21CM: Surviving the First Decade

21CM
By Assaff Weisman

The odds of getting an ensemble off the ground can feel like those of launching a new restaurant. Most groups disband within a few short years for reasons that are often similar: Establishing a name in an already crowded market is tough, and the administrative burdens that come with it can make even the most organized group want to crawl into a hole. As the Israeli Chamber Project prepares to celebrate its tenth anniversary, we look back at what brought us here, at the challenges we faced and the lessons we learned along the way.

1
Work With People You Respect

You’ve formed a group and agreed on what to call yourselves – you may even have a couple of concerts lined up. Everyone is energized and the future looks promising, but the honeymoon doesn’t last forever. Soon, you and your new colleagues will face your first challenges – anything from temperamental differences, conflicting opinions on concert offers or how long to hold that fermata. Most likely, you’ll encounter all of these and more.

Conflicts are a natural part of any group dynamic, but when you work with people you respect, it’s much easier to accept those times when your individual input is overruled. You don’t necessarily have to be best friends with your ensemble mates, but what does matter is that you hold each other’s work in high regard and respect one another as people.

With ICP, we had good fortune in that most of our members grew up together in Israel, getting to know one another as part of the country’s small but very lively musical scene. Several of us met as students, so when it was time to come up with a roster, ICP’s founder and clarinetist, Tibi Cziger, already had some people in mind. At the time, pianist Yael Kareth was the only one of us living in Israel. Cziger, cellist Michal Korman, harpist Sivan Magen, violinist Itamar Zorman and I lived in New York, while violist Guy Ben-Ziony and violinist Daniel Bard were based in Europe. Despite the difficulties of running a group across three continents, our commitment to each other as musicians and people strengthened our commitment to the ensemble.

2
Know Your Identity

Knowing your identity is critical for reasons way beyond marketing. Naturally, you want to stand out from other ensembles, but you also need to know what you stand for. Are you a group that champions neglected composers or focuses on the core repertoire? Do your concerts support a broader mission or are you strictly about the music? It is especially powerful if you can point to an origin story, making it easier for people to grasp what sets you apart and why your voice is needed. 

Back in 2008, seven of our eight founding members were pursuing careers outside of Israel – emblematic of a broader “brain drain” from the country, where lack of government funding, little to no private philanthropy and a small market severely limited the possibilities for a sustainable career in chamber music. But we all felt a strong connection to our cultural heritage and, wanting to give back to the community that had first guided us, we saw an opportunity to foster connections within Israel’s fragmented society while bringing a distinct musical energy to audiences abroad. Of course, we wanted to do this in a sustainable manner, which led to the birth of ICP. 

What started as two annual tours across Israel (including places on the periphery, where live classical music is hard to come by, as well as metropolitan centers), quickly became three, and we were fortunate to bring along such distinguished guest artists as Peter Wiley, Antje Weithaas and Liza Ferschtman. Meanwhile, with five of our members in New York, we established a U.S. base of operations for North American tours. Today, though our founding members are still spread across the globe, we’re able to increase our activities on both sides of the Atlantic through a careful expansion of our roster, long-range planning and intensified fundraising.

3
Have a Clear Idea of Each Member’s Role

There is no one way to run a chamber ensemble. You should feel free to create a structure that suits your particular needs, but it’s very important for everyone to know what they’ve signed up for. Are you the kind of group that reaches decisions by consensus, majority vote or top-down action? Who will handle administrative duties? (And the more success you experience, the more of these you’ll have to deal with.) Establishing roles allows each member to assess whether this ensemble is the right fit. In ICP, only two of our artists take on administrative roles. Tibi Cziger serves as the artistic director. He’s responsible both for programming and the logistics of our Israeli tours. Meanwhile, I serve as executive director and I handle our North American activities. Additionally, our board of directors offers invaluable assistance with the running of the organization, and this allows our artists to focus solely on making music.

