A few months ago Elaine Calder asked the orchestra members to suggest guest artists with whom they would like to work. I’ve compiled a list of those who I’d personally love to see come, as well as those who I think would really create excitement and big audience numbers for our concerts. It’s been quite a while since we’ve had a big season of A-list soloists and conductors, and I think that sometimes you’ve got to spend money to make money, and skimping on guest artists can often come back to bite you on the wrong end.

Remember the recent big attendance figures generated by Itzhak Perlman and James Depreist? They cost a lot, but they make money for the orchestra. I figure that when you look through the season brochure or scan the pages of the newspaper, you want to see a name you recognize - that gets you in the door. I read somewhere that in print advertising, success is getting the consumer’s eye to stay on a page for 1/10th of a second longer than a comparable ad. That little catch of the eye is what adds up to success when your product is competing in a crowded field. So, without further ado, my semi-annotated wish list of guest artists:

Conductors

Yakov Kreizberg - he’s been here before, and I can’t wait for him to come back again - we’ve been lucky to have him as much as we have, he’s rapidly becoming one of the top guest conductors in the world today. He brings a wonderful combination of flexibility and rigor to his approach. His guest appearances here are always cited by the orchestra musicians as high points of the season.

Robert Spano - I worked with him years ago at Tanglewood, where he now heads the conducting program. He’s now the music director of the Atlanta Symphony. He is a dynamic force of nature who specializes in new music while bringing a new spin to old classics.

Michael Tilson Thomas - I played a concert under him while playing a week with the New World Symphony. He’s the closest thing we have to a modern day Leonard Bernstein, and he delivers all the goods: he can talk and he can conduct with the best of them. A Mahler symphony with MTT would be a trip to heaven, hell, and back.

Marin Alsop - she’s now music director of the Baltimore Symphony, where she’s putting together an adventurous season (very progressive). I think that snobbery kept her from being asked to come here in years past (being from the Eugene Symphony), but I think it’s time she was invited to come and work with us. It seems like Eugene is a couple steps ahead of us in terms of being on the right part of the cutting edge - maybe we could borrow couple of their moves for a change.

Soloists

Hilary Hahn, violin - she is one of the hottest violinists out there right now, and rightly so. She brings an Apollonian approach to playing that is so very satisfying, plus she has a diverse repertoire and a reputation for searching interpretations.

Alisa Weilerstein, cello - she’s the cellist to beat right now and her first Oregon engagement is at the little Sunriver Music Festival. She’s inspiring (for better or for worse) a lot of comparisons with Jaqueline duPré and recently made some high profile (and critically acclaimed) debuts with Big Five orchestras.

Angela Hewitt, piano - one of my favorite pianists, and a favorite of Portland keyboard afficianados: I’d love to hear her do Bach, Beethoven or Mozart with Carlos on the podium, it would be a pairing for the ages, I suspect.

Stephen Hough, piano - he’s playing Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto this season, and I’d love to see him as often as humanly possible - my favorite pianist who visits regularly.

John Kimura Parker, piano - he is a HUGE Portland favorite, and I know he’d love to play with us again - there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be seen more often around here.

Yo-yo Ma, cello - he hasn’t been here in 11 years - bring him back, he’d be the perfect opening gala artist, and everyone has a great time when he’s on stage.

Daniel Barenboim, piano/conductor - it’s a pie-in-the-sky notion, I know, but to have him come and conduct some Wagner and lead a Mozart concerto from the piano, it’s a no-brainer. I would love to see the orchestra work with a huge A-list star conductor of his stature.

Other

Other notions: do some concert versions of opera with big name vocalists, using the Keller Auditorium stage to allow semi-staged productions, and bring in an influential director like Peter Sellars to do some provocative staging as well.

