The Year in Music: North America

By Leslie Kandell

The big news of 2010: Far from being hi-tech masters of the universe, we are but human creatures easily overcome by nature’s forces.

Eyjafjallajökull, the Icelandic volcano whose name we dare not speak, spewed streams of molten lava and pelted April’s balmy skies with plumes of ash. Ash in the jetstream jams airplane motors, so for a couple of weeks flights—and concerts—were cancelled. Orchestras and soloists scheduled to fly to the United States were stranded; many scurried around Europe looking to rebook.

The January earthquake in Haiti inspired international benefit concerts: Lang Lang and Sony underwrote one in Carnegie Hall. Among orchestras responding in various ways to Haiti’s disaster were Cleveland, San Francisco, Miami’s New World, Princeton University, Delaware, North Carolina, Saint Louis, D.C.’s National, Tulsa, Seattle, Louisiana, and Pittsburgh.

Jessye Norman headlined a concert with a music/video/speech setting of Langston Hughes’s poem cycle Ask Your Mama, giving profits to Haiti. A performance of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony was the choice of The Sheep Island Ensemble to benefit a New Orleans church still recovering, five years later, from Hurricane Katrina. You can bet that music inspired by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the Pakistan flood is being composed right this minute.

BICENTENNIAL, CENTENNIAL
Chopin and Schumann happened to be born the same year, but their lives and works were so dissimilar that attempts to link them further were discreetly avoided. The Caramoor Festival took a stab, with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s presenting concerts called “Schumann and Chopin at 200,” “Schumann the Romantic,” and “Chopin and the Opera Composers who Inspired Him.” The Mostly Mozart Festival (“mostly” now down to 19 percent) also featured both, with Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Paavo Järvi performing the Manfred Overture and “Spring” Symphony, plus the ubiquitous Chopin recital.

Chopin had more attention, maybe because only one performer is required. The Film Society of Lincoln Center screened rarely seen films featuring interpreters of Chopin from the 1940s through 1980s. Maurizio Pollini gave three Chopin recitals at Carnegie Hall and Garrick Ohlsson, having recorded Chopin’s complete works, performed Chopin recitals in Seattle, Berkeley, La Jolla, and New York, as well as the Ravinia and Tanglewood festivals and overseas. A documentary based on Chopin’s life and music, featuring Ohlsson, was co-produced by Polish, French, British, and Chinese television stations.

As for centennials, Barber’s was marked largely with song surveys and small pieces—none of the thorny late works like Antony and Cleopatra. That of composer William Schuman, president of Juilliard from 1945 to 1961, was celebrated in a book entitled American Muse by Joseph W. Polisi, Juilliard’s president since 1985, and in an all-Schuman concert with the Juilliard Orchestra led by Leonard Slatkin. Kristin Lancino, of publisher G. Schirmer, reports that while performances of Barber’s music have never waned, Schuman’s picked up considerably in his centennial year.

A CLOSER LOOK
In addition to the Schuman concert was an intriguing all-Henry Cowell program by the American  Symphony Orchestra, courtesy of the ever-questing Leon Botstein, and an all-Ursula Mamlok chamber-music recital by Continuum. The surprise tough ticket at the Lincoln Center Festival was Varèse (R)evolution: the complete works of Edgard Varèse by the New York Philharmonic and International Contemporary Ensemble.

The American premiere of Franz Schreker’s rarely staged opera The Stigmatized (Die Gezeichneten), from 1919, was this year’s installment of Los Angeles Opera’s Recovered Voices, James Conlon’s project of reviving works by composers whose lives and careers were cut short by the Nazi regime. Schreker resurfaced at Bard College’s SummerScape in The Distant Sound (Die Ferne Klang), under Botstein, and the summer’s festival topic, “Berg and His World.”

HEARTY WELCOME TO YOU
Many “fresh voices” (meaning names we’re just beginning to hear) are appearing around the United States, to wit: Yannick Nézet-Séguin was named music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, taking over in 2012-13. Meanwhile, former Philly m.d. Christoph Eschenbach is being warmly greeted as he takes over the National Symphony. The Seattle Symphony’s battles are subsiding as Ludovic Morlot takes the directorship. Fabio Luisi is principal guest conductor at the Met. The Canadian Opera Company’s new director, Johannes Debus, is proving his range and verve at productions ranging from Mozart to War and Peace.

Jacques Lacombe at the New Jersey Symphony begins an initiative through which the orchestra will present works from composers who were either born in New Jersey or whose time spent there influenced their artistic identity. Alberto Veronesi succeeded Eve Queler at Opera Orchestra of New York. Giancarlo Guerrero is music director of the Nashville Symphony, and Christopher Warren-Green is music directordesignate at the beleaguered Charlotte Symphony.

