In anticipation of the 100^th birthday of Cage, several of Boston’s musical institutions are programming musical tributes, leading one to wonder whether a reevaluation of Cage’s position in the avant garde canon is underway. Will a composer best known for what he did not compose, and who in later years instructed performers how to resort to chance in performances, continue to hold even a tenuous place when his work ceases to shock? Listeners should be able to decide for themselves after Boston’s mini festival of Cage concludes in three weeks.

The festivities for “Cage.88@100” begin on February 6^th at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall. NEC’s piano department chair Bruce Brubaker and project director Stephen Drury will bring together piano students from the entire spectrum of NEC’s teaching studios for this concert. Drury’s interactions with Cage included the 1991 NEC visit (the year before he died), when the solo part of Cage’s 101 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra was premiered, as well as commissioning  a new work from the composer.  Drury has coached students for this upcoming concert and has prepared the piano to be used in the performance of Sonatas and Interludes. The program is weighted towards the period of Cage’s most intensive concentration on writing for piano — in the 1940s and early 1950s — along with two works from much later in his output. A useful link is here.

NEC will present two additional concerts on February 22^nd and 27^th. The latter will include the world’s first performance in its entirety of Cage’s Music for Piano from 1952, in which “Cage began a series of giant steps to remove traces of intention or ‘authorship’ from his works for piano. The random imperfections that occur in paper due to its organic source as fiber pulp became notation. Anywhere Cage could see an imperfection, he drew a note onto the score paper, [letting it] fall where it may. All other performance decisions are left to the performer: duration and intervals between notes, how the note is struck by the performer, etc.”

On February 7^th that force-of-nature pianist Janice Weber performs a concert of demanding works of the standard repertoire, including: Liszt’s Two St. Francis Legends and Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2; Debussy’s Estampes; Franck’s Prelude, Chorale and Fugue, and Rachmaninoff’s Corelli Variations, but Weber will also give a nod in Cage’s direction by including the composer’s The Seasons (1947) in her Piano Masters Series recital at Boston Conservatory’s Seully Hall. The piece was originally composed as a score for a ballet by Merce Cunningham before Cage arranged it both for solo piano and for orchestra.

A Cage tribute by Callithumpian Consort, programmed by its director, pianist Stephen Drury, will include Cage’s Apartment House 1776, Earle Brown’s Available Forms I, and John Zorn’s For Your Eyes Only. This event, on March 1^st will be in the new Calderwood Auditorium at The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.  (Callithumpian will return to the Gardner in the fall for two concluding programs including music by Cage, Morton Feldman, Luigi Nono, and others.)

Detailed information on the concerts mentioned here can be found in BMInt’s “Coming Events.”

Bernstein admonishes in 1955

Three-quarters of a century and going strong: “Tanglewood 75” will make a triumphant return to the Berkshires this summer with the customary line-up of some of the classical and jazz worlds’ brightest stars. Fireworks and gala receptions abound, but music-lovers seeking quieter thrills will be sure to find something to please as well from among the 80-plus scheduled events, tickets to which go on sale Sunday, January 29, at 10 AM (obtainable at Symphony Hall box office, tanglewood.org, or by calling 888-266-1200).

To commemorate the 75^th anniversary of Tanglewood’s first season, Opening Night with the BSO on July 6^th will feature a replica of an all-Beethoven program of 1937. Christoph von Dohnányi will conduct this and other BSO performances throughout the summer; the orchestra will also feature celebrity soloists including Joshua Bell, Anne Sophie Mutter, Yo-Yo Ma, Emmanuel Ax, Peter Serkin, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet, among others. Other scheduled guest conductors are Andris Nelsons, Marcelo Lehninger, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Loren Maazel, Kurt Masur, and John Williams, who will also be honored on August 18^th in a special 80^th birthday celebration.

The major Anniversary Celebration will take place on July 14^th with a potpourri of Americana, showpieces, and classical favorites performed by the three resident orchestras, Festival Chorus, and a gaggle of guests. Among these will be James Taylor, a Tanglewood favorite, who will also be featured with his band on the three evenings leading up to the 4^th of July.

Program book from 4th Berkshire Symphonic Festival - the first on the Tanglewood grounds

Not all concerts will require hundreds of performers, however. The three-concert String Quartet Marathon returns on July 1^st and 2^nd, while the Emerson String Quartet will present a moderate-length program of Mozart, Beethoven, and Adès on July 5^th. Baritone Gerald Finley will present a recital on August 2^nd, and the young, hip Quatuor Ébène will genre-bend on August 16^th. More chamber music will be offered by TMC Fellows and the BSO chamber players.

Immersion-by-composer experiences are also on the slate. An all-Wagner program conducted by Asher Fisch repeats another historical program of 1937. Mozart will be bursting through the seams in two separate orchestral programs, including one of violin concerti by Mutter on July 13^th. An intrepid Gerhard Oppitz will perform Brahms’s complete solo piano works in a series of four recitals, July 18^th-19^th and 25^th-26^th. Not to be left out, Bach will be represented on August 10^th by a set of concerti, including Brandenburgs 3 and 5, in the able hands of members of the BSO chamber players led by Pinchas Zukerman.

Tanglewood publicity advertises eight world premiers, by upstanding locals Edgar Meyer, John Harbison, Michael Gandolfi, and Gunther Schuller, as well as others to appear on the Festival of Contemporary Music taking place August 9^th-13^th.

Renowned jazzers will take the stage as well, beginning with Diana Krall on June 23^rd. Chris Botti’s stylings will fill Ozawa Hall on August 5^th, followed by the Christian McBride trio on the 18^th and Chick Corea with Gary Burton and the Harlem String Quartet on the 26^th.

The Boston Pops will also make an appearance with Broadway singer Bernadette Peters on July 8^th and with Maureen McGovern and Brian Stokes Mitchell on August 24^th. Opera will get its turn with Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust on July 28^th and Falla’s La vida breve — featuring Spanish singers, dancer, and guitarist. For something a bit more austere, Sequentia Ensemble will present a dramatic sung performance in Old Norse (with English supertitles) based on the medieval Icelandic Edda saga.

Eclectic early-season performances will include Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble on June 22^nd and 24^th, Mark Morris Dance Group on June 28^th-29^th, and Garrison Keillor in a Prairie Home Companion presentation on June 30^th.

And here’s something that wasn’t part of the Tanglewood season 75 years ago: free digital streams at tanglewood.org, distributed throughout the season and featuring 75 historic performances, as well as master classes taking place at the Music Center.

Tanglewood season concert listings can be found here.

Zoe Kemmerling is a recent graduate of the Boston Conservatory and a freelance violist, baroque violinist, writer, and string instructor. She is also an editorial assistant for BMInt.

Musical road trip, 1939 ( All photos courtesy of Sam Brewer and Bridget Carr, BSO)

]]> http://classical-scene.com/2012/01/28/tanglewood-75th-year/feed/ 4 http://classical-scene.com/2012/01/26/monadnock-region/ http://classical-scene.com/2012/01/26/monadnock-region/#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:47:10 +0000 Bettina A. Norton http://classical-scene.com/?p=10902 Two recent disappointments for area musicians have, in the past few days, spawned two developments that stand only to benefit classical-music concertgoers to the Monadnock region. Jonathan Bagg and Laura Gilbert, who had been let go as artistic directors of Monadnock Music, have started a new venture, Electric Earth, that already has six concerts planned and three in the pipeline for the rest of this 2011-12 season; and Gil Rose, who lost his position as artistic director of Opera Boston when it abruptly shut operations just before Christmas, has just been appointed artistic director of Monadnock Music, which runs a full summer program of concerts. In both cases, long-standing loyalties and professional associations played major parts in the decisions.

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.

This will be a concert performance with Harvard University Choir, an orchestra of 28 members from Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and soloists, Tony Arnold, soprano; Charles Blandy, tenor; Matthew Anderson, tenor; Sumner Thompson, baritone; and Paul Guttry, bass under the direction of Edward Elwyn Jones. According to the composer, “The players will be stationed between Mem. Church’s rood screen and the front pews (on the left, I believe); the solo singers will be similarly placed on the right. Ed and I have talked about movement in two places: (1) the scene in which two sets of thugs proceed through the audience with rope and knife on their way to castrate Abelard and (2) the movement of the choir from the risers to behind the rood screen — to the tolling of a tubular bell — which leads into the last scene in which the choir sings the Credo in the distance while Peter the Venerable, stage right, sings, and Heloise, stage left, reads, his beautiful letter informing her of Abelard’s death. I wouldn’t be surprised, given the solo roster, if some minimal movement between them emerged from rehearsals. (One of the best Wozzeks I ever experienced was at the Chicago Symphony, with very restricted but hugely effective movement.) No props or costumes are planned, but I suppose minor additions might develop in rehearsal (which reminds me, I must bring my astrolabe).”

John Austin met conductor Ed Jones during the Memorial Service for the composer’s Harvard class of 1956’s 50th reunion in June of 2006. A performance there of Austin’s duo on Li Po’s At Yellow Crane Tower Seeing Off Meng Hau-Jan to Yang-Chou, with Ed Jones’s wife, soprano Amanda Forsythe, and the BSO cellist Martha Babcock, apparently impressed Jones enough to suggest a subsequent collaboration. By coincidence Austin and his wife, librettist Christine Froula had been talking for years about doing an opera on Heloise and Abelard. According to Austin, “Ed’s spectacular Memorial Church performance of Handel’s Alexander’s Feast in late winter of 2007 supplied the motivation to actually start writing and left me no doubt that we would be fortunate indeed to entrust it to Ed.”

Now in his early thirties, conductor Edward Elwyn Jones, Gund University Organist and Choirmaster at The Memorial Church, Harvard University is excited about the project. Ed had also been Gil Rose’s chorus master and assistant conductor at the late and lamented Opera Boston. It was through that connection that the members of BMOP were engaged for this project and also the reason why BMOP agreed to lend its imprimatur.

Asked to describe the musical language of Heloise and Abelard, Jones answered,

The music is quite contrapuntal, both rhythmically and melodically, and is often built out of a few key cells that are layered on top of each other to create a dense structure in climactic moments. The orchestration has a chamber quality to it – utilizing combinations of sounds from the various instruments, and reserving the full group for a few powerful outbursts.

Much of the music is very lyrical, with soaring melodies for both Heloise and Abelard, and some beautiful ensemble writing. The music for the villains (for example Abbot Suger) is, as one might expect, rather more angular.

The story depicts one of the most interesting and controversial periods in church history. Though this will be a concert performance, the work is very dramatic and would indeed work very well on the stage. In the most powerful moment, the castration of Abelard, two groups of thugs intone recurring motifs against the beat of a drum; it builds in rhythmic and dynamic intensity until it is abruptly cut off…

Closer to home, in 1999 Harvard University Press published a book of essays, Driven into Paradise: The Musical Migration from Nazi Germany to the United States compiled and edited by Professors Reinhold Brinkmann and Christoph Wolff in which the lives, careers, and experiences of musicians and music historians are portrayed in their own words. In 2009 Yale University Press published A Windfall of Musicians: Hitler’s Emigres and Exiles in Southern California by Dorothy Lamb Crawford. This is her second book focusing on the development of the concert scene in the LA area and how those artists may have had an unusually large influence not only on how we hear music in concerts and film, but on how we play and speak about music today in private conversation and public forums.

Free Forum: 1:30 pm – 3 pm.

The forum will have three speakers: Joseph Auner, the Schoenberg expert from Tufts University; Dorothy Lamb Crawford, and Martin Marks, film music historian from MIT. Marks will focus on contributions by these composers to film music, especially in the rise of Film Noir, and how their music was transformed to suit the dominant cultural medium of their new home. We will be seeing several clips of films that show the range of styles and the depth of artistry that won Oscar nominations and Oscars and paved the way for one of today’s towering figures, John Williams.

Crawford will focus on the experiences of being uprooted and replanted, in the composers’ own words. She will be assisted by such lyrics as those written by Bertold Brecht for Eisler’s The Hollywood Songbook, the poem by Ernst Lothar in Korngold’s Mond, so gehst du wieder auf from his Abschiedslieder, op. 14, and from the text by H. Kaltneker for his Sonett für Wien, op. 41. Korngold used Mond, so gehst du wieder auf as the theme for the slow movement of his Piano Quintet, which closes our program and continues the series of piano quintets BCMS has scheduled on every concert this season.

The Concert at 4 pm.

The concert will open with the Piano Trio No. 2 in G major by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, a composer known for his copious guitar music and short concert pieces for violin and piano. This is a substantial work that our players have been eager to learn. The best-known student of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco is John Williams. The program continues with selections from Hanns Eisler’s Hollywood Songbook, a collection of some 40 lieder in German and English, many based on poetic texts by Berthold Brecht. It is through these we learn directly of the anguish and despair of the emigrant experience. Eisler was also the author of an important theoretical work on combining film and music; his music is enjoying a revival in Europe this year. Ernst Toch is best known as the composer of the Geographical Fugue, not for the chase scene in Shirley Temple’s Heidi! His Sonata for Violin and Piano is a masterpiece. Eric Korngold is widely known for his Violin Concerto written for Jascha Heifetz, his gorgeous String Sextet, but not as widely in concert circles for winning an Oscar for the music to Robin Hood! Louis Gruenberg, who also wrote a violin concerto for Heifetz, came to America from Russia as a child before 1900 and returned to Europe to study with Busoni before World War I. Once he settled in LA he worked at merging media and film, and was nominated for an Academy Award for a documentary Fight For Life about life in the Chicago slums.

Series extras and conclusion.

