Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Loved or Feared Conductors: Fiedler vs. Reiner

Is it better to be feared than loved?

I note that ‘tis the season not only to be jolly, but for births of great conductors who reached full flower during the hi-fi era.

Arthur Fielder’s birthday anniversary was on December 17. For 49 years, Fiedler (1894-1979) was music director of the Boston Pops. He was not the Pops’ first music director – the group was founded in 1885 as an offshoot of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (which Fiedler joined as a violinist in 1915) – but he was certainly its best-known and arguably most-beloved.

Fiedler built the Pops into one of the best known and bestselling orchestras in the United States. He made his first recordings with the group in 1935. With the rise of PBS, he became a regular presence in American living rooms on “Evening at Pops” telecasts, beginning in 1970.

Allegedly, the Fiedler-Pops partnership yielded more recordings than any other conductor-orchestra combo in the world, with album, single, tape, and cassette sales exceeding $50 million.

Because of his phenomenal success as a light classics and crossover conductor, Fiedler’s talent in the more respected classical music repertoire was often overlooked. There’s a lot that he never conducted or that was never recorded, but in Liszt, Rimsky-Korsakov, and even Darius Milhaud, he was never less than first-rate. And as an accompanist to soloists like Earl Wild, he oversaw a number of popular (Gershwin) and cult (Paderewski) classics.

I myself once underrated him, but my long experience in radio set me straight. Once you filter out the kitsch, you’ll find the man made some truly marvelous recordings. On the evidence of these, in a certain kind of music, he could stand toe-to-toe with any conductor in the world. I remember just randomly airing his recording of the “Nutcracker” suite one morning and being struck by how satisfying it was on every level.

As for the splashy arrangements of showtunes and movie themes, and the amusing album covers (Fiedler surrounded by leotard or taffeta-wearing babes, or the one on which he dons Travolta’s iconic white disco suit for a program featuring arrangements of Bee Gees hits), the man knew how give the public what it wanted. How much he believed in the kitsch and how much was canny showmanship, I have no idea. I believe he laughed all the way to the bank, but if so, he did it wholly without contempt for his audience.

Fritz Reiner (1888-1963), on the other hand, is the last person I would ever imagine on the dance floor. Reiner, born on December 19, was one of the most dreaded conductors, from a musician’s standpoint, in an era when tyrants of the podium still very much roamed the earth. With a glower that could make Karloff quake (though he resembled more Bela Lugosi), Reiner was forged in Hungary at the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Hungary at the time had quite the reputation for churning out great conductors. George Szell, Eugene Ormandy, Antal Doráti, Ferenc Fricsay, Sir Georg Solti, and István Kertész all achieved considerable international success.

Among Reiner’s own teachers was Béla Bartók, with whom he studied piano. Reiner would later repay the favor with what many consider to be the benchmark recording of Bartók’s “Concerto for Orchestra.” He also worked closely with Richard Strauss in Dresden, and his recordings of Strauss’ works are equally revered. All in all, the Chicago Symphony under Fritz Reiner was a surefire choice to give the ol’ hi-fi a good workout in the early days of stereo.

In 1928, Reiner became a naturalized American citizen. He began to teach conducting at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where among his pupils was Leonard Bernstein. His first American post was as principal conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony. He took over the Pittsburgh Symphony for a decade, beginning in 1938. Then he spent several years at the Met. But it was as music director of the Chicago Symphony that he attained legendary status.

For a master interpreter of some of the largest and most challenging works in the repertoire, his baton technique was notable for its precision and economy. Much of what he achieved, unfortunately, was through the brutality he exuded in rehearsals. Reiner emerged from an Old World steeped in aristocratic privilege. At the top of their profession, conductors then were regarded as gods-on-earth. When drive and ego were bolstered by absolute power, working conditions could become downright perilous. Before strong musicians’ unions, conductors exercised the authority to fire anyone on a whim. So when musicians played for Reiner, they played as if their lives depended on it – or at the very least their livelihoods.

Did it make for better musicmaking? You can’t argue with the excellence of Reiner’s Chicago Symphony. Unless, of course, you look to Fiedler and the Boston Pops.

