Melinda’s Writings on the Arts and Other Subjects,
From the Sublime to the Truly Ridiculous
DEBORAH VOIGT, soprano
By Melinda Bargreen
Opera divas are almost always great copy, but it isn’t often you get a media frenzy like the one surrounding soprano Deborah Voigt in the past three years. Voigt, one of the undisputed stars of today’s opera stage, was the subject of an international furor when she was fired from an upcoming production of Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos” at London’s Royal Opera at Covent Garden.
Usually such firings are cloaked in a veil of diplomacy, with companies issuing discreet bulletins about artists “withdrawing” from a production because of schedule conflicts. Not this time. Voigt proclaimed to the world that she was fired because of her size, which was indeed pretty sizable, and because she did not fit into the little black dress stipulated by the production’s design team.
Voigt then took a drastic move she had long been planning: gastric bypass surgery, which trimmed her down by almost 150 lbs., from a size 28-30 to a 12-14. And yes, she has been rehired by Covent Garden, where she has been booked not only for “Ariadne,” but also for a recital and a “Tosca” production. The music world is buzzing about her weight loss and the Covent Garden issue, especially since company music director Antonio Pappano’s controversial claim last week that the black-dress firing was just concocted by Voigt as a publicity stunt. She’s the hot diva of the moment around the world, and her interview phone time is now measured in 20-minute increments, but luckily we both talk fast. Here’s the result of a quick Q&A last week.
Q: Are you going to hang up if we introduce the subject of weight loss and little black dresses?
A (laughing): I think those issues still have a shelf life, at least until I return to Covent Garden, and then we’re putting it to rest. I’ve lost about 140-150 lbs., and I’m pretty content where I am. But I’m still a little frustrated because I’m a 12 on the top, a 14 on the bottom, which is the average size of today’s women, by the way. I can’t walk into designer boutique on Madison Avenue and find anything in my size: what are designers thinking? I’m a Wagnerian dramatic soprano, and I’m not meant to be tiny. I’m not so sure as a woman in her mid-40s that it’s good for me to be any thinner.
Q: Doesn’t Pappano owe you a really nice lunch, after his comments that the Covent Garden firing over the little black dress was “a load of rubbish,” designed to draw attention to your new CD?
A: I was really disappointed to read that. I’m just not that kind of person. Maestro Pappano only worked with me on one occasion when we made a CD together, and he doesn’t know what my moral makeup is. I’m not clever enough to make that up! You know, years ago I was working with Herbert Breslin (the much-touted promoter of Luciano Pavarotti), and he said, “What we really need is a good scandal (for publicity).” We fantasized about what it would take, but never came up with anything remotely like this. He was right -- but I would not have thought up this scandal on my own.
Q: Did Pappano’s remarks come as a surprise?
A: They certainly did! At this point too, when I’m coming back, to throw something like that at me – when I thought we had laid that all aside. It was not a nice day.
Q: OK, this is the last Covent Garden question: what is that famous black dress like?
A (laughing): I haven’t seen the black dress in question. But of course the issue had more to do with production as a whole than with one dress.
Q: Now you are singing Salome, Ariadne, Tosca and a lot of other plum roles that demand dramatic believability. You have Brünnhilde ahead. Any worlds left to conquer?
A: Well, I’m going to be singing some Minnies (the spunky heroine of Puccini’s “The Girl of the Golden West”). I can’t tell you where yet, unfortunately, but I’m really looking forward to that role.
Q: And you’ll get to wear some Wild West costumes, which should be fun.
A: Yes, costuming is a lot more fun than it used to be. I used to dread fittings. In the very early days, when I was singing my first Chrysothemis (in Strauss’ “Elektra”) at the Met, the designer wanted to wrap my head in bandages as if I were bald. “You are paid to sing and I am paid to dress you,” he said. I looked in the mirror and just wept. Fortunately the Met intervened.
Q: What’s it like to sing Salome after years of loving the music, but thinking the role was not right for you?
A: I always knew the role was for me, and dramatically and temperamentally as well, but carrying that much weight, there was no way anyone would cast me. So to have it actually happen and be successful was one of the heights of career so far. I worked very hard vocally and physically. I studied a belly dancer, a real veil artist, and incorporated her moves into the Dance of the Seven Veils.
Q: So did all those veils come off at the end of the dance?
A: Yes, they did! But I was behind a scrim and I did wear a body suit. The unveiling was very brief, but it was an artistic and personal triumph. It’s a fabulous opera, isn’t it? I love it. Everything else pales at the final scene. There’s so much there; it’s such a rich part.
Q: There’s been a lot of speculation about whether the past few years have also changed your voice. What do you think?
A: I’m asked that a lot. It’s hard for me to make that determination. I’m a singer who has always sung by sensation and not by what my ears feed back to me. Acoustics are different everywhere, in each theater. If you rely on what you hear as a singer, it can be deceptive. During the course of losing weight and maturing, there were times I felt a little less connected to my body, and the breath support would be a little bit higher than comfortable. I had to re-engage muscles that were engaged automatically before with all that weight there. But in terms of change in color and size, I will leave that up to the audience. Some say it’s lost this, others say it’s gained that. I feel the top part of my voice is working better than before.
Q: Are you happy with where you are now?
A: I could have stayed heavy, but it would have limited what my public could see me do. My health was not good; I knew it would get worse. The quality of life was not good. After my weight loss, the first time I was on an airplane in coach, I sat down in the seat, crossed my legs, buckled the seatbelt and started to weep. Such an amazing experience! And I can buy a pair of pantyhose at Target; I don’t have to hoard the big sizes anymore.
I know those images and memories of being a big girl won’t ever leave, though. Yesterday I was shopping with my stylist for gowns, and I tried on a svelte gown; I didn’t think it would fit, and it did. I turned sideways and I looked normal, thin. It still surprises me. Walking with friend, I noticed our shadows were the same size. What a shock!