The series allows us to explore themes, topics, and ideas, in conversation and concerts that have enlarged the context for enjoying the chamber music literature. This year’s program, the third, is sponsored in part by Goethe-Institut Boston. The musical portion our series began in December at MIT with the Schoenberg Chamber Symphony and ends in February with the performance of Ingolf Dahl’s Concerto a tre, an exciting and virtuosic piece for violin, clarinet and cello that BCMS has performed in 1984, 1992 and 2003. Dahl was a close collaborator with Stravinsky and was one of the translators for Poetics of Music. Besides giving private lessons to Benny Goodman, making arrangements for Victor Borge and Tommy Dorsey, he is best remembered as the teacher of Michael Tilson Thomas.

We are grateful for a number of collaborations that we hope can enhance the experience of this music, its creators and fellow artistic contributors from this time. At MIT Martin Marks has been teaching a course, “The Rise of Film Noir,” during the school’s Independent Activities Period in January that leads up to our forum. Among the events available to the class and the public will be a film series entitled “Five Émigré Directors and the Rise of Film Noir” with music by our composers and others and a tour of visual art works by émigré visual artists at the Harvard Sackler Museum. During the

Marcus Thompson is a distinguished performer both on viola and viola d’amore, a Professor at MIT and director of BCMS.

A bit about the 1902 Palace is in order, to start. We know that Isabella Stewart Gardner was literate, well traveled, and deeply interested in art. It’s easy to imagine that such a connected, wealthy, and vibrant woman would have known about some of the ascendant thinking about art in her day. In the second half of the 19^th century, one group of thinkers believed that art should be personally felt, intense, and unaffected by the corrupting influence of too much Classical learning. Art was more than just an object to be studied intellectually. Rather, art was part of a whole environment that included dance, music, and furnishings. Art for them gained meaning and effectiveness by its surroundings.

Palace Court (John Tittmann photo)

These thinkers included critics like John Ruskin and artists like William Morris and Rossetti, who emphasized the virtues of the medieval over the Late Renaissance, then the touchstone of taste. One brotherhood’ called themselves Pre-Raphaelites because they preferred to be influenced by artists that preceded Raphael — before, they said, the corrupting and cerebral Classicism took away a personal and visceral connection to art. John Ruskin, as the foremost spokesman of this way of thinking, brought attention to Venice, where the architecture is largely medieval. The appeal to Ruskin and others was that Venice was Pre-Raphaelite architecture. Venice embodied their Romantic approach.

Commensurate with how the Pre-Raphaelites saw art, Gardner chose the Venetian style intentionally and with artistic purpose. For her, a Venetian court provided the perfect vessel for her holistic approach to art and how the viewer should interact with art. (Sebastian Smee covers this topic well in the Jan 15, 2012 article in the Boston Globe.)

And so Boston has a piece of Venice on the Fenway. It’s an exotic, certainly, but very much a native, too. Gardner, a pioneering woman, a Boston woman (it’s hard to imagine her flourishing in New York), lived independently after her husband’s death in 1898 and traveled internationally. She was thoroughly modern in a way that seems normal to us but was highly unusual in her day. Her new thinking is exemplified in the Pre-Raphaelite building that is the Palace.

Taken in this light, we needn’t find her vision ‘embarrassing’ as Sebastian Smee wrote in his otherwise excellent article. There’s a sense in many circles today that Gardner’s vision is, well, a little weak intellectually, and that a Venetian palace on the Fenway is silly. We live in a rational age, and are for the most part uncomfortable with the Romantics. However, the child within us all is still overcome with awe at the site of the courtyard and its plantings: this awe is part of the experience of art that Gardner wanted her visitors to have. The Palace has a strong sense of place, a presence, and a collection of memorable spaces.

The Predicament

Somehow the museum that Isabella Stewart Gardner founded has survived the almost 90 years since she died in 1924 at the age of 84. But all those visitors in the intervening years have been putting a significant strain on the building. Something had to be done to keep the museum, now known as the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (ISGM), from essentially being loved to death. The strain of taking care of the visitors (up to 200,000 annually) through selling tickets, hanging wet coats, and providing a café, bookshop, toilets, as well as housing the museum’s offices, was not sustainable. Furthermore, since 1927, the ISGM has been hosting a music series, bringing in each year some 10,000 people to traipse through the galleries to the Tapestry Room to hear the concerts. Music, of course, is an essential part of the total art experience that Gardner endorsed, and seemed integral to the ISGM.

Enter the 21st-century Architect

Entry from Evans Way (John Tittmann picture)

And so the ISGM hired Renzo Piano, the world acclaimed architect from Genoa, to build an addition. Now completed, the public can see what has been so long in planning and construction. The addition, as intended, has successfully and indeed triumphantly removed the functions that were eroding the Palace. The entrance has been moved to the flank of the property, now fronting Evans Way Park. From the new entry the visitor passes through a lobby to find a coat room, a welcome area known as the Living Room, a café, and a museum shop, all done in a 1950’s retro style. Between the Living Room and the café, a glass passageway connects to the Palace. A grand stair leads up a level to the Special Exhibition Gallery and to the Calderwood Performance Hall. Museum offices are stacked up behind the Gallery and the Hall. South of the Entry, along the side of the Park down to Tetlow Street, is a wing that houses a small greenhouse and two visiting artists’ apartments. The service entrance is off of Tetlow Street. Restoration work was done within the Palace, particularly in the Tapestry Room now that music concerts will no longer occur there. The Palace has been saved. The museum is now on surer footing that it has ever been. The functions have been perfectly arranged. Boston’s grand dame on the Fenway should be thrilled. Or should she be?

Making a city with buildings

Tetlow Street Corner (John Tittmann photo)

One of the roles of individual buildings in a city is to define the public realm, to define streets and gathering-spaces like squares and parks. The Piano building does a poor job of shaping Evans Way Park. It seems surprising that an Italian architect, from a country with the world’s best street spaces and piazzas, would be so insensitive to this aspect. The south end of the building along Tetlow Street, where the service entry is, makes no effort to define its corner.

Defining corners, or shaping the street at corners, is how city blocks define themselves. The Greenhouse and Artist Apartment wing has a 45ºplane of glass slanting away from the street, seeming more like a sound deflector at Logan Airport than street-shaping building face. Clearly the architects were not interested in making Evans Way Park a better defined chamber of space. The ISGM controls one wall of the three walls of the Park: shouldn’t they have contributed to the public domain? Buildings may be brilliant individually, but the aggregation of buildings makes the city. This role of building making — of architecture — to shape streets is the equivalent of good citizenry and is an essential point by which buildings are evaluated. So on this point, the addition to the ISGM seems more suburban than urban, where street shaping is less important.

The Music Hall

The most interesting space in the new building is the space where music will be played. It’s a cube, 44 feet to a side, and 44 feet to the ceiling. The hall seats 300, arranged on four levels. There are two rows on the stage level and one row on each of the three balconies.  The audience seating completely surrounds the performers, so that some of the audience will necessarily be behind the performers. This arrangement may work for some types of music, but any music that is best presented frontally, like say a violin, or a singer, will have to perhaps modify the presentation. It is an awkward space for speakers, as was made clear during some speeches last week. Speakers and performers will have to learn to turn around constantly to communicate with those seated behind them. The ISGM will sometimes have illustrated talks, at which time the seating will be aligned to face the permanently installed drop-down screen. 

The sightlines from the top balcony are almost untenable. A viewer sitting normally in one of the top balcony seats can only see half of the stage. To see the full stage one must lean over the rail, nearly 30 feet above the performers, getting a good view of the tops of their heads. The sightlines from the middle balcony are better, but still awkward. The lower balcony, just above the main level is excellent — as long as one doesn’t sit behind the performers. Of the 300 seats, only about half are good for viewing. 

This reviewer, listening to the rehearsal of the orchestra, A Far Cry, found the acoustics excellent, warm and vibrant, on the main stage level, and on the first balcony. They were also excellent when leaning into the space on the upper two levels, but less so when sitting back in the seats where the glass panel seems to block some of the ranges of sound from below.

Renzo Piano's back (John Tittmann photo)

View from third balcony (John Tittmann photo)

Calderwood Hall (John Tittmann photo)

The Special Exhibit Space

Special Exhibit Gallery (John Tittmann photo)

This room is also a cube shaped room, 44 feet to a side and 44 feet high. It is described as ‘flexible,’ meaning that the ceiling can be set at three different heights — one third, two thirds, and full height. It’s quite an undertaking to adjust the ceiling, since plumbers and the Boston Fire Department must be called in each time to re-set the fire sprinkler system.

The curators say that some exhibits will be better suited to lower ceilings. And there may also be a work of art 30 feet tall that needs the full ceiling height. The current exhibit has small (relatively) paintings hung at eye level and near eye level. The wall above is empty. 

Abstraction is a distraction

And so this brings us back to what Gardner’s vision is, and what looking at art means. Gardner was interested in the totality of the experience. Looking at a painting was not a disembodied intellectual experience, but something that was felt as much as understood. This approach is why she integrates furniture, decorative objects, and paintings together in a sympathetic architectural setting. Like at the Frick and other “collection museums’’ (again, thank you, Sebastian Smee), art was for her more powerfully presented in a total environment that included music, and even the aroma from flowers. Her vision is intensely humanist: she combines all the viewer’s senses together. Her vision is not abstract or rational. It is visceral and syncretic.

In the new addition, the two primary spaces for music and exhibits are the opposite: they are cerebral and rational. The architects were intent on making a matching pair of platonic cubes of space. Why else would these two rooms just “happen’’ to be 44 feet by 44 feet by 44 feet? The artistry of their work is platonic. It is not felt, but intellectually understood. Had the messy, un-platonic needs of viewers — things like sightlines, and the shapes of human bodies, and how sound, and smell and memory interrelate — been part of the design-think, the abstraction would have been compromised. Piano and his team were not interested in that concession. Their architecture is highly technological, and very far from Gardner’s Pre-Raphaelite vision.

Piano and his team are masters. The addition is a technological marvel that solves the practical problems of the Gardner. But what of Gardner’s vision? Has the new addition missed the point? Has all the abstraction become a distraction?

John Tittmann is an architect in Boston.  He is a principal at Albert, Righter & Tittmann Architects, Inc.

Calderwood Hall, designed by Renzo Piano and Yasuhisa Toyota, is built into a cube 44 feet on a side. Two rows of audience surround the musicians on the floor. The rest of the seating is in three tiers of four-sided balconies – each only one row deep. Seating capacity is approximately 300, similar to the 330 seats of the Shalin Liu Hall in Rockport, but the designs of these two halls, and their sounds, could not be more different.

BMInt staff photo

Current fashion for concert venues of all types tends toward a shoebox shape – long, narrow, relatively high ceilinged, and with the performers in some kind of a stage house. The goal in such spaces is usually a reverberant sound, often at the expense of clarity. But at the Gardner we are being treated to an entirely different concept. The musicians are on the floor, and the audience surrounds them, as close as is practically possible.

The design of the Calderwood is unusual for our time, but it is not historically unprecedented. Most chamber music was written for performance in small spaces – holding at most a few hundred people, and richly supplied with sound absorbing furniture and fabric. The idea that it should be performed in a reverberant space would have been very foreign. Even churches, particularly Protestant churches with their emphasis on vernacular text, were hung with tapestries and banners that reduced reverberation to low levels. The Thomaskirche in Leipzig, where Bach performed his Cantatas and Passions, is estimated to have had a reverberation time of only 1.6 seconds, a very low value for such a large space. It would have been much easier to hear all the words in that space than in the recent passion performance in Boston Symphony Hall.

There was a need for such spaces – and their existence drove the evolution of music. In the Baroque period music became more highly ornamented, both in chamber settings and in opera. Opera houses were typically U shaped, with audiences in tiers. According to Marshall Long in his excellent book Architectural Acoustics:

‘Baroque music was performed in salons, drawing rooms, and ballrooms, as well as in churches. In general the former were not specifically constructed for music, and tended to be small. The orchestras were also on the smallish side, around twenty-five musicians, much like chamber orchestras today. … The problem of distributing sound evenly to the listener was soon recognized, but there were few useful guidelines. In England Thomas Mace published (1676) suggestions for the designer in his Musick’s Monument or a Rememberancer of the Best Practical Musick..He recommended a square room with galleries on all sides surrounding the musicians, much like a theater in the round.’

The Calderwood Hall takes Mace’s suggestion literally. The advantages are clear, the disadvantages equally clear. Ensembles typically arrange themselves facing a particular direction – often with a conductor. Their instruments are directional, with much of the sound directed forward or upward. Audiences behind them certainly get a different sonic and visual picture. The violins will be softer, the violas louder (sometimes not a bad thing…) Those audience members will see the face of the conductor, the backs of the musicians. With the top off a piano radiates mostly upward – a great benefit to the audience in the balconies, a slight detriment to those on the floor.

I was fortunate today to have several conversations with Yasuhisa Toyota, the acoustician from Nagata Acoustics in Los Angeles who was responsible for the acoustics, and Scott Nickrenz, the artistic director of the music at the Gardner. Nickrenz, an accomplished violist, had always been dissatisfied with the sound of concerts in the Tapestry Gallery. Although I am not personally familiar with concerts there, I have heard many reports of very dry sound, poor sight lines, and a great difference in sound between the front of the hall and the rear.

I asked Toyota and Nickrenz how the idea of the new space arose. Why put musicians on the floor, with audience in three balconies? Nickrenz, perhaps anticipating the question, pulled from a folder a wonderful picture of an early Italian opera house. “This is what I said I wanted”, he said. I was in complete agreement, as I have felt for some time that putting the audience in tiers around the musicians is the best way to give a large number of people the kind of clarity that chamber music demands. At least two halls in this area give credence to the idea: Jordan Hall and Sanders Theater. “But why”, I asked “did you decide to put the audience on four sides of the musicians, and not just three?” Nickrenz explained (with Toyota nodding) that this idea arose at the first meeting between Toyota and Piano at Piano’s home in Paris. Piano had always been fascinated with cubic forms. Nickrenz said some good ideas take a long time to develop. This good idea took only 15 minutes. “Good,” they both decided, “let’s go for it”.

