SEARCHING FOR THE MEMORABLE
Tales of a Peripatetic Record Producer - Part 2
ELBIGENALP
Don't pretend you've been there!
Despite being located in one of the world's beauty spots, my first few trips were spent entirely on the job. One reached this isolated part of the Tirol by driving through some of Bavaria's loveliest scenery including the Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain. Cross the border into Austria and the scenery becomes enchanted. Even though I faced a gruelling schedule, I always cheered up when the road from Reutte turned down the Lech Valley, with towering mountains on either side of the road. Elbigenalp straddled both sides of the highway with the KOCH facility and church on one side, pubs, guest houses and residences on the other. Our long drives now from Hamburg to Italy and Salzburg in the summer become pleasant when we cross the first set of mountains and enter the Tirol. I begin to wax rhapsodic and nostalgic as we near Reutte and the Fernpass.
One of my first trips to Elbigenalp involved editing the Barber-Menotti project and as I was already in Europe, I planned a few other stops mainly of a business nature. I had been in contact with the very fine Bratislava Orchestra and Chorus and was curious to visit Czechoslovakia now that it was beginning to break loose from the Soviet bloc. A stop in Vienna, not far from Bratislava, was not entirely necessary but I always enjoyed the city finding it a more persuasive version of the German speaking lands than that offered in Berlin. One of the KOCH staff kindly drove me to Munich where I arrived in time to take a second class "liegwagen" overnight to Vienna. The "liegwagon" consists of a number of bunks where one could stretch out under a blanket. In the company of strangers, no one undressed and this being pre-Schengen Accords, there was the pre-dawn wake up call for passports. Michael Koch was aghast that one of his executives travelled this way (although was very unhappy that I stayed at the famed and expensive Sacher Hotel!) Later trips to Vienna were more interesting and this one doesn't deserve mention save for a quick drive to Ljubljana to see Dubravka Tomsic, the marvellous Slovenian pianist, and two unmemorable evenings at the Staatsoper. My Bratislava contact, a young man from the Ministry of Culture, rang and we agreed to meet at the Czech Embassy to arrange my visa.
To the top of the pageThe winds of change had not cooled the bureaucratic ardour of the Embassy officials. Hours later, I had the necessary stamps and we drove across the border. I booked a hotel as well, as I realized this was now an overnight trip. I planned to pick up a couple of necessaries in Bratislava. As we approached the frontier, the most extraordinary sight greeted us as thousands of Czechs, a day after the successful conclusion of the Velvet Revolution, were lined up in antique vehicles, bicycles, and on foot to cross the border into Austria. On the Austrian side, the streets were full of Czechs staring into shop windows full of merchandise and decorated for Christmas. Our crossing took some time, Communism and suspicion still to be had from the border guards.
As we drove to my hotel, I offered to let my host, his wife and baby stay in the relative luxury of the hotel while I could camp at his flat. He was concerned that the police might object as the hotel was for foreigners. I stopped at a special "dollar" shop which dealt in a peculiar scrip then common in the east - local versions of the US dollar - and bought the only pair of mens' briefs to be had. I'd worked a lot in the east and knew what to expect from the hotel's restaurant - a large menu and very little food. No matter, my first meeting was early at the Bratislava Orchestra's offices.
One was immediately struck by the number of nails in the wall
designed to hold pictures that were now free of their burden:
photographic portraits of the last Communist president of the
Republic, Gustav Husak. I was surprised when I entered the office
of the courtly man behind the desk who managed the orchestra
as Husak was still in place. Oversight or an unwise gesture.
Near me sat the musician's representative, the principal violist.
He caught my eye leading it with a facial gesture that was unmistakable
to the benign portrait of the now ex-leader: don't waste your
time speaking with the man sitting in front of the portrait.
He is a Communist. He will be quickly replaced. Our meeting finished
with mutual statements of our earnest desire to work together
in the future. We never did.
At lunch, my host confirmed my understanding of the violist's
gesture. As we chatted, he asked where my next trip would take
me. I told him Israel, to visit family. He was shocked: me, the
executive of an Austrian company, a Jew? He then covered the
potential faux-pas of his reaction by assuring me, saying it
was well known that a group of seven Jews ran Czechoslovakia
from a coffee bar in prague holding their furtive (yet commonly
known) meetings on Saturday mornings.
The only other time I had a similar experience was waiting on a long, dismal queue for a flight re booking after my regular TWA flight from Munich was cancelled. We had several unrewarding hours on the hot aircraft waiting to see if the plan could be repaired or replaced and were then sent back to the gate where we were told a large staff of airline representatives would sort out our flights. Two such representatives, no happier than we, began the laborious process of listening to each passenger's tale of woe and why he simply had to be re booked on whatever else was heading across the Atlantic: a wedding, a funeral, the business deal of the century. The woman waiting behind me, a Czech film maker, commented that I would undoubtedly be put on a flight. Why me, I queried. You're a Jew aren't you, she responded. And? She went on to inform me that Jews always got ahead in life and that she wished she had been born Jewish. Judging by her age and knowing her country of origin, I doubt she would have been around to chat with me had her wish been realized.
Tammy and I got married in California on November 7, 1992 after adventures from Chicago Phoenix to Oregon to Moscow. We celebrated our wedding on the beach in Del Mar and left immediately for New Zealand for a combination recording trip honeymoon. The conductor this time was James Sedares making the first of many acclaimed recordings with the New Zealand Symphony. Andrew Schenck died before his fiftieth birthday of a particularly rare cancer a year earlier. With an irony that was typical of Andrew's life, he learned of his illness a day before he was due to conduct and record with the Chicago Symphony - the biggest break of his career. The recording - Samuel Barber's The Lovers - was his most celebrated and won numerous awards. I will always be haunted by the fact that it could have been better. Andrew, understandably, was somewhat preoccupied and his music making reflected the knowledge of his immediate mortality. Four months later, he would be dead.
To the top of the pageShe Accepts You
A Cultural Night Out
Tammy and I had the good fortune to travel the world making recordings, some better than others, but always interesting. Most were for the Koch label and many are recordings I still listen to with a great deal of affection. Most are by artists not well known but no less talented than those on the world circuit: pianist Gustavo Romero recorded what is still my very favorite piano disc - a Mompou recital that never fails to satisfy me. We also were hired privately to produce recordings, often by young musicians looking for an audio calling card. Some of these were extraordinary. More lucrative, often frustrating and usually challenging were the "vanity" artists - usually conductors - who hired good orchestras and required a fair degree of production and editing to make an acceptable product. There was the classic case - not my recording - of the poor sod with plenty of money and no talent waving his arms with little effect in front of one of London's better orchestras. Normally, these musicians can play anything if this sort of conductor doesn't get in the way. Unfortunately, they stumbled on a particular passage requiring a bit of help from the podium which was beyond his gentleman's ability to provide provide. The orchestra's leader, a model of suave courtesy, suggested that the putative Maestro listen to the previous take in the booth. He thought it was acceptable. When Maestro arrived in the booth, the orchestra played it through without him under the expert direction of the leader from the first violin stand. The Maestro thought he was listening to the previous take and left the booth satisfied that he had pulled it off! I was always astonished when these recordings were acclaimed by the critics who couldn't be bothered with work by truly great conductors. Couldn't they hear that there was no real interpretation happening; that there was no one on duty at the podium? Of course, the producer's job is to create a performance at the last resort but a good listener should be able to hear what is really going on. I prefer a good review of a good recording and understand a bad review of a good recording that is just not to a particular critic's taste. I simply cannot abide a good review of a bad recording. We producers need well informed critics as well as the artists.
Our usual circuit of recordings took us to New Zealand, with good luck two to three times a year including occasional stopovers in Tahiti or Fiji, Monte Carlo where work with James De Preist became a regular summer stop, London with a variety of conductors and usually the London Symphony Orchestra, to cities all over the USA. Seoul became part of our annual peregrinations through our strangest recording experience ever. As all of the participants still live, I'll have to save that story for a subsequent volume, but we were invited back by a subsidiary of Samsung to record three discs with the KBS (Korean Broadcasting System) Symphony for a local label.
I had been prompted by the Koch export manager that the local distributor would invite me out to a very special meal, boys only, he emphasized! I warned Tammy who gallantly encouraged me to accept should the invitation be proffered but "try to be back at the hotel at a reasonable hour." The invitation was made and I told the gentleman that I had to be back by eleven in order to prepare for the next day's sessions.
To the top of the pageWe fought Seoul's horrendous traffic to a tiny but elegant restaurant where we were greeted on the street by a group of at least twenty boys who rushed to attention, then took the car away while we were ushered into a waiting lounge by a woman in traditional Korean dress. She introduced us to a group of lovely young ladies, also traditionally attired, two of whom, I was told, would serve us. I let my host chose: Miss Kim and Miss Chu, the latter being appointed to look after my needs. Food and drink flowed liberally. Following the local custom, I poured for Miss Chu while she poured for me. We downed five small bottles of Scotch whiskey which managed to make up for the lack of conversation as my Korean was limited to about five phrases. She massaged my back and legs working her way provocatively up to my upper thighs as I drank, ate, and chatted with our Korean rep. Very pleasant evening. Miss Chu would take food in her chopsticks and feed me, being careful to hold her hand under the implements lest something drop. A couple of hours and about seventeen courses later, my host noted "She accepts you." I replied courteously, "That's very nice. Please tell her I accept her too." No, no, he demurred, this time more emphatic: "She accepts you." Yes, Yes, please tell her I accept her as well and it's been lovely spending an evening in her charming company. This time the meaning was unavoidably clear: "She accepts you. Take her back to your hotel. It's on me." The light dawned even in my semi-inebriated state: "Please thank her. My wife is in the hotel room." I was being illogical: he was married too, so take her to a different hotel. "Thanks awfully," I replied, "but I've got to get going. The sessions tomorrow, remember?" The chief geisha, for that is of course what these lovely ladies were, came out to insure that poor Miss Chu had somehow not offended. I protested that she was perfectly delightful and hoped my refusal would not reflect badly on her. The bill was over two thousand dollars. We left hurriedly. I arrived in my room at the stroke of eleven, spinning on my heels in a less than debonair way and fell on the bed giggling to tell Tammy all about it. My only fear was that our Korean distributor would visit New York and that I would be expected to reciprocate. I somehow couldn't imagine Michael Koch reimbursing a two thousand dollar geisha dinner.
All wasn't Scotch and roses. My dental bridge, the result
of a rough and tumble game of hide and seek in the second grade,
became dislodged and infected. An emergency call to our dentist
in New York provided a helpful solution: "get penicillin.
It might be available over the counter." Tammy created a
prescription on a Seoul Garden Hotel telephone message pad and
we looked for the green cross indicating a pharmacy. Doctor?
the woman behind the counter inquired. We shook our heads no
and before we could do the same for her next question: US military,
she looked at our passports, filled the prescription and filed
our paper along with the days' legitimate prescriptions. I once
again felt guilty that I may have inadvertently caused problems
for an innocent Korean employee.
On the musical side, we had learned from our first experience
in Korea that their culture only permitted a negative answer
in the most dire of circumstances. We had faxed the KBS with
a long list of the equipment we required to make a recording,
indicating we would bring whatever they could not provide. The
answer they returned was a soothing "Pleased to provide
everything according to your list." When we arrived in Korea,
we were met by our smiling host who had not managed to provide
a single item on our long list. We began a sad litany - Eight
microphone stands - "Sorry, can not provide"; two professional
DAT recorders - "Sorry, could not provide." The answer
never became reassuring despite its frequent repetition.
