The Strad: Yo-Yo Ma on making artistic connections and raising balanced musicians

The Strad
Charlotte Smith

This month Yo-Yo Ma returns as artistic director of his Chinese education initiative Youth Music Culture Guangdong, a programme that aims to create balanced, astute and connected musicians. Charlotte Smith explores the ideas behind the cellist’s approach

Photo ©Li Lewei, courtesy of YMCG

‘Classical musicians today have moved away from improvisation, but it’s an essential part of owning the music,’ he says. ‘In the classical tradition, pretty much all musicians played, arranged and composed. Clara Schumann composed and Heifetz made arrangements and Kreisler wrote all those little pieces. It’s today’s insistence on professionalisation and specialisation that has separated those skills. It’s the commoditisation of music. We are told to stick with what we do well, as opposed to develop the whole individual. But what’s valuable is the musician who can do all of those things. Of course there will be some skills that stand out, but musicians should continue to feed themselves with all aspects of musical life. It’s an idea that was cherished by the Enlightenment – that we should treasure the person who can be a generalist, the conduit for a world of wonder and awe.’

For Ma, making connections – between people, cultures, artistic modes and genres, and musical skills – is the key to developing into a complete and healthy artist and, crucially, to tapping into the flexibility necessary to negotiate difficult and changing times. ‘That’s why at this year’s YMCG we are focusing on the music of Beethoven,’ he continues. ‘Beethoven was a pivotal personality in a rapidly changing world, both as a culmination of the Classical era and a herald of the Romantic. He was an improviser, a virtuoso pianist and a composer, and shows us that being many things produces the great creativity we need to understand change.’ Just as the young Ma reacted to the huge upheaval of his family’s move to the US with a desire to learn, consume and, ultimately, to express himself creatively, 21st-century musicians can also follow Beethoven’s lead in using instability and unrest as fuel for their own imaginations, and by doing so, making sincere and meaningful connections with audiences and fellow musicians.

To read the full article, get the January 2018 issue.

Bachtrack: Variations of tension, energy and contrast with Long Yu and the Hong Kong Phil

Bachtrack
Alan Yu

First, a disclaimer: I have been an admirer of Long Yu’s conducting skills – not that he can do no wrong, but that he can usually make up for it by delivering tension, energy and contrast in whatever is at hand. Friday evening’s collection of variations with the Hong Kong Philharmonic was a case in point.

Long Yu’s première of Er Huang in Hong Kong was a resounding success, traversing the full gamut of emotional latitude the work afforded, from contemplative introspection to boisterous clamour. He laid bare the variety of orchestral colours and kept us on tenterhooks with a superb sense of timing.

Read the full Bachtrack review here.

Time: How a Live Orchestra Is Mashing Up Kanye West and Beethoven

Time Magazine
By Raisa Bruner

Rap icon Kanye West and classical legend Ludwig van Beethoven are, at first glance, polar musical opposites. But one project, dubbed Yeethoven, is bringing their music together in a bi-coastal mash-up concert that cuts through the distance of centuries and styles.

But why Kanye and Beethoven? It comes down to their shared status as iconoclasts of their eras. “[Beethoven] was emblematic of making really dynamic and meaningful changes in his art form, just as Kanye does in his,” explains Yuga Cohler, one of the project’s creators. “You might think Kanye’s one thing and only certain types of people listen to it, and ditto Beethoven. But that’s actually not the case.” Instead, project masterminds Cohler and Johan — who goes by a single name — argue that there’s a “common musical and cultural backbone” that runs straight from classical to contemporary hip-hop. Bringing the two genres together in live symphony, they hope, can help listeners discover a new way to appreciate music, no matter their age or musical taste.

Taking place in L.A. on Dec. 14 and in New York City on Jan. 18 with support from the Young Musicians Foundation (YMF) and Lincoln Center, Yeethoven II is now in its second year, after a sold-out 2016 concert. Cohler regularly conducts the YMF Debut Chamber Orchestra, while Johan is an independent artist and producer and arranger for hip-hop and pop acts like rapper Vic Mensa and singer Alessia Cara.

TIME spoke to the duo about their process of piecing together the perfect orchestral mash-up, how a “risky project” like this one can help popularize classical music and why Kanye makes a great case study as an artist with unexpectedly broad appeal.

TIME: Why did you select these two artists to bring into dialogue? What makes them good parallels?