A view from on high. (BMInt staff photo

In the Calderwood the goal was to make the sound for each audience member as uniform as possible, giving each both a sonic and visual unobstructed view of the performance. When BMInt visited in December the reverberation time was quite low – about half a second. It is not obvious why the room was so absorptive. The visual walls are made of decorative plywood cut with linear slits. Eighteen inches behind the slits there is a structural wall. There were absorptive curtains in the space between the visual and the structural wall. These were mostly withdrawn into the corners of the structure during our visit, exposing the walls behind. During our December visit the sound in the balconies from people speaking on the floor was clear, highly intelligible, and not reverberant.

In contrast, Shalin Liu is a shoebox, with the musicians occupying a stage area in front of a large glass window. The shoebox has become a standard shape for a music performance space, possibly because of the success of our own Boston Symphony Hall. But Boston Symphony was designed for orchestral music, and has a capacity of 2700 seats. It is not clear that a shoebox is the ideal shape for a chamber music hall with a much smaller capacity. In a shoebox some the sound up close is louder and clearer than the sound in the rear. A shoebox hall also typically has large surface areas that are sound reflecting. These surfaces reflect sound between each other and eventually into the audience, increasing the loudness and adding – in large halls – a warm enveloping reverberation. In small halls these reflections are a mixed blessing, as they come sooner and stronger than they do in a large hall. When there are too many early reflections the sound is muddled, and notes are difficult to separate one from another.

In the front of a large shoebox orchestral hall the sound in is dominated by the direct sound – sound that travels directly from the instruments to the listener. There are typically a great many prompt reflections – both from surfaces of the stage house, and from the ceiling and walls of the hall. These reflections increase the loudness of the sound somewhat as you move back – but they do so at the expense of clarity. The direct sound decreases in pressure by 6dB for every doubling of the distance, so in the rear of the hall the direct sound is weak. Early reflections – those that bounce off only one or two surfaces – are similarly weakened as they travel to the rear. But there are a great many later reflections that have bounced off many surfaces before they reach the listener, and these combine to make the loudness more uniform. For listeners in the middle and the front of the hall it is this late reverberation that gives orchestral sound its warmth and envelopment. But in a small hall we do not need the extra loudness if the audience is close to the instruments. The direct sound is strong enough.

Coffered ceiling and side walls make corner reflector (BMInt staff photo)

So why do we need reflections in a chamber music hall? Were we happy with the dry sound in the Tapestry Gallery? The answer depends in part on what experience an individual audience member would like. When direct sound is un-muddled by early reflections it is perceived as close to the listener. It demands our attention. Clarity is very high, and with careful listening one can hear every note, and identify which instrument played it. Listeners intent on hearing every note will be delighted – those wanting a less demanding “well blended” sound may be disappointed. Assuming no-one in our distinguished audience is in the latter category, what other purposes do reflections serve, and does the Calderwood deliver them?

Musicians do not like playing in a reflection-free space. They rely on sound from the hall to judge the balance between their own instrument and those of their colleagues. A solo string player needs sound from the hall to judge the effects of bow speed and position on the timbre and tone of their playing. It is also much easier to hear one’s intonation when the sound in the hall can be heard. But reflections that arrive earlier than 50 milliseconds are masked by the sound of their own instruments. All the beneficial reflections arrive later than that – ideally more than 100ms later. Like the perception of warmth and envelopment to an audience member, musicians depend on late reverberation. How can you have late reverberation in a small, absorptive hall?

Turns out – you can. Reports from several musicians that have played in the new hall are quite favorable. A glance at the geometry of the hall explains why. The underside of each balcony makes a right-angle with the wall behind it, forming a corner reflector. Sound striking the underside of the balcony will bounce against the wall behind, and return back to where it came from. If we imagine a musician near the center of the floor, his sound will strike the underside of three balconies in four different directions. Reflected energy will return to him at twelve different times from twelve different directions. If the curtains are removed the corners of the side walls the balcony undersides add an additional twelve reflections. The dimensions of the space are such that the first set of reflections arrives before 50ms, but the later ones arrive well after. There is sufficient strength and time delay in the combination of reflections to give the musicians a satisfactory sense of the hall. But there is some danger: If there are too many of these reflections, clarity will suffer. The audience also benefits, although to a lesser degree. Reflections directed to the floor are not absorbed – at least if the floor is not packed with musicians. The sound will bounce off the floor and back up to the balcony, creating at least some late reverberation.

Detail of sidewall (BMInt staff photo)

Audience members also appreciate reflected energy. In a reflection-free space each member of an ensemble is perceived as a soloist, and the group never seems to blend together into an ensemble. This problem is well-known to recording engineers. Closely-miked instruments never sound together unless some early reflections are added. My initial impression in the Calderwood during the first visit was that that there would be sufficient reflections in the time range of 80ms to 100ms to provide a sense of ensemble. This would certainly be true on the floor, where the parallel wall surfaces will provide them. But once again, if there are too many reflections, clarity will suffer.

So – how does the new hall sound? Short answer: it sounds fantastic. Nickrenz is in heaven. I listened to the rehearsal of A Far Cry, the resident chamber orchestra of the Gardner, in many of the balcony seats. (We were shooed away from seats on the floor.) The sound in every seat, according to both Toyota and Nickrenz, was “clear and warm.” (I think they had rehearsed their speech…). I am delighted to concur. One can quibble, and maybe this was my charge in being assigned to this article by BMInt. So here goes.

David Griesinger deliberates. (BMInt staff photo)

When we visited in December the curtains behind the perforated walls were mostly withdrawn. The reverberation time was on the order of half a second – although I was not able to measure it. Yesterday the reverberation time was immediately perceived as longer – my guess is about 0.8 seconds, and quite uniform with frequency. (This means the bass response is rich.) The change in reverberation time between the visits is significant. I inquired as to what had changed. The answer from Toyota was that the curtains had been completely withdrawn into enclosed spaces. I worried a bit about this increase, as I had looked forward to unusual clarity in the hall – much like an early opera house. (The Staatsoper unter den Linden in Berlin (currently under renovation) had 1500 seats and a reverberation time of 0.9 seconds). Small spaces lose clarity quickly as the reverberation time increases. But I was relieved when I heard A Far Cry play. Yes, the hall is more reverberant than before, and yes, the clarity has gone down a bit. But it is still good in every seat, and very good in most.

It is worth explaining what I mean by clarity, as I use the term somewhat differently than current acoustic texts. I have found that humans can instantly detect when a sound is close to them or far away. The detection is usually subconscious, but it can be very important. We pay attention immediately to sounds that we perceive as close. Those far away can be attended to more leisurely.

The quality of sound that allows us to perceive “close” is the same quality that allows the brain to separate simultaneous sounds from several instruments, determine from what direction each came from, and attend to one of several conversations at the same time. To me, sound is “clear” when all these perceptions can be made. These perceptions are mostly subconscious, but when you listen carefully you can hear them. A Far Cry was rehearsing a Haydn’s C Major cello concerto and Britten’s Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge. They were arranged conventionally in a semicircle, with the violins on the left, the violas on the right, and the cello in the middle. When I was sitting in the balconies in front of the group the clarity was very high. Even in the third tier I could clearly localize the cello with my eyes closed. The violins were equally clear, the violas mostly inaudible, as is normal. When I moved to the rear of the orchestra in the third tier the balance was still very good, the music terrific, but with my eyes closed the cello was not sharply localized, just somewhere in front. (With eyes open you always hear it just where you see it.) The violas were suddenly audible and localizable. The sound was good – but not as gripping as in front. The cello was more localizable in the rear part of the second tier, and the cello localized sharply in the rear of the first tier. The localization and gripping clarity was good at the sides of the orchestra in all the tiers – but you have to look over the rail. If you settle back in your seat behind the glass balcony front the sound is “well blended”. It is good but not gripping.

In short – no problems, and an amazing success story. Nickrenz and others have plenty of time to play with the curtains in the walls. Just a bit more absorption might bring the clarity up a bit, at the expense of what is currently audible reverberation.

Calderwood represents a bold break with current fashion in chamber music hall design. It portends an acoustic much closer to the kind expected by the great composers of the Baroque and Classical periods – strong, balanced, and exceptionally clear. I look forward to hearing many different types of concert there.

David Griesinger is a Harvard-trained physicist who is eminent in the field of sound and music. His website is here.

Some weeks ago, A Far Cry, the Gardner Museum’s resident chamber orchestra, got to do an early sound-check on the soon-to-be-opened Calderwood Hall that inhabits the Museum’s new Renzo Piano designed wing. Violist Sarah Darling’s musings follow.

If there had been a documentary film about that morning, it would almost certainly have begun with shots of the various musicians of A Far Cry engaged in mundane tasks such as rolling out of bed, making tea, assembling the exact constellation of materials that they would need for that one day only (there’s rarely any verbatim repetition in the life of an active Boston musician), making their way to subways, buses, and cars, and converging on the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Shots of faces and brief interviews would highlight a sense of excited anticipation, plus a little tension, expressed differently through each individual. Meanwhile, the camera stationed at the Gardner would catch a couple of early birds waiting patiently, then one by one, the group of musicians would swell to critical mass, topped off by the last arrivals, panting slightly. Winding its way through the museum, the next camera would certainly snag one or two looks of utter delight as we got to the light-drenched glass hallway that connected to the new wing, leading to the ultimate treat – something new and wonderful to explore, something where nothing had been before.

“Welcome to your new home” were the first words we heard from violist and Gardner music director Scott Nickrenz. Always collegial and warm, today he was positively glowing. We were there, of course, to try out our new home – or perhaps our new instrument – by creating a palette of sounds for it to magnify and reflect. What we hadn’t taken into account was what a huge effect the construction of the hall would have on our musical intentions.

Walking into the space, the eyes are drawn down and then straight up. The brightness of the wood illuminates the stage, which is simply the floor of the four-story structure. You feel as if you’re in an arena – or, of course, as if you’re in another iconic Gardner courtyard. There is no sense of “across” – it’s all “here.” The immediacy is almost overwhelming, providing you with a new set of musical challenges and opportunities. Where does the sound go? Where is the intention directed? All the traditional crutches we rely on – and allow ourselves to be defined by – are tossed out the window in this hall.

So. We set ourselves up for the first piece we’d brought – the first movement of Beethoven’s Quartet op. 95 in a string orchestra arrangement. We oriented ourselves in a traditional setup facing the “front” wall (where the control booth window was located) and tore in. Immersed in the waves of sound we were creating, we could sense something immediate, all the same – a sense of our acoustic selves.

A Far Cry rehearses in Calderwood Hall (BMInt staff photo)

Much of our profession is based on acoustic impression. It goes to the very heart of what we do. The sounds that are reflected back to us in the context of our playing define how we continue – we adjust our “selves” and compensate. We articulate, we project, we sweeten the sound with vibrato,… and we are affected in more subtle ways as well. The vibrations of a room inform not just the sounds coming out of our instruments, but also their potential for expressivity, and that heads straight back into our minds and bodies. A standard observation around conservatory circles is that the practice rooms of any given school affect the sound of the graduates – and I believe it!

Who did we become as we played Beethoven in the new hall? We were stark and forceful, and every shift of mood was crystal-clear. It was energizing to play in the space in which it was possible to hear all the other musicians (this is crucial — yet so rare), and also be able to enter into the violent world of the music. The hall didn’t cover anything up – if we decided to go for a less refined sound, that sound came straight out without apology. I’m speaking, of course, from the onstage point of view, which is the only one I’ve experienced. I can talk about how the sound affected our playing and what I heard, but I can’t say what it actually “sounds like” which is just as well – each of us should experience that on our own terms.

However, when we stopped, we had a new issue on our hands. The setup that we had chosen was not optimal for our potential audience members. We heard this from Yasu Toyota, the acoustician responsible for the hall, who had cannily positioned himself in a chair directly behind the second violins. Sure enough, the sound and our intention were blocked in that area by our own bodies and backs. With such a large ensemble (17 artists in total), we would have to discover another solution.

That’s when we truly started thinking outside of the box (or perhaps I should say “inside the box!”).  Rather that set ourselves up parallel to one side, we opted to try out a diagonal line instead. That was a revelation! It was much easier to play “to” two sides of the cube, without feeling as though we were turned away from everyone else. Of course, once the first idea like this was floated, the floodgates – as they so often are in A Far Cry – were officially opened. Next, we tried bringing the outer players of the presenting line closer together, creating an orchestral shape that looked a little like an apple with a bite taken out if it. This was a very popular move, bringing the group closer to itself than it ever dares to come. It also had a good effect on the audience, because for every extra back that is turned towards someone, there is also a front that shows up on the other side. Bit by bit, we felt as though we were democratizing the audience experience.

By this time, we’d switched to trying out our second and third numbers  – the second movements of Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances and Dvorak’s Serenade for Strings. As we played and tried out different setups, we gradually became aware of another acoustic phenomenon – the need to play up to the upper balconies, and to imagine how the sound was translating in that space. With the quiet moments of the Dvorak and Respighi (we experimented with extreme softs) we tried to get a sense of what our acoustic limits might be. I’m delighted to say that we really didn’t find any.

