Italics are mine

Thomas Schippers in "The Opera House"

Writing my previous post about Leonard Bernstein reminded me of another New York conductor who once reached great fame, but one whose career later plummeted and who met an untimely death of lung cancer at 47: Thomas Schippers.

To be honest, I had never heard of Thomas Schippers until I watched the documentary “The Opera House” during a Met-in-HD broadcast. He led the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera house at Lincoln Center on September 16, 1966 with a performance of Samuel Barber’s “Antony & Cleopatra”, an opera that was panned by the critics in spite of the performers’ best efforts, including those of a stunning Leontyne Price. Schippers was also “handsome as a Hollywood leading man” (from the NYT obit), Leonard-Bernstein-kind of dashing, and like Bernstein he was a homosexual in spite of being married (his wife passed of cancer in 1973), although back then people didn’t talk about those things. They prefer to focus on his enormous talent.

He was considered a major contender to lead the New York Philharmonic after Leonard Bernstein stepped down in 1969 (his conducting A&C on opening day of the new Met in 1966, a great honor, suggests he was being groomed for a top job) but was ultimately passed over for Pierre Boulez and ended up at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, hardly a ringing endorsement of his future. But perhaps he would have staged one of those comeback stories Americans are so fond for, if lung cancer hadn’t felled him. Most of his recordings are out of print (Sibelius, to name just one), but a few remain (Barber's Adagio for Strings, highlights from Verdi's Il Trovatore). 

His New York Times obituary mentions starkly: “Fortune gave him everything and then brutally snatched it away.” Although he is most remembered for conducting the A&C performance that opened the new Met, if he’s remembered at all, the 1977 NYT obit asserts that “One of Mr. Schippers's greatest Metropolitan triumphs came in 1974, when he conducted a new production of “Boris Godunov” in Mussorgsky's original version, a first for the company.” This gave me pause when I read it, because the Met has shown so many more productions of Godunov since then. Schippers’s story reminds me that even the greatest fame is fleeting, and for every Bernstein who remained at the top throughout his career, we also have to count many artists who were once promised to great things but left us too soon or didn’t quite live up to their early days. I don't know if there is any way to rescue from obscurity a conductor who has been dead for over 40 years, but I've done my part by ordering his 1970 recording of Lucia di Lammermoor with Beverly Sills and the London Symphony Orchestra, after he had left the Met but before Cincinnati, before his wife's death, before the lung cancer diagnosis. He only had 7 years left. 

Copland, Bernstein, Shostakovich

I’ve been listening to Aaron Copland a lot since I became an American citizen. When it comes to classical music, what is more American than his Third Symphony or Appalachian Spring? Predictably, I’ve gravitated toward my recordings of Copland’s by American conductor extraordinaire Leonard Bernstein. August 25^th marked the 100^th anniversary of his birth, so Bernstein has predictably been the focus of much musical programming over the past few months, and the subject of several books. Interestingly enough, I valued Copland before I became an American but didn’t care for Bernstein. I'd heard many good conductors live; I didn't feel I missed out on much if I didn't hear Bernstein's recorded take on things. Besides, Bernstein has been dead for 28 years. But I gave him a closer listen for the centenary of his birth, and perhaps also because the man is as fascinating as the music he was able to coax out of his orchestras, I've changed my mind about him. 

Bernstein is famous for many things, from his interpretations of Mahler to his leading the New York Philharmonic to his being a gifted composer in his own right, but also for conducting American composer par excellence Aaron Copland with the New York Philharmonic - an American superstar conducting work by another American superstar with an American orchestra. But Bernstein has also led the NY Phil in landmark performances of work by Soviet composer Dmitry Shostakovich.

So recently Bernstein became part of a broader reflection I had on musical nationalism: Bernstein conducting Copland with the New York Philharmonic, (Valery) Gergiev conducting Shostakovich with the Mariinsky Orchestra, Bernstein conducting Shostakovich with the New York Philharmonic, (Andris) Nelsons conducting Shostakovich with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Do American orchestras have something novel to offer in the performance of Russian works? What would we think of the Mariinsky Orchestra performing Copland? (It seems hard to imagine, perhaps because Gergiev has been a staunch supporter of Russian works. He knows where his competitive advantage lies. On the other hand, the United States doesn't have a large tradition of first-rate American classical music that would go back multiple centuries. So American orchestras wouldn't have much to play if they had to limit themselves to American music.)

