OK, that might be a little facetious, but it’s important to look at this particular sub-specie of Homo Musicus Musicus.  Everyone who has been affiliated with a community orchestra, or a pickup ensemble, or some variation thereof is familiar with the following scenario: Mr. Huhdifluh is Principal Trombone with the Very Important Professional Orchestra.  Mr. Huhdifluh feels that given his extraordinarily lofty position he is more than qualified to lead the local community ensemble as their Chief Cond……. nay, as their Music Director! You may now call him Maestro Huhdifluh.

Sometimes this works out.  After all, the first and most important qualification for being a good conductor is to be a good musician.  If you are a good musician, and you have your collective act together, then it is indeed possible for one to be a good conductor for a community organization, or in some cases a professional one.  From the semi-pro bands perspective – if Maestro Huhdifluh isn’t going to be your leader, then who is? Some 19 year-old punk from the local conservatory?  I think not! Theoretically a community or semi-pro orchestra would want a good musician to lead them, and when you have the VIP orchestra right up the street then, bingo!!!

But there are other things that go into making a good conductor then winning an audition for the VIP Orchestra- a decent baton technique, an understanding of how all the instruments of the orchestra function, rehearsal technique, score reading, acoustics ……. this is just to name a few.  As I read that list I can hear my colleagues rolling their collective eyes and saying “but so few conductors have any of those!!!” That may be, but I’m trying to describe the mythical good conductor, somewhat akin to finding a non-grainy film of Sasquatch. A good conductor is going to have at least a fair understanding of most of that list.  Of course there’s also that intangible something that great conductors have.  My best buddy described an encounter with Leonard Bernstein as “being just a little too close to a supernova.”  Technique?  Nah, I wouldn’t really call his baton stuff technique.  But Good God….. L.B. could just light up the room.

The tidbits I listed, though, are fairly important.  The clearer the technique then the easier it is for everyone to play as an ensemble, and this is critical whether you’re playing in the Lower East Side Community Orchestra and Knitting Club or the aforementioned VIP Orchestra getting ready for this year’s Carnegie Hall appearance.  Conducting itself may be an art form but the technique of conducting is very much a science.  One has to understand that the downbeat isn’t nearly as important as the upbeat!!! The orchestra is reacting to what they have seen before so by definition a conductor has to be one step ahead of the players.  Nothing will drive a wind/brass section crazier faster than a conductor who doesn’t breathe with them on the upbeat and/or prepare said upbeat with the fact in mind that other people have to breathe.  A decent conductor also has to get the patterns right, and do it clearly.  Ictus, good tempo indications, size of beat displaying dynamics etc., these are all part of the science of conducting.

When it comes to the knowing the instruments there is that same issue, and this ties in directly with rehearsal technique, score reading, and acoustics.  Knowing to ask for a string passage in a different part of the bow, or for a harder mallet for the timpani, or whatever is critical to developing a musical sound for an ensemble.  Understanding how a score functions, what it’s telling you, and how the acoustics of your instruments and hall function will usually lead one to make good musical decisions.  So what’s the problem with players picking up the baton?

In a word, nothing.  But in another word, training.  I know this may come as a shock to people by most good conductors have good conducting training. (Actually, many bad conductors have good conducting training as well, but that’s a whole ‘nother topic.)  And this is where the first problem comes into focus.  If you are a professional musician at some point in your career you are going to either conduct the local orchestra, conduct your students in an ensemble, run a sectional, or do something like that.  This is just part of being a working musician.  Why, then, can you go through a complete conservatory curriculum without ever having a baton put in your hand?

Once again I looked up Juilliard.  There’s a lot of highfallutin’ language about Ear Training and Music Literature in the B.M. curriculum, but not one mention of Basic Conducting, Acoustics, Score Reading, or any of those other tidbits that go into conductor training.  Their “Literature and Materials of Music” courses, all four years of it, is “devoted to the study and practice of music theory.” Although the curriculum description goes on to mention “analytical score study” the skeptic in me questions whether any of this material is ever approached from a conductor’s point of view.  What about how the different instruments attack a note?  Balance in an orchestra and how to achieve it? Or the very basic problem that the orchestra is spread all over God’s Green Creation and yet somehow has to play together?  I suspect that isn’t covered but I would dearly love to hear otherwise.