Reiner conducts Beethoven

Big band Bach

Benchmark Bartók

Strauss’ “Salome”

And, to keep it seasonal, “Waltz of the Flowers” from “The Nutcracker”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgaS9CZ7KsQ

Fiedler’s benchmark Gershwin with Earl Wild

Conducting Liszt’s “Mazeppa”

Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Le coq d’or” (“The Golden Cockerel”)

Paderewski Piano Concerto with Wild and the London Symphony Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-ZLIXCSZ70

Perhaps one of Fiedler’s least-known recordings: Paul Hindemith’s “Der Schwanendreher,” with the composer as viola soloist

Handel’s organ concertos with Carl Weinrich

Fielder conducts “Waltz of the Flowers”

December 19, 2024
Classical Christmas Fading Away

I realize I’ve not been churning out with my usual vigor this time of year my characteristically voluminous posts on arcane Christmas lore. By now, I’ve usually written with ample cranberry relish about the Yule Goat, the Yule Lads, the Yule Cat, Saturnalia, (the historic) Saint Nicholas, even Krampus. But I’ve been busy, and anyway I’m just not feeling it this year.

That said, there’s always time for a good rant. On the birthday of soprano Rita Streich, I elaborate on this reflection from last year, on the dwindling culture of classical music Christmas, as sadly – if not unexpectedly – it still very much applies. And it’s not going to get any better. I will continue to carry old Christmas in my ears and sporadically in my CD player, but the wise should seek it only on the internet, for it is now no more than a dream remembered. You will search for it on American classical radio in vain.

For much of the time I worked at a certain radio station (for nearly three decades, in fact), it was the rule, for some reason, not to program any Christmas music until after December 16 – Beethoven’s birthday. That has changed, since they laid off all of their sub-managerial local hosts and started piping in most of their content from an independent, presumably more economical service in the Midwest. But for many years, Beethoven was the demarcation for Classical Music Advent to commence. Sure, you don’t want to hammer listeners with a month of brass arrangements of the usual ho ho ho; but for those of us with a little more imagination, who would really like to relax into the repertoire, nine days isn’t a heck of a lot of time.

Most of the grand and contemplative Christmas works (Franz Liszt’s “Christus,” Berlioz’s “L’enfance du Christ,” Vaughan Williams’ “Hodie,” Saint-Saëns’ “Christmas Oratorio,” Casals’ “El Pessebre,” Charpentier’s “Messe de Minuit,” Respighi’s “Laud to the Nativity,” Schütz’s “Christmas Story”) – basically, those that aren’t “Messiah” – are slipping away, as playlists pander to an increasingly A.D.D. society.

Over the years it’s been suggested to me that people “don’t like singing.” Or that they might find the religious content exclusionary or off-putting. (Somehow it’s never a consideration when we play Bach.) The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and the wider listenership has been trained to expect little more than consumer-friendly arrangements of the less-demanding carols. This sets a frustrating precedent, but at a time when even Beethoven symphonies are broadcast less and less frequently in their entirety (except perhaps for the shorter ones), what are you going to do?

Brass renditions of “Rudolph” and “Frosty” are sweetmeats that can give you a lift between meals, but on their own they offer very little sustenance. They are great palate-cleansers, for sure, and they are perfect for a parade or a public tree-lighting or as background for a holiday party, but you don’t necessarily want to down box after box of them.

I muse on this every year, but especially so around the birthday of Rita Streich (1920-1987), whose crystalline voice I have always admired. If you’re going to do traditional carols, Streich is a paragon of how they really should be done. She sang them most enchantingly. Whenever I programmed one of her carol medleys on December 18, for the duration of the performance, it really felt like Christmas.

Streich is also the soprano soloist in a recording that has become dearer and dearer to me over the years of Josef Rheinberger’s “The Star of Bethlehem.” Rheinberger (1839-1901), everyone’s favorite composer from Liechtenstein, is likely remembered, if at all, primarily for his organ works. But he was also a distinguished teacher and left an uplifting piano concerto that really should be much better known. How I would love to hear it in concert!

