The Year in Music: North America

By Leslie Kandell

All Eyes on Space
The A-list wedding of the cultural world is off: The blushing bride, better known as the New York Philharmonic, didn’t walk up the aisle to where the dazzling groom, Carnegie Hall, was waiting. Or not waiting, as it turned out. After months of courtship and negotiation, New York’s pre-eminent orchestra and classical music’s most renowned hall could not agree on terms for a merger. Beside problems of management division—would Carnegie’s Executive Director Robert Harth or the Philharmonic’s Zarin Mehta be the Godfather—there were scheduling issues, such as how many concerts the Philharmonic could give, and when, and who would decide. Mehta got it right when he said, “There are multiple massive issues to be resolved.  If we can work them out, we go. If not, we don’t go.” Not to mention the impact the orchestra’s departure would have had on Avery Fisher Hall (its flawed acoustics suddenly all the talk) and Lincoln Center, which acted like rejected suitors, and now that the merger is cancelled, are a tad surly about taking the orchestra back without a few little adjustments. So it looks like the old way of getting to Carnegie Hall is still the one.

Meanwhile the Judy and Arthur Zankel Hall, gouged out of bedrock beneath Carnegie Hall in what was last a movie theater, completes a renovation of Carnegie’s three spaces. Zankel (Zan-KELL), a 644-seat contemporary rectangle with two narrow upper galleries fronted with slender wood strips, has moveable blocks of seats that can be configured with the stage at one end, or raised in the middle, or on the whole parquet. Rear panels beneath a descending movie screen rise silently for swift movements of heavy metal setups on and off stage. It is designed for small-scale musical performances and its full schedule includes ethnic and world music as well as solo and chamber music recitals and education events.
The idiosyncratic Canadian architect Frank Gehry had new halls open on both coasts. Officials hope his Walt Disney Concert Hall, a $274 million new home for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and smaller arts organizations, becomes the signature of the downtown skyline. Concertgoers sit surrounding the orchestra in its 2,265-seat auditorium, built to suggest a sailing ship, with curved wood ceiling and natural lighting. But one local critic said it “looks like half-torn-up cardboard boxes left out in the rain, spray-painted silver. There are equal [cardboard] sculptures to be found on Skid Row. . . .”

Smaller but hardly less controversial than Disney is Bard College’s 900-seat Richard B. Fisher Performing Arts Center in New York’s Hudson Valley, also designed by Gehry. It is—depending on the angle from which it is viewed—a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. As for the well-publicized difficulties in reaching young listeners, Bard president Leon Botstein says that classical music has always had a graying audience, because it’s associated with wealth and leisure, which imply seniority—it’s just that 19th-century seniority came earlier in life than it does today.

Cesar Pelli, who also laid out Cincinnati’s Aronoff Center for the Arts, designed the $121 million Benjamin & Marian Schuster Performing Arts Center—new home of the Dayton Philharmonic—which seats 2,300 and opened in March. The Detroit Symphony moved back into the city’s venerated Orchestra Hall, renovated and restored over several years, floor to ceiling and much in between, for $64 million. The related television, radio station, and 1,200-student performing arts high school now under construction is expected to cost twice as much. The landmark 150-year-old Fulton Opera House in Lancaster, Pa., is celebrating the rescue, restoration, and operations of historic theaters.

Centennials
Berlioz’s acclaim had to wait till rule-breaking was considered acceptable—even admirable—but he got a better shake in his bicentennial year. Symphonie fantastique, which never went away, received performances around the country. It was the highlight of a symposium at Manhattan School of Music, led by a chipper-looking Charles Dutoit (who then led the Requiem with the New York Philharmonic), and Basil Twist’s quixotic aquarium version resurfaced. At the Ravinia Festival, Chicago Symphony education director Lawrence Rapchak inserted a “Dream of the Witches’ Sabbath” rap number. The Metropolitan Opera’s hot ticket, Les Troyens, with Ben Heppner, Deborah Voigt, and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, was five speedy hours of dramatic staging and twisting, often beautiful melodic lines. James Levine took the Met Orchestra to Carnegie Hall for two Berlioz concerts with the Fantastique, Harold in Italy, La mort de Cléopâtre, and three overtures. Colin Davis brought the London Symphony to Lincoln Center for a three-concert “Fantastic Voyages: the World of Hector Berlioz,” which included the Fantastique, of course, Harold in Italy (also played by the Boston Symphony), Roméo et Juliette (also led by Lorin Maazel at the Philharmonic), and La Damnation de Faust in concert form. (San Francisco Opera’s updated, angular staging of Faust flaunted a lewd vision-chorus that provoked some patrons to storm out.) Sir Colin also led a version, complete with actors, of Béatrice et Bénédict at the Philharmonic. The New Mexico Symphony’s ongoing Berlioz commemorative festival covers big works, operas, songs, art, and theater.

