 Wednesday, May 14, 2003; 2 p.m. ET Tim Page is the chief classical music critic for The Washington Post and the author or editor of a dozen books, including "Dawn Powell: A Biography," "The Glenn Gould Reader," "The Unknown Sigrid Undset," "William Kapell: A Documentary Life History of the American Pianist" and the forthcoming "Tim Page on Music" (Amadeus Press). He won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1997 for his writings about music for The Post. He has also worked as an artistic adviser (the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra), a radio host (WNYC-FM in New York), a record producer (BMG Catalyst) and, in his younger days, a rock musician and cocktail pianist. A graduate of Columbia University, he lives in Washington with his wife, Julieta Stack. A transcript follows. Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
Tim Page: Hello and welcome to another on-line chat about classical music. It's been a lively time here in D.C., with an amazing concert by Evgeny Kissin at the Concert Hall a week ago and an arresting, if not entirely satisfying "Fidelio" from the Washington Opera. Gil Shaham offered a fine recital last night at the Terrace Theater, too -- entirely sold out, as I might have expected.
I wish the Kennedy Center had a concert space about the size of Alice Tully Hall in New York. Shaham could probably have sold out a place that size, and yet the event would have remained relatively intimate.
Looking forward to hearing Itzhak Perlman lead the National Symphony Orchestra on Thursday night. Can he conduct? I don't know -- I hear mixed things from St. Louis, where he is currently artistic adviser, while the orchestra searches for a full-time music director. I do know that he sells out houses, whether he plays the violin or not, and that has to make the box office happy.
Strangely enough, one of the pieces on the program is the Khachaturian Violin Concerto, in an arrangement for flute. The first time I ever heard the NSO, the orchestra played that piece. Rostropovich conducted, Jean-Pierre Rampal played the flute, and I thought the whole thing was awful. I've come to like Khachaturian more than I did in 1982, however, and the orchestra is better, and the flutist will be better than Rampal was at that stage in his career, so it ought to be a different experience.
Well, let's see what musical Washington is talking about today...
Right now in Oslo Norway: Tim, I recently acquired a recording by Marc Andre Hamelin which entails the complete set of 53 variations on the original Chopin Etudes, 22 of which are for the left-hand alone, written by Leopold Godowsky. The writings and performances are of the highest musical quality and stretch the physical and artist limits of pianism. Why haven't these pieces acquired a more prominent placement in the repertoire and do you know of any other complete recordings? Tim Page: We have a real Marc Andre Hamelin fan out there -- his name seems to come up every session!
I think the reason the Godowsky arrangements of the Etudes aren't played more often is that the originals are already too difficult for most pianists -- Arthur Rubinstein, who made a career out of Chopin, didn't think his technique was adequate to play them. And then you add on all the wild stuff Godowsky did -- playing them with only the left hand, or adding on additional fluff - and you come close to music that is physically impossible.
There is an excellent complete recording of the Godowsky studies on the Music and Arts label. I think Ian Hobson also recorded these works a few years back for Arabesque. I haven't heard the Hamelin, but he is a fine pianist and would imagine his recording is a strong one.
Charleston, S.C.: I have tickets to see El Nino by John Adams at the Rivinia Festival near Chicago. Have you seen any previous performances and could you comment if so? Tim Page: I haven't seen "El Nino." There is a recording out on Nonesuch that has been highly admired.
Washington, D.C.: Tim: I am a board member of a somewhat prominent cultural organization in town which is regularly reviewed by the Post ... and no, I'm not writing to complain! As a board member, my job is to help build an organization through effective oversight, fund raising, and execution of the strategic plan. It's properly the job of the staff (both administrative and artistic) to hire the staff, sell the tickets, set the program, and prepare the artists. However, here's where I get stuck: with my professional background, I know how to be an effective manager, provide the financial oversight, raise money, etc. (the "administrative" side). I feel like I don't know how to be of support to the "artistic" side of the house, besides saying bravo after performances. Based on my experience with other boards and board members, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. I'm not suggesting that a board should have a hand in setting the details of a program or pick individual performers. But, there certainly is an important role for a board to play as part of a strategic vision, such as targeting particular programming areas in which we should invest more resources to get an even greater "return" in terms of advancement of our mission-core performances. It's just hard for me to figure out how to get my head around that. I write you because, as a critic, you aren't just looking at the short-term ("what happened at last night's show"), but also at the long-term ("how is this group changing over time, and how are they comparing to their peers in town"). How would you advise someone in my position to get this same sense of how an organization needs to grow, change, or improve to achieve a higher level of success? Are these people, sources, articles, or similar that you might recommend? Any advise you have would be helpful. I don't want to get in the way of the creative team, but do want to be doing my part. Thanks. Tim Page: I wish all board members were as thoughtful and modest and respectful as you are.
