Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn was about as far from the stereotype of the starving artist as you could imagine. His father was a well-heeled and highly discriminating banker, and he saw to it that Felix got the best education money could buy.

Such an education inevitably included mind-broadening travel. Felix was no more than a teenager when he visited Paris and Switzerland, and papa’s pocket change paid his way to Britain in 1829 at the age of twenty. There he soaked up the damp, severe beauty of Holyrood Chapel, where Mary Stuart had been crowned. This set him on course for his Scottish Symphony.

Italy was quite another matter. Felix landed there late in 1830. It wasn’t long before Italy’s sunshine and energy had put paid to the grim grey memories of Scotland – and (for the moment) to the Scottish Symphony.

The festivals, the celebrations, the coronation of a pope: all this brilliant color shifted the musical gears of Mendelssohn’s mind into overdrive. In early 1831 he wrote home that he’d begun work on a new symphony – "the merriest piece I’ve yet written," he said. He expected to finish it in short order, but that was not to be. Mendelssohn didn’t have the Italian Symphony in performing condition until Spring of 1833, just in time to conduct its premiere in London in May.

You could argue, in fact, that Mendelssohn never actually finished his Italian Symphony as such. He never published it, and continued to revise and tweak it off and on for the rest of his life. The Italian Symphony finally saw print in 1851, listed as "opus 90, posthumous."

Italy’s vitality and energy radiate from the very first brilliant A major bars of the symphony – no slow, dark introduction here! The entire movement has a strong forward, upward drive. The andante second movement is the embodiment of Mendelssohn’s melodic skill (also on display in his Songs Without Words). His third movement echoes an elegant Mozartean minuet and trio.

The finale is where the Italian Symphony really gets technically interesting. Mendelssohn labels it a saltarello – a medieval Italian dance – and it ends in the key of A minor. In finishing a major-key symphony in the minor mode, Mendelssohn left Mozart well behind.

By Mendelssohn’s time, a transition from minor to major wasn’t too extraordinary, even in a large, multimovement work. After all, Beethoven had begun his fifth symphony in minor and moved to major.

But going the other way – from major to minor – wasn’t nearly as common. Not unheard of, mind you; a handful of Scarlatti keyboard sonatas and a Handel concerto had followed this pattern, well before Mendelssohn’s time. (I should note, though, that the Handel was from his opus 3. That set was a notorious cut-and-paste hack job, so it’s entirely possible that ending a major work in minor was literally accidental there!)

It’s also true that Mendelssohn himself had composed his opus 14 Rondo Capriccioso for piano a year before the symphony, beginning it in E major and wrapping it up in E minor. And in the early 20th century, the Danish composer Carl Nielsen would effectively dispense with the idea of a symphony being in a key, more or less aiming his last three symphonies toward keys.

However, in his era’s symphonic literature, Mendelssohn seems to stand alone. I don’t know of any symphony prior to Mendelssohn’s Italian which begins in a major key and ends in a minor key.

Alvy Powell and Marquita Lister

NOTE: This In Performance broadcast will begin one hour earlier than usual, at 2:30pm.

Over the last decade, the Akron Symphony Orchestra has periodically programmed opera – collections of operatic excerpts, and complete concert-format and semi-staged operas. The latter have included Bizet’s Carmen in 2003 and Verdi’s La Traviata in 2007.

For the 2010-11 season, music director Christopher Wilkins set an even more ambitious goal – a large scale, semi-staged production of George Gershwin’s American "folk opera," Porgy and Bess.

Gershwin’s vision for Porgy and Bess specified an African-American cast and onstage chorus. In addition to the national and regional talent recruited for the singing roles, Wilkins called on the musicians who have brought several years of the orchestra’s Gospel Meets Symphony programs to life, augmenting them with performers from Akron’s Youth Excellence Performing Arts Workshop (YEPAW). An additional 68 voice chorus located in the upper balcony included members of the Akron Symphony Chorus.

In 1924, author DuBose Heyward read a newspaper account of a local African-American man accused of aggravated assault, a crime of passion. It caught Heyward’s attention and imagination. "Goat Sammy" was disabled, unable to stand or walk; a cart pulled by a goat was his only mobility.

Porgy, Heyward’s novel inspired by Goat Sammy’s story, became a best seller. Composer George Gershwin read Porgy in September of 1926 and immediately contacted Heyward, proposing that they work together on a folk opera adaptation of the tale. Heyward’s response was strongly favorable, but he was already involved in a collaboration to produce a stage production of Porgy with spirituals.

This was just two years after Gershwin’s sensational success with Rhapsody in Blue, and he was much in demand. So it wasn’t until late in 1933, more than 7 years after their initial contact, that the author’s and the composer’s schedules finally meshed. The month after that, though, Heyward began sending material to Gershwin. The following spring he spent a month in New York with George and his brother Ira, who was helping with the lyrics.

Heyward had set Porgy in his native Charleston, South Carolina. Since almost the inception of the project he’d been trying to draw Gershwin there for a visit. Finally, in June 1934, Gershwin rented a cottage on an island off the Charleston shore. Heyward and his wife Dorothy, who had assisted with the theatrical Porgy, joined Gershwin there.

Gershwin spent quite a bit more of his summer enjoying the island than he did working on the opera. Nevertheless, he was able to absorb some of the African-American musical culture on a neighboring island.

When he returned to New York late in July, Gershwin set to work in earnest, wrapping up the recitatives and orchestrating his opera. This time he soloed on the orchestration (Paul Whiteman had orchestrated Rhapsody in Blue for him). A year later, Porgy and Bess – now bearing the second character’s name to distinguish it from the earlier spiritual-based musical – was finished.

Gershwin’s next tasks were casting and production. He was seeking classically trained African-American singers for his cast, and Todd Duncan’s name surfaced almost immediately. However, Duncan taught at Howard University, and Gershwin "didn’t want any university professor to sing" in Porgy and Bess. When Gershwin actually heard Duncan sing, though, he gave Duncan the lead on the spot.

Gershwin may have thought of Porgy and Bess as an opera, but he was careful to book its Broadway run at the Alvin Theater, assiduously avoiding the word "opera" in connection with it. The show opened in New York on 10 October 1935. It ran for a rather modest 124 performances and was not a financial success.