I used to encounter “The Star of Bethlehem” on the radio every year. Of course, as one of the last of my kind, I myself picked up the standard and bore it proudly, working it into my programs when I still had a regular air shift. Streich’s recording originally appeared on vinyl, on the EMI label. It was reissued on compact disc on Carus. Good luck finding the CD for a reasonable price now that it’s out-of-print and in the talons of the secondhand market. (You’ll have better luck if you own a turntable and aren’t too finicky about condition.) Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is the baritone and Robert Heger conducts.

A thousand years of Christmas music, and how much of it is ever played? It all seems to have disappeared so quickly.

I realize not everyone is Christian, radio stations are not churches, and we are living in an increasingly secularized society, but I assure you my concerns are more musical than they are religious. I join Hector Berlioz, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and others of their like in appreciating the transcendent beauty of so much music for the season, even in cases where the composers themselves may not have been the most devout believers. (Many most certainly were.)

Somewhere, I’ve got my old program guides for WFLN, Philadelphia’s classical music station for nearly 50 years. While still in its golden era, WFLN filled the airwaves with Christmas music for the entire span of Advent. True “classical” Christmas music. Granted, for a kid (I wasn’t even in my teens at the time I discovered them), it was pretty hardcore, and I was thankful for the occasional lighter interludes like Leopold Mozart’s “A Musical Sleigh-Ride” and Victor Hely-Hutchinson’s “Carol Symphony.” But this music came to characterize the Christmas season for me, other than those times, for the sake of my mother, we would decorate the tree to the Chestnut Brass. I’ll see if I can find one of the December program guides from back in the day and post what I can.

Watch this space, and happy birthday, Rita Streich!

December 18, 2024
Stereo Obsession A Classical Music Cautionary Tale

Assembling a million-dollar stereo system has its price. Yet another classical music cautionary tale. I’m lucky mine ends with walls of dollar CDs from @[100064570938690:2048:Princeton Record Exchange]. Tantalizing photos, but clearly this is a chronicle of an obsession gone too far. When you’re done with the article, here’s a link to the documentary “One Man’s Dream.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b2IOOhJmxw

December 17, 2024
Liszt’s Piano Beethoven’s Ghost Romantic Salon

On Beethoven’s birthday, here’s “Liszt at the Piano,” a famous painting, oil on wood, by Josef Danhauser, who lived from 1805 to 1845. Depicted is quite the salon, with, left to right, writers Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, and George Sand; violinist Niccolò Paganini; with his arm around him, composer Gioachino Rossini; at the keyboard, the titular Franz Liszt; and at Liszt’s feet, his mistress during his Paris years, the Comtesse Marie d’Agoult – also a writer (who published under the name Daniel Stern) and the mother of Liszt’s three children. Their daughter Cosima would marry the conductor Hans von Bülow and then leave him for Richard Wagner.

Why am I posting a painting of Liszt and his peeps to celebrate Beethoven? Take a gander at that surreal, luminous bust floating outside the window. Yes, that’s right – it’s the likeness of Ludwig van, remarkably similar to the famous bust sculpted in 1821 by Anton Dietrich.

The painting was completed in 1840, 13 years after Beethoven’s death. Everyone else depicted would have still been alive – actually Paganini died the same year – with the exception of Lord Byron (if you look closely, you’ll see his gilt-framed portrait behind Rossini), who died of fever in 1824, while fighting for the cause of Greek Independence against the Ottoman Empire.

What is the point of this gathering of super-artists? Were they all even ever in the same room together? Where is Sand’s lover, Frédéric Chopin? Why Rossini and not Hector Berlioz, who was a friend and beneficiary of both Paganini and Liszt? (Actually, there is some question as to whether that might not be Berlioz and NOT Hugo between Dumas and Sand.)

I can only assume Rossini’s inclusion is because he actually made the pilgrimage to meet Beethoven, who was inadvertently condescending in praising Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville,” but dismissive of any attempt at serious opera by Italian composers. (Anyone who’s read Berlioz’s Memoirs knows that Beethoven wasn’t alone in this, though Berlioz adored Spontini and Beethoven owed a thing or two to Cherubini.) But beyond that, Rossini’s standing in this company is tenuous at best.