Yuga Cohler: I had always been a big fan of Kanye’s music, and I knew other musicians were as well. I was really interested in doing a project with the [YMF] Orchestra involving him. So the first person I called was Johan, who was studying composition at Yale at the time. We talked about comparing [Kanye] to Stravinsky and a bunch of other classical composers, but we settled on Beethoven.

Johan: We were trying to figure out why classical musicians find Kanye so compelling, especially on his last two albums [2013’s Yeezus and 2016’s The Life of Pablo]. We were trying to find a classical musician who had a similar impact on their time.

Why is Kanye particularly interesting to classical composers?

Johan: He’s a risk taker, really innovative. He gets away with things musically that are pretty radical for someone who gets that attention: the fact that millions of people listen to his albums; the fact that Yeezus was borderline unlistenable as pop music, but really interesting as more of an art project, as well as The Life of Pablo. I was around a lot of composers and found they were interested in the fact that this guy was doing such crazy stuff. When I was in grad school at Yale, I studied with David Lang, a Pulitzer-prize winning composer. He was like, “Oh, Yeezus is really good.” This dude is like 55, and he’s talking to us about how Yeezus was really cool!

Cohler: Johan and I thought about this a lot. In those two albums, he willfully deviates from the traditional verse-chorus format, which is obviously a hallmark of pop music. The decision to do that, and then the decision to branch out into other, new formal language, was really reminiscent to us of what classical composers constantly try to do.

How do you create music that’s a true dialogue between the two artists? What’s your process like to figure out how to mash it up in a way that makes sense?

Cohler: We’ll go through the track listings of Yeezus and The Life of Pablo and we’ll talk about which songs are most interesting or have elements that are most reminiscent of Beethoven or classical composition. Then we ask, what are compositions by Beethoven that do the same thing? Is there sonic similarity, is there cultural similarity, is there compositional similarity? From there, Johan arranges and orchestrates them.

Johan: It always starts with the Kanye. That has to be turned into an orchestral thing, no matter what. It’s not like we’re running through the whole song; we’re grabbing the iconic material from a song of his. We’ll get the 16 bars or something that are really iconic, figure out how to make that sound unbelievable with an orchestra, and then figure out a way to add the Beethoven and develop them to interact. It’s important that the pieces communicate what we’re talking about. If they’re both there, we want people to recognize each piece of material separately before they start to hear them intertwined, so people can really get what’s going on. That’s a big part of the whole concert for us: making it clear.

Was there a particular Kanye song that was especially successful — or challenging — to adapt?

Cohler: For me it’s the arrangement of “Waves.” It’s hard to describe; the melody is in bass, but the accompaniment is in treble, which is this sort of unique thing. We compare that to Beethoven’s 8th Symphony, which is an unlikely candidate. But when you bring the two together, you can actually hear how the voicings are very similar.

Johan: It’s the second movement of the 8th Symphony, right?

Cohler: Yeah.

Johan: They were pretty tricky. We also did one with “Ultralight Beam” and a quartet —

Cohler: It’s the string quartet of Op. 132 — the slow movement from that.

Johan: That was about trying to show these really spare elements. They’re both really slow and spread out, so finding a way to keep the momentum going while illustrating how much space there was in both of these was tricky to keep it as a compelling piece of music. But I think it came out well.

You’ve spent a lot of time exploring the Kanye-Beethoven mashup. Are there any other pairings you’re interested in?

Johan: Personally, I think something with Daft Punk would be cool.

Cohler: It has to be a really organic connection. I don’t think it works to make this into a trope — one classic composer and one pop artist — that cheapens the art. Kanye is very special, I think everyone would agree.

Johan: There’s few people who are simultaneously doing stuff as weird as he is and on as such gigantic a scale in terms of reach.

Have you ever reached out to him? Do his people know you’re doing this?

Johan: I think he knows, but we don’t know for sure. I do string arrangements for the hip-hop world, so… We’ll see what happens.

What do you hope audiences take away from listening to this?

Cohler: One of the really positive aspects of the show in 2016 was that so many different types of people came. It was definitely not your typical hip-hop or pop concert; it skewed a little bit older. It was absolutely not at all your typical classical concert; it was much younger than that. You have people of all different backgrounds, bound by either this interest in Kanye or the concept. There’s this common musical and cultural backbone to both of them, and we can all appreciate it in a single group. That’s the message of the whole thing.

