Das Neujahrskonzert der Wiener Philharmoniker

[M forever]

There aren't actually any seats there. The podium is totally "naked". But they smetimes put chairs there and let people sit on the podium, in the corners on either side of the orchestra.

[PSmith08]

I'm still waiting for Pierre Boulez to conduct a New Year's concert and VPO to finally blurt, "**** this whole Strauß BS, we're gonna play an all Webern programme!" 

I am actually a little surprised that Boulez has not been asked to conduct a Neujahrskonzert (at least recently). He seems to have a pretty good relationship with the WP, having done the Mahler 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, Das Lied, and the Lieder disc with them - in addition to that stunning Bruckner 8th (plus the 7th and 9th floating around). His style of conducting would, likely, serve the traditional selections well, given his ability to articulate the rhythmic structure and emphasis on clarity and precision.

Don't kid yourself: Boulez knows how to play to a crowd, even if it's grudging - a habit learned in New York.

[Iago]

Don't kid yourself: Boulez knows how to play to a crowd, even if it's grudging - a habit learned in New York.

Very interesting.  How then do you explain the following;
   1. Boulez couldn't get out of NY fast enough
   2. Many of the members of the orchestra felt about him. like most players felt about Fritz Reiner
   3. The NY audience was bored to tears by Boulez, and was VERY glad to see him replaced by Zubin Mehta.

[PSmith08]

Very interesting.  How then do you explain the following;
   1. Boulez couldn't get out of NY fast enough
   2. Many of the members of the orchestra felt about him. like most players felt about Fritz Reiner
   3. The NY audience was bored to tears by Boulez, and was VERY glad to see him replaced by Zubin Mehta.

(1) Yeah, he was in such a hurry it took him from 1971 to 1977 to pack his bags and clear out his office. In any event, Boulez still played the stuff. The "even if it's grudging" implied, well, that the repertoire he was forced to play wasn't his first choice. You must recall, knowing as much as you do, that Mahler's stay in New York (shorter than Boulez', I might note) was beset with many of the problems which Boulez encountered. Frau Mahler, indeed, even went so far as to suggest that the New York scene exacerbated her husband's illness. The fact that Boulez wanted to get out of New York proves nothing, except that the forces that pushed Mahler out sixty-some years before were still at work.

(2) You mean they respected his technical abilities, even if they disliked his autocratic personality and dictatorial style on the podium? They still talk about Reiner in Chicago, and this isn't second-hand "I hear" crap, either. When I went to hear Barenboim conduct the Mahler 5th a few years back, an elderly gentleman turned around, overhearing a conversation I was having with an associate, and proceeded to wax rhapsodic about Reiner. Native Chicagoans of a certain age praise Reiner's music, while admitting he was (more than) a bit of jerk. Is that what you meant?

(3) Except, you know, for the "rug concerts," which received some small measure of acclaim in some circles. What you meant to say was, "Some parts of the New York audience were bored to tears by Boulez, and were very glad to see him replaced by Zubin Mehta." Of course, that appointment worked out so well.

Very interesting, indeed.

[MISHUGINA]

I am actually a little surprised that Boulez has not been asked to conduct a Neujahrskonzert (at least recently). He seems to have a pretty good relationship with the WP, having done the Mahler 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, Das Lied, and the Lieder disc with them - in addition to that stunning Bruckner 8th (plus the 7th and 9th floating around). His style of conducting would, likely, serve the traditional selections well, given his ability to articulate the rhythmic structure and emphasis on clarity and precision.

Don't kid yourself: Boulez knows how to play to a crowd, even if it's grudging - a habit learned in New York.

LOL, I do not think Boulez is interested in conducting Strauss even with VPO. Otherwise prepare to hear him conduct Brahms and Shostakovich first. 

Is it me or Bernard Haitink has YET to conduct a New Year concert for VPO?

[Que]

Why don't they invite Jos Van Immerseel to conduct?

Judging from his Strauß disc on Zig Zag, he can actually conduct a decent Viennese waltz.
Would be refreshing. 