4
Flexibility is Key

Things happen. Marital statuses change, people have babies, they move to a different country, they sustain injuries. Any one of these can threaten to derail your hard-earned success. Or, you can choose to turn them into opportunities. ICP has experienced everything mentioned and more (think concertizing through a war zone), and we have always tried to extract the positive from any situation. So a geographical move may wind up strengthening the administrative structure, and an injury provides much needed rest for one member while allowing another to shine. When two of our artists – a couple since pre-ICP days – had their first child, we incorporated feeding stops into our travel schedule. All of us took turns babysitting backstage as the new parents performed, bringing the ensemble closer together. Through all the bumps in the road, what kept ICP going was the connection between our exceptional members and a belief in our core mission – to give back to our home country while showcasing Israeli culture abroad. We have faith in our audience to be moved by a wide range of musical styles if we present them with integrity and humility, and we are continually reminded of music’s power to reach across divides of culture, politics and socioeconomics.

No doubt, there are still many opportunities for growth. But here we are, about to celebrate a decade of meaningful music-making, and we’re looking forward to many more. If our experiences can help launch or sustain your ensemble, we would consider that among our successes as well. 

To learn more about the Israeli Chamber Project, visit israelichamberproject.org

The Guardian: Facing the music - Long Yu

The Guardian

The Chinese conductor – music director of the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra and artistic director of Beijing Music Festival – on his musical inspirations, from Beethoven to Benjamin, and Karajan to Qigang Chen

‘If I were not a musician, I would still want to connect people’ - conductor Long Yu. Photograph: PR

What was the first record or cd you bought? 

My childhood coincided with the Cultural Revolution. During this period there was a ban on Western music, and I learned music theory through Chinese music. My generation was one of the first to study abroad, and after attending the Shanghai Conservatory, I studied at the Hochschule in Berlin, where a new world of recordings and music opened up to me. I don’t remember the first record I bought, but these times in Berlin were a time of deep exploration for me. I studied great conductors such as Karajan. To this day, I look back on my time in Germany and the recordings I studied with great affection.

... and the most recent?

Yo-Yo Ma’s Bach Trios with Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer.

What’s your musical guilty pleasure?

I am interested in learning more about many genres – pop, rock, and jazz. Exploring outside of classical music sometimes informs my approach to traditional repertoire.

Vinyl or digital?

Digital.

If you had time learn a new instrument, what would it be?

Before I was a conductor, I was a pianist and percussionist. My grandfather, a gifted composer and pianist, taught me to play the piano from an early age. He also guided me to become a conductor. He said the baton can lead you to a magical world, which is much more interesting because conductors experience different kinds of music including operas, concertos, and symphonic works. Having the faculty of an entire orchestra’s instruments now seems imperative to me.

Did you ever consider a career outside of music? Doing what?

I am lucky to conduct orchestras all over the world, and music offers a common language in which to communicate. This is probably what I enjoy most about my job; if I were not a musician, I would still want to connect people, perhaps through diplomacy.

hat single thing would improve the format of the classical concert?

I want young people to love music. If I could change one thing, I would make the classical concert accessible to as many people as possible.

What or where is the most unusual place/venue you’ve performed?

Last year, I had the great pleasure of touring in China with Yo-Yo Ma. We performed at some incredible places including an outdoor concert at the Old City Wall in Xi’an in Central China, and in Dunhang, at the edge of the Gobi Desert. We worked with young people in these places and encouraged them to continue their musical life. It was a very special experience for both of us.

What’s been your most memorable live music experience as an audience member?

I remember my formative years in Berlin watching Karajanand many of the last generation’s legendary artists. I will carry these concerts with me my entire life. In 1979, I was in the audience as Isaac Stern made his first appearances in China. I was 15 years old and I hadn’t ever heard violin playing like his. Years later, I was honoured to invite Maestro Stern to the Beijing Music Festival. Last year, the Stern family and I started the Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition to honour the importance and the impact of Maestro Stern’s visits to China. He brought many Chinese musicians to the world stage.

We’re giving you a time machine: what period, or moment in musical history, would you travel to and why?

I would love to travel to Vienna 7 May 1824 for the premiere of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Can you imagine what it what have been like to be in the audience for that final movement when the chorus comes in? Or, to have seen Beethoven’s face when, not able to hear the audience, he finally turned around at the podium to see their wildly enthusiastic reaction? An incredible moment.

What is the best new piece written in the past 50 years?

In the last 50 years, there have been so many important composers such as Messiaen, George Benjamin, and Qigang Chen, who all all use their creative voice to move music a big step forward.

Imagine you’re a festival director with unlimited resources. What would you programme - or commission - for your opening event?

