Gil Rose told BMInt that his intention was very much to explore American opera. “It’s a wider area than a lot of people think, both in this century and the one we just got through. I am hopeful that it will work for us. Everything will be on the table. I want to identify the opera community up there and see what happens. This is a test case,” he added, “and a pretty good one, too, I think.”

Chapman added, “We are not trying to be Glimmerglass or Santa Fe, but chamber opera is something we can do in the Monadnock region. Frankly, given the resources available at this time, we weren’t going to attempt Antony and Cleopatra! We will always try to keep the range that Bolle envisioned, but we also want to have an American focus.”

But vocal music will not be limited to opera; Sanford Sylvan, whose career began in Boston but has blossomed into world-wide performances and a Grammy Award, will venture north for Schubert’s Winterreise on Aug. 4 at the Peterborough Town House.

Chapman was asked how he managed to snag Rose. (They both worked for seven years with Opera Boston.) “Gil got in touch with me. I would say, he was curious, and the more we talked, the more we thought it might be a fit. And it certainly fit into his schedule, that is, as it was last year. No one had any inkling, of course, that Opera Boston would go away, but [joining us] would complement things he could do neither at BMOP nor at Opera Boston. Gil has a wide range of interests and talents. Jim Bolle is a tough act to follow, but I think Gil can do it.” Not insignificant is that the strategic assessment undertaken by the board in 2010 — before Chapman was hired —“identified opera as something people missed,” he said. And at the retreat, held after he was hired, “more of that came up.”

Some announced players for the upcoming season are very familiar names, longtime performers at Monadnock, like Rafael Popper-Keiser, Maddalena, Gabriela Diaz… so Chapman was ask how many are old-timers, how many new. He replied that the Monadnock Quartet, which will make its debut, is made up of Popper-Keiser and Diaz with two newcomers, Charles Dimmick and Wenting Kang. “Between the fact that James Maddalena lives here and Frank Kelley spends time at Apple Hill, it is a natural. We have some other musicians who have been with Monadnock who will be returning,” Chapman added, “to be part of the Monadnock Players. We will populate our website as those contracts come in. We want to keep a nice mixture of some of the wonderful artists we have had in the past and to bring in some new artists so there’s always a freshness to [our programs].”

The focus on American music starts the season on Friday, July 6, at the Peterborough Town House, when the Monadnock Sinfonietta performs music commissioned by Martha Graham: Norman Dello Joio’s Diversion of Angels, Paul Hindemith’s Herodiad, Huang Ro’s Chamber Concerto No. 4, “Confluence,” and the complete original ballet of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring.

Many of the most intriguing concerts are those that are free and take place in the local community churches, a tradition Monadnock Music is committed to continue. The concert on July 8, in the historic town of Harrisville, includes three compositions by Thomson, Portraits for Violin Alone, In a Bird Cage for Solo Cello, and Sonata for Flute Alone, along with String Trio No. 2 by Max Reger and Persian Folk Songs Set #9 by Reza Vali. On Sunday, July 22, at the Francestown Old Meeting House in the center of its bucolic town green, Monadnock Players will offer pieces by Boston’s Michael Gandolfi, Gunther Schuller, and John Harbison, along with Mozart, Villa-Lobos, and Barber. Irina Muresanu, well known to Boston-area audiences, will play at the Deering Community Church on July 11, with her regular accompanist Rob Auler. Another concert of note is that of the Monadnock Players on July 15 at the Wilton Center Unitarian Church, to include besides the Beethoven Sonata in F Major for Horn and Piano, music of Arnold Bax, George Antheil, and Stjepan Sulek. Hardly average fare.

There are fewer ticketed concerts at the Peterborough Town House than in former years. Asked why the season ending is so early when it used to run to mid- to late-August, Chapman answered, “We normally would end later, but Gil has a conducting engagement out West, and we have a housing arrangement that ends on August 12. The season is still six weeks,” he pointed out, “which is what we have done from the first. There are fewer concerts,” he admitted, “but we are investing more in each concert.”

The odyssey from the Boston area up Rt. 119 to West Townsend, then up Rts. 124 and 123 to Peterborough, to an evening concert and back again in mostly pitch black night, is always an adventure. But this writer also is looking forward to an old Sunday-afternoon ritual in the Monadnock region: arriving in one of these small towns in time to enjoy a picnic before (or after) one of the Sunday concerts, eating beside the old mills, or in front of the 19th-century long row of wooden stalls for parking carriages, or in the center of a town green on a hill, to enjoy a concert in such bucolic settings.

This large body of sacred composition, Ross contends, has a great deal of surface diversity. “But underneath, there is the common urge to present sounds as ‘other-worldly,’ with sacred connotations,” Ross stressed, “and the ability to unsettle us is why the compositions endure.”

Implicit in his comments was the notion that 20th-century dissonance is unsettling to many audiences. As music historians are wont to do these days, he stressed that modern dissonant music began with compositions listeners are comfortable with — without suspecting that they contain the germs that continued to develop into the 20th century: such composers as Wagner, and earlier, Liszt, who were the precursors of the Modernist impulse. Ross, in an example of a section of Parsifal, Act 3, called it “beyond Romanticism, with hazy dissonances, opening the door to 20th-century’s thrilling ambiguity, and quoted Arthur Symons: “It [Parsifal] is the unsatisfied idea of a kind of flesh of the spirit,” which had such an influence on Debussy in Pelléas and Melisande, and even on Satie, who used six-note chords, stacked in fourths and tritones. In these compositions, the non-tonal harmonies became “a vision of absolute ‘otherness.’”

Schoenberg’s Die Jakobsleiter (Jacob’s Ladder) starts with a six-note base, adding six other pitches cumulatively. A similar hexachord is used in his Moses und Aron, “representing the unrepresentable — a gaping-hole feeling.”

Stravinsky came from a culture (Russia) with a strong mystical urge, which spread throughout Europe at the time, Ross noted. The Rite of Spring is really an “adoration” of the earth — its true title, “Holy Spring”  — with a key moment reminiscent of a culture when the eldest villager is brought to the center of the village to kiss the earth.  And Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms is one of his most imposing compositions, Ross said, illustrating it with “Laudate Dominum” from the end of Psalm 150, and the hushed coda, which could be described, in words borrowed from Satie’s Le Fils des étoiles, as “white, immobile, pale, hieratic.”

Asked during the question-and-answer period why he had not focused on music written for church services, Ross retorted, “I am interested in the more surprising.” Such compositions meant or commissioned for services, he explained, fall into a narrower stylistic compass, and would not encourage a composer’s “wild speculation.”

To the astonishment of many in the audience, Ross places John Cage among the spiritualist composers of the 20th century. Is his famous composition, 4’33” (a composition of complete silence from instruments) a satire? Is it philosophical? or is it a silent prayer?, Ross asked. Cage was known to have read many varied religious texts and was especially drawn to Buddhism, and this is reflected in his music, and in his famous quote, “Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation.” Ross illustrated this with Cage’s Ryoanji, named after one of the most famous of Japan’s temple gardens, one noted for contemplation. (Seemingly simple, the garden, achingly aesthetically tranquil, is powerfully inducive to contemplation.)