Two before the Whore
No room in my bus for you
The lure of sponsored recordings to exotic locales occasionally clouded my judgement and I accepted an offer by a moderately well-known pianist to make a pair of recordings in Moscow. She had been married to a very prominent conductor and this perhaps clouded her judgement as well. We invited an old friend to conduct and arranged sessions in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory during the evening hours of 10 PM - 2 AM. Tammy was delighted as this would give us plenty of time to tour Moscow and even some of the surrounding areas by day. Our conductor spent some time working with the pianist beforehand and returned with a not entirely favorable report. Plans were meanwhile progressing and I have always had an inordinate faith that the recording medium could create something out of nothing, if necessary. I rang the pianist asking where she would be staying and her curt reply "Nowhere you could possibly afford" did little to warm the atmosphere. No matter, Tammy and I booked a hotel very close to Red Square and began preparing for our trip. This was in September 1992 when the barriers had fallen and there was still something approaching hope for the new reforms that would lead to a market economy. Despite this, we packed snacks as my previous experiences in Communist and recently post-Communist countries often included restaurants with nothing available that evening.
Rehearsals took place not at the Conservatory which was otherwise occupied during the day but in the Philharmonic Hall. The local facilitator we hired to walk us through the tortuous beauracracies told us we would be stopped at the door but to simply enter and continue walking, ignoring the abuse that would be hurled at us by the doorkeeper. We followed his advice to the letter and once we had got not more than a hundred feet from the entrance, the guard stopped her stream of what I can only imagine to have been invectives. We had apparently left her area of responsibility and she took no more interest in us. The rehearsal was going well and while I wasn't thrilled with the pianist either technically or interpretively, she was certainly prepared and I thought perhaps the magic of the recording session would provide a dose of inspiration.
We found out soon after our arrival that our pianist had hired
a film crew to document her activities. She felt that the world
was waiting for a film of her first recordings in Moscow during
this significant time. I shrugged it off with the caveat that
the orchestra must be informed: most require additional moneys,
some do not allow filming excepting a few minutes for promotional
purposes. I expressed an additional concern regarding the noise
cameras and people moving about with cameras make. She shrugged
off my concerns.
The sessions began with little of note. A complete take of a
movement. Listening in the booth, comments. Then the detailed
work on the problem sections. The conductor informed the pianist
that she was dropping a bar of music in each retake. Where, she
angrily demanded. He courteously noted the missing bar. Denials
and accusations: it was the conductor and orchestra who were
dropping the bar. The tactful producer invited the parties to
the booth for a quick listen and confirmation that the pianist
indeed was skipping a bar. We carried on fixing, correcting,
and generally improving things till the session came to its end
at 2 AM. Tammy and I waited for a while thinking that the pianist
would like to hear the last sets of takes to prepare herself
for the next sessions. After twenty minutes, Tammy walked down
to the stage to find our star admiring herself in the rushes
of the video team's work. We noted that we could only stay for
a short while and that if she wanted to listen, she had better
come to the booth soon as we weren't sure that the walk back
to our hotel at three in the morning was entirely safe. Or, perhaps
she could give us a lift. We knew she had engaged a car and driver.
She announced, with no small irritation, that she would come
and listen but sadly she had no room in her vehicle for us. After
she heard the last takes, her only comment was she would prefer
us to make her louder. We walked down the stairs into the dark
Moscow night to discover she had a large bus waiting for her
and her crew of three. She managed to squeeze us in.
The next night, we discovered that quite a few members of the orchestra were camping out in the hall as the sessions finished an hour after the Moscow underground stopped. I spoke with the orchestra and they agreed to work with only one brief break if we finished each evening by 12:30 AM. The pianist reluctantly agreed - she was paying for the services of musicians but I suggested that we might get better results from players who had a night's sleep in their own beds. The session commenced and as we approached our new quitting time, I gently reminded the pianist. She responded in Hebrew, a language familiar to the two of us, but she assumed to no one else in the building: "They must continue, they are rising to my great level of artistry." A murmur from the orchestra that seemed, to me at least, to imply an understanding of the conversation. I left the booth and quickly trotted to the stage to beg the musicians indulgence, calling a short break. As I reached the stage door, a couple of the players, with big smiles, greeted me in very acceptable Hebrew. They understood.
We began again and I asked the orchestra to start two bars before letter b, saying in Russian, dva do "b." When several players said they couldn't hear my instruction, I repeated it using a word to make my "b" clearer: "Dva do blatt." Wild applause and shuffling of feet broke out from the orchestra: I had said "two before the whore." During this demonstration of, shall we call it affection, our beaming pianist announced to me, in Hebrew, "You see, they love me." How much she never knew. (Her biography, published in the recording noted that she was not only a great pianist, but also a great humanitarian!) The recording was issued to desultory reviews, one in particular though caught my fancy though imperfectly remembered: the proceedings had all the enforced gaiety of an alcohol-free party. More or less a quote and jolly accurate.
Aside from the relatively unpleasant recording sessions, Tammy and I toured Moscow and the cathedral city of Zagorsk. We shopped the open air markets buying a lovely rug direct from Degastan: our entire negotiation consisted of typing in numbers in a pocket calculator to have the counter offer typed in by the seller. We danced on my birthday to a Russian band playing 1970s pop music at a night club on the river where the fantastic spread of goodies from champagne to mountains of caviar was graced by a bottle of Coca-Cola given place of honour at each setting. A gypsy leading a bear waited outside for photographs.
To the top of the pageThe river comes into our last Moscow story. It was our final evening in the city and we had read about boats that carried passengers from dock to dock throughout the river's passage through Moscow. We waited at the Red Square dock in the early evening and as the boat pulled in, I shouted the word, Skolka. How much. The answer, usually pyat dollar ($5), was quite a bit lower, about one dollar per passenger. We settled in to watch the river and its associated scenery roll by. It rolled by for over an hour and we were off the map included in our handy guide book. Tammy joked about ending up in Finland when the boat finally pulled alongside a dock deep in the forest, we knew not where. Last stop, everybody off, and we were left by ourselves on the deserted pier. There was nothing - not a phone booth, store with helpful merchant, taxi stand - nothing. Thinking about our very early flight and chastising ourselves for being foolish enough to have decided on a boat expedition, our spirits rose when after about half an hour, a dilapidated old tugboat appeared heading down the river towards Moscow proper. We shouted, hailing the boat, waving our arms like lunatics. Fortunately, the boat heeded our cry of distress and pulled in. "Krasnayu Plochad?" - Red Square, I queried. Sure, why not. How much? There was a quick conference between the two sailors running the vessel: they cagily eyed us and demanded the princely sum of 200 rubles. We were fresh out of Russian currency. Would they accept our best offer of two US dollars - one apiece and at that time more than double the 200 rubles they were asking. They were delighted, so much so that they kissed the pair of crisp greenbacks while executing what must have been the Russian version of the sailor's hornpipe. How they even purchased petrol at those rates of carriage eluded me but we were happy to be heading back to the snug safety of our hotel. As we arrived, there was a large demonstration by members of the Communist Party, somehow ominous in an environment where everyone seemed to be shedding every possible vestige of the old regime. Complete uniforms with medals of Marshall of the Soviet Union were available in street markets along with framed oils of Stalin chatting with children in the snows outside the Kremlin. At the airport, we watched the humiliating spectacle of an old man, wearing his medals from World War II, having his silverware confiscated by the border authorities. He was emigrating to the United States, Philadelphia I recall.
I never went back to Russia but end this chapter at a very posh dinner in Paris where I was seated next to the Governor of the Bank of Moscow. Being left-handed, I often make the unfortunate mistake of taking the drink to my immediate left. In this case, it belonged to this very distinguished Russian banker. He nodded sagely and noted, "You must be an admirer of our former foreign minister, Mr Gromyko." When I protested ignorance, he quoted the famed diplomat: "What is ours is ours. What is yours is open to negotiation."
To the top of the pageTravels with my microphones
You should not think that we traveled with crews of technicians carrying our gear and setting up our equipment. With the exception of those recordings made in well-equipped facilities such as Master Sound and Abbey Road, Tammy and I generally carried all the necessary gear ourselves - microphones, cables, mixing desk - fortunately a superb and very portable one made by the Swiss company Sonosax - and the heavy shipping crates with recording machines and various special effects black boxes. The microphones were always traveled as hand luggage. This made us popular with airline crews and fellow passengers as we tried to be first on board and used up a great part of the overhead luggage space. Fragile and expensive, our complete microphone kit fit into a large camera bag. Tammy, an expert packer, found the one way that all the various microphones could be placed into this bulging bag. It always aroused the suspicions of airport security personnel and required time-consuming explanations as the bag passed through the X-ray machine. I once did my best imitation of a pop-star wailing into a microphone for a security person of singularly low intelligence who had never heard of nor seen a microphone. A security guard in Baltimore asked me to take a particularly fine microphone apart to see if I was using it to carry drugs. On another occasion, I thoughtlessly, and in earshot of a vigilant airport employee, asked Tammy if our "snake" was in a particular duffel bag. The simple explanation, that our snake was a special cable with multiple connectors, didn't satisfy this particular gentleman who despite the crates of recording equipment was convinced we were travelling with an illegal and dangerous reptile.
Not only security personnel found our equipment interesting. After over thirty trips to New Zealand without a murmur of interest at the Immigration and Customs counters, a vigilant employee of Her Majesty's Customs confiscated all our gear. She was sweet, earnest and implacable, warning us that if we sold the gear in New Zealand, it would have an adverse effect on the islands' economy. Despite having just endured a twelve hour flight in the Economy Dungeon, we were polite explaining that we carried the equipment to use and not to sell and that an examination of our passports would prove that we were regular visitors to New Zealand. This comment was probably a mistake as it strengthened her opinion that we were regulars traffickers in smuggled recording gear. Despite the early hour, I began calling friends in the orchestra and managed to catch the Chief Executive and the Chairman both at their breakfast in an Aukland hotel. (The orchestra was fortunately on tour in that city.) They must have detected a note of panic in my usually measured tones as they promised to come to the airport immediately and rescue us. By the time they arrived, I had already written and signed a statement that bound me to taking our equipment with us when we left New Zealand. Fortunately, our case had been turned over to a more senior officer who believed our strange tale that we came to New Zealand to record their national orchestra. After this trip, we purchased in international carnet that provided more-or-less smooth sailing through customs ever after.
Beyond the customs and security checkpoints, one still had to be vigiliant when traveling with expensive and highly portable gear. We had disembarked from the airport shuttle bus in Phoenix, Arizona and as we stood on the curb surrounded by crates realized the the microphone bag was not in sight. To my quizzical look, Tammy simply pointed at the departing bus. I learned that day that I had some potential as an Olympic sprinter when I ran off in hot pursuit, catching the bus at a fortunate red light a kilometre away.