Q

[Iago]

Except, you know, for the "rug concerts," which received some small measure of acclaim in some circles. What you meant to say was, "Some parts of the New York audience were bored to tears by Boulez, and were very glad to see him replaced by Zubin Mehta." Of course, that appointment worked out so well.

If it were to be announced that both Boulez and Mehta were available to return to NY as MD, just whom do you think BOTH the orchestra and the audience would welcome back? Don't you think it a bit odd that in the ensuing 31 years since Boulez left NY as MD, he has been invited back to conduct only on 1 or 2 occasions?  The "rug" concerts were an attempt by Boulez to make the orchestra the "Boston Pops South". It didn't work, because the WRONG sort of music was programmed. The NY audience wanted "hummable", popular stuff. Boulez gave them Xenakis, Stockhausen, Ligeti,  probably a little bit or Carter, plus a large overdose of himself. Maybe it would have been right for the "Intercomperain" in Paris, but NOT for Lincoln Center on Broadway.  Boulez was the wrong man in the wrong place at the right time. I'm glad Boulez didn't let the swinging door hit him in his ass as he departed the premises.

[M forever]

I am surprised to hear that NY in the 70s was apparently such a provincial place when it comes to "modern classical" music, at a time when new approaches to concerts and repertoire were tried out in many places in many ways. I have a hard time believing that though. Everything I have heard about the music scene in NY contradicts what Iago says. And Iago is generally contradicted by reality.

[Iago]

AND, I was a subscriber to the Philharmonic all through the Bernstein years and retained that subscription through the Boulez years simply because I had "hope upon hope". But it was all for naught.
In his first year he programmed "Liszts "The Legend of St. Elizabeth". He said it was an UNjustly neglected masterpiece. Well it turned it to be "justly" neglected and something far less than a masterpiece. From the beginning, the handwriting was on the wall. But Boulez continued to ram that crap down the throats of the NY audiences. And in case you didn't know it, the subscription audiences precipitously DIMINISHED during Boulez' tenure.
They NEEDED Zubin Mehta to come to the rescue!!

[PerfectWagnerite]

I am surprised to hear that NY in the 70s was apparently such a provincial place when it comes to "modern classical" music, at a time when new approaches to concerts and repertoire were tried out in many places in many ways. I have a hard time believing that though. Everything I have heard about the music scene in NY contradicts what Iago says. And Iago is generally contradicted by reality.

I don't think Iago is referring to New York per say but just to the subscribers to Philharmonic concerts. I wasn't there in the '70s but even now they are not the most adventurous of lots. I think for the most part they want their warhorse. If you want to put Varese or Xenakis on the program you better make sure the 2nd half of your concert has a Brahms or Dvorak symphony. There was a concert when Carter Brey played the Barber Cello Concerto (a fabulous piece by the way) and played it miraculously and all he drew was a lukewarm applause. Now you you would think the Barber Cello Concerto, which is NOT a difficult-to-listen-to piece, would draw more enthusiasm but it didn't.

[M forever]

I wasn't referring to New York per se either:

that NY in the 70s was apparently such a provincial place when it comes to "modern classical" music

They NEEDED Zubin Mehta to come to the rescue!!

Which, as we know, apparently didn't work out, or did it?

[Gustav]

This is taken from the book "Boulez on Conducting - conversation with Cecile Gilly"

were you appointed because of your reputation as a composer-conductor?

The panel knew in advance what it had to do. I wasn't totally unknown in New York; They knew what i had achieved in London, and also that I had spent two seasons with the Cleveland Orchestra. The three weeks of concerts I had conducted in New York during the spring of 1969 were all representative of the sort of music I liked to programme; it has always been my aim to pay equal attention to both the twentieth cnetury and the standard repertoire. All went well during these three weeks, and to my great surprise I was asked to become Musical Director of the orchestra. By a funny coincidence, I was offered the post on 1st, April!
I have to admit that, when I first took over, subscriptions declined because the repertore was judged to be too adventurous; but numbers increased with a different type of audience who were more inquiring and more ready to listen to music of their own time. I would quite often include a twentieth-century 'classic' in a programme, and I was also keen to premiere several new works per season.