This October we’re celebrating 20 years of the Beijing Music Festival where, since founding it two decade ago I have been lucky to realise many of my musical dreams. This celebratory year, we are presenting co-productions with the Salzburg Easter festival and the Aix-en-Provence festival, and a Beethoven symphony cycle with Paavo Järvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. The festival is such an important part of Chinese cultural life and has planted many classical music seeds in China. 

Long Yu conducts the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra in two concerts as part of its first UK tour: 14 May at Cadogan Hall, London and 16 May at Birmingham Symphony Hall.

The Spectator: Mao's Music

The Spectator
By Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

Smog is making me cough and I feel my eyelids smart and redden. High-rises are swaddled in a soupy haze and locals scuttle about their day, huddled against the cold, faces down. Has Beijing done nothing to improve pollution since I last lived there three years ago? This is a city that changes fast. There are the same old scruffy nail bars and lamb hot pot restaurants, the windows smudged with steam from boiling vats of oil and meat. But in the ancient hutongs or alleyways there is also a smattering of Scandinavian-style design stores. Hidden around the back of one is a tranquil café, at odds with the dirt and dust outside, classical music wafting into chilly air. Here are the locals you never see on the street: men in elegant cashmere coats, scarfs slung around their necks; women propping Louis Vuitton bags against long, poised legs. I stop for a hot chocolate and avocado cheese cake; it costs nearly twenty dollars.

‘There is in fact no such thing as art for art’s sake,’ Mao Zedong said. Under the ‘Great Leader’, during the tumultuous tragic years of the Cultural Revolution, classical Western music was particularly despised as ‘bourgeois’. Instruments were smashed, concertos ripped up, and conductors punished, sometimes with death. When facing execution for tearing up Mao’s Little Red Book, Lu Hongen, conductor of the Shanghai Symphony, said to his cellmate. ‘Visit Austria, home of music. Go to Beethoven’s tomb and lay a bouquet of flowers. Tell him his disciple is in China.’ Would Lu laugh or cry if he went to Guangzhou now? I’ve taken the long train ride south to see the very first Youth Music Culture Guangdong (YMCG) in action, the pet project of Chinese-American superstar Yo-Yo Ma and the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra. It’s early in the year but there is unseasonal heat as hundreds of earnest young musicians gather to learn from artists of the Silk Road Ensemble. Among the educators is symphony conductor Michael Stern. When his father, violinist Isaac Stern, made history by touring China in 1979, just three years after Mao’s death, he found not one playable piano left in Shanghai. His son has arrived in a new era: China is now the largest piano producer in the world, and the largest consumer too with some forty million students learning to play. Beethoven, it seems, is not short of disciples.

Yo-Yo Ma, a believer in art for art’s sake, relishes the redemptive qualities of creation. I ask him why here, why now? Why China? ‘When the flood gates open there’s this moment of receptivity. There’s a small window in this society where you can do so much,’ he says. He looks down at his hands, adjusts his shirtsleeves rolled half way up his arms. ‘I think if that window closes it’s going to be harder to start things, to create habits, cultural habits. For me, it’s planting seeds that we may not see the resultsof for twenty, thirty years.’

‘I want you to have enough courage to stand up,’ Yo-Yo Ma later tells a room of shy young musicians, bent over their instruments, anxious to do well and to please. ‘Who’ll be the first victim?’

Fostering innovation in China, a country hindered by an educational system that encourages rote learning and discourages asking questions, is not always easy. Some classical musicians have broken through: concert pianist and child prodigy Lang Lang is a celebrity here, commanding sell-out concerts and legions of fans. But Long Yu, the man who has helped spearhead China’s classical music renaissance (he is artistic director and chief conductor of the China Philharmonic Orchestra and music director of the Shanghai Symphony) wants more. ‘Asian parents, they force the kids to learn instruments not to introduce arts to them but they want to train them to become a star, the next Lang Lang, or to add some points when they apply to university. But this is totally wrong,’ he insists. ‘We don’t need only one or two champions. We need a new generation to understand creativity.’ Some are rising to the challenge. Back in an improvisation workshop, under the cold glare of classroom lamps, a plump girl in a yellow frilly dress shakes her hips, forgetting the glasses that fall down her nose, while a percussionist taps out an addictive beat. Yo-Yo Ma is happy. His charges are starting to stand up, no longer victims. As he confides with a grin, there is a little known secret: ‘You can practise imagination’.