We did a quick trip up to Seattle Friday night for the Seattle Violoncello Society’s Bach Suite Marathon on Saturday morning/afternoon. We arrived slightly late Saturday to catch the first of the suites performed by cellists from around Western (and Central) Washington. The performers included my lovely wife Heather Blackburn (she did the two Gavottes from the 5th suite) and our good friend Richard Treat, who did the two Minuets and Gigue from the 1st suite, as well as college educators from around Western Washington, members of the Seattle Symphony and Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra, local amateurs, and a couple advanced high school and college students. The order was 2nd (d minor), 4th (E-flat major), 5th (c minor) with a lunch break, and then the 3rd (C major), 1st (G major), and the great 6th (D major). There were around 25 cellists in all who played the suites, with most taking one or two movements, either contiguously or apart. Applause was witheld until the last movement was played, then the cellists who had performed each suite stood and took a collective bow.

It was fascinating to see and hear all of the different approaches to both the suites themselves and to cello playing in general. It’s always amazing to me how personal the interpretation of Bach is. There was everything between full-blooded (and very much un-PC) Romantic tradition interpretations with lots of vibrato and portamento as well as more moribund tempos, and the “hip” (historically informed performance) style with minimal vibrato, no portamento and a more fleet approach to tempos. Bach’s music stood up equally well to all approaches, showing its innate sturdiness and flexibility to adaptation.

Especially interesting to hear was the 6th suite, the most virtuosic of the set, and very much on a different stylistic and musical plane than the preceding five. There has been some lively debate lately among Bach scholars as to the attribution of the cello suites, with some new evidence suggesting that at least some of them might have been written by his wife, Anna Magdalena Bach. The stark difference in every one of the typical dance suite components between the sixth suite and the other five at least begs closer examination. Either Bach was after something completely different in the sixth than in the others, or is it possible that there are two different authors at work? I don’t think that it all is explained away by the fact that the sixth suite was written for a five-string instrument. It bears too much resemblance to the violin sonatas and partitas for a mere change of instrumentation to be responsible.

The three performers for the sixth suite were John Friesen (Prelude and Allemande), who is the cello professor at Western Washington University. He did a yeoman’s job with two brutally difficult movements - all the more impressive since he had just driven down from Bellingham and was still panting from running in from his horrible parking space! Next was Amos Yang (Courante and Gavotte I/II), a member of the Seattle Symphony cello section, who did some wonderfully inventive, tasteful, and attractive ornamentations in the Courante. Last to appear was Joshua Roman see an interesting interview here. [thanks Alex Ross], the newly-appointed principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony. He performed the Sarabande and Gigue movements, the former with poetic grace and extraordinarily subdued dynamics, considering that the movement is almost all played in double-stops, and the latter with grace and charm. This was all the more impressive since he had given his Seattle debut recital at Town Hall the evening before (a huge concert of the Bach 6th Suite, Ligeti Solo Sonata, and Kodaly Solo Sonata) and played a symphony rehearsal that morning. He’s hopefully enjoying a well-deserved rest now!

Most gratifying was the large turnout for this event - the church in which it was held was a near capacity for most of the day. Good coverage in the two local Seattle papers was surely a factor, as might have been the clouds and rain that moved in late in the morning, making a Bach marathon an inviting place to wile away the hours.

For those of you who love (and who doesn’t?) the Young Artists at the Schnitz concerts each year - there is more good news. Christopher O’Riley’s radio show “From the Top” has now become a PBS television program!

The show will begin airing on Oregon Public Broadcasting (television) starting on Sunday, April 8, 2007 at 4:30 p.m. - here is the program schedule.

Here is a trailer from youtube:

I received word this afternoon that my old viola has found a new owner. Some people like to name their instruments, I never got into that. Now that I’ve learned of the sale of my first viola, I wish I had named her (for lack of a name, I’ll settle at least on the nautical convention of the female pronoun). We went through a lot together.

