The Year in Music

By Leslie Kandell

THE SCHUBERT BICENTENNIAL
Born two centuries ago to a couple whose children tended not to survive infancy, Franz Peter Schubert never grew tall enough for military service. Besides, he wore glasses. As a young man, he changed his residence within Vienna at least once a year, seldom owning a piano. Too nervous to introduce himself to Beethoven, he composed in obscurity, got by with a little help from his friends, and died unmarried at 31. His magnificent “Unfinished” Symphony was less unfinished than his life.

But his transcendent talent and astonishing fertility gave to posterity symphonies, choral and chamber music, operas (which he didn’t get the hang of), and song cycles—a form he invented and at which he has never been surpassed.

Numerous 1997 events honored his bicentennial. New York’s 92nd St. Y’s ten-year Schubertiade survey, sadder and soberer after years of rethinking its programs, came to a close with talks, chamber music, and song cycles: Winterreise with Mitsuko Shirai stepping in for the ailing Hermann Prey and Schwanengesang with Håkan Hagegård accompanied by James Levine. The Philadelphia Orchestra opened its season with Schubert songs orchestrated by Brahms and Schubert piano music arranged by Liszt. Fierrebras, an opera exhumed in several versions and locales, has gorgeous musical moments but a lethal plot overdose. (Enterprising excerpters sought.)

At Carnegie and Weill halls, the Alban Berg Quartet played Schubert quartets, and there were Schubert-theme performances by Daniel Barenboim and Itzhak Perlman, the Cleveland Orchestra, and Thomas Hampson with Wolfgang Sawallisch. There was an all-day marathon and an exhibition of manuscripts, first editions, letters, and the always-popular hair. The San Francisco Symphony’s two imaginative Schubert concerts featured contemporary homages by Henze (fantasia on Erlkönig) and Berio’s Rendering, a fantasia on Schubert’s Tenth Symphony. Choruses sang masses, recording companies released cycles.

It was also the death centennial of Johannes Brahms, who is buried in the same Vienna cemetery as Schubert. Visitors to Vienna could hear indoor and outdoor concerts, as well as visit the honorees’ residences—in Schubert’s case an exhaustive project.

The Philadelphia Orchestra took its “Brahms Perspectives” on tour—symphony, concerto, overture, quartet orchestration by Schoenberg, and the new Ernster Gesang, an homage by Wolfgang Rihm. Orchestras—the Boston Symphony and New York Philharmonic are two— played Brahms’s four symphonies. And the German Requiem was everywhere, led most memorably by Robert Shaw at the Cincinnati May Festival.

OPERA
With 100 professional opera companies in 41 states, the National Endowment for the Arts reports that the U.S. opera audience is up 25 percent. Opera America adds that word-of-mouth and shrewd marketing are bringing in new audience members in their thirties. Pittsburgh critic Robert Croan cites improved visual elements, the transfer of power from conductors to stage directors, new regional companies, the expansion of standard repertory, and a spate of recordings and electronic media events “that have transformed opera from the plaything of a small elite to a popular entertainment.”

Anthony Davis’s Amistad, named for a ship and based on a pre-Civil War anti-slavery victory, with stage direction by Broadway’s George C. Wolfe, had its premiere with the Chicago Lyric Opera. At Santa Fe Opera, Kurt Oilman was an early king with a moral dilemma in the premiere of Ashoka‘s Dream, by Peter Lieberson. The passionate delivery of another cast member, mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt, made her much sought for various productions, including early music. Tobias Picker’s Emmeline, another of the nine operas that Santa Fe commissioned in total, has been televised and planned for New York City Opera. (City Opera, which dropped its plans for Hugo Weisgall’s Esther, received no NEA funds for The Visit of the Old Lady by Gottfried von Einem, based on the Durrenmatt play.) With a sweet mounting of Monteverdi’s Orfeo, Opera Theater of Saint Louis looked back to 1607, and forward to 1973 with Conrad Susa’s eerie Transformations, in a stark, budget-conscious production, well performed. Harvey Milk, revised, was warmly welcomed home to San Francisco.