Then a plaintive request from the basses changed the nature of the morning even further. Since were were in this cube, and since so much of our sound and visual impression was directed upward, would it be possible to close our circle entirely, and let the basses into the final open space? This took some fancy footwork from the amazingly patient audio engineers, but we got it done and tried it out. And it was another great world – wonderful to have the basses, architects of so much of our structure, right up there in the thick of things, and the closed circle apparently made a great impression from the higher floors. Worried that the circle would seem too dense or unfriendly, we tried lessening our density on the ground floor by standing further apart, but were informed by Mr. Toyota that that setup was less ideal, so we gave it up right away.

A Far Cry viewed from top tier (BMInt Staff photo)

This new setup was much more controversial in the group, with some members feeling like it was the perfect way to honor the space and others feeling uncomfortable about its closed nature and the lack of direction. So we debated some more and tried even more extreme tactics – working with antiphonal basses, switching other sections, changing the amount of open space within the circle. And the whole time, of course, we were listening like crazy and observing the effect that each change had on us, personally and as a group – Could we see? Hear? Feel comfortable? Know where and how the sound would go?

It was really over that span of time, as we tried one option after the next, that I personally became aware of what an amazing gift to Boston this new hall really is. The space embraced every option we tried, leading us to even greater flights of fancy. Over the two hours that we were in there, we had been given a huge new dose of freedom and a fluid new identity to explore. It’s clear that this is a work in progress, and that our work in the space will evolve and change the more time we spend in the hall.

Meanwhile, the hall sits there, waiting to be filled with sound. And from my perceptions of that morning, I can say as a musician that the sound-world it offers us is equally freeing. It doesn’t alter what you bring to it. There’s no need to fight it, and there’s no sense that it’s glossing over your edges. It faithfully magnifies whatever you have to offer. I wonder if it might not be my definition of a perfect instrument. It’s ready for anything — but as you gradually improve, it stays right there with you, smiling a mysterious smile.

Sarah Darling, a violist with A Far Cry, pops up anywhere and everywhere around town in early, classical, and contemporary circles.

Unlike Monteverdi’s earlier Vespro della Beata Vergine of 1610, the 1640 version is incomplete, Metcalfe explained, so he “fashioned a Marian Vespers, based on the 1610 model, featuring psalms and motets from later Monteverdi sacred works, using the 1610 setting of the hymn, Ave maris stella, along with music by the great Venetian, Giovanni Gabrieli and the Milanese composer-nun, Chiara Margarita Cozzolani.” 

Jolle Greenleaf, Molly Quinn, and Virginia Warnken in Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 at St Mary the Virgin, New York City, in January 2011 (Joanne Bouknight photo)

“The specific contents are entirely my own choosing, but the manner in which I put the elements together is exactly the way a 17th-century Italian chapel-master would have assembled the music for a festive Vespers. The service, whose main ingredients are five psalms, a hymn, and the canticle Magnificat, became, at large institutions in early 17-century Italy, a sort of sacred concert. We have various contemporary accounts of these concerts/services, some of which I quote in the notes. Monteverdi’s collections of 1640/41 (Selva morale) and 1650 (the posthumous Messa…et salmi) are largely anthologies of Vespers music from which a chapel-master might choose.”

Metcalfe added that although the Vespers, which begins at 7:30 pm, is not a religious service “per se,” he expects it to be a deeply spiritual occasion. Co-director Jolle Greenleaf chose St. Paul’s Church as a performance space because she finds it “a beautiful sacred space perfectly appropriate to the baroque esthetic of the music — flamboyant, varied, sumptuous, and colorful.”

Metcalfe further explained that there will be a great variety of moods and textures, with forces ranging from a solo tenor accompanied by organ and theorbos (singing an intensely emotional text from the Song of Songs), through ensembles of solo voices, instrumental canzonas by Gabrieli, and voices plus instruments, all the way up to the concluding Magnificat by Gabrieli,  in 14 parts plus basso continuo, mixing voices and instruments. Some of the music is playful and madrigal-like; some rich and sonorous; some virtuosic in the sense people usually mean (i.e. lots of notes), and some virtuosic in that it requires virtuosity of expression. There will be moments of profound stillness and others of dance and rejoicing. There will even be plainchant. This is what the baroque aesthetic means: variety of all kinds.

Members of the Green Mountain Project performing Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 at St Mary the Virgin, New York City, in January 2011 (Joanne Bouknight photo)

Jolle Greenleaf founded the Green Mountain Project in 2010 with the precise aim of presenting the 1610 Vespers in New York City on its 400th anniversary. She invited Metcalfe to join as music director, conductor, and player. That concert was such a success that TENET, a vocal ensemble and non-profit organization directed by Jolle, administratively took Green Mountain under its wing, and she immediately began to dream of more concerts, including performing in Boston, where nearly half of the musicians involved live. She is a Californian who’s lived in NYC for a long time, and Metcalfe, although actually a Vermonter from the Green Mountains, has lived in Boston for a long time. (There is no direct connection to Metcalfe’s Boston-based Blue Heron, except the overlap of music director and some personnel.)

The twenty-seven performers represent the musical communities of these two cities and more, including people from Ann Arbor, San Francisco, LA, as well as many familiar to Boston audiences. Among the singers are sopranos Jolle Greenleaf and Molly Quinn; tenors Zachary Wilder, Jason McStoots, Scott Mello, Marc Molomot, and Sumner Thompson; baritone Jesse Blumberg; bass David McFerrin; with chants provided by altos Virginia Warnken and Luthien Brackett, tenor Jason Rylander, baritone Thomas McCargar, and bass Steve Hrycelak. Instrumentalists include Scott Metcalfe and Julie Andrijeski, violins; Emily Walhout, bass violin; Kiri Tollaksen and Alexandra Opsahl, cornetto; Greg Ingles (NY), Brian Kay (MA), Erik Schmalz, Mack Ramsey, and Liza Malamut, trombone; Hank Heijink and Dan Swenberg, theorbos; and Avi Stein, organ.

The complete program with lengthy, interesting notes may be downloaded here. The concert is FREE, though tickets for a reserved section  may be purchased here.

“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.

David Patterson

Concerts
BSO Chamber Players Create Gorgeous Music
Uncorked Vintage Oeuvres from Denève
BSO Apr 16 2011 Master(ful) Class in Electroacoustic Music

CDs
Olivier Messiaen 100th Anniversary Box Set- EMI Composer Boxes 217466214 discs
John Adams Son of Chamber Symphony; String Quartet  Nonesuch label
Works of Lili Boulanger Igor Markevitch, Orchestre Lamoureux Everest label

Mark DeVoto

CDs:
Marc-André Hamelin playing his own works, with special emphasis on his Twelve Etudes
The Grainger Edition, including most Percy Grainger’s works in various versions; 19 discs
Organ works by Alexis Chauvet, on two French instruments by Carolyn Shuster

Concerts:
Morlot Endorsement
BoCo’s Shoenberg

David Dominique

CDs:
Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus
Os Mutantes by Os Mutantes
Kurtag: Kafka Fragments by Tony Arnold

Concerts:
Jon Damian featuring Allan Chase and Bob Nieske at Outpost 186, Cambridge.
Professor Bad Trip”, by Fausto Romitelli, presented by Argento Chamber Ensemble in LA
Charles Ives: The Astonishing Pioneer, conducted by Gunther Schuller and presented by Alea III at BU.

Andrew Sammut

Concerts:
Newton Baroque with CPE Bach
L’Academie with Charpentier
MOPR’s “Winter’s Cheer”

CDs
Ricardo Kanji and Cesar Villavicencio’s recorder duos
Europa Galante’s “La Stravaganza” (Walsh’s 1728 edition
Patricia Petibon: “Rosso” Italian Baroque arias

Michael Rocha

Concerts:
Dust Blown Off Zesty Zelenka
Rock-Solid Borromeo in Rockport
Gossamer to Rugged Ravel from Thibaudet

Lee Eiseman

Concerts:
BSO in Bartok: Bluebeard’s Castle
Spectrum Singers Patriotic Program
The Lure of Hamelin

BluRay Videos:
Sunrise 1927
Metropolis
Operas on Bluray by Opus Art

David Shengold

Concerts
Opera Boston – CARDILLAC
Boston Lyric Opera AGRIPPINA
Boston Baroque -DIE SCHOEPFUNG

CDs
Porpora: Arias – Karina Gauvin: Alan Curtis (ATMA Classique)
Schubert: Three Sonatas, Impromptus – Paul Lewis (Harmonia Mundi)
Vivaldi: Farnace – Diego Fasolis (Virgin Classics)

Geoff Wieting

Concerts:
NEC’s YPO Ben Zander, playing Tchaikovsky and Mahler, June 3
Niobe, Regina di Tebe by Steffani, at the Boston Early Music Festival, June 12
Audra McDonald at Symphony Hall (Celebrity Series), October 2

Susan Miron

Concerts:
Audra McDonald- Celebrity Series
Marc-André Hamelin – Rockport Music
Philipe Jaroussky (with Apollo’s Fire) Boston Early Music Festival

CDs:
Philipe Jaroussky “Vivaldi Heroes”
Cecilia Bartoli   “Maria”
Jean-Yves Thibaudet  ”Aria: Opera without Words”

Fred Bouchard

Concerts:
BLO (Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream)
BSO (Prokofiev, Sibelius, Newhouse
Discovery (Ravel, etc., Lewis)

Most Regretted Misses:
BSO (Berlioz Requiem, Dutoit)
Alea III (Ives Concert, G. Schuller)

Tom Delbanco

Concerts:
8/20 “Fish and Fanfare…”
9/21 Denk and Miro…
10/29 Kremer and BSO…

CDs:
Schubert piano trios: Beaux Arts Trio (1967, with Guilet, Greenhouse, Pressler)
Beethoven violin sonatas: Szigeti and Arrau (1944)
Bartok:  Violin concerto # 2 (Menuhin and Dorati) (1957)

Liane Curtis

Concert:
Sofonisba by Maria Teresa Agnesi, presented by La Donna Musicale.

CDs:
Complete piano music by Luisa Adolpha le Beau
In Praise of Woman: 150 Years of English Women Composers

Vance Koven

Concerts:
BSO/Morlot, with Harbison 4, Mahler 1 and Ravel D&C 2
Don Berman and friends doing Schoenberg and Shostakovich
New England Philharmonic featuring Mahler 10 and works by Earl Kim, Donald Erb and Andy Vores.

CD:
BBC Concert Orchestra under Keith Lockhart doing the American Sketches and other orchestral works by Frederick Shepherd Converse

Cashman Kerr Prince

Concerts:
Jeremy Denk – Goldberg Variations & Ligeti Etudes, book 1 @ Gardner off-site
Serkin, Eschenbach, BSO – All-Brahms at Tanglewood
Bang on a Can All-Stars at Kresge Auditorium

CDs:
Daniel Müller-Schott & Julia Fischer, Brahms Double Concerto
Jean-Guihen Queyras, Britten Suites for Solo Cello
Bruckner, Symphony 4 – Orchestre Métropolitain, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, cond

Geoff Wieting

CDs:
All-Night Vigil (Vespers), Sergei Rachmaninoff USSR Ministry of Culture Chamber Choir
“An American Masterpiece” Thomas Murray, organ, Church of the Immaculate Conception, Boston
Daphnis et Chloe, Maurice Ravel Montreal Symphony Orchestra & Chorus/Charles Dutoit

Nelsons still intends to appear at Tanglewood this summer where he plans to lead both the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in concerts July 14th through the 16th.

MARCELO LEHNINGER

Brazilian-born Marcelo Lehninger was appointed assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra by James Levine, Mr. Lehninger made his BSO debut in 2010 with violinist Pinchas Zukerman as soloist and in 2011 stepped in for Maestro Levine at short notice to conduct the world premiere of Harrison Birtwistle’s BSO-commissioned Violin Concerto with Christian Tetzlaff. Of his acclaimed Carnegie Hall debut with the BSO the New York Times’ Anthony Tommasini wrote, “He was terrific, conducting all three works with impressive technique, musical insight and youthful energy.” Maestro Lehninger’s next BSO appearances include a subscription night in the 2011-12 season with pianist Peter Serkin, his debut at Tanglewood in 2012 and a subscription week in the 2012-13 season.

Before dedicating his career to conducting, Mr. Lehninger studied violin and piano. He holds a master’s degree from the Conductors Institute at New York’s Bard College, where he studied conducting under Harold Farberman and composition with Laurence Wallach. In Brazil he studied with Roberto Tibiriçá, and he has also participated in master classes with Kurt Masur, Leonard Slatkin, Marin Alsop, Moche Atzmon, and Andreás Weiss.

A citizen of Brazil and Germany, Marcelo Lehninger is the son of pianist Sônia Goulart and violinist Erich Lehninger. He lives with his wife Laura and daughter Sofia in Boston, MA.

Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and “Procession du Vendredi-saint” (“Good Friday Procession”) from French composer Henri Tomasi’s Fanfares liturgiques will be essayed by the brass and percussion players, then Richard Strauss’s Serenade in E-flat, op. 7, will be played by the winds; and the first half will conclude with Tchaikovsky’s Serenade in C for Strings, op. 48.

The second half of the concert will present the originally scheduled The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky under the direction of Giancarlo Guerrero. He made his BSO debut at Tanglewood on August 22, 2010 and debuts in the BSO subscription series with these performances. Guerrero is now in his third season as music director of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. In autumn 2011, he also began his role as principal guest conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra Miami Residency. A full biography of the young conductor is here.

In the second set of subscription concerts that Chailly was to have conducted, Bramwell Tovey will lead the orchestra.  The January 26-31 program will go on as planned, with one work, Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise), for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, featuring sopranos Carolyn Sampson and Camilla Tilling, tenor Mark Padmore, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.