There are consultants who pride themselves on matching up organizational support with creative drive. Right here in Washington, Cathy French has done a lot of work with symphonies around the country. With very rare exceptions, it helps to have at least two strong personalities in charge of cultural groups -- one with what used to be called the "vision thing" and another to make that vision a reality.
Good luck on your search. The mixing and matching of talents is a mysterious one, and almost every case is different.
Washington, D.C.: So I just finished reading "Bel Canto," which I loved, but I have to admit, I've never been moved by opera the way the characters in the book are, or the way Cher gets in "Moonstruck" and Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman." My question: Is that kind of an emotional reaction to opera just a cliche? I mean, I know it's a cliche in those movies, but is it possible in real life? Have you ever been so moved by opera? Which one? Tim Page: I haven't read "Bel Canto" but everybody tells me it is terrific.
As for opera, there are probably as many ways of responding to it as there are people to listen. If you want a quick gander at what William James might have called the "Varieties of Operatic Experience," click on to Opera-L, where you will find comments on just about everything to do with the genre -- from learned and passionate reviews from around the world to bug-eyed hysterical ranting about the most arcane minutiae.
In general, I've found that it is a certain type of male opera fan, usually gay, that is most likely to behave like Cher or Julia Roberts. (The bible for this group is Wayne Koestenbaum's "The Queen's Throat," which I find unreadable.) Lest I be accused of homophobia, let me add that I know a lot of straight men who are very much part of "The Queen's Throat" crowd and a lot of gay operaphiles who are not.
Setting aside the folks who go around calling retired divas "La Divina" and "La Stupenda," there are a lot of listeners who are moved to their souls by opera. Works such as Gluck's "Orpheus and Euridice," Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro" and Berlioz's "Les Troyens" strike me as on a level with the greatest art I know.
I should add that in the 24 years I've been reviewing concerts and opera, the only death threats I've ever received have been from opera fans. It's a passionate audience!
Washington, D.C.: Comment: I have heard "El Nino" in Europe, and can highly recommend it to your reader. I saw an unstaged performance - which allowed the audience to focus fully on the work's imaginative vocal and orchestral writing. My only hesitation in giving it a "highest recommendation" was the composition's use of three synthesizers. Maybe at the Chicago performances, these instruments will be in better balance with the reduced size orchestra. Tim Page: Thank you. I've heard that the Peter Sellars production detracted from the impact of the music.
New Haven, Conn.: I see that Berlioz' "Les Troyens" is a favorite of yours. Did you happen to catch the Metropolitan Opera's production this past season in New York - and what did you think of it? Are you, in general, as impressed with the Met as I am? I feel fortunate to have access to so many first-quality productions each season. I wonder if James Levine's gradual relocation to Boston will adversely impact that quality over time. Tim Page: I loved the Met production -- with some qualms about some of Francesca Zambello's staging.
I don't know whether we can post my review or not. That will be up to my editor.
New York has an amazingly rich musical life. I like to hope that Levine will be able to divide his time in a manner that makes everybody happy. We'll see.
Bethesda, Md.: Isn't there supposed to be a new Alice Tully size concert hall at the new American Music Museum on the site of the old downtown Convention Center? What new performance spaces are envisioned for the Kennedy Center expansion? Tim Page: I don't know. Is there a reader who can help me out with this one?
Nani/Tex.: You know those tunes that get caught in your head? Many moons past, in highschool , at every variety show, a female student sang this one lovely aria and I'm trying to determine the title. Phonetically, it sounds like "Kwan doh mi vah". Note she had a bit of a Texas twang, but this is as close as I can determine. I think the opera is La Boheme, but am not sure. Tim Page: That's great! I think you probably mean Musetta's Waltz -- "Quando men vo" -- from Act II, a lovely melody indeed.
Boston, Mass.: Can you recommend modernist compositions for the guitar? It seems everything to do with the guitar involves the baroque or Latin composition. But it seems the classical guitar should have had impressionist, atonal and post modern pieces written for it, no? Tim Page: There is a fellow named David Starobin who has played and recorded a tremendous amount of contemporary guitar music. You ought to look into his record company -- Bridge Records (I'm not sure of the Web site). Sharon Isbin has also helped support new works for guitar.