To the top of the pageThese trips by air even in the confines of coach class were luxurious compared with local outings where I loaded and drove the ancient pick-up truck that KOCH has purchased. This vehicle, somehow always in poor repair, without air-condtioning, or even a functional radio, was used for the long drives to "nearby" venues such as Boston (four hours away) or Washington (six to seven hours distant.) It could not be properly locked giving me an uneasy feeling about our equipment if I dared stop along the way. Perhaps it was too shabby to excite any potential thieves' attentions. Shabby enough to make me look suspicious to the law: we were loading the truck late one evening after a recording session on a college campus. As I was about to heft a large recording machine into the truck, I found myself staring into two powerful torches wielded by two police officers convinced that I was making off with the school's property. The man responsible for renting the college facility was playing second bassoon in the New York City Ballet's production of the Nutcracker and would not be reachable for hours. We were able to get a message through to him somehow while I steamed and fumed.
I was working alone on that recording - Tammy rarely assisted on recordings that required use of the truck. Another solo effort became the last. Our superb portable mixing console had a battery pack that had never been used and hence ignored. I was near the end of a particularly difficult recording of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire when I heard a strange hissing noise. Fearful that we had a serious technical problem, I was about to call a break when I realized that 1) we were close to being out of time and under the American union rules, playing time and breaks are strictly regulated and 2) it was the mixer's battery leaking a green and unpleasant acid that was the source of the noise. As they played, I ran to the toilet for paper towels to mop up the mess, keeping an ear on the music as well. Back in under thirty seconds, I was horrified to discover that the powerful liquid was eating away at the score on my desk. I managed to dislodge the battery, clean-up the table and keep the session going only by vowing to myself that I would have an assistant on all future recordings.
To the top of the pageTake Two
Producers tend to refer to "my recording of Beethoven's Eroica" forgetting the musicians on the other side of the glass as having something to do with the end result. Whether we like to admit it or not, the artist plays a rather important part though the extent of the producer's role varies from recording to recording. With an artist of the artistic calibre and unsurpassed professionalism of Anne-Sophie Mutter, the producer's role is to provide the best possible environment which allows her to do her finest work without hindrance. The interpretation is completely her own, the result of much thought and many performances. Yet even in her case, the producer serves as the ideal audience and a valuable second pair of ears.
I learned early on that much as we might want to, the producer cannot conduct the recording from the booth. (Neither should the conductor attempt to produce from the podium.) I used to produce numerous revenue-generating vanity recordings with the hopefully uncharacteristic hubristic belief that I could somehow make it work by directing from the booth and fix it all later in the edit. In the course of these recordings, never ultimately satisfying, I've had to show these putative maestri how to beat complex rhythmic patterns and even to identify wrong notes. We were recording a recently discovered work by a major composer with a conductor who sadly owned the score and would not let anyone else record the work. I had hired a fine London orchestra, usually capable of ignoring the least competant time beaters to turn in respectable results. At one telling moment, we discovered that a copyist's error had mistakenly placed the flute part a half-tone higher than the violins for what should have been a unison passage. I stopped the sessions telling the oblivious conductor that we needed to correct a part. During the brief moment while he made the inane comment "You'll get used to it; it's fine," the musicians sorted out the problem. They began again and he turned to me, noting aloud (and ruining the take) that there had been no mistake. In a fit of exasperation, the ever polite leader of the orchestra asked the maestro "What exactly is your usual profession." The critics loved the disc.
To the top of the pageOne of my first recordings for Koch was a disc of Ives' orchestral music conducted by James Sinclair, one of the leading Ives specialists and an expert on the complicated and confusing Ives musical texts. We had met only briefly prior to the recording at Yale. Early in the first session, I stopped Sinclair to make a balance suggestion and as he later told me, his unspoken thought was "Who the hell does this guy think he is telling me what to do?" He quickly realised that I was the fellow listening to the sound through the microphones, the balance that would be heard on the record, and that he had to trust me to make a good record.
In fact, the producer needs to be as authoritative in his understanding of the music as the artist. The artist must trust the producer's musical judgement and instincts if the record is to have a remote chance of success. This doesn't mean that the they have the same job. I learned early on that you cannot conduct or play from the booth while most of the artists I worked with knew that they shouldn't try and produce from the podium or keyboard. The producer also needs to respect the artist's interpretation even if he disagrees with it. His job is to help the artist achieve his ideal performance of the work.
The producer must trust the artist as well. The cost of studio time, not to mention musicians scale, means that all producers need to be excellent time managers. Most labels take a dim view of overtime, blaming the producer for not bringing the project in within budget. There have been many times when I have felt more than happy with the material on tape for a given piece and with an eye on the clock suggested to the artist that we move on. I learned that the plea for "one more take" usually was a sound decision by the artist who having "covered" all the problem spots was now about to give you the performance you had been waiting for.
My first recording with Christoph Eschenbach, a wonderful musician and superb pianist and conductor, was a disc of demanding Second Viennese School chamber music. The first work to be taped was the Berg ultra-romantic Sonata. Take one was flawless technically and interpretively all one could hope for. Silence from the booth. For once, I was speechless. After about half a minute, Christoph asked "So how was it?" We listened together in the booth talking through several spots and he proceeded to make two complete and equally beautiful, though different, takes of the Sonata. We then recorded small sections to have further choices. I told Christoph that I had enough material for at least three profoundly beautiful performances of the work. As I edited the piece, I had to make the most difficult decisions as all the material was good. I have had the same "problem" editing Gustavo Romero's recordings in which the unused material is as beautiful though subtly different from that ultimately used for the recording.
To the top of the pageThis is what I refer to as good editing. "Bad editing" is much easier though less satisfying: you have several takes of a section of music and the last one is a more or less correct rendition of the notes. With intensive editing, you can put together a performance and perhaps even an interpretation. The famous story of pianist and conductor listening to the final results after a particularly difficult set of sessions and endless hours of editing is probably true: Pianist: "It sounds wonderful!" Conductor: "Don't you wish you could play it like that?"
The early days of the period instrument movement were the
golden days of editing paid for by the hour. Cumbersome instruments
had yet to be mastered and some of the recordings were made quite
literally bar-by-bar, stopping at each cracked horn note or for
imprecise intonation and ensemble. The producer would then back
the musicians up a couple of bars to cover the error and carry
on, often not very far, to the next mistake. Those days are mainly
past, as the extraordinary players who work regularly for Sir
John Eliot Gardiner and Nikolaus Harnoncourt demonstrate in their
live performances.
In general, the level of preparation for recordings is superb
though there are those sessions where busy musicians simply haven't
had the time to properly rehearse their material. They usually
know what a good producer with good equipment can do but the
results are never quite the same as great performance enhanced
by good production. I have even worked with conductors who told
the orchestra, "We'll let Michael fix that." While
I don't mind, the great artists start at a very high level and
through the process of recording and with good production take
their performance to an even higher level.
Some find the whole idea of editing offensive and even dishonest. I was giving a talk to a class at Juilliard describing the recording process when I could see that one of the students, a young singer, was very unhappy about my remarks. She objected to editing as a way of perpetuating performances that never really happened. I reminded her that all the actual notes on the record came from the artist but that we helped put some of them together in the most attractive way. She was still unhappy. I then took a different approach: had she a publicity photograph? Of course. Did the photographer shoot more than one roll of film to create this one photo. Yes. Did he do any touch up work. Yes. Is the photograph still your picture? An imperfect analogy but with a grain of truth.
To the top of the pageEditing shouldn't be about perfection but about performance. With diligent editing and enough studio time, one can achieve a reasonable approximation of perfection but this is sometimes at the cost of the performance. While nobody wants to hear an incorrect second violin note or horn splat that could be easily corrected, note-by-note editing can sometimes take the life out of the musical phrase: perfection at great cost. I have great admiration for artists who stand by their work. Early in my career, I recorded a distinguished pianist at the end of his long career. While he couldn't play the most difficult passages perfectly any longer, he still had much to give in performances of great wisdom, maturity, and insight. I suggested we isolate the most difficult sections and that he play them as many times as he liked. With luck and editing, we might be able to create those moments. He demurred and said "I can't play those passages the way I used to but I still stand by my performance." The great Heifetz was once ordered to repeat a passage again and again by his producer. The Maestro finally stopped and asked: "How many times have I played it incorrectly?" "Fourteen times," responded the producer. "Then, that is how I play it."
To the top of the pageSearching for the Memorable
There is a great deal of musical talent around: very talented composers, instrumentalists, conductors, and singers with active careers most of whom have no appreciable discography. (I won't write here about the talent that is unable to fashion any sort of career.) I'm convinced the only reason to record an artist is if there is something memorable about their performance. Think of the great voices and how, in your mind's ear, you can recreate their unforgettable sound from a concert you attended or imagine how they would perform a role you've never heard them sing or which perhaps they will never attempt. The quality of their sound is unique, unmistakable, and unforgettable: you instinctively know how they turn a phrase, how they deliver a text. I remember once imagining Luciano Pavarotti "singing" the soprano aria "Ernani, Involami." Though it will never happen on a concert stage, this impossible performance was perfectly credible. One thinks of singers such as Renata Tebaldi, Carlo Bergonzi, Franco Corelli or today's Cecilia Bartoli, Rene Fleming, and Bryn Terfel. Memorable.
Not only singers have distinctive sounds. My grandfather, a fiddle fanatic, could immediately identify Heifetz, Milstein, Szigetti, and Kreisler to name but a few. Conductors like Toscanini, Karajan, Klemperer and Abbado have an indelible stamp in sound and phrasing that makes them immediately identifiable regardless of differences from performance to performance. Their voice is as distinct as a composer's. I began these tales with a reference to New Zealand composer Douglas Lilburn: like all great composers, his voice is recognisable from a single phrase, whether chamber music or symphony.
Years ago, during a Metropolitan Opera broadcast intermission feature, a panel of experts was played the opening 'oom-pahs' to a series of Verdi arias and asked to identify the excerpt from those few notes. With few exceptions, the answers were easy to anyone who knew the Verdi canon and panel scored impressively. Each 'oom-pah' was so distinctive and so obviously the introduction to its aria. Try it yourself.
To the top of the pageThe Music of Hollywood
The great scorers of film had the same ability to imprint a watermark in the memory, clarifying and even identifying the emotions incompletely portrayed on screen. Imagine the scene in 'Psycho' with the woman frantically driving after committing her robbery. With all respect to fine acting and direction, it is Bernard Herrmann's chilling music that adds a frightening dimension of self-induced guilt to the flickering images and for me, it is the music that lingers in the memory. I wonder if I would have been such a fan of the classic swashbucklers if they hadn't been framed with the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Miklos Rozsa, for it was they along with Franz Waxman, Victor Young, and Alfred Newman that put the lump in my throat long before I ever heard their names.
I don't recall how it was that I became actively involved in recording and in some cases restoring the works of these composers to print and record but it is an important part of this story. These composers, forgotten by many and scorned by the anti-romantic establishment of the recent past, were the true inheritors of the romantic symphonic tradition that ended in Europe with the rise of Nazism. How it landed in Hollywood bringing symphonic music to its widest audience ever is a tale better told by scholar. Nonetheles, one could argue that the great symphonic tradition lost in the wreck of Europe and the rise of the modern avant-garde transferred its allegiance to the big screen.
I suppose it began with friends: John Waxman, son of Franz Waxman was one of the first people to contact me a KOCH, full of projects and ideas for recordings. Conductor James Sedares was also a film and film music enthusiast with great knowledge. Through John Waxman, I met the late Christopher Palmer, a great writer, musician, and expert in the field of the film composers, and the families of Korngold and Jerome Moross and eventually the great Miklos Rozsa himself.
