The appearance in Holocaust Memorial Week of an album of synagogue music on the Deutsche Grammophon label is a milestone of sorts, perhaps a first step towards a reckoning with the German company’s complicated past. Founded by Emile Berliner, an American Jew, DG was dominated in its heyday by an Austrian Nazi, Herbert von Karajan. One record of Jewish liturgies does not reconcile these extremes, but it does point towards a settling of memories.
The album’s content is archaic. The opening of the 3,000-seat Oranienburger Strasse synagogue in 1866 marked a high point of civic confidence among German Jews….
The violinist played for a captive audience in a Canadian jail this weekend.
He found it more attentive than most concert audiences.
Watch.
Musicians of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra have agreed a 3-year deal, raising the base wage to $105,000 in 2024.
What’s not to like?
Other terms:
The number of musicians will rise from 87 to 88.
They will play 39 weeks with 4 weeks paid vacation.
President and CEO Anne Parsons said: ‘As we prepare to usher in a remarkable new era for the DSO and our city with the introduction of Jader Bignamini as the orchestra’s next music director, this third straight early contract resolution with our musicians serves as a springboard to a wide-open future.’
The death is reported of Geneviève Moizan, a French soprano who sang from 1949 to 1968 at the Opéra de Paris and performed in the world premiere of Francis Poulenc’s Stabat Mater.
She was a notable Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust, and was popular in many other leading roles in Paris and around the Francophone opera world.
President Barack Obama sings Amazing Grace at the funeral of South Carolina State Senator Clementa Pinckney.
Remember this? It was five years and a whole constellation away.
The US pianist died yesterday after a long illness, aged 72.
He was more loved than he ever knew.
It’s hard to see one’s heros falling; now it’s Peter Serkin, may he RIP. I always learned so much being around him. Thanks for the great music-making, for the fierce will and for the uncompromising curiosity. -AG
Pianist Eliane Lust: I was 16 years old when I first heard & met him at the Spoleto Festival Italy where we were both performing. My biggest teen crush ever … all dressed top to bottom in white, handsomest guy there, performing the complete Vingt Regards outdoors with just a short 5 minute (sweat) break in the very middle. Dude. A performance never paralleled since, to be perfectly honest.
Pianist Shai Wosner:
Who on earth ends (!) a recital with the Schoenberg Suite Op. 25? And what an ending it was. Only Peter Serkin could take this piece of perhaps the worst reputation in all of piano music – and bring it across like a rock star. I was screaming bravo at the top of my lungs after that Gigue not only because I knew it could not be played better but also because, still a student, I knew that this was an altering experience which showed that if you play the music you truly believe in you can make an audience go with you no matter how cuckoo they might find this music otherwise. In his hands Schoenberg was alive and well – not academic and dour but subversive and witty and infectiously exciting. That is only one of many memories of his playing that etched themselves already in my student concert-going days. There was a Brahms D Minor with the New York Philharmonic that I will never, ever forget. And a Brahms B-flat encountered on YouTube which had me glued to my computer like a child. Or a recital at Carnegie Hall ending with an almost blindingly luminous Beethoven “Les Adieux”. How poignant that title is today.
RIP Mr. Serkin.
Pianist Sylvia Kahan: Peter was my chamber music coach at Tanglewood, and it’s thanks to him that I was introduced to the beauties and intricacies of Stefan Wolpe’s music. A few years later, I became piano teacher to his children Elena, Maya, and Stefan. I remember how intimidating it was to teach those lessons in a room largely taken up by his father Rudolph Serkin’s music library and Steinway grand. But Peter was always so hospitable, and never failed to praise my teaching. He was a towering musician, and I shall miss his warmth and his remarkable pianism and intellectual prowess.
RIP Peter Serkin.Someone who I heard at Curtis age 18 and didnt forget.Someone who can play stunning Bach and give a Premiere of Carter.Rare sort.