With Berlioz ascendant, Aram Khachaturian’s centennial seemed an afterthought (like most of his music aside from the “Sabre Dance” and Spartacus), but there was a concert tribute in Carnegie Hall, a film biography released in New York and Los Angeles, and an EMI recording of his Flute (née Violin) Concerto. A three-day film festival, with outtakes and recordings, marked Vladimir Horowitz’s centennial. Fellow pianist Rudolf Serkin’s life was commemorated at the Marlboro Music School, of which he was co-founder. Otherwise, his centennial went shamefully unfeted.

The Jewish Persona in Music
Piano pieces by a Polish guy named Chopin are big on the soundtrack of The Pianist, an Oscar-winning film about a Polish pianist who survived the Nazis and the destruction of Warsaw. In the movie, Chopin’s G-minor Ballade saved the life of actor Adrien Brody; the real-life Wladyslaw Szpilman played the C-sharp minor Nocturne. Songs later composed by Szpilman are now published by Boosey and Hawkes, which also offers music of other composers who perished in the Terezin concentration camp. The Hawthorne Quartet, which has been uncovering this repertoire for years, is part of the effort.

James Conlon conducted combined forces in “Rediscovering a Musical Heritage,” three concerts in Carnegie Hall, a synagogue, and a church, respectively, featuring Victor Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis and works of Alexander Zemlinsky, whose music Conlon champions and arranges. A revival of John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer stirred more discussion of the libretto’s implicit anti-Semitism than of the quality of anything within the opera.

Five hundred works never before recorded, plus over 100 others, began appearing on the Naxos label as part of a pro-ject for The Milken Archive of American Jewish Music. The first disc goes from Brubeck to Weill, with further releases scheduled through 2005. The Milken Archive joined the Jewish Theological Seminary in presenting “Only In America,” a conference-festival commemorating 350 years of American Jewry. New York City hosted concerts, services, and talks in several locales.

There’s Bad News
The budget ax is felling an orchestral forest: The 75-year-old Colorado Springs Symphony dissolved in bankruptcy court; the Charleston Symphony Orchestra took a pay cut and may re-form as a regional orchestra and play in Savannah, where the Savannah Symphony canceled part of its season and filed for bankruptcy. (Neither Savannah nor Charleston musicians are happy with Charleston’s concept.) Musicians of the Pittsburgh Symphony agreed to a pay cut over the next two seasons. The Florida Philharmonic cut wages, benefits, and its season, the Charlotte Symphony struck after rejecting a pay cut, as did the Houston Sym-phony (which reluctantly returned under straitened circumstances), while San Antonio Sym- phony members played without pay till bankruptcy was declared. The Winnipeg Sympho- ny’s board resigned rather than assume the Orchestra’s debt, and its musicians began taking temp jobs.

New York and Colo-  rado properties of Al-berto W. Vilar, a huge supporter of the Metropolitan Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Vienna Philharmonic, and other cultural institutions, were auctioned after hard times forced him to default on debts and pledges.

At the San Francisco Symphony’s opening gala, someone
evidently confused “Firebird” with “fire alarm,” pulled the latter, and caused an aborted finale and hasty exit.