NEW MUSIC
Death was the unintended subtext at Tanglewood’s Festival of Contemporary Music. The works of Christopher Rouse, in residence, show fascination with memorials. Guest composer Sofia Gubaidulina, intensely interested in timbre, sends an idiosyncratic spiritual message of death and hope. Conlon Nancarrow’s music was performed in Ursula Oppens’s Fromm recital, without her knowledge of his death hours before.

Elliott Carter’s Allegro Scorrevole, third in a series of orchestral works and inspired by lines of the Jacobean poet Richard Crashaw, received its premiere with the Cleveland Orchestra. Britain’s Independent said that Gnarly Buttons, John Adams’s clarinet concerto commissioned by the London Sinfonietta, “demonstrates chromatic inflection as well as the drama of more familiar solutions.” Adams’s Slonimsky’s Earbox, a 13-minute high-energy orchestral work, was introduced in Portland, Oregon, under James DePreist, and taken around by Leonard Slatkin. Thomas Adès’s 1995 opera, Powder Her Face, was introduced to the United States in concert at Berkeley and staged at Aspen.

Composers have a hard enough time getting second hearings for their music, but John Harbison was onto something with his Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano. It received 34 U.S. performances, plus nine in other countries, all on the same day by different artists. The way it worked: performers ponied up for the right to a score and a performance on the allotted premiere day.

Carnegie Hall’s “Making Music 1997” is a new concert-plus-talk series emceed by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. It opened with music of Steve Reich contrasted to medieval works; subsequent composers were Ned Rorem, Alvin Lucier, and the emcee herself. Bang on a Can’s marathon was easy to criticize, hard to prepare, and grabbed attention with choreography and a display of electronic gloves.

FESTIVALS
With over a thousand artists, the second Lincoln Center Festival was, as New York magazine said, “an even more frenzied eclectic revel” than its maiden voyage. Winner of the year’s most mixed reviews was the Royal Opera’s American premiere of Hans Pfitzner’s Palestrina, a 1917 allegory based loosely on the conflicts of the Renaissance composer. Its Romantic style and plot were deemed everything from visionary to stultifying. Pfitzner discussions, chamber music, and a Palestrina concert by Pomerium augmented the production. A solo reduction of The Magic Flute by Christoph Hornberger didn’t do much for anybody, and the New York Philharmonic’s series “Wagner—Currents and Countercurrents” raised no hackles.

At Tanglewood, some of the best concerts were not by the Boston Symphony: Yo-Yo Ma with six Bach Suites again, and with Christopher Rouse’s 1994 Cello Concerto, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus under Robert Shaw’s baton for a Beethoven Ninth. Seiji Ozawa left early, for the Salzburg Festival, which featured Le Grand Macabre, an opera by György Ligeti, led by Esa-Pekka Salonen. The New York Times loved the music, but called Peter Sellars’s production a “comedy of coarse bad manners, small and sardonic.”

Caramoor Festival added to its schedule a bel canto revival project, with Will Crutchfield and Marilyn Horne leading it and beginning with a production of Rossini’s La Donna del Lago. The Ojai Festival keeps on truckin’ and made it through 50 years without compromising its commitment to uncompromising repertory.

Every year a different Latin-American country: the plucky American Composers Orchestra mounted an illuminating week of “Sonidos de las Americas: Puerto Rico,” with talks, chamber music, and orchestra concerts at Carnegie Hall under Dennis Russell Davies.

COMINGS, GOINGS, BUILDINGS
Metropolitan Opera Music Director James Levine may take on the Munich Philharmonic, rudderless since Sergiu Celibidache’s death last year. Valery Gergiev, director of the Kirov Opera and Ballet at the Marinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, was appointed the Met’s first principal guest conductor. He will lead eight productions over the five years of his contract, and the two companies will share artists and (possibly) productions. Two days after the Met announcement, a Russian government functionary criticized Gergiev for not checking with the authorities first.