Bramwell Tovey made his BSO debut in Tanglewood last summer in a concert performance of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. He also makes his BSO subscription series debut with these performances. His tenures as music director with the Vancouver Symphony, Luxembourg Philharmonic and Winnipeg Symphony Orchestras have been praised for his expertise in operatic, choral, British and contemporary repertoire. His complete bio is here.

What follows is the story of the evolution of this and other musical pursuits involving these men. 

Gottlieb Graupner, François Mallet, and Filippo Trajetta were astute in establishing their Conservatorio in Rowe’s Lane, a street which converged with Summer Street at Church Green. Summer Street in the early 1800s was “beyond dispute the most beautiful avenue in Boston. Magnificent trees skirted its entire length… where stood the gardens or mansions of the old merchants and statesmen of Boston,” wrote Samuel Adams Drake, in his well-known book on Boston Landmarks. In the midst of today’s skyscrapers in fast-paced 21st-century Boston where Bedford Street (formerly Rowe’s Lane) and Summer Street converge at Church Green, it is still possible to envision the fashionable community of the early 1800s: Summer Street, beyond dispute the most beautiful avenue in Boston; nearby, Rowe’s Lane and the Conservatory Hall;  the wafting strains of the evening musical concerts; the music lessons for the young ladies and the young gentlemen; the planted gardens and the mansions owned by statesmen and town fathers. Here we see the birthplace of the American Conservatorio of Boston, 1800, the first conservatory of music in Boston and, in all likelihood, in the country

Church Green and The New South Church with Rowes Lane on the left

The term “Church Green” was first applied nearly four hundred years ago to an empty space that had not been trodden upon by the early English settlers and their cattle. In 1715, the vacant “Church Green” space was finally to have its destiny fulfilled: The place for a house of worship. The spot was staked out and deeded to a new religious society. Samuel Adams, father of the patriot, was one of the petitioners granted the land: It was a beautiful site for a church in Boston, with an unobstructed outlook over the harbor. The New South Meeting House, a building of wood with a seemly Ionic-style steeple, was dedicated in 1719 and remained for almost 100 years a manifestation of Church Green’s destined use.

The Reverend Kirkland, who served as Pastor of the New South Meeting House congregation from 1794 to 1810, would be named President of Harvard University in 1810. Four years later in 1814, the ancient wooden New South Meeting House would be replaced with a granite edifice designed by the esteemed architect, Charles Bulfinch, and named the New South Church — generally considered Bulfinch’s most beautiful church. Unfortunately, the New South Church was demolished in 1868. The term Church Green remains to this day, but no church stands in the historic place.

Gottlieb Graupner was well known as an accomplished musician and teacher of several musical instruments, but perhaps not as well known as a singing teacher. Mallet was also a teacher of several musical instruments, and, although he was a vocalist, he may not have had the level of teaching skills for voice instruction that Trajetta possessed. The American Conservatorio of Boston experienced a setback, however, when Trajetta left for Charleston, South Carolina, in mid-1801, less than a year after it was established. Joseph Story, a British singer/actor who had performed as a vocalist in the spring concert season at the Conservatory Hall earlier that year, joined the Graupner-Mallet partnership in early November. On November 5, 1801, a press announcement advised of a concert to be presented by Story at the Conservatory Hall. One may assume that he left Boston and the Conservatorio shortly after his concert, also to resettle in Charleston, South Carolina, where, as early as January 5, 1802, Story was presenting concerts.

Initially, Graupner and Mallet appeared to have taken Story’s departure in stride, as noted in the first article; unfortunately, however, in November 1802, the American Conservatorio of Boston and the Mallet & Graupner music publishing firm were dissolved. No explanations for their decision appeared in the partners’ individually written newspaper announcements, other than Graupner’s brief comment that the lease of the Hall in Rowe’s Lane expired.

Individually, each man established enterprises that offered services well suited to their interests and concerns: F. Mallet’s Musical Academy, instruction in vocal and instrumental music, in Congress Street; G. Graupner’s Musical Academy, (also known as Musical Repository, and Music Store) music publisher, dealer of musical instruments and sheet music, instruction in vocal and instrumental music, No. 6 Franklin Street. Graupner’s music publishing business prospered and he became known as Boston’s leading music publisher. Both musicians continued to perform in concerts, at various times in the same programs. Of note, both Mallet and Graupner presented concerts that featured their talented children. On September 26, 1805, at Concert Hall (formerly Conservatory Hall in Rowe’s Lane) “Miss Mallet, aged 7 years” on the Piano Forte, accompanied by Mr. Mallet on the violin, played a Sonata by Nicolai. On June 16, 1809 in Burlington, Vermont, “Mr. Mallet, Music Master of Boston,” presented a “Medley of Vocal and Instrumental Music, Recitations and Dancing” featuring Miss Mallet, ten years of age, Master F. Mallet, 12 years of age, and Master W. Mallet, eight years of age. The Battle of Prague, a piece for four hands on the pianoforte, was performed by father and daughter. A year later, both talented families, the Mallets and the Graupners, came together on June 26, 1810, for a concert presented by Mallet at the Exchange Coffee House that featured Miss C. Graupner, Mr. and Mrs. Graupner, Miss Mallet, Mr. Mallet, and “all the Musicians of the town.” When this event took place, Mallet had reached his 60th year, and Graupner, his 43rd.

Unlike a number of music publishers of the time, Graupner was not a composer of instrumental music — neither for the oboe  nor other instruments he played — and he composed only two sheet music pieces as Graupner Publications: Attic Bower in 1802 and Governor Brooks Favourite March in 1820. Francis Mallet was a composer of sheet music — six titles are listed as Graupner Publications, including The Negro’s Humanity, Pride of our Plain, and Rule New England. Among the larger public works of Graupner Publications, one listed as Rudiments of the Art of Playing on the Piano Forte was arranged by Gottlieb Graupner and copyrighted August 29, 1806. Later editions of this work were published, the last edition on January 1, 1827.

Graupner’s interest in playing orchestral pieces by Pleyel and Haydn probably led to establishing, around 1810, the Philo-Harmonic Society, also known as Philharmonic Society, a group of amateur and professional musicians who came together for enjoyment of playing orchestral music. The Society, with Graupner as president and conductor, held concerts at Concert Hall in Rowe’s Lane, a venue that may have evoked nostalgia and remembrances, not only of the “old” Conservatorio, but also of the “young” Trajetta.

Reprinted courtesy of Harvard Musical Association

During the second decade of the 19th century, Boston’s musical scene continued to present opportunities for local musicians and for visiting professional musicians who relied on the support of Boston’s “Old Guard” professionals such as Mallet and Graupner. As a dedicated music teacher, Mallet launched a new enterprise in July, 1812; he and a “Mr. Yarnold” were to open their School “on Monday next” at Concert Hall. Unfortunately, this partnership was short-lived, due to the arrival of Dr. George K. Jackson, an Englishman who set in motion events in Boston that would affect the musical pursuits of both Mallet and Graupner. Jackson, then about sixty-seven years of age and the father of eleven children, was a larger-than-life figure who had earned his Doctor of Music degree from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in 1791. To add historical significance to this plot, in 1784, both Mallet and Jackson had performed in the grand Commemoration of Handel in London: Mallet, bassoonist in the orchestra, Jackson (not yet “Dr.”), a tenor. (The four-day festival commemorating the 100th Anniversary of Handel’s birth and the 25th Anniversary of his death took place in Westminster Abbey, where Handel is buried.)

In Boston, Jackson gained a prominent role in the musical community as organist of the Brattle Street Church and as a private instructor of the organ. His imposing presence in Boston’s musical life led to a professional relationship with the Graupners. For his “Impresario” debut in Boston, Dr. Jackson organized “A Grand Sacred Oratorio,” performed at Stone Chapel (King’s Chapel) on October 29, 1812: music by the “beatified” composer Handel with “Dr. Jackson, organist; Mr. Graupner Leader of the Band; Mrs. Graupner, and Mr. Mallet Vocalists,… and many respectable Vocal and Instrumental Amateurs of this town.” Less than a month later, on November 12, 1812, all three men associated for “Instruction in Vocal and Instrumental Music” at Pythian Hall in Pond Street.  (The old adage, “If walls could talk,” comes to mind with the mention of this hall, known by several names, street name changes, and countless occupants.) The new musical enterprise was doomed when it was revealed that Dr. Jackson had not registered as an enemy alien, a requirement of the Federal government, due to the outbreak of the War of 1812. Dr. Jackson was banished to Northampton, Massachusetts and, soon after his departure, an oratorio concert that had been delayed due to the “banishment furor” was given at Stone Chapel on March 29, 1813. One may presume that Graupner, as Leader of the Band, had acknowledged the audience’s “vociferous applause” knowing that his future musical endeavors would not be shared with Dr. Jackson, nor with Mallet, who decided to leave Boston with his family to seek brighter horizons — a hiatus that would last for about eleven years.

Jackson returned to Boston after the war years as organist at Stone Chapel, after which he played at Trinity Church, then in Summer Street, and at the parish of St. Paul (now the Cathedral for the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts) in Common Street (now Tremont Street), where he remained as organist until his death in 1822. However, in 1817, when the position of organist with the Handel and Haydn Society opened, Dr. Jackson was not hired; instead, Dr. Rayner Taylor was invited to come from Philadelphia. A year after Jackson’s death, a critique of his accomplishments as composer for the organ was published in the Columbian Sentinel, October 22, 1823: “….[Jackson] as a composer was… in my opinion…below mediocrity….A certain quality called genius is required which I see very little proof that Dr. Jackson possessed.”

Graupner’s importance as a founder and conductor of the Philharmonic Society orchestra led, in 1815, to his becoming one of the original members of the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston. The institution, the wonder of the nation, influenced the formation of similar institutions in the country and continues to be an important musical presence to this day in Boston. History was made when President James Monroe visited Boston to celebrate the Fourth of July, 1817, an occasion for a procession and an elegant “collation” in his honor with about 600 in attendance in Doric Hall at the Massachusetts State House. The following day, Monroe was present at a grand concert in his honor presented by the Handel and Haydn Society, assisted by the Philharmonic Society, This “most notable event” took place at the First Church in Chauncy Place. The nearby Pythian Hall in Pond Street, the usual venue at that time for the Handel and Haydn Society concerts, would not have accommodated the “brilliant audience” that thronged the church.

Late in the year 1817, Graupner was also involved in a new business venture of music publishing and sales of musical instruments; he formed a partnership with George Cushing, G. Graupner & Co. Both played in the orchestras of the Handel and Haydn Society and the Philharmonic Society. Graupner was also conductor and President of the Philharmonic Society. About a year after Cushing joined in partnership with Graupner, he married Graupner’s stepdaughter, Catherine Graupner, against the wishes of her parents. The business partnership, which was not successful, was dissolved on February 17, 1820, followed by bankruptcy, reorganization, and personal sadness for Mr. and Mrs. Graupner.

For more than 20 years, the couple had enjoyed public accolades and a prominent presence in Boston’s musical scene. Their generosity in supporting charitable causes was unfailing. As an example of the esteem in which Mr. and Mrs. Graupner were held in the musical community, the Handel and Haydn Society officers “sent a cab” for Mr. and Mrs. Graupner to attend the Society’s First Concert on Christmas night, 1815, at Stone Chapel. In 1821, in her 52nd year, Catherine Graupner passed away. Graupner’s mourning and partial retirement from public life was eased by a benefit concert in recognition of his contributions to the cultural life of Boston. The event on November 20, 1821 at Boylston Hall was assisted by the Philharmonic Society and many visiting talents, including Dr. Jackson “himself not long destined for this world.” (He died in Boston the following year.)  About sixteen months after Mrs. Graupner died her husband married Mary Hills, only daughter of the late Capt. John H., of Boston, on October 4, 1822, in Providence. The couple had three children.

By 1822, Boston had advanced from a township to the formation of a municipality, the City of Boston, and Bostonians had also advanced in their musical taste. As early as 1817, the trend no longer favored the Old Guard, and the earlier, more gracious days, now faded into memory. Instead, new talents, such as Louis Ostinelli, the brilliant violinist from Italy, had not only received generous applause, but also a place in musical history: his performance of Beethoven’s Minuetto, with full orchestra of the Philharmonic, was the first known instance of a Beethoven work performed in Boston. On that occasion Graupner was featured on the double-bass.

Both Gottlieb Graupner and Louis Ostinelli were elected to the rank of Honorary Member of the Handel and Hayden Society of Boston, Massachusetts, on November 20, 1829 and November 23, 1843, respectively. George Cushing was also elected to the rank of Honorary Member of the Society, on January 28, 1840. (Both Graupner and Cushing were Original Members of the Society.)

Sadly, Gottlieb Graupner, who had been known as a musician of high standing, a talented teacher of several musical instruments, and a leading music publisher in Boston, would be seen in his later years as “an avowed object of charity.” He presented several concerts for his own benefit that featured his young daughter, Harriet Hills Graupner, a child prodigy pianist, the first-born (in 1823) of his three children with Mary Hills. His music publishing firm, which was salvaged in the G. Graupner & Co. bankruptcy settlement, was in decline, as witnessed in the company’s “clearance sale” in September 1820.

Although Francis Mallet returned in 1824 to a far different musical scene in Boston than what he had known eleven years earlier — a change that brought about the demise of almost every cherished thing of the olden days, and the emergence of many new talents — Mallet was undeterred. He steadfastly advertised in the Boston newspapers that he offered his services as an instructor in music. Two years later, on March 30, 1826, when he was 76 years of age, he advertised an Oratorio to take place at the First Church on Chauncey Street.