[MichaelRabin]

If you want to put Varese or Xenakis on the program you better make sure the 2nd half of your concert has a Brahms or Dvorak symphony.

Yes, Perfect Wagnerite is correct. Even NY could not understand modern classical music in Boulez's time, so in Malaysia too we are faced with the same problem. Modern music must be given in small doses e.g. I was at a Muti/Philharmonia concert in the 1980-85 period. Muti programmed Penderecki Adagietto from Paradise Lost, Mozart VC 2 (Mutter) and Stravinsky Petrushka 1947. The concert sold very well. A modern piece, a top soloist and a good less-modern masterpiece.

[PSmith08]

Yes, Perfect Wagnerite is correct. Even NY could not understand modern classical music in Boulez's time[...]

Now, there needs to be a distinction between the New York music scene and the New York Philharmonic's bread-and-butter crowd - a crowd that likely views Mahler as about as modern as they would want to get on a Thursday night. Read Alex Ross' book for a brief synopsis of some of the exciting things that were happening in New York, except at Lincoln Center.

If it were to be announced that both Boulez and Mehta were available to return to NY as MD, just whom do you think BOTH the orchestra and the audience would welcome back? Don't you think it a bit odd that in the ensuing 31 years since Boulez left NY as MD, he has been invited back to conduct only on 1 or 2 occasions?

That raises the issue of Boulez' unquestionable success in Chicago and his close relationship with the Cleveland Orchestra. Unless something has changed, Chicago is still a Midwestern city with a different cultural tradition than that of New York. Indeed, after Fritz Reiner and Georg Solti - with some brief interregnums - one would assume that Chicago would have no use for Pierre Boulez. The press and the audience would disagree with that assumption. Vehemently.

Cleveland even less so, but - no! - Boulez is going there next month to do some 20th Century "masterpieces" (mostly Webern, Schoenberg, and Bartók) that would - in your view - be risky fare for the provincial New Yorkers. What you have said - more or less - is that Pierre Boulez is more popular in the Midwest (meat-and-potatoes country if that is to be found anywhere) than in cosmopolitan New York City. Let us also remember that Boulez had a reasonably successful tenure in London with the BBCSO and had a career at Bayreuth (despite criticism from players and the stalls, though he was more popular at the end of the run than at the beginning, even though he was handed the Centennial production by Wolfgang Wagner) lasting forty-some years. He has also had a fairly successful relationship with the Wiener Philharmoniker, which isn't the Ensemble InterContemporain by any stretch of the imagination (in the sense that they are rooted in the central Germanic repertoire and very good at that).

A picture is emerging: the problem isn't Boulez, it's New York. Perhaps Zubin Mehta, who has his moments, but let's be serious about that, was the right choice. He seems to be more on New York's level.

[M forever]

Or maybe not on that level, whatever it is, either. NYers have told me that many of the concerts they heard with him were simply not well prepared, and that the playing and music making under him was very undisciplined and random. Interestingly, Angelitos have told me the same about his concerts in LA in the 70s. They told me that never sounded nearly as good as the Decca recordings which are of course well recorded in "nice" sound and edited. They said many of the concerts were underprepared, everything was just very "big", there was no real dynamic range etc.

That and a number of other examples, such as quite a few equally mediocre and obviously not well prepared concerts with not much rapport between orchestra and conductor I have heard in the past years in LA with Salonen, seems to remind us that conducting is above all a very difficult craft which takes many years to learn from the bottom up to a high level - years which doubtlessly very talented young conductors simply don't have if they get catapulted into the "star sphere" too early and if they spend too much time "lookin' good" in front of very good and top level orchestras which can play well anyway, no matter of who happens to be posing in front of them at any given time. They don't need to and so never learn how to work hard with the orchestra, how to develop a very specific concept and a method for how to get there from whatever the orchestra offers them, and so they can't explore and develop the potential of orchestras on whatever level they work with - they simply don't know how to work out all the fine details, how to solve problems, how to make things sound better.