Dallas News: Competitors Named for 2017 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition

Dallas News
By Scott Cantrell

The 30 competitors have been named for this year's Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, to be held May 25 through June 10 at Fort Worth's Bass Performance Hall. They were selected from 290 pianists who applied for the contest, one of the most prominent  music competitions in the world. Among the applicants, 140 were selected to perform in screening auditions in January and February in London; Hannover, Germany; Budapest, Hungary; Moscow; Seoul, South Korea; New York; and Fort Worth. 

The 2017 competitors represent 16 nations, with one competitor, who holds dual Algerian/Canadian citizenship, counted twice: Russia (6), South Korea (5), the United States (4), Canada (3), Italy (2), and one each from Algeria, Austria, China, Croatia, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Poland, Romania, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. There are 21 men and nine women, the competitors ranging from 18 to 30 — the actual age range for eligibility.

The 2017 competitors (with their ages as of the last day of the competition):

Martin James Bartlett, United Kingdom, 20
Sergey Belyavskiy, Russia, 23
Alina Bercu, Romania, 27
Kenneth Broberg, United States, 23
Luigi Carroccia, Italy, 25
Han Chen, Taiwan, 25
Rachel Cheung, Hong Kong, 25
Yury Favorin, Russia, 30
Madoka Fukami, Japan, 28
Mehdi Ghazi, Algeria/Canada, 28
Caterina Grewe, Germany, 29
Daniel Hsu, United States, 19
Alyosha Jurinic, Croatia, 28
Nikolay Khozyainov, Russia, 24
Dasol Kim, South Korea, 28
Honggi Kim, South Korea, 25
Su Yeon Kim, South Korea, 23
Julia Kociuban, Poland, 25
Rachel Kudo, United States, 30
EunAe Lee, South Korea, 29
Ilya Maximov, Russia, 30
Sun-A Park, United States, 29
Leonardo Pierdomenico, Italy, 24
Philipp Scheucher, Austria, 24
Ilya Shmukler, Russia, 22
Yutong Sun, China, 21
Yekwon Sunwoo, South Korea, 28
Georgy Tchaidze, Russia, 29
Tristan Teo, Canada, 20
Tony Yike Yang, Canada, 18

The competition, held every four years, has been reorganized into four rounds:

Preliminary (May 25-28): All contestants play 45-minute solo recitals.

Quarterfinal (May 29-30): Twenty quarterfinalists play 45-minute solo recitals

Semifinal (June 1-5): Twelve semifinalists play 60-minute solo recitals, and a Mozart piano concerto with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, led by Nicholas McGegan.

Final (June 7-10): Six finalists perform a piano quintet with the Brentano String Quartet and a piano concerto with the Fort Worth Symphony, led by Leonard Slatkin.

The entire competition will be webcast live on cliburn.org. In addition, the final round will be broadcast in cinemas around the United States.

Blogcritics: Anne Akiko Meyers 92nd Street Y Concert Review

Blogcritics
By Jon Sobel

“Fantasy” was the theme but versatility and diversity the watchwords the other night at the 92nd Street Y‘s Kaufmann Concert Hall in New York. Celebrated violinist Anne Akiko Meyers and pianist Akira Eguchi‘s program ranged from the 28-year-old Beethoven’s teemingly imaginative first violin sonata to an evocative work for violin and electronics, “Wreck of the Umbria,” written in 2009 by the then also 28-year-old Jakub Ciupinski and accompanied by video footage of the sunken Italian ship that, together with Meyers’s commission, inspired the piece. In between, we heard familiar pieces by Arvo Pärt and Morten Lauridsen outside their usual settings, Ravel’s rousing “Tzigane,” and one of the last compositions by Einojuhani Rautavaara, who died only last year.

Anne Akiko Meyers, photo by Vanessa Briceño-Scherzer

Meyers attacked the flashy “Tzigane” with percussive, almost schizophrenic force, her 1741 Guarneri violin’s dark, room-filling lower register resonating like the skin of a drum. Inspired by Hungarian gypsy tunes, the piece netted the most enthusiastic response and a curtain call of its own.