Morton Feldman led a “quiet protest against self-important noise”; his Rothko Chapel, like the artist on whose work the composition is based, opened “contemplative spaces.” Stockhausen was a “wild man,” a Catholic into astrology; Ligeti was Jewish, but wrote Lux Aeterna, with its great number of vocal subdivisions signifying supplicants; Ross’s similar example was the Kyrie from Ligeti’s Requiem. And there are Penderecki, Pärt, Tavener, Glass, Reich,…

Ross ended his lecture, “of course, with Messiaen,” a composer who did not “shy away from the darkness of dissonance, in order to instill in us the fear of God. His music is eerie to religious ends. ..” He makes a major triad sound different, giving it a “sense of awe.”  Ross quoted the Messiaen St Francis of Assisi libretto:  “God dazzles us by an excess of truth; music carries us to God in default of truth.”

Music demands our attention, Ross intimated. Just to be a comforting background for us to wind down is not so valid. Sometimes we need to step back, as with the music of Russian contemporary composer Gubaidulina, and “contemplate it from a distance.”

Responding to the idea of composers being influenced by music from precursors, Ross opined, “If a composer has a personality, all [earlier influences] fall away. Britten, he noted, “imprinted himself.”

W. H. Auden, Ross told the rapt audience, once said he had never seen God, but once or twice, he had heard him. Immaterial, evidently at least to Ross, and ultimately by the audience, is in what situations Auden heard this voice.

Alex Ross supplied the Intelligencer with the complete list of excerpts he presented:
Frank Martin, Agnus Dei from Mass for Double Choir
Janáček, Agnece Bozij from Glagolitic Mass
Salvatore Martirano, Agnus Dei from Mass
Britten, Agnus Dei from War Requiem
Bernstein Agnus Dei from Mass
Wagner, Prelude to Act III of Parsifal
Satie, Le Fils des étoiles
Schoenberg, beginning of Die Jakobsleiter
Schoenberg, beginning of Moses und Aron
Stravinsky, Adoration of the Earth from The Rite of Spring
Stravinsky, Psalm 150 from Symphony of Psalms
Cage, Ryoanji
Feldman, Rothko Chapel
Stockhausen, Gesang der Jünglinge
Ligeti, Requiem
Penderecki, Utrenja II: The Resurrection of Chris
Ustvolskaya, Composition II, “Dies Irae”
Pärt, Credo
Pärt, Da Pacem Domine
Messiaen, from Act II of Saint François d’Assise
Messiaen, Zion Park from Des Canyons aux étoiles

Alex Ross in Naples

Although Lent for 2012 will have passed, the last lecture of this year’s Price Lenten Lecture Series, funded by the will of an 18th-century Boston cabinetmaker, print-seller, and sometime organist, William Price, will occur nine days after Easter. Alex Ross, classical music writer for The New Yorker and author of the highly acclaimed The Rest is Noise, about 20th-century music, will give a lecture, “Sacred Music of the 20th Century” at Trinity Church in Copley Square on April 17^th at 6 pm.

Ross’s return to Boston (he was Class of 1990 at Harvard) features a lecture on a subject he first explored during his undergraduate years as a member of the staff at WHRB (“The Network”). Members of the WHRB cult audience may remember Ross; he planned its classical music programming.

WHRB President David Elliott reminisced about Ross, “He had a program on Sunday afternoons, ‘Music since 1900,’ a title he took from a book by Nicholas Slonimsky — Alex’s tribute to him, to use the title.  He explored all of 20th-century music in a way that was enlightening to our audience. Music they otherwise might not have heard, but if they did, it approached from a point of view that they otherwise might not have thought about. In his senior year, May 1990, he produced a major 60-hour orgy of Mahler and the fin-de-siècle, presenting all of Mahler’s music in chronological order [as orgies usually do] with music of other composers interspersed, to show their influences upon him and his on others. A phenomenal undertaking, worthy of thesis credit.”

Ross planned some of these programs with James C. S. Liu, M.D., a Boston internist (and a BMInt reviewer), who was a year ahead of him at Harvard.

“Pretty much everybody recognized that Alex was special from the beginning,” Liu said. “Harvard is full of smart, talented people, but Alex was easily one of the smartest people I’d met in my four years there. He was definitely one of the most gifted writers as well; even in college, his best writing could warp your perception of reality in the same way that any great artist does. We ultimately didn’t completely see eye to eye on things — he was more of the rebellious Young Turk, looking for creative new ways to bend and break the established rules.”

The “rebellious Young Turk” quality in Ross just got him the highly coveted Belmont Prize from Munich’s Forberg-Schneider Foundation. The prize, according to its mission, “honors innovation, daring, and courage, but nothing that prolongs the status quo. Innovations proceed from the arts; art patronage can only help to sustain them a few steps along the way…. But Belmont is also a token of admiration for Arnold Schoenberg, who declared war on empty pathos and embarrassing conventions in his protean artistic creations and forms of expression: ‘The heart must reside within the domain of the brain.’”

Trinity Church in the City of Boston (Copley Square), has an interesting music history. A staple of Christmas music, O  little town of Bethlehem, was composed by Phillips Brooks, rector of Trinity from 1869 until 1891. The Rev. Theodore Parker Ferris, rector from 1942 until his death in 1972, who took lessons from Nadia Boulanger when she was in Cambridge during World War II, also composed a church hymn, though it has never achieved the stature of his predecessor and in fact was omitted from the most recent American Episcopal hymnal.

Price, after whom the series is named, played the organ at King’s Chapel for a short time after he arrived in Boston, before his allegiances switched to the North Church, and then Trinity Church, where he was a member of the original Vestry and building committee —  and part-time organist. At his death, Price left a substantial amount in his will that was fought over by both King’s Chapel and Trinity Church. The courts decided that the fund would be administered by Trinity but that the income from the trust would be split equally between the two parishes — even after King’s Chapel renounced Episcopalism for Unitarianism following the American Revolution. The legacy has grown over the years to be substantial.

Many well-known organists have served Trinity, but the reception to more adventurous or modern music often has been chilly to ice-cold. When one 20th-century organist attempted to play more obscure music from the late Renaissance, it was not well received and he decamped. Another organist was told to limit himself to “statured composers — not that atonal crap.” That era has passed, and now organists have been able to perform a wider variety of music, including such 20th-century composers as Judith Weir, Tavener, and Judith Bingham, whose Clouded Heaven Emeritus Director of Music and Organist Brian E. Jones (and also a BMInt reviewer) included a few years ago on the church’s choir tour of Europe.

Ross explained to BMInt, “When I was working on the Messiaen chapter of my book The Rest Is Noise, it struck me that the 20th century had produced an extraordinary corpus of sacred music—a body of work perhaps more significant, collectively, than the equivalent production in the 19th century…. From the beginning [of the 20th century], the avant-garde had a mystical urge. One could even regard The Rite of Spring as a religious work; the Russian title is, after all, more accurately translated as ‘Holy Spring.’”