Orchestra administrator Ed Yim: I will always regret never finding a way to program the Reger Piano concerto Peter always wanted to do with one of the orchestras I worked for. I remember when he came to play Hindemieth with Sawallisch and Philadelphia, he was flummoxed by the somewhat old-school ways of dear Maestro Sawallisch and called Manny Ax to say “I thought you liked this conductor? He’s telling me exactly how to play my part.” and Manny said, “Yes, that’s why I love him.” He also eschewed post-concert dinners (he was warm but private), and we got into a ritual over the years of my stopping by during the week to say “You don’t want to go out to dinner this week, right?” and he would say “Right. But thanks for asking” with a twinkle in his eye. What a great artist.
Critic Tim Page: More than any other group, it was Tashi (pianist Peter Serkin, violinist Ida Kavafian, clarinetist Richard Stoltzman and cellist Fred Sherry) that brought Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time” to public attention, presenting it in unexpected places such as the Bottom Line. I don’t think a day went by in 1976 when this didn’t find its way to my turntable. You can hear it all here.
Sonia Alexandra Knussen: I’m so incredibly sad.
Since Oldie left this world in 2018, I have frequently heard Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 playing on the car radio. I cry almost every time, just a little bit, as I’m caught off guard thinking of Oldie and Peter in Japan and London having a blast in rehearsals. The photo below is from their Japan performance of the Brahms. I was in the audience.
Oldie wrote his Variations and Prayer Bell Sketch for Peter to play. When he wrote Variations it was in the days of fax and answering machines. I remember that the phone would ring and Dad would shout “No! don’t answer! It’s Pete!“ and sure enough we’d get to hear the first ever readings of sections of the piano piece, that had just been faxed to Peter in the states from our flat in London, played over the phone from NY and recorded onto our answering machine tape.
So much love to the entire Serkin family, extended family, friends and students.
Label owner David Starobin: Peter Serkin passed away today. He was a wonderful musician who touched our lives deeply. Here he is with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, from a recording session of Peter Lieberson’s “Rilke Songs”. I remember these sessions as if they were yesterday, and will always be grateful for them.
Sam Jackson, Senior Managing Editor of the Smooth, Gold and Classic FM stations, has joined Universal Music as de facto head of classics. His role will be similar to that formerly occupied by Costa Pilavachi.
Release below:
Dickon Stainer, President and CEO of Global Classics and Jazz for Universal Music Group (UMG), the world leader in music-based entertainment, today announced the appointment of respected music industry leader, Sam Jackson, in a newly created global leadership role. He will become Executive Vice President, Global Classics and Jazz, reporting to Stainer, based in the company’s London headquarters.
Jackson’s new role reflects the ongoing evolution of the genre, focusing on innovation in listening and a greater awareness of audience and consumption habits to drive global growth for UMG artists. Working with the division’s leadership team, Jackson will bring his knowledge of audience access, touchpoints and discovery to international marketing, content creation, brand expansion, digital innovation and strategic communication.
Musical masterpieces do not leap fully formed off the page. At its first performance in Vienna on December 23, 1806, Beethoven’s violin concerto was so poorly received that it may never have been heard again in his lifetime. The review in the Weiner Zeitung read:
With regard to Beethofen’s [sic] concerto, the opinion of all connoisseurs is the same: while they acknowledge that it contains some fine things, they agree that the continuity often seems to be completely disrupted, and that the endless repetitions of a few commonplace passages could easily lead to weariness. It is being said that Beethofen ought to make better use of his admittedly great talents…
It is reported that Beethoven was late in delivering the score to the soloist, leaving Franz Clement to sightread some pages, but the real reason for its failure was that the work as a whole went above the heads of its audience, who were used to the polite conventions of Haydn and Mozart and could not adjust to the open combat between soloist and conductor which make this concerto a milestone in the evolution of western music.
Beethoven was so disappointed by its rejection that he made a tame transcription for piano and orchestra. It was May 1844 before the violin concerto was taken up in earnest after the 12 year-old Joseph Joachim played it with his own cadenzas at the Philharmonic Society in London, with Felix Mendelssohn conducting. The concerto was ahead of its time, both musically and in its suggestion that soloist and conductor must square up to each other if the work is to succeed. Gidon Kremer, in the essay I quoted a couple of days ago, complains that too many conductors fail to earn their fee by simply following the violinist in everything.