Nevertheless, Porgy and Bess went on tour in January 1936, playing in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Washington DC. In Washington the cast protested the National Theatre’s policy of discrimination. Eventually, the theatre management gave in. Porgy and Bess became the first performance there to have an integrated audience.

Porgy didn’t achieve real audience and financial success for another half-dozen years. The turning point was a 9-month 1942 run at Broadway’s Majestic Theatre. However, what played at the Majestic was not Gershwin’s original work. The show’s director had made draconian cuts in the libretto, halved the size of the cast, pruned the orchestra, and eliminated many of the recitatives in favor of spoken dialogue.

A 1952 version reversed many of the cuts, and brought in sizable European audiences. Although that production made a few appearances here in the States, the first really successful American performance of Porgy and Bess as the full opera Gershwin had envisioned didn’t take place until nearly 40 years after the premiere.

In the summer of 1975, Lorin Maazel led the first essentially uncut modern performance of Porgy and Bess with the Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Orchestra Chorus. It was recorded by London/Decca. The recording was out of print for some years, but was reissued in 2007.

That same year, Houston Grand Opera presented a fully staged, full length performance, which they later took to Broadway’s Uris Theater. That performance was recorded by RCA.

At last, a half-century after Gershwin had first conceived the idea for Porgy and Bess, it was the fully-fledged American opera he had meant it to be. Its international stature has only grown since then.

Act I, Scene 1

It is night in Catfish Row, a shantytown near the Charleston waterfront. A piano plays "Jassbo Brown’s Blues." Clara sings her infant to sleep with the lullaby, "Summertime." Jake, Clara’s husband, sings "A Woman is a Sometime Thing" to the baby.

Porgy enters (in the Akron performance, he supports himself with a crutch rather than riding a goat cart) as a crap game is in progress. The others tease him for his interest in Bess. Bess enters with her lover, Crown, who is intoxicated. Crown joins the crap game. Enraged at his losses, Crown attacks another player, Robbins, and kills him with a cotton hook.

Crown runs away to hide. As the police arrive, the Catfish Row residents scatter. Bess, now abandoned by her runaway lover, pleads to the nearly empty scene for help and shelter. Sportin’ Life, Catfish Row’s drug dealer, offers to take her to New York, but she refuses. Porgy opens his door to her.

Act I, Scene 2

Robbins’s corpse lies in his and Serena’s room, a saucer on his chest for burial cost donations ("Overflow, Overflow"). The police arrive on the scene and accuse Peter, a half-deaf elderly man, of the murder, expecting the others to finger Crown. No one does, so Peter is hauled off as a "material witness." Serena mourns Robbins with "My Man’s Gone Now." His friends commend his soul to heaven with "Leaving for the Promised Land."

Act II, Scene 1

It’s a month later on Catfish Row. Jake and the fisherman mend their nets and prepare to take to sea, despite warnings of September storms ("It Takes a Long Pull to Get There"). Porgy sings "I’ve Got Plenty of Nothin’," and his friends remark on how he’s changed since he’s been with Bess. Sportin’ Life once again tries to entice Bess with his "magic dust" and life in New York, but Porgy’s example has helped her change her ways. She refuses both. Porgy sends the dope peddler packing. He and Bess sing the love duet "Bess, You is My Woman Now."

A picnic is in the offing ("Oh, I Can’t Sit Down"), but Porgy can’t go. Bess says she’ll stay home too. Porgy insists that she join their friends at the picnic.

Act II, Scene 2

It’s evening, and the picnic is in full swing on Kittiwah Island ("I Ain’t Got No Shame"). Sportin’ Life extols the virtues of religious skepticism in "It Ain’t Necessarily So." Serena arrives and casts "Shame on All You Sinners." Now they have to hurry, or they’ll miss the last boat home.

As the others pack up to leave, Bess lingers. Abruptly, Crown appears; he has been hiding on the island. She begs him to leave her alone ("What You Want With Bess?"), but he compels her to stay. The boat leaves without her.

Act II, Scene 3

It’s early morning, a week later. Jake and the fishermen make final preparations for their fishing excursion, with a partial reprise of "It Takes a Long Pull to Get There." The police have released Peter.

Bess has returned from Kittiwah Island, incoherent. She lies delerious in Porgy’s house. Serena prays for her recovery ("Oh, Doctor Jesus"). Catfish Row awakens as the Strawberry Woman, the Crab Man and Peter the honey man offer their wares.

Bess calls for Porgy. She admits to having been with Crown. Porgy replies that he knows, but it’s all right. Bess has promised Crown that she will go with him, but now she’s afraid. She wants to stay with Porgy ("I Loves You, Porgy"). Porgy swears that he will protect her from Crown.

Anxiously, Clara watches the sea. A storm is brewing. The hurricane bell rings its urgent warning. Fearing the worst, Clara falls to her knees.

Act II, Scene 4

The storm rages outside Serena’s room, where all have gathered to wait and pray. Peter sings "I Hear Death Knockin’ at the Door" – and just then there is a loud, violent knock at the door! Crown bursts in, returning to claim Bess. Serena warns Crown that the storm may kill him, but he sings "If God wanted to kill me, He had plenty of chance ‘tween here and Kittiwah Island." He taunts the entire company with a bawdy song ("A Red-Headed Woman").

Clara spots Jake’s boat, capsized ("Jake’s Boat In the River"). She hands her baby to Bess and rushes out into the storm. Bess urges all the men to follow her, but it is Crown who does so, shouting that he will return for Bess.

Act III, Scene 1

In the courtyard the next night, all mourn Clara, Jake, and Crown – surely lost in the storm ("Clara, Clara"). Sportin’ Life, however, hints that Crown is not dead. Bess sings "Summertime" to Clara’s baby. The courtyard empties.

Crown slinks into the abandoned courtyard, creeping toward Porgy’s door. As he passes the window, an arm reaches out and plunges a long knife into his back. Crown staggers. Porgy stumbles out of the house, seizes Crown, and throttles him. "Bess, Bess, You Got a Man Now," he proclaims.

Act III, Scene 2

The next afternoon, the police arrive to investigate Crown’s death. Serena says she knows nothing – and that all in Catfish Row will swear that Crown murdered her husband Robbins. The police ask Porgy to identify Crown’s body. He refuses out of fear; Sportin’ Life has told him that if a man’s killer looks at his corpse, the corpse’s wounds will bleed. The police haul him away.