“In addition to the above, I will talk about John Cage, whose spiritual path is difficult to describe briefly but seems essential to his development as a composer. When you place it in the proper cultural context, Cage’s famous “silent piece” 4’33″ is very obviously not any kind of prank or satire but a work of meditative intensity. Of course, in the twentieth century the notion of what is “religious” or “spiritual” or “mystical” grows confusingly vague; …”

Asked if he planned to mention any composers less well known to the general public or any current American ones like Dan Pinkham, Hilary Tann, or Weir, Ross responded, “Alas, not everyone knows the work of the Swiss master Frank Martin; I will play the Agnus Dei from his Mass for Double Choir. I will also give listeners a taste of the hard-edged religiosity of Galina Ustvolskaya — radically different in style from the so-called “Mystic Minimalism” that has gained popularity in recent decades. One theme I wish to trace is the power of dissonance to suggest not merely earthly terrors and tragedies but also intimations of the sublime and the sacred. … I might play a selection from the haunting new Requiem of the young American composer Gregory Spears.

“This topic is immensely broad, and I can hope to offer, at most, a few glimpses, a few hints, a few beginnings. Messiaen will of course have the final word.”

So the question occurs to this long-time (since 1945) parishioner: is the intent of this lecture to foster more understanding, and therefore interest, in hearing more 20th-century sacred music at Trinity? A spirited lecture by Ross should make many converts.

The lecture, in the nave of the church, is free and open to the public.

Bettina A. Norton, executive editor of BMInt, was appointed first archivist of Trinity Church in 1970 by the Rev. Theodore Parker Ferris and served until 1986. She also wrote part of and edited Trinity Church: The Story of an Episcopal Parish in the City of Boston (1978) and ran a five-lecture series, “Mission vs. Museum?” at the Boston Public Library and Trinity Church in 1984/5.

Chancel of Holy Cross Cathedral (HCC photo)

Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem was commissioned for the consecration in 1962 of England’s new Coventry Cathedral, the original of which was bombed to a shell by the Luftwaffe during World War II. But the source of the libretto recalled World War I, the horrible “war to end all wars.” The text intersperses the timeless words of the Latin Mass for the Dead with the poetry of Wilfred Owen, a World War I British soldier who was killed a week before the Armistice.

This upcoming concert, a year in the planning, is hardly a new collaboration. The Chorus pro Musica and New England Philharmonic have performed together for each of the three years since Betsy Burleigh became director of one of Boston’s most prestigious choruses. As a graduate student at NEC, she took Pittman’s class in orchestral conducting. The Providence Singers came into the picture when Burleigh, who knew that larger forces were needed, became director of the group last summer.  Soloists are tenor Frank Kelley, baritone Sumner Thompson, and soprano Sarah Pelletier. The Boston Children’s Chorus, with its outstanding position in the Boston community, was a natural for the youth choral sections of the Requiem. In all, the performance will have more than 300 orchestral musicians and singers. Very few places can accommodate that large a group, but the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston’s South End fits the bill.

The New England Philharmonic created the monumental plan for these concerts in acknowledgement of its 35 years of presenting recognizably well programmed concerts in greater Boston. Pittman explained, “For each anniversary we try to find a piece; we have done Wozzeck on our 30^th anniversary, Bluebeard’s Castle on our 25^th. Britten’s War Requiem is widely admired and seemed appropriate at this time.”

The Boston Children’s Chorus, singing antiphonally, will be in the choir loft at the back of cathedral. The Cathedral’s original 1875 organ, however, is at the wrong pitch, Pittman noted.  “So we have hired two men to deliver a portative up a spiral staircase two stories high. Not only that, but because we are borrowing the instrument, it has to be carried in and out again for each performance. Let’s hope these two same guys show up each time!”

 Pittman said of the  War Requiem, “I think first of all, of course, it is great work, and musically speaking, so unusual in combining in a brilliant way the traditional Latin Requiem with poetry of Wilfred Owen,” set to music by a steadfastly pacifist composer.

“The baritone and tenor are always accompanied by a chamber orchestra; the soprano always sings in Latin with the full orchestra,” Pittman explained, “and the children’s choir is off on its own, accompanied by its own organ.”

The “Dies Irae,” the second movement, is the longest of the six movements, Pittman pointed out. “It has so many parts that it reminds me a bit of the finales of Mozart’s operas. Extraordinary. His musical constructions begin with an aria that moves without a break to a duet or a trio with completely different music that still connects, often in a different tempo and different key, then to an ensemble of four people — new musical material without a break.

“The Britten ‘Dies Irae’ is the same way, starting off with brass fanfares, a demonic fanfare from a chorus in 7/4, then more fanfare, interrupted by the baritone singing ‘Bugles sang’; but this is mournful, about the tragedy of soldiers dying. That leads to the section with the soprano and full orchestra, measured and lyrical, then to a militaristic, boisterous duet by tenor and baritone, once again with chamber orchestra, talking about their defiance of death…  Then, once again, a very slow, lyrical section for the women of the chorus with full orchestra, then a faster section for just the men… The basses sing militaristically, ‘Confutatis maledictis,’ and the tenors sing lyrically against it, ‘Oro supplex’, combined!  The baritone with chamber orchestra sings of slowly lifting up “long black arm” – a canon, each phrase interspersed with a trumpet fanfare…. The 7/4 with trumpets and chorus comes back, and then slows down into a ‘Lacrimosa’ with chorus and soprano, quite mournful, followed once again with the tenor singing of moving a dying soldier into the sunlight; this is interspersed with ‘Lacrimosa.’ The ‘Dies Irae’ ends with ‘Pie Jesu Domine’ from the a cappella chorus.”

The 1930s in Britain were not easy years  for a committed pacifist. Britten’s treatment of war, tempered by the poetry of Wilfred Owen, two world wars, and the Cold War gloom of nuclear arms, was not celebratory.  “When you hear Britten’s music — if you really hear it, not just listen to it superficially,” said Leonard Bernstein, “you become aware of something very dark. There are gears that are grinding and not quite meshing. And they make a great pain.  It was a difficult and lonely time.”

Burleigh is thrilled to be part of this performance. “When I was a student in Boston, I heard it [The War Requiem] live at the BSO. Britten had an extraordinary ability to capture both the drama and psychology in this setting, for an extremely expressive, extremely powerful work. Over the years, as I have been working with choruses, I have never been part of it. I thought, it is not going to happen in my lifetime.”

There will be a repeat performance on March 4^th at 3:30 pm at Providence’s Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul.

Holy Cross Cathedral nave (HCC photo)

The atmosphere at Monadnock Music, founded in 1966 by James Bolle, has seemed to visitors very much like “Our Town.” Gilbert stressed that she and Bagg, who have over 20 years of association with Monadnock Music between them, are “going right back to the grassroots — trying to engage as many people as we can, in as many ways with music… for our beautiful, humble, rural Monadnock Region.”

Gil Rose (BMOP file photo)

Opera Boston, on the other hand, which Rose joined in 2003, had devoted itself to becoming a main-stream opera destination. Will Chapman was in charge of development there, before becoming executive director of Monadnock Music last June, so he and Rose had worked together for seven years.