The program’s most substantive selections, though, were the Beethoven and the Rautavaara. The first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata in D major, Op. 12 No. 1, was sunny and straightforward but also richly resonant. In the theme and variations of the second movement, the duo displayed exquisite sensitivity to the music’s spaciousness; Eguchi established a delicate rhythmic feel that left plenty of room for shock when the third variation’s minor-key triplets arrived with all the requisite heat. They then leaned into the final variation’s rocking off-beats with a jousting spirit that I suspect would have pleased the composer. And after the laughing finale I felt I could hardly imagine this sonata played any better.

Meyers commissioned Rautavaara’s “Fantasia” and has recorded it in its original violin and orchestra version. Here she presented it in an arrangement for violin and piano for the first time. The piece treads the border between romanticism and modernism and presents the composer in a thoughtful mood. Wandering melodies over gently flowing piano accompaniment evolved into watery complexities, with Meyers conveying supreme confidence and Eguchi showing a fine dynamic sense on the exposed piano passages. A lyrical triplet section near the end combined Mendelssohnian flow with Nordic cool.

It was a relatively lengthy piece to which one could surrender one’s sense of time, and ebb and flow with the music’s pure emotion as Meyers and Eguchi swayed with its strains like a pair of synchronized swimmers.

I’d heard Pärt’s “Fratres” only in its original orchestral version. A violin-and-piano iteration proved transporting, beautiful and ruminative. Meyers’s technique on the arpeggio passages and whistling tone on the high harmonics were marvels. Yet somehow Pärt’s writing rubs out any sense of showiness, instead wrapping the listener in a low-key tension that Meyers and Eguchi sustained masterfully.

At the easy-listening end of the spectrum were a transcription of Lauridsen’s popular choral work “O Magnum Mysterium” and an encore of John Corigliano’s “Lullaby for Natalie,” written for Meyers’s daughter. With its commissions and personal dedications, the concert felt like a family affair as well as a musical celebration. Both musicians are at the tops of their games.

The Guardian: Haochen Zhang's CD review – An Intimate, Artful Piano Recital

A self-confessed introvert … Haochen Zhang.

The Guardian
By Erica Jeal

Haochen Zhang is both a prodigiously award-winning pianist and a self-confessed introvert, and the wide-ranging choice of repertoire on his first studio disc reflects this. He captures the childish, quickly dissipating seriousness of Schumann’s Kinderszenen, and plays it with the kind of artistry that sounds sincerely artless.

Liszt’s Ballade No 2 has Zhang creating great rumbling waves in the left hand, then closing in an atmosphere of hard-won peace. In this, and in Janáček’s Sonata 1 X 1905, he excels in conveying the larger shape of the piece, knitting the phrases together into long paragraphs, yet he doesn’t short-change the showier passages. Brahms’s Three Intermezzos, Op 117, make for an understated close to an intimate, inward-looking disc, and their feeling of slow rise and fall evokes the breathing of a huge creature asleep. Rarely on this recording does his playing make a forceful bid for the attention, but it certainly rewards close listening.

The New York Times: Anne Akiko Meyers at 92nd Street Y

The violinist Anne Akiko Meyers at Carnegie Hall in 2014. Credit Kevin Hagen for The New York Times

The New York Times
By Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim

Classical Music in NYC This Week

ANNE AKIKO MEYERS at the 92nd Street Y (April 20, 7:30 p.m.). Armed with one of the most coveted instruments in the field, this violinist has built her reputation on a polished sound and brilliant technique. For this recital, at which she will be accompanied by the pianist Akira Eguchi, Ms. Meyers will put her Guarneri through its paces with new and recent compositions by Jakub Ciupinski, Morten Lauridsen and Einojuhani Rautavaara, alongside well-loved classics by Beethoven and Ravel.
212-415-5500, 92y.org

The Epoch Times: Gerard Schwarz, a Lifelong Music Educator

The Epoch Times
By Catherine Yang

Gerard Schwarz conducting the All-Star Orchestra during the filming of their PBS TV special at the Manhattan Center. (Steve Sherman)

NEW YORK—The mark of a great civilization is best and most completely left by its artistic achievements. This is what conductor Gerard Schwarz firmly believes, and something that has guided his actions over the course of his career.