Q: Tell us about your recital program for this present tour.
A: I’m gearing up for a Carnegie Hall date May 11, and I love this program. My pianist, Brian Zeger, suggested several of the pieces. He makes me look like a smart programmer. I’m looking forward to singing in Seattle – my father and stepmother are living in Seattle now, so I have an extra reason to come here and sing my best.
*********
MARIN ALSOP, conductor
By Melinda Bargreen
It’s one of the last bastions of sex discrimination in the performing arts.
And it’s occurring in the most prominent place in all of classical music: the podium.
When you ask conductor Marin Alsop whether there’s a glass ceiling in her profession, she chuckles.
“I don’t know if it’s a glass ceiling, or a concrete or a fabric one,” she says, “but it’s definitely a ceiling. I’m very proud that I’m to become the first woman conductor in history to lead the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (of Amsterdam), but I’m also appalled. It’s sort of surprising that one can still be the first woman in so many areas – in the 21st century.”
Not only in America (where sex discrimination is ostensibly illegal) but also abroad, symphony orchestra membership is tipping in the distaff direction -- though some major European orchestras still have only a token woman or two. About one-third of the Seattle Symphony roster is female. Women soloists are far from scarce on the concert stage; last month, both Cecile Licad and violinist Akiko Suwanai made memorable music as soloists with the Symphony. Women also can be found at the top administrative positions, and also at the top of boards of directors, in the opera and orchestral worlds.
Considerable care is taken these days in American orchestra auditions to ensure that there is no gender bias. Players audition behind screens that shield their sex, age and ethnicity; floors usually are padded to conceal the sound of women’s high-heeled shoes.
But no such process applies to conductors.
“We don’t audition behind a screen,” says Alsop, 48, who nonetheless has become one of the most prominent and successful women conductors of all time.
“I see this as a metaphorical issue. The conductor represents the ultimate authority. Until we live in a society where women have ultimate authority, the idea of a woman conductor will be resisted.”
Alsop thinks it’s actually easier in England, where she has a great deal of conducting experience, “because of Margaret Thatcher. It’s a different kind of society. Once they have had a powerful woman prime minister, they have a different outlook on gender and leadership.”
The music director laureate of the Colorado Symphony, Alsop has gotten the most attention for her work in the United Kingdom. She began working there in 1996 at the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, where Alsop was enough of a hit that the Scots decided to create a position for her. She stepped in at the prestigious London Symphony Orchestra at the last minute, and “really hit it off” with the players; the same thing happened with the London Philharmonic, with which Alsop now is recording some highly successful Brahms symphonies on the Naxos label.
In 1997, she guest conducted the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, where she proved so popular that Alsop became their principal conductor (this term is used more widely in the UK than is music director, the standard term for American orchestras’ artistic leader).
“I have a long and happy relationship with British orchestras,” she explains.
“They’re really easy for me to get along with. We share the same work ethic.”
But the American style of podium leadership doesn’t always go over very well in the UK, Alsop reports. Asked about the difficulties faced in Britain by other American conductors (including Seattle’s Gerard Schwarz, who will leave the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in 2006), she says, “There are several different elements. Gerard Schwarz and I are both hands-on music directors. That’s not quite the style there. They have a lot more musician involvement and administrative involvement in running the orchestra. But I had a very slow and gradual introduction to this process.”
Several American conductors have collided with the British orchestra system. Leonard Slatkin stepped down last fall from the BBC Symphony in frustration over “his inability to control hiring or overall programming or the choice of soloists, sometimes even at his own concerts,” according to New York Times critic John Rockwell, who also pointed to “Kent Nagano's unhappy tenure with Manchester's Hallé Orchestra a few years back.”
Alsop acknowledges that a good relationship with British orchestras is “not something that happens overnight. I think I was fortunate in that the Colorado Symphony functions more like the London orchestras: not a lot of bureaucracy or layers of corporate development, but more grass-roots. I love the Bournemouth musicians, and we’re already talking about an extension of my contract there, which is up in 2006.”
Among her coups are the coveted Artist of the Year prize from England's Gramophone Magazine and the Royal Philharmonic Society's Conductor of the Year.
Last year, Alsop conducted four all-Bernstein concerts at the New York Philharmonic; she was originally inspired to be a conductor after watching Bernstein at work in one of his fabled “Young People’s Concerts.” But like many women conductors, she had to found her own orchestra, Concordia, in order to be able to conduct it. In this, she followed in the footsteps of Sarah Caldwell, who founded the Opera Company of Boston, and Eve Queler, founder of Opera Orchestra of America.
Top American conducting jobs are still elusive, even for Alsop. She told Colorado writer Marc Shulgold that she had been in the running to head both the Ravinia Festival and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra: “I've heard that (the rejections) were because I was a woman.”
But she also knows that the male domination of the podium is unlikely to continue indefinitely.
“As society changes,” she told The Seattle Times, “so will conducting. I prefer to dwell on the positive, and how fortunate I’ve been.”
For her, the toughest thing isn’t getting conducting gigs; it’s leaving behind her 1 ½-year-old son. As we speak, she’s answering the doorbell, turning on a CD for her son, and making final preparations for her conducting trip to Europe and the UK.
“It’s always hard when you have a family,” says Alsop, who is single.
“Leaving is just killing me. I hear it gets easier as your child gets older, and I certainly hope so!”
*********
Asked about the long delay in inviting Marin Alsop as its first woman guest conductor, spokesman Sjoerd van den Berg of the venerable Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra stated: “It's very simple. In our eyes there were no good female conductors until now.”
Others might disagree.