Washington, D.C.: Tim, this new Rattle-VPO Beethoven Symphonies set has been getting a lot of buzz lately. Do you have an impression? I, too, am weary of the re-recording of standard, but great, pieces; however, that is what people buy, play, and discuss. Tim Page: I haven't received a copy of the set yet. I'm interested to hear it. I'm still waiting for my "Simon Rattle moment" -- that day when I will join so many of my critical colleagues in hailing him as a master conductor. For whatever reason, I've never been terribly impressed. But this is all subjective.
Washington, D.C.: Tim,
Since plagiarism is all the rage at the moment, can you recount any famous cases of musical plagiarism? I can think of excessive stylist borrowings by a particular overrated film composer, but no direct copying.
Tim Page: Film composers are notorious borrowers. Rossini self-plagiarized all the time. So did Bach.
The Post's Philip Kennicott wrote a wonderful story a couple of years back about an Atlanta-based composer who claimed to be a student of Messiaen and actually produced a Mass that turned out to be an exact duplicate of a work that had been published and performed some 30 years ago.
A lot of famous songs have been constructed around classical melodies -- Rachmaninoff alone is responsible for "Full Moon and Empty Arms," "Never Going to Fall in Love Again" and several others.
Concerned Music Lover: Tim--
The New York Times has a rather disturbing piece in the paper today about regional orchestras becoming financial insolvent and going under. What's your take on this? Any chance something like that might happen to some of the larger, more well-known orchestras, like the NSO?
Thanks.
Tim Page: I think the NSO is safe, for a number of reasons -- the partnership with the Kennedy Center most obvious among them. But I worry for the smaller ensembles across the country. The little groups -- the amateur orchestras that people play in for the love of it -- will survive. So will the larger groups. But the struggling professional ensembles in-between are going to have a hard time of it.
Fed up with rude Washington audiences: Tim,
Am I the only Kennedy Center concert goer who finds Washington audiences unbelievably rude: talking loudly during performances, jangling keys and fumbling through purses, LEAVING concerts mid-song (even when seated in the front rows of the Terrace Theater!), bringing noisy children who are far too young to be expected to behave, etc etc? How does a music lover deal with this? And how come the Kennedy Center ushers don't take a more proactive role? Tim Page: I don't think the Washington audience is any ruder than the norm in America these days. If anything, I'd say that our local tendency to give EVERYTHING a standing ovation shows that our hearts, if not always our heads, are in the right place.
I thought about concert etiquette a lot this week because I wrote a review of a "Fidelio" that was disrupted, at one of the most glorious moments, by the fussing of a small child. I am a father myself, and I felt guilty when I read my complaint in print -- making excuses for the family ("Maybe they couldn't get a babysitter") and so on. But then I was told that the same couple brings their child to the opera regularly, and that the same child regularly disrupts the performances.
And so I no longer feel guilty. In fact, I think the Kennedy Center and the Washington Opera should enforce some sort of age limit at their concerts -- eight might be a reasonable age. (I know that there are some younger kids who would do fine in the concert hall, but it doesn't seem worth the risk to me.) I'm all in favor of exposing children to great music, but it might be better done through Young Peoples Concerts and recordings.
Washington, D.C.: Comment: One concept for the downtown National Museum of American Music, proposed for the western half of the old convention center footprint, calls for a large theater capable of handling Broadway shows displaced from the Kennedy Center Opera House - as well as smaller halls, and an outdoor plaza for summer performances. Your reader should contact the Federal City Council for their latest plan. I think that the current Kennedy Center plan is for smaller, flexible spaces for Washington Opera rehearsals and for Kennedy Center educational performances and workshops; but for no mid-size hall. Your reader should contact the Center's Office of the President for details. Tim Page: Thank you. This sounds interesting.
Washington, D.C.: Tim, In a chat several months ago, you said that you thought Washington had the most musically sophisticated audience of any area you had lived in, including New York. I would be curious as to why you think this is so. And if this is so, why isn’t that more consistently reflected in the musical programming we are offered? Actually, things have gotten pretty good with Slatkin at the NSO and the various offerings at the Library of Congress and through WPAS, but my real complaint is about Wolf Trap. The classical offerings there this summer are absolutely the worst I’ve ever seen in terms of any adventurousness in the programming. As recently as a few years ago, the NSO included a piece of Richard Danielpour performed by Frederica von Stade along with more standard fare. They were also including some innovative items such as “The Planets” accompanying NASA film footage. In the early 1990s, they were still presenting Eisenstein’s “Alexander Nevsky” accompanied by a live performance of the Prokofiev music (which would have been appropriate to bring back this summer for the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death). By contrast, this summer is nothing but a classical “top 40”. Do we really need the millionth performance of Beethoven’s 5th, Carmina Burana, and the 1812 Overture? Do they real evidence that such an approach gets more people in the seats?