James Conlon is confident enough to joke about surviving a year as principal conductor of the unsettled Paris National Opera. Hans Vonk, well-received new music director of the Saint Louis Symphony, leans toward traditional repertory, to the relief of some subscribers.

George Manahan will be conductor and music director of New York City Opera, under Paul Kellogg’s general directorship, and Robert Freeman is president of New England Conservatory. In addition to his music directorship of the Houston Symphony, Christoph Eschenbach has assumed that post at Hamburg’s NDR Symphony.

David Atherton, conductor of the Hong Kong Symphony, sees its once-thinning audience increasing after the governmental transition. Santa Barbara’s Music Academy of the West, 50 years old, appointed Marilyn Horne voice director. Pianist Marc Neikrug assumed directorship of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festiv.al, as did Eugenia Zukerman of Bravo Colorado and Eije Oue of Grand Teton—for which Libby Larson composed a new fanfare.

Omus Hirshbein exchanged his post at the National Endowment for the Arts for the presidency of Meet the Composer. The Juilliard String Quartet underwent a 50 percent change, from which it has emerged with a sound that is necessarily different but worthy of its predecessor. Robert Mann, after 50 years as the quartet’s founding first violinist, stepped down; Joel Smirnoff, its second violinist, moved to first, and the new second violinist is Ronald Copes. The Tokyo Quartet’s Mikhail Kopelman succeeded former first violinist Peter Oundjian, who became artistic director of the Caramoor Festival. (Both quartets reintroduced themselves with Schubert’s “Death and The Maiden.) Cracks in the Glass Ceiling: Agnes Grossman is the first woman to direct the 500-year-old Vienna Boys Choir; the Vienna Philharmonic auditioned its first female string player.

Stepping down: Ernest Fleischmann, managing director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic; hornist Barry Tuckwell, after 50 years.

The $180 million New Jersey Performing Arts Center, with its 2,700-seat Prudential Hall, 500-seat Victoria Theater, offices, dining and parking facilities, and highway exit is the final multi-arts facility of its magnitude to open during this millennium. The Chicago Symphony completed a three-year renovation project that involved acoustical alterations of its main auditorium, construction of a new 300-seat hall, and expanded educational facilities.

A Museum of Music, with free headphones for listening to its 4,500-instrument collection, opened in Paris’s Cité de Ia Musique. Work began on the new version of Covent Garden’s Royal Opera House, during which the company will rent other houses while selling off the old house’s seats one by one. For the San Francisco Opera, which awaits earthquake-damage repairs to War Memorial Opera House, director Lofti Mansouri was able to turn the Billy Graham Civic Center into a usable performance space. The Philadelphia and Brooklyn academies of music are both making multi-million-dollar improvements involving structure, reorganizing of spaces, and audience services.

In Manchester’s new Bridgewater Hall, the Halle Orchestra gave what it claimed to be the first performance of the original three-movement version of Mahler’s Das klagende Lied (presumably meaning that the last two movements were in their unrevised orchestral garb); its commissions for the event were from Thomas Adès and George Benjamin. After 90 years, opera returned to the restored Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, some 1,000 miles into the Brazilian rain forest. 

EDUCATION
There are two age groups to be educated: young people and adults. Conservatories report steady or increased enrollment in recent years; conductors marvel at fantastically trained soloists. So at least some young people receive musical justice. But is classical concert-going on the decline, which would mean these terrific performers have no listeners? No, say American Symphony Orchestra League figures: concert attendance drops for households of more than two. Meaning couples with children don’t go to concerts—they return after the children are grown. Violinist Joseph Silverstein, music director of the Utah Symphony and artistic adviser to the Kansas City Symphony, points to proliferating chamber-music concerts and the many cultural alternatives among which audiences now spread themselves. Isaac Stern, whose chamber-music workshop-and-concert week at Carnegie Hall is repeated almost annually, asks adults, rhetorically, if they have contacted congressmen, put music education on political platforms, volunteered in classrooms, lobbied school principals—in fact, taken action beyond worrying and subscribing. He is familiar with the sheepish silence.