Ditto for my alma mater Eastman. If I hadn’t voluntarily taken conducting there, and gotten together with my fellow nerds to discuss scores (usually with the mighty Mojo Rising… but that’s really way too much information…), then I probably would have never picked up a baton. I certainly wouldn’t have been required to do so over the course of either my B.M. or M.M. degree from that institution. Without wasting too much time I’m going to assume that it’s probably the same at all the other major conservatories.  From my point of view this makes no sense at all since the vast majority of musicians who come out of these conservatories will make their living playing in ensembles that require a conductor, if they make their living in the music biz at all.  Does it not make sense for them to have at least a basic understanding of what goes into that position?  Does this not fall under the category of the “well-rounded professional musician?”

Once again, I’m not suggesting that every orchestral musician be immediately thrown up in front of the VIP Orchestra to conduct the Rite of Spring, as entertaining as that might be. (And if you haven’t seen this young man take a whack at that you really need to).

However, there are certain basic skills that need to be developed, and certain basic knowledge needs to be learned, before a person can pragmatically function as a decent conductor.  It would be an asset to every professional musician to have a better understanding of these basics.

But what about experience?  Nothing, not any knowledge or good intentions, can substitute for experience.  This is the reason we throw young conductors in front of orchestras.  Honestly people, there is a LOT going on up there when you’re  trying to lead an orchestra, and you have to get used to all those different elements happening simultaneously.  This is why there are conducting ensembles in college. This is why we used to bribe our collegiate colleagues with beer to play in our pickup orchestras at Eastman.  This is why there are Assistant Conductor positions in many orchestras.  This is also why there’s the entire répétiteur tradition in Europe.  Go over it, keep going over it, go over it until you’re on the verge of a(nother) psychiatric episode, get that experience, work with the singers, the players, and then maybe, just maybe, we’ll let you get up there and wave your arms.  Experience counts, and experience conducting counts more.  For every player out there who says “PFFT!! I could do that!!  It’s EASY!!!” I say – “here, go ahead, put you’re baton where your mouth is.  I dare you – first 2 minutes of Petrouchka……. GO!!!   And then rehearse it.  Good luck.”

What, then, to do with musicians who tack on conducting to their major solo careers?  Ashkenazy comes to mind, as does Perlman and Oundjian.  Well, honestly, I don’t know.  I did say that “the first and most important qualification to being a good conductor is to be a good musician.”  There’s also that crazy intangible something that some people just have that can go a mighty long way.  I once asked a friend of mine how in the world his orchestra followed Ashkenazy?  He replied “we don’t, but he’s such a great musician that the rehearsals are just riveting.”  You really have to be a damn good musician in order for that to happen.

I realize there is a certain practicality about players taking up the baton.  There are just not a lot of conductors to go around in many situations, and somebody has got to get up there.  Playing a Mozart symphony without a conductor is difficult enough, and I certainly wouldn’t want to try a Stravinsky ballet that way.  The truth is that many of these johnny-come-latelies shouldn’t ever pick up the baton because we don’t prepare them to do so! They’re missing the science part of the equation, and despite the fact that music is truly an art form the science part can make the difference between the good, the bad, and the very very ugly conductor.

The conservatories of the world today are frequently so focused on churning out the next great violin soloist that they neglect this aspect of an average professional career.  Why shouldn’t a basic conducting class be an absolute requirement?  Why shouldn’t score studying, acoustics, and learning about other instruments be a part of the curriculum?  Right now it is as if a student is expected to pick all this up via osmosis.

I’m detecting a thread between this post and my last one and it’s centering upon education.  I suspect that we have become too specialized in the requirements to matriculate from a conservatory, and the requirements that we demand of our professional musicians after college.  Very recently I had a young man ask me whether he should attend a) the local big university music school so that he could focus on practicing; or b) the local liberal arts college where his current teacher was.  He really loves his teacher, but his main gripe about the liberal arts college was that he would have to take things like Philosophy, Religion, or History.  Really?  I suspect I know which one Thomas Jefferson would have picked.