Mehta is a great guest conductor, I have seen many very nice concerts with him in Berlin, with the WP and the IPO. But there are serious doubts about how "deep" his abilities really reach.

Speaking of Berlin, BTW, Boulez has also been a very well liked guest there for many years and he made some very good recordings with the BP, too.

I am just wondering, how come a relatively "provincial" place like Cleveland appears to have an audience much more open to and appreciative of, say, modern music - I also recall Dohnányi saying in interviews that it was amazing what he could do there with programming - while a big cosmopolitan city like NY, according to the descriptions I read here, seems to have a much moe conservative audience when it comes to "classical music"? Because there is so much stuff going on in all areas o music and culture, and the "hip" people are simply not going to "classical concerts"?

[PerfectWagnerite]

I am just wondering, how come a relatively "provincial" place like Cleveland appears to have an audience much more open to and appreciative of, say, modern music - I also recall Dohnányi saying in interviews that it was amazing what he could do there with programming - while a big cosmopolitan city like NY, according to the descriptions I read here, seems to have a much moe conservative audience when it comes to "classical music"? Because there is so much stuff going on in all areas o music and culture, and the "hip" people are simply not going to "classical concerts"?

Maybe, there is just too much stuff going on in NY. You have about 10 professional sports franchises in the area, plus museums and musicals up the gazoo. If you want my money and want to pull me away from a Mets or Yankee game you better have something I want. I may or may not be a typical concertgoer but I do go to a few a year and let me tell you when I go I want to hear Bruckner, or Mahler, or Tchaikovsky. Xenakis or Varese I would listen to on recordings, I wouldn't pay $150 to hear them though. But that's just me...

[Gustav]

Maybe, there is just too much stuff going on in NY. You have about 10 professional sports franchises in the area, plus museums and musicals up the gazoo. If you want my money and want to pull me away from a Mets or Yankee game you better have something I want. I may or may not be a typical concertgoer but I do go to a few a year and let me tell you when I go I want to hear Bruckner, or Mahler, or Tchaikovsky. Xenakis or Varese I would listen to on recordings, I wouldn't pay $150 to hear them though. But that's just me...

You make a good point, those tickets are expensive, I wonder how the prices compare in Cleveland. Therefore, the people with an appetite for modern music might not be able to afford to going to concerts, which is a shame really. The European orchestras, they were also subsidized by the state, so they have a certain freedom to schedule concerts, while, in New York, I imagine that the privately owned insitutions would care less about "Art" and more about money.

[PSmith08]

Speaking of Berlin, BTW, Boulez has also been a very well liked guest there for many years and he made some very good recordings with the BP, too.

Yeah, I forgot about Berlin. I shouldn't have, since some of his performances from the recent Mahler-Zyklus are among my favorites (I can't tell which I prefer at this point, the live or studio M8).

I am just wondering, how come a relatively "provincial" place like Cleveland appears to have an audience much more open to and appreciative of, say, modern music - I also recall Dohnányi saying in interviews that it was amazing what he could do there with programming - while a big cosmopolitan city like NY, according to the descriptions I read here, seems to have a much more conservative audience when it comes to "classical music"? Because there is so much stuff going on in all areas o music and culture, and the "hip" people are simply not going to "classical concerts"?

I don't know. I would think that audiences without long-standing preconceived notions about what "good" programming is would be more receptive to new and unfamiliar works. I think that the competition in a city like New York makes smaller ensembles more responsive to contemporary works and the bigger orchestras necessarily beholden to the demands and dollars of the dinner-jacket crowd. In a city like Chicago or Cleveland, there is less competition among world-class ensembles capable of playing these works. I guess that is to say that, while in New York, there is a competitive market that can support a niche band, in a city like Chicago or Cleveland, the primary band has to serve multiple audiences. It's probably a combination of factors.