Johan: People are smart and discerning listeners of music. Those same people who were applauding at Kanye were also applauding at the Beethoven stuff; they were just excited about good music.

KUSC: What Happens When You Mix Beethoven and Kanye West?

KUSC

Yuga Cohler and Johan take the stage during a performance of “Yeethoven”

The worlds of classical music and hip-hop may seem too far apart to ever come together in any meaningful way. However, two artists (and a youth orchestra) are looking to remix the way we think about these two different art forms: composer/arranger Johan and conductor Yuga Cohler, the music director of the Young Musicians Debut Chamber Orchestra.

Together, Cohler and Johan have put together a concert of mash-ups of the music of composer Ludwig van Beethoven and hip-hop artist Kanye West. The project is called Yeethoven and premiered last year. Now, they’re back for Yeethoven II, taking place on December 14 at the Belasco Theater in Downtown Los Angeles.

For more information about the project, I interviewed Johan and Cohler.

BL: Where did this idea for combining the music of Beethoven and Kanye West come from?

J & YC: We both have been interested in Kanye’s music for years, and so have many of our friends in the classical world. We wanted to examine what it was about his music, especially on his last few albums, that was so compelling to us as classical musicians. The idea of putting Kanye West side-by-side on a concert with a similar iconoclast from the classical world, such as Beethoven, seemed like a really cool way to illustrate it for people.

BL: From a musical/structural standpoint, what sorts of similarities are there between Beethoven’s and Kanye’s music?

J & YC: Starting with his album Yeezus, Kanye’s music moved away from traditional song formats and towards more freely developed “pieces”. This allowed him to feature extreme juxtapositions between material of different characters, to a degree that felt very Beethovenian to us. For example, the sudden dynamic contrasts found in Kanye’s “Blood on the Leaves” struck us as similar to the subito character changes in the famous Fifth Symphony. Our concert focuses on six of these parameters for comparison, with a pair of pieces illustrating each one.

BL: How did you assemble the scores? What led you to make the musical decisions that you made?

J & YC: We began by finding Kanye songs that felt most conducive to these types of comparisons, while also being likely to translate well to the orchestral format. Simultaneously, we looked for pieces by Beethoven that housed similarly innovative structural elements and held long discussions about what common musical kernel defined both the Kanye song and the Beethoven piece. Johan then transcribed the Kanye works and orchestrated them, finding specific instrumentations that would approximate the sound of the original songs. Once he had an orchestrated version of each Kanye excerpt, he developed them into full pieces.

BL: How big, do you think, is the Venn diagram intersection area of classical music lovers and hip-hop lovers? Do you think there are more classical fans who enjoy hip-hop or more hip-hop fans who enjoy classical?

J & YC: That’s a great question. Many young classical musicians have very wide-ranging taste, and many also have what feels like a newish desire to reach outside of the classical music community. Hip-hop is probably the most adventurous genre of popular music right now so it makes sense that it would receive a lot of attention from curious young musicians. Going the other direction, it’s harder to say. Fans of adventurous pop music seem to respect classical music a lot without necessarily consuming that much of it. We’re both very interested in changing this.

BL: How have audiences responded to Yeethoven?

J & YC: More enthusiastically and attentively than we ever could’ve dreamed, honestly. We talk briefly throughout the concert about the formal elements in each piece, and last year we witnessed the audience erupting into spontaneous applause when the exact techniques we referred to appeared later in the actual music. That level of perception from an audience mostly unused to classical concerts was something we never anticipated.

BL: It feels like genre is becoming less and less important to music consumers. I get the sense that most people categorize music into two groups: “stuff I like” and “stuff I don’t like.” Are you seeing that also?

J & YC: That definitely seems accurate. The way streaming platforms organize music allows people to move much more fluidly between genres. There are still boundaries, but they seem to have more to do with the context in which people want to experience music. Someone might have a wide variety of genre-spanning works which are unified only by the fact that they like to study to them, and a separate, equally wide range of music they like to experience at a party or on the dance floor. In our view, classical music at its best is a spectacular emotional and sensory experience, and can most effectively cater to people seeking that type of immersion.

BL: Anything else you’d like to add?

J & YC: We’re just really grateful to YMF for taking a risk on this event with us. It matters more now than ever that organizations like that are open to experimenting with the way classical music fits into the public consciousness.