During the late 1820s to early 1830s, both Mallet and Graupner were probably hired to play in Boston theatre orchestras for special performances of Italian opera music, where Bostonian audiences enthusiastically applauded the “tuneful overtures and arias.” Rossini was in the prime of his life, and such old favorites as the Battle of Prague had seen their better days. In 1833, Mallet petitioned for a federal “Old War Invalid” pension, which was “Rejected” by the Court for the reason that Francis Mallet had belonged to the French Army — though he had served with it on American soil, in defense of the American cause. The Daily Evening Transcript of August 9, 1834,  noted that the “Aged Oak,” a person of dignity and charm,” had died. He was 84.

Less than two years later, on April 16, 1836, Johann Christian Gottlieb Graupner, “Father of American Orchestral Music,” died in Boston at age 68. News of his death and that of Mallet two years earlier probably reached Trajetta in Philadelphia, where he had resided since 1828. Such news may have prompted him to recall his youthful musical beginnings in Boston, the formation of his partnership with Messrs. Mallet and Graupner, and their establishing the American Conservatorio of Boston in 1800.

Gustav and Alma Mahler “got to know both the city and an assortment of its occupants, … they toured the city’s ethnic quarters, among them an underworld Chinatown with an opium den and a teeming Lower East Side Jewish quarter whose inhabitants Mahler could scarcely see as ‘our own sort of people.’ … ‘Are these our brothers?’ he asked Alma. ‘Can it be that there are only class and not race distinctions?’” wrote Stuart Feder in Gustav Mahler: a life in crisis.

With this background forming part of his understanding of what it means to be a musical stranger, Coleman, the director of NEC’s Contemporary Improvisation Department (founded by Gunther Schuller in 1973), offered an explanation for Tuesday’s concert:

What happens when Classical Music misses its subway stop and gets off at Improvisation? In this concert, NEC’s Contemporary Improvisation and Jazz departments cross paths with their classical colleagues. The virtuosi of NEC’s conductor-less Chamber Orchestra provide a foundation for the imagination of MacArthur Foundation Fellow Jason Moran — the familiar Adagietto from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 will appear in an unfamiliar, new light. Another NEC MacArthur Fellow, Ran Blake, creates a film of Mahler’s life at the piano keys. Improvising singers add fresh ingredients to Mahler songs. Would Mahler recognize his own music? As a composer haunted by a wide variety of sounds, would he feel right at home?

The NEC website here describes how a wide array of “improvising” and “classical” musicians will combine forces on a program including adaptations, derangements and selections from the following works of Mahler:

Mahler, third movement of Symphony No. 3, re-composition by Contemporary Improvisation ensemble Survivors’ Breakfast coached by Anthony Coleman, with interpretation of posthorn solo

Ran Blake, Mahler Noir, re-composition/solo piano performance based on Blake’s storyboarding of important events in Mahler’s life
I. Death Gong
II. Conversion
III. Death of Maria
IV. Auf Wiedersehen Wien
V. The Last Boat Trip: New York to France
VI. Flashback and Death

Mahler, “St. Anthony’s Sermon to the Fish,” from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, re-composition by Eden MacAdam-Somer, performed by Sarah Jarosz, vocals and mandolin; Eden MacAdam-Somer, violin and vocals; Vesela Stoyanova, MIDI marimba and vocals; Valerie Thompson, cello and vocals; Jeffrey Balter, drums and percussion

Fain/Kahal, I’ll Be Seeing You, performed by Tanya Kalmanovitch, viola; Ted Reichman, accordion; Anthony Coleman, piano.
The standard by American songwriter Sammy Fain and lyricist Irving Kahal opens with melodic material that closely resembles a passage of the last movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 3.

Mahler, excerpts from Symphony No. 4, re-composition/performance by Fausto Sierakowski, saxophone, and Andrew Clinkman, guitar

Mahler Adagietto from Symphony No. 5, piano improvisations by Jason Moran, performed with the NEC Chamber Orchestra coached by Donald Palma

Mahler, selections arranged by Schoenberg from Das Lied von der Erde
On Youth Maria Kim, vocalist
On Beauty Natalie Cadet, vocalist
Drunk in Spring Nedelka Prescod, vocalist
NEC Wind Ensemble, Charles Peltz, conductor

Bruce Brubaker Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, performed by Huijuan Pan, piano; Yoojin Park, violin; Chia-Hui Hung, viola; Seungwon Chung, cello

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.

“It is in these two works that Schoenberg took his decisive leap into atonality, though without entirely abandoning at least traces of triadic harmony,  BMInt reviewer, musicologist  Mark DeVoto explained. “Stefan George was one of Germany’s best poets in his time, possibly the most widely appreciated after Rilke, who died slightly earlier. There were originally thirty-one poems in Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten. Schoenberg’s fifteen settings, op. 15, are 1908-1909; they are all short, and musically as richly expressive as their texts.

“The String Quartet No. 2 (1907-08) is perhaps a simplification of Schoenberg’s quartet language after the String Quartet No. 1 (1904-05), which though nominally in d-minor is of immense tonal and formal complexity and lasts nearly an hour; No. 2 is contrapuntally just as intricate, at least in its first two movements, but not as thematically intricate and is palpably shorter. The first movement is very chromatic but the f-minor is still strong. The second movement is an apparent scherzo, and is famous for its quotation of ‘Ach, du lieber Augustin’ which provoked roars of laughter at the premiere; Schoenberg was miffed by this, because he thought it should have provoked only ‘a knowing smile.’ One can say that the use of that melody, which in the folksong has the text ‘alles ist hin’ (all is gone), is Schoenberg’s nod to the idea that tonality is disappearing as, in the fourth movement, it does, almost entirely. The third movement, with Stefan George’s sung text, ‘Tief ist die Trauer die mich umdüstert’ (Deep is the sadness that glooms around me), has been associated not only with Schoenberg’s decision to force the tonal issue, but also with the crisis in Schoenberg’s domestic life, when his wife ran off with the painter Richard Gerstl; she was persuaded to return, and Gerstl committed suicide, as Schoenberg later admitted he had himself considered. The fourth movement has the often-quoted text beginning ‘Ich fühle Luft von anderem Planeten’ (I feel the air of another planet), meaning, presumably, atonality. Even at that, there are what I call paratonal references in this movement, that is, strongly tonal intervals like the perfect fifth, which project here and there even amid the densest chromaticism; you find the same things in the Five Pieces for orchestra op. 16 (1909) and Erwartung (same year). f-sharp minor does return at the very end of the four movement, so one can say the break with tonality isn’t yet absolutely complete.”

Some may remember “The Ludovico Treatment” from Anthony Burgess’s (and Stanley Kubrick’s) A Clockwork Orange as an aversion therapy that leaves its subject unresponsive to violent impulses, with the unintended side effect of rendering him immune to the enjoyment of Beethoven. Since the players of the Ludovico Ensemble have remained studiously nonviolent on stage and have never programmed any work of the master, one wonders whether they underwent the treatment before their founding the group in 2002. The players on November 21 will be Aliana de la Guardia, soprano; Gabriela Diaz, violin; Shaw Pong Liu, violin; Mark Berger, viola; Benjamin Schwartz, cello, Jennifer Ashe, soprano; and Karolina Rojahn, piano.

$10-15  (FREE to students with valid ID)  A link to the program is here.

BMInt’s review is here

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.”

The original loudspeaker orchestra.

The Goethe-Institut Boston in collaboration with the Cultural Services of the French Consulate, Harvard University, and Northeastern University will be presenting a very interesting three-day festival of electroacoustic music. Sound in Space Festival, bringing together prominent representatives of top-notch institutions in Germany, France, and the USA, will create performance opportunities for composers enrolled in North American institutions and will commemorate the beginnings of electroacoustic music in the 1950s. The festival will run from November 17 to 19 at Northeastern University’s Fenway Center, 77 St. Stephen Street, Boston. The Awards Ceremony and Closing Reception will be at the Goethe-Institut Boston, 170 Beacon Street, Boston

The “performers” at these events will be the 32 loudspeakers of the Harvard University “Hydra” Speaker-Orchestra, a sound projection system designed for the performance of electroacoustic music with or without the participation of instrumentalists. Distributed both horizontally and vertically, in order to provide a wide range of sound planes and perspectives, the speakers are controlled by two interfaces with 32 faders, permitting real time control and configuration for each work performed.

Similar “speaker orchestras” include the Acousmonium, conceived and developed at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (Radio France) in the early 1970s, BEAST (Birmingham Electroacoustic Sound Theatre) developed by Jonty Harrison at the University of Birmingham, GMEBaphone, IMEB, Bourges (France) and the loudspeaker orchestra of Musiques & Recherches in Belgium.

The festival considers electroacoustic music interpretation and gives composition students and the public insight into its possibilities. Prominent representatives from top-notch institutions in Germany, France and the USA will be presenting for the first two dates, and the final round of the Sound in SPACE Competition will be for students of North American institutions. The six finalists present their works in two concerts following participation in interpretation workshops and coachings. Further concerts feature the French and German composers-in-residence as well as recent North American electroacoustic works. A panel discussion frames the debate on interpretation of electroacoustic music in Europe and North America. The festival ends with an awards ceremony. All concerts, workshops and panel discussions are free and open to the public.

GRM Bayle Acoustimonium from 1970

While such festival are somewhat novel in the US, in Europe there continues to be a great deal of interest in presentation of sound-images. The advancement of loudspeaker orchestras has permitted much more development in this discipline. Further innovation in music performance has brought new requirements for interpretation theory and implementation in live performance. Ideally, each and every space requires a studied interpretation of the sounds of a given composition, its changes in dynamics, and its compositional gestures.

Two key cultural institutions for this revolutionary music are currently the GRM (Groupe de Recherche Musicale) in Paris and the ZKM (Zentrum fuer Kunst und Medientechnologie) in Karlsruhe. Their regular cooperation in the promotion and performance of electroacoustic music in the past fifteen years has opened up new sonic worlds for audiences through international artistic collaboration, innovation, and experimentation.

The term ‘orchestra’ in ‘Loudspeaker Orchestra’ is appropriate, not only because of the deployment of individual ‘loudspeaker-instruments’ in space but also because of the different registers and timbral qualities of each loudspeaker. However, the setup of a speaker orchestra is not fixed. The largest “Speaker Orchestra” in the world is the GRM Acousmonium with 80 loudspeakers. It groups very different types of loudspeakers into an imposing spatial setup.

Participants:
Ludger Brümmer, director of ZKM | Institute for Music and Acoustics in Karlsruhe (Germany)

Harvard's Hydra Orchestra

Daniel Teruggi, director of GRM | Groupe de Recherche Musicale (France).
Hans Tutschku, professor & director of electroacoustic studios at Harvard University
Mike Frengel, professor at Northeastern University
Elainie Lillios, professor at Bowling Green State University

Complete Schedule:
Thursday, November 17, 2011
4:00 PM  Interpretation Workshop
7:30 PM  Competition Finalists Concert
9:00 PM  Portrait Concert – Daniel Teruggi

Friday, November 18, 2011
4:00 PM  Interpretation Workshop
7:30 PM  Competition Finalists Concert
9:00 PM  Portrait Concert – Ludger Brümmer

Saturday, November 19, 2011
4:00 PM  Panel Discussion with invited composers
6:00 PM  Curated concert of recent electroacoustic works from North America
8:00 PM  Composition Competition Awards Ceremony

For more information visit www.goethe.de/boston-soundinSPACE or contact Annette Klein at program2@boston.goethe.org or (617) 262–6050 ext 11

This program is supported by the Elysée Treaty Fund for Franco-German Cultural Events in Third Countries.

Marc Antoine Charpentier

Dylan Sauerwald and Zoe Weiss, co-directors of the newly-founded Helios Early Opera group, are planning to introduce the ensemble to the public with a concert of opera scenes from works of Handel, Rameau, Strozzi, Purcell and Mozart on Saturday, November 19th at 7:30 at Friends House (5 Longfellow Park) in Cambridge. The singers include: Erika Vogel, soprano; Claire Raphaelson, soprano; Owen McIntosh, tenor and Jacob Cooper, bass. The co-directors were recently interviewed by Joel Schwindt, writer for BMInt, who will be serving as “resident musicologist” for the group’s production of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s David et Jonathas in January.

JS: Let’s jump right in: why did you decide to start Helios?

ZW: Before we met, both of us had independently formed an interest in creating new ensembles, and each of us had directed operas as undergraduates. The Boston Early Music Festival puts on rigorously historical performances of operas, and other groups are offering innovative combinations of historical and modern elements in the production of smaller works. We thought: why not try taking a different approach with larger works?

JS: So what is this “different approach” that you hope to offer to the Early Music scene here in Boston?DS: Early Music is undergoing a dramatic shift in focus. Early pioneers of the movement had to prove that the extra time and effort required to use period instruments was worthwhile in the pursuit of a “sonar approximation” of period sound. Now that the movement and its literature are well established, we have the flexibility to be less traditional in our approach. For this reason, we are attempting to integrate the historical and the modern. We like to think of ourselves as facilitators mediating a conversation between the work and our audience, rather than “re-presenters.”

What is the philosophy or approach behind this decision to offer “modern” staging?

DS: Our goal is to make our operas resonate with contemporary audiences. We’re not interested in trying to force a modern concept on a historical story. We think a well-crafted modern staging is on some level “historical,” since was “modern” in its own century. Period staging can be beautiful but has the potential to be subtly alienating too, because it emphasizes details and conventions today’s audience may not relate to. We want the drama to feel immediate, and we want the jokes to be funny without the footnotes.

Both of you are veterans of the Early Music scene, often working together. How have your experiences as a performer and director informed your process as a producer, including casting, scheduling, rehearsal direction, etc?