One of the great myths of Classical music that is foisted upon the general populace is the “even though the Conductor usually just waves his/her arms around they’re really playing one big instrument – the orchestra” myth.  A larger barrel of pigeon droppings has not yet been discovered.  The Western Classical orchestra is most certainly a collection of instruments, and at their best it can sound like one amazing voice, but an instrument by definition requires this – you have to be in physical touch with it.

With the exception of such strange creations as the Theremin and its ilk, every instrument that is used in our business requires direct physical contact to make a sound.  You depress a key, or you draw a bow across a string, or blow into a reed, or whatever.  Conducting, by definition, is one step removed from any true making of sound, and is therefore one step removed from any true music making.  Truly great conductors make that distance seem infinitesimal but, let’s be honest, how many of those are there?  What I find distressing is that in today’s world it is now OK, if not downright de rigueur, for a conductor to not regularly play their instrument.  How in the world did this happen?

Solti was an accomplished pianist who was a protegé of Bartok, and even later in life made a landmark recording of the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion with none other than Murray Perahia.  Toscanini, after making a sensational conducting debut at the age of 19, returned to his cello chair in the orchestra and participated in the world premiere of Otello.  Mitropoulos was a phenomenally gifted pianist who in Minneapolis once filled in during a morning concert for an ailing soloist.  He played, and conducted, the 3rd piano concerto of Prokofiev that day.

In today’s world Barenboim, Eschenbach, and Levine lead the pack, with a few others such as Oundjian and Ashkenazy joining the ranks, though the latter two seem to have given up their instruments due to injury or boredom, respectively (hey, if you’re Ashkenazy, and you can literally play anything, I suppose it would get boring after a while, but I don’t think I’ll ever have that particular problem).  What concerns me is that the youngest of that list, Oundjian, is 54 years old.

Among today’s crop of conductors I can’t find a single one who performs on their instrument with any semblance of regularity.  It took me a while to find out that The Dude played violin at one point, though there is absolutely no mention of him doing that in public for the last 14 years (though from some reports in the press he seems on the verge of being capable of transubstantiation).  My fellow Buffalonian Michael Christie got himself a degree in Trumpet, but ditto on the disappearing instrument.  My buddy Alastair Willis?  No idea.  I do know that his sister is a helluva horn player, but that’s about it.  Don’t get me wrong – I like all these guys, but my question is: “How do conductors expect orchestras to take us seriously if we don’t play our instruments?”

I know this is very old school and fuddy-duddy of me but when I look at the “great” conductors of yesteryear (or today) I see very well-rounded musicians.  They were involved in opera, orchestral, chamber music, composition, etc., and almost all of them were very accomplished performers on their instruments! Exactly when did it become acceptable, nay even expected, that conductors were no longer performers in their own right?  This seems a musically dangerous trend, and one that is not going to go away any time soon.

Part of the problem starts right in the music conservatories.  Going to Juilliard for a conducting degree?  No time for that pesky instrument!!!  You’re required to have passed out of Piano I/II, but not the least mention of playing an instrument, either studying it privately or in the orchestra, is made on the website as a requirement for the conducting degree.  Ditto for my alma mater Eastman.  I suspect it’s the same at the other ones, so straight from the get go the major conservatories demand that the conductor be segregated from the musicians instead of picking up valuable experience by playing in the orchestras they’re supposed to conduct!

Out of college the separation is even starker.  None of the conducting competitions so much as waste a nano-second worrying about whether this or that conductor can play.  Conducting jobs with orchestras?  As far as I am aware the Edmonton Symphony is the only orchestra that requires any applicant for the Resident Conductor position to be able to play an instrument.  Managers/Agents?  They actively discourage any young conductor from continuing on their instrument.  Goodness, practicing scales takes away valuable time during which they could be doing another conducting gig, becoming a Music Director with your 3rd, 4th, or 5th orchestra, thereby maximizing profits for management.  The goal here is to make money, not music.