[Hector]

Well, I do.

But then I'm a naive youth 

To young to remember when this was a real occasion with Boskovsky, Karajan and, best of all, Kleiber?

[MishaK]

I am just wondering, how come a relatively "provincial" place like Cleveland appears to have an audience much more open to and appreciative of, say, modern music - I also recall Dohnányi saying in interviews that it was amazing what he could do there with programming - while a big cosmopolitan city like NY, according to the descriptions I read here, seems to have a much moe conservative audience when it comes to "classical music"? Because there is so much stuff going on in all areas o music and culture, and the "hip" people are simply not going to "classical concerts"?

It is only partly an issue with New York as such. One main issue is Avery Fisher Hall. The place is just crap. Unless you get the expensive seats, either the sound is terrible or the view is awful and your neck hurts by the end of the performance (because, you know, some genius thought it was a good idea to have the sides of the upper tiers face EACH OTHER instead of the stage). Who wants to go to AFH if there are great concerts to be heard a few blocks south at Carnegie where you can have a great experience even in the cheapest seats? While touring ensembles in Carnegie do tend to mostly present warhorses, the programming there has usually been far more interesting than what the NYPO presents. Levine with the Met Orchestra always presented lots of music of living conductors and Ohnesorg during his tenure as artistic director gave different artists carte blanche to design series of thematically connected concerts (the "Perspectives" Series). Examples include a Pollini-concevied series with lots of 20th century stuff. The new subterranean Zankel Hall has also become an arena for experimentation with new types of programming. So, it's not that there isn't an audience in NY.

Secondly, the NY Phil is in the clutches of a painfully reactionary board. How Boulez ever got past them in the first place is a wonder. But the "safe and tried" type of programming that Mehta and Maazel represent is exactly up their alley. I am very hopeful for the appointment of Gilbert. If he can resist the more reactionary members of the board, he may just be able to make the NYPO matter again in American cultural life.

Finally, NY isn't as culturally alive as it seems. I have always likened NY to a permanent world fair. Everybody who is anything wants to perform there, but very little is home grown. This makes the place very cosmopolitan and almost overloaded with cultural offerings on the one hand. But on the other there is little of a home connection to something like a "home band" that the NYPO should be. As odd as it sounds, places like Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, LA, San Fran have much more vibrant home grown local cultures, and even as regards orchestral life in the US, have been more often trend-setters than NY. Alex Ross's article on Marin Alsop in the current New Yorker also mentions how NY has not been a cultural leader in American orchestral life:

Lists of forward-thinking American orchestras—the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony are the de-facto industry leaders, with the ensembles of Baltimore, Atlanta, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Boston, and Chicago not far behind—seldom include the New York Philharmonic. For years, America's oldest orchestra has epitomized the stick-to-the-classics, no-surprises school of orchestra programming. Not long ago, the critic Peter G. Davis hailed the Philharmonic as "the most boring major orchestra in the world." Seemingly intent on proving the point, the orchestra kicked off the current season with a festival entitled the Tchaikovsky Experience; last year, the spotlight fell on Brahms. Lorin Maazel, now in his sixth season as music director, has the orchestra playing fiendishly well, but he has left no discernible mark on the cultural life of the city.

One example of impulses from outside of New York: the CSO a few seasons ago started a very successful "Beyond the Score" program, where a musicologist and an actor would present a multi-media show about a major orchestral work, its structure and its cultural and historic context with excerpts performed by the orchestra, followed by a complete performance. (Here is a complete video of a presentation on Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin with Boulez.) This has now been exported to NY a few weeks ago, after New Yorkers got an opportunity to see one of these presentations for themselves on last year's CSO east coast tour, but it came from Chicago.

This is not to say, NY has no native musical life of relevance. But it tends to be outside of the orchestral arena. Bang On A Can and Bargemusic come to mind, as well as the Emersons, who live in NY, IIRC.