NEW SPACES
Lincoln Center continued its renovations, making dramatic progress in outdoor spaces. The 45-year co-habitation of City Opera and City Ballet in the David H. Koch (formerly New York State) Theater is acknowledged in a lobby mural whose image changes according to where the viewer stands. The renovation was celebrated in a City Ballet series that commemorated the 50th anniversary of Lincoln Center: Architecture of Dance, with seven new dances, four commissioned scores, and designs by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.

The $250 million Musical Instrument Museum opened in Phoenix, displaying about a quarter of its collection of 12,000 instruments from many eras and places.

Yo-Yo Ma was on hand to open the season at the appealing Koerner Hall in Toronto’s Royal Conservatory, next to a controversial museum addition designed by Daniel Liebeskind.

The new Miami hall for New World Symphony, directed by Michael Tilson Thomas, was designed by Frank Gehry, who was once Thomas’s babysitter.

Indiana news: the Palladium Center for the  Performing Arts in Carmel opens in January 2011. In addition to its performance spaces, it houses the Michael Feinstein Foundation for the Preservation of the Great American Songbook. Indiana University is the new home of Leonard Bernstein’s workroom from his house in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Copland House adds a 130-acre neighboring estate and mansion in Mt. Kisco, New York, to be used as a county park and for cultural programs.

OPERA
Last season, the Met’s new Tosca, designed by Richard Peduzzi, was poorly received by audiences longing for Zeffirelli’s familiar opulent production. A year later, Robert Lepage’s heavyweight sets and hi-tech effects unexpectedly turned out not to be the stars of the Met’s new Ring cycle. Its first installment, Das Rheingold, was notable for the return of James Levine after months of recuperation from surgery, the magnificent voices, and the direction, which brought out plot accents, and for the rain that soaked the huddled faithful in Times Square and Lincoln Center plaza, where the openingnight performance was shown on large screens. Though Met assets are declining like everyone else’s, General Manager Peter Gelb maintained that the company is “thriving artistically, and will continue to flourish.” Large audiences at movie-theater broadcasts around the world affirm his statement, as does philanthropist Ann Ziff ’s $30 million gift.

Somewhere in Act II of the Dallas Opera’s new Moby-Dick, starring Ben Heppner (and
he really starred) as Captain Ahab, Jake Heggie became a composer of substance. The opera will have several productions in the next couple of years, having been co-commissioned by the State Opera of South Australia and the companies of Calgary, San Diego, and San Francisco.

Seattle Opera presented Amelia, by Daron Aric Hagen, the company’s first opera commission under Speight Jenkins’s tenure. It is a fatherdaughter story set in America and Vietnam.

The L.A. Opera introduced Daniel Catán’s Il Postino (The Postman), a commission based on the 1994 Film and coproduced with Theater an der Wien (Vienna) and Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris). Plácido Domingo sang the role of the exiled Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.

Big: L.A. Opera’s multi-event first Ring cycle. Small: New York City Opera’s patchwork season, as George Steel spruced up the operas-in-progress Vox marathon and kept the struggling company’s head above water, looking toward better days.

PLANET TECH
Composer Nico Muhly is at work on an opera commissioned by the Met, with a plot about an Internet murder and sounds of multiple voices suggesting online chat rooms.

Discussion topics at the League of American Orchestras conference were chosen by vote on a new blog site, orchestrarevolution.org. One topic was, “What makes an orchestra matter in the 21st century?” Conference delegates were joined by an online audience participating via live video stream and Twitter feed.

The classical-music audience has learned to tolerate podcasts: San Francisco State University’s VoiceBox: The B Sides, is a series on singing, recording, and composing for singers.

The go-to site for videos of early-music groups is Youtube.com/gemslive.

A new-music concert in Contact!, Alan Gilbert’s new Philharmonic series, was held uptown in Symphony Space, and reviewers blogged live from the balcony, which had Wi-fi for the occasion.

THE FLESH IS WEAK
The Metropolitan Opera may have lost count of the number of cancellations and substitutions in the season’s casts, but it could easily approach 100. The list of the benched would include Music Director James Levine, who had to cancel much of his spring season—as well as at the Boston Symphony Orchestra and its Tanglewood summer season—to recuperate from back surgery. He returned for the Met’s opening victorious, if frail, and then brought Rheingold star Bryn Terfel with him for the Boston Symphony’s triumphant opening of Mahler and Wagner. On October 9, in a feat that would try the endurance of the heartiest youth, Levine conducted a matinee performance of Rheingold in New York and was immediately whisked to Boston, where he led Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony No. 2.