I actually had one of the most powerful Manager/Agents in the business tell me that I should quit the piano, a suggestion that left me utterly speechless for one of the few times in my life.  Now, I don’t consider myself the greatest pianist out there but I’m pretty good in my repertoire, and I don’t think I make a complete fool of myself on stage.  I must admit, though, that as a black man growing up in the USA I’ve heard every nasty racial insult there is, but I have never been so insulted as when that pompous idiot suggested I stop playing.  In my universe it shows a cosmic lack of understanding concerning what should go into a well-rounded conductor’s life.

Now of course, for every rule there are exceptions, and I am not saying that we should immediately put every conductor working out there through a rigorous instrumental jury, as entertaining as that would probably be.  Keeping up on an instrument is very time consuming and just might not be practical for a lot of people. I am also very sure there are some tremendous conductors who haven’t touched their instrument in decades.  I haven’t heard of Haitink playing in public for a quite a while, though I’d be very interested about it.  I would advocate, though, that if most conductors spent more time in actual contact with an instrument then they would have a better connection with both music and their fellow musicians.  Would that be such a bad thing?

Here’s the rub – as I’m sure everyone noticed the sales of Classical CDs are down by a whopping 9.8% AGAIN last year.  In case you missed it there’s an article in the Washington Post putting the whole thing into perspective.  Essentially if you manage to sell 1,000 units of a Classical CD these days you’re going to be on the Billboard top 10 list.  Why, then, should the Grammy Awards waste valuable TV time to focus on a whole genre who, between all the nominated CDs in the “Best of” category, probably sold less than 20,000 copies TOTAL?!

I lived in L.A. for three years and knew several people who voted for the Grammy Awards.  The dirty little secret was that in the genres that they knew very little about these people generally voted for the names they recognized.  So, yes, there’s a reason behind the incredible total that Sir Georg Solti racked up.  Yes, many of those recordings are pretty darn amazing, and there are some incredibly worthy winners on that list.  But there’s that dirty little secret – there were a lot of people who voted for Solti’s recordings simply because they recognized his name.  The Recording Academy claims that voters are directed to vote only in their field of expertise but I believe that as much as I believe that there wasn’t a steroid problem in Major League Baseball in the ’90s.

Numerous other issues conspire to make the Classical Grammy Award essentially impotent.  The insistence that people should pay attention to yet another cycle of Beethoven Symphonies, or yet another recording of Mahler 8, or the umpteenth recording of the Goldberg Variations doesn’t make sense.  They all might be fantastic recordings but there are plenty of other fantastic recordings of the same music out there already.  Technology has also become an issue.  The Grammys nowadays are all about video content.  Think of Beyoncé, the Black Eyed Peas, Eminem, Lady Gaga – it’s all about the visual and the video and there’s precious little that’s about music.  Try to get an orchestra to do video, I dare you.  Even if you manage to get the money, the union approval, and whatever else you need to get it done, how is it going to compete with Lady Gaga?

An interesting comparison can be made between the winner list of 1975 and this year.  In ‘75 Solti picked up 3 awards, two for a terrific recording of Symphonie Fantastique and one for a recording of Boheme that I don’t know.  Alicia de Larrocha won for her recording of Iberia.  All in all a banner year, but what really stands out is that the Classical recordings account for a full 15% of all the awards passed out that year.  This year?  Goodness, the Latin section alone is almost as big as the Classical section.  Best Banda Album?  Really?  Best Tejano Album?  You betcha.  We now have Rap, World, Spoken, whatever you want.  I’d be willing to bet good money that in every single one of those categories the winning album has sold more than the Classical Album of the year did.

Last but not least, all these award shows are basically irrelevant now because of the internet.  The internet is the ultimate democratizing element and it has generally rendered the opinions of experts extraneous.  Now there are blogs, Facebook, Wikipedia and related sites, etc.  Anyone can, and does, have an instant worldwide audience for their opinion.  That simply didn’t happen 35 years ago.  People now vote with their wallets on iTunes, and I haven’t looked at a Grammy list for interesting new music in years.  I can just surf the net or ask my Facebook friends.

