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Famous Soloists—Pinchas Zuckerman

2010
05.11

Pinchas Zuckerman was born in 1948 in Tel Aviv, Israel.  He studied music with his father from a very young age, experimenting with various instruments before settling on the violin.  He came to the United States in 1962 (age 13) with financial support from violinist Isaac Stern, cellist Pablo Casals, and several charitable foundations.  He studied at the Juilliard School, taking the first place award in the highly prestigious Edgar Leventritt Competition in 1967.  His career has continued unabated for more than 40 years, marked by notable performances with major orchestras around the world.  Zuckerman has also made a name for himself as a conductor and music director, oftentimes appearing in the dual role of performer and orchestra leader while playing any number of well-known violin concertos.

From 1980–87, Zuckerman was music director for the St. Paul [Minn.] Chamber Orchestra and a primary catalyst in that ensemble’s rise to prominence as one of the best small orchestras in the United States.  In addition, he ran summer music festivals for both the Baltimore Symphony and the Dallas Symphony for three seasons each, as well as the South Bank Festival in London.  Zuckerman is also an accomplished chamber musician, having appeared alongside such famous soloists as Itzhak Perlman, Yefim Bronfman, Daniel Barenboim, and the late Jacqueline du Pré.  He is a regular participant at the Santa Fe [N.M.] Chamber Music Festival and created the Zuckerman Chamber Players in 2003.  The group has performed in more than 40 venues since its formation and has recorded several CDs.

In April 1998, Zuckerman was named music director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra (NACO) in Ottawa, Canada.  He is the first non-Canadian to hold that post since the orchestra’s inception in 1969.  He is also a member of the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music and he operates the Zuckerman Musical Instrument Fund, which is dedicated to helping orchestra musicians acquire affordable instruments.  Zuckerman has more than 100 recordings to his credit—five with the NACO—and has received 21 Grammy Award nominations, winning twice.  His television appearances have included several performances on Live from Lincoln Center as well as the PBS special Mozart by the Masters.  Zuckerman married Amanda Forsyth in 2004.  She is the principal cellist for the NACO and the daughter of composer Malcolm Forsyth.  He was formerly married to professional musician and novelist Eugenia Zuckerman [1968–1983], and actress Tuesday Weld [1985–1998].  Zuckerman plays a violin built in 1742 by Guarnerius del Gesù.

Zuckerman performs the final movement of Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Israel Philharmonic (Zubin Mehta, conductor):

Category Famous Soloists |

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Masters of the Podium—Arturo Toscanini

2010
05.09

Arturo Toscanini [1867–1957] was born in Parma, Italy, the eldest of four children.  He attended the city’s Royal School of Music from the age of nine, graduating with honors nine years later with particular skill in playing the cello and in composition.  His photographic memory, legendary among his peers, became evident upon his first opportunity on the podium.  While performing as principal cellist for an Italian opera company on tour in South America, he was called upon to lead the evening’s performance of Aïda when the ensemble’s conductor became ill; he did so from memory!  Upon returning to Italy, Toscanini began to pursue a career in conducting by taking itinerant jobs with various regional opera houses around the country.  At Milan’s second opera house—the Teatro Del Verme—in 1892, he conducted the world premiere of Leoncavallo’s I pagliacci and, three years later, he achieved the same goal in Turin with Puccini’s signature opera, La bohème.

When he was 31, Toscanini assumed the prestigious post of music director at Milan’s famed Teatro alla Scala (La Scala), considered the most important opera house in Europe at the time.  In addition to providing Milanese with their first exposure to many great operas that would become strong elements of the repertoire—works by such leading composers of the day as Puccini, Mascagni, Cilea, Franchetti, and Giordano—he also revamped the opera house’s administrative functions and streamlined the way artists and musicians were hired.  He left this post in 1908 but returned during the 1920s for a short stint.  Toscanini led New York’s Metropolitan Opera from 1908 to 1915, a tenure that included the world premiere of La fanciulla del West by Giacomo Puccini (featuring Enrico Caruso).  He left his native land over his opposition to Fascist rule, settling in the United States.  He would return to Europe annually once WWII was over, but the New York City area remained his home for the rest of his life.

The NBC Orchestra was created expressly for Toscanini in 1937.  He conducted his first radio broadcast with that ensemble on Christmas Day of that year.  The studio in the company’s Rockefeller Center facility that served as the orchestra’s home was renovated in 1950 and is now used by NBC for its television show, Saturday Night Live.  The maestro served as the leader of the NBC Orchestra until his retirement in 1954 at the remarkable age of 87.  During his time with that organization he continued his penchant for presenting premieres of many major works.  These included the world premiere of Barber’s Adagio for Strings and the first U.S performance of Symphony No. 7 by Dmitri Shostakovich.