And Good News
In an effort to head off a potential shortfall, the New York Philharmonic raised a quick $1 million, sparked by Music Director Maazel’s challenge grant of $100,000. Soon after, outgoing Pittsburgh Symphony Music Director Mariss Jansons contributed the same amount toward his own orchestra’s deficit. The Louisville Orchestra filed for Chapter 11 rather than accept an offer contingent on a balanced budget, but after six months it returned to safe ground. The Saint Louis Symphony reduced its deficit for the second consecutive season. Oregon’s Portland Opera and Chamber Music Northwest are in the black, while the Duluth Superior Symphony erased its deficit, and its (very) part-time musicians approved a two-year contract. New Jersey’s John Harms Arts Center, about to shut its doors, was bailed out with a $1.9 million low-interest loan voted by Bergen County. At the still-thriving New Jersey Performing Arts Center, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra players took a pay cut; on the positive side, the players have begun to perform on the “Golden Age” collection of Stradivari and like string instruments donated by collectors Evelyn and Herbert Axelrod. Paganini’s Stradivar- ius is out of its museum case, being taken on the road by jazz violinist Regina Carter. The Dallas Symphony almost balanced its budget, losing “only” $1 million from its endowment in the last year. (“Only” is a word better ap- plied to the Richmond Sym- phony’s deficit of $20,000.)

The Nashville Symphony received a $3 million gift from the Curb family to support its Young Musicians Concerto Competition, its planned Curb Youth Symphony, and related educational programs.
The Joffrey Ballet will be dancing with a live orchestra again: Leslie B. Dunner was appointed music director and resident conductor of the Chicago Sinfonietta, which is the company’s orchestra.

Ever since tenor Salvatore Licitra dramatically replaced Pavarotti at the Met Opera last spring, Licitra’s future has been the subject of speculation. But the hard-to-please Martin Bernheimer found his Verdi opera roles and Carnegie Hall recital proof that he “seems to be the real, rare thing.”

The National Symphony has five new works by American composers on its Kennedy Center schedule, including a harp concerto by Mark Adamo, one for cello by Stephen Jaffe, and one for electric guitar by Stewart Wallace.

Conductor Keith Lockhart became a father, which makes him the Boston Pop.

Ins and Outs
James Conlon was named music director of the Ravinia Festival, succeeding Christoph Eschenbach, who is now music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The new president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is Deborah R. Card, succeeding Henry Fogel, who becomes CEO of the American Symphony Orchestra League. Lawrence J. Tamburri became CEO of the Pittsburgh Symphony following the departure of managing director Gideon Toeplitz. Two conductors from the East adding Western directorships are Larry Rachleff of the Rhode Island Philharmonic, tapped by San Antonio, and Joel Revzen, of the Berkshire Opera Company, adding Arizona Opera.

Peter Oundjian, artistic director of Caramoor International Music Festival, succeeds Jukka-Pekka Saraste as music director of the beleaguered Toronto Symphony; Jahja Ling was named music director of the San Diego Symphony; Mariss Jansons is, officially, music director of the Royal Concertgebouw; Stefan Sanderling steps into the Florida Philharmonic post, and Leon Botstein was appointed music director of the Jerusalem Symphony, for three years. Last summer was Louis Langrée’s first as director of Mostly Mozart. David Shifrin resigned as artistic director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Emile Subirana, credited with (or blamed for) pushing Charles Dutoit out of the Montreal Symphony, was himself voted out of the presidency of the Quebec Musicians Guild.

The Winners Were . . .
John Adams was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for On the Transmigration of Souls, a choral World Trade Center memorial work commissioned by the New York Philharmonic. A two-month Adams festival at Lincoln Center encompassed his orchestral work plus opera and ballet, some of which he conducted. He also led Lou Harrison’s Concerto in Slendro at the opening of Zankel Hall, and his new memoir, My Father Knew Charles Ives, was introduced at the San Francisco Symphony.

Kaija Saariaho won the $200,000 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for her opera L’amour de loin (“Love from Afar”), based on a novel about a 12th-century troubadour’s love for a countess, and Robert Spano introduced her song cycle, Château de l’âme (“Castle of the Soul”) with the New York Philharmonic. Golijov received a $500,000 MacArthur Award.
Ned Rorem, 80, had a flute concerto introduced by the Philadelphia Orchestra, a song tribute at Tanglewood, a cello concerto premiere in Kansas City, and read passages from his latest book in New York’s Symphony Space.