Tim Page: I think there are more people who know and care about classical music per capita in the Washington area than there are in New York or any other U.S. city. This is probably due to the influx of people from countries around the world. New York has more musicians -- there's no doubt about that -- but I think we have more "appreciators."
Wolf Trap seems to be increasingly heavy on pops-type concerts as the years go by. One of the reasons for that may be the summer exodus of just those people who fill the concert halls during the year -- e.g. the "out-of-towners." Washington musical life draws to a trickle, and a not very interesting one, toward the end of June.
Washington, D.C.: Surprised by your positive review of Evgeny Kissin's Kennedy Center performance of Schubert's D960 sonata. I found it somewhat mechanical and, at times, painfully slow. For Kissin, I think, it has too few notes. Good review in the Guardian (London) of Kissin's March performance of the same works: "[W]hat started as a penetrating musical investigation quickly became a caricature of a performance. Schubert's complex structure collapsed under the weight of Kissin's overwrought interpretation." Later: "However, Kissin's reliance on his phenomenal technique to structure his performances became an interpretative strength in a second half of shorter Liszt pieces." Do you ever read other reviewers (before or after writing your own)? Tim Page: I used to read other critics assiduously -- not so much anymore. There's so much else to read.
I thought Kissin's Schubert was glorious. It was very slow and a little mechanical (that's why I mentioned the detache, "Gouldian" way with the second movement) but, for me, overwhelmingly effective. I've never heard anybody turn the piano into such a bel canto instrument.
I think Kissin is much more than a flashy virtuoso -- although I confess I thought less of him a dozen years ago. At this point, he's right up there with Peter Serkin and Maurizio Pollini among the pianists I never want to miss.
Too young for the opera: You shouldn't feel the least bit bad about that criticism. The Opera was remiss -- they should have asked the parents to take their child out of the hall and refunded their ticket prices if necessary. And they should do the same thing each time those people bring their kid, if they persist. Completely inappropriate. Tim Page: You're right, of course. I get a little softheaded sometimes when I think about kids -- especially since mine don't live with me.
Roseville, Minn.: Tim, It has been my pleasure to hear the Minnesota Orchestra in its acoustically superb home, Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis. That has prompted me to ask: what do musicians and other critical listeners consider to be be best venues acoustically for hearing music in the Washington, D. C. area? Tim Page: We don't have a lot of choice. The Kennedy Center Concert Hall is a lot better than it used to be but still far from optimal. Constitution Hall is a quirky old battleship of a place. The main hall at the Clarice Smith Center has some acoustic problems.
We are at our best in the smaller halls -- the Terrace Theater, the Kay Playhouse out at Clarice Smith, and at certain churches. There may be others that I am forgetting.
Salem, Ore.: Hello Do you recommend any recordings
for Bach's "Mass in B minor?" Tim Page: All things being equal, I still prefer Karl Richter's early 1960s recording on Archive. If you want a more "authentic" performance, check out Philippe Herreweghe on Harmonia Mundi.
Sonataville: Hi Mr Page, apologies for getting in early and reading late... The late Beethoven piano sonatas: whose recordings do you prefer? And I tend to like more over the top than restrained: suggestions? And a big question: I'm trying to convince a friend that Beethoven changed everything. Did he? And how? Thanks Tim Page: Over-the-top late Beethoven? Hmmmm ...
I'm tempted to say that late Beethoven is already so over the top that it needs steady hands. Glenn Gould is certainly idiosyncratic in this music, but I happen to loathe most of those recordings. (He recorded Opus 109, 110, and 111 when he was only 23 -- how I wish he'd returned to them.)
I'm very fond of the Pollini set, but his renditions may be too Apollonian for you. All in all, I'd suggest one of the classic sets -- Claude Frank, Yves Nat, Wilhelm Backhaus or, more recently, Richard Goode.
Tim Page: T-t-t-that's all, folks! Thanks for tuning in on such a beautiful day. We'll speak again in two weeks.
washingtonpost.com: That wraps up today's show. Thanks to everyone who joined the discussion.
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