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s six-movement piano concerto grosso, Peanuts Gallery, introduced to a family audience by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, was inspired by a “Peanuts” cartoon in which she herself was included. Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors reprised its “Homemade Instrument Day,” this year adding electronic instruments to staples like talking shoes.

The American Russian Youth Orchestra, ten years old, rehearses under Leon Botstein at Bard College and performs in the students’ home countries. In Russia, its director said, “The big orchestras there are fighting for their lives, and they are not looking at the next generation of talent.” Midori and Friends is that young dynamo’s foundation, which sponsors 120 yearly elementary school concerts—by Midori or her friends. The Houston Symphony made a Website for its European tour, which children from the Parker Elementary School contacted regularly, to enhance studies in music, geography, and history. In a project called “Creating Original Opera,” the Metropolitan Opera Guild teaches children- 35 to 40 per school from 500 schools worldwide— melody, rhythm, and story, and helps classes create their own operas. Harmony Helper, a device constructed by a high school junior, has lights that show if a sung pitch is matched, or an interval correct.

RETURN ENGAGEMENTS
Yale University’s Beineke Library has received, from Frederick R. Koch, a trove of manuscript scores and correspondences: Handel, Boccherini, Schumann, Liszt, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns, Bizet, Hahn, Satie, Wolf, Mascagni, Puccini, Leoncavallo, Respighi, Falla, Strauss, Stravinsky, Walton, Wagner, Verdi, Offenbach, Franck, Debussy, Ravel, and Poulenc are but some of the composers.

Mozart is not among them, but in Hamburg, University of Northern Iowa professor David J. Buch turned up two operas that Mozart had at least a hand in during his last year of life, and which shed light on his approach to The Magic Flute. Another significant collection of Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach, feared destroyed in World War II, is now on exhibit in Krakow. Magic or not, the flute may be as old as Neanderthals: a bear’s femur bone with aligned holes, found in a Slovenian cave, suggests that conscious music-making dates back well over 40,000 years.

The adventurous Leon Botstein unearthed a 1930s Nazi-approved oratorio, The Book with Seven Seals by Franz Schmidt, and led a strong performance with the American Symphony Orchestra and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir. International Piano Archives, in Maryland, has received the Anderson collection of 8,000 recordings made between 1887 and the 1950s.

“WHAT CAN YOU SAY?”
Shine, a true-story film about a mentally and emotionally impaired pianist’s struggle to master Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, caused a sensation in the music industry when it caught on with the elusive “larger audience.” Recordings of the Concerto, referred to as “Rach 3,” have been, in store parlance, walking off the shelves. The Philips label promptly released “Shine: The Complete Classics,” including all the classical music in the film (omitting what was composed for it, which most buyers won’t miss). When Geoffrey Rush, who played the role of the gifted but demented David Helfgott, won the Oscar for best actor, the pick-up orchestra played “Rach 3” in a pop arrangement.

Capitalizing on the film’s success, promoters scheduled an international concert tour for Helfgott, during which it quickly became apparent that, though good-natured, he is not prepared to play much of anything. Critics and public alike were embarrassed; Michael Walsh expressed relief that his retirement as Time magazine critic came just before he had to review Helfgott’s performance.

Shine’s success sparked new cinematic efforts: expect Master Class, a movie of Terrence McNally’s Maria Callas play (Faye Dunaway will star), The Magic Flute, Tristan and Isolde, and The Red Violin, which traces the path of a blood-varnished instrument over three centuries. The score is by John Corigliano, the playing by Joshua Bell.