Toscanini leads the NBC Orchestra in a 1944 performance of the overture to the opera La forza del destino by Giuseppe Verdi (note that he conducts without using a score!):

Category Masters of the Podium |

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Composers Corner—Johann Sebastian Bach

2010
05.07

Johann Sebastian Bach [1685–1750] was the driving force behind the maturity of the Baroque movement in classical music.  In addition to his skills as a composer, Bach was also a noted organist and keyboard player, a choir director, and a violinist.  He was born in Eisenach, Germany, to a family of professional musicians.  His father led a group of local players, and assorted uncles on his father’s side held various posts such as church organist or court orchestral musician.  Bach became orphaned at the age of 10, but not before learning to play the violin and the harpsichord from his father.  Four years later he received a scholarship to attend a prestigious music school near Hamburg.  After graduation, he was hired as a court musician for a minor royal in Weimar.  This led him to a string of musician and organist posts throughout Northern Germany.  A move to Leipzig in 1723 was his final relocation—he remained a resident of that city until his death.  It was here that he composed the vast majority of his major pieces while officially serving as the music director of St. Thomas’s Lutheran Church.

Bach’s musical style combines elements of counterpoint and fluidity, and his material is highly melodic.  His influences involved exposure to the early Baroque masters from the German, French and Italian schools—Pachelbel, Lully, Marchand, and Frescobaldi predominate—along with liturgical music from the Lutheran Church.  He composed in a wide variety of formats and was incredibly prolific.  His organ works include a setting of 21 chorale preludes plus the “Little Organ Book.”  His best-known harpsichord works include The Well Tempered Clavier and the Goldberg Variations.  His top orchestral works—primarily for strings—include the Brandenburg concertos and The Art of the Fugue.  He composed a number of vocal works including cantatas and some massive choral pieces, among them the St. Matthew Passion, the Christmas Oratorio, and Mass in B-minor.

Bach sired seven children with his first wife, four of whom survived to adulthood, and an additional 13 children with his second wife; six of them survived to adulthood.  Four of his children became well-known composers in their own right: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Wilhelm Friedrich Bach, Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, and Johann Christian Bach.  His last known descendent—a great-granddaughter—died in 1871.

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Titans of Opera—Luciano Pavarotti

2010
05.05

There was no greater opera singer during the latter half of the twentieth century than tenor Luciano Pavarotti [1935–2007], whose spectacular and distinctive voice, plus a larger-than-life career, made him the top-selling classical recording artist of all time.  Born in Modena, Italy, Pavarotti learned to sing opera from the records in his father’s collection—inspired by great tenors of the past such as Caruso, Gigli, and Di Stefano—and enjoyed his first musical success as a member of an all-male choir that included his father, winning first prize in an international competition in Wales.  Pavarotti continued vocal instruction with several local teachers, one of whom also taught Pavarottti’s childhood friend, Mirella Freni.  The pair would enjoy significant worldwide operatic careers, and they appeared onstage together in a number of productions.

In the Italian town of Reggio Emilia, Pavarotti made his professional debut in 1961 as Rodolfo in Puccini’s La bohème, a role that would become one of his favorites throughout his career.  Two years later, his first performances outside Italy took him to the Vienna Opera House, where he sang Rodolfo and also appeared in Verdi’s Rigoletto as the Duke of Mantua.  Later that year he replaced his mentor and idol, Giuseppe Di Stefano, in this same role at Covent Garden (London) when the elder tenor fell ill at the last moment.  After being “discovered” by Joan Sutherland, Pavarotti was invited to perform alongside the famous soprano on a tour of Australia.  He gave his first U.S. performance in Miami—hardly an opera hotbed—in February 1965, appearing as Edgardo opposite Sutherland, who sang her signature role of Lucia in the Donizetti opera of the same name.

In 1972, Pavarotti’s first appearance at New York’s Metropolitan Opera was as Tonio in Donizetti’s comic opera La Fille du Régiment, where the aria “Ah, mes amis” includes nine high Cs.  His effortless performance of what is generally considered the most difficult lyric tenor aria in the repertoire prompted 17 curtain calls, and a legend was born.  During his career he performed hundreds of more times on the Met’s stage, and he was also featured in the very first television broadcast [1977] of the series Live from the Met.  For that program, Pavarotti reprised his role of Rodolfo in La bohème, with Renata Scotto as Mimi.  He continued to appear on opera stages throughout the world—his favorite roles also included Manrico in Verdi’s Il trovatore, Nemorino in Donizetti’s Le elisir d’amore, and Cavaradossi in Puccini’s Tosca—including La Scala [Milan], where his performance in Radames in Verdi’s Aïda in 1985 was one of the most heralded in that house’s long history.