Sportin’ Life approaches Bess. Porgy could be in prison for years, he tells her. He might even be executed. The dope peddler offers Bess his "happy dust" to assuage her fears. At first she refuses, but then she succumbs to the temptation. Sportin’ Life again presses her to accompany him to the big city ("There’s a Boat That’s Leaving Soon for New York"). He reminds her that she is now again all alone.

Act III, Scene 3

A week later, life in Catfish Row seems normal ("Good morning, Sister"). Porgy returns. Everyone sings "It’s Porgy Coming Home." Porgy has been in jail for contempt of court after refusing to identify Crown. Even there his luck held up; he’s won cash at jailhouse crap games. He brings gifts for all, including a red dress for Bess.

But – "Oh, Bess, Oh Where’s My Bess?" Serena and Maria join in, excusing and explaining her actions: Bess has gone to New York with Sportin’ Life. Porgy calls for his goat cart. He will find Bess, wherever she is, and bring her back. He and the chorus sing the finale, "Oh Lord, I’m On My Way."

If you’re a book geek and library lover, you’d be in heaven in an orchestra’s library. It’s scores by the score (and parts too), on shelf after shelf.

The accumulated musical thoughts of the centuries are simultaneously inspiring and sobering. They also have an alluring aroma all their own. It’s as good as (but a bit different from) what you breathe in when you prowl the stacks of a good, well established public library.

Somebody has to take care of all that wisdom. Go to the website of any orchestra, large or small, and check out their list of musicians. Somewhere in there, among the violists and horn players, you’ll find a category for librarians.

Orchestra librarians are the folks who look after all these semibreves, crochets, and quavers (whole notes, quarter notes, and eighth notes).

But their job isn’t just handing parts out before rehearsals begin, and collecting them after the concert. Orchestra librarians have crucial behind-the-scenes roles before rehearsal can even begin. Here’s one example from the San Diego Symphony – complete with "bad attitude."

Matt Haimovitz

Cellist Matt Haimovitz has something of a reputation in the classical music world. He’s a champion of new music, but probably he’s best known for playing in unorthodox places, including clubs where you’d normally expect to hear jazz or alternative music.

But when Haimovitz arrives in Cleveland on 17 May (2011), he’ll perform in a half-dozen area churches – not exactly known as unconventional spaces for classical music – and he’ll be playing works of Beethoven, Brahms, and Anton Arensky.

City Music Cleveland is sponsoring the series of six concerts, and some of their musicians will join Haimovitz and guest violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama. The program comprises Arensky’s second quartet, the Brahms sextet #1, and Beethoven’s opus 20 septet.

Performances are Tuesday 17 May through Sunday 22 May:

• Tue: Fairmount Presbyterian Church, 2757 Fairmount Boulevard, Cleveland Heights
• Wed: Mary Queen of Peace Church, 4423 Pearl Road
• Thu: St Noel Church, 35200 Chardon Road, Willoughby Hills
• Fri: St Ignatius of Antioch, 10205 Lorain Avenue
• Sat: Shrine Church of St Stanislaus Church, 3649 East 65th Street
• Sun: St Mary Church, 320 Middle Avenue, Elyria

The Tuesday through Saturday concerts are at 7:30pm, and the Sunday concert is at 2:30pm. Dinner reservations are available for the Thursday and Saturday concerts, and free child care is available on Tuesday and Thursday.

More information here.

David Guerrier plays the keyed trumpet

The trumpet goes back a long, long way. Trumpeters are depicted in art from ancient Egypt, dated in the 14th century BCE.

For most of its centuries of existence, the trumpet was an instrument of royalty, used for playing fanfares. Frankly, that’s about all it was good for. These early trumpets couldn’t play all the notes of the scale. They played only the first few notes from the harmonic series, which is already a subset of the scale’s notes.

By the 16th century, instrument makers had figured out how to make trumpets play more of the notes from the harmonic series. Now, the further up you go in the harmonic series, the closer together the notes get. If you could push your trumpet far enough, and fudge the pitch of some notes a bit, you could play all the notes of the scale. By the 17th century, trumpets could actually be used to more or less play melodies.

I say "more or less" because they still didn’t do a very good job of it. It took a really talented (and fit!) player to get all the notes in tune. (Many of today’s period instrument specialists use trumpets with tiny, inconspicuous, and inauthentic "cheater holes" that help them with this challenge.) Even then, the timbre (tone quality) of the notes varied radically.

In the 15th century, a few instrument makers had experimented with adding slides (like a trombone’s) to trumpets. We have pictures! But given the design – they were straight trumpets – it’s hard to see how a player could’ve flung that slide around fast enough to play any but the slowest music. He might well have knocked his own front teeth out trying. For centuries more, trumpet players had to pretty much depend only on skill and lungs to coax a real tune from their instruments.

In the 17th century, Vienna became something of a Mecca for trumpet players. The very earliest trumpet players had been little more than vagrants, but Viennese trumpeters were given a place of honor. On high feast days the court’s string orchestra was augmented by a choir of trumpets, playing sonatas composed by the likes of Schmelzer and Biber.

But by the late 18th century the trumpet was going out of style, giving way to more agile and tonally consistent instruments. A few trumpeters, determined to salvage their careers, scrambled to develop a trumpet that could compete with the violin, flute, and oboe. Some of them achieved a measure of success by adding keys to the trumpet, so it could play all the notes of the scale, even in its lowest register.

Enter Anton Weidinger (1767 – 1852). Weidinger was a Viennese court trumpeter. Around 1793, he began experimenting with some of these keyed trumpets, refining them and practicing with them. By 1796 he was making enough progress that he convinced Haydn to write a concerto for his Klappentrompette (keyed trumpet). He took that concerto on the road in 1803, playing it in France, Germany, and England. Weidinger caught the interest of composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel, who composed yet another concerto for him and his curious keyed trumpet.

The critics had good things to say about Weidinger’s trumpet and his playing. But it was too late. By 1820 the valved trumpet had appeared in Vienna and was rapidly taking over. Weidinger’s keyed trumpet hung on for a little longer; some musicians and composers preferred its tone to the valved trumpet’s. But by 1840 the Klappentrompette was forgotten – obsolete.