Among today’s top currently active women conductors and the orchestras with which they have been associated: JoAnn Falletta (Buffalo Philharmonic, Virginia Symphony, Honolulu Symphony); Gisele Ben-Dor (Santa Barbara Symphony), Anne Manson (Kansas City Symphony), Keri-Lynn Wilson (Dallas Symphony), Anu Tali (Nordic Symphony Orchestra), Elizabeth Schulze (Maryland Symphony), Sian Edwards (English National Opera Orchestra), Andrea Quinn (Ballet of the Royal Opera House, London, and New York City Ballet), Emmanuelle Haim (Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Le Concert d’Astrée), Xian Zhang (China Opera House, associate conductor of New York Philharmonic), Sara Jobin (San Francisco Opera), Susanna Malkki (City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra) and Zheng Xiao-ying (Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra).
* * * * * * * * * * *
CONCERT ATTIRE
Joshua Bell
By Melinda Bargreen
Consider the lilies of the concert stage.
Women classical soloists and conductors get to wear whatever they want. If they are Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, they wear purple jumpsuits or well-tailored pants with bright, glittery tops. If they are glamour-pusses like violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, they wear dresses that are strapless, backless, occasionally nearly frontless. The women of the Anonymous 4 quartet wear gorgeous flowing medieval-inspired dresses in dark jewel tones; the three jazzy sisters of the Ahn Trio wear edgy, glamorous, teeny-tiny outfits with stiletto heels and postmodern hairdos.
And how do the male soloists and conductors dress?
Like headwaiters. Or penguins.
Most of them have that same old white-tie and tails going on, a costume that evolved to its present state during the 18th century. Stuffy and reportedly uncomfortable, with fitted shoulders that restrict movement and cummerbunds that squeeze, this antique outfit has been de rigueur for all males in classical music.
But for soloists -- those instrumentalists, singers and conductors who give recitals or star with symphony orchestras – the white tie and tails as a dress standard appears to be slowly edging its way into the wings. Ironically, while women are still playing catch-up in many quarters of the concert world (only a tiny handful of woman are given serious consideration for a major music directorship, for instance), in the matter of concert dress, they’re still considerably more liberated than the men.
One important caveat: we aren’t talking about orchestra members, where a unified field of black (with occasional flashes of white) helps promote the audience’s perception of a unanimous ensemble. It’s the male soloists under discussion here: those guys who should be free to express themselves in the sartorial sphere, but generally do not.
But there are exceptions, a few more every year.
Violinist Joshua Bell and Christian Zacharias still usually stick to variations on basic black – but they’ve loosened it up considerably. Bell favors flowing black shirts that don’t impede his bow arm, and Zacharias wore a well-cut, tone-on-tone black shirt during his last appearance here as conductor/pianist.
The most daring dressers are the pianists. Jon Kimura Parker is often seen onstage wearing dress slacks and a white shirt, but with a natty vest instead of a tux jacket, leaving his arms and shoulders free for action at the keyboard. Most colorful of all is pianist Awadagin Pratt, who usually shows up in brilliantly hued Versace shirts, adding to the distinctive appearance of his dreadlocks.
“As far as clothes, the outfit [a tuxedo] didn't make sense to me," Pratt told one interviewer. "It's not comfortable. So there didn't seem to be any reason for me to do it. Who put this on and said this is the way to go?"
On his website (www.awadagin.com), the pianist adds: “I think if the soloist or recitalist is coming out less dressed-up, then some people will feel more comfortable coming. I think it's an important thing that particularly helps bring in younger people.”
Jean-Yves Thibaudet doesn’t just wear Versace; he also usually wears bright-red dress socks, ever since an engagement about 10 years ago when he had to play at 11 a.m. and couldn’t find any other clean socks to wear. Now they’re his thing. Recently, he appeared in an English performance wearing Vivienne Westwood — ruffled voile shirt, tight black trousers and blue taffeta jacket. (The “Daily Telegraph” critic unkindly said he looked like “Coco the Clown.”)
Jane Eaglen’s recital pianist, Phillip Thomas, may have been under the diva’s influence when he, too, decided to change outfits at intermission – displaying two very striking jackets, neither bearing the slightest resemblance to a tux.
Chinese-born virtuoso Lang Lang likes to wear Chinese silk shirts with no jacket, giving this very active 21-year-old a lot of freedom of movement.
Here in Seattle, Byron Schenkman – cofounder of Seattle Baroque and an expert harpsichordist as well as pianist, says a performer’s dress should be just as distinctive as his music-making. An unusual shirt or tie can “add to your presentation,” Schenkman says; “it’s another way of expressing yourself.”
The 2002 Silk Road Project at Benaroya Hall introduced music lovers to a wide variety of other dress traditions: splendid ethnic garb in many colors, all worn with evident pride by musicians from Middle Eastern and Far Eastern cultures. That blue-shirted tabla (drum) player sitting cross-legged on a rug would have looked pretty silly in white tie and tails.
How did the white tie and tails become the classical dress standard for men in the first place?
Symphony orchestras gradually evolved through the 18th century to their present configuration during the 19th century, growing from small court orchestras performing in an aristocrat’s music room to big 100-member ensembles with their own concert halls. This also was the era in which white tie and tails represented the highest sartorial standard for men, so that’s what was worn on the concert stage. (Needless to say, there were no women in orchestras in those days. Some European orchestras still have only a token woman or two.)
The world of classical music is a deeply traditional world; it takes a long time for change to evolve. Still, there are gradual signs that the ice is beginning to break a little – for orchestras, as well as for soloists.
On the other side of the Atlantic, arguments for and against the white-tie-and-tails uniform for orchestral players have waxed and waned. England’s Hallé Orchestra is overhauling its image; its marketing director is said to have called it “bizarre” that dress standards for the concert attendees have changed over time, while the musicians’ dress hasn’t. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (the other orchestra of Seattle Symphony music director Gerard Schwarz) has commissioned a survey to find out what the audiences want the players to wear, maybe coming up with a new image for the musicians.
Others, at the august London Symphony Orchestra, feel the audience expects and wants white tie and tails on the concert stage, after paying high ticket prices and preparing for something special.