“Culture is important to civilization: If you look at every advanced society through history, they’re always known for their contribution to the arts, whether it be literature or music or philosophy or painting. If you’re known for your wars, what a shame,” said Schwarz, who will celebrate his 70th birthday this year. To commemorate this, he’s recently released a memoir (“Behind the Baton: An American Icon Talks Music“) and will release a 30-CD box set of favorite recordings with Naxos Records in the fall. 

His achievements are usually given out as a long string of numbers—five Emmys, 14 Grammy nominations, six American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers awards, 300 world premieres, and 350 or so recordings. During Schwarz’s time as music director, the Seattle Symphony’s subscriber base grew from 5,000 to 35,000 and its audience numbers tripled from 100,000 to over 320,000. These numbers, while impressive, belie his personal and anecdotal approach to musical life.

His memoir, for instance, was easy and “very fun” to write, he said, because rather than recounting years and dates, he draws on his memories of projects, people, and most importantly, the repertoire involved. The book spans childhood to present day at a brisk pace, with an almost matter-of-fact tone and up close and personal vignettes. 

The notes for the CD set he’s currently working on are written in the same way—”I try to do everything from the personal perspective. … Why did I put this on the disc? What’s important? Why did I program them? What does it mean to me, and what’s the value they have for us?” Schwarz said. Everyone knows Brahms’s symphonies, for instance, so Schwarz would like to talk about why they are not just great music but also great orchestra-building repertoire. 

Since stepping down from his music directorship at the Seattle Symphony, Schwarz has been working on passion projects. All of his projects are fun, he explained, and meaningful too. 

“Behind the Baton” by Gerard Schwarz

A major one has been the All-Star Orchestra, a televised-only symphony orchestra made up of top players from about 30 different major orchestras across the country. Here, as it has been throughout his career, Schwarz’s purpose is to educate.

First, he said, you have to believe in the intrinsic power of music.

“For me, music is language. It encompasses every emotion, every intellectual exercise that we have, and it is a language that goes beyond words,” Schwarz said. 

Education

The best musical education is to learn to play an instrument yourself, Schwarz said. You then learn the language; you become literate. And beyond gaining musical knowledge, you learn things like focus, collaboration, and other character-building traits or social skills that come along with the study.

In addition to conducting, Schwarz is also a composer and is currently writing four duos for cello and piano that will premiere at Bargemusic in Brooklyn. (VanHouten Photography)

Born to Austrian parents, Schwarz’s upbringing was filled with music and culture. He was expected to learn an instrument from a young age—something like the piano or violin—but after hearing the horns in the procession scene of the opera “Aida,” he knew he had to play the trumpet. 

At age 18, he was freelancing for all the major ensembles in New York, and then joined the American Brass Quintet, which played concerts for students four to six times a week. “Every morning, we’d go to an elementary school to teach, to expose kids to this music and try to open their minds,” he said. The quintet traveled internationally, and so they were giving classes at various universities as well.

“Education has always been a priority for me,” he said. Even more so when he became a conductor and then a music director. “Because if you don’t educate, there is no future.”

Beyond learning to play an instrument—which Schwarz ardently advocates, citing numerous studies of the benefits of learning an instrument—music education is about experience. It’s about hearing Beethoven’s Fifth in full, not just learning the theory and history, which, though important and interesting, cannot replace firsthand experience. 

The All-Star Orchestra’s third season premieres in the fall. (All-star Orchestra)

He made the choice to switch career paths from being a trumpet player to being a conductor fairly early because he wanted to do more with his musical career, and ended his trumpet career on a high note, after being made the youngest-ever principal trumpeter at the New York Philharmonic. Then in 1985, he took on the music director position in Seattle and made the city his home. Being a part of the community, he could see the immediate results of his educational and outreach initiatives.

The education programs had been cut before he arrived, so one of the first things Schwarz did was restore them. Many of his efforts centered on outreach, whether it was through free concerts so that Seattleites could come downtown to visit the symphony’s hall for free, or bringing the orchestra to City Hall and to Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, and every other major corporate headquarters. “This is your orchestra,” Schwarz said. “We’d love to have you come to us, but we’ll go to you too. … We’re there for you.”

All-Star Orchestra members play Dvorak’s “New World Symphony.” (All-star Orchestra)

Being a music director requires caring deeply for the community and having a great respect for history. The Seattle Symphony is the city’s only professional orchestra, and Seattle is not a regular stop on major orchestras’ international tours. Meaning, if the orchestra doesn’t play a Tchaikovsky symphony one season, it won’t be performed in the city at all that year. They are responsible for presenting the core repertoire, so that people can connect with the classics.