The Young Musicians Foundation Debut Chamber Chamber Orchestra performs Yeethoven II on December 14 at the Belasco Theater in Downtown Los Angeles. Johan is the composer/arranger of the show. Yuga Cohen, music director of the YMFDCO, will conduct.

Miroirs CA: Interview with Yekwon Sunwoo

Miroirs CA

Soon after 28-year-old Yekwon Sunwoo won the 15th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Decca Gold released a recording of his performances at the competition called Cliburn Gold, which became number one on Billboard’s Traditional Classical Album charts.

Those who live streamed or attended this year’s Cliburn Competition were bowled over by Yekwon Sunwoo’s dynamic playing, as were the jury members who awarded him a gold medal with its built-in perks that include three years of concert tours in the US and at international venues and fashion threads - concert attire supplied by Neiman Marcus which is reason enough to practice hours a day for a chance to compete!

Over the next few seasons and beyond, Sunwoo will appear with high-profile groups such as Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Elbphilharmonie, National Orchestra of Cuba, and perform at Aspen Music Festival, Istanbul Music Festival, Klavier-Festival Ruhr and the Gewandhaus in Leipzig.

Sunwoo’s playing was center stage even before his participation in The Cliburn Competition as evidenced by his winning the 2015 International German Piano Award, 2014 Vendome Prize at Verbier Festival and 2012 William Kapell International Piano Competition. Already a seasoned performer, he has given recitals in South Korea, Europe, Costa Rica and appeared with major orchestras including the Houston Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, National Orchestra of Belgium.

He also concentrates on chamber music in collaboration with such artists as members of the Brentano and Jerusalem Strings Quartets, Ida Kafavian, Peter Wiley and released recordings with violinist Benjamin Beilman on the Warner Classics and Analekta labels.

He began piano studies in his native South Korea at age 8 and then relocated to the US in 2005 where he received a bachelor’s degree at The Curtis Institute of Music with Seymour Lipkin, a master’s degree at The Juilliard School with Robert McDonald and an artist diploma at the Mannes School of Music with Richard Goode. He currently studies with Bernd Goetzke in Hannover, Germany.

Yekwon Sunwoo talks about his career with Editor Leonne Lewis.

You studied in South Korea and at conservatories in the US. Have mentors of these schools influenced your approach to piano playing?

I feel extremely fortunate to have such wonderful teachers and they all share the same trait of being genuine and sincere musicians and warmhearted human beings. I am deeply saddened by Seymour Lipkin’s passing two years ago, but have fond memories of working with him at Curtis for six years beginning in 2005, when I was 16 years old. During the time I worked with him, I became more exposed to diverse music and he helped me open up my heart and play as if actually singing with my own voice.

After that, I went to Juilliard to work with Robert McDonald for two years. He has incredibly sensitive ears, which helped me become more attentive in listening to my own sound and the phrasing coming out as intended. Then, I went to study with Richard Goode at Mannes School of Music for two years. From time to time he would be away giving concerts, but whenever he was in town I would come to his house and play for him – and sometimes this went on for two or three hours.

He demonstrated a lot and it was sheer beauty to stand right next to him and hear him play, and I would feel as if I was reborn after each time. His whole life is faithfully dedicated to discovering the true intentions of each composer and I learned so much from him, like not taking every phrase each composer writes for granted.

In the Fall of 2016 I moved to Munich and currently study with Bernd Goetzke in Hannover. I’ve been working with him for just a year now but he has helped me to have more conviction in my music making and especially in shaping each phrase according to the requirements of the composer and understanding the whole structure in a more constructive way. I am forever grateful for guidance from all these teachers. They all made me love music even more deeply so that I can really bring out all emotions through piano playing.

You have won many international piano competitions. Does your approach change when playing for competitions or performing live concerts?

I believe strongly in not having a different thought process when performing in concerts or competitions. You are there to play your heart out and to share all kinds of emotions that are going through at every second of music making and hopefully convey them to audience members. The only difference might be in these two elements. First, you have to be even more focused and mentally strong when participating in a competition because you are under high pressure and there is the cruel fact that the announcement awaits after each round. Secondly, you are handling a huge amount of repertoire, so you need to understand your physical stamina and how to balance it all at once.

However, it is all about music making in the end and conveying your own interpretation with conviction. Seeking the composer’s intentions and putting all your endeavors into making the music come alive should be the main concern at all times.