DS: For me, it’s mostly on a logistical level. Being a performer shows you what it is to be managed more or less successfully, what to do and what not to do in the day-to-day of the process.

ZW: This is my fifth year in Boston and I’ve been constantly surprised and impressed by the wealth of talent here. I’ve seen many of my colleagues and friends start ensembles, and there’s an amazing amount of enthusiasm for new ventures, a great willingness to try new things. I wanted Helios to be a musician-based project, something people could get excited about and really put their whole heart into. I think we’re on to something, because the response has been overwhelming!

Why the name Helios?

ZW: We went with Helios because of its allusion to the Greek pantheon, a culture whose mythology was the inspiration for so much of the early operatic repertoire. We also liked the reference to the Sun, which calls to mind Apollo, the first musician and the god of music, whose son Orpheus was the subject of so many of the earliest operas.

Your first production will be Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s David et Jonathas, playing Thursday and Friday, January 26 and 27 at First Church, Cambridge. What led both of you to this work?

DS: We spent a lot of time in libraries looking at scores before deciding on David et Jonathas. We wanted our first opera to be something most people wouldn’t have seen before, but by a composer familiar to concertgoers. When we found this work, we were excited not only by the music, which is sublime and unusual, but also the characterizations, which are wonderfully complex: Saul is a powerful king, but the opera opens with him seeking the aid of the Witch of Endor, a soothsayer, to ease his fear that the prophecy of his death —as well as of his son Jonathan — is coming to pass. On the other hand, the composer’s treatment of the love between David and Jonathan is both tender and nuanced, culminating in a pair of deeply moving musical dialogues in the final act, one as Jonathan is dying. We think audiences are going to be surprised and delighted by this piece when they see and hear it.

Would you be willing to share the names of any works that are being considered for future productions, just to give our readers a preview?

ZW: We want to lay out the breadth of our ambitions in our first few seasons, so we’re looking to perform pieces in a wide range of styles and languages. Next season will feature Artemisia by Pier Francesco Cavalli, written for the Venetian public opera houses in the 1650s. After that we’re diving into the repertoire of the eighteenth century. We chose the designation, “Early Opera” over “Baroque Opera,” in fact, because we didn’t want to limit ourselves to a particular era or style. We are also considering Chevalier St. George’s L’Amant Anonyme, Reinhard Keiser’s Coresus and Franz Joseph Haydn’s Lo Speziale. And of course, we’re still looking.

JS: Speaking of previews, you are planning to put on a concert of opera scenes on Saturday, November 19th at 7:30 at Friends House, 5 Longfellow Park, in Cambridge. What can we expect to see on that program?

DS: There are more amazing operas than one company could ever produce, so we’ve decided to start a yearly tradition of a performance of staged scenes that we love, taken from operas both beloved and obscure. Like a tasting menu at a restaurant, it gives us room to experiment, and show our audience all the different things we can do. We’re also hoping this performance will get people excited about our approach to opera. We’ll be performing an assortment of scenes from the tragic to the hilarious: a scene from Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie, the famous “drunken poet” scene from Purcell’s Fairy Queen, a very dramatic Barbara Strozzi cantata, a great scene from Handel’s Agrippina, and a scene from Mozart’s fragment Zaide.

JS: Tickets are available through your website?

ZW: Yes; it’s  www.HeliosOpera.com

JS: Thanks so much for your time, and best of luck with this great endeavor.

Pre-show screen shot from Showcase Revere f4.5 at 1/2 second ISO 3200 (BMInt staff photo)

I learned that that Fenway may have made the decision to use a lesser projector because the DCI (“main act” digital cinema initiative projector) projectors are subsidized by the distributors and the studios and are sometimes restricted as to the content for which they can be used.

Since an average digital projector costs over $100,000 versus $20,000 for a 35-mm projector, the theaters, which are not paying for their prints, have no incentive to make the conversion without a subsidy. The distributors and studios, on the other hand, will save  $2,500 per print, multiplied by the thousands of prints required by theaters every year because digital images are presented on inexpensive, reusable hard drives rather than on film. That gives distributors and studios a substantial incentive to encourage the equipping of theaters with digital projectors through cash subsidies. In some cases those relationships also have imposed  certain restrictions on use of the DCI projectors.

Asked whether she could say what projectors Regal will be using for future Met HD broadcasts, the spokesman from its corporate office, Michelle Portillo, wrote, “Per our conversation this morning, I inquired about your projector questions and that information cannot be released.” Because of that non-disclosure policy patrons can have no way of knowing what to expect from the Regal chain.

By contrast, the Showcase Cinema Revere’s very responsive manager, explained that every one of their theaters is equipped with Sony SRX-R320 SXRDs. With 4096×2304 pixel count, these are capable of twice the resolution sent out by the Met via satellite (1900 x 1080). The  contrast rating of the Sony projector is 2000:1. In the case of Revere, there is also no issue with 3D lenses being left on projectors at inappropriate times, a practice that can cut the brightness in half, as has been exposed by a recent Boston Globe article by Ty Burr. According to the manager, screens 5 and 10, where Met broadcasts take place, are never used for 3D, though the Revere Cinema chain claims never to leave the 3D lenses in place for 2D movies on their other screens. He went on to say:

At Revere three out of 20 screens can still handle 35 mm film, though there is no advantage to it. The images from the Sony 4K projectors are better in every way, and you don’t have the aggravation of seeing dirt and scratches. We don’t have that headache any more, thank goodness. The films are delivered to us on small hard drives, so that cost of freight is miniscule compared to film, and we don’t need to splice the reels onto large platters or employ an army of projectionists. We have only one now, for twenty screens. The Met Broadcasts come to us through satellite. Though those broadcasts are only 2K, I guarantee that we will always use our DCI projectors for them.

For creature comforts there are also soft drinks and box lunches served before the movie within the auditorium. There’s also a pleasant restaurant with a full liquor license which attracts some patrons who don’t even bother to stay for a movie. We’ll probably never offer reserved seats, since that would encourage people to arrive later and not buy food and drink.  Also we have acres of free parking.

Tony Beadle, executive director Rockport Music (BMInt staff photo)

Another favorite Met HD site for BMInt readers is the Shalin Liu center in Rockport. As most of us know, this establishment is much more visually and acoustically sumptuous than a commercial cineplex. BMInt learned the following from executive director Tony Beadle.

Generally it’s safe to simply show up for one of our Met HD broadcasts, but like so much of classical music, attendance is driven by what’s on the program. In our experience, Italian opera sells very well, Wagner sells very well. For other operas we have to do a little extra work. Overall attendance has been very good and well beyond our expectations. We don’t sell every seat in the house since some of them, though excellent for a concert, have obstructed views of the screen. We sell about 280 seats out of 350.

We sell reserved seats at three different prices. This is one of our major differentiators from the presentations at conventional cinemas. We get a lot of people coming up from Boston who like to be assured that they have seats reserved for them. They don’t have to arrive two hours early and put their coats on chairs. But they can also come early and reserve a table for lunch on our third floor. We also offer pre-opera lectures. Parking is also free in Rockport after the third week in October. And yes, we do serve wine and beer on the third floor at lunch and we have great snacks at intermission.

We’re particularly proud of our image and sound quality. When we were designing Shalin Liu we knew we were going to be doing video presentations and we wanted the best. After you finish with me you ought to talk with David Shriver, our AV expert.   And we also had a recent consultation from classical sound expert Steve Colby of Evening Audio Consultants to optimize our surround sound. The surround sound comes directly from the Met feed which arrives in 5.1. We’re not creating an artificial surround. It comes from microphones in the auditorium at the Met.

David Shriver, Rockport’s technical director told BMInt more technical details about their venue.

We have a German very high end sound installation from D & B Audio Technik. The three speaker systems above the screen were supplemented by four channels of D & B speakers on tripods in our first year. This was not entirely convincing, so we hired Steve Colby to come up with a permanent surround sound system that sounds good in virtually every seat. He encouraged us to stay with D & B for the surround, but was also sensitive to the need to install speakers that were aesthetically pleasing. We did not want to alter the look of the hall [in the manner that has just been done with speakers at Symphony Hall]. We bought 6 model E-8 speakers for orchestra left and right in the front and rear, and for the balcony left and right. We also were careful to adjust the delays digitally to make sure no one was hearing arriving sound from the surrounds before hearing the sound from the mains. Every speaker is driven by a D & B MB D-6 amp. Each amp is driven from our London Sound Web DSPs (digital sound processor) which are in turn fed from our Integra decoder.

In terms of speaker placement,  because of the famous glass wall at the back of our stage, it’s not possible to install speakers directly behind the screen as is normally the case, but I believe the above-the-screen positioning of the main speakers is actually very advantageous for film. You definitely get the feeling that the dialog comes from the screen. We’ve done some clever things with the aiming and fill speakers to make sure that the sound field is consistent through the house.

Our projector is a Panasonic Pt D10000DW  three-chip DLP which produces 10,000 lumens with a 5,000:1 contrast ratio. From the beginning, since we knew that video was going to be important, we didn’t blanch at spending $40,000 on a very good projector. It isn’t in a totally soundproof booth, but we are currently working on moving the fans out of the auditorium. At this point those seated in the back couple of rows can hear the projector in very quiet moments. This will be improved very soon.”

Screen shot from Shalin Liu Center f4.5 at 1/40 sec, ISO 1600 (BMInt staff photo)

The picture at Shalin Liu is much brighter than those in cineplexes. I measured 4 stops more brightness from the screen shots I took. It’s true that the Sony 4ks in use at Fenway are 18,000 lumens compared to Rockport’s 10,000 lumens, but the screen at Revere is 4 times the size: (40 x 25 vs 20 x 12.) So the brightness advantage of Revere’s projector is dissipated over the much larger surface area of their screen. I would also observe qualitatively that Shalin Liu’s image quality benefits from the better contrast ratio of their projector.  The black level also appears deeper than at Revere.

So what’s BMInt’s recommendation? In my opinion at the best theaters, such as Rockport, the image is as good as a BluRay of a well produced opera on a top home theater system. This is less true at the larger cinemas since the same amount of information used to create the picture on one’s 50 inch home display is spread over a 40 – 50 foot image at a large theater. So if one sits too close, the image does not appear sharp. And in favor of watching at home there is also the availability of many excellent discs. Opus Arte alone has 59 operas on BluRay. And there are also many opportunities for streaming opera. Yet most individuals do not have top home theater systems. Furthermore, watching a recorded performance at home, though certainly convenient, is not a substitute for a live broadcast in a well equipped theater full of pumped-up senior citizens. Our recommendation then, is to go to Rockport if the drive is not too onerous. Otherwise we suggest Showcase Revere as the next most satisfying venue.

Courtney Lewis: I think this will be a concert that the audience members will leave with smiles on their faces. There’s a lot to discover and enjoy: new sounds and color, jazz, several excellent musical jokes, and of course everyone loves Mother Goose. I’m looking forward to hearing Discovery Ensemble — a chamber orchestra with eight first violins — play Ravel. Mother Goose isn’t a part of the usual chamber orchestra repertoire. I’m excited to see if we can find unusual timbres and balances and textures in a piece which is so familiar.

Am I being a Philistine or ignoramus in assuming that because your bio begins in Belfast, Northern Ireland, that you somehow grew up in relative poverty and had benefited in your youth from something like the El Sistema approach that you now so enthusiastically espouse?

Courney Lewis talks to Dorchester kids (Eric Antoniou photo)

Well, yes! I come from a middle-class family. My mother is a professor at Queen’s University Belfast and my father is a barrister. So I did not experience music education in an El Sistema model. Alongside lessons, I had an incredibly inspirational high school music teacher who opened the door to everything that came later. It’s very easy for a student to spend years making music — I was a pianist, a clarinetist and a chorister —  without developing a habit of listening to music. That’s a separate interest. Thankfully, when I was twelve I was encouraged to listen to as much as possible by my high school music teacher. That’s when I began to be really excited about music. I spent every afternoon after school listening and reading scores at Belfast Central Library. Stravinsky and Bach were my gods! Because I was so interested in twentieth-century music, I began to compose. Later, I went to study at Cambridge because the composition faculty there taught practically every major British composer over the last two hundred years, apart from Benjamin Britten!

When I went up to Cambridge I began to conduct. The student orchestras there are conducted by students — they don’t bring in professionals. With a little experience, and if you audition well, you can have several symphony orchestras at your disposal. This was my privilege for three years. I was able to conduct all the time and I realized it was something I wanted to do much more. In terms of composing, I realized that I much preferred making music with other people than being by myself. Also, I preferred to spend my time with great music rather than what I was composing, which I wasn’t always so happy with!

It’ll be up to others to decide whether this is false modesty.

They’re never going to get the chance. No one’s ever going to hear anything I wrote!

After Cambridge, what prompted you to become a Zander Fellow? Tell us about that experience and how it tied in with the El Sistema program that you experienced.

I spent an extra year there studying the late music of Ligeti and conducting a lot. Since Ligeti died in the middle of that year, the project had to take a different turn. Then I went to the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester where I studied conducting with Sir Mark Elder, conductor of the Halle Orchestra; he’s a frequent guest conductor of the Boston Symphony.

When I finished at the RNCM I was still quite young and without much experience conducting professional orchestras. The Zander Fellowship seemed like a great position in which I could grow, spend time thinking about music and conducting in a semi-professional environment, without the pressures of an actual assistant conductor’s job. One of the great things about that time was the trip to Venezuela with Ben Zander. He conducted the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra in Mahler 1 and 2 over a couple of weeks. I was able to spend a lot of time with El Sistema, going into many núcleos, which are the centers where all the music education takes place. Many of these are in barrios, not very great areas of Caracas. It was moving to see how this system was able to transform children’s lives — children who didn’t have much else going on. I’d walk into a shopping center in some really bad area where you’d see people shooting up drugs all around you. Bodyguards with guns accompanied us. Then we’d go into a basement room where an orchestra of 15-year-olds was playing Don Juan. Experiencing the immediacy and passion with which these kids related to music was absolutely incredible.