In the back of many British administrators’ minds, no doubt, is the example of the BBC Philharmonic, which opted for powder-blue suits in the 1970s, and was deeply sorry afterward. Another attempt to spruce things up by offering women players green silk (to be made up in styles of the wearer’s choosing) failed when the resulting dresses were not all as “tasteful” as the dress code stipulated. Extra players, frequently required by big repertoire (or as replacements for ailing regulars), found themselves stuck with what one player called “green sackcloths.”
One success story: the London Mozart Players, who chose red as a signature color. The men still wear tails (with red cummerbunds), but the women may adapt the offered red fabric to a number of designs. Audience approval ratings are reportedly high.
New-music groups, not surprisingly, are less tradition-bound when it comes to concert attire. Many of them wear variations on basic black, but the black might be T-shirts and jeans. The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group wears the same casual attire as its audiences.
Meanwhile, a few orchestras are moving in the other direction. Here on the West Coast, the Monterey (California) Symphony has been updating its image – by putting the men in white tie and tails (the women wear black dresses or tuxedos).
A 2002 exchange on the classical-music website andante.com brought up an intriguing case for dumping white tie and tails: it’s “a species of livery. Recall that, well into the 19th century, long after respectable gentlemen had adopted trousers and natural hair as standard, the servants of the upper classes continued to wear knee-breeches and powdered wigs. Isn't the formal attire of musicians an echo of an earlier time, when they were a kind of upper servant in the employ of aristocratic houses?” Musicians should abandon tails, because they “signify a long abandoned feudal status for the musicians who wear them.
And then there’s the question of audience attire. . .
What to wear to an opera or symphony performance:
1. Opening night for opera productions tends to be more formal than the rest of the run. At the top sartorial end are men in black tie and women in long dresses; perfectly acceptable, however, are business suits or even sports coats for men, and dresses or elegant pantsuits for women. Also popular at the opera: dress that’s themed toward the opera being performed (an Asian flair for “Madame Butterfly” or a dressy cowgirl theme for “Girl of the Golden West”).
2. For symphony concerts, men can’t go wrong in a business suit. You also see variations on dress slacks, collared shirt, and tie with a sweater or a vest, or with a leather jacket. For women, anything you’d wear out to a sit-down (not fast-food) dinner is fine.
3. New-music performances are a law unto themselves. Most patrons try to look as hip as possible; certainly no suits or conservative dresses.
4. For summer festivals, all bets are off; you’ll see shorts, sundresses and all kinds of casual attire. (Just remember, the person seated behind you is unlikely to appreciate that towering sunhat you’re wearing.)
Strangest outfits seen recently at the opera (in the audience, that is):
1. A man in blue jeans and underwear-type T-shirt with large holes in it;
2. A woman in hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants, with running shoes (possibly aiming for a quick getaway at the final curtain);
3. A woman with bright turquoise hair, a poncho-like top and jeans;
4. A man wearing black leather head to toe, with a metal-studded dog collar and wristbands, and high-heeled boots;
1 5.A woman in a dress that had no back and sides, perilously little front, and a skirt so short it resembled a cummerbund.
* * * * * * * * * * *
DAVID FULTON VIOLIN COLLECTION
By Melinda Bargreen
From about 20 feet away, it looks like any other violin.
There are no trimmings or trappings to tell you that this is the “Lord Wilton” Guarnerius del Gesù, the favorite fiddle of legendary violinists, or that it might command between -10 million if it were for sale.
Then the young violinist James Ehnes tucks the Lord Wilton under his chin and starts to tune up. Suddenly, the 400-seat concert hall is completely filled with the kind of rich reverberations that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. It actually sounds amplified – but when you look around the Fulton Performing Arts Center at the Overlake School, there are no speakers, only cameras and microphones.
The Lord Wilton, like most of the other instruments in David Fulton’s collection, has been thrilling listeners for nearly three centuries. Now, the retired Eastside software magnate is documenting for posterity on CD/DVD the remaining ultra-choice nine violins, three violas and three cellos of the recently trimmed-down Fulton Collection, earlier dubbed the world’s greatest by Money magazine. Created by Antonio Stradivari, Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù and a handful of other 18th-century Italian masters in and around Cremona, these irreplaceable instruments are the crème de la crème of the world of strings.
There’s the King Joseph del Gesù, a violin so famous that it was the subject of an entire monograph about 27 years ago. It arrived in the US in 1868, possibly the first great Cremonese instrument to reach this country, and has been loaned to a succession of distinguished violinists to play in competitions (including Itzhak Perlman, who considers the King Joseph a personal favorite).
The most prized Strads (and there are about 500-600 Strads extant, out of a total of probably 1,116 made in Stradivari’s 93-year lifetime) come from his so-called Golden Period, approximately 1700-1719, and these violins are as recognizable by sight to knowledgeable dealers as are the faces in their family album. One exception, though, was Fulton’s “Baron d’Assignies” Strad (1719), a violin unknown until the mid-1950s, when it was brought into a Paris shop by its owner, a French baron. It had been in his family for more than 100 years — literally sitting under a bed. Two owners later, the instrument passed into Fulton’s hands; he calls it “a rarity: an instrument that was authentic (and wonderful) which had been unknown.”
The Sassoon Strad of 1733, made when Stradivari was 89, shows some shakiness in the carving of details, but the old master still knew how to make a great fiddle. The violin is named for a previous owner, Alfred Sassoon, whose wealthy family made its fortune in the opium trade in Shanghai. Alfred’s son Siegfried Sassoon was a well-known poet of World War I.
Most intriguing is the Duke of Alba Strad of 1719, named for the Spanish duke who acquired it around 1788. He was the husband of the Duchess of Alba who so entranced the painter Goya (and was probably the model for his famous “The Naked Maja” of 1799-1800). Could she have listened to the Duke of Alba Strad as she posed for her portrait?