Countries are naturally proud of their best-known composers, and their best-known work shows the essence of that country. Appalachian Spring is imbued with the spirit of the American West at the beginning of the 20^th century and evokes Americans' resilience and can-do attitude. Shostakovich’s symphonies capture the difficulties of life under Stalinism. His Seventh Symphony (“Leningrad”) echoes with the pounding rhythms of war and became a symbol of resistance to Nazism, his Thirteenth (“Babi Yar”) pays homage to the great massacre of 1941.

 Do conductors and orchestras of the composer’s same nationality have a particularly insightful perspective to bring to that composer’s work? I like to think so, yet Gergiev and the Mariinsky Theatre have thrived under Putin, and not every American these days relates to the can-do "I will succeed on my own terms" attitude of their elders. Recent scandals suggest that to some American companies, lying, cheating and exploiting workers might have become the preferred way to wealth. Now that the Soviet Union has imploded and music is available easily on the Internet, should we even continue to consider Bernstein’s recording of Shostakovich’s Symphony No 5 as a landmark contribution to music? Or should we accept instead that an American conductor, born and raised in a democracy, will never completely relate to the horror of living in a dictatorship, and so will not be able to fully convey the symphony to his listeners? To be fair, Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic recorded Symphony No 5 after they toured the Soviet Bloc, where they performed the piece in front of Shostakovich himself, so the musicians did draw from this deeply moving experience. Their performance remains recognized for its emotion to this day. Perhaps the gratitude of living in a democracy shines through in their playing, as does the 1982 performance at the John F. Kennedy Center of the National Symphony Orchestra led by Mstislav Rostropovich, the most famous cellist of the 20th century with great conducting gifts and a staunch advocate of human rights. 

Bernstein recorded the symphony in 1959. A lot has changed since then, and I prefer purchasing recordings of Shostakovich symphonies by Russian orchestras or at least orchestras from the former Soviet bloc. Among those, no one is better than Valery Gergiev. But can a famous Russian conductor and music director at the helm of the best Russian orchestra who could live anywhere in the world but chooses to keep living in Russia (perhaps to keep conducting Russian musicians), who necessarily has to make compromises with people in power, relate to Shostakovich’s anguish in any sort of meaningful way? Or should we forget who the conductor and orchestra are? In the end, I tend to gravitate toward Rostropovich when I want to listen to Shostakovich's 5th, because of his human rights record. I don't know if it makes for better playing but it does lend the conductor more gravitas. 

 When I become interested in a topic, I don’t do things halfway. True to myself, I’ve purchased quite a few books on Bernstein. He was a complicated man who was widely recognized as a genius and deeply appreciated his beautiful wife but he was also a homosexual who collected one-night stands with far younger men and treated his assistants in such a dismissive way that they never lasted. I’ve read the memoirs by his daughter and the one by his former assistant, both focusing on a troubled man rather than his music (the books don’t make for a very deep read), and I’m now engrossed in his biography by Humphrey Burton, but my favorite books are by Bernstein himself: his essays about music and – more than anything – his letters. What a gifted writer he was. Yet he wanted to be remembered for his music, as he instructed his former assistant on his deathbed. So I should end with a mention of my favorite recording of his, his final concert in August 1990. That second movement of Beethoven's 7th Symphony gives me chills whenever I listen to it. 

 

Below is a little gallery of the books I have about Bernstein.

 

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Musings on Esteban Vicente

Two years ago shortly after moving to Dallas I discovered Abstract Expressionist Esteban Vicente (1903-2001) in an exhibition at SMU's Meadows Museum, about which I blogged here. I have come to adore his paintings, and as the true nerd/scholar that I am, when I truly like something I enjoy buying multiple books by different authors on the topic to see how various writers approach the subject.

(Another example is my current interest in World War II hero and U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, about whom I possess no fewer than three biographies. One of my great pastimes is to read various famous episodes of his life in all three books to see the differences in their treatment. Next in line for a similar treatment is conductor extraordinaire Leonard Bernstein, when I'm not busy listening to his recordings of Copland's Symphony No 3 and Appalachian Spring. I'm a nerd at heart, what can I say. More on Eisenhower and Bernstein some other day.)  