One of the privileges of painting is that an artist can conjure truths that transcend mere photographic realism. (You don’t really think about cameras being around at this time, but Chopin was photographed not too long after.) Obviously, Danhauser intended this as a kind of Pantheon of the Romantics. (Why else include Byron?) All of them are transfixed, enraptured even, by the music conjured by Liszt at the piano. All of them look to Beethoven as a spiritual father.

Beethoven, more than any other composer, was seen as a bridge from 18th century Classicism – the tidy, rational Enlightenment – to a new age of sensation – intensity of feeling, raw passion, and heaven-storming aspiration. His personal struggle was evident. Perfection did not come easily to Beethoven. He grappled with it. And he captured that struggle in his music. In struggling to express what he was compelled to express, he pushed hard through countless trials to forge new paths. Plagued by deafness, he remained defiant. Unbowed, he transcended personal and human limitations to express the sublime in all of us. His indomitable drive and achievement caused him to be perceived by many as the proto-Romantic. The development from his Haydnesque Symphony No. 1 to the Mahler-in-utero Symphony No. 9 is one of the great artistic journeys of all time. And those late string quartets? Fuhgeddaboudit.

One of the scores on Liszt’s piano is the slow movement from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 12. It bears the superscription “Marcia funebre – Sulla morte d’un Eroe” (“Funeral March – On the death of a Hero”).

Beethoven’s heroism has burned with Promethean daring for artists and listeners who, down the ages, have sought affirmation of, and consolation in, the inherent possibility of all that is great in humanity.

That’s my lofty observation. The painting was actually commissioned by Conrad Graf, a piano builder, so it also functions on the more mundane level as an advertisement!

Happy birthday, LvB.

Piano Sonata No. 12, Movement III: “Funeral March – On the death of a Hero”

Some time ago, I also wrote about the meeting of Beethoven and Liszt

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1077344973184565&set=a.883855802533484

December 16, 2024
Winter Wonderland’s Surprising Jewish Roots

In putting together yesterday’s broadcast of “Sweetness and Light,” I looked into the origins of the Christmas song “Winter Wonderland,” and I learned a few things.

First of all, the song joins the pantheon of great American Christmas songs composed by Jews (see Sammy Cahn, Jay Livingston, Johnny Marks, Mel Tormé, and of course Irving Berlin).

Second, it was written in my home state of Pennsylvania within an hour of where I grew up. The lyricist, Richard Bernhard Smith (Dick Smith), was born in Honesdale, PA, 32 miles northeast of Scranton.

Third, Smith wrote the words while being treated for tuberculosis in Scranton’s West Mountain Sanitarium. His sister claimed he was inspired by the sight of Honesdale’s Central Park covered in snow. (Perhaps that should be third and fourth? I had better stop counting.)

Felix Bernard, who wrote the music, was born in Brooklyn, into a Jewish family named Bernardt. Smith was an Episcopalian. So in this case, the Christmas tune was the product of something of a mixed marriage.

The first recording was made in 1934 by Richard Himber and his Hotel Ritz-Carlton Orchestra, as kind of an afterthought, on time left over from another session. Among the musicians in the orchestra was Artie Shaw. But it was Guy Lombardo who made it into one of the year’s biggest hits. The song, of course, went on to be covered countless times.

Sadly, Smith, whose illness was diagnosed in 1931, died on September 29, 1935 – his 34th birthday – a poignant footnote to this timeless fantasy of winter fun and romance.

Lombardo’s nationwide broadcasts were New Year’s Eve staples for nearly 50 years, originating first from New York City’s Roosevelt Hotel and later the Waldorf Astoria. I remember watching him on television in his twilight years with my grandparents when I was child growing up in the 1970s. Following Lombardo’s death in 1977, Dick Clark’s “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” first broadcast in 1972 – and which unquestionably appealed to a younger crowd – sounded the death knell for a more elegant era.

The first recording, with Himber at the Ritz-Carlton, with Joey Nash vocal

Lombardo and His Royal Canadians in 1934:

Lombardo 1946 remake, with the Andrews Sisters

December 15, 2024

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