons, Catholics, and Jews.

Some sources even suggested that Mozart poisoned himself. One story is that he was trying to treat a case of syphilis, and accidentally took too much mercury. This falls flat for the lack of evidence that Mozart ever had the disease. Another notion, maybe a bit more plausible, is that Mozart overdosed himself with patent medicines containing antimony.

If not poison, could it have been heart disease? Some newspaper obituaries mentioned "dropsy of the heart." Mozart did indeed suffer from edema in the weeks before his death, but his other listed symptoms don’t fit too well with that diagnosis.

One doctor’s report mentions "a deposit in the brain" — perhaps some kind of tumor. Intriguing, but again, the reported symptoms don’t support this notion.

One physician who had attended Mozart suggested "rheumatic inflammatory fever." A few years ago, this led physicians at the University of Maryland to an obvious conclusion: rheumatic fever. The University of Amsterdam researchers arrived at their strep throat theory by building on this diagnosis and by examining other health records from 1790s Vienna.

Over two centuries after Mozart’s death, the cause continues to fascinate and puzzle health experts. Since we have no way of exhuming his remains — the cemetery in which he was buried was later plowed — it’s not too likely that we’ll ever know for certain.

Further reading:

Strep throat may have killed Mozart from Reuters

What Killed Mozart? by Jan V. Hirschmann, MD

Mozart

About 15 years ago, a professor of psychology stirred up the music world with the idea that listening to Mozart could make you smarter. Before the decade was out, the work of Dr Frances H. Rauscher, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, had brought forth a veritable flood of pop-psych books, tapes, and CDs promising in newspaper inserts and on television infomercials to boost your brain (or your baby’s). One enterprising author even went so far as to trademark the phrase "The Mozart Effect."

Dr Rauscher had a group of college students mentally unfold a piece of paper and try to identify its shape. She found that the students who had listened to a recording of Mozart’s K448 sonata were better and faster at the task. Dr Rauscher published the results in the journal Nature in 1993.

There were only two problems with the Mozart Effect. One was that it didn’t last: the students only held on to their newly acquired spatial skills for ten or fifteen minutes. The other problem was that when other researchers tried to verify the effect, some just couldn’t. So, over the years since, the idea that Mozart can make you smarter has lost much of its credibility.

However, a recent study has found that the Mozart Effect is real — but only for certain people. It definitely works for right-handed non-musicians.

Psychologist and Royal Holloway PhD candidate Afshin Aheadi assembled her own group of 100 university students — half musicians, half non-musicians. She had them listen to the same Mozart sonata that Dr Rausher used. Then they viewed a drawing, and were asked questions about it which forced them to mentally rotate the image.

Aheadi found that listening to Mozart helped the non-musicians with the task, but not the musicians. It seems that it’s the right hemisphere of the brain which processes spatial information. That’s the part of the brain that music tends to grab — in non-musicians. In effect, the Mozart "revved up" their right brains.

The musicians didn’t get the same right-brain boost because musicians process music with both brain hemispheres. And although the trial didn’t include any left-handed non-musicians, Aheadi’s team theorizes that they too might not get much benefit from listening to Mozart. That’s because southpaws tend to use both hemispheres of their brains more equally.

And the musicians? Mozart does them no good? Well, not exactly.

True, they didn’t get an immediate boost in their spatial processing skills from listening to Mozart. But that’s because they already had it. Thanks to their years of music study, the musicians were better at spatial processing right from the start of the test, long before the researchers ever hit the go button on the CD player. That finding confirms what we’ve known for years: early musical training improves mental ability. And that Mozart Effect lasts a lifetime.

Further reading:

A Limiting Feature of the Mozart Effect at Royal Holloway, from Sage Journals Online

Music and spatial task performance in Nature (14 October 1993)

The Mozart Effect: A Closer Look at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Jeannette Sorrell (WKSU)

Jeannette Sorrell’s background as a dancer has served her well in her role as founder and director of Cleveland’s historically informed performance band, Apollo’s Fire. Her deep understanding of the partnership between music and movement has unquestionably shaped her interpretation of the rhythms in early music.

Steven Player Audio clip: Steven Player in Mediterranean Nights (2005)

At times, she’s also added literal dance to the group’s programs. This coming season (2009-10), two of Apollo’s Fire’s concerts will feature movement.

In late October and early November, guitarist, dancer, and high-energy showman Steven Player will join Apollo’s Fire as they present a revised version of their popular 2005 program Mediterranean Nights. Cool Cleveland’s Kelly Ferjutz said that the earlier Mediterranean Nights at St Paul’s Episcopal Church was "a treat that will not soon be forgotten." Of a Harp Consort program featuring Player, the Adelaide Review said, "Steven Player was worth the price of admission by himself."

In March, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra will bring dance to Severance Hall as they perform Mozart’s ballet music for Idomeneo, as part of an all-Mozart program. Apollo’s Fire last played this Mozart work three years ago, in October of 2006, and Sorrell also conducted a well-received Akron Symphony Orchestra performance of it in 2007. In 2009, for the first time with Apollo’s Fire, the performance will have the element of movement which Mozart intended. In addition to Severance Hall, the Mozart Celebration will be presented in Akron, and at Oberlin’s Finney Chapel.

For the 2009-10 season, the ensemble expands their repertoire with a new concert featuring excerpts from Bach’s B-minor mass and Vivaldi’s Gloria. Gloria will open the Apollo’s Fire season in October (on the 1st through the 4th of the month) in Cleveland Heights, Akron, and Rocky River.