Vicente had already been the object of a survey at the Meadows Museum back in 2011, long before Dallas was on my radar, but at the bottom right of the picture above you can see a thoughtful monograph about Vicente for the exhibition, written by the late, brilliant Nicole Atzbach, whom I briefly knew before her untimely passing in 2017, which combines an overview of his life with high-quality reproductions of some of his works and those of artists who have inspired him.

The book on the left is the catalog of the exhibition as put together by New York University's Grey Art Gallery, where the retrospective originated (Concrete Improvisations: Collages and Sculpture). I particularly enjoyed the fact that the catalog is bilingual -- English and Spanish -- and provides thoughtful interviews with well known artists who were closely connected with Vicente, and the reproductions are outstanding.

Top right is a book about Esteban Vicente by renowned art historian, Pulitzer-Prize winner and Bard Professor Elizabeth Frank, which I got on Amazon.com after discovering Esteban Vicente because I was looking for a book that would contain both essays and great reproductions of his paintings. Each of those three books makes a different contribution to the body of knowledge on Vicente, who deserves to be better known. He wasn't a tormented soul like Jackson Pollock but instead was described by the New York Times as "tall and slim with a reserved, patrician manner." This probably didn't help his fame one bit, but at least we get to focus on his art rather than remembering his antics or the way he died, as we remember Jackson Pollock's. Nothing really distracts from his paintings, and collages, and sculptures.

There is a lesson to be learned, though, regarding who becomes user-famous (Rothko, de Kooning), who doesn't and how some of them played their cards to become household names. His New York Times obit argues that he borrowed liberally from other artists, suggesting that his work was derivative of more original colleagues, but I disagree with that last part. I think certain artists fit more the mold of what the media wanted to promote, especially when it came to the "macho men" of Abstract Expressionism, and Vicente paid a price for not fitting that mold. (Women abstract expressionists painters paid a price too. You can read more about them and a great book about them in this old blog post of mine.) Museum curators such as Nicole Atzbach and art historians such as Elizabeth Frank should be commended for making sure that Esteban Vicente isn't forgotten. 

Here is an example of painting by Vicente owned by SMU Meadows Museum, and here is a link to his New York Times obituary in January 2001.

A Dali retrospective is currently on view at the Meadows Museum until early January, to be followed by an exhibition about Spanish painter Mariana Fortuny y Marsal. Come by if you can.

Multiple Identities

Not too long ago I came across a blog post entitled “It’s OK to be a writer and __”, by Middlebury College president Laurie Patton on the blog The Millions. Patton happens to be a poet and a scholar to whom we owe a compelling translation of The Bhagavad Gita. Her post in itself was quite shallow and cursory, even for a blog post, but its main theme still resonated with me.

We live in a society that wants to put people into boxes. We are supposed to do only one thing that will be perfectly aligned with our personal brand. I am one of those people who are both strongly left-brained and right-brained: I love data science and I love to write. My time tends to be more productive, meaning I end up using everything I do, when I do left-brained stuff like working on a paper or preparing my next lecture, while I can spend hours or days working on a scene I ultimately discard. Yet there are things I express in my writing that I can’t express in my research papers.

This is not about scattered energy. In the same way that you can’t stay awake 24 hours (at least not on a sustainable basis), I can’t spend all my hours awake working on all left-brain stuff or all right-brain stuff, at least if I want to feel I’m working my edge. Usually I feel more productive when I devote blocks of time to one and then the other within the same day.

I think that as a result my work has a different quality from that of people who would be all left-brain or all right-brain. For instance, I think I am more innovative in the research ideas I pursue, although that comes with its own set of challenges. I also think I am more plot-driven rather than character-driven in my fiction, mindful of cause and effect and characters’ motivations. I am not the type to plop a character in a scene and see what happens.

Of course success doesn’t come without its tradeoffs and people who have gotten to where they are through single-minded pursuit of their goal might find themselves puzzled by my behavior. I got tenure that way, if you can imagine. Ultimately, happy people make for more productive contributors, no matter their line of work.

I’ll add Laurie Patton to the list of women I’d like to meet some day, and perhaps the woman closest to me in personality.