Chapman stresses, however, that not only will the mission of Monadnock Music — to “deepen a sense of community by means of diverse classical programming”— remain, but it will return to “what it used to do — a lot of early music, opera, orchestral music, concerti, vocal recitals, piano recitals, opera on stage, … Jim Bolle did Don Giovanni in 1980 with [Peter] Sellars, [James] Maddalena, at the Palace Theatre in Manchester. We have this legacy. I think Gil can do justice to it.”

Bagg and Gilbert, drawing upon over 100 letters they received after their dismissal, have set up a core group of supporters — prominent among them Monadnock-region residents Miki Osgood and Linda Harris and composer Melinda Wagner — and already have called upon some of the Monadnock performing regulars.

“Everyone is delighted to be asked,” asserted Gilbert. “The musicians are giving generously of their time. We are paying them, but a modest amount. We are having to start small; it is a pay-as-you-go sort of festival. … People have to feel they are part of the organization, so we are engaging a lot of volunteers to be working for us and with us.” She and Bagg, she says, plan to go to Monadnock three or four day a month, “much more starting in May.”

Rose will continue programming of Boston Modern Opera Project in the Boston area during the regular concert season but will be able to go to Monadnock for meetings with its staff with relative ease. He is well known in the Boston area for his commitment to contemporary music with his innovative, imaginative programming for BMOP, which he founded in 1996, and which has received many favorable notices and several Grammy nominations. He has featured the music of Louis Andriessen, Derek Bermel, John Cage, Robert Erickson, Lukas Foss, Charles Fussell, Michael Gandolfi, John Harbison, Lee Hyla, David Lang, Tod Machover, Steven Mackey, Steven Paulus, David Rakowski, Bernard Rands, George Rochberg, Elena Ruehr, Gunther Schuller, Reza Vali, and Evan Ziporyn. Two seasons ago, Rose entertained audiences at Jordan Hall with “bad boy” George Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique, a recording of which, according to Rose, is coming out this summer.

Although he used to play clarinet, he “makes no claims to do it now.” A Tanglewood Fellow in 1994-1995, he has conducted the American Composers Orchestra, Warsaw Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra of the Ukraine, (et alii) and he has made several appearances with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players.

Jonathan Bagg (file photo)

Bagg, a professor at Duke University, has been a member of the Ciompi String Quartet for 25 years, in a career that included hundreds of concerts across the U.S. and abroad, in Europe, China, Israel, and South America, as well as over a dozen recordings. American Record Guide hailed him as “an excellent violist who approaches the music with intelligence, passion, and clarity.”

Gilbert, a flutist, joined Monadnock Music in 1995. She has performed around the world as chamber musician, soloist, recitalist and guest lecturer in addition to founding and performing with Aureole, a trio comprised of flute, viola and harp.

On the face, it does not seem that the two groups will interfere with each other, at least for a while.

Electric Earth’s concerts have been planned so that five precede MM’s season: the first in July is mid-week, and the ones for August and September are after MM’s season. At the First Church in Jaffrey Center, there will be two concerts: on February 27, music from Dowland to Rorem with guitar, flute, violin, piano, and soprano then Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata played by Rieko Aizawa, piano; and on April 1, the Ciompi Quartet, in music of Mozart, Beethoven, Foote, and Dvorák. In early May there will be a fund-raising evening of Kurt Weil with Lauren Flanigan, soprano. A new chamber group, the Horszowski Trio, will make its debut in New Hampshire with two concerts, one on June 14 with music of Dvorák and Haydn (so far), and on June 16, with Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Brahms. On July 17, the Borromeo Quartet will appear in a concert preceded by George Gopen, delivering T. S. Eliot’s masterpiece “Four Quartets,” a work inspired by Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 132. Projected for late August, when the MM season is over, is “Twilight of the Romantics,” German Romanticism from Brahms’s early symphonic Serenade to Wagner’s only song cycle, performed by a chamber ensemble under German conductor Andreas Delfts; and in September, Choreographer Cherylyn Lavagnino and her modern ballet dancers and photographer Betsy Weis partner with Music for the Mountain musicians for a multi-faceted reflection on Debussy’s Sonata for flute, viola and harp and Rameau’s Pièces de Clavecin.

Laura Gilbert (file photo)

Rose’s duties — spelled out by Monadnock’s Executive Director Will Chapman (“season programming, engaging artists, conducting on occasion, and helping to design and oversee education and outreach programs, among other duties”) — begin with this summer season. They do include the free community concerts at different venues, so Rose plans to visit them all, to get “my feet on the ground for how much we can do on the budget.“I want to do music that can be sacred to the venues,  like an Episcopal church he visited that had an “old-world early-music feel” that is suitable to chamber or choral music. Asked if he plans to use the same musicians long affiliated w/ MM, he responded, “Yes, absolutely”; and he wants to “recapture ideas that Bolle had… but it depends on how fast we can raise the money.”

Electric Earth has more work ahead of it than the already-established Monadnock Music. Bagg and Gilbert have plans to do “serious fundraising. … particularly coming off such an experience during the last year, when collaborative discussion deteriorated, we want to go extremely slowly. We want people to see what we are about. People who would be good board will emerge.”

Where there may be potential conflict is in out-reach programs, which are so important to organizations for attracting funds. Monadnock Music has an impressive track record with its program, “Lend an Ear.” To be determined is how both groups will succeed.

Chapman, asked if there will be some drawing away by Electric Earth from Monadnock Music’s traditional base, said “I don’t think it is going to have any bearing on anything at all. As to why the new group was formed, he said, “Of course, they have to do it out of love. Musicians do not do what they do out of love for money. On average.”

Editor’s Note: BMInt published an earlier article on changes in Monadnock Music here.

Bettina A. Norton is a retired museum professional. She has published widely in her field, American historical prints, and has been attending classical music concerts since the waning years of World War II.

“Over the years, we have never had a big loss; we have raised enough money,” explained Bulger. “Unfortunately, in the last fiscal year that ended in July, we had the biggest budget deficit in our history — over $200,000. Normally, we have an end-of-the-year campaign which in this year did not go well. Some donors just didn’t come through.”

Also, Bulger said, a donation from a major foundation, which had been a major regular supporter, was denied this year. Boston Musical Intelligencer was told that it is believed to have been a company that moved some of its facilities and therefore some of its allegiances, to New Hampshire. That seems to spell Fidelity.

According to another reliable source, however, that is not the full picture. Special funding last year in two cases came as a one-time extra gift so that the new director could come on board with no debt. For both donors, those gifts were “emergency, supplemental,” and “in no way had the donors later withdrawn their regular  support.”

Opera Boston has its origins in the Boston Academy of Music “re-founded” by Richard Conrad in 1980. He was ousted in 2003, and Carole Charnow, who had run Glimmerglass Opera, was hired with the mandate to revivify Conrad’s organization. The name was changed to Opera Boston, Gil Rose was hired as artistic director, and a strong board was developed under the chair of Bulger. Under Charnnow’s leadership, Opera Boston had a spectacular growth. When she left in the summer of 2010 to become director of the Children’s Museum, Lesley Koenig was hired as general director, but never got the chance to lead.