And then, of course, there’s the Lord Wilton, which has been termed – in the opinion of at least two outside experts – the greatest violin in existence. It roars to life as Ehnes and his pianist, Eduard Laurel, launch into the opening lines of Manuel de Falla’s fiery “Polo,” in a performance that is being recorded as part of an audio-visual time capsule.
The recording project includes music, video/still photographs of the instruments from every conceivable angle by three HD cameras, and side-by-side comparisons of Ehnes and Seattle Symphony cellist Joshua Roman playing the same pieces on each of their respective instruments, so their different voices can be heard and assessed for posterity. It’s a sort of musical “dragonfly in amber,” suspending these Strads and del Gesùs for a moment in time that documents just what they sound and look like now.
Fulton’s stringed instruments are the Pavarottis, Callases and Carusos of the string world. And somehow they’ve survived world wars, fires, floods, storms at sea, and everything else history could dish out. They have been treasured by owners as devoted as is Fulton, who still can’t part with the first instrument he took out a loan bigger than his home mortgage to buy, more than 25 years ago.
Hold the “La Pucelle” Stradivarius in your hands – if you dare – and what surprises you the most is how delicate it is. These little wooden boxes, and the very expensive bows that tease them into singing, may be fragile, but the ones played by touring virtuosi will be in action every day, usually for hours at a time. They’ll be lugged around the world in cabs, jets, and the sweaty hands of a player who is counting on the instrument to make him sound better than everyone else.
No wonder Fulton says, “The 20th century has been very hard on these historic instruments.”
“It’s just like being a kid in a candy store,” marvels Ehnes of the violins and violas he is playing for the DVD/CD project. The award-winning Ehnes is already used to Dom Perignon-level instruments; he performs and records with the “Marsick” Stradivarius (on loan from Fulton’s collection).
Fulton, who sold his very profitable Fox Software company to Microsoft back in the early 1990s, bought all this ear candy with Microsoft stock when it was worth twice its present value. Feeling that there were “no more worlds left to conquer” as a collector, he has recently sold seven instruments, keeping only the best ones. Fulton doesn’t discuss the profit he has made on the sales, only saying that the instruments, though “not hugely profitable investments, are worth more as time goes on,” and that he was surprised how quickly and how well they sold.
The video documentary portion of the project, produced by John Forsen, will be a feature film including interviews and historical perspective. Fulton is writing an accompanying book that is part autobiography, and part historical examination of instruments that have as lively a backstory as anything Hollywood could dream up. Take the “Bass of Spain” Stradivarius cello: one of the best of the 60-odd extant Strad cellos, its top had been removed in the mid-1800s, and was discovered roasting in a sunny Spanish shop window. An enterprising violin dealer who recognized the top found the rest of the cello and reunited the pieces, only to narrowly escape a lethal storm in the Bay of Biscay. This amazing instrument also has connections to Singer sewing machines, dancer Isadora Duncan and the Statue of Liberty.
AND NOW, OVER AT THE OVERLAKE SCHOOL’S CONCERT HALL:
The high-definition cameras are rolling, and one of them swoops in for a closeup of Joshua Roman’s fingers as his bow begins a long slide across the strings of the 1797 “Gudgeon” Montagnana cello. The opening strains of Rachmaninoff’s lovely “Vocalise” flow out into the hall.
The sound is like sliding into a vat of warm chocolate. It envelops you in rich sweetness.
This cello, which Roman played last March in his sold-out Town Hall Seattle recital, is one of three museum-quality instruments he is immortalizing on DVD/CD for a high-end recording project. The project documents the David Fulton collection of rare stringed instruments in their 2007 state for posterity, with James Ehnes playing the nine violins and three violas, and Roman on the three cellos. They’re lucky to have the pianist Eduard Laurel, who partners these players like Nureyev hoisting Dame Margot Fonteyn.
The recording process, overseen by video producer John Forsen and audio engineer Tim Martyn, was timed for spring break at the Overlake School, a week-long window of opportunity to turn the school’s David and Amy Fulton Performing Arts Center into a recording studio with three high-definition cameras and a battery of sophisticated audio equipment. Originally, they planned to record only the violins and violas, saving the cellos for later – but the process has gone so quickly and so smoothly that there was time to record the cellos as well.
The call went out to Roman: could he get several solo pieces of the appropriate length ready – immediately? Roman, who is principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony, was granted dispensation by Gerard Schwarz to miss a rehearsal, and he showed up to record with the indefatigable Laurel.
In the darkened concert hall, collector David Fulton leaned over to discuss the great cellos in between takes.
“The Montagnana is very balanced, very accessible,” he said just after Roman turned in a final performance that was even more freely expressive than his first go at the Rachmaninoff.
“But the ‘Harrison’ (Pietro Guarneri of Venice, 1737) cello is a bit more temperamental.”
Bigger and darker-toned, this cello gives up its secrets only when the player hits the note dead-center – and then you hear its tremendous, booming bass notes and its singing tone. From the stage, you can hear Roman wrestling with the instrument, calling out, “This is an untamed stallion of a cello!”
Fulton thinks there’s always a faint melancholy ring to its sound. This is the instrument for which the famous Elgar Cello Concerto was written, performed by the player (Beatrice Harrison) for whom the cello is nicknamed. All the collection’s instruments have nicknames, some of them relating to their origin, but most of them reflecting famous owners and players in their nearly 300-year history.
Finally, it’s the turn of the Bass of Spain, a 1713 Stradivarius cello that is considered one of the finest instruments extant. Roman struggles to find the words: “This one is just . . . a thousand times greater.”
“This is the one that touches my heart,” says Fulton of the Bass of Spain, as Roman warms up on the instrument with the opening statement from the Brahms Double Concerto (an excerpt he plays on all three instruments).
“The Bass of Spain is my favorite instrument – and I can’t even play it.”