Apollo’s Musettes Audio clip: Puer Natus from Christmas Vespers (2005)

Two other audience favorites from the past will round out the series of five concerts. In early December, Apollo’s Fire will present a reprise of Christmas Vespers. This program of Advent and Christmas works by early Baroque composer Michael Praetorius sold out and generated highly positive reviews in 2005 and 2007. In February, the group will perform an updated program of concertos by J S Bach and his sons.

Although their regular season is one concert shorter for 2009-10 (5 concerts rather than 6), Apollo’s Fire will present a separately-ticketed bonus event to help make up the difference. In January the young French countertenor, Philippe Jaroussky, will perform a French art song recital with piano accompaniment at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Jaroussky will appear with Apollo’s Fire during the 2010-2011 season.

Further reading:

2009-2010 Season at Apollo’s Fire

Philippe Jaroussky at Bach Cantatas

Further listening:

Amazon, Arkiv Music, and HB Direct offer Apollo’s Fire’s Christmas Vespers on CD

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.

Edward Downes (classicalarchives.com)

The former conductor of the BBC Philharmonic and Netherlands Radio Orchestra has died at age 85.

Sir Edward Thomas Downes, CBE and his wife Joan, who was terminally ill, traveled to Switzerland where, according to a statement released by the conductor’s family, they "died peacefully, and under circumstances of their own choosing."

The arrangements were made though the Swiss assisted suicide group Dignitas.

Unlike his wife, Sir Downes was not terminally ill, but his daughter described him as "almost blind and increasingly deaf."

Friends of the conductor said that they weren’t surprised by his action. According to BBC Philharmonic general manager Richard Wigley, "Ted was completely rational, so I can well imagine him saying, ‘It’s been great, so let’s end our lives together.’"

Downes had also served as associate music director of the Royal Opera and as music director of the Australian Opera. He was knighted in 1991.

Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, but not in Britain. The deaths are being investigated by Greenwich CID. In the cases of 115 other British citizens who have traveled to Switzerland to die in a similar manner, no friends or family members who accompanied or collaborated with them have been prosecuted. However, some UK officials have expressed concern over the fact that Downes was not himself terminally ill.

Further reading:

Conductor Dies in Assisted Suicide at BBC

With Help, Conductor and Wife Ended Lives at New York Times (registration may be required)

Alfred Brendel (Photo: Philips Benjamin Ealovega)

In January of 2009 (on the 5th), pianist Alfred Brendel celebrated his 78th birthday. He did not celebrate by playing in public. It’s official: Brendel has retired — and in the view of many, at the height of his career. Late last year, Brendel gave his final bow 90 miles and 60 years from where his career had begun.

Brendel was born in 1931 in what is now the Czech Republic. His family wasn’t particularly musical. His father was an architect who gave up his profession to move to a resort area of Yugoslavia and run a hotel. The young Alfred amused guests by singing along to opera records on the hotel’s phonograph.

From there the family moved to Zagreb to manage a cinema. There, at the age of 6, Alfred began taking piano — more because it was the thing for kids to do than because his parents thought he had any particular talent.

Five years on, though, it was already clear that Alfred Brendel was no ordinary kid when it came to music.

The Brendels moved again, this time to Graz, Austria. Brendel continued his study at the Graz Academy of Music. He graduated in 1947. The following year he gave his first public recital in Graz, playing Bach, Brahms and Liszt. Brendel was only 17 years old.

He won a difficult and prestigious competition two years later, but that didn’t fill seats at Brendel’s performances. This was still the era of the showy virtuoso. Audiences flocked to see pianists who put on grand shows, and stamped the works they played with their own highly individual interpretations. That wasn’t for Brendel. Instead, he saw himself as a conduit for the composer’s musical intent.

It took decades, but finally the value of his approach as a “thinking pianist” gained him recognition and admiration. Over those years Brendel never gave up playing in public as Glenn Gould did — far from it — but he did find great rewards in making recordings.

Brendel was the first to record all of Beethoven’s piano music (for Vox, in the early 1960s; many of these recordings, including the sonatas, are still available to this day). He revisited these works as his interpretations (and recording technology) matured. In the mid-1990s Brendel became the only pianist to record the complete piano works of Beethoven three times. Brendel is also highly regarded for his interpretations of Haydn and Mozart, and for his efforts in reawakening interest in the sonatas of Franz Schubert.

Brendel moved to London in 1972. Since then he’s been more selective in his teaching, but four of his best pupils heard him play his last concert.

It was on the 18th of December (2008), not in London, but in Vienna’s glittering Musikverein. Another noted Mozart interpreter, Sir Charles Mackerras, was there to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic as Brendel played a Mozart concerto.

Did he go out with the 27th, Mozart’s last? Not on your life. Perhaps the 77 year old Brendel had a twinkle in his eye as he played the concerto Mozart composed as a 21 year old, the 9th, the one nicknamed “Jeunehomme” — “The Young Man.”

And when he had finished, Brendel smiled and gestured toward Kit Armstrong, Imogen Cooper, Till Fellner, and Paul Lewis — his most noted students, all there in the Musikverein, there for his farewell. Perhaps he was saying to them, “Now it’s your turn.”

Further reading:

Brendel bows out with a shrug and a smile in Vienna in The Guardian

Alfred Brendel’s Biography in Musicians’ Guide

This article was originally published on 5 January 2009.

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

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.

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.

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.

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