Something to listen to: Requiem and Resurrection

Everyone knows I dig Hovhaness. If I need to feel better, he’s one of the first guys I turn to for solace, mostly because his music often possesses an ethereal quality that allows me to remove myself from the vagaries of human existence, which is necessary much more often than I ever assumed it would be when I was 10. Requiem and Resurrection certainly fits that description. Scored for brass choir and percussion, it is an episodic mix of mysterious chants and smooth temple dances and majestic chorales, all employing the mixed meters and aleatory that Hovhaness is known for. It does exactly what it needs to do, much like Mysterious Mountain, the Mount Saint Helens Symphony, and his other most popular works: dissolves your sense of time and replaces it with something like meditation. It would be nice if music like this wasn’t needed to soothe and save the soul, but thank God it’s there, because I would probably be punching furniture were it not.

Showdown: Mahler vs. Mahler

The Contestants:

Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler said that symphonies should be like the world and that they must embrace everything. This is, of course, statistically impossible (unless I’m missing the bits in Mahler about Hillbilly Hand Fishing), but that doesn’t mean that the percentage that actually did make it in couldn’t include a wide range of musical styles. In his attempt to encompass everything under the sun, Mahler crafted symphonies and song cycles that speak to an ever-increasing group of people. I don’t think it’s crazy to suggest that his symphonies are as popular as Beethoven’s now, and if I would said that 65 years ago, I would have been kicked in the groin by men in pork-pie hats.

Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler seems like a bit of a dick. Perhaps it’s easy for me to sit here casting judgment from my 6’1’’ body having recently spoken to my all-still-alive siblings and non-alcoholic father while patently not being one of the greatest musical geniuses of all-time, but Mahler seems to have been enough of an asshole to make us consider renaming the Napoleon complex. I don’t know why I’m mentioning this, but I’ve grown weary of the “Alma was a whore and poor Gustav suffered greatly by her infidelity” narrative that seems to be everywhere I turn. Now I’m not saying Alma is a gold digger…but she ain’t messin’ with no broke members of the Viennese cognoscenti circa 1900-1920. But wouldn’t you have blown some architect guy if you spent a prime decade of your life quitting your own music to write manuscript copies for somebody else and then having to put up with their bullshit? I know I would, and I don’t even like buildings and shit. Anyway…

The Rep:

Four, count 'em four, voices!

The chorale is a hymn sung in Christian congregations, particularly Protestant denominations. Usually in simple strophic forms or the German Bar (AAB) form commonly found in Bach chorales, they are often harmonized in four or five voices. Over the course of time, it began to include purely instrumental sections of music that maintained the characteristics of the hymns (four voice harmonies, simple tunes, etc.). By way of example, some works with instrumental chorales in them are Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture and Chausson’s Symphony in Bb.

The showdown:

Mahler employed the chorale frequently in his works, both with voice and without, in spite of his seemingly bewildered sense of agnosticism. There is probably at least one in every symphony he wrote if you look hard enough (or not that hard). But there are two that really stand out for me, so let’s put them to the test.

Something to listen to: Mahler – Symphony no. 2 ‘Resurrection’ — Manfred Honeck conducts the Pittsburgh Symphony

Gustav Mahler

Anyone who would even entertain the notion of reading anything contained in this space knows enough about Mahler’s Second Symphony to make any possible explanation I may put forth essentially fruitless.  I could wax on about the epic funeral music of the 1st movement, and wax off about the apocalyptic finale, but we all know the story.  This piece is enormously popular, and we’ve all heard it at least once, or in some cases hundreds of times (I have a condition!).

Ever since the “Bernstein” revival of Mahler’s music, it has become a key component of every orchestra’s repertoire (you could make a reasonably compelling claim that it has even superceded Beethoven to become THE key component, but that’s a discussion for another dimension).  What does this mean?  That every conductor, band, and Forbes magazine regular has performed, recorded, or been interviewed about this music, often on more than one occasion.

Why, then, should we even bother listening to yet another interpretation of this warhorse?  Two reasons:

Are We Bailing Out Gilbert Kaplan?

Gilbert Kaplan

With the performance in New York of yet another Mahler 2 under the direction of Gilbert Kaplan, a lively discussion has begun about just what Kaplan is, and perhaps more so what he isn’t.  Just yesterday I read a rather scathing view from a member of the New York Philharmonic which drew responses on all sides of the issue.  As I think about this more and more, I keep coming back to something my mother told me when I was 14 years old and just getting started with being a serious music student:  “It’s not what you know…it’s who you know.”

The entire music profession is rooted this concept; in fact, the entire world is rooted in it.  You can have advanced degrees, loads of experience, drive, work ethic, the whole enchilada, but if you don’t have friends in the right places, you can eat your enchilada all by your-no-job-having-self.  Is this fair?  I guess not.  But then again, my mom also told me “life’s not fair” so that jives just about right.