A very capable violinist who might have continued in a career as an orchestra musician, Fulton was an academic prodigy (he entered the University of Chicago at 16) who later became a member of the Hartford (Connecticut) Symphony’s second violin section. He later gave up that position in order to go to graduate school, a move Fulton describes as “a very happy decision, particularly for future violin dealers.” Fulton went on to earn a doctorate and chair the fledgling Computer Science department at Bowling Green State University, a path that took him away from violin playing – but one that (because of Fulton’s success in computer software) made his later acquisition of prized violins possible. After selling his Fox Software company to Microsoft in the early 1990s, Fulton quietly began the hunt to acquire the violins of his dreams.
In 2002, when the collection was at its height, magazines and industry insiders called it the world’s finest. Why, then, would he want to sell off seven of the instruments, as he has in the past few years?
Now 62, Fulton says it’s a matter of “No worlds left to conquer. For me, part of the fun of the collecting process was trying to get the very best instruments. Anything better than what I have is in museums. I’ve been there, done that.
“Besides, our youngest will be in college next year, and it’s time to travel. The collection is best enjoyed when you’re not moving around.” And the recent completion of an 80-foot diesel/electric boat that was three years in the building adds some impetus to those travel plans.
Finally, Fulton says, the instruments he sold are “virtuoso tools. For me to play the ‘General Kyd’ (Stradivarius, 1714) or the ‘Carrodus’ (Guarnerius del Gesù, 1743) is like trying to drive a racing Ferrari in traffic. You don’t play Mozart quartets with them. When Vadim Repin (a well-known young Russian violin soloist) used the ‘Carrodus’ in concert with the Seattle Symphony, he said it was ‘like trying to ride a wild horse.’ ”
Both those instruments sold for world-record prices, one trumping the other. Other instruments have gone to foundations, museums and individuals, all of them overseas. Fulton was surprised at how quickly the instruments sold; he had thought it might take up to 20 years to find the right buyers at the right prices. Estate planning was another factor in the selling process; Fulton has said he didn’t want to leave the collection for his heirs to deal with.
Listening to the remaining 12 violins and violas, all played by Ehnes in succession, is a reminder of the distinctive voices these important instruments have. After one take, Ehnes describes the “King Joseph” Guarnerius del Gesù as “very human, with a warm voice.” The same excerpt from Bruch’s “Scottish Fantasy” sounds downright delicious, though, with the 1715 “Baron Knoop” Stradivarius, an instrument that has been called the most beautiful of the Strads. The “Lord Wilton” Guarnerius del Gesù (1742) is downright inhuman in its power, like a del Gesù on steroids. Fulton calls it “nuclear powered.”
And then there is the “La Pucelle” Strad, a 1709 instrument in immaculate shape, whose complicated history has kept it sequestered from the world for much of its long life. Amazingly, “La Pucelle” has never been recorded. This project is the very first time, a fact that should add some luster to the DVD/CD package when it is released.
The violins, violas and cellos all take a turn suspended very, very carefully from an overhead turntable, allowing them to be shot from every conceivable angle and in every possible nook or cranny. (There’s thick padding below; no one wants to think of a 0 million violin taking a tumble.) Fulton has also done immense, finely detailed digital still photography of all the instruments, so that every wiggle in the woodgrain and every tiny nick in the varnish are documented for posterity.
Each instrument, not surprisingly, is different to play. Roman and (especially) Ehnes have to contend with instruments of different sizes and shapes, making minute adjustments to precisely where they’ll find that F-sharp on this one, as opposed to that one. The violas are particularly different; the 1793 “Rolla” Guadagnini viola is “tiny,” according to Ehnes, but the Gasparo da Salò viola, c. 1580, is "huge, like a cello without an end pin.”
It’s testament to both players’ quickness that they pick up the instruments’ idiosyncrasies fast enough to do near-perfect takes.
But not quite perfect. The lynx-eared sound producer Tim Martyn, off in a nearby sound room with Seattle sound engineer Al Swanson, says at the conclusion of all but the last takes, “Beautiful. That was just great.” Then there is a pause, and then comes the addendum we all know to expect: “But could you just do the last three lines of page four another time.” It takes exquisite tact; Martyn will say of a certain too-quiet note in the piano, “Eduard, that G is my favorite note. Could we have a little more of it?”
One thing’s for sure: except perhaps for those exhausted musicians, no one is sorry to hear another take. Hearing this great lineup of instruments, out for another dance with immortality, is an experience no music lover could ever forget.
* * * * * * * * * * *
THE THREE TENORS ... AND A BASEBALL CAP
By Melinda Bargreen
It all started with the Three Tenors.
Back in 1997, I reviewed a concert by that legendary trio, and cast about for a suitable souvenir for my husband. A nice baseball cap, perhaps; black with a fairly discreet logo of the tenors across the front.
My husband duly wore the Three Tenors cap to the next Sonics game, accompanied by our then-teenaged son. The Sonics tanked miserably.
At the next game, similarly attired, husband and son cheered on the Sonics to no avail: same result.
“Dad!” exclaimed our son.
“That is a seriously unlucky hat. You have to get rid of it.”
My husband nodded solemnly, and the Three Tenors baseball cap went into the recycling.
“Wait a minute!” I intervened.
“You really believe that a hat you wear to a basketball game can influence the outcome of the game?”
Both males looked at me as if I had declared my membership in the Flat Earth Society.
“Duh!” replied my son.
“Of course it can.”
Thus began my education in the subject of unlucky attire. Now, we in the arts are no strangers to performance-related superstitions. Pavarotti himself, the most famous of those Three Tenors, reportedly wouldn’t go onstage at the opera until he had discovered a lucky bent nail backstage (needless to say, opera companies made sure there were plenty of bent nails around). Pre-performance rituals abound, from Wagnerian diva Jane Eaglen’s warmup tape (to which she sings along with Whitney Houston and Meat Loaf, among others), to the kiss Leonard Bernstein used to bestow on his cufflinks (given to him by another legendary maestro, Dmitry Mitropolous) before striding to the podium.