I’m sure there are a host of other reasons I haven’t thought of for Grammy irrelevance but these are enough.  Suffice it to say it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.  But before everyone starts another round of bellyaching about the Classical Grammy Awards not being on TV I suggest that we focus on getting music appreciation and music lessons back in the schools.  If we do that there’s an off chance that, 20 years from now, there might possibly be enough interest in the Classical Grammy Awards for them to warrant a brief 2 minutes of TV time.

BREAKING UPDATE:

How irrelevant is music to the “music” industry?  I have just learned that MTV has dropped the word “music” from their logo.  Now the logo shows the various cast members of their reality shows.  Goodbye music, hello “reality.”

The second part of my statement should be self-evident to anyone.  The piano music of Beethoven is at the very core of the piano repertoire.  There are, of course, the 32 sonatas for piano, works which span his entire artistic output.  I would be surprised indeed to find any pianist who didn’t wrestle with Op. 2, #3 early in life, and hacked their way through many of the ensuing sonatas later.  The five concertos are staples of the rep as well, and I would bet my life that the vast majority of pianists making the circuit of orchestras today have at least one of them in their standard offerings.  Beethoven is the the next natural stop on the pianistic shelf after Mozart and these works are at the foundation of the piano oeuvre.

It is the first part of my statement which is the more radical by far, and boy did it have people up in arms!  String players, especially, seemed to take offense.  “What about the quartets?  Are they chopped liver?”  Certainly not.  “What about the ‘Cello sonatas?  Are they trash?” Not at all.  At least one flautist and a trumpet player chimed in about the symphonies.  All great works, I quite agree.  But, my friends, you miss my point.

The fact is that of all the “Great” composers Beethoven is the one most inextricably linked to one instrument – the piano.  No matter from which angle one looks at it, the piano completely dominated his life and his entire compositional output.  Look at it first by sheer numbers.  The master wrote 9 Symphonies; a half dozen overtures; 14 or so quartets plus several other chamber works for strings and/or woodwinds; an opera; a couple masses; incidental music for plays.  Not an exhaustive list but it covers the basics, and please keep in mind that I’m leaving out the WoO’s.

Compare that to the works that use piano – first there are the 32 sonatas, the single greatest cycle in all of music.  Add to that the 5 Concerti, the dozen or so sets of Variations, the Bagatelles, the Polonaise , the Fantasy, the Rondos, the Choral Fantasy, and the works for piano 4-hands.  That’s just the list for solo piano.  In the chamber music category you have the Sonatas for Piano and Violin, the Sonatas for Piano and Violoncello, a whole host of Trios for Piano and string and/or wind instruments, and the myriad Sonatas, Trios, Quartets for Piano + Horn/Flute/Clarinet/Strings/Whatever.  I need not even mention the Serenades, Variations, Rondos, Dances, etc. that are in that same category.  No matter how you slice it, whether you talk about the number of compositions or the amount of performance time required, the works with Piano as the main instrument dominate the works without.

But there are many more factors here – notice that when I listed all those chamber works I gave them their original titles.  In every single instance that I could find (and I spent a good hour randomly running through the photo archives of the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, a tremendous resource) the first instrument listed on the title pages for every single chamber work is the piano.  In the case of the Op. 5 sonatas the title page goes so far as to say “Piano…. with Violoncello obligato.” The same can be said for the early Sonatas for Piano and Violin.  Pride of place in these works goes to the piano every time.  Indeed, the autograph for “Kreutzer” makes a clear distinction – “Sonata for Piano and obligato Violin, written in an extremely concertante style, almost like a concerto.”  This is the first time that Beethoven ever even considered another instrument to be on par with the piano in one of his chamber compositions and he was cognizant enough of that fact to acknowledge it on the title page.

One could easily dismiss all of that as an aberration but there is much more to the argument.  From a musical standpoint most musicians I know would say that there were three main musical idioms in which Beethoven had an unparalleled impact – the Piano Sonatas, the Symphonies, and the String Quartets.  As great as those last two idioms are, the naked truth is that for every major advance that they encompass Beethoven made his great artistic leaps in the Sonatas first!  Before we even get to the second Symphony Beethoven had churned out 18…. yes, that’s 18 solo sonatas, encompassing everything from the early Op. 2 trilogy through the incredible Tempest sonata.  Before the great expansion that is heralded by Eroica there is the equally astonishing run of Waldstein, the F Major Op. 54, and the Appassionata, three works that herald an immediate break with his past compositional techniques. It is those three sonatas which directly led to the great trio of symphonies – #s 4, 5, and 6.  Sturm und Drang indeed, but a style thought out first in the sonatas.