I have a Master’s Degree in Instrumental Conducting.  I was able to pursue that degree because the orchestra conductor at my undergraduate university left to take another job and had a Graduate Assistantship opening.  I have been fortunate to have some opportunities as a cover conductor with a terribly fun orchestra, in large part because I consider the conductor a friend…who I met through another good friend.  The world of music is filled with stories just like this, although usually on a much grander scale than insignificant me.  Even in the same New York, arguably the top of the Orchestra Food Chain in America, the incoming Music Director’s parents were both Philharmonic members and a cousin is on the executive side of the group.  Friends help friends get the gig.  And one friend in particular helps get them better than any other.

Money.

Having friends named Franklin, Grant, Jackson, et al is the best and easiest way to get almost anything done.  Want to get with some hot chicks?  Get that wallet out.  Want to get a better job?  Go to Harvard.  Want to make money?  Spend money.  It’s no different if you want to conduct an orchestra.

I can go, right now, to a website where I can purchase the opportunity to conduct an orchestra in the Ukraine for four rehearsals and a concert.  I have to pay my way there, pay for accomadations, meals, etc., but I can also do that Tschaikovsky 2 that seems so right in “Little Russia.”  Now add some zeros.  Several zeros.  And make the orchestras some of the elite orchestras on the planet.  Isn’t the concept the same?

I don’t have details on Kaplan’s donations to the arts, or if he draws fees for his Mahler 2 performances, but I do know that his contributions to the arts, orchestras, and Mahler are significant and not to be discounted.  Does that entitle him to conduct the piece he loves with these elite orchestras?  As long as someone gets on the phone and asks him to, yes, it does.

The cries of “FRAUD!” ring lound with Kaplan.  Why?  Because he only conducts one piece?  Because he didn’t play an instrument?  Because he was just a fan?  They’re certainly not going to let me play QB for the 49ers anytime soon.  But I don’t see in any way how this makes Kaplan any more of a fraud than countless other “maestros” out there.

I remember listening to a broadcast of one of my favorite orchestras, the Pittsburgh Symphony, in a program featuring Dvorak’s Symphony no. 7.  The conductor was a prominent concertmaster with no significant conducting experience.  He was interviewed during the broadcast and made more than one reference to how “nice” it was to conduct an orchestra of that caliber because you “don’t have to work out the kinks.”  Is it OK because he is a great violinist?  The musical world is filled with star performers turned conductors whose conducting work is as eminently forgettable as their performing careers are stellar.

I think there is certainly a tinge of jealousy to be found in this whole thing, myself included.  I’ve studied Mahler 2.  I feel like I know the music well (which isn’t to suggest I know it well enough to conduct a powerhouse orchestra).  I’m certainly a fan.  I’d love the opportunity to be on the podium for that piece with that orchestra in that town.  I’m too many Benjamins shorts right now.  I’m not alone.  That’s life, and life…say it with me…isn’t fair.

I own something in the neighborhood of 40 recording of Mahler 2, including both Kaplan releases.  I would not rate either of Kaplan’s recordings as among my favorites, but I would rate them closer to the top then the bottom.  I suspect that he has a deep knowledge of the score and some idea of how to put the piece together in a rehearsal (and by extension piece together a recording), but lacks the true understanding of what it takes to make it a valuable performance.  I gave my own theory a little more credence when a friend of mine, whose opinion I value, recently heard Kaplan in Cincinnati, both in rehearsal and performance.  These are his comments:

I have a friend who studied with the new principal trumpet in the Cincinnati Symphony and we got hooked up today!  We were able to sit in on a Mahler 2 rehearsal.  Gilbert Kaplan was conducting.  I wish you could have been there.  It was really, really interesting to watch him work with the group.  He isn’t a great conductor but everything he does is super clear and comes right out of the orchestra.  He did  a ton of stuff with balance that instantly changed the group.  Also really cool to see how he worked through the offstage stuff.

We were the only two in the hall and he asked us about balance from the offstage stuff.  I was like, uh…what, um… I could use just a little more.  So that is what he asked for from them.  Turned out to be a little too much but he closed the doors another six inches and the balance was fantastic.

And here the thoughts after the performance:

Turns out the Kaplan Mahler 2 concert was not good!!!!
The playing coming off the stage was first class but his interpretation was really uninspired.  I talked to a lot of people after who thought the same thing.  Musicians and audience folk.  Too bad.  I was really pumped about it.

The biggest part of being a conductor is making the performance great, in all that entails. Which is why you have yet to see me refer to him as “Maestro” Kaplan anywhere in this painfully long bloviation. But that in no way defines Kaplan as a fraud. He is a man with a passion, a dedication to supporting artistic endeavors, and the resources to realize those passions and endeavors.

What’s fraudulent about that?