Since winning The Cliburn Competition, what are some of your career and artistic goals?

Since I first started playing the piano when I was 8-years-old my ultimate dream has always been to become a concert pianist, travel all around the world and share all these feelings through music. Winning the 2017 Van Cliburn Competition has opened up a new chapter for me and this definitely helps my dream continue. I have a personal affinity towards German and Russian repertoire so I would like to focus more on this repertoire for now. Having performed works such as Mario Davidovsky’s Synchronisms No. 6 and Thomas Ades Traced Overhead, I would also like to explore more contemporary works that are not yet often played. After winning the Van Cliburn Competition, I know that the exciting musical journey will continue.

Musical America: Top 30 Movers & Shapers - Neeta Helms

Musical America

Movers and Shakers: Musical America's Top 30 Professionals of the Year
Susan Elliott, Musical America Editor

If “Movers and Shakers” is a familiar moniker for bigwigs and high rollers, “Movers and Shapers”
represents a perhaps less visible but arguably more important category. These are the individuals who are actually “shaping” programs, practices, and perceptions of the performing artists.

NEETA HELMS
By John Fleming

Music is the universal language, and Neeta Helms speaks it around the world. As founder and president of Classical Movements, now in its 25th year, she specializes in tours for orchestras and choruses, with clients ranging from the National Symphony Orchestra to the Yale  Glee  Club.  Based  in  Alexandria, Virginia,  the  company  does about 60 tours a year, and has brought music to 145 countries.

Helms  is  a  risk-taker  whose  breakthrough  came  in  1993, when she organized a tour of the Choral Arts Society of Washington with  the  National  Symphony  Orchestra  and  legendary  Russian conductor  and  cellist  Mstislav  Rostropovich  to  the  former  Soviet Union. Rostropovich led a free concert in Moscow’s Red Square that drew more than 100,000 people. “It was probably like touring the United States with the Beatles, that was what it was like going to Russia  with  Rostropovich,”  she  says. “It  was  so  exciting. The  world was  changing.”  Last  spring,  Classical  Movements  handled  its  30th NSO tour, again to Russia.

Classical  Movements  also  produces  choral  festivals  in Washington,  DC,  and  South  Africa,  as  well  as  a  summer  festival  for young  singers  and  instrumentalists  in  Prague.  Since  2005,  the company has commissioned composers from 20 countries to write more than 50 works. In 2015, it commissioned 10 American composers for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s 100th anniversary. This  year,  Syrian  clarinetist-composer  Kinan  Azmeh  became  the company’s first composer-in-residence.

Helms  grew  up  in  a  musical  family  in  India.  She  began studying  piano  at  age  four,  sang  in  public  at  five,  and  went  on  to earn  a  BA  in  economics  and  an  MBA.  She  has  lived  in  the  United States since 1986.

What  annoys  her  most  about  travel?  “Airlines  get  on  my nerves. They are absolutely the most difficult part of our job.” Some tours take special resourcefulness, such as those in Cuba, which has a  shortage  of  musical  instruments.  In  June,  Classical  Movements took  both  the  Minnesota  Youth  Symphonies  and  the  Stanford
Symphony  Orchestra  there. “Our  biggest  challenge,  believe  it  or not, was finding and renting the timpani.”

The Strad: Fantasia Album Reviewed

The Strad
Julian Haylock

"Yet the star item here is Rautavaara's Fantasia (2015), one of his last works and composed especially for Meyers, who soars aloft with its tender cantabile, shaping its shimmering melodic lines with a profound sensitivity that exerts irresistible pressure on the tear ducts."

Read the full album review in The Strad's December issue by purchasing it here.

Limelight Magazine: Huntington Estate Music Festival, Opening Weekend (Musica Viva)

Limelight Magazine
Richard Gate

The Huntington Estate Music Festival is always an experience. The concerts are held in the Huntington Estate barrel shed, with rows of wine-filled oak barrels behind the players, while meals, which are served in the garden, are all part of the price and the event.

The programme for the opening weekend of this year’s Festival contained at least five undoubted masterpieces – the three Op. 59 quartets of Beethoven (known as the Razumovsky Quartets), the Chaconne for solo violin by Bach, and that outburst of youthful genius, the Octet for Strings by Mendelssohn.