Repertoire under Charnow and Rose has been adventurous and challenging; some productions were successful, some less so. BMInt, since its inception in the fall of 2009, has reviewed eight:

Although there was “bel canto in abbondanza at Opera Boston’s production of Rossini’s Tancredi  in the fall of 2009,” the review noted, the staging was “park and bark.” In March 2010, “Opera Boston now has to its credit Boston’s first operatic world premiere in two decades, Zhou Long’s attractively scored Madame White Snake, … a huge undertaking, not least in diplomacy and marketing, and if the work finally proved interesting rather than deeply memorable, it was a worthwhile effort, well led by Music Director Gil Rose.” Offenbach’s La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, reviewed in May, 2010, was a “generally satisfying and wholly entertaining performance successfully [that] avoided the pit-and pratfalls often associated with this genre.” Cardillac, reviewed in February 2011, “is a troublesome work, a richly kaleidoscopic, multi-layered feast of the fraught that requires equally varied music that the young Hindemith was unable to deliver.” Maria Padilla, reviewed in May 2011, “is a troubled work, riddled with beautiful music and a single damning flaw — an opera whose entire dramatic impetus is a setup for a tragedy that never occurs.” For Beethhoven’s Fidelio, reviewed on October 22, the audience “was treated to some superb singing and playing. The cast was excellent throughout,…” and Béatrice et Bénédict  had many fine elements, although “[a] work like this, however, needs a bit more daring for it fully to come to life.”

Yet that opera left Opera Boston with a $30,000 shortfall. The production slated for this coming February, Tippett’s Midsummer Marriage, was to have cost $500,000. “We just didn’t see enough money coming in to pay the bills,” Bulger said.

Paul Buttenwieser, whose Catherine and Paul Buttenwieser Foundation has been a major supporter of the opera company “under its different incarnations since the beginning,” had not yet learned of the closure when contacted. “I’m saddened by the loss of this wonderful company,” he stated.

Neither the current General Director Lesley Koenig, nor Artistic Director Gil Rose could be reached for comment.

In the closing days of this holiday season, Opera Boston is offering its final presentation, Mozart’s Bastien und Bastienne, featuring some of the company’s younger singers, for First Night on December 31.

Santa Sabina interior

Composer Andrew Norman finds in “the rhythm of the brownstones” —  the stoops, the windows, and the doors that line the streets where he lives in Brooklyn — “music that is just waiting to be written.”

Boston Modern Opera Project (BMOP) had just announced that this young gifted artist will be the Music Alive Composer-in-Residence for two years, from now until 2013. His Air: Concerto for Theremin (2011), with Dalit Warshaw on theremin, will be performed at the January 27 concert at Jordan Hall. BMOP, the adventurous Boston music group, was one of five orchestras nationwide selected for an extended residency under a program of Meet the Composer and the American Symphony Orchestra League.

The young Norman (he is 32), who has already been a fellow in two European academies of music and has received a number of commissions, has absorbed his life-long interest in architecture with the compositional techniques to create his style — or, more accurately, multitude of styles.

Composer Andrew Norman (Christian Steiner photo)

“My music comes out differently every time. Musically speaking, a part of me is super-interested in mid-century extended techniques, Penderecki, crazy sounds. But I am also a lyric composer like Samuel Barber. A lyrical moment is something we can hold onto and remember. … We relate to lyricism because it is such a human thing. … Over the course of my life, I have been naturally inclined to be a lyrical composer, but there are other ways of approaching music. I am trying to embrace everything, an eclecticism of my music. I am interested in it as a composition tool. Sort of  Babbitt with Bernstein, or Barber with Xenakis.”

Completed work already includes three pieces for orchestra; five for chamber music with various combinations of instruments; three solo pieces, one for viola or cello and two for piano; and one vocal piece, a lullaby. His appointment as Composer-in-Residence at the Academy of Rome, in 2006-07, resulted in Companion Guide to Rome, with each of its nine movements intended to invoke the Eternal city’s lesser known architectural gems. The ninth movement, for Santa Sabina, was the only one composed while he still was in Rome and was actually played in the church. The rest of the movements — Santa Maria della Vittoria (which Norman calls “over-the-top Baroque), San Benedetto, Santa Susanna, Tempietto Bramante, St. Ivo, San Clemente, San Lorenzo Oltre Le Mure, and Santa Cecilia — were written in Berlin, where he also was a fellow at its academy. A similarly appealingly titled composition is Garden of Follies for saxophone and piano, commissioned by the Society of Composers, Inc. and ASCAP. “Follies” here, too, refers to the often extravagant architectural conceits in lavishly landscaped gardens of England, France, and Italy — subsequently imported, of course, to America. Another piece is Farnsworth: Four Portraits of a House.

Norman is a strong advocate for live performance, alluded to in his comment, “What is special about the kind of music I make is that it is live, and that this piece will only happen once. It will be there for ten minutes, and then it won’t be there any  more. And that kind of transience is really special to me, that element of chance, and surprise, that things will happen differently. This is what I find really interesting and exciting,  about writing music and about listening to live music.”

This is what Norman will be doing, and the audience will be hearing, in Boston, starting with a performance of his piece on the January 27th Jordan Hall program. His residency at BMOP will involve him in all its concerts; and he will participate in pre-concert discussions and out-reach programs.

Shop sign for Auersbachkeller in Leipzig, the tavern in which Goethe is said to have been inspired to write Faust

While BMInt’s Esteemed Leader with two assistants held down the fort for a bit over two weeks in October, your executive editor and her spouse were in London and Germany (Leipzig, Dresden, then Berlin), attending to the Nortons’ four main food groups: music, architecture, history, and politics. Boston connections could be the excuse, if one were needed, for an article on the various musical events we were fortunate to catch; but another reason, according to Lee Eiseman, is that “Publishing dispatches of European concert-going from eminent Bostonians was a tradition of BMInt’s progenitor, Dwight’s Journal of Music in ‘Diaries from Abroad’.” (An example from “Leipsic” in 1854 is  here.)  Not only are the “Musical Offerings” worth it, there still is ample evidence, in the German cities of the former Soviet bloc, of welcome reconstruction and rebirth.

The event around which we planned our entire itinerary was a concert by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado, in which pianist Marc-André Hamelin was soloist in the Szymanowski Symphony No. 4. It is a wonderful, lush piece, previously unknown to us. Hamelin’s wonderful phrasing, superb command of the keyboard, and concentration, well known to Boston audiences, swept the listener along. He played the incredibly dense score from memory (generally the case with solo pianos, but a high-in-command BSO person stated that he could recall two other performances of the Szymanowski at which the soloist used a score). As in Hamelin’s playing of Liszt, cadenzas are clean and brilliant, and the way he lets the conclusion of certain phrases fade away compels one’s concentration, too — to a sense of sublime satisfaction. He said after the concert that he and Heras-Casado worked very hard on the balance of soloist with orchestra. It showed. One does not have to take my word for it; there are four reviews in German newspapers I have seen, but this from Der Tagesspiegel encapsulated them: “The particular characteristics of the composition, a hybrid of symphony and concerto, are heightened when a pianist of Marc-André Hamelin’s caliber is in command. It is well known that given his virtuosity he favors seldom played works. In the case of Szymanowski it becomes especially clear what quality of tone production he has. …. Even in the most orgiastic moments Hamelin’s sound transcends the percussive nature of the piano and creates characteristic colors.” Perhaps the BSO can be persuaded to have this shimmering work at an upcoming concert, with Hamelin at the keyboard?