Once again, immediately preceding the great duo of symphonies #7 and 8 there is a another sudden burst of sonata writing, culminating in the fantastic Les Adieux sonata.  At this important moment of his life, when his chief supporter the Archduke Rudolph had fled Vienna, he turned to this idiom to express his feeling.  Beethoven himself referred to it as a  “characteristic sonata”, referring to it not so much as programme music but more as an expression of his state of mind and feelings with musical means.

What, then, of the 9th symphony?  How to explain this complete busting of the boundaries?  In one word – HammerKlavier.  Without the incredible expansion found in this greatest of all sonatas the scope of the 9th symphony would have been unattainable.  But wait… did I say one word?  I meant to add another – Diabelli.  Although it is not a sonata it is the master’s last great piano work.  Based on a theme that Beethoven originally called “Schusterfleck” (no translation necessary) the master managed to spin out 33 of the most astonishing variations imaginable encompassing everything from simple folk dances through proto-jazz.  And lest we forget – before the 9th symphony there is the Choral Fantasy, the basis for the 4th movement of the symphony, a work for PIANO, Choir, and Orchestra. (Admission – I am one of those who believe that the Choral Fantasy is proof positive that Ludwig had an evil twin brother, Skippy van Beethoven, who occasionally snuck in and wrote such dogs as this piece and Wellington’s Victory.  I’m no big fan of the 9th symphony but I actively despise the Choral Fantasy.  It’s dreck.)

Similar arguments can be made about the string quartets.  Before we even find a quartet in the Beethoven oeuvre there are 10 piano sonatas, including the wonderfully inventive Pathétique.  Between that first set of quartets (Op. 18) and the second set, the fabulous Razumovskys (Op. 59), there are another 13 sonatas, which take us from the early style of the lovely E Major (Op. 14, #1) right through the high Sturm und Drang of the aforementioned Appassionata.

What then, one might ask, of the late quartets of Op. 130-132, and Op. 135?  Once again, before he bust the boundaries in these late masterpieces it was necessary for Beethoven to work out the stylistic DNA found in them though the composition of the last 3 piano sonatas, Ops. 109, 110, and 111.  As inventive and gender-bending as those late quartets are it is the fantasy style found in those late piano sonatas, especially the colossal Op. 111, that heralds the genius of late Beethoven.  And before anyone objects that the Grosse Fuge would certainly be an exception to my argument you must take into account the fugal writing found in the sonatas of Op. 101, Op. 110, the fugue in the Diabelli variations,  and the incredible closing fugue of HammerKlavier.  That is where Beethoven cut his teeth, and it is those pieces which lead directly to the Grosse Fuge and make it possible.

Even with all these arguments in favor of my original premise there is still a couple more which may be even more important, and for this one must look at the historical impact that Beethoven had on the piano, and vice versa.  Up through the time of Mozart the keyboards in use were the Forte-Piano, the Clavichord, and their cousin the Harpsichord. If Mozart had lived to be twice his age he would have seen that Forte-Piano change into the PianoForte and change further into the proto-modern Piano.  (Pet Peeve alert: Please, people, can we remember that the forerunner of the Piano is NOT the Harpsichord.  The Harpsichord belongs to that category of keyboard instruments where the string is plucked.  It is the Clavichord which is the direct forerunner of the modern Piano – the category of keyboard instruments where the string is hammered.)  In less than thirty years this instrument had progressed from the lovely instrument of Mozart’s time straight towards an instrument where Der Grosse Sonata für das Hammer-Klavier was conceivable.  No instrument had ever come so far, so fast.