It is no reflection on the quartet players to say that the star of the concerts was the Russian-American pianist Olga Kern, outstandingly glamorous in dazzling multi-coloured dresses – a different one for each performance. On the first day she played a selection of Rachmaninov Preludes and Scriabin Études with sensational aplomb, accuracy and virtuosity. And her large hands made mincemeat of the notorious difficulties in Balakirev’s Islamey. It is a long time since I have heard – or seen – anything like this.

The next day Kern demonstrated her flexibility by adopting an intimate, chamber music style to accompany the Canadian violinist Alexandre Da Costa in Brahms Sonata in D Minor Op 108. Both artists gave a perfect account of this difficult work. It was therefore surprising to me that Da Costa gave a less than perfect account of the Chaconne, which has a claim to be the greatest piece of music ever written. His tempi were too fast, the rhythm was not always steady and the different moods of the successive sections of the work were not conveyed. There was also some inelegant double-stopping.

Altogether though, the weekend provided an extremely enjoyable mixture of music, food, wine and rural living.

Primephonic: The Early Life of a Pianist - An Interview with Haochen Zhang Part 2

Primephonic
Jennifer Harrington

Haochen talks to Primephonic about growing up in China, the contrast in approach between the Chinese and American music conservatoires, and his strongest influences.

After his Carnegie Hall performance, where pianist Haochen Zhang stepped in for Lang Lang who had withdrawn for health reasons, Haochen and I met at Knave to talk about his career as a pianist, inspirations in music, and his debut studio recording featuring works by Schumann, Liszt, Janácek and Brahms.

How did you begin to play piano?

Where I grew up, my mom was one of the few people who listened to classical music and played it basically for me in her womb, this kind of “pre-birth education.” She never had an idea of introducing me to an instrument until she was taking English classes and as a part of her homework she had to read the American magazine, Reader’s Digest, every week. One week, when I was 4, there was one article that said piano was one of the best ways to raise a baby’s intelligence, and that really caught her imagination. It talked about how piano trains both your hands equally and both sides of your fingers move in the same kind of frequency.

Back in China then we were under the one-child policy. Intelligence was very important – it’s the future of your family. Since we were playing classical music all the time she thought ‘why not let him study piano’. I was always running around by myself so my mom thought it could be a way of communicating with an abstract thing and maybe piano can do that. So that’s how I started.

What was it like growing up in Shanghai? Are the music education and musical career expectations much different there than in the USA?

I was 14 when I auditioned for the Curtis Institute and moved [to the U.S.] when I was 15. In China it’s more systematic – the teachers I studied with are wonderful teachers but they are into details. They give you a very specific direction: what is right and not right. This Chinese way gives me a certain work ethic and discipline which is absolutely crucial because you need to be self-critical. It’s often mentioned in music you need two ears; one ear is enjoying the other is criticizing. Otherwise you can’t improve. In the States it’s an opening-up process. I still criticize myself in my own way but not in the teachers’ expectation. I am fortunate to have benefited from both.

Who inspired you from your time studying at the Curtis Institute?

My teacher Gary Graffman is a world-renowned pianist. He became a pedagogue and the director of Curtis. I’ve always looked up to him. The way he taught me and other students was very unique in that he didn’t force his own opinions on his students. There’s always this systematic approach in every successful teacher. How to make sound, technique, style and somehow Mr. Graffman avoided doing that. If you see other teachers and their students, you find that you can guess whose student it is. All students of the same teacher somehow have the same system, the way they produce sound or techniques or phrase, but in Mr. Graffman’s case, all his students are vastly different. This way really allows students to open themselves up and dig into their own personalities rather than copying the teacher or emulating them. The way I was able to develop a sense of self-awareness – who am I as an artist – I think that is very fortunate.

Are there artists that you look up to?

My favorite living pianists are Radu Lupu, who also won the Van Cliburn award, and Murray Perahia. Among the dead pianists would be Rachmaninov and the French pianist Alfred Cortot. They were part of the recording era when it started to become popular in the market. They played in a much different way that is lost in this generation, but I find something precious in that era that is very romantic and almost indulgent but not cliché.

Do you have any memorable performances?

I vividly remember playing with the Munich Philharmonic, one of my favorite orchestras, and I played with them Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, a cornerstone piece of the late classical, early romantic eras. Munich Philharmonic is one of the most authentic German orchestras, and playing Beethoven’s 4th concerto is a really memorable experience for me. The conductor was Lorin Maazel. I played with him shortly before he died. His easy technique was so precise and the sound of the orchestra was so unique, so round, and so full. They played in a way that is seldom found in this authenticity.