She was my first - I started on the violin and went from 4th grade until my sophomore year of college as a violinist. The dusky-eyed beauty that is the viola seduced me the spring before I transferred to the University of Puget Sound (UPS). Up to this point I was intent on some sort of business-oriented degree, perhaps international relations/business or something of that sort. I was taking part in a chamber music summer session at UPS and word came down that there was a shortage of violists, and there was need for one to play one of the Mozart flute quartets. I took up a borrowed instrument, and the rest was history.

The crush hit hard, and I traded my violin in for a viola by the same maker, William Watson, who was also my private violin teacher through high school. She was a large instrument - a full 17 and 5/8 inches length along the body (average is 16 to 16.5 inches), modeled on a great tenor viola made by the early Brescian maker Gasparo da Salo (1542-1609) and housed in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. I did a lot with her, here are some highlights:

• Performed concertos or works with orchestra by Bach, Britten, Bruch, Castaldo, Hindemith, Mozart, and Walton.
• Played in masterclasses and/or coachings for Joseph dePaquale, Donald McInnes, Kim Kashkashian, Karen Tuttle, Phil Setzer, the Takacs Quartet, the Guarneri Quartet, and the Peabody Trio.
• Won my job with the Oregon Symphony.
• Premiered half a dozen new works for viola.
• Played three summers with the National Orchestral Institute, and three summers as a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center.
• Played two years with the Ethos Quartet.

I’m sure that I’m leaving a lot of stuff out due to lack of recall, but you get the idea.

I’m glad that she’ll be played by someone who has fallen under her spell, and that it will be a long and fruitful collaboration. It’s a bittersweet occasion, as I’ll miss her sound and feel, and since her maker passed away last fall. It marks the closing of a real door with my youth, and a time when everything was new.

My first major, formal recital in Portland (it only took 11 years!!) will take place on Saturday, April 7th at 7:30 p.m. at the Community Music Center (3350 SE Francis St, Portland, 97202). I’m delighted to be able to invite some of my incredibly talented colleagues to join with me in the music-making for this recital. In addition, the concert will benefit the Community Music Center, which is suffering from decreasing levels of support from the City of Portland, and which is a priceless asset to the entire metropolitan region.

Artists:

David Buck, flute
Shin-young Kwon, violin
Karen Wagner, oboe
Cary Lewis, piano

Repertoire:

Ludwig van Beethoven - Serenade, op. 25 for flute, violin and viola
Henri Vieuxtemps - Capriccio, op. posth. for solo viola
Charles Martin Loeffler - Two Rhapsodies for oboe, viola and piano
Zoltan Kodaly - Adagio for viola and piano
Henri Vieuxtemps - Elegy, op. 30 for viola and piano

Johnny Mathis

It was a pleasure once again to see a packed house at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall last night. Having the Itzhak Perlman series sell out followed by a special appearance by the legendary Johnny Mathis was a great way to brighten the appearance of the orchestra’s future. I hope that these artists will begin the flood tide of world-class guest artists and conductors that this ensemble (and this community) clearly deserves.

I love watching these great artists do their thing - whether they are classical, crossover or popular music practicioners. There is such an evident dedication to their craft - and they always project a great joy in what they do. I see them all backstage, and I know that they can have their off days - and tempers to prove it! But to a one, regardless of their circumstances, they step out on the stage and give the audience the dedication and enjoyment that they are paying $50 - $150 a seat for. I’ve seen Yo-yo Ma step out of a cab from a late-arriving plane, get out his instrument, and do a spell-binding performance of the Dvorak Cello Concerto in the dress rehearsal, and then several hours later deliver an even more arresting performance that night. Clearly, he was exhausted, frazzled and probably surly, but he betrayed none of this to either the orchestra, backstage staff, or audience. This is the duty of the professional performer.