Continuing with your description of what you took away from the Zander Fellowship. Did you get any actual coaching in conducting from Ben?

I learnt a lot from watching Ben talking to concert audiences. He’s great at that, and it’s something I’ve been called upon to do an enormous amount in Minnesota But I was very lucky. During my two years as Zander Fellow, NEC hadn’t yet set up a conducting course. Nowadays, every time a guest conductor comes in, the conducting students have prepared the orchestras, but a few years ago not only were there no conducting students, but there wasn’t a large enough conducting staff to do all the preparation. So I was asked to prepare many of the orchestras for illustrious guest conductors, including Hugh Wolf and Gustavo Dudamel. I conducted a huge amount of repertoire. No Zander Fellow before or since has done that, so I was lucky. That’s how I met all the people involved when I went on to found Discovery Ensemble with [musicologist] David St. George.

But it wasn’t just about the musicians, the concert audiences and me. When David and I were thinking about how to begin an orchestra in Boston, we agreed that education had to be a very large part of it. In a small way we are imitating El Sistema by bringing Discovery Ensemble into under-privileged areas of Boston and exposing kids to classical music. This was our brief when we founded the orchestra, hence the name Discovery. Beethoven’s Eroica is certainly a discovery for kids in Dorchester!

The discovery of music by kids is matched by the discovery of new music by existing concert audiences. The idea was that we would play unusual repertoire, providing opportunities for sophisticated audiences to make discoveries as well.

Do you have any theories of thematic programming or do you simply select pieces that interest you and hope it all goes together?

Last season all of our programs had titles. This year we have put together programs of pieces that speak to each other in a particular way. But we always have programming guidelines. There is always a piece that’s appropriate to bring to our workshops in schools. Then we tend to have a classical symphony (we’ve played a lot of Beethoven!), and we always want to have a piece that the regular concert audience is not familiar with. The program that we’re offering on November 6 is classic Discovery Ensemble. It includes a piece that is reasonably well known, Haydn’s Symphony No. 90. Then we will take Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite into the schools. It’s perfect for kids who haven’t heard classical music before. Copland’s Clarinet Concerto is a fantastic piece with many interesting turns that fit in so well with the wit of the Haydn. Julian Anderson’s Khorovod, written in 1995, is for fifteen soloists: percussion, winds and strings. A khorovod is a Russian dance: there’s one in Stravinsky’s Firebird. Anderson’s piece is all about dance, and it’s full of color, wit and frequent changes of direction. Not many people will know the composer, even though he was for a time a resident at Harvard. Every piece on the program, even Mother Goose, has a certain lightness of touch, of wit, of a winking eye. That vague idea, that type of deft wit, ties the program together.

When you’re only giving three (or the season after this, six) programs in a single season, you don’t really have space to give a whole concert one idea. There are so many pieces we want to play, so you have to sit and wonder whether these pieces relate to each other in some way that binds them together, even if there isn’t a discernable theme.  If you have a twenty concert season then maybe some can be thematic.

Eric Antoniou photo

You’re such a globetrotter with commitments in Minneapolis and LA and also elsewhere. Tell us for instance, was LA a shock after Cambridge University?

I know southern California very well because my father lived there between his eleventh and eighteenth years. I have two aunts and an uncle and many cousins who live in San Diego. I had been to LA many times before I went there professionally. I love LA! It’s one of my favorite places. It’s very different from Cambridge [UK], yes, and very different from Boston and Minnesota, but it has tremendous energy. It’s especially exciting to be in LA as a guest of the LA Philharmonic because their hospitality is absolutely breathtaking. The city is such fun and that orchestra has the resources to do absolutely anything, like the BSO. They have incredibly interesting programming ideas and an astonishingly brilliant staff, both administrators and creative artists.

I’ll be conducting the LA Phil in two sets of Neighborhood Subscription Concerts. These are programs that the orchestra takes into poorer neighborhoods during which the conductor spends some time talking to the audience. First up is an all-Dvorak program in December. I’ll return in March for Beethoven 1 and Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite.

I have just started my third season with the Minnesota Orchestra. We have a big subscription season, much like the BSO, for over thirty weeks a year. We also have Summerfest, which, though not as extensive as Tanglewood, presents a month of events in the summer. We also have an extensive program of young peoples’ concerts, all of which I program and conduct. We do six programs a year, each of which is each given six times. So, thousands of kids hear the Minnesota Orchestra every year. We also do tours to underserved parts of the state. In April, I conducted an extensive tour to rural parts of the state. This is why, since the 1970s, the orchestra has been called the Minnesota Orchestra instead of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. I’m also very excited about conducting regular subscription concerts for the first time this season, beginning with a fully-staged production of Hansel and Gretel at Thanksgiving. In February I have a regular subscription concert. It will be nice to conduct subscription concerts after having put so much time into education work.

Note: A related review is here.

The most recent local performance of a work of his was at a concert at Agassiz Theater only two weeks before he died; he was not only present but participated in the pre-concert discussion. Mary Wallace Davidson wrote of that concert here, “Let me say at the outset that James Yannatos’s two-act Rocket’s Red Blare, in the opera buffa tradition, is richly rewarding on many levels…. Yannatos is a fine craftsman: the music was perfect for this multilayered invention, yet in a classical style with respect to recitatives and arias. In particular I enjoyed the humorous use of the woodblock or snare drum to punctuate recitatives.”

 The Boston Symphony Orchestra Assistant Principal Cellist Martha Babcock, an alumna of the H-R Orchestra, reminisced, “He meant a tremendous amount to me when I was a student. He was a superlative musician, a natural and uninhibited person, and I appreciated it very much, as a 17-year-old coming from a small Illinois town. He was a person one could really connect to as a musician.”

Federico Cortese, music director of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, told the Intelligencer, “I was not his colleague, so I did not work with him for a long time. I was his successor. But I have affectionate memories, many. He always came to our concerts. Always. And he would come backstage and discuss things in a very gentle, nice way. Sometimes he came to rehearsals, too. He was not territorial at all; he was generous. No one knew better than he what the challenges were. Also the quality. He had a very good understanding of how a performance went, and he helped. Always.”

The H-R Orchestra’s concert in Sanders Theatre on December 6 will not only be dedicated to his memory but will feature a performance of the James Yannatos Concerto Competition winner, Ariel Mitnick, in the Barber Violin Concerto.

A Memorial Tribute to Dr. Y will be held on Dec. 10 at 3 pm, also at Sanders Theatre.

Unlike most composers who depend on the Byzantine web of foundation support or academic sponsorship, Tony Schemmer is that rara avis who self-produces performances of his own works in formal settings with top musicians. He studied piano and has composed since grammar school, continuing at Yale College where he majored in composition. Upon the insistence of wise parents he followed college with studies at Harvard Medical School and served as a physician until the 1990s. Perhaps, like Gibbon, he had “sighed like a lover but obeyed as a son.”

Now having shed those professional obligations and their concomitant respectability, he has boldly engaged a cadre of young talent of the so-called “emerging” variety whom he has supported and promoted in concerts often — not always — featuring works by someone named Schemmer. Those young musicians have responded with enthusiasm to his compositional “voice,” [or they won’t be invited back!] by incorporating Schemmeriana into their own studio classes and programs. According to Schemmer, his efforts along with this cohort, have emboldened a fifth column of tonality which is tweaking the academic musical establishment to the extent that they notice.

Discounting clothesline-and-sheet productions in his cousins’ basement à la “Our Gang,” Schemmer might be said to have sprung fully armed into the ranks of impresario-composer with a semi-staged production under the baton of Philip Morehead (Chicago Lyric Opera) at Sanders Theatre in April of 1980 of his opera, Phaust. In a Boston Globe review replete with reservations, a dubious Richard Dyer conceded that, “Schemmer has a lot of talent — there is more invention and skill in any 30-minute section of Phaust than in the whole score of …[a] musical like Annie.” Since then, Schemmer has not permitted himself to become discouraged. His self-presented concert at Longy last year was reviewed in these pages here. His works have also been heard in New York, Italy, Austria (Salzburg), Ukraine (Odessa), Russia (St. Petersburg), Ireland and the lower 48.

Schemmer as Faustus (Lee Eiseman photo)

BMInt asked the composer some questions:

BMInt: Don’t tell me you’re going to present another one of your Schemmeriades.

Schemmer: Thou sayest it.

Why dub it “Salon d’un refusé?”

The reference of course is to the Impressionists, who set up their own shop when juried out of the Académie’s official exhibition. Of course there is some further irony here in that the Impressionists were the avant garde and the official Salon was very conservative. My stuff is pretty damned conservative, but some people now think the return to tonality — or is it the revenge of tonality — is the new avant garde.

So your music is not the sort one would hear from academic composers? Are you less melo-phobic than they?

I write for haters of dodecaphony and minimalism. Actually, as I follow the performances of composition students at the New England Conservatory [where he serves as an overseer] and at competitions like the Underwood Commission of the American Composers Orchestra, I am struck by the flight to tonality. I mean, the kids still delight in snarled complexity, but their music now more often has a tonal centrality of some sort. My good friend the conductor Isaiah Jackson remarked to me that my things are more in fashion now than when they were written.

So what does your music sound like?

Think of my music as a digestible cocktail: Three parts Richard Strauss; two parts Prokofiev (if running low on the Prokofiev, substitute Bartok); one part Oscar Peterson; add a dash of Victor Borge. Shake until frothy.

Tell us about the musicians and the pieces which they will be playing.

Foremost is the belated premier of an extensive work for violin and piano, dating from about 1981, a work originally conceived for oboe and piano that was never performed. It languished until pianist Artem Belogurov and I were rummaging and it jumped off the shelf. He started reading through it and I thought: “Hey, not half bad.” More surprising was that Artem agreed.

Belogurov is an extremely refined pianist who has keyed into my musical style with uncanny intuition. He and a terrific violinist, Emil Altschuler, have been patiently working the violin adaptation up. The work was largely inspired by the fabulous “through-composed” jazz of Claude Bolling. It has been fun seeing how Emil, as a strict classical violinist — he went to Juilliard and Yale — has taken to the freer style of this music, doing things that would perhaps induce a cringe response from his teacher Erik Friedman.

So, while I have worked with Emil and Artem for some years, there is an even older guard. That includes pianist Constantine Finehouse and ‘cellist Sebastian Bäverstam. The superlatives grow tiresome, so just check out their sites on the web. Those two will bring back another substantial work, Romanza, which has been unheard for many years and they will also essay some trifles that continue to please crowds, Toney Tango and Divertimento. Yes, the “Toney” is a triple pun. Olga Caceànova, our exotic violinist from St. Petersburg (and a current student of Donald Weilerstein at NEC) will also premier a solo work, Etude en Rose, and we plan a diptych of Puccini arrangements called Bonbons Bohème. Then the misguided full forces conducted by Andres Lopera will conspire to play an octet extracted and arranged from a musical I wrote about Columbus.

Do you have any CDs or videos?

Funny you should ask. We just received the shipment of CDs which Bäverstam and Finehouse recorded in July of 2010 in New York. It features the Brahms e minor and some other things I don’t remember at the moment. I suppose they will be hawking them post concert. Sigh.

What do your wife and children think of your vocation?

They warn everyone: Do not attempt this at home.

Is there any good reason to stay away?

Well, I would hope not. But you know what Sol Hurok said: “If people don’t want to come, nobody can stop them.”

Note: A related review is here.

A winner of four competitions before his twenty-first birthday, and a graduate of both Eastman and Yale, Christian Lane was a semi-finalist in the last CIOC in 2008. At the time he decided not to bother doing more competitions, but this year he was tempted to return, partly, he says, because of the charm of Montreal. “I said to many folks,” as he tells BMInt, “that the greatest benefit of this is that I have a good excuse to return to Montreal regularly in the coming years.” But, more seriously, he says that the real reason behind his return to the CIOC is that “this competition stands out amidst all others in our profession: it is the best run, best organized competition I have ever participated in. The board of CIOC is committed to having the world’s premiere organ competition, and thus is willing to fund it appropriately.” Everyone, naturally enough, makes a fuss about the large cash prizes—first prize is $30,000, second $15,000, and third $10,000, but, as Christian pointed out, “the real integrity of this competition is the incredible level of funding that goes into the behind-the-scenes, no frills costs: having a strong media presence, connecting with the public, and hiring incredibly committed and able staff members, not only for the duration of the event itself, but to run an entire office year round.”

But above and beyond everything else, what Christian finds most inspiring is the exceptionally high level of playing amidst the sixteen competitors. “It was wonderful,” he says, “to meet colleagues from around the world, to hear them play, and to grow in this process together. I never feel as though I have played well enough to deserve an honor such as this, but it is both thrilling and exceptionally humbling to now have the opportunities afforded to the winner of this contest. I am very much looking forward to serving as ambassador for the CIOC in the coming years, and I can only hope I’ll represent them as well as I believe they deserve.”

When asked what plans he has for the organ in Boston, he says he dreams of ways of making Boston “more of the ‘organ town’ it has the potential to be.” And what way is he dreaming of now, he replied, “The establishment of a major biennial organ festival.” Knowing the city’s wealth of magnificent organs, we can only say—Christian, go for it!

Tamar Hestrin-Grader, a harpsichordist, received her A.B. in Music from Harvard.