His fame grew even greater as one of the Three Tenors—Placido Domingo and José Carreras were the others—whose performance in Rome prior to the 1990 World Cup finals resulted in the best-selling classical recording of all time.  Their continued appearances throughout the decade in front of stadium-sized audiences helped raise awareness of opera with much of the general public.  Pavarotti’s final Met Opera performance (as Cavaradossi) took place on March 13, 2004, and his farewell tour of 2006 was cut short when the maestro was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in July.  He died at home in Modena in September of the following year.

Pavarotti sings the famous tenor aria from Aïda (Vienna, 1984):

Category Titans of Opera |

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Masters of the Podium—Eugene Ormandy

2010
05.03

Eugene Ormandy [1899–1985] was born to a Hungarian Jewish family in Budapest.  His birth name was Jenö Blau, which he changed to the one we know today in 1921 after immigrating to the United States.  Ormandy began his study of the violin at age five and performed his first concert two years later.  His fame as a child musical prodigy is further cemented by the fact that he graduated with a master’s degree from the top Hungarian music academy at 14; he also earned a university degree at 20 in philosophy.  Upon his arrival in New York City the following year, Ormandy landed a position as a violinist for a theater orchestra.  In the years before “talkies,” many movie palaces employed full-size or scaled-back orchestras to accompany the silent films they showed.  Within a week he became the ensemble’s concertmaster (first-chair violinist) and eventually took over as its conductor.

In 1931, when Arturo Toscanini became ill while leading the Philadelphia Orchestra, Ormandy was invited to fill in for him.  Almost immediately he was asked to take over the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, and he served as their conductor until 1936.  During his stay in the Upper Midwest, Ormandy forged a strong relationship with RCA Victor and recorded a number of classical works for them.  The quality of the music he created brought him further acclaim, and it was hardly a surprise when he was asked to return to Philadelphia as the orchestra’s assistant conductor (working under Leopold Stokowski) and then its music director.  Ormandy enjoyed a 44-year career with the Philadelphia Orchestra and is credited with making that ensemble into one of the most revered classical music organizations in the world.  He conducted anywhere from 100 to nearly 200 concerts per year, and he also led the orchestra in a number of international tours.  The orchestra performed in China in 1973, providing many of the thousands of Chinese audience members with their first-ever exposure to Western music performed live.  He continued his relationship with RCA Victor and made hundreds of records for them.  His favorite material—both in concert and on vinyl—included compositions of the late Romantics and early 20th century composers.  These included Debussy, Ravel, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff.

Among the many awards Ormandy received during his long career were the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom [1970] and Kennedy Center Honors [1982].  He was also named an honorary Knight of the British Empire in 1976.

Ormandy conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra in an excerpt from The Planets by Gustav Holst:

Category Masters of the Podium |

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Composers Corner—Johann Strauss II

2010
04.29

Johann Strauss II [1825–1899] was a Viennese composer who wrote primarily dance music and has subsequently earned the unofficial title of “The Waltz King.”  He was the son of another famous composer—a man with the same name occasionally known as Johann Strauss the Elder—and studied the violin in defiance of his musical parent, who would have preferred to see his son join the banking business.  The antagonism between the two never truly abated—albeit more of a political than a musical conflict—and one that was only resolved when the elder Strauss died from scarlet fever when his son was 23 years old.

Strauss toured much of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with his orchestra, performing for royals and commoners alike in private salons as well as in theaters.  His waltz compositions were all the rage throughout Central Europe, but this constant touring took a toll on the composer.  He convinced his younger brother, Josef, to abandon his engineering career and instead take over as the leader of the Strauss orchestra.  This allowed Johann to concentrate on composition, although he did acquiesce to taking his ensemble on tour to the United States during the 1870s.

In addition to the stand-alone waltz pieces Strauss wrote, he was also known for a number of operettas.  The most famous of these—one of the few to enjoy regular performance today—is Die Fledermaus (The Bat), an 1874 composition that offers a humorous commentary on Vienna’s political and socio-economic scene at the time.  As is the case with nearly all of Strauss’s operettas, the story lines are somewhat sparse and exist mostly to connect one tuneful melody to another.  Die Fledermaus was his third such composition out of a total of 15.  While most of the others have rarely been performed in the intervening years, some lasting popularity exists for a song or two extracted from one score or another.

Strauss contracted pneumonia in spring 1899 and died from that affliction in June of that year.  His music is considered to be one of the signature elements of his home town, and the Vienna Philharmonic traditionally performs an all-Strauss program every New Year’s Eve.  It should be noted that Johann Strauss II is not at all related to the German composer with the same surname, Richard Strauss.

Category Composer's Corner |

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