We in orchestras often consider ourselves above “entertainment”, but really - what does it matter when that is one of the things that an audiences is looking for in our product? We owe them a pleasing and enjoyable visual experience as well as an aural one. I don’t mean apeing and mugging for the audience like one of Yanni’s or John Tesh’s side-performers (shudder) - I mean projecting a real and engaged involvement (and evident enjoyment) in the process of making music. What we’re doing is hard work, and sometimes it’s so hard that we cannot spare the energy or time to do that extra bit of showmanship, but there are times when it’s ok to just let go. The concerts with Perlman, especially, were full of moments like that. It’s a difficult task sometimes, when you’re tired and have had a bad day, or are catching the latest bug that’s making the rounds. But it is an obligation, and one that I aim everyday to do a better job of meeting.

photo credit: sophie yao - the oregonian

First of all, here is the nicely written review by James McQuillen of the Oregonian.

I’d say McQuillen hit the nail pretty much on the head. It would have been nice to hear more of Perlman’s playing - it really was the draw for much of the crowd. His orchestral appearances with this orchestra are rarer than hen’s teeth (he hasn’t appeared since I joined the orchestra 11 years ago), and though the Beethoven Romances are wonderful little gems, there was little for the audience to sink their teeth into (aside from music-making as only Perlman could deliver, that is).

Perlman as a conductor is an interesting animal. He is full of great ideas that he is able to convey fairly well. He’s not a virtuoso with the baton like he is with the violin - but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. He gives the orchestra a chance to breathe - to shape phrases with a common voice, but without a straightjacket.

The concerts were a measure of how much the orchestra has grown artistically over the last five years. We could never have sustained the level of rhythmic discipline with minimal direction in years past, and even when the sound was full-out in the Tchaikowsky, there was always a suppleness, depth and lack of hardness that wouldn’t have been present before.

It would be a coup if we were able to establish a continuing relationship with the maestro for future seasons - he would, I hazard a guess on behalf of the rest of the orchestra, be a welcomed presence on the podium, both from the stage and the hall. Rumor has it that he might return in the 08-09 season - this would depend upon many variables including his availability - but it is a good rumor to think about!

P.S. - as for the photo - you can see the author in the lower left-hand corner.

Today was an interesting day, and I mean that in the non-parenthetical way, i.e., it was not “interesting” but interesting. I’ll attempt to explain why.

Over the course of the last several years, the way the orchestra plays, and more specifically, the way the strings play has been profoundly influenced by Carlos Kalmar. Textures have been lightened by the use of less vibrato, more bow, and less pressure of the bow on the string. Not for all music all the time, but especially in the music of early Romantic composers on back, it is a pretty reliable feature of our string sound.

This was a sharp departure from the way that James DePreist wanted the strings to sound. He was a product of the Philadelphia Sound as perfected by Stokowski and Ormandy, and he had that sound in his “ear” for nearly all of his repertoire. It is a sort of no-holds-barred style of playing, and the perils of this style have much to do with pushing the sound too much and losing a sense of coherent rhythm. It has the advantage of being a fun way to play and of giving a more present sound in the horrid acoustic that is the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

So, here we all were on a bright, sunny Thursday at 10:00 in the morning awaiting the arrival of Itzhak Perlman on the podium to begin rehearsal. I, for one, was a bit apprehensive. Would he be the genial presence you see in his live and broadcast public performances, or would he be a taskmaster, bent only on achieving what he wanted and the sound of the orchestra be damned? Well, a little of both, if you must ask, and I mean it only in the nicest way. He is a wonderful person on first meeting, and his immense heart (and hands) are immediately apparent.  He has a non-threatening way (except for the fact that Itzhak Perlman is telling you to do it) of getting the sounds and shapes that he wants, but he is insistent about what he wants and isn’t afraid to tell you twice or even three times if necessary.
We spent the first portion of the rehearsal reading through the major work on the program, Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony. He is not a conductor who imposes his will on the orchestra through overt gestures. He sort of prods this way and that in a rather understated fashion - he clearly trusts the skills of a major orchestra to get through a standard piece such as the Dvorak.