My first recording of Rozsa remains one of my favorites. It was immediately following our honeymoon in New Zealand that Tammy and I returned to Wellington for James Sedares' first recordings with the New Zealand Symphony. We planned two discs: Morton Gould's Fall River Legend coupled with Randall Thompson's 1st Symphony and a disc of Rozsa's symphonic works. I had no idea that the latter disc would be prelude to a series that would eventually encompass all the composer's concert music and several film scores as well.
To the top of the pageThere were many sceptical musicians in the studio when we
turned up with music by a composer most had never heard of or
only knew of from his film scores. Rozsa's film works were so
successful that they obscured his very significant canon of works
for the concert stage. Even though Leonard Bernstein's celebrated
surprise debut with the New York Philharmonic included Rozsa's
Theme, Variations and Finale, his music never earned the place
in the concert repertoire it deserved. Those of us who loved
him were disappointed when his obituary in the New York Times
was headlined "Miklos Rozsa, Film Composer." I'd like
to believe that the New Zealand musicians were won over by soaring
beauty, craft and distinctive voice of Rozsa in this and the
other works we recorded. Years later, I was setting up for another
recording in Wellington and caught the principal oboist warming
up with the theme of Theme, Variations and Finale. The recording
turned out well and there are not a few nights after midnight
in Hamburg when I hear the Hungarian Nocturne broadcast on the
local classical station. (I imagine the rules are less strict
in the wee hours when only a few diehards and insomniacs are
listening.)
The recording was sent by Waxman to Miklos Rozsa who still lived
in Los Angeles though wheel-chair bound as the result of a stroke.
His comments, quoted on the compact disc, still fill me with
pride:
It is many years since I last heard
the four works on this disc performed by anyone else: their give
these new versions a warm welcome. The performances are broadly
conceived and colorful; the orchestral playing combines passion
with discipline in exactly the way my music demands. James Sedares
has the measure of my style in his interpretations of my works.
I have a particular fondness for your youthful Opus 13: I was
in my early-to-mid 20s when I wrote it and it made my international
reputation. It is delightful to hear it so vigorously brought
back to life.
Miklos Rozsa, January 12, 1993
Along with these nice comments came an invitation to visit should I be in Los Angeles. California was in my plans thanks to a Grammy nomination as Classical Producer of the Year. As the competition for the award were the producers of major, international artists, I had little expectation of picking up a statue. I did plan to attend the ceremony and party as I had two years previously in New York when I received a similar nomination. In addition, Andrew Schenck's recording of Barber's The Lovers had two nominations and was listed as one of the five recordings given as examples of my work. Andrew had passed away a year ago but I wanted to be there for his sake. Barber had a much better chance of winning than I. We had a good year: in one category, the Barber was competing against another recording I had produced: Ellen Zwilich's very beautiful Flute Concerto with Doriot Dwyer and James Sedares conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.
To the top of the pageI drove the rental car through the lovely hills surrounding
Los Angeles to Rozsa's home on the morning of the Grammy Awards
and was admitted by his nurse, Clara. Rozsa met me in his study,
his speech somewhat difficult to understand due to the effects
of stroke. His mental energy and inner youthfulness were immediately
apparent as he suggested a particularly glamorous violinist to
record his concerto with hopes of a private meeting to go through
the piece. He asked me to wander through the house and enjoy
the art and framed musical manuscripts and autographs, apologising
that he couldn't accompany me. The room housing his Academy Awards
had a large Breughel canvas; Rozsa delighted in telling me that
his previous nurse was going to "throw the picture in the
trash" as the frame was broken. He commented "you had
to live with art to properly appreciate it."
We began to discuss his music in some detail when he stopped
and said the word Symphony in a mysterious way. As a student,
he had composed a large scale symphony and sent it to Bruno Walter,
Pierre Monteux, and Wilhelm Furtwangler. Monteux wrote back and
said he would perform the Scherzo movement. When I asked Rozsa
to see the score, it was then that I learned that he had all
the music except the Scherzo which Monteux never returned. A
casual glance at the unpublished sheets in front of me revealed
the indelible Rozsa voice, Hungarian, powerful and richly orchestrated.
I made a promise to record the work as soon as the score could
be made ready, parts prepared and the Scherzo located. I also
promised to record all of Rozsa's concert music.
We never found the Scherzo after a futile search through libraries around the world but did record the rest of the Symphony and almost all the concert music in New Zealand. Jim Sedares did another brilliant job of creating an interpretation on the spot in limited time with a score and parts riddled with errors. He had never conducted the work in public and it had no tradition of performance. It seemed as though every bar required a correction in someone's part, slowing down the process and irritating the players who generally prefer to get on with it. I must admit that I had some doubts early in the sessions: it was Tammy, whose quick and enthusiastic reaction "this is a great score" provided the momentum in the booth. One of the violists in the band dared a positive comment and things turned decidedly better.
Rozsa loved the recording but this was one that I would love to do again, after a series of performances for conductor and orchestra to settle in to an interpretation. This is not a criticism of Sedares, a fine and greatly under-rated conductor or the New Zealand musicians who always gave their best regardless of the unusual bits of music I placed before them. Both have my undying gratitude. The rehearse-record method of recording simply has its limitations.
As I was making my farewells, Rozsa asked Clara to bring him a copy of his autobiography, A Double Life, which he wished to inscribe to me. He could barely hold the pen and with help signed the book in a barely legible script.
To the top of the pageGRAMMY Night
The Grammy Awards have never been about classical music. We are an occasional afterthought with a couple of token appearances on the televised show. Classical music, along with spoken word and a host of other categories, receive their due in what the organisers call the pre-telecast. A number of colleagues have called for a boycott of the Grammys and the creation of our own awards. I'm not sure what classical music has to do with awards but the Grammy adds a little lustre to our world with a larger public and immediate credibility to its winners.
Tammy and I joined the throng heading to the Shrine Auditorium,
the area already lined with people in search of the famous. We
greeted friends, including veteran Chicago Symphony Orchestra
recording engineer Mitch Heller who had a long-overdue nomination
for his engineering on our Barber "The Lovers" recording.
One of the few genuine stars at the pre-telecast event was Patrick
Stewart, Star Trek's Captain Picard, who was nominated for his
extraordinary reading of Dicken's "A Christmas Carol."
Tammy summoned up the courage I lacked and introduced us saying
I was a big fan. He turned out a classical music lover and we
managed to stay in touch for a number of years.
As we reached the auditorium, Tammy insisted I sit on the aisle.
Why? So I would be able to move quickly to the stage to accept
my award. We sat on the aisle as the long list of categories
and their happy winners were announced. The gentleman handing
out the classical awards was a very distinguished American conductor
with excellent Barber credentials of his own. When I first thought
about recording the Second Symphony and The Lovers, I asked him
if either of those works were in his own recording plans thinking
there would be little point in doing them if he was. He replied,
"No, only the good works." He was now about to open
an envelope and announce that Samuel Barber's The Lovers had
won a Grammy Award. The final category was Classical Producer
of the Year and I still remember time standing still between
hearing my name read and walking on stage to say "Thank
you maestro" and then saying a very few words in which I
thanked my wife and the wonderful artists I worked with.
Winners were then escorted off stage for a photo with the Grammy and then led off to meet the few journalists stuck with greeting winners in non-glamorous categories. The Grammy handed to you at that particular moment is returned after the photo. Quite a few winners were understandably reluctant to part with their prize. (Copies engraved with your name and category are shipped off later.) My only thought was to get back to Tammy and call a few friends. Security would not let me back into the hall but fortunately, some newly award winning rappers were not to be stopped. I left in their midst perhaps somewhat incongruous in a tuxedo but swaggered back into the auditorium to find Tammy already in the lobby on queue for the phone. We reached friends who promised to tape the telecast show for us and headed out to the party on the Paramount set. That evening, Tony Bennett and Natalie Cole announced my category; my picture with what my wife calls "the deer-in the-headlights" look accepting the Award flashed across the screen.
To the top of the pageThe Grammy has been a gift that keeps on giving. My pride in the award has more to do with the recognition of my peers than any certainly unjustified belief that my work is better than anyone else's Particularly pleasing was the list of recordings supporting my nomination: all were artists of great talent virtually unknown on the world scene. It was our mutual triumph. I received scores of letters, telegrams, and faxes from friends and colleagues and my mother was genuinely tickled. It gave her points with her friends and for her legitimized my career.
I returned to a champagne reception thrown by KOCH and would remain there for another three years. The company had grown and classical music was becoming a less important element in the mix. Michael Koch, while always personally supportive, had the gleam of gold in his eyes and he wasn't going to get it with recordings of Bloch and Barber. He purchased a sumptuous new building adjacent, unfortunately, to a landfill and needed hits to pay for it. At the same time, recognising the long-term value of owning a quality catalogue of classical music, he promised to install a first class editing suite, if I made a commitment to remain with the company. I signed a sweetheart of a long-term contract and settled back in to work wondering what my real future was to be.
The editing suite turned out to be a disaster. Despite being designed by a distinguished architect who had worked on the famed Radio Nederlands studios in Hilversum, he made every conceivable mistake. Worst of all, the room was above the warehouse and far from soundproof. It had inadequate electrical grounding and every time the conveyor belt came on to move another shipment of records, aside from nearly jolting me from my seat and making a screeching noise, it added an unwanted click on to our recording track.
Acoustically, the room was useless, made in the forbidden
square shape. Nothing we could do helped and I took to editing
at home with headphones. While very pleasant for me, it further
isolated me from KOCH and and weakened classical music's precarious
position in the company. Those with physical proximity tended
to be more persuasive.
We still had our successes, many of which continue to sell to
this day: a fascinating recording by the talented JoAnn Falletta
and the Womens Philharmonic, a San Francisco orchestra - all
woman - dedicated to repertoire by women. The disc included an
overture by Fanny Mendelssohn, the Clara Schumann Concerto, and
two lovely pieces by Lili Boulanger. I actually saw a copy of
this record in a cabin outside Fairbanks, Alaska which we visited
in order to borrow a portable CD-player during a dog mushing
holiday. Conductor Gisele Ben-Dor's pulsating Ginastera and Emmanuel
Music's intense and intensely lyrical Schuetz are first class
recordings that only could have happened in an environment where
an A&R Director had virtual carte-blanche (provided he didn't
lose money!)
James Sedares' recording of the complete score for Elmer Bernstein's The Magnificent Seven broke all our sales records. I sent a copy to Bernstein with some trepidation: he was also a conductor and was somewhat dubious when I proposed the project. His response was more than generous: he proclaimed it definitive.
The recording was made in two sessions of three hours each. For the uninitiated, this translates to two hours of recording time per "call" as the American musicians union's national recording contract requires twenty minutes of break time per hour. In this case, the Phoenix Symphony had the luxury of a read-through at a Pops Concert but I knew that Jim would deliver results in the very limited time we had. It was a tense week for the orchestra as well: they narrowly defeated a strike vote the evening before our recording. They were the worst paid major orchestra in America at that time. The concert that evening, conducted by a guest maestro, was far from successful.
There was an atmosphere of contrived jollity as we set our equipment and ran through the final sound and microphone checks. Jim, one of the finest exponents of gallows humour I have ever met, walked in with a cheery "We're for it lads" doing his best imitation of a stiff-upper-lip British Colonel noticing about a million armed savages on the nearby hill.