“In a place like Seattle, you are really responsible for musical life in the city,” said Schwarz, who must have conducted 50 or 60 Beethoven’s Fifths during his tenure. The individual players, too, were involved in education initiatives, and many gave private lessons to children. 

The result was an uptick in everything, from orchestra members’ salaries to the number of concerts programmed per season to the number of seats filled. The results of Schwarz’s dedication to musical education made his next project, which met with great skepticism, something his friends and supporters believed he could accomplish.

After Schwarz finished his music directorship in Seattle, he and his wife, Jody, came up with the idea of the All-Star Orchestra. The goal would be to film one-hour episodes of great musical works, plus additional education segments and discussion of the pieces, and give all of this content away for free online and on public television. 

“Yes, we [include talks], but the music is the key, not the talk,” Schwarz said. The program has already reached over 5 million viewers and last year was broadcast in the United States for 5,000 hours (equivalent to more than half a year’s worth, consecutively), so there has been traction. 

“Do I hope it’ll inspire other people to do the same thing? Yes. This isn’t something I own, I’m just one person, trying to make a difference,” he said.

Filming With the All-Stars: Musical Camp of the Highest Caliber

Working with the All-Stars Orchestra is great pressure, but also great fun, according to Schwarz. “It’s like going to camp—a lot of the players went to school together and haven’t seen each other for 20 years.” There is no audience, just the sound stage, so everyone is “playing for their colleagues.”

There were no auditions. Schwarz asked people he knew and took some recommendations as well. They represent about 30 orchestras, where most are principal players, and there have been 14 concertmasters in the mix. Everyone is incredibly experienced, because “I have to have people who know the repertoire. There’s no learning curve.” There’s no rehearsal. Everyone, including the conductor, is expected to intensely prepare because once the cameras turn on, and Schwarz gives a downbeat, they just have to go. There is maybe less than 3 hours to spend on a 46-minute piece.

A Good Conductor, in a Nutshell

“You have to have a very good ear,” Schwarz said. You have to be able to hear multiple things and distinguish them from each other all at the same time, while minding the beat. Additionally, “you have to have some kind of physically ability to be expressive, with your hands, eyes, body.”

“In some ways, the most important thing is to have a tremendous amount of knowledge of [and exposure to] music—knowing repertoire, knowing history.”

“You need to have good leadership abilities so you’re sensitive to people and their needs and where they are, rather than being an autocrat,” he said. “And you have to be the servant of the composer. You have to care deeply about the audience and the musicians, but the composer is first.”

“There are a lot of things, and not one is more important than another.”

American Heritage

The All-Star Orchestra partnered with the Khan Academy to create free educational material on music basics, the instruments in an orchestra, and analysis of masterworks. (All-star Orchestra)

History has always been a core interest for Schwarz, partly because it provides perspective, and maybe because it gives us something to build on. And this respect for history guides much of what Schwarz does.

An important piece of our heritage is classical music by American composers in the 20th century, but with the exception of a select few like Gershwin and Copland, most are relatively forgotten.

“There’s so much interesting repertoire that people just don’t do anymore, it’s shocking to me,” he said. He champions American composers like William Schuman (also former president of Lincoln Center and the Juilliard School), Howard Hanson, David Diamond, and over a dozen more. These are composers that continued in the tradition of 19th-century classical composing, Schwarz said, not the school that veered off into the avant garde in the last century. Schwarz is interested in the composers who built on what came before them, rather than disavowing it.

It’s especially surprising for Schwarz that American composers are rarely programmed because he grew up with these songs in his ear, alongside the more well-known classical masterworks. He played the trumpet, after all, and was in contact with a lot of band music, which is basically all American. 

Last fall, he and the All-Stars recorded another season of shows, which will go out to stations this summer to be broadcast in the fall. This season includes music performed by the United States Marine Band, which he also recently guest conducted in concert.

It’s not a marching band, but a concert band, he elaborated. “The Marine Band is very interesting—most people don’t know what bands are.” They are essentially wind ensembles, and people don’t hear many of those; not in New York, at least. In the Midwest, most major universities have a band, but the only full-time and professional bands are really the U.S. military ensembles.