Although the Baroque natural trumpet has no shortage of proponents (and makers and players), not many musicians have shown much interest in reviving the Klappentrompette. Who can blame them? After all, what’s the point of reviving an instrument for which only two major concertos were ever written? (See also the arpeggione.) Adolf Egger has built modern reproductions, as has Christopher Monk, but they don’t seem to have had many customers. The few recordings that have been made with their instruments have quickly gone out of print, presumably for lack of interest.

But if you’d like to see and hear the keyed trumpet, here’s a rare opportunity: David Guerrier playing the first movement of the Haydn in the Festival de l’Epau last May (2009). He’s accompanied by the chamber orchestra "Les Siècles."

Further reading:

The story of the keyed trumpet, by Norwegian trumpeter Ole J Utnes

The natural trumpet in Wikipedia

Adolf Egger’s workshop

Trumpeter David Guerrier from Trumpet World

This article was first published in WKSU Classical on 28 December 2009.

Philadelphia Orchestra (Ryan Donnell / Philadelphia Orch)

Many nonprofit organizations have been working through lean times since the crunch of 2008. Some orchestras have had to program carefully to limit costs for soloists, music licensing, and supplemental personnel. They’ve cancelled tours and recording projects, taken pay cuts, laid off staff. They’ve reduced their number of concerts.

The Philadelphia Orchestra has gone farther. On Saturday they played Mahler’s Fourth just hours after their board had voted to send the orchestra to bankruptcy court. According to board chair Richard Worley, "We’re running low on cash, we’re running a deficit, and we have to put ourselves in a position to attract investment funds to help us."

The decision wasn’t unanimous. Several board members abstained, and all five musicians on the board voted against the resolution. Some of the musicians believe that the move is partly intended to force renegotiation of their contract. Management reportedly has been considering bankruptcy for more than a year, after deciding it could no longer afford to contribute to the musicians’ pension fund.

As board members entered the offices of their law firm Saturday, musicians were waiting for them. They handed the board members leaflets encouraging a "no" vote, as a string quartet played Schubert and Mozart.

The orchestra expects 2011 income of $33m against $46m in operating costs. The orchestra has a $140m endowment, but use of those funds is restricted.

Some observers blame simple mismanagement, but surely the causes are many. Attendance has been off, and in fact there were reportedly quite a few empty seats at Saturday’s concert. Critics have blasted the orchestra’s 9 year old home, the Kimmel Center, as visually rewarding but sonically cold. The orchestra’s board indicated that they’d be reviewing the rental fees for Kimmel as they try to emerge from bankruptcy later this year.

Although some smaller orchestras have had to seek shelter from creditors, to my knowledge, Philadelphia is the first major American orchestra to take this step. "We’re in a state of shock, really," said principal oboist Richard Woodhams. "I think it’s a very, very sad day for culture in the United States and the world."

Estates Theatre, Prague, where Mozart conducted Figaro in 1787 (Wikimedia Commons)

Much has been written about Leopold Mozart’s anxiety about his family’s financial security – and his own, as he aged. Leopold was unrelenting in his pressure on Wolfgang to find a permanent position. This, as much as anything else, may have precipitated Mozart’s split with home and hearth. In 1781, he cast off Archbishop Colloredo’s hated livery and shook Salzburg’s dust from his boots. Mozart would make his fortune as a freelance musician in Vienna, or so he believed.

There, at first, Mozart had all the concert and lesson business anyone could want. Five years on, though, Vienna’s appetite for Mozart’s keyboard virtuosity had already begun to wane. Increasingly, he saw opera as his future; but even there, the response was cooler than he had hoped. The Vienna premiere of Le nozze di Figaro in May of 1786 went well. However, after only nine performances that year, Figaro faded from the repertory.

In December of 1786 Figaro opened in Prague – and there it did not fade. Quite to the contrary.

In spite of his wide travels, Mozart had never visited Prague; there were more musical and financial attractions in other cities. But his music had led the way four years before, when a traveling company had first introduced the Prague public to Die Entführung aus dem Serail.

The Figaro premiere literally ignited a new musical sprit in the city. A month later, Mozart was invited to Prague to conduct a performance of the opera at the Nostic Theatre (now the Estates Theatre).

Given Vienna’s growing indifference, the adulation Mozart encountered in Prague must have been deeply satisfying. In a letter to his student Baron Gottfried von Jacquin, Mozart marveled, "Here they speak of nothing but Figaro. Nothing is played, sung, or whistled but Figaro. Nothing draws like Figaro."

Figaro was to be the main course for Prague, but Mozart also planned dessert – a symphony. Symphonies had been among his concert staples in earlier years, but since then Mozart’s symphonic output had fallen drastically (in 1773 alone he had turned out a half-dozen – as many as he composed in his entire ten Vienna years from 1781). In fact, there’s evidence that he initially planned to simply recycle the Paris Symphony (K300a) for Prague. He even composed a new finale for it. But for some reason he set that work aside, and made a fresh start. Mozart wrote the date on his newly-finished Prague symphony: 6 December 1786.

This was a somewhat uncharacteristically punctual finish for Mozart – he wasn’t due to leave for Prague until the 8th of January. Thus, some historians speculate that Mozart didn’t really compose K504 for Prague, but rather meant it for a Vienna premiere which never took place. Others argue against this, pointing out that the Viennese expected their symphonies to have four movements, and K504 has only three.

The missing minuet gives K504 its other (seldom used) nickname – "Ohne Menuett." And of course it provides yet another source of speculation for the music historians.

Some of them characterize the Prague Symphony as a throwback to Mozart’s earlier Italian-style 3-movement symphonies. This is a little tough to swallow, though, when hardly anything else about this symphony suggests those earlier works.

Mozart expert Alfred Einstein declared in the 1940s that K504 is "a full scale Viennese symphony which happens to lack a minuet simply because it says everything it has to say in 3 movements." Maybe so, but this strikes me as somehow more in line with Schumann’s ethos, or even Beethoven’s, than with Mozart’s.

One recent writer has even declared that by dispensing with the "aristocratic" minuet, Mozart was indulging his pro-Enlightenment persuasions. This isn’t as far-fetched as it might seem on first glance. Prague wasn’t too keen on Vienna’s political machinations, and one reason for their enthusiasm about Figaro was the opera’s rather daring political tone.