Oh, and with the London Symphony Orchestra, playing the same Yellow River Piano Concerto one of the few times they performed it. British orchestras are playing so many concerts with not much time to prepare and are working like crazy. The end result was really beyond my expectations. The dedication they put into the performance was really inspiring.

Can you describe that difference, playing the Yellow River Concerto with the LSO and then NCPA?

Being a Western orchestra, you view the piece as you first learn it, which offers me an objective vision if we sort of block the original cultural heritage in China. With Chinese orchestras they know the piece inside out. Many of the older players lived through that period so there is a lot of feeling to it and of course, in terms of authenticity, playing with a Chinese orchestra provides that. However a foreign orchestra offers a fresh perspective.

Is there anyone who you hope to play with in the future?

In the future, I think it’s everyone’s dream to play with the Berlin Philharmonic. But there are also many amazing orchestras I look forward to playing with.

So, I’m sure you’ve got a full and exciting schedule ahead. What performance projects do you have in the upcoming year?

I’m certainly looking forward to the New York recital debut in Zankel at Carnegie Hall. I’ve never played my recital in New York City. It’s the arts center of America. I’ve always wanted to come here and play and it’s really exciting for me that I can play my recital here for the first time.

Image credit: Benjamin Ealovega

Schumann, Liszt, Janáček & Brahms: Piano Works

Primephonic: Gerard Schwarz at 70 - An Interview

Primephonic

Gerard Schwarz, music director of the All-Star Orchestra and the Eastern Music Festival, and Conductor Laureate of the Seattle Symphony, enters his 70th year. Marking the occasion, an impressive 30-disc album has recently been released on Naxos Records. Primephonic caught up with him to discuss his impressive career, superb recordings and unstoppable endeavours.

The Gerard Schwarz Collection

The Gerard Schwarz Collection has been released to mark your 70th birthday, showcasing retrospective recordings in a 30-disc album. This year also saw your memoir published and Emmy Awards. What are your thoughts on what has been a year of exciting events?

It’s a dream come true to have all of these things come together at the same time. The memoir I wrote of course was very meaningful to me. I never was intending to write one but for a variety of reasons, there it was. It’s called Behind the Baton. It’s about performances, it’s about repertoire, it's about conducting, but it's also about living a life in music. There are many lessons to be learned as you go along and I thought for future generations I might be able to give them some hints on how I dealt with issues that came about like building a hall and building an orchestra.

And with the recordings, Naxos had approached me with this idea and I contacted Nonesuch where I had done about 21 or so LPs. Many of these were never released on CD, and many which were released on CD were out of print. I even had to transfer some LPs, which was really interesting, and once Nonesuch said yes, the process began. With the great support of Klaus Heymann, I thought “Wow, we really have something here.”

 We found a version of Schubert’s Third recorded with the New York Chamber Symphony that was never edited and we had a Schubert Ninth that I really wanted to get out but the tapes had disintegrated, and then it went from there! There are some Handel Arias which I really love and I wanted Mozart to be part of it. We did the Brahms Schoenberg Piano Quartet from the Eastern Music Festival, and of course many of my old trumpet recordings. I thought it was important that I included a few CDs of American repertoire that has been so important in my life. It was a thrill. And 30 CDs is a lot of CDs!
 

Photo credit: Steve J. Sherman

I also recently did a program with the Juilliard Orchestra that was like a dream come true for me. Difficult music of Diamond, Druckman and Schulman. All composers associated with the school. I was just thrilled and the kids loved it. All this stuff is going on this year and it makes me extremely happy.  

You were music director with the Seattle Symphony for 26 seasons and are now conductor laureate. It must be an honour to have led one of the world’s top orchestras. What was your biggest achievement during your time there?

Starting from where it was artistically and bringing it to a new level and broadening the repertoire was so important to me. And then, of course, helping to build Benaroya Hall. I believe there are five things you need for success. The first are talent and intelligence. The second is work ethic, you have to work very hard. Then a positive attitude, I call it a yes attitude. And there’s willingness to do anything, to go beyond the job description. I thought about that a lot, it’s not just something that I’ve come to casually and I see it all the time, in my kids and in my own family. And it’s also not just in music, it can be in any career.  