And this is the critical point – the person immediately responsible for the development of this most universal of all instruments is Beethoven.  It was his writing for the instrument that forced the change from the Viennese style of Forte-Pianos of Erard and Stein to the larger, more robust English instruments of Broadwood, developments quickly adopted by the Viennese company Graf. Everything about the piano changed in 30 years – the number of pedals, the compass, the tone, the action – and many of these changes were forced by Beethoven’s own compositional style.  The critical moment comes when Beethoven received his fabulous Broadwood in 1817.  He wrote to Thomas Broadwood:

“My very dear friend Broadwood – I have never felt a greater pleasure than your honour’s intimation of the arrival of this piano, with which you are honouring me as a present. I shall look upon it as an altar upon which I shall place the most beautiful offerings of my spirit to the divine Apollo. As soon as I receive your excellent instrument, I shall immediately send you the fruits of the first moments of inspiration I spend at it, as a souvenir for you from me, my very dear Broadwood; and I hope that they will be worthy of your instrument.”

The result in 1818 – HammerKlavier.

And this is it -Beethoven was the UR-Pianist.   As much as Beethoven was critical to the development of the modern piano, the development of the piano is critical to the musical development of Beethoven.  It was a vicious cycle of the master exploring the limits of the instrument, forcing the builders of the time to explore the limits of piano development, and forcing Beethoven to explore those limits, and back and forth.  It is through the prism of Beethoven’s genius that the piano must be admired, and it is through the piano works where we gimpse all the seeds of Beethoven’s genius.  To play Beethoven on his instrument is to understand his approach to form, phrasing, dynamics, touch, and everything that makes Beethoven Beethoven.

Having said all that, let me make clear what I have not said.  I have never said that one cannot admire, nay, even adore Beethoven without playing the piano.  In the Pantheon of music for all western Classical musicians Beethoven has very, very, very few peers.  I have also not claimed that one cannot play incredible Beethoven without playing the piano.  Many of the great conductors who made their names on their cycles of the Symphonies did not play the keyboard, but that does not lessen the power of their interpretations.  And when it comes to the Quartets?  Well, I grew up in Buffalo in the ’60s and ’70s, and attended Eastman in the ’80s.  I grew up hearing the Budapest, Guarneri, and Cleveland quartets playing the Beethoven cycles. One does not easily forget those moments. Indeed,  Mischa Schneider, the great ‘Cellist of the Budapest, was the first professional musician I ever met, and I shall be forever proud of that fact.

But no matter how great the Symphonies are, or the how much the Quartets move you, those of you who do not play the piano will never know that moment when you are backstage, and in a few short minutes you know you will walk through that door to go on stage where, God help you, there is nothing but a piano and an expecting audience waiting to hear your take on the colossal genius that is the HammerKlavier.  There is the joy, the expectation, and yes, the sheer terror of knowing that you are about to perform the one work which changed your instrument forever.  At that moment in time you are now the musical equivalent of the biblical David, for you are about to go out there, all alone, and attempt to beard the greatest of all the Lions of music in his own den.  To be in that moment is to truly, instinctively, understand Beethoven.

My friend Bob Bernhardt was in Cincinnati last week conducting a Pops show.  I don’t think he’ll mind if I quote from an email that he sent to a few of us about that fateful day:

The orchestra was seated in place, the Board of the CSO was there, as well as reps from the Opera and Ballet Boards. The announcement was that Mrs. Nippert, who has already endowed the CSO and CPO conductor podiums, is leaving 85 million dollars through the Community Foundation to benefit the Cincinnati Symphony! Holy Crapola. Of the 5% annual draw, 75% of it goes to the CSO to hire back players to their full compliment, and to ensure a 52 week season. The orchestra went wild with applause. 12% of the draw goes to the Opera so that they use the CSO, and 5% to the Ballet for the same thing. So smart. The remaining 8% of the draw will be divided among other arts groups at the Fund Board’s discretion.

It truly must have been an amazing scene.  Anyone who has read my blog knows that I’m a big fan of the Cincinnati Symphony, and I don’t think this could have happened to a more deserving organization.  Such fantastic news…. and yet something about it has been bothering me, and it took until today for me to figure it out.  There’s a piece of the equation missing.  Perhaps it’s not to late to fill it in.