Or perhaps the experts are all thinking too hard. Seven years before, in his K338 symphony, Mozart had swapped the andante and minuet for no apparent reason. So maybe it’s just as valid to suggest that Mozart dumped the minuet in K504 because he felt sure that Prague’s musically canny audiences would let him get away with a bit of creative tinkering.

Nor was this the only example. Mozart began with a slow introduction, only the second time he had done so in a symphony (though Joseph Haydn had shown the way fully 25 years before). After the first 36 bars, Mozart dispelled the dark clouds with an energetic theme. He developed this theme in ways that no doubt raised a few eyebrows among his more knowledgable listeners.

A pastoral andante leads to the fleet-footed finale. Here Mozart gave Prague concertgoers a treat by including one of those Figaro themes that they were all playing, singing, and whistling.

Both the Figaro performance and the symphony were rousing successes for Mozart. Twenty-one years later, Mozart’s biographer Franz Xaver Niemetschek was able to report that this and the K543 symphonies "are still favorites of the Prague public, although they have been played at least a hundred times."

Library of Congress Packard Campus

Each year, the US Library of Congress adds 25 significant audio recordings to the National Recording Registry, housed in the Library’s Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation in Culpeper, Virginia. These recordings can be of almost anything – speech, natural sound, and all kinds of music.

This week (the week of 4 April 2011) the LoC announced their selections for 2011, and they include two significant classical recordings – one of music from the Renaissance, one of music from the 20th century.

In 1545, Pope Marcellus responded to the Protestant Reformation with the Council of Trent. Over a period of 18 years, the Council met for a total of 25 sessions. Their findings were sweeping. Included were serious condemnations of church music.

Briefly, the Council suggested that liturgical music had become so complex that its structure obscured the text, defeating the music’s purpose as a form of teaching and worship.

Legend has it that Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina composed the Pope Marcellus mass in 1562 to demonstrate that sacred works could be both artistically and liturgically satisfying, and thus "saved church music."

Roger Wagner Chorale on a European Tour, 1953

Choral director Roger Wagner founded his chorale in 1947, initially as a group of 12 madrigal singers.

In 1951, the growing Roger Wagner Chorale recorded Palestrina’s Pope Marcellus Mass. In selecting this recording for the National Recording Registry, Librarian of Congress James H Billington cited the Roger Wagner Chorale’s "rhythmic precision and tonal opulence."

The year 1954 brought with it the establishment of a record label dedicated not to maximizing profit, but to expanding the reach of newly composed music. Composers Recordings Inc (CRI), founded by Otto Luening, Douglas Moore and Oliver Daniel, devoted its full attention to modern music by American composers.

George Crumb was born in Charleston, West Virginia in 1929. From 1965 until his retirement in 1995, he taught composition at the University of Pennsylvania. His early years there were some of his most creative ones.

George Crumb (Sabine Matthes)

Crumb was profoundly affected by America’s military activity overseas. In 1970, this inspired Black Angels (Thirteen Images from the Dark Land), a work for amplified string quartet with added percussion and vocalizations by the musicians. Richard Steinitz has called Black Angels a "strikingly dramatic, surreal allegory of the Vietnam War."

Two years after its composition, the New York String Quartet recorded Black Angels for CRI. This week, the Library of Congress selected this recording for their National Recording Registry.

Other additions this year include Edward Meeker’s Take Me Out to the Ballgame; Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man; a 1955 unauthorized recording of Mort Sahl’s At Sunset, considered the first recording of modern stand-up comedy; Voice of America broadcasts by jazz producer Willis Conover; the parlance of the last Yahi Indian in 1915; the first Jazz at the Philharmonic concert in 1944; and a recording from 1853 believed to be the first sounds ever captured. The Registry also added performances by Nat "King" Cole, Les Paul, Lydia Mendoza, Blind Willie Johnson, The Sons of the Pioneers, the Boswell Sisters, John Fahey, Steely Dan and De La Soul.

Works for the Registry are nominated by the Library of Congress’s National Recording Preservation Board, and by members of the public online.

Further Reading and Listening:

Roger Wagner at Wikipedia

The Roger Wagner Chorale’s official website

Palestrina’s Pope Marcellus Mass in the Roger Wagner Chorale’s 1951 recording, from Arkivmusic

George Crumb’s Black Angels at Wikipedia

Black Angels at George Crumb dot net

Black Angels as performed by the New York String Quartet in 1972, from New World Records

Black Angels in a performance by the Kronos Quartet, from Nonesuch and Arkivmusic

Black Angels Part 1 performed by an unknown ensemble at Youtube

Antonin Dvorák was son of the village butcher in a small town in Bohemia. He was supposed to take over the family business but when he was sent off to school at age 11, he showed a lot more promise as a violist.

I think he looks more like the guy behind the counter in a butcher shop than a violist – or composer. This is in no way a negative comment on his appearance, it’s just that he was a tough-lookin’ guy who made a livin’ the hard way.

Little Rock School Integration, 1957 (Will Counts/Arkansas Democrat)

In 1954, in the landmark case Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the US Supreme Court found that separate but equal schools for white and African American children were unconstitutional.

It would be another 22 years before a federal district court decision in the case of Reed v. Rhodes would finally force the desegregation of Cleveland public schools. But by the mid-1960s, voluntary busing programs were in place. Although these programs didn’t always fully implement side-by-side classroom education of black and white students, they were still controversial.

Gerald Sindell today (Agency for Social Media)

In the mid-1960s, twenty-three year old Shaker Heights native Gerald Sindell decided that he wanted to "educate the world so that ignorance, war, and racism would end."

Sindell says, "Throughout my high school life in Cleveland, I had been concerned with what it would take to end racism in the country. The hope was that by integrating the schools, our cities could finally provide equal rights and equal opportunity to all our citizens. I was confident, in 1962, that within a few years racism would be a thing of the past."

Nor were social concerns Sindell’s only interest. In his childhood and youth, he’d been deeply immersed in music. He had seriously studied organ, flute, and piano, and played in a dance band. He’d grown up going to Cleveland Orchestra concerts, following a score as the orchestra played, sitting in a box right next to the Szells’.

But by 1967, Sindell had gravitated toward film as his medium of expression. With the help of his older brother Roger as co-writer and producer, he explored the issue of racial equality in an early independent film, Double-Stop.