It is not hard to understand that an item of attire previously worn in an atmosphere of success – a great vocal performance, a winning football playoff game – might comfort the performer and lead to an expectation of repeated success. No one would have a problem understanding such “lucky” garments or tokens.
It’s also easy to understand why fans would wear logo jackets and hats to sporting events in the hope of influencing the outcome. The players on the field, looking up to see a veritable ocean of blue at a Seahawks game, may well be encouraged to play harder. (Though football insiders tell me the players don’t really gaze at the stands all that much.)
But since the episode of the Three Tenors hat, I’ve discovered there are many other rules applying to lucky and unlucky clothing and behavior, when it comes to sports. Here are a few of them:
1. Whatever you have worn to a sporting event in which your team loses is unlucky. (This does not apply to underwear, at least not always. It usually implies a hat, shirt, or jacket, though almost any item of clothing could be seen as unlucky.) If the same outfit or item causes any further losses, it must be given away.
2. You must not wear an unlucky garment, even during a game that you are listening to on the radio. Unlucky emanations can pierce through your radio in a reverse stream and enter the stadium, where they will damage your team.
3. If you should be wearing a lucky garment (one that has caused a previous victory for your team), and your team should happen to lose, you do not have to discard the item right away. The loss might have been a fluke. A second loss, however, will clinch the item’s unluckiness.
4. If your team is ahead, and you turn on the TV or radio in the middle of the game, but the tide of the game starts to turn in the opposite direction, you must immediately turn off the TV or radio, because you have caused your team to fall behind. Similarly, if your team is behind when you turn on the broadcast, but then pulls ahead, you are duty-bound to keep watching and listening, or you’ll jinx them.
To be honest, I don’t really know what happened to the dreaded Three Tenors baseball cap after it was recycled. For all we know, it could be on someone else’s head, sending out evil rays in the direction of the Sonics for perpetuity. (Maybe that explains the season opener against the Clippers.)
This subject really could be explored at greater length, except that I have to go change into my lucky black dress. The Seattle Symphony is playing, and if I have on my unlucky pantsuit, we could be doomed to an evening of total discord.
* * * * * * * * * * *
NEVER HECKLE
A HECKELPHONE
By Melinda Bargreen
You never know what you’re going to find on e-Bay.
University of Washington faculty bassoonist Arthur Grossman was trolling the site one day as he often does, looking for good bassoon bargains for his students, and up popped a listing for a Heckelphone.
What, you may ask, is a Heckelphone? The history of wind instruments is long and varied, and it has many interesting side roads; one of those is inhabited by this rare, conical-bore double-reed instrument. Invented in 1904, long after a request by composer Richard Wagner, at the Heckel factory just outside of Wiesbaden, Germany – where top-quality wind instruments still are made today – the instruments have fascinated Grossman ever since he was stationed in Germany in the late 1950s.
“They have a museum of instruments there, and I’d never heard of a Heckelphone,” Grossman explains. “I’d go to the little town of Biebrich and play those instruments on the weekends – they don’t allow that now. I was fascinated.”
Fewer than 100 Heckelphones remain in the world, many of them in museums. All the players – and Grossman estimates there are maybe 50 of hem in the world -- are self-taught, because there are no teachers, and nobody really knows how the reeds should be made (Grossman’s handmade reeds are not too dissimilar from his bassoon reeds). Early Heckelphones, like Grossman’s, are based on 19th-century Viennese oboe fingering; later ones moved more toward a modern standard.
“I had to figure out the fingering,” he explains, “by putting an electronic tuner on my music stand and figuring out which combinations of fingers made a B or a B-flat. These instruments are very finicky.”
So what do you play on a Heckelphone? Well, there’s a very nice Trio for Viola, Heckelphone and Piano (Op. 47) by 20th-century composer Paul Hindemith (see review in these pages). Richard Strauss also was a fan, giving the instrument parts in the “Alpine Symphony” and the operas “Salome” and “Elektra.” Conductor/composer Wilhelm Furtwãngler liked the Heckelphone and composed music for it; so did Hans Werner Henze and Percy Grainger (“The Warriors,” a work in which Grossman played the Heckelphone for the Seattle Symphony performances a season ago). Holst also specified either a bass oboe or a Heckelphone for “The Planets.” (For more opportunities, as Grossman suggests, players can “steal the oboe repertoire and play it down an octave.”)
Where did Grossman’s Heckelphone come from? Its provenance is mysterious; he bought it from a Texas collector of musical instruments, who had obtained it earlier from another collector, but beyond that, no one knows.
“I gave myself a limit beyond which I would not bid,” says Grossman, who declines to specify the cost of the Heckelphone, “and of course I went over that amount. I’ve spent quite a bit on repair and maintenance, moving some keys to make them more reachable. Somewhere along the way, somebody soaked it in oil, and oil never really leaves the instrument; the pads stick and I’m constantly putting baby powder on them.
“But I’m glad I got an old one. There’s a real sonic difference to the early ones, which have thinner walls and more resonance – the older ones are much more rich and beautiful.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
THE INSPIRING JEANNE BLUECHEL
By Melinda Bargreen
As soon as the eager youngsters spot Jeanne Ehrlichman Bluechel in the classroom, the shout goes up: “Miss Jeanne! Miss Jeanne!”
You’d think a pop star had come to the Wing Luke Elementary School. Instead, it is a tiny, blue-eyed granny with a radiant grin, bearing a stack of information about the lives and works of great composers. At 78, Bluechel is still afire with enthusiasm for music education, creating an ad-hoc volunteer program so successful that 17 principals of Seattle Public Schools want to take part.
Twice a political wife, Bluechel once badgered legendary conductor Antal Dorati into giving a free children’s concert in Washington, D.C. and talked Pat Nixon into making the concert an annual cabinet wives’ event. She has seen good times and bad, including the unwanted celebrity of being a Watergate wife (of the late Nixon domestic-affairs chief John Ehrlichman). But the abiding theme in her life has been music, which has sustained her over seven decades, and which she wants as a birthright for every child.