As the rehearsal goes on, he makes more small remarks, mostly to the strings, about the use of vibrato and the bow, and the sound of the strings changes - subtly at first, and then gradually becomes warmer, richer, and more diffuse. [I should add at this point that one of the first things he said to our principal violist Joël Belgique on the podium just before rehearsal began was "I hear this is the orchestra that doesn't use much vibrato."] He’s clearly a product of the golden age of musical training in America, and it’s much like making a recipe from “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” as opposed to Dr. Weill’s “The Healthy Kitchen”. Each approach is valid and true, but one is definitely a guilty pleasure.

The second, afternoon rehearsal was spent on the lovely and ubiquitous Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings. By now we in the strings are happily doing whatever Maestro Itzhak wants, and though rhythm and tone are getting a bit scrappy (the pendulum always swings too far at first) the mood is fairly positive. We’re pretty much over our star-struck phase of the first rehearsal (especially when you’re on the front stands and this legend is a mere arm’s length away!) and it’s much like a usual guest conductor relationship.

That’s it for rehearsal coverage - I’ll post after the first two concerts to let you know how things are shaping up. Stay tuned…

I’m in the process of figuring out what to play on a planned spring recital, and it’s made me think a lot about the largely forgotten art of programming - the act of picking what pieces will be on a concert.I was poking through some of my music that I haven’t looked at for a long, long while, and came across a set of Three Legends by Heinrich von Herzogenberg. He and his wife, Elizabeth Stockhausen, were both good friends of Brahms, and there is a good record of correspondence between the three of them (yet another triangle in Brahms’ private life along with Robert and Clara Schumann).

Heinrich von Herzogenberg

I first encountered these pieces by hearing them on a recording (sadly, out of print) by Paul Coletti, and they’re quite nice, treading the line between Brahms and Bruch, which is an interesting axis. It turns out that Herzogenberg taught at the Hochschule fur Music in Berlin, where he in turn urged a young Ralph Vaughan Williams to study with Max Bruch.

With these three composers, we’ve got a nice basis for a recital: Herzogenberg’s Legends, Vaughan Williams’ Romance, and Bruch’s Romance. It’s not hugely exciting or varied, but it does show influences between composers and their peers, and all of these pieces are lovely and show the lyric gifts of the viola to good effect.

Other ideas are using compositions which were composed for the same competition, such as the 1919 Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge competition, whose entries included Ernest Bloch’s Suite for Viola and Piano, Paul Hindemith’s Op. 11/4 Sonata, and the Rebecca Clarke Sonata.

I got to know Naoko Shimizu at Tanglewood in 1994. We were both fellows at the Tanglewood Music Center. I did not know her well, but there were only 12 violas there that summer, and so everyone knew each other at least a little. One of the 8 weeks we were there, Samuel Rhodes (violist of the Juilliard Quartet and faculty member at the Juilliard School) gave a masterclass. Naoko got up and played the Bartók concerto - and I mean PLAYED! She knocked it out of the park. Before then she hadn’t sat principal of the section in the orchestra and was very quiet and kept to herself. We had no idea who we were dealing with. Come to find out, she was a student of Nobuko Imai, one of the world’s leading violists and teachers, studying with her in Germany. The next five summers she went on to play at the Marlboro Festival and tour with Musicians from Marlboro.

I didn’t hear anything about her for a while, then I happened upon a blurb about her winning the ARD Competition in Munich in 1997 and the Concert Artists Guild competition in 1998.

Then, in 2001 I heard about her from a fellow Tanglewood alum - she’d won a Principal viola position with the Berlin Philharmonic. I was floored - this is like hearing that someone you’d gone to a summer program with had been elected president or senator.

Anyway, a couple of months ago I was doing one of my periodic Google searches for people I’d once known, and found links to a company which was producing recordings of Naoko’s. So, if you’re game, buy one and hear some truly phenomenal playing.