Now, when does Robin Williams get the baton? Imagine how much fun the rehearsals would be!

As for McCartney’s appalling “Standing Stone” being a financial disaster when it was presented here in PDX, perhaps it wasn’t marketed correctly? It would be interesting to know more of the details surrounding that occasion.

However, with the right kitschmeister in charge of promotion for the 1-2-3 punch I outline above (oratorio, doctorate after-hours love fest), I believe that a bona-fide tidal-wave of ticket sales would ensue.

D-Bob says, come on “kids,” let’s give it a go!

Then again, perhaps it’s time to program McCartney’s “Liverpool Oratorio” here in Portland to help refill the sagging coffers of some local arts organizations? You want a younger audience at concerts? Paul’s “classical” works are just the ticket. AND, if Yale can give him an honorary doctorate, why can’t one of PDX’s finer schools join in on the Ivy League fun? Wouldn’t you just love to see “Beatlemania” erupt once again among the aging academics screaming in their seats?

D-Bob says, Let’s do it!

PS
Now, getting Paul to cut loose with a few steamin’ rockers at an after-hours club WOULD be worth the price of admission!

“[E]ven were Mr. Kaplan a genuine Mahler scholar (NPI) as he’s put out to be, that in no way qualifies him to mount the podium in front of one of the greatest symphonic ensembles in the world. We mean, the man is not even a trained musician much less a trained conductor, fer chrissake. However, we suspect that what prompted the strident attack on him by Finlayson was, in large part, for the wrong reasons. We suspect that what got to Finlayson was Kaplan’s insufferable arrogance, NOT his lack of qualification. We suspect that had Kaplan adopted the attitude of, say, Danny Kaye when he stood on the podium in front of the NYP for their pension concert, and, like Kaye, took the attitude that, as a conductor, it was all in the spirit of good will rather than an attempt at a definitive performance of the Mahler No. 2, Finlayson’s flaying criticism of Kaplan would never have been written. ”

ACD

Speaking of audiences, I was also reminded of a link Charles posted a few weeks back to a piece by Holly Mulcahy entitled “How To Alienate Your Audience in 10 Easy Steps: Musicians.” For Step 7 (“Roll eyes when your colleagues make mistakes during concerts”) she wrote, “There is nothing more insulting to you as a professional than a fellow musician that is not performing to your standards. Worse still, someone in the audience might think you were the idiot who made the mistake. Rolling your eyes and/or smirking lets everyone know that you are not only innocent of the transgression but you acknowledge that it was wholly ruined by someone else.”

Step 8 (“Snub anyone and everyone in a lesser artistic position to yours”) seemed to be particularly relevant to the discussion of professional status. “It is a shame to admit it, but everyone gets caught up in the social status bear trap at one point or another. Even so, it pays to keep the social fight or flight mechanism from clouding your judgment. You never know who you are talking with so be nice and treat all colleagues with the level of respect you expect they would show to you.”

I think the key factor for me is that if it is always made clear that he is an “amateur conductor” – albeit one who has invested a lot of his time and money into his obsession with this score – then it is entirely up to the audience to decide whether they want to spend their money watching him conduct/or pretend to conduct the NYPhil, or rather stay at home and watch Bernstein do the same work on DVD. Personally, I would have stayed at home, but I can understand a lot of people perhaps feeling inspired by his situation… rightly or wrongly…

Charles – how would you and your colleagues react in these difficult economic times if Kaplan, or any other “amateur” conductor for that matter, approached the Oregon Symphony and said: “I’ll donate $100K to the endowment fund if you let me conduct Mahler 2/Beethoven 5… etc etc” ??

Also, there’s a disturbing backlash against the supposed “elites” in all their flavors. We idolize pop stars who come from humble roots, or just care enough to get past Paula, Randy and Simon and make it big. On the other hand, we’re suspicious of those who have undergone rigorous educational processes yet still deign to entertain us. It’s sort of a new wrinkle on the Madonna/Whore duality. We want to be entertained, but never to know how much incredibly hard work it takes to be a quality musician in any genre.

Anyway, I like your medical-schooled doctor analogy and find it to be spot-on. Sadly, even in that rigorous world, one winds up with incompetent hacks (murderers?) like the well-known local, Dr. Jayant Patel. Yes, I’m giving an extreme example which does not bear any real analogical resemblance to the extremity of Mr. Kaplan’s case history. Or does it? For, you see, one thing is consistent in both sorry scenarios; there are, and have been, numerous colluders that have helped usher along the careers of both men.

The issue of professional status, and the qualitative perceptions that go along with that status, is quite interesting and I hope you’re able to pick it up in a later post. I’d be happy to share my own experiences as a musicologist without a Ph.D or an academic position.

“Much has already been written about Gilbert Kaplan’s extraordinary obsession with Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. A wealthy publisher and financier, he not only owns the manuscript and has published it in a facsimile that is a miracle of book-production, but he took lessons to enable him to conduct it. This he has done on many occasions, with several orchestras. Naturally this has led to a good deal of scepticism and to ‘toffee-nosed’ disparagement from some professional musicians and academics. With the uncharitableness and new puritanism which disfigure so much of today’s writing about music, it will be viewed as a crime for an amateur to invade the closed shop and if the amateur also happens to be rich, then that is the ultimate indiscretion. No doubt Kaplan’s wealth has been a big advantage to him (and to others, incidentally) but I suspect it is irrelevant in this case. If a post-office worker like the late Frank Walker, who was not a professional writer, devotes all his spare time to ferreting out and correcting errors and misconceptions about Hugo Wolf and Verdi so that he can write books about them which changed our perceptions of both composers, then that is scholarship and everyone admires it. Why should Kaplan’s devotion to the minutiae of this Mahler symphony not be regarded in a similar spirit?”

“One answer,” the reviewer notes, “is that writing is a solitary art and act [while] conducting a choral symphony involves over 200 other people and persuading them to do what you want. Anyone can beat time; only a relative few can conduct and ‘interpret’….Having heard [Kaplan] at a concert and now on this recording, no one will persuade me that he cannot conduct Mahler’s Second Symphony. An interpretation of this degree of excellence and emotional range cannot be faked by a nod, say from the orchestra leader.” In the end, the reviewer compares Kaplan’s recording to that of Simon Rattle, saying that the two “complement each other and I should not wish to be without either.”

Kaplan has been performing this piece on a more or less regular basis since 1982, and he even recorded it again with the Vienna Philharmonic in 2003. He has established a foundation dedicated to studying and preserving the composer’s music, and along with Renate Stark-Voigt, who is herself a highly regarded Mahler scholar, he has been commissioned to produce a new critical edition of the Second Symphony, to be issued under the auspices of the Internationale Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft in Vienna. Now none of this makes him a great conductor, nor does it automatically qualify him to stand in front of the New York Philharmonic (or any other orchestra for that matter). I think it’s safe to say, though, that after 25 years of living with the work, he has more than a passing familiarity with it. That alone is no small feat.

Finlayson has certainly raised a number of very interesting questions, but I’m wondering why this is such a hot button issue on the musical blogosphere right now. It’s not entirely clear to me what’s really driving all of the passion and intensity.