Because viola playing necessitates a distorted body position, there now exists an ergonomic viola called the Pellegrina, designed by David Rivinus, whose unconventional body helps its player sit straight and not risk eventual injuries. Conductors in rehearsal have been spotted doing double-takes, and viola jokes have new, if unneeded, life.

Twenty-one valuable violins, including two Strads and a Guarneri, will be loaned to young German musicians as competition prizes. Whether they are owned by eastern or western Germany, and who competes to use them, is currently in dispute. And 70 years after Puccini’s death, his estate has been settled in favor of his illegitimate granddaughter.

AWARDS, DESSERTS
Pulitzer prizes were awarded to Tim Page for his wide-ranging music criticism, and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis for his jazz oratorio, Blood on the Fields. Jon Nakamatsu, an American pianist, won the Van Cliburn competition. Soprano Kelley Nassief became a Leonard Bernstein Jerusalem Laureate, and mezzo Marguerite Krull earned the Marian Anderson Award. In Athens, Steven Lipsitt, associate conductor of the Boston Classical Orchestra, won the first Dimitri Mitropoulos Competition, and the first Dallas Organ Competition winner was S. Wayne Foster.

Six-figure NEA grants—while they last—went to the Metropolitan Opera Association for five new productions, Brooklyn Academy of Music’s “Next Wave Festival ,” Chicago Lyric Opera for Anthony Davis’s opera Amistad, and Philadelphia’s American Music Theater Festival for the creation of a multi-disciplinary work. Avery Fisher Career grants were awarded to pianists Mia Chung and Orli Shaham, violinist Tamaki Kawakubo, and violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama.

MILESTONES
It is the centennial of Henry Cowell; he and his student Lou Harrison (alive and full of energy at 80), were variously the subjects of concerts and seminars, including Juilliard’s Focus! Festival, and events at Lincoln Center, Rutgers University, and the 92nd St. Y. Marian Anderson’s centennial was honored in Carnegie Hall, with performances by well-known singers and recorded recital excerpts, notably one from her 1939 Lincoln Memorial appearance. Joseph Machlis, musicologist and author of the multi-reprinted The Enjoyment of Music, is 90; Edward Downes, who stepped down after 56 years as Metropolitan Opera radio quizmaster, is 85, as is Norman Dello Joio; Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, at 80, is much decorated despite her cloudy wartime affiliations; Dorothy DeLay, violin teacher to the famous, is also 80; flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal is 75, as is György Ligeti, to whom the Los Angeles Philharmonic offered a four-concert tribute. Seventy this year are Carlisle Floyd, Kurt Masur, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Joan Sutherland; Hildegard Behrens, David Del Tredici, and Philip Glass are 60.

OBITUARIES
In 1997, the music world recorded the loss of composers Conlon Nancarrow, Hugo Weisgall, Tashiro Mayuzumi, Berthold Goldschmidt, and Ross Lee Finney; conductors Georg Solti, Newell Jenkins, Antonio de Almeida, Herbert Zipper, and Beatrice Brown; pianists Sviatoslav Richter, Ariel Rubstein, and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (late 1996); violinists Joseph Fuchs, Jascha Brodsky, and Sándor Végh; violists William Lincer and Walter Trampler; cellist Daniel Saidenberg; flutist Samuel Baron; guitarist Narciso Yepes; sopranos Ljuba Welitsch, Helen Jepson, Kaaren Erickson, and Lois Marshall; tenors Charles Bressler, and Seth McCoy; baritone William Metcalf; librettist Myfanwy Piper; opera managing directors Rudolf Bing and Ardis Krainik; musicologist Eric Fenby; and publicist Elizabeth (Bette) Snapp.

Leslie Kandell is music critic for the New Jersey edition of The New York Times. She also writes for The Berkshire Eagle and other newspapers. She contributes to Opera News, American Record Guide, and Stagebill.