Be that as it may, we are approaching a point where you have the right to expect firm recommendations from the recorded archives. In addition to the early birds listed yesterday, I should draw your attention to the 1959 performance by Isaac Stern with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, an interpretation highly praised in its time but irritating on repeated hearing for slow tempi and exaggerated pauses, especially in the middle movement. Stern’s 1975 New York recording with Daniel Barenboim conducting is lighter, brisker and considerably less affected. Barenboim returned to the concerto time and again with his Israeli pals Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman, the former more slack than slick with the Chicago Symphony, and the latter flawless with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1989. The best of Perlman, however, is heard in his 1981 recording with Carlo-Maria Giulini and the Philharmonia, a performance that ushered the concerto into a digital era which, by exposing the slightest flaws of intonation, prompted soloists to cut back on risk. This is, nonetheless, a memorable, celestial reading by a formidable artist at the summit of his powers.
There are two more landmark recordings in the 20th century. In September 1979, the authoritarian Herbert von Karajan presented a 16 year-old girl as soloist in the Beethoven concerto in the Berlin Philharmonie. Anne-Sophie Mutter had been his protégée for three years. In the Beethoven concerto she achieved artistic maturity, albeit under the tight control of the old conductor, who set slow tempi and brooked no contradiction. Mutter’s playing is breath-taking in places, daring in its quietude and forcing the orchestra to play at her volume. The DG release was an overnight best-seller. Some commentators identified Mutter as the first German talent to emerge on the violin since 1933. She recorded the Beethoven twice more, with Karajan and Kurt Masur, but never with the same élan.
The other landmark could hardly be more different. I happened to be present in June 1992 when the bad boy of British music Nigel Kennedy recorded the Beethoven concerto in a north German radio studio with the most unmaestro-like of great conductors, Klaus Tennstedt. Kennedy was at his most awkward with the recording crew and Tennstedt was at his most impassive. It did not augur well. But the spark between them was unmistakeable and the performance, very slow as it was, caught fire. Kennedy’s playing in the cadenza of the finale is the best I ever heard from him. The recording, if I remember rightly, sold 100,000 copies in a week. It remains a cracking performance. The only living violinist to match the sales of Mutter and Kennedy is the German-American David Garrett, in a 2011 performance of self-indulgent exaggeration. The last sales figure I heard was close to half a million. There is no accounting for bad taste.
Although the concerto is a virtuosic showpiece, a number of excellent concertmasters have stepped up to show that they are as good as any soloist. Two recorded the concerto with Bernard Haitink – Toronto’s Steven Staryk and, more reticent, the Concertgebouw leader Hermann Krebbers whose playing is dignified by moderation and unassuming mastery.
In the 21st century I am drawn to Nikolaj Znaider’s marvellously assured and musically refined 2005 recording with the somewhat less impressive Israel Phil and to Janine Jansen, crisp and commanding in Bremen in 2009. Among the period instrument takes, Thomas Zehetmair’s 1997 collaboration with Frans Brüggen challenges the ear constantly with surprising speeds and phrasing. There is also a heartstring-tugging Patricia Kopatchinskaja recording dated 2009 (not on Idagio) with the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées and Philippe Herreweghe, a favourite with many professionals. Nicola Benedetti and Viktoria Mullova aslo have their fans.
All of which brings me inexorably back to Gidon Kremer. The Latvian violinist recorded the concerto twice – in a closly argued 1995 dialogue with his favourite conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt and, a dozen years earlier, in a shortlived recording with Neville Marriner. The unique facet of this release was the cadenza. It’s by the late-Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke and it is made up of snatches of every major violin concerto from J S Bach to Alban Berg. It’s a phenomenal composition, unbelievably tough to play, and it gives everything one knows about the Beethoven concerto a thorough window-cleaning. Best of all, it throws one of those rare bridges across the whole of music history for listeners to contemplate at leisure,
Audiences, needless to say, hated it. The record label deleted it and I have never heard it since in a concert hall (although I gather Lisa Batiashvili has given some recent performances). Happily, it’s here on Idagio…. and I’m still transfixed by it.