As the orchestra filed in, I chatted with players about our last sessions, the very successful Bernard Herrmann Symphony, but wasn't able to lighten the mood. Their playing surpassed their mood as we worked on the opening theme, the best known music in the piece thanks to the Marlboro Man. Although time was short, I knew we had to get something special out of that theme and not just bravado. Jim and I talked about a more lyrical view with strings more prevalent than customary. There would be plenty of action later in the long score. We probably spent more time than was absolutely necessary on the opening. leaving some material, dangerously, with only one take, but I left the session confident that we had more than a film score on tape: Sedares created a symphonically conceived work of breadth and occasional depth, a cowboy Alpensinfonie.
Tammy and I went horseback riding in the Arizona desert following the sessions. Once again a sad postscript: Christopher Palmer who had brilliantly recreated the score by watching the film - the original musical parts and scores had long vanished - died in a London hospital the day we heard the disc had won the German Echo Award. We had just been to visit Christopher a couple of days before and raced to call him when we received the news. When I rang his number, the nurses station picked up and told me it was too late. He had just passed away.
To the top of the pagePossibilities Abound
Life had settled into a regular, often satisfying routine. Tammy and I continued to travel and make recordings. I would come home and edit them. We enjoyed our lovely home on Long Island's north shore not far from Long Island Sound and even closer to the Nissiquogue River where we could play Ratty and Moley as we canoed through the tall grass to the open waters of the Sound with nary a building in sight save the occasional cottage. We surprised real river rats and otters paddling through the tall grass. Days not spent on the river always included a walk along the high bluffs that ran along the shore, an island of tranquillity that took one's imagination far away from brutally ugly strip malls that defined Long Island for most of its residents. We found a large lake close to home surrounded by horse trails and woods. The winters brought snow which didn't stop our outdoors activities but added to the joys of coming home to sit in front of the glow in the coal-burning stove.
We began to get calls asking if we could produce recordings for private individuals and even other labels and I began to think about working less, perhaps just doing free-lance work. We both felt a relationship with KOCH still made sense provided Michael Koch would allow the occasional outside recording. I told Koch that I need to double my salary watching his look of terror subside when I added it needn't cost him anything. He agreed to let me do recordings on the side provided they didn't compete with KOCH products. Fine Sound Productions was born and while it hasn't made us rich, I found enormous joy in pretending to be self-employed.
It wasn't long after that I spoke with Koch again: I was prepared to renegotiate my contract to a half-time position under which I would still run KOCH International Classics but spend the rest of my time growing Fine Sound Productions. I came home that day after our first talks when Tammy asked me what I really wanted to do short of retirement and a life of ease which unfortunately wasn't financially feasible at that moment. It didn't take me long to respond, "Of course I'd like to be head of music at Deutsche Grammophon but I doubt they have heard of me and I can't imagine they would take an American and an Israeli-American at that!"
The next day, I wandered over to KOCH to pick up some materials I needed for the edit was engaged with. The phone rang and while I usually let my assistant or the voice-mail system answer, I picked up the receiver to be greeted by a caller from a London executive placement firm asking if I would be interested in the position of Vice President of A&R at Deutsche Grammophon.
To the top of the pageThe famed German label was my musical accompaniment from an early age. I lived with my Russian grandparents as a young boy and my earliest recollections are my grandfather sitting in a large red chair conducting along with the recordings that filled the shelves of his living room. Certain pieces of music bring back the smell of that old building on Mansion Street. Today, Rachmaninoff 's Second Symphony with Maris Janssons conducting brings it all back: the huge speakers in both corners and the Van Gogh print of fishing boats not to mention the smell of Russian-Jewish cooking and the fascinating mixture he used in his hair to keep it stiffly in place. It was my grandfather who told me to listen "inside the music" for the inner voices and encouraged me to sing along with counter-melodies. Complex harmony fascinated him more than melody, a predisposition I shared. Despite his understandable post-war aversion to things German, he always made an exception for Deutsche Grammophon recordings. His logic was simple: they make the best records. Grandma wasn't moved: DGG, Volkswagon, Hitler and the concentration camps were all one for her and we had to create a diversion to bring the newest DGG treasures into their apartment. When DGG issued a recording with Rozhdestvensky and the Leningrad Philharmonic, my grandfather tried to use the disc as a lever to allow the forbidden product into the home. "You see, my dearest," he said in Russian or Yiddish, I don't remember, "this is good Russian music with good Russian musicians." Grandma remained unmoved: Nyet. Still German as far as she was concerned. When my grandfather died, I knew where the closet was stacked high with hundreds of records with the famous yellow label.
There was one small problem. I did not know a single DGG artist and a strong relationship with the artist is a key component to the job. Labouring under a bad early winter cold, I met the headhunter in New York . As I answered his questions and explained my generally optimistic view of classical music on records - a distinctly minority opinion - my voice began to fail. Feeling that I had completely botched it and quickly running out of voice, I croaked "I can't imagine that anything I am saying could be of the slightest interest to Deutsche Grammophon." "On the contrary," he replied, "it is exactly what I wanted to hear. Can you meet Chris Roberts, the President of Polygram Classics and Jazz next week?"
I met the man who would fire me two and half years later in spacious offices on Eight Avenue with a spectacular view of the Hudson River. Back when I was salesman as well for the recordings I produced, I had encountered Roberts as the manager of a small store in Portland, Oregon and I had also made a series of recordings with the very fine choir of Lewis and Clark College, also in Portland, where Roberts had been a student. The conversation was amiable and while I sensed no burning intensity to preserve the legacy of DGG or classical music in particular, I sensed no particular hostility to continue the label's almost century-old tradition of recording great literature with the important artists of the day.
To the top of the pageYou might think this an obvious and even required stance for one running a classical record label. Yet new managers often think they need to reinvent successful products. Many executives in the classical recording field, envious of the commercial success of their colleagues on the pop side, denigrate the music that at one time inspired them. The day's notion of politically correct thinking is wary of any expression that appeals to the few, especially if those few are perceived to be well-off and Western.
I can assure you that the love of music does not stem from one's financial status. Many years ago, when I was doing a stint of army reserve duty "somewhere in Israel," I pulled late evening guard duty on the night that the BBC World Service was going to broadcast a program about the late German conductor Otto Klemperer. I looked at the duty roster and saw that my companion at the explosives bunker was a nice guy of Iraqi descent, a mechanic at the Dan Bus Company garage in Tel-Aviv. Listening to music on guard duty was forbidden but not unheard of. I had an earphone and planned on telling my colleague that I would be unavailable for one hour that evening and that I would cover for him for an hour before or after the broadcast. It never occurred to me that a bus mechanic whose family came to Israel in 1947 from Baghdad would have any interest in Otto Klemperer or music in particular. My prejudices had got the better of me as he turned up at the bunker armed with rifle and radio with the very same plan.
The story of that radio, confiscated by my sergeants on many occasions but always returned, had a tragic ending. All Israeli combat soldiers wear a belt designed to hold such necessaries as cartridges loaded with bullets, water bottles, and of course, close to the front and immediately accessible, a pouch which carries two grenades. The pouch had a thin cloth divider which when removed created the perfect vehicle for my transistor radio. This was still a few years before the ubiquitous miniature radios and cassette decks which were later joined by baseball caps as required apparel and finding a small radio with a decent FM band was not easy. The radio, along with a large portable library, was my salvation during long months of military duty and not to be replaced in Israel. The grenade pouch's position on the belt, directly below the shoulder strap provided perfect placement for the earphone which I taped along the strap's backside. All was well and I could often hear the sergeant's commands dimly over the music courtesy of Kol Israel's First Program.
Until grenade exercises: We were meant to run from a bunker high on hill to a position immediately overlooking a large crater with a giant metal trash can strategically placed in the center. The idea, simple enough, was to run down the hill, pull a grenade out of its receptacle, shout "rimon" - grenade, or literally pomegranate - and throw the grenade into the large specially constructed can where it would explode. There was an officer at the edge of the crater to make sure you didn't blow yourself up.
As the army rarely gave one time to prepare, I had no time to stow the radio and find my two grenade, safely in my pack back at the barracks. I had no choice but to run down the hill, shout "rimon" as loudly as I could, hopefully a diversionary tactic, and throw my precious radio into a large tin can. Of course it didn't explode and the officer assumed it to be a dud.
To the top of the pageNACH HAMBURG
I received the formal offer to join Deutsche Grammophon as Vice President for Artists and Repertoire while sitting in the tiny living room of my daughter Debby's house in the tiny and isolated West Bank settlement of Yitzhar. The headhunter asked if there was a bottle of champagne around as he had good news. Nothing could be further from the world of fine bubbly than Yitzhar but I was both exhilarated and terrified to receive the news. As I had said to several friends, I would be devastated either way. Most colleagues had counselled me not to take the job, one warning me that DGG was "a snake pit." I have a bad history of not accepting good advice but I had already made the emotional break with KOCH and had already at least in my mind started at DGG. Many friends were concerned that I would miss producing but I assured myself that I wouldn't let too much time pass before I had my hands on the mixing desk.
Negotiations were quickly settled and I made a quick trip to Hamburg to meet my new colleagues. Though my appointment was undoubtedly controversial, I was impressed by the courtesy and professionalism of all I met and touched by the genuine desire that we should somehow succeed together. The office building, situated next to the large lake that makes Hamburg;s city center unique, was comfortable and accommodating. I was in the best of hands with Gaby von Beust, my assistant, who looked after everything making easy the inevitable beauracracy of moving to a new country. I quickly learned that my weekend Berlitz course and extensive knowledge of Wagner did not amount to anything approaching mastery of German. (The biergarten waitress was disappointingly not familiar with Siegmund's opening phrase from Die Walkure and was nonplussed by my request for "Ein Quell." I retreated to English and had a beer.)
To the top of the pageBRAHMS IN NEW YORK
The first crisis was brought on by the impending recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto with Anne-Sophie Mutter, Kurt Masur conducting the New York Philharmonic. Aside from the high costs of hiring the Philharmonic and its expensive hall, we had to get Masur released from his exclusive Teldec contract. This is usually done by offering the other record company the services of an exclusive artist on your label. Because of these issues, DGG's management was reluctant to honor its contractual commitment to Mutter. My colleagues preferred to either cancel or to insist that she record the Brahms with a less expensive European orchestra. Postponement to an indefinite date was a common solution to these pressing issues. The other way out was to fail to reach agreement with the Philharmonic, Avery Fischer Hall, or Teldec. While the management was deliberating, we were receiving frantic calls from our distribution companies fearful that we would lose the recording: Mutter is the company's best selling artist and a household name in Germany.
Two weeks before the recording was scheduled (and seven days before we could cancel without having to pay the New York Philharmonic), our attorney and President - Mutter's nominal producer at that time - both went on scheduled holidays. A call then came from the production center in Hannover: should the crew and crates of recording equipment leave for New York? I made my first executive decision at DGG: Send the crew and gear. This recording will happen.
With the help of the excellent attorney from our sister label Philips, we were able to conclude negotiations with the New York Philharmonic and the hall with a day to spare. It was only because of DGG's sterling reputation for paying its bills that Avery Fischer Hall allowed our crew to set up its equipment before having a check in hand. Little issues - union teamsters to unload equipment - sorted themselves out more easily. I told our crew head in New York to do whatever was necessary.