Marrying his passions for social justice and music (double-stopping is the process by which a string player sounds more than one note at a time), Sindell built his story round a musical family. His protagonist is a fictional Cleveland Orchestra cellist, Mike Westfall (Jeremiah Sullivan). Westfall and his activist wife Katherine (Mimi Torchin) enroll their young son Pablo (Billy Kurtz; his character is named for the legendary cellist Pablo Casals) in a voluntary busing program.

When Westfall discovers the rough reality of conditions at his son’s new school, he pulls Pablo out, against the wishes of the more idealistic Katherine.

Daniel Domb (Larney Goodkind)

Sindell hired the entire Cleveland Orchestra to appear in his film. Music director George Szell declined to take part, so they were led by assistant conductor Michael Charry.

Some of the film’s music was composed expressly for the purpose by David Davis and James Streem, but the Cleveland Orchestra and chorus performed music from Bach’s Cantata #40. Cellist Daniel Domb, who was married to Sindell’s cousin and would later serve as the Cleveland Orchestra’s acting principal cellist, played the Bach cello suites for the soundtrack. He also modeled for shots of fingers on a cello’s neck.

Scene from Double-Stop

Visually, the film was ambitious and unusual. It was shot in the fall of 1967 in Cleveland, and all the hues – costumes, sets, accessories – were deliberately designed to suggest autumn leaves. Even the cars were painted.

When Double-Stop was chosen for the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, it looked as if Sindell’s movie was on its way to international distribution. But civil unrest cut the festival short, and Sindell’s distributor let him down. After a few more film festival screenings, Double-Stop was largely forgotten. Sindell made a few more films, then moved on to other pursuits. Today he operates a California-based PR firm, the Agency for Social Media.

Finally, over 40 years later – thanks in part to some help from the Cleveland Orchestra – Cleveland is about to see Sindell’s dream on the screen. WKSU’s Mark Urycki has more on the film, and the story of how Double-Stop was rescued from oblivion.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Double-Stop will play at the Cleveland Cinematheque, Aitken Auditorium in the Cleveland Institute of Art’s Gund Building at the corner of East Boulevard and Bellflower Road in University Circle. Screenings are Saturday, 19 February 2011 at 7:25 pm, and Sunday, 20 February 2011 at 8:40 pm.

Further Reading:

Double-Stop at Ohio.com

Double-Stop at the Cleveland Cinematheque

From the Middle Ages, Italy’s Medici family was a magnet for artists and artisans, who created extraordinary works under the family’s generous patronage. In 1688, Florence’s Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici hired Bartolomeo Cristofori, then 33 years old, to look after his collection of harpsichords. This was an important position: Cristofori was paid as much as any court musician.

The harpsichord of Cristofori’s time was a well developed instrument, responsive and flexible. But it lacked one feature: variable dynamics. The harpsichord’s mechanism plucked the strings of the instrument. There was no practical way (then) to make it pluck them more gently. The only way to vary volume was to change stops or combine manuals. The possibilities for dynamic variety were fairly limited.

Some time in the 1690s, Cristofori had a brainstorm. He realized that if he replaced the harpsichord’s plucking mechanism with one which struck the string instead, the force of the strike — and thus the volume of the sound — could be under complete control of the player.

The idea of a keyboard instrument that struck the strings rather than plucking them wasn’t really new. The clavichord had existed since at least the 15th century. A clavichord had tangents fastened to the keys. Instead of controlling jacks and quills which plucked the strings, the tangents themselves struck the strings inside the instrument’s case.

The problem with the clavichord was that while it was capable of extraordinarily sensitive dynamic expression, its volume range was from almost inaudible to barely audible. Let’s face it, the force that a keyboard player can transmit through his or her fingers is limited. The clavichord’s tangents couldn’t strike its strings hard enough to make a sound that could be heard, say, in a church sanctuary. This meant that the clavichord wasn’t suitable for anything other than the most intimate music-making. (It made a magnificent instrument for late-night keyboard practice, however.)

Cristofori solved this problem by adding a mechanical action. It multiplied the player’s string-striking force by four (eight, in his later instruments) and used that force to drive a hammer against the string. He also added an escapement mechanism. The escapement allowed the hammer to fall back after striking the string, so the string would keep vibrating. (Think of the way a fine crystal goblet rings when you tap it with a spoon — as long as you don’t keep the spoon touching the glass after you tap it.)

Cristofori called his invention "arpicimbalo che fa il piano e il forte" — harpsichord with soft and loud. Today, we shorten that name a bit. We call it the piano.

Maybe you’re expecting me to say here that Cristofori’s piano "took Europe by storm" (or some similar cliche’!) and almost immediately eclipsed the harpsichord.

That didn’t happen. Truth to tell, keyboard players didn’t like the touch. The Florentine piano was harder to play, and the keys just didn’t feel right when pressed. They didn’t like the tone, either; it was too soft, too muffled. Besides, who really needed that much variety in volume anyway?

It would remain for later piano makers to solve these problems. But Cristofori had begun the process of breaking the harpsichord’s lock on public keyboard performance. It’s not hard to imagine that without the financial and moral support of the Medici family, Cristofori probably couldn’t have pushed keyboard technology ahead — but that’s another story for another day.

Now back to 1700, and over to Naples. That’s when and where Domenico Scarlatti, one more musical member of a hugely talented musical family, was named organist and composer of the Royal Chapel. He was even granted a special additional salary for his work as chamber harpsichordist.

Domenico Scarlatti was only 15 years old.

Two years later, Scarlatti and his father Alessandro made the first of two visits to Florence. Their host was none other than Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici, Cristofori’s patron. Did Domenico play one or more of Cristofori’s Florentine pianos on these visits? Perhaps. History doesn’t tell us. So far no documentation has surfaced — no letters home raving about (or excoriating!) the new-fangled instrument, no eyewitness reports, no newspaper articles.

By 1708, Domenico had joined his father in Rome. There he attended the weekly concerts originated by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni. In 1709, Prince Ferdinando sent the Cardinal a lavish gift from Florence: one of Cristofori’s pianos. Did Scarlatti play or hear that instrument? Again, history doesn’t tell us.