You are known for championing works by American composers, such as Walter Piston, William Schuman, David Diamond and Philip Glass. What was in your opinion, the most significant performance you conducted?

What jumps out at me are a few things. Doing all the symphonies of Schuman for Naxos Records was extremely significant, it had never been done before. There’s a recording here or there of this piece or that piece, but we’ve never had them all, so that was very important. To do a live recording of the Deems Taylor opera Peter Ibbetson and get a live recording was very important as well as Howard Hanson’s Merry Mount was also a big opera. To do David Diamond’s 10th Symphony, which I think was a significant event for me and the orchestra. It was the only symphony premiere I did of his. The others were premiered by Mitropoulos, Koussevitzky, Munch, Ormandy, Bernstein and Masur, so it was nice to be part of that group.

The Emmy-Winning All-Star Orchestra TV Series was filmed with an impressive 18 high-definition cameras and is back for a new season. The orchestra is made up of players from some of the country’s top orchestra. Did you hand-pick the players?

In my last years in Seattle we did a few television shows where the format was not live. We would record two to three performances and do some packages around them with educational talks and interviews. They were quite successful. Then we were actually allowed to record one without an audience, so we had performances on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, but none of Friday. I asked Andre Watts and the orchestra if they would consider doing a performance on Friday morning with nobody in the audience so we could get better camera shots. They all agreed, we did it, and it was incredible. That show won Emmys and I thought to myself, what an interesting idea.  

“Made for television” concerts really hadn’t existed in this country since the late fifties. Everything was “Live” and always two hours with intermission and filler so I thought to myself what if we went back and did an hour-long concert with a talk surrounding it. And then from all the material we have now recorded, do some really significant educational work. That’s how it came about. I went to a group of friends in Seattle and told them I had this idea. Actually Jody my wife named it, and I said I wanted it to be fundamentally American, like all-star baseball. Then I got a half dozen people together who were friends and said “Hey, why don’t we try this”. That was the genesis of the very beginning of it.

Photo credit: Ben Van Houten

What would this orchestra be? Then I thought why not ask my friends at a variety of American orchestras to participate. I didn’t want it to be associated with just one orchestra, I wanted it to be associated with American orchestras. We have players from 30 different orchestras.

And then there’s how. Well I chose my friends, I got recommendations as necessary from them and then each section was happy. I tried to get many leaders from major orchestras. That’s how it all began.  

What was your reason for starting up the All-Star Orchestra?

We produced the TV shows thus far and we have won six Emmys, but I really wanted to get an important educational component. So the first year we did a lot of interviews with experts and players, not knowing what we were going to do with it, but I wanted to somehow make a difference educationally. I feel the two big issues are exposure and education. So the exposure part was covered, television was free and I wanted education part to be free as well. I wanted to give music teachers more tools to enhance what they were doing. With all this material, we were able to convince the Kahn Academy to do some music education, which they had not done before. We raise money for everything and it becomes available for free. So far we’ve reached 6 million students.

 My hope is that 6 years from now, someone goes to the Philadelphia Orchestra and says “Oh, I first saw David Kim with the All Stars and fell in love with his music and his violin and now I really want to come to Philadelphia Orchestra concerts.”

Do you have any advice for young budding conductors?

There’s a lot of advice and a lot of it is in my book but you have to study really hard, you have to really know music. So many kids study beat and time and that’s of minimal importance. What’s important is knowing musical ideas and making performances. Having all the qualities that I spoke about before in terms of success. To take advantage of every opportunity. If they ask, “Would you conduct the local band?” say yes. Do everything you can do and most importantly have perseverance. It rarely comes easily or quickly, you have to stick with it. I don't know any conductors that haven’t had to continue to persevere at it. Many give up but you need to have the energy to keep going.

What do you see for the future?

Conducting all over the world, which I love. My number one priority is the All-Stars and music education, helping its resurgence in the schools. I want us all to be flourishing in this world. My main focus is to think about that. I’m composing a lot. I enjoy it, which is shocking to me because I never used to.

I’ve done now three TV shows with the Marine Band in the same format as All Star Orchestra to teach about band music because music lovers at orchestra concerts don’t know what a band is or the repertoire is. And, hopefully we’ll be doing more shows with the All-Star Orchestra.


Gerard Schwarz in conversation with Jennifer Harrington