I didn't know Anne-Sophie Mutter though we had met briefly and by chance in London's Savoy Hotel several weeks before. I did know and respect Douglas Sheldon, her highly experienced US based manager, as we had done business on several recordings in the recent past. I called Doug to assure him that we were making the recording. He in turn overcame his agent's natural and necessary skepticism to give me the benefit of the doubt. There was a last minute flurry of activity over an insurance certificate required by the hall: our Hamburg based comptroller was of the most conservative disposition and probably would have been delighted if this missing piece of paper could have torpedoed the recording to make his figures look better. He told me it would take days. I bit the bullet and called his boss in London who had the matter in hand in two hours.
To the top of the pageAs I put together a few last things before heading to the airport to catch the flight to New York, a fax came that I had been awaiting for two weeks: I had been working on a gala recording of popular sacred works with the wonderful Cecilia Bartoli and the blind singing sensation Andrea Bocelli. This was a major contractual endeavor as both of these artists worked exclusively for other labels, though part of the Polygram group. The recording, like the Mutter Brahms, had enormous commercial potential. After much wrangling with my colleagues at Philips, they had agreed to allow Bocelli to sing one track on our record. The fax I was awaiting would tell me the cost. I had already settled on a fee with Bartoli: high but perfectly reasonable considering her extraordinary talent and appeal. It was also a chance to get reacquainted with Jack Mastroianni, her agent, with whom I had briefly worked at Columbia Artists Management many years ago. I expected the Bocelli fee to be similar. As I was about to jump into the cab, my secretary called out that the fax had come. I quickly scanned the long letter, full of contractual details, searching for the all important number: there were far too many zeros! As I exercised my little used mental arithmetic, my first thought was it couldn't be that much in German Marks till a quick mental calculation provided a more sobering reality: about DM350,000 for one track. There was no time to panic as the plane wouldn't wait. I shoved the fax in my briefcase and knew it would be a long flight.
It wasn't only the Bocelli contract that occupied me during the flight: These would be the first recording sessions I would attend that I would not be producing. I was there as an executive to help, encourage, and provide what assistance I could but I had no official role in the process of making the record. My job was to stay out of the way and let the producer and engineer do their work. Nonetheless, the team was aware that I was the first A&R chief at DGG who came from their field and I would be evaluating their work.
After quickly checking in at the Parker-Meridian Hotel on 57th Street, I hailed a cab for the short ride to Lincoln Center, contracts in hand. Mutter was already rehearsing for the concerts that were to be the basis for the recording. As I stood in the wings listening to the most lyrical and heart-breakingly beautiful account of the Brahms I could ever imagine, I knew that I had made the right decision. As she played the long trill that leads out from the first movement cadenza into the work's coda, I had that rare feeling of time standing still, waiting for one of us, in this case an extraordinary violinist, to allow it to move forward. Listening now to the compact disc as I write these words, I'm struck that this is one of those few that captures the transient magic of a concert.
To the top of the pageA HYMN FOR THE WORLD
I met Maestro Myung-Whun Chung at the Savoy Hotel moments after my chance first encounter with Anne-Sophie Mutter. I had only heard Chung conduct once, a memorable and musical Simone Boccanegra at the Metropolitan Opera in the early eighties. While I enjoyed several of his recordings, most notably some recent Messiaen discs, I was not well acquainted with his work. As he sat back in an easy chair in the Savoy's lounge expansively discoursing about music and his concern for reaching larger audiences for classical music, I took an immediate liking to him. He told us - DGG President Karsten Witt was with me - that he planned a special concert for the Pope's visit to Paris: they expected over one million young people from around the globe to great His Holiness. Chung felt a recording commemorating this event would have immediate as well as long term appeal. We agreed to record a collection of sacred favorites with his Roman orchestra, the Santa Cecilia, as well as a new piece commissioned especially for the event by a young and highly successful pop-composer, Eric Levy. Who should sing the new piece? Chung pointed me in the direction of the DGG Paris office where he suggested I discuss all the details with Annick Nogues, the director of publicity. The idea of the Papal concert was hers and she was organizing all details. (She also masterminded the press campaign supporting Chung after his untimely departure as director of Paris' Opera Bastille.) In addition to this potential hit recording, we also planned a series with the Santa Cecilia Orchestra of sacred masterpieces, the first being the Faure and Durufle Requiems.
I required no excuse to visit Paris and in any case, needed an opportunity to introduce myself to the team who would be marketing our recordings in France. An affable and effective group lead by Jean-Phillipe Allard, they distributed DGG in what is probably still the best 'culture-market' in the world. For them, the Chung project was vitally important. Chung is one of Paris' musical heroes: I have rarely seem an audience respond to anyone they way the Parisians react to Chung. The Pope's visit was an ideal opportunity to promote the sacred collection and the new hymn would be the event's musical theme, heavily promoted on television and radio. As far as Annick and her colleagues were concerned, there was only one person to sing Levy's "I Believe:" Andrea Bocelli.
Still new in Europe, I had only the dimmest idea who this man was. I didn't realize that the pleasant tenor voice coming from the radio in virtually every Hamburg eatery I frequented was the blind singing sensation. Chung already had his agreement to perform the piece on the concert for the Pope and couldn't imagine there would be any difficulty in obtaining a release from his record label, Philips, as they were part of the same group of labels that included DGG. I concurred as I had been told when hired that all the artistic resources of the three labels run by Chris Roberts - DGG, Decca, and Philips - were to be shared. My job, so I thought, was to provide income for my company at a high artistic standard.
To the top of the pageLittle did I imagine that my request for Bocelli would set off the classical music equivalent of World War III. Under no circumstances would Bocelli be made available for this recording whether he wanted to or not. To be fair, I understand the proprietary nature of exclusive artists. Record labels make major investments and assume a fair degree of risk when they sign an artist to an exclusive contract. Despite the fact that the three labels were loosely linked under the rubric Polygram Classics, we all felt a strong interest in maintaining the labels' identities and most importantly the identity of our most important artists with our label particular label. The President of Philips, Costa Pilavachi, had taken a risk in signing a tenor with no classical music credentials to his classical music label. He viewed my request as a dangerous attempt to poach his artist. I quickly pointed out that we were speaking only of one track and a light composition at that. The battle went round and round till we eventually received permission to record Bocelli in one "classical" track. I suggested Bizet's Agnus Dei, a setting of the familiar text to a movement from the L'Arlesianne Suites which I knew from a recording with Beniamino Gigli that I loved as a young child. Bocelli was, I was told, thrilled to be recording something with the world's premiere classical label and with Chung for whom he had an immense admiration.
Enter Bocelli's main label, Sugar Insieme, based in Milan. They "discovered" and at that time essentially owned him. They owned all the repertoire he recorded and licensed it to other companies: Philips for classics and Polydor for everything else (and outside Italy.) They viewed DGG as a dangerous development as they wanted to keep Bocelli on the profitable straight-and-narrow of popular music. They too eventually agreed to one classical track on the record. Neither Chung nor I, gave up on finding a way to get Bocelli to sing "I Believe." My colleagues at DGG were also anxious to secure a deal with Bocelli as the financial return would not only help us but help our distribution companies meet their budget targets.
To add real luster to the recording, I approached Jack Mastroianni about Cecilia Bartoli singing several tracks on the recording. I am a great admirer of extraordinary Italian mezzo and didn't imagine there would be any difficulty in organizing a release from our "sister" label, Decca. I reached Jack on the mobile phone from somewhere near the Baltic Sea where Witt, his wife, and three sons were spending a lovely Sunday with Tammy and me. The boys were getting frustrated by my poor soccer playing - I'm only an American - and the ring of my portable phone was undoubtedly a relief to them as well as me. (They were also convinced that I was waiting for a call from Marcello Mastroianni.} Jack, whose enthusiasm for music and large personality were immediately captivating, agreed to approach Cecilia if I cleared the details with Decca. The fee was quickly discussed and agreed to: with an artist like Bartoli, one doesn't quibble about a few thousand dollars. Either you want her for the project and can afford the fee or you can't. I raised the thorny issue of Levi's Hymn. Thorny because Cecilia Bartoli had obvious concerns about recording a "pop" tune with an artist, who despite his desire to be an opera star was considered a pop singer. I left it to Bartoli's judgement, a good decision as I learned when I knew her better. Like Anne-Sophie Mutter and few other artists, her instincts about herself, her voice, audience, and repertoire were close to infallible.
To the top of the pageWe settled on repertoire quickly and it wasn't long afterwards that I was on a plane to Rome. I had also planned a meeting with Cecilia Bartoli who happened to be in her home town. In a typically mad and delightfully dangerous taxi ride from Fiumicino to town, the mobile phone rang. Our publicity director, Lucy Maxwell-Stewart, already in Rome to keep an eye on the proceedings and create the video to accompany the disc, had a message from Chung: the maestro planned to ask Bocelli to read "I Believe" that evening along with Cecilia Bartoli. The orchestra had recorded the music sans singers and he hoped to intrigue the two artists. Chung knew, of course, that without contractual permission, anything he recorded could not be released. Lucy was warning me that an explosive situation might be in the making.
After quickly checking in at the Cardinale, a pleasant hotel a short walk away from the Santa Cecilia, I went to the hall where I met Cecilia Bartoli. She had already recorded her tracks for the recording, meltingly beautiful performances of the Domine, Deus from Vivaldi's Gloria. We joined her brother Gabriele and sister Federica around the corner for coffee and panini. Her charm is legendary and not overestimated. I thanked her for agreeing to take part in our program and learned with delight that she would be singing her first Susanna in Nozze di Figaro, my favorite opera. We walked back to the hall, I somewhat guiltily knowing that she was about to be asked to read I Believe with Bocelli. She would be staying in any case as we planned a photo shoot in St Peters Square with the three artists.
In the meantime, Bocelli and a troop of handlers had arrived. Andrea went to his dressing room where he asked to speak with me in private. As my Italian is far from perfect, I asked Gaston Fournier, the excellent manager of the Santa Cecilia Orchestra to join us in the event any translation would be required. I could hear the handlers pacing outside the room, clearly reluctant to allow their charge to be alone with a classical record executive. Bocelli asked me directly: how much money was Sugar asking for the track. I replied, somewhat naively that surely he knew as Sugar only gave me the fee request after consulting with him. No they had not and he would rather not sing without the information. I reluctantly told him 350 million lire. He sighed quietly, turned away, and said, Grazie.
To the top of the pageWe rode the short way to St Peters and begin filming and photographing Bartoli, Bocelli, and Chung walking through the square, laughing, chatting and doing all that Lucy requested. A crowd gathered and the police as well. When they saw our stars, they allowed the show to go on. I walked Bocelli back to the car where two Italian sailors stood transfixed: could they touch maestro's hand?
Knowing that Chung was about to read the forbidden 'I Believe' with our two singers, I asked the manager of Sugar Records, former Italian pop star Caterina Casselli, if she would stroll back to the Sta Cecilia with me. We took the most roundabout way. When we finally arrived at the stage door (with the recording booth round a close corner), she heard the fatal strains. She began to remonstrate: "This is not correct, this is not correct," proceeding on stage with the same refrain. The reading session ground to a halt as Myung-Whun eloquently defended his right and that of Cecilia and Bocelli to read and record anything they liked for their own pleasure. He understood that nothing could be released without contracts but they were just having fun. I stood in the middle of the crossfire trying to calm both sides. Lucy was terrified that we would "all get fired." I moved away from the fray for a quick call to Chris Roberts alerting him, in the calmest possible way, that he might be receiving a call from an offended Sugar Records tomorrow. None of us remembered that a French television crew had been engaged to do some footage of the recording sessions and that they ran film during the altercation. Lucy confiscated the footage and made an edit for our amusement later which shows a bemused Cecilia, eyes moving right and left with a curious expression as Chung and Sra Casselli traded barbs. Bocelli sits in his chair head down.