Berliner Philharmonie (1963), first major building designed by Hans Scharoun. He felt the parts of a building had to be like 'individuals in a democracy.' Its forward-thinking design met much resistance at first but now is regarded as an icon of Berlin and has become the model for many orchestra halls throughout the world. All photos by Bettina A. Norton

Both interior and exterior of the Berliner Philharmonie show Scharoun’s interest in an “aggressive articulation of parts.”

In Boston, at a WGBH recital only two weeks earlier, we had heard him play Liszt’s Fantasy and Fugue on B-A-C-H. We  heard it again in Leipzig, played formidably well by a teacher and performer, Birgitta Wollenweber, professor of piano at Academy of Music Hans Essler in Berlin, at a recital on October 16 in Mendelssohn’s well-preserved and maintained house. She included Mendelssohn, of course: Variations sérieuses in d-minor and Rondo capriccioso op. 54 (1841) as an encore. Wollenweber has cut back on recitals, she said after the concert, until her two young children are older; we hope to live long enough to hear her again.

It was a pensive moment, thinking that Mendelssohn composed these pieces at a piano in this house, where he was living at the time, only a few blocks away from Schumann. How much more effective it would be if the piano in Mendelssohn’s house were a French Erard —  one of his favorite pianos, according to Patricia Frederick, who with her husband owns the Frederick Historic Piano Collection in Ashburnham (q.v.); She said Mendelssohn also was known to have thought highly of Viennese pianos, particularly those by Conrad Graf, and English pianos; just before his death he was given a English Broadwood. The argument on the use of historic pianos for period pieces has its pros and cons, but in the houses of composers that are extant, it seems a shame that there are not pianos of whichever make they used in situ.

Mendelssohn’s study in his house in Leipzig.

Mendelssohn-Haus is a house museum that has many furnishings from the composer’s occupancy; his study demands more than a moment of silent admiration. On a few walls throughout the house are a number of his very accomplished watercolors of scenes throughout Europe. (Mendelssohn’s style was typical of the period; in fact, they have strong affinity with the style and soft colors of contemporary aquatints.)

Predictably, it would be at a recital in Leipzig where we would run across a man, who like me was toting two tomes on Bach by Christoph Wolff. (Each is two inches thick.) He, too, had chosen to fly intra-Europe on bargain RyanAir, with its crippling checked-bag weight restrictions, and was obliged to load these hefty Wolff volumes into the one allowed carry-on item. My canvas bag had to hold these along with a borrowed Blue Guide, Fodor’s, Let’s Go for England, my husband’s book on early Christian history and my large pocketbook, jammed in. And I was obliged to wear superfluous layers of clothing.

Brigitta Wollenweber at the Mendelssohn-haus. The piano is a Boesendorfer, a “brand-new, overstrung piano, with hard, heavy hammers.

The concert at the Schumann-Haus was another piano recital, by Frank Peter, a student from the Hochschule für Musik Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy who later studied in the U.S. at West Georgia State University. His homage to Schumann was with two pieces, Papillons and Kinderszenen, both written before the composer and family moved to the house on Inselstrasse in 1840. Schumann was using the Graf piano that had been given to Clara as a wedding present, Patricia Frederick said. But, again, the piano now in the house is not of the period, and the recorded music emanating from a touch-button was composed well before he moved there. Given the number of compositions between 1840 and 1843, when he was in residence and where he died, that also is a shame.

One of the many pleasures of Leipzig is that these two composers’ houses are close to each other and within a short walk from the city’s historic district, which is where one would wish to stay. We did, at Motel One (with a name like that, we had avoided it), suggested to us by Prof.

Christoph Wolff. And how right he was; it is inexpensive, sleek, no-frills but with essentials well presented and well located. Our room overlooked Nicolaskirche, one of the churches which Bach oversaw. The walls of the main lobbies of all Motel Ones began using horizontal slabs of rock composite in 2007 that are similar to those used in Rockport Music’s new Shalin Liu auditorium, and to the same good effect on acoustics. Svenja Hansen, head of design for Motel One, said it was employed to give “a natural, high-quality look”; it is a very popular element and is now one of the hotel’s “brand marks.”

Leipzig Gewandhaus, dedicated in 1981. This third Gewandhaus building, designed by Rudolf Skoda in close cooperation with then-Music Director Kurt Mazur, has 1,900 seats.

The BMInt connection secured us house seats at the Leipzig Gewandhaus for October 14. Riccardo Chailly conducted the Beethoven Fourth and Sixth, with the premiere of Upon one note  by Bruno Mantovani. This piece could never be done in a hall with muddy acoustics. It begins with tonal variations, to a middle section generally fortissimo, then the return to the one-note motif, with interest. Chailly executed lightning-fast change from militaristic march to gentle swaying of orchestral sound, fluttering his fingers to bring it home in the Beethoven 6th. The storm scene was the most dramatic I have ever heard, with piercing waves of dynamic change, followed by the first violin’s sweet, poignant motif, with the outcome that I then had to add the complete Chailly Beethoven symphony cycle CD set to that already over-stuffed, onerously heavy carry-on canvas bag on the flight back on RyanAir to London.

Dresden’s Semperoper, an architectural pastiche recalling buildings in Thomas Cole’s famous series of paintings, Course of the Empire. Originally built in 1841 to designs of Gottfried Semper, it has been destroyed twice (the second time, in WWII bombing), but was rebuilt almost identical to the 1878 building to plans entrusted by Semper to his son, Manfred.

For those who think Europeans make better audiences, there was nervous clapping after the second movement of the 4th and before the final notes of the 6th — in both cases, stopping abruptly when it was obvious it was out of place.

The Gewandhaus has a strange double standard regarding its musicians. They do not wander on stage at their own pace to sit down and tune up or practice, as they do in Boston and the States generally, but come on as a group just before the start of the concert, to applause from the audience. At the same time, the program does not list the members of the orchestra! It was explained to me that there are close to 200 members and (obviously) they do not all play on any given occasion. So why, one wonders, cannot those who are playing be listed? One reason, of courses, is that European houses do not issue separate programs for each concert; one is supposed to buy the paperback program book.  I found it annoying not to know the name for example, of the flutist, that wonderful first violinist, or the other concertmaster (duties were divided).

Interior of Dresden Semperoper.