The Naumburg Award, to violinist Frank Huang, included performing the premiere of an unaccompanied sonata by Donald Martino. Kotaro Fukuma, age 20, of Japan, was winner of the Cleveland International Piano Competition; final rounds were performed with the Cleveland Orchestra. Rome Prizes went to composers Mason Bates and Jefferson Friedman, and John Williams’s theme songs for four Olympic Games received the International Olympic Committee’s highest honors. Itzhak Perlman was a recipient of a Kennedy Center honor.

Lorin Maazel, Lukas Foss (80), Jessye Norman, and Gian Carlo Menotti were among those inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in Cincinnati.

Festivals
The biggest was at Lincoln Center, with the charismatic Valery Gergiev leading the Kirov Opera in six operas, five
by Russian composers: Prokofiev (50 years after his death), Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Anton Rubinstein, and Tchai-kovsky. Except for Eugene Onegin, the repertoire, well performed, produced, and reviewed, proved too bold an endeavor for the leery audience, which wasn’t willing to take a chance on the somewhat unfamiliar. Kirov’s view of Verdi’s Macbeth, however, proved far safer than the scary Macbeth by Salvatore Sciarrino, in its U.S. premiere by Oper Frankfurt.

After two leaderless summers, the Boston Symphony awaits the advent of James Levine, but meanwhile Tanglewood’s Festival of Contemporary Music highlighted the appealing works of Jennifer Higdon and honored Gyorgy Ligeti at 80.  Tanglewood Music Center commissioned short operas from former students: Rob Zuidam’s Rage d’Amours (led by Stefan Asbury with soprano Lucy Shelton) and Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar (led by Robert Spano with soprano Dawn Upshaw) coincidentally re-create strange, unfortunate moments in Spain’s history.

Composers, performers, and protégés who come into the wide-armed embrace of Mstislav Rostropovich are legion: “Slava and Friends,” a three-week New York Philharmonic festival, seemed barely enough to display works of Bernstein, Britten, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Dutilleux, Lutoslawski, and Penderecki, with performers including Yefim Bronfman, Evgeny Kissin, Maxim Vengerov, and Yuri Bashmet. For the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and for Portland’s winter edition Chamber Music Northwest, Vladimir Feltsman organized “Masterpieces of the Russian Underground,” ten days of concerts, lectures, and poetry readings from the eras of Stalinist suppression that, wrote critic Peter G. Davis, “could only give an idea of how rich the subject is and how much we still have to learn about it.”

At Ravinia, Robert Spano conducted the Chicago Symphony, Heidi Grant Murphy, and Brett Polegato in the U.S. premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s song cycle, Five Reflections, for soprano, baritone, and orchestra.

The Body Musical
A Montreal study reveals that listening to music creates pleasure “clusters” in the cerebral cortex, producing the same soothing, pleasurable brain signals as eating chocolate or drinking champagne. The Montreal Neurological Institute also found that the rare gift (or irritant) of absolute pitch is more common in Asians, who speak tonal languages, and that if you don’t have it by age 12, you never will, so it’s apparently fair to regard it as a “slight derangement of normal brain processes.”

The Indianapolis Symphony became the first American orches- tra to require its musicians to attend a workshop in pain prevention.
When Vienna doctors found hearing impairment in six percent of Volks Opera orchestra members, musicians were provided with earplugs of varying strength, which dampen sound levels without distorting or restricting the acoustic information.

Obituaries
In the year 2003, the music world recorded the loss of composers Arthur Berger, Luciano Berio, Lou Harrison, Goffredo Petrassi, Manuel Rosenthal, Emmanuel Ghent; pianists John Browning, Eugene Istomin, Rosalyn Tureck, Ward Davenny; organist Catharine Crozier; Steinway executive David Rubin; sopranos Susan Chilcott, Nadine Conner; mezzo-soprano Fedora Barbieri; bass-baritone Otto Edelmann; bass Jerome Hines; violinist Tibor Varga; cellist Stephen Kates; bassist Julius Levine; violinist and conductor Harry Ellis Dickson; flutist Julius Baker; drummer Babatunde Olatunji; impresario John Crosby; artists manager Agnes Eisenberger; recording producer Richard Mohr; philanthropist Irene Diamond; critic Harold C. Schonberg.

Leslie Kandell contributes to The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, American Record Guide, BBC Music Magazine, The Berkshire Eagle, and other newspapers and magazines.