Somehow, we managed to resume recording with only Chung, Bartoli, Bocelli and me of stage. The orchestra track was fed into headphones on stage. At one point, Bocelli missed an interest causing a brief outburst from Chung. I whispered, "Myung-Whun, he's blind." Bartoli quietly took the tenor's hand and squeezed it in rhythm nudging him gently for his entrances. For both singers, the music was new, neither sang in English, and of course, we had no rights to release the material. Still, there was exciting material on tape. The Sugar Records people remained in a belligerent mood as they drove off with Bocelli. One even suggested I "lock my doors at night."
The next day, I had a call from Jack Mastroianni. He had heard the whole story from Cecilia and after we had a bit of a laugh suggested I send on the edited material to her and we would see what could be done with it.
The edited version, while not perfect, gave us all an idea of the song's potential. Please don't think that "I Believe" is a masterpiece: a likable and memorable tune allied to an occasionally cumbersome text, I began to hear people humming and singing it all over the DGG building in Hamburg and at the production facility and Hannover. To think all this trouble over this pleasant piece and not over decisions to record important repertoire exercised my thoughts over many late nights. And yet, its simplicity and the presence of the two stars made it worth fighting for.
To the top of the pageBoth artists wanted to redo individual phrases. We had arranged one such session while Bartoli was recording in Milan. My assistant had made all the arrangements and I went to New York on other business satisfied that we would finish Cecilia's contribution to the album. It was meant to happen the afternoon of the day I was flying back to Germany. I rang up Cecilia to ask how it went. I was incredulous when she said neither equipment nor producer turned up. I had the seven hour overnight flight to mull over what went wrong. Surely my assistant, near perfect in attention to detail, couldn't have forgotten.
With everything to obtaining the Vatican's imprimatur and a statement from the Cardinal for Cultural Affairs for the disc's booklet to the DGG attorney's unhappiness with including a sponsor's name in the booklet, I had my hands full. The recording came out without "I believe." A version in Korean was recorded and for France, the fabulous jazz singer Dedee Bridgewater tracked "I Believe" to the same accompaniment track Bartoli and Bocelli had used.
"I Believe" was finally released on Hymn for the World II with only Andrea Bocelli. We were forbidden to promote the song as Sugar and Polydor feared it would interfere with sales and promotions of the tenor's forthcoming pop album. Both I and II were DGG's best selling new releases in their respective years and I still get occasional requests at home for the music to Levy's unintentionally contentious Hymn. They are not crossover recordings - horrible phrase - but present a survey of the world's greatest and most popular sacred music from Bach to Messiaen.
Without entering the fray about Andrea Bocelli as an operatic tenor, I found him very musical and a genuine opera lover. Somehow, this musicality does not always come across in his recordings. Prior to recording "I Believe" (the second time) we sat in a dressing room in the "old" Santa Cecilia, site of many famous old opera recordings with Renata Tebaldi. Bocelli sat at room's piano and began playing opera scores from memory singing along. He began to play the opening of the fourth act duet from "La Boheme" and I joined him in that and several duets, I singing as badly as one might imagine. When his laughter wouldn't permit him to sing, we talked opera and opera recordings. A big fan of Franco Corelli, he was excited to be working on the state where the great singer had recorded Tosca with Nilsson and Fischer-Dieskau. He asked me if I knew which microphones were used for that old Decca recording. I was able to find out from Christopher Raeburn, producer of those sessions and of the Bartoli tracks on Hymn for the World II.
To the top of the pageLife in Germany
Most of our friends refuse to believe we enjoy living in northern Germany. Now that I am no longer employed by Deutsche Grammophon, our American friends send notes asking when we are coming home "for good" or that we now, "can finally leave Germany." When I took the job, living in Hamburg was not the offer's principle attraction. Tammy and I were both convinced it would be a grimy industrial town. We were both pleasantly surprised to discover a gracious and green city not overburdened with skyscrapers or what someone, I believe Prince Charles, has called "urban brutal" architecture. Like the low countries and Denmark, the bicycle remains a favored method of transportation and this was one of our first and perhaps our wisest purchase shortly after arriving. Two Kettler aluminum bicycles. Tammy was somewhat dubious: bicycles were not a major part of her childhood. She dreamt of the horses she rode as a girl and later on in California. For me, the bicycle was part of the fabric of my youth. Perpetually stolen, occasionally recovered (with a new coat of spray paint), my bicycles carried me on most of my childhood adventures.
Tammy planned a week's visit for house hunting. In the States, one call to real estate agent provides a friend for life or at least till you make a purchase. Loneliness and its more appealing sister Solitude are banished. The Realtor can't resist calling at any hour of the day or night with a "must-see" property. We assumed that the same system applied here in Germany. Wrong again. The various rental offices we spoke with didn't seem particularly interested in our business and most had nothing to show us or perhaps one or two houses which they might be able to show us next week. We finally found one agent with a modicum of enthusiasm who had two houses for rent, one on a wooded cul-de-sac in a village twenty kilometers from the center. The house with garden was a short walk from Hamburg's superb rapid-transit system. Tammy and I loved the house at first sight, not that we had many others. We thought the process would involve paying a deposit, signing a contract and moving in. I could hear the agent's private thought "Americans are so impatient." First, we had to meet the owner, an eighty year old widow and her children to see if we were suitable. There were also other candidates. The rent was high, more than the mortgage on our Long Island home. Nevertheless, Tammy had her heart set on the house and had no desire to find an apartment in town. With the support of this rare and enterprising Realtor and, I'm convinced, sheer luck, we got the house. Had we known that a few hundred metros west, we would have lived in Schleswig-Holstein, avoiding Hamburg's high-taxation and making most of Germany's beauracratic procedures easier, we might have passed on the little house in Rissen.
Another myth quickly vanished. We were told it would be years before we would make the acquaintance of our neighbors. Our first day in the house, the Gorbahnts, two houses down, stopped by with the traditional gift of bread and salt as well as a welcome to their home and offer to help Tammy with anything she might need.
Though work took my inwards towards city on those rare days that a tax wasn't running me to the airport in the pre-dawn hours, our real joy began at our street's end where the bicycle tracks headed into the woods which we began to explore. The trails on weekends on those endless summer afternoons were often crowded to our tastes - like Bangladesh as we uncharitably noted to each other. Lakes and moors with their own characters began to receive our private names - one stretch of moor and heath became Alaska as it reminded us of part of Denali Park minus the snow-capped peaks. Another stretch, more barren, looked like an African watering hole and this section became Africa. We were charmed by the small villages, still with thatch-roofed houses and windmills, that we passed through. Being Germany, even the trails had names and numbers: Feldweg 91, for example.
To the top of the pageWe had gotten used to the convenience society - everything open all the time and of course twenty-four hour telephone service for airline tickets and virtually anything else. Hamburg offered quiet Sundays, early closings on Saturdays and quiet hours when no power tools or lawn mowers, the bane of the American suburban weekend, must be still. In short, we felt quickly at home relishing the long, almost endless summer days and learning to enjoy the comforts of winter days in front of the fire place. Summer mornings came early as we were awakened by a glorious symphony of bird song heralding the sun's arrival. Despite my natural aversion to taxes - and I was paying all told over sixty percent of my wages to Bonn - I felt I was getting value for money, from the rapid transit system to the rich cultural life. We're still here (though we enjoy the ease with which we reach Toscana and Norway when either the south's warm breezes or something more bracing beckons.)
We had a number of contracts to cancel upon leaving the United
States, including the security service that monitored our house
alarm. This is a factual account of Tammy's call to the alarm
company:
Tammy: We'd like to cancel your service as we're moving to
Germany next month.
Operator (thick Long Island accent): Oh my God! Germany! Isn't
that far away? Aren't you scared?
Tammy: We're looking forward to it but there is a new language
to learn.
Operator: Oh my God! A new language. You mean they don't speak
English.
Tammy: No
Operator: Oh my God! They have their own language?
Tammy: Yes
Operator: Oh my God! What's it called?
Tammy: German
Talking About Music
No one is ever quite sure about what Artist and Repertoire Directors do. Considering the large number of rich, calorie-laden meals one is sadly required to eat with artists, A&R has been called Artists and Restaurants. My son, not really sure what his father did for a living, attended a recording session in Israel I produced during which I gave him a pair of headphones to listen with. After a few moments, he said with a knowing smile, "You get paid to listen to music all day! Not bad." This was a reasonable assumption on his part and certainly close to the truth for the production side of my career. Another gentleman who runs a well-known music festival, intimated to a colleague that "A&R Directors talk about music with artists all day." This was a bit of wishful thinking as that gentleman was a candidate for a top job at a record label despite his lack of recording experience.
And yet, aside from the often memorable issues of budgets, personnel difficulties, and the general problems of managing a large department, speaking with the artists about music is one of the most pleasing aspects of the job when there is actually time for it. How could I ever forget Gil Shaham analyzing the Brahms Concerto on a transatlantic phone call, playing the accompaniment on an electronic keyboard and singing the violin part. Equally fascinating was a lunch with James Levine at Munich's sumptuous Raphael Hotel. Jim had led his first concert as the new Music Director of the Munich Philharmonic, a controversial appointment in the Bavarian capital, with a particularly fine performance of the Brahms 4th Symphony. As we ate, and we both enjoy eating, Jim went through the work in extraordinary detail including his own mental process as he conducted the piece.
Listening to music, first edits or auditions, with Claudio Abbado, was always a treat. With respect to all the great artists I have worked with, Abbado's concert Tristan in Berlin, Mahler 3rd in Ferrara, Mahler 9th in Hamburg and Salzburg, and Brahms 1st in Turin were the greatest orchestra concerts I have ever heard and all were, not incidentally, with the Berlin Philharmonic. A man of great personal modesty and charm, Abbado is for me the ultimate musician's conductor. For those of us who do listen to music for a living, there can be a dangerous tendency to be bored by the merely great. Critics are quick to praise eccentric performances as "fresh" because they have heard too much music and have lost a degree of perspective. There are a great number of podium practitioners who are, for me, unmusical. They receive an imprimatur from critics often leading to public acceptance because their awkward way with music can bring out a different dimension, unfamiliar and therefore revelatory to these jaded listeners. Abbado's ear for textures, elegant and musical line and sense of the architecture of the piece and for me, unerring sense of the phrase, are for me, always satisfying and often thrilling.
To the top of the pageI recall a weekend in which one of the early music specialists stood in front of the Vienna Philharmonic offering a very poor parody of Schubert. The great lyric lines phrases were stunted, each downbeat painfully clear. His lack of understanding the music was aided by his poor stick technique rendering sloppy ensemble and poorly judged balances. Even a great ensemble like the Vienna Philharmonic could not play around him. The concert played with my nervous system like a loud piece of construction equipment adjacent to one's house on Sunday morning. I sat there, irritated and wondering when it would all end. The next day, Abbado did a pair of Schubert Symphonies with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe: they were unremarkable unless you believe that beautifully inflected performances of great literature in shimmering sound and jeweled precision is something to take for granted. Following the concert, I joined Lucy Maxwell-Stewart, the previously mentioned DGG Publicity Director, who was chatting with the critic of a leading London paper. I walked in at a bad moment as he loudly proclaimed "we didn't need to hear Abbado conducting Schubert any longer," preferring the previous day's debacle. Lucy saw me about to break the record business' prime directive of never hitting (or arguing with) a critic and deftly intervened, allowing me only one sarcastic comment.