Mendelssohn was only 26 when he became conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1835. (It was founded in 1743.) During his twelve-year tenure, he transformed it into one of the leading orchestras of Europe. By the end of the century, in 1884, the second Gewandhaus was built; this one became the model for our own Symphony Hall, built sixteen years later, but was so badly damaged in the bombing of World War II that it was finally demolished under the Communist regime in 1968. The third Gewandhaus on Augustusplatz opened on October 8, 1981; the chief architect was Rudolf Skoda, whose team worked in close cooperation with Kurt Masur, Gewandhaus music director at the time.

It had taken more than four years to build. We sat next to the board member who eagerly recounted construction of the new building which he oversaw and gave us a private tour, the success of which we promised to convey to BMInt readers. Opinions of knowledgeable Bostonians with whom I subsequently have discussed the acoustics of the Gewandhaus have varied from “muddy in the center balcony,” to “perfectly fine.” I found everything perfectly clear and audible, especially the pppps.  I love this hall, inside and out (again, some do not agree), from the interior elongated semi-circular shape of so many modern halls, with audience “behind” the orchestra — which is becoming the modern style — to a dramatic exterior that beautifully captures the building’s function.

The famous St. Thomas Church Boys Choir, established in 1212 and over which J.S. Bach presided, was not in residence, but we did hear a service on Sunday morning, October 16, that included the Bach Cantata 47, Wer sich selbst erhöet, 320, with a chamber group and Ulriche Böhme, Thomasorganist. We left before the sermon — along with the chamber musicians; our excuse was being at the Mendelssohn concert on time.

Leipzig’s Thomaskirche, where Bach served from 1723 until his death in 1750. Nothing remains of the organ he used. The nearby Bach Archive's Museum has a room that allows visitors to hear amplified individual instruments while an orchestral piece is playing.

The rebuilt concert hall that did recreate (substantially) its original was Semperoper in Dresden, our next stop. Our misfortune was to be in this city on two evenings when the hall was dark, but we were given a superb tour of the building in English, offered once every day, at 3 pm. ….

Organ in Dresden Hofkirche

At noon on that day, to the peal of bells from the magnificent Frauenkirche we rushed in to hear an organ recital, so to speak. Not enough from the organ, but plenty of speaking, both a sermon from the Lutheran minister and a long lecture on the building — in German. What information was given in the folded service program for the two musical selections? “orgelmusik”(!) The large Baroque organ case (reconstructed) is a faithful reproduction of the original damaged in World War II bombing and has an even more elaborate case than the one in the Hofkirche, the former Catholic Cathedral.  At the Hofkirche, the housing of the Silbermann organ and parts of the wind plant were also destroyed by bombs in World War II, but the pipe work had been removed and so was saved. A fairly accurate reconstruction, it is not true to the original, however, due in part to differences of opinion between conservators and organist (who prevailed).

Before Germany, we spent four days in London, where we saw Gounod’s Faust at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Verdict? The Faust, Vittorio Grigolo, should not be missed, wherever and in whatever he sings. And I don’t think we suffered much loss having Malin Byström sing in place of Angela Gheorghiou. Overall, the production, conducted by Evelino Pidó and directed by David McVicar, was a treat. And set the tone for a dinner later that week at the Auersbachtkeller — where Goethe got his inspiration — in Leipzig.

*     *     *

Non-music addendum

On our last day in Berlin, we took the bus to Checkpoint Charlie. We had not realized that this October is the 50th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall, a cataclysmic event celebrated with an in-situ street exhibition running for two sides of a long block, until the end of the month.

Tower in Berlin's Jewish Museum

1904 Sauer Organ from Berliner Dom

Mimicking the height of the original wall, billboards explaining the history — in German and English — from the Potsdam Conference to the current day were being eagerly absorbed by hundreds of people. A mock Checkpoint Charlie scene, with posts and Soviet guards, was placed in the exact spot of the original. We had a similar encounter with the end of a Communist regime when we were in Prague in May 1989, just after the break from Soviet but before the first election, when a similar exhibition of life under Soviet occupation was put up in Na Pricope, one of the city’s main streets, telling of religious persecution, World War II, lack of freedom of the press, Jan Hus, …

Then we visited the Jewish Museum. The entrance is in the 18th-century building (In England and the U.S., it would be called “Georgian”), but the main museum is approached by a long descending staircase… this mood of somber dread is maintained throughout the museum. The floor is slanted, leaving one uneasy. Two diagonal axes dramatically portray two routes: toward annihilation or exodus to another country. Most emotionally effective is the “Tower,” an enclosed space with very high walls, each slanting inward, to a hole about 50 feet above, where a little light in visible. A ladder leading up to the opening is attached to the wall — but about 15 feet above the floor. We were struck by its emotional ties to L’Orecchio di Dionisio, the famous rock formation in Syracuse, Italy, in which acoustics were so good that, purportedly, prisoners’ soft whispers could be heard by the infamous ruler.

At the airport on the way to London, we ate dinner next to a table of ten people, six emotionally or physically impaired, with four caretakers, who treated their charges with such respect and lack of condescension that we were impelled to ask the name of the facility from which they came. The Albert Schweitzer Institute, one said. These three experiences during our last day in Germany reaffirmed out faith in humanity. As did the music we were privileged to hear.

During its three years of existence, BMInt has reviewed ten concerts of Monadnock Music, of which nine were highly favorable; this period is within that of the artistic directorship of Jonathan Bagg and Laura Gilbert, who took over from its founder, composer James Bolle, in 2006. Members of BMInt’s staff also have attended many concerts, both those with admission fees and free concerts, for the past twenty years or so.

Founded by Bolle in 1967 and run by him until five years ago, Monadnock Music provides ticketed concerts, usually at the Peterborough Town House, and many free concerts throughout the summer season in neighboring communities. When Bolle retired, he hand-picked three persons to succeed him, including Bagg and Gilbert as co-artistic directors. Bagg had been affiliated with Monadnock for 27 years; Gilbert, for 18.

The first question that occurred to BMInt is why the two were let go in hopes of replacing them with someone from the Monadnock local community, as was stated, when a request for names to replace them went out to a broad community, into Connecticut. And in these days of the prominence of email communication, what is the added value of somebody local? Another question was, given the apparent success of the co-artistic directors, whether there had been any discussion with them about adjusting programs and fees, or any other issues, or whether the reasons for termination were to be found elsewhere. And general questions came to mind: would replacing the artistic directors address the main concerns of the board? Are the concerns financial? Were there other major changes being contemplated? Last and most important, would this imbroglio impair or improve the future of Monadnock Music?

“My first reaction was astonishment,” said Margaret Johnson, long-time supporter and volunteer who began and headed up the highly successful Monadnock program “Lend an Ear!” for elementary schoolchildren. “I am baffled — deeply distressed.”

Miki Osgood, former staff member in charge of special events — arrangements for practicing and accommodations for musicians, volunteer coordination, etc. — who was let go in the reorganization, noting a change of direction, fears “the uniqueness of Monadnock is being jeopardized.” Additionally, she added, “Will Chapman sent out the end-of-year appeal the week before the ax went down…. People are saying, ‘There is no way I am giving to MM with this going on.’”