“The kids love Jeanne,” says Wing Luke principal Ellen Punyon.
“She is like their musical guardian angel. They enjoy the music, and the way she presents it. She gives them background in a part of our culture to which they might not otherwise be exposed.”
When the band from Aki Kurose Middle School played for the Wing Luke students, Punyon says she was very impressed that all the kids recognized the composer.
“They know the different instruments,” Punyon says, “and they know which ones they want to play when they get the chance, thanks to Jeanne.”
Bluechel’s early years were not easy. She was an only child, and her parents divorced when she was eight.
“I was the only child of divorced parents in my school,” she remembers.
“But my mother’s dear friend from Germany was a piano teacher, and we had a piano. It was my main thing. We didn’t have a car; we never went on vacation. But my mother did take me to the L.A. Philharmonic.”
There Bluechel heard the renowned pianist/conductor Sergei Rachmaninoff, whom she still remembers as a towering figure with huge hands. He inspired her to study even harder, especially during the summers, when Bluechel would spend most of her time at the piano teacher’s house. She learned to play a Beethoven concerto, with the teacher playing the orchestral score.
“I couldn’t do that today!” she quips.
Busy at the keyboard throughout high school and U.C.L.A., where she did a lot of accompanying, Bluechel says she “sort of faked that I had a singing voice” so she could join the a cappella choir. The high point of her choral career: a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
When she married attorney John Ehrlichman and produced five children, there was no question about providing piano lessons for the family quintet.
“We told each child, ‘We’re giving you a gift: piano lessons for three years. It’s up to you if you practice.’ Actually, they were pretty good. All of them love music today and play another instrument, or they sing.”
Following Ehrlichman’s Stanford Law School graduation in 1951, the family moved to the Northwest. But in 1968, the “other Washington” beckoned, and Ehrlichman went to work for Richard M. Nixon – a career that would end disastrously in a prison sentence after the Watergate hearings.
Already a music activist in the Northwest (she helped present Seattle Symphony family concerts), Bluechel joined the board of Washington, D.C.’s National Symphony Orchestra. When conductor Dorati initially refused to present children’s concerts, Ehrlichman got Department of Defense buses to take the kids from their schools to the new Kennedy Center, which had just opened. The Seattle Symphony sent their “Introduction to a Symphony Orchestra” materials to the DC Music Coordinator to help prepare the 3rd and 4th grade students for the concert.
At the next board meeting, Dorati announced that he had to take his hat off to Jeanne Ehrlichman: “I never played for a better audience.”
She drew on her experience teaching first and second grade (while helping Ehrlichman get through law school) to go into D.C. schools, working with the kids on their reading skills.
In 1978, the couple divorced after 28 years of marriage. Once again, music became Jeanne’s solace. Shortly after the Ehrlichmans had moved back to the Northwest in 1973, Jeanne became the first named education director of the Seattle Symphony. She was incensed when the Seattle School District virtually wiped out its music programs by firing nearly all the music teachers.
“We got together the presidents of the boards of all the arts organizations in town, and we went to the school board. That was the beginning of my life as an arts activist!" she recalls.
The arts also led her to her present husband, former state senator Alan Bluechel. She was lobbying the legislature for funding for the Seattle Symphony, and Alan Bluechel was the only one who showed up at the event. The two soon found themselves in harmony.
More recently, Bluechel has been working with the Symphony, KING-FM and the Downtown Rotary Club on a program to get musical instruments into Seattle schools, for kids who can’t afford to rent or buy their own. So far, they’ve given about 500 instruments to the schools, and Bluechel says she’s ready to do another campaign “every three or four years” to raise that number.
It was at Rotary that Bluechel met Wing Luke Elementary principal Ellen Punyon, whom she told about visiting her grandchildren’s Bellevue classrooms to tell them about the music of the great composers. Punyon responded: “If you can go to Bellevue, you can go to Wing Luke; we really need your program.”
That was about three years ago. Now Bluechel is going strong, though she wants to make it clear that she doesn’t take the place of a music teacher: “This is extra. But the kids love it.”
Bluechel says her program is nothing fancy. She uses some standard references, including a book called “Meet the Great Composers,” to make a folder on each featured composer, and she redoes the biographies to make them age-appropriate. Each teacher with whom she works gets a copy, so teachers can continue the work themselves. The book comes with a CD illustrating the major works of each composer, which the teachers play in their classrooms.
“Then I just talk to the kids about the music, and how inspiring it is, and tell them a few stories about the composers and their works,” Bluechel says. “They’re very attentive and interested.”
So are the principals of other Seattle schools, after word got out about what Bluechel is doing. Marta Olson, the district’s visual and performing arts program manager for the past five years, says, “Jeanne Bluechel is actually helping me with a dream. I have long wanted a music listening program. She talked with me about it, and we have named her program the ‘Great Composers Listening Program.’”
When Ellen Punyon asked her fellow principals if any of them wanted the program, 17 responded positively. Since Bluechel herself can’t be in every school, the plan now is to ask each interested principal to find a volunteer: staff, parents, grandparents, community members. In October, training for the volunteers will be scheduled.
Right now, the program is for Seattle Schools only. The need is certainly there; Olson explains that about half, or around 35, of the district’s elementary schools have general music teachers (they stay in the building and work with all grade levels). There are only 16 instrumental music teachers, who travel to a total of 70 buildings to teach fourth- and fifth-graders.
“We call them our miracle workers,” says Olson of the doughty 16.
They’re looking for some less-overworked miracle workers now, in the form of volunteers for Bluechel’s program. Interested volunteers and school principals can reach Olson at molson@seattleschools.org.
“I’m so glad there is interest in the program,” says Bluechel.
“This is my life work. The children need and deserve it.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
WANT MORE? Check out “More Miscellany,” the next page.