Tanglewood took another hit when its former music director, Seiji Ozawa, withdrew from a conducting visit because of esophageal cancer, and Betsy Jolas’s clarinet quartet was dropped from the contemporary festival because poor health kept her away. Meanwhile, Itzhak Perlman’s rotator cuff surgery sidelined him from conducting at Ravinia. Riccardo Muti, in his opening weeks as the Chicago Symphony’s new music director, abruptly cancelled two weeks of appearances with the orchestra to be treated in Milan for gastric distress, and Murray Perahia withdrew from his fall recital tour to recover from a hand injury.

Claudio Abbado cancelled La Scala appearances because of exhaustion, and the Juilliard String Quartet’s new violinist, Nick Eanet, resigned due to the rigors of travel.

FESTIVALS
In its fourth year, Toronto’s Luminato Festival is established, popular, and growing. Dark Star Requiem, an oratorio (with lighting) about AIDS, by Andrew Staniland, was introduced there, as was Rufus Wainwright’s opera, Prima Donna. Originally intended for the Met, it was rejected because of a disagreement about whether it should be in French, as the Canadianborn Wainwright had planned, or English, as the Met wanted. When it opened in Manchester, England, the New York Times said, “There are inspired touches and disarmingly beautiful passages in this mysterious, stylistically eclectic work.”

When Levine had to pull out of Tanglewood, its administration did some fancy footwork to avoid the festival’s seeming like a headless horseman. But with fill-ins like Michael Tilson Thomas for Mahler, Christoph Von Dohnányi for Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, and some “fresh voices,” the schedule was rescued.

Carnegie Hall’s all-city festival in autumn 2009, Ancient Paths, Modern Voices, illuminated China connections; this year’s title was Japan NYC. Lincoln Center held a fall White Light Festival, exploring spiritual works of several centuries and countries.

EDUCATION
On 60 Minutes, L.A. Phil Music Director Gustavo Dudamel was called a classical-music rock star and a conducting animal. Dudamel has an ASCAP Award for Educational Programming, and is taking his training in Venezuela’s El Sistema into L.A.’s tough neighborhoods, inspiring youngsters who wear the program’s t-shirts. The System, which requires parents to sign a contract concerning attendance and instrument care, is being extended to Chicago, Baltimore, and Miami.

Touring internationally and in the United States since 2008, Luke Jerrem’s installation Play Me, I’m Yours opened a Make Music New York festival, when 60 upright pianos, some decorated, were distributed in public parks and streets, for anyone to sit down and play. Pianos, later donated to schools and local community groups, were furnished by Sing for Hope, an organization that mobilizes professional artists in volunteer service programs.

PRIZES
Jennifer Higdon was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her violin concerto, introduced and recorded by Hilary Hahn. This year’s Gilmore Artist is Russian-born pianist Kyrill Gerstein, whose performing career is well under way. Alfred Brendel won the Praemium Imperiale, and pianist Soyeon Lee added the Naumburg to her past laurels. Brett Dean became the first Australian to win the Grawemeyer Award, which was for his violin concerto, The Lost Art of Letter Writing. Among recipients of ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming were the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and the Omaha Symphony.

At the Cincinnati May Festival, James Conlon was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame. A Carnegie Hall Medal of Excellence for philanthropic leadership in the arts was awarded to Henry T. Segerstrom, developer of South Coast Plaza and founding chairman of the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

MILESTONES
Pierre Boulez, Gunther Schuller, and Betsy Jolas are 85. David Amram, Herbert Blomstedt, Alfred Brendel, and Russell Sherman are 80. Seiji Ozawa is 75. Louis Andriessen and the Tanglewood Music Center are 70.

Young Concert Artists, which helped launch the careers of 200 renowned performers, marks its 50th season with events in Washington and New York. •

Leslie Kandell has contributed to Musicalamerica.com, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, American Record Guide, BBC Music Magazine, Berkshire Eagle, and other publications.

OBITUARIES
In 2010, the music world recorded the loss of composers Jack Beeson, Benjamin Lees; conductors Charles Mackerras, David Randolph, Ole Schmidt, Mitch Miller; sopranos Elisabeth Söderström, Irina Arkhipova, Joan Sutherland, Mary Curtis-Verna; mezzo-sopranos Blanche Thebom, Giulietta Simionato; contralto Maureen Forrester; tenors Philip Langridge, Anthony Rolfe Johnson; baritones John Reed, Giuseppe Taddei; bass Cesare Siepi; pianists Earl Wild, Yvonne Loriod; cellists Arthur Winograd, David
Soyer; impresarios Wolfgang Wagner, Ernest Fleischmann; musicologist H.C. Robbins Landon; music critics Allen Hughes, Paul Moor, Alan Rich, Gene Lees; music critic and radio host George Jellinek; record company executive and Cliburn Competition Director Andrew Raeburn; record company executive Wolfgang Mohr; folk singer Susan Reed; Rosa Rio (age 107), organist for silent films.