Reading about Mrs. Nippert I was struck by one salient fact – I would argue that the reason why she has become a major donor to the CSO is not because she’s a scion of the Proctor & Gamble family.  Neither is it because she & her husband owned the Cincinnati Reds for many years.  Rather, I would bet that the reason is that she is a classically trained singer who had soloed with the orchestra way back in 1957.

In a previous post I mentioned how I thought it was overwhelmingly important for the future of Classical music that we encourage young people to pick up an instrument.  The best way to ensure a future audience is to get young people playing, or as happened in Mrs. Nippert’s case, singing.  So where in all this incredible news is the emphasis on Music Education?  I couldn’t find a single mention of it.  So I’d like to make a suggestion:

If I was Mrs. Nippert I would tie one little string to my gift to the CSO.  I would say “I’ll give you this $85 million as long as each and every member of the orchestra commits to going into the community and teaching deserving students for four hours a week ……. for free.”  Yes, you read that right – for free!

Here’s how it could happen: take $100K off the top of the $4Mil or so that will come annually out of the fund.  Hire somebody @ a decent salary, take the rest of it as a program budget.  The sole job of this new person would be to act as a program co-ordinator.  Send the musicians throughout the greater Cincinnati area. Target the program towards Junior High/High school aged kids.  Make it a part of the core curriculum of the orchestra to give something back to the community.

Can you imagine the impact this would have?  First, there’s the basic PR.  Instead of always demanding something (the nature of Arts organizations who live in the non-profit world – “We want money!!!  Did we mention we want more money?  Did we?”) there would be the headline of “Orchestra Gives Back To Community.”  When have you seen that headline? You would have 360 hours per week (90 members X 4 hours) of  community service in the form of the best trained musicians dedicated to ensuring that their art form continues.  Then there would be the impact on the Cincinnati Youth Symphony Orchestra.  In just a couple short years I’m sure they would be overwhelmed by kids auditioning for them.

But the real impact would be felt several years afterwards.  If you have that many more kids able to study music through learning instruments then the next generation of your audience is already built in.  They will be your next generation audience, and by extension they will bring family members, or friends, or consorts, or whatever.

Ok, I know there are problems here.  I’m sure that the naysayers will have a field day with this idea.  But that’s half the problem with what goes on in our business today – too many naysayers who stand in the way of changing who we relate to the people who are most important to us – our constituency.  Because without them – our constituency, our audience – we’re just playing music for ourselves, and that’s not interesting at all.

I am not privy to any of the particulars here so I should probably keep my mouth shut, but since that’s never happened in the past I see no reason to change things up.  I am of the opinion that 99% of the time it is a terrible idea for any orchestra anywhere to go on strike.  For one thing, the odds are strongly against the general public being in your camp.  They’ll take one look at your paycheck/workload and quickly dismiss you as a bunch of whining artist pansies.

There is also the tremendous damage that a strike does to any arts organization.  You have already lost the goodwill of your audience (see above paragraph) and odds are your donors aren’t going to be so happy with you either.  Needless to say when the media gets a hold of this the results are usually not very pretty.  The damage to any arts organization from a strike usually takes at least 5 years for said organization to overcome, if it is overcome at all.  Having said that there are some obvious situations where the administration and/or the Board of Directors are so far off base that the musicians of the orchestra essentially have no other recourse, but this should definitely be the last resort.

None-the-less, one wonders what is going on @ Lyric.  At a time when every other orchestra within earshot has agreed to contractual rollbacks due to these unprecedented economic circumstances, things @ Lyric seem headed down the wrong road.  A word of warning – Joe Public, who was featured in my previous post on music education, is going to look at that article (assuming that Joe & Jane Public even care about the Lyric Opera, and that’s a pretty big assumption) and a few numbers are going to leap out at him:

• 18% raise over the last 3 years
• $91,624, for 27 weeks of work and 20 hours of work per week, not including overtime
• 13 percent drop in Lyric Opera subscription sales from 2008
• 29 percent loss to Lyric’s endowment in 2008

As I said, I don’t know what the situation is there, and frankly I probably don’t want to know.  But one thing I know for sure – in the court of public opinion the orchestra of the Lyric Opera has already lost.  Sorry to say that but I’d be willing to bet my next year’s wages on it, and that’s one economic bet guaranteed to make a good return.