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![]() "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" ranted Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. Saturated with self-importance (and -preservation), he was quite serious, even though lyricist Alan Jay Lerner had his own tongue firmly in cheek (as did George Bernard Shaw, whose Pygmalion served as inspiration). In classical music, whose ranks are among the most socially liberal of any profession, gender issues are hardly a laughing matter. Women have held the stage as opera stars ever since the age of the castrati waned over two centuries ago. Female instrumental soloists emerged throughout the 1900s. Yet, the world of the baton still remains firmly a male bastion. Of the few pioneers, esteemed American conductors Sarah Caldwell and Eve Queler had attracted considerable attention several decades ago, but founded their own opera companies in Boston and New York when established podiums eluded them. (Alsop appeared destined for a similar fate, forming Concordia, her own chamber group, in 1984.) As with most births, Baltimore's was fraught with pain. Although Alsop's appointment was strongly promoted by the orchestra's board, nearly all the musicians reportedly opposed it. While the parties quickly made peace to present a united front of support and high expectations, and attributed the prior protest to a procedural snub of not having been adequately consulted, that's not what they had said to the press at the time. In an especially ironic twist, their foremost spokesperson was a woman, but it appears that gender issues played at worst only a minor role. Rather, the musicians, as well as some critics, expressed concern over poor rehearsal technique, shallow interpretation, lack of nuance and uninspired artistry. Alsop's artistic and administrative credentials surely appear strong – educated at Yale and Julliard, one of Leonard Bernstein's last pupils, Gramophone's Artist of the Year, the first conductor to be named a MacArthur Fellow, regular appearances with the world's great orchestras in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles and throughout Europe, Music Director of the Colorado Symphony since 1993 and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra since 2002. So what can Baltimore expect once Alsop takes over for the 2007/8 season? Perhaps the best evidence lies in her catalog of recordings, which reflect not only uncommon taste but an astutely planned career path. Perhaps to surmount the special challenges she faced in competing with the vast tide of rising conductors of her generation, Alsop positioned herself as a specialist in modern American music, a focus reflected in the vast majority of her extant CDs. Alsop has the good fortune to record for Naxos, which not only is budget-priced and widely-distributed but tends to market its vast catalog of offbeat repertoire for sustained periods, an unfortunate rarity nowadays, when CDs tend to have an alarmingly short window of availability before deletion. There's a common pattern to her recordings – despite having been written as recently as 2002, nearly all the works are easy on the ears. Paramount among these are superlative multi-volume surveys with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra of the orchestral music of American romantics Samuel Barber and Joseph Collins, played with just the right blend of lyricism and brashness. While modern music has served Alsop well to establish a niche on record shelves and to garner invitations as a guest conductor, the demands of her new position as music director of a major orchestra are far different. But how will she handle the standard repertoire? Of her CDs so far, only three suggest her level of mastery of traditional fare. Two are of Brahms and are largely discouraging. While his Symphony # 1 begins and ends with thundering tympani, the rest reflects her outlook of "balance and proportion" – superficially idiomatic but without any special distinction. A Tchaikovsky disc, though, hints that Alsop may have more to offer and that Baltimore may have more to anticipate. A studio Romeo and Juliet Overture is undernourished, its climaxes plodding and fatigued. The difference is crucial – it's one thing to tempt CD buyers to risk eight bucks on a new Alsop release, but a far steeper challenge to pry a time-pressed professional couple out of their living room to splurge $200 on a concert, especially if they're apt to hear a less interesting performance of a standard work than dozens already available. In prior times, the only way to savor the glories and subtleties of music was to attend a concert, but that's no longer true – indeed, the home often provides a superior occasion for concentrated listening and reflection than amid a restive audience. Concerts remain justified when they project the distinctive and spontaneous personalities of performers with something unique to say about a work, but not for mere routine run-throughs of well-worn scores. Hopefully, Marin Alsop will rise to that challenge in Baltimore. February 2006 Update:
Marin Alsop in concert On February 13, the Maestra came to Washington for her first concert with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at its "second home" in the gorgeous new music center at Strathmore in suburban Bethesda, Maryland. As a herald of things to come, unfortunately it tended to confirm my earlier speculative concern. As we say in The Law, the jury's still out. After a warm reception, the program began with a dull and dutiful Brahms Tragic Overture, technically competent but largely devoid of enthusiasm or perspective, and barely distinguishable from her bland Naxos studio version with the London Symphony. The evening concluded with a thick and unexceptional Dvorak Symphony # 7 which would have been far more engaging had it displayed the same vibrancy as the brief furiant encore. In a Q&A session following the concert, Alsop noted that her first recording project with the Baltimore Symphony is to be a Dvorak cycle on Naxos. While a budget-priced series of his earlier symphonies seems sure to attract attention as an alternative to the few CDs currently available (especially if they include overtures or tone poems as fillers), the competition from more idiomatic and energetic readings of the final three may prove overwhelming. The clear highlight was the striking Symphony # 1 of Christopher Rouse, of which the orchestra is justifiably proud, having commissioned it two decades ago from a native son and having recorded it with its former music director David Zinman, under whose baton the world began to take its first serious notice of Baltimore as a font of serious music-making. Built upon extremes of dynamics, registration, rhythms and textures, the half-hour provided a fine showcase for the orchestra members as well as the new hall's acoustics, and it was led and played with deep empathy for its searing anguish drawn from eclectic sources from Bach through Bruckner and Stravinsky to industrial sounds. The wholly favorable audience reaction to its formidable challenges was paved in significant part by a thoroughly engaging and refreshingly informal ten-minute introduction in which Alsop outlined the structural highlights with orchestral excerpts. Alsop and her new orchestra clearly were in their element with their deeply moving and thoroughly committed performance of the Rouse, but far less so with Brahms and Dvorak. Rather than grind out redundant readings of repertoire better served elsewhere, and having to compete against more charismatic podium personalities both in concert and on disc, wouldn't it make more sense to establish Baltimore in the forefront of a bold initiative to display modern orchestral work? After all, hearing Brahms and Dvorak in concert gains little over listening to them in the home; indeed, the comparison in such works often weighs favorably toward CDs by acknowledged masters. Yet, the astounding dynamics and textures of a piece like the Rouse provide an opportunity to create an experience that, even with all the technological advances in multi-channel hi-fi, can't be replicated outside the concert hall. Even if the programs for Alsop's upcoming Baltimore seasons must be weighted down with familiar museum pieces, hopefully they'll be balanced with uniquely interesting modern fare that Alsop is in a fine position to advocate. Copyright 2006 by Peter Gutmann |
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