This was not what the board had in mind, according to President Michael Petrovick. “We needed to make a change. The entire model for non-profits is changing, especially with what is happening with available funds. We were going to be under more and more stress. We really needed to have our staff more involved in day-today fundraising, to meet with donors, patrons, on a day-to-day basis; it wasn’t working not having [Bagg  and Gilbert] accessible.” So the decision was made to extend the net to within a 150-mile radius of Peterborough, to allow the next artistic director — and it would be only one, Petrovick stressed — “to go to meetings and social events with ease. But I don’t think anyone would have handled it the way it was portrayed….  Believe it or not, the vote [of the board] was unanimous,”  he continued,  “but someone essentially high-jacked the process. … Unfortunately, it got a life of its own.”

Bolle indicated there had been difficulties, but, he offered, “For anyone coming in, it is difficult to deal with these eccentricities at Monadnock. It is a unique organization. There was bound to be a lot of tension.”

That portrayal of a neighborhood conflict was first made public in an article by Dave Anderson in the Monadnock Ledger Transcript on October 20, in which Bagg was quoted extensively. That article is here.

Contacted about his original source, Anderson said he heard from a few people in the community. Asked if he had heard from either Bagg or Gilbert, he responded, “They did not contact us first. I called them. And they responded to my questions.”

Petrovick stated that the one thing that came out of both the strategic assessment, which the board commissioned in 2010, and the audience survey, for which participation was solicited at each concert this past summer, “was not against the artistic directors. … The underlying message was that there was too much of them as performing artists and that concerts were featuring too much music in which they participated, or music played by their friends. … We had had that conversation with them on several occasions,” Petrovick  asserted.

Bagg said that is not true. The issue was never raised with them, he reiterated. Gilbert agreed.

As for the comment that Bagg and Gilbert used their friends, Margaret Johnson has a different view. “It isn’t their friends; many of them were the good old Monadnock musicians whom we all recognized. [Bagg and Gilbert]  have a pretty wide acquaintance and they are more than able to pick the good ones. Quality is what they are after.”

The strategic assessment “wasn’t bad,” Petrovick continued. In fact, it was “inconclusive, in that Monadnock Music has always has gotten mixed feedback because the programs are so diverse”; and so the board instituted the second survey this summer.

Osgood questioned the earlier 2010 survey run by the board at the onset of this change in direction. “It seemed as if it were set up as a bias,” she mused. “People chosen were not necessarily a cross-section… Some very intelligent individuals were not asked.”

The second survey this past summer was passed out to the audiences at eight concerts. To the question “What would you most like to see changed?” an impressive number — 69 out of 187 — responded with a variety of ways, some quite imaginative, of saying “nothing”; others called for “more”: more concerts, more locations: “move east!” “move to Texas!” “Bring a concert to Nashua.” Suggested changes on programming were for “more” of various types of music: Baroque, songs, Schubert, etc. (One said “Do not play non-melodic modern music.”) Most problems cited were with facilities: hard seats and poor air-conditioning. Basically, for the programming aspects, the survey results were overwhelmingly favorable.

Bagg noted, “This summer, we got the formula just right. We made the Peterborough [paying] concerts different enough from the free town concerts, so people would say, ‘This I want to buy a ticket to.’ We programmed Mahler, Wagner, Das Lied plus Siegfried Idyll, so that it felt big. …I think it worked pretty well.”

In further affirmation of the past season, Executive Director Chapman, who had been away for three weeks and recently spoke to BMInt upon his return, pointed out that in this past summer, ticket income was up 40% and donations to village concerts up 70%. “But having said that, people don’t restructure because we are trying either to adapt to new condition or anticipate a new environment. Everything we are doing is to ensure we sustain and stay on our mission.”

On the basis of the strategic assessment, the board was enlarged and reorganization was instituted: the staff and artistic director were to be under the executive director, who would answer to the board. Petrovick decided to throw his hat in the ring, so he said, “I recused myself from the board.” Riccardo Barreto, who had been president of the board for three months, resigned when his partner, Will Chapman, decided to apply and was appointed. Bagg and Gilbert, among others, felt Chapman’s fundraising skills were just what was needed.

However, once Chapman was on the job, Bagg and Gilbert said they no longer were invited to take part in board meetings. Chapman instructed them that reports they used to submit directly were to go to him, and he would present them.

“The artistic directors’ reports were a way of keeping the board informed about what grants we had gotten, what was successful and what not,” Bagg explained. When he and Gilbert questioned Chapman about the versions presented to the board, according to Bagg, Chapman “told me there was nothing ‘actionable’ in the report.”

Gilbert concurred. “Not only did he rewrite and leave out part of our report, but evidently, through channels that I’d rather not discuss, it was reported that the final artistic director’s report was his interpretation. He didn’t convey our words about what we thought were good and bad about the season.”

Asked about the assertion that he was rewriting reports, Chapman stated, “I am not going to comment on anything involving personnel.”

Bagg and Gilbert also dispute the assertion that they performed too often. “We had a huge plethora of performers,” Gilbert bristled, “and to keep things under a responsible budget, we played when we needed to. We were incredibly conscious of [this]; it was always one of the first and foremost things we made sure of. When you have good relations with your colleagues, they want to work with you and will do things they might not necessarily do for strangers. Why do they want to come? Because of our relationships, making music the way it should be made.

“We got absolutely the best. Musicians were paid $950 [for being at Monadnock] from Tuesday through Sunday, and they still had to pay their food and travel, and get to all the different venues. We provided a bed.”

Chapman stated that the new direction was “no criticism of Jonathan and Laura; they are excellent musicians…. There’s never been a problem with the programming. Musicianship, it’s not about. It’s about the basic business model…. It’s clear that the model has to change, but not the mission. It’s how it is executed.”

The financial picture is driving the board decisions, including the possibility of dropping the free town concerts. The organization received a lot of grants based on both the village concerts, and new music, Osgood stressed. The dropping of the latter has to be a concern. “Once they cut back, then OK, what happens to the grants?”

According to Anne Alexander, retired business manager of Monadnock Music, “Things were rolling around nicely…. The programming has grown, it has been spectacular, with musicians willing to come up here, not getting paid what they would in New York, but they are dedicated to this organization. I thought the audiences were increasing. They were not huge, and the free concerts of course always have large attendance…. [Bagg and Gilbert] deserve a lot of respect for their accomplishments.”

Of the reported aim to attract more people, Alexander noted, “It is a good goal, [but] I think there is a certain wait-and-see element to it. It is early days.”

Echoed Miss Johnson, “I think it just has to play itself out. Every organization has some critics. I don’t happen to hear them, but I suppose they are there. I hope fervently that MM will still continue and be of the same wonderful quality that it has been. It is a rare treasure, not a business model to be replicated.”

“I think it is going to work just fine,” stated Chapman.  “A lot depends on who ends up here. Obviously, there’s going to be teamwork. Coordination. Making sure we are meeting all our benchmarks, not only artistic and musical. [There’s] a level of rigor that I am being held accountable for. I think it’s healthy.”