In 1719, Scarlatti left Rome, ostensibly for England. In actuality, he was on his way to Lisbon, Portugal, where he had a job offer — he was to be master of the Royal Chapel there. In Lisbon he encountered an exceptionally talented royal youngster — the infanta Maria Barbara, who, as a contemporary report said, “Surprise[ed] the amazed intelligence of the most excellent Professors with her Mastery of Singing, Playing and Composition.”

In January of 1729, Maria Barbara married Ferdinando, the Spanish infante. It was a rather uncomfortable union whose purpose was entirely political. Maria Barbara soon found herself in the hostile company of the jealous Queen Isabella of Spain. Isabella even refused to allow Maria Barbara to bring along her personal servants — all but one, that is: her music teacher, Domenico Scarlatti. During the remaining 28 years of his life, Scarlatti composed and catalogued over 550 keyboard exercises for Maria Barbara — from 1746, queen of Spain.

Scarlatti and the Florentine piano are linked (if only circumstantially) at several other times and places, but what’s undeniable is that Maria Barbara herself was a point of intersection.

Maria Barbara owned pianos. We know this because she died just over a year after Scarlatti did, and at her death, her instruments were inventoried. Of her dozen (!) keyboard instruments, three were pianos, and two more were harpsichords which had been converted from pianos (perhaps because their actions failed, or because they were judged unsatisfactory as pianos). It thus becomes rather difficult to deny that Scarlatti was acquainted with the piano.

But did he play them? Did he intend for Maria Barbara to play his sonatas on them?

Ralph Kirkpatrick didn’t think so. Kirkpatrick was an American harpsichordist (1911 – 1984). He had a distinguised career as a performer, but his magnum opus was his biography of Domenico Scarlatti. It occupied him for 16 years, from 1937 to 1953. When it came to Scarlatti’s sonatas, Kirkpatrick’s views in that 1953 publication were enormously influential, guiding the performance practice of a generation of historically-oriented keyboard musicians.

Kirkpatrick pointed out that 73 of Scarlatti’s 550-some sonatas required more keys than the queen’s pianos had. This is pretty hard to argue with! It seems very unlikely that either Maria Barbara or Scarlatti played those 73 sonatas on any of the pianos to which they had known access. That’s a carefully qualified statement, but it’s about as definitive as we can really get in this discussion.

Kirkpatrick thought that was sufficient evidence to declare that Scarlatti probably had the harpsichord in mind for playing all of his sonatas. There is more to his argument, but it’s mostly conjectural, related to what he saw as the musical suitability of the piano of the time to the sonatas. What else can one do without definitive surviving documentation?

But from 1970, other historically-oriented musicologists and performers began to question Kirkpatrick’s assessment. Their re-evaluation of the evidence, sketchy as it was and is, led to harpsichord maker David Sutherland’s 1995 article in Early Music magazine, “Domenico Scarlatti and the Florentine Piano.”

Sutherland argued that, in making his recommendation, Kirkpatrick should have given more weight to the circumstantial evidence connecting Scarlatti and the early Florentine piano. Sutherland also questioned Kirkpatrick’s judgement of the Florentine piano as unsuited to Scarlatti’s sonatas, but in all honesty it’s difficult to see Sutherland’s view of this matter as any less subjective than Kirkpatrick’s. Finally, he took issue with Kirkpatrick’s argument that the piano was mostly used at court for accompanying singers. Sutherland’s evidence here seems about as persuasive as Kirkpatrick’s. Stalemate.

Who’s right? I don’t know.

Keyboard isn’t my instrument, so maybe I’m able to view this whole discussion with a bit of detachment. We’ve invested over 70 years in poring over what little documentation exists (reckoning from when Kirkpatrick began his research for Domenico Scarlatti). We have more informed opinions than ever (and thank goodness for that), but informed as they are, they’re still opinions. We don’t have a definitive answer as to whether Scarlatti intended his sonatas for the harpsichord or the piano. Perhaps he intended some of them for one and some for the other, but we have no way of knowing that. If he did, the 73 I mentioned before are the only ones which we currently have much hope of assigning. Actually, we don’t know whether Scarlatti even cared which instrument they were played on. We may never know. There just isn’t enough evidence to say.

Meanwhile, players of the modern piano, from Dame Myra Hess to Vladimir Horowitz — and countless others since — have never stopped playing Scarlatti. Why should they? For them, I suspect that the question of what instrument Scarlatti had played was pretty much academic. His music worked for them on their chosen instrument. They gave Scarlatti a voice, and also found their own expressive nuances in the sonatas. Audiences loved it. I imagine that was enough for them.

What I do know is that I’ve heard successful and musically enlightening performances of Scarlatti sonatas on harpsichords, Florentine pianos, and modern pianos. But don’t take my word for it; compare for yourself. Here are three short clips from Scarlatti’s Sonata in f minor, K519 — played on modern piano, a reproduction of Cristofori’s Florentine piano, and harpsichord.

Scarlatti’s K519 sonata on modern piano (Beatrice Long)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Scarlatti’s K519 sonata on Florentine piano (David Schrader)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Scarlatti’s K519 sonata on harpsichord (Colin Tilney)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I’ve also heard some pretty good Scarlatti on other instruments, including harp and guitar. His music seems to suit many different instruments, and I for one am glad that one more avenue of timbre and style has opened up for interpreting Scarlatti sonatas.

Further reading:

Domenico Scarlatti. Ralph Kirkpatrick, 1953 (1983 revision).

Domenico Scarlatti and the Florentine Piano. David Sutherland, Early Music, 1995 (Note: JSTOR access is required to read this article. A public-access computer associated with a university or library will usually connect immediately, but most home or business computers will not.)

A Florentine Piano c.1730 for Early Piano Music. Denzil Wraight.

Domenico Scarlatti, a brief biography. Chris Whent, Here of a Sunday Morning, WBAI, New York.

Cristofori, Inventor of the Piano. Roy E. Howard, Cantos Para Todos.