I've only broken the rule once before (not hitting the critic, of course.) An American critic who enjoyed the recordings of one of the vanity conductors was upset that I was re-recording a piece with a legitimate, practicing maestro that I previously made, but never edited with the 'wannabe' musician he admired. He wrote this in his journal, implying that the vanity conductor was one of America's great musical treasures. Having worked with the object of his adulation, I knew that he was not only incapable of conducting an orchestra but could not read music. I made the mistake of placing a phone call leading to an unpleasant spat with the critic which unfortunately resulted in his writing outrageously bad reviews of the real conductors I recorded. Not their fault.
To the top of the pageEarly Memories
My earliest memories are musical. I even recall the first time I had that indefinable thrill, that peculiar but good feeling that some call frisson. Please don't judge my taste too harshly as I was very, very young but I retain the indelible memory of feeling that something when I first heard Beecham's recording of Chabrier's Espana. I could mitigate some of your criticism by adding that the first opera I heard was Tannhauser, when I was a young teenager. There were a series of "Stories of the Operas' with romantic watercolors and short musical motifs that I would play at the piano. Tannhauser intrigued me also because, truth be told, of the Venusberg. It never occurred to me that the singer who performed Venus would not necessarily look like the Venus de Milo or for that matter like Mariyln Monroe. I took the train to Manhattan thinking of combining the joys of music with more adolescent urges. Standing room at the 'old' Met was inexpensive - just over one dollar - and the standees then lines the side walls of the theater. (In the 'new' house, they were exiled to the back of the orchestra, in an acoustically dead part of the hall.) I remember Ossie Hawkins, the sonorous-voiced executive stage manager, striding out before the curtain opened to announce that the tenor, an ill-favored Finn, was indisposed. Thunderous applause. With the timing of a practiced actor, Hawkins added "... but will sing anyway" to the groans of the audience.
When the curtain rose on the Venusberg scene, a strange woman not far from me shouted out "look, they're all nude." (This may have led to the standees' exile.) Venus on her couch - Anita Valkii, I think - was far from physically appealing. At that age, it would have to have been Marilyn Monroe to provide the proper impact but then I imagine her mezzo-soprano not up to the part. Even worse, when the tenor began to sing, I realized that opera recordings and staged operas were not the same thing. The situation improved dramatically when the beloved Leonie Rysanek sang "Dich, teure Halle." I became a confirmed and regular opera standee spending what little I could earn from odd jobs to make the trip to New York and wait on the long queue for precious tickets.
About the same time, I received my introduction to the business of music. I was able to convince a local radio station that I should do a Sunday evening program of classical music. Although I was under age to be legally employed, they were kind enough to never ask and "Sunday Evening Concerts" was broadcast to who knows how many tens of people. The program always began with the Nimrod music from Elgar's Engima Variations. The station's library of classical music was small, but I was able to augment its selection with records from my grandfather's larger collection. The program had a local jewelry store - not coincidentally a customer of grandfather who made and designed watches - as a sponsor. Things went well, I like to think, till one evening shortly after I began Nimrod. The station was usually deserted on Sunday nights. As in most small American stations, I was the producer, announcer, and engineer for my program and also did the news, weather, and required meter readings. I heard the door open and looked to see a stranger in a cowboy hat enter the sanctum of the studio. In a voice whose crudity I can still hear, he shouted "Get this shit off the air." I learned quickly that the station had been sold and the new format was to be cowboy music.
To the top of the pageFind me a tenor
The clash of cultures was never more apparent than the night France won the football World Cup in 1998. I was in Aix-en-Province for Abbado's Don Giovanni, a rare performance of Britten's strangely beautiful Curlew River, and a meeting to plan the program for the Berlin Philharmonic Sylvester concert which would be recorded live. Curlew River took place on the night that France was engaged in defending her honor on the playing field. The streets of Aix were silent save for the sounds of men setting up televisions in each of the town's many restaurants. The performance of Curlew River was surprisingly full and played undisturbed though one could hear the occasional distant cheer. There were minutes to go when all of a sudden, the bells of Aix rang out. France had won. The singers continued on stage unheard. The bells continued to ring as I left the theater imagining it must have been like this following the liberation of Paris in 1945. People raced down the streets carrying French flags screaming "Vive le France." Strains of Le Marseille were never out of hearing. When I returned to my hotel, ear plugs, a fan whirring next to my head, and a dose of melatonim never got rid of the sensation that I was in the center of a major celebration in the city square.
My love of Mozart and Britten aside, the main reason I traveled to Aix was the Sylvester concert. Gala musical events were becoming an important part of the classical music business. The pop world understood the connection between concert tours and record sales but it took us a little longer to catch on. One of the most important events in DGG's year was the Berlin Philharmonic's annual Sylvester concert, televised early on New Year's Eve immediately preceding the German President's New Year's greeting. We had been recording the concert for several years but it was never easy coming up with a new program which would work for television, international record sales, and the gala character of the event. The program also required the consent of the orchestra and most importantly, Claudio Abbado. There were also budget considerations: the artists needed to paid by us for the recording, by the television for their media rights, and by the orchestra for the engagement.
It was already late in the planning year when the interested parties sat around an elegant picnic spread just outside Aix-en-Provence where Abbado had taken a house during his run of Don Giovannis. Around the table, with a glorious view of endless vineyards, were the Maestro, Elmar Weingarten, Intendant of the Berlin Philharmonic, Michael DeWitte, Abbado's personal assistant and head of the Salzburg Easter Festival, producers from ZDF Television, the recording's producer Chris Alder, myself and various members of the Abbado family.
To the top of the pageThe desert plates were being gathered as we began to hammer out our ideas. In a short while, we agreed on pairing two major operatic celebrities with two rising talents: superstars Lucianno Pavarotti and Mirella Freni and the young soprano Christine Schaefer and baritone Simon Keenlyside. (Bryn Terfel, the label's star baritone had sung in the previous year's concert and was not available.) It was left to Chris Alder and me to work out a program with Abbado and secure the participation of the artists.
Luck seemed to be with us as we quickly reached agreement in principle with all four. Decca Records which had an exclusive contract with Pavarotti kindly agreed to release him for the record. I turned my attention to other matters when someone noted an article in the Berlin paper mentioning Mr P's tax difficulties following a Three Tenors concert in Germany. The presenter was to go on trial and might face imprisonment. Pavarotti stated his reluctance to work in Germany. This reluctance was confirmed by Herbert Breslin, his manager. Knowing that there are no border checks between Italy and Germany didn't help. There were, in fact, no charges pending against the tenor and Abbado called Pavarotti encouraging him to come. Dr Weingarten was in touch with the Berlin Senate who would consider offering Pavarotti an award and officially invite him to Berlin. We offered to fly him in the most discrete way by private jet and deliver him to the door of the Philarmonie. Meanwhile, the Philharmonic had announced the concert and were selling tickets. We had announced the recording.
While we continued to work on encouraging Pavarotti to come, we quickly cast about for another tenor and struck upon Jose Cura, a charismatic young Argentinean with whom we been negotiating for several projects. Chris Alder shuttled around Europe's opera houses on the trail of Cura who finally agreed to think about the Sylvester concert. (We had already ascertained before approaching Cura that Domingo was also not available.) Cura's participation would change the whole tenor of the evening. Now we had three fabulous young singers and one genuine star. Someone suggested we drop Freni. Under no circumstances: she was the star and despite the sterling credentials and established reputations of our young singers, for many concertgoers and record buyers around the world, the only familiar name on the cover of a caliber with Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic. We would simply revise the program.
At this point, my boss Karsten Witt intervened telling me to cancel the recording if neither Cura nor Pavarotti were available. This was sensible as the recording would be expensive and difficult to market without "the tenor." His good sense was unacceptable to Abbado and the Philharmonic who understandably saw us as having made a commitment to the project. I also was reluctant to cancel, both out of respect for Abbado and to protect our newly good relationship with the orchestra but also because I wanted the recording, especially to bring Freni and Abbado together again. Abbado also felt that Pavarotti might just agree to come at the last minute. It was now December and we had two programs arranged, one with Cura, one with Pavarotti. What Freni would sing depended on which tenor appeared with her.
To the top of the pageChristmas was nearly upon us and we had not yet reached a resolution. Karsten Witt left for one of the world's few locations where he could not be reached by mobile phone, the island of Mauritius. Tammy and I left for a delightful Christmas in Salzburg, one of the world's loveliest locations. We stayed at our regular digs, the Statdtkrug Hotel in the old town where they treated us like family, and anticipated a peaceful holiday accompanied by Salzburg's wondrous scenery, architecture, ambiance, bells, and music.
While we enjoyed ourselves immensely and made private resolutions to return to Salzburg next Christmas, my ear was rarely separated from that plague of modern times, the mobile telephone. (In Germany, it is called a handyphone, handy for short. Israeli's have dubbed it the "pelephone" or miraculous wonder phone. Something unprintable would be more appropriate.) After having assured Elmar Weingarten that we would not cancel the recording and actually tracking down Witt in Mauritius letting him know that all was well, I reached Chris Alder at home. He was on his back under the family's Christmas tree tinkering with a particularly recalcitrant ornament. As he tells it, sap from the tree dripped on his face as we spoke. His news was not particularly festive: He had just learned that Cura was no longer available. The tenor's family, understandably, took precedence and his wife made it clear that he was to spend New Years Eve at home. We were stuck.
As we racked our brains for ideas, we thought of Marcello Alvarez, a young Mexican tenor who had just made a well-received debut recording on SONY. We had tried to reach him through his New York agents but was told he was in Tokyo and requested that he not be disturbed over the holidays. I reached Abbado with the news. Not an easy task either as he was in his Swiss mountain home without telephone. You called his neighbor, the doctor, who walked to Abbado's house, weather permitting. Weather permitting, Abbado than walked to the doctor's house and returned the call.
During all this, Tammy and I were endeavoring to enjoy Christmas, strolling though the festive Christmas Markets and deciding which of the churches had the most promising music for the Christmas mass. We had also planned to train to Oberndorf, the picturesque village where Silent Night was composed, and walk or cross-country ski back to town.
Abbado rang back. He would reach Alvarez and convince him. Chris Alder reached our attorney who was able to contact SONY and arrange for a release. As Alvarez and his charming wife later told us, the phone rang and a quiet voice asked for Marcello. Who is it, inquired his wife. Claudio. Claudio who? Claudio Abbado. She almost dropped the phone. Abbado got Alvarez agreement quickly. He was excited to sing with "il piu grande Maestro" with the Berlin Philharmonic, live on television, and to record for the world's most famous record label. A lovely man. He and Abbado agreed on the repertoire we suggested. Even though they were well known operatic excerpts, Abbado needed scores delivered to him in Switzerland. Unlike several well-known conductors, Claudio never "winged it." He studied everything he was going to do and usually memorized it.
To the top of the pageMy next call was to Jack Mastroianni who managed Freni. We had already agreed that if Pavarotti was not in the picture, Mirella would sing the letter scene from Onegin, an opera she recorded brilliantly for DGG several years before. Jack, whom I