“That’s a whole different repertoire,” Schwarz said. But if you’re not involved with a band, you’ve probably never heard the music and the composers’ names won’t ring a bell. “It’s fantastic, and what a joy, to educate and expose people to great music.”

Blogcritics: Concert Review - Israeli Chamber Project (NYC, 8 April 2017)

Blogcritics
By Jon Sobel

Mozart, Richard Strauss, and 20th-century composer Jean Françaix were on the menu Friday night at the Baruch Performing Arts Center as three members of the Israeli Chamber Project and guest violist Paul Neubauer served a repast of virtuosity and variety. Presented by the Sandra Kahn Wasserman Jewish Studies Center, the program showed off the ensemble’s deep grounding in a wide range of repertoire.

Israeli Chamber Project at Baruch Performing Arts Center

Sandwiched between the Mozart and the Strauss, the performance of Françaix’s 1933 String Trio was my first exposure to the prolific Frenchman’s relatively neglected music. Based on this piece, I’d be happy and interested to hear more. Neither firmly modernist nor strictly neoclassical, the piece begins with a perpetual-motion Allegro, all ghostly agitation on muted strings. The Scherzo jumps with echoes of ragtime, posturing in good-natured mockery of a classical vocabulary. Vaguely jazzy chords also underpin the early strains of the Andante.

Again muted for the final Rondo, the the musicians plunged through a tutti statement and into gently swaying harmonies, passing the melody from instrument to instrument. Carmit Zori (violin), Hillel Zori (cello), and violist Neubauer rendered the entire concise work with sensitivity, grace, and a touch of humor.

The fun Françaix was perhaps all the more effective following Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, K. 493, a mature work that in this performance put me in mind of the astounding String Quintets of Mozart’s final years, as it feels nearly as forward-looking in some aspects. A few slightly rushed passages didn’t reduce the overall sweetness of the first movement as pianist Assaff Weisman merged a ballet-like touch with the string trio’s warm tones. The audience had to bite back an impulse to applaud when the movement ended. (It’s a pity current propriety doesn’t permit that; I think less formality would make classical concerts more widely appealing, and the additional feedback could help musicians distinguish their good performances from their great ones.)

The Larghetto movement begins in a simple lullaby-like mode, then grows with subtle complexity into dense drama. The string players conveyed Mozart’s fascinating harmonies in superb balance, while Weisman played with soft, tasteful restraint without ever sacrificing the clarity that’s all-important in Mozart. This emotional movement is very much a dialogue, and the four musicians spoke its narrative like lifelong friends, delivering with exquisite sensitivity what was to me the most memorable performance of a thoroughly satisfying evening of music.

Then they delved into the laughing recesses of the light-footed and lighthearted Allegretto, with its call-and-response passages, setting up the Françaix trio nicely.

After an intermission came the heavier matter of Richard Strauss’s Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 13. In the Brahmsian first movement of this youthful work, the musicians showed their deep understanding of the Romantic mode – though, to be honest, their performance of the Mozart had left that in little doubt. They achieved an orchestral energy in the striking three-instrument unison passages over rumbling thunder from the piano, and made the galloping Scherzo with its punchy accents an edge-of-your-seat experience. The Trio section felt like a Mendelssohn Venetian Boat Song.

In the Andante they brought out the heavy Rachmaninoff-like melodies and three-against-four rhythms with deep feeling but no schmaltz, and applied equal conviction to the Finale’s percussive energy and sparkling chromatics.

Based in Israel and New York, the Israeli Chamber Project has upcoming concerts in the U.S., Canada, and Israel.

BBC Music Magazine: Top 20 Live Events for April 2017

BBC Music Magazine

ANNE AKIKO MEYERS
92nd Street Y, New York, 20 April
Tel: 212-415-5500
Web: www.92y.org

In 2015, the Finnish composer Rautavaara wrote what turned out to be his last score, a violin-and-orchestra Fantasia for Anne Akiko Meyers (right). Meyers and Akira Eguchi present a violin and piano arrangement of the piece in a programme that also features a new arrangement of Morten Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium, plus music by Jakub Ciupinski, Arvo Pärt, Beethoven and Ravel.

See more of BBC Music Magazine's 20 Events for April in North America and more in their April issue here.