This article was originally published on 17 July 2008.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (Vivian Goodman)

After last weekend’s Severance Hall concerts, former Cleveland Orchestra Artist-in-Residence Pierre-Laurent Aimard takes Bartok on the road with the orchestra. This Tuesday (25 January 2011) they’ll perform Bartok’s challenging second piano concerto in the auditorium at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Then it’s on to Miami. There, on Friday the 28th, Aimard and the orchestra bid Bartok farewell in favor of the Schumann concerto. Tuesday will find them at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Michigan. On Wednesday they land in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, home to the Chicago Symphony. Friday it’s Carnegie Hall in New York, though Aimard won’t perform on that concert. The Cleveland Orchestra’s mini-tour wraps up in Newark on the 6th of February. Franz Welser-Möst will conduct all the concerts.

WKSU’s arts reporter Vivian Goodman spoke with Aimard about the Bartok concerto.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Pianist Simone Dinnerstein has a new album titled Bach: A Strange Beauty. She spoke with NPR’s Robert Siegal and told him that she discovers joy where Bach moves away from his orderliness. She tells us what exactly brings her joy in the music and what she hears as she plays.

Online at NPR.org.

Bach at the keyboard

In Leipzig Bach was perpetually overworked, so it’s no surprise that he borrowed the French overture of his fourth orchestral suite to open the cantata he composed for the first feast day of Christmas in 1725. (I wonder how many of his church listeners would also have been regulars at Zimmermann’s Coffee House, where his collegium performed such instrumental works as the suites.) He could hardly have made a better choice to begin this festive, celebratory cantata (Schmieder catalog number 110).

I can’t take credit for the following notes; they’re from a lecture which the director of today’s performance, Helmut Rilling, gave at concerts in the late 1990s, when the recording was made. They’re reprinted by kind permission of the publisher.

This cantata was written for the first day of Christmas 1725. Bach calls for a large orchestra to match the festive nature of the holiday: two oboes, two flutes, three trumpets and timpani. Appropriately, the work also begins on a festive note. However, the cantata has a theme related to the miracle of the Son of God coming into the world.

Movement 1: The musical construction (long-held notes in the bass, rhythmically active middle voices, ascending melodic lines in the melody instruments) gives occasion to consider this verity. It is divided into three parts and marked by dotted rhythms. Here Bach chose the form of the French overture. This kind of music was intended to be played in Versailles, when the king entered the theater – for does not a king enter the world on Christmas, as well? At the same time, Bach falls back on an older piece, an orchestral suite (BWV 1069), to whose middle section Bach adds a choral setting. The voices enter one after the other and signify the “laughter” mentioned in the title. The inventive alternation of wind and string instruments which serves the purpose of differentiation in the orchestral suite is overlaid in the cantata by the choir (“Der Herr hat Großes an uns getan”). Even though this may conceal the architecture somewhat, it gives the movement additional intensity and luster.

Movement 2: This tenor aria specifies the time of the celebration, which is “today” (“anitzt”). Musically, thoughts and the senses are also set in motion toward heaven, “himmelan.” Bach gives emphasis to the contemplation of God’s deeds, the image of Christ as man and man as the child of heaven by contrasting the “earthly” bassoon with the high “heavenly” tenor voice.

Movement 3: In the course of a recitative expressing affirmation, Bach illustrates the majesty of God while the strings tell us that the Lord’s magnificence is thus and shall ever remain so.

Movement 4: Together with the oboe d’amore, the alto voice protests against this certainty. Bach interprets “Daß du sein Heil so schmerzlich suchst” (“That you seek his salvation so painfully”) as indicating the way to the cross. The text, and thus Bach, as well, finds two answers to the related question of the essence of humankind: worm, hell and Satan are presented in dissonances and difficult rhythms, the Son and Heir born of love in playful, cheerful sounds. The canon between the oboe and the alto suggests that the way taken by the Son of God should also be a model for humans, the children of God, to follow.

Movement 5: Here for the first time there appears a passage from the Christmas Gospel, the “gloria in excelsis Deo” sung by the angels on the fields. Bach puts this to a dance setting in which the oboes provide the pastoral ambiance while the voices sing a dialogue in the form of a canon. For the words “peace on Earth,” Bach finds quite a different kind of music, one that expresses collective beseeching and apprehension. Finally, Bach draws a parallel to the first movement by having the laughter marking the day of the joyful celebration stand for good will to men.

Movement 6: Now is the time to wake up! – as signaled by the trumpet, followed by the instruments and voices. In the orchestra, the trumpet, violin and oboe play each other “Freudenlieder.” Here too, though, there are “andachtsvolle Saiten,” where the wind instruments are silent, and a shadow in B minor falls upon the D major harmonies. Virtuoso passages in the strings strike up the “Freudenlieder” once more at the end. At the command “singt!”, the response turns out to be a simple chorale – Bach wants the entire congregation, including the less sophisticated, to join in singing the concluding “Halleluiah.”

SUNG TEXTS

Further reading:

Cantata 110 at Bach Cantatas website

The Vieuxtemps Guarneri del Gesu

What would you do if the tools you use to do your job cost you a half-million dollars?

This is the quandry that working musicians face. Responsive, sweet-toned instruments have never been cheap. Even 20 or 30 years ago, a good midrange historical violin would easily have cost an orchestra player a year or two’s worth of salary.

Since then, prices have soared. In 2006, a Stradivarius violin sold at auction for over US$3.5 million. This year (2010) a Chicago dealer is offering a Guarneri del Gesu once owned by composer Henri Vieuxtemps. The asking price: an eye-popping US$18 million.

Even for soloists of international stature, these instruments are simply out of reach.

The problem is that fine musical instruments are increasingly seen not as vehicles for musical expression, but as investments. They are slipping away from musicians and falling into private investors’ collections.

Thoughtful musicians treasure the living art from history’s great instrument workshops. They play them daily. They become one with these instruments. They share their art with us.

But increasingly, these artists are shut out. Many of those who didn’t or couldn’t buy – maybe I should say "invest" – in the 1980s or before may now never own an historical instrument.

What to do? For many, a modern instrument is the only answer. Fortunately, outstanding instruments are made in 21st century workshops all over the world, including right here in the US. And increasingly, students and those just beginning a career are turning to the world’s low-cost manufacturing center for help. Look inside the instrument, and the words “made in China” are on the label.

WKSU’s arts reporter Vivian Goodman recently spoke with musicians and instrument makers about the situation. Here’s her take on the story.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Further reading:

The Mona Lisa of Violins in The Guardian

A Modern Strad in WKSU Classical

A Nation of Pianos and Pianists in WKSU Classical