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Monday, August 14, 2006

I Knew It Was Bad, But …

Posted by on August 14 at 9:35 AM

From David Patrick Stearns this morning comes a review of how the Mostly Mozart Festival has been revived from its comatose state in the 1990s, when it was led by music director Gerard Schwarz, and now is livelier than ever. (Schwarz, for those who don’t know, is Seattle Symphony’s music director, the one whose contract the board recently renewed despite languishing programming at the symphony and a vote of no-confidence from musicians.)

Schwarz ran the Mostly Mozart Festival (into the artistic ground, as Stearns writes) for 17 years, ending in 2001:

Not so long ago, if you wanted to know what was wrong with classical music in America, you looked no further than the Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival. The brand-name summer concert series had grown increasingly derelict by the mid-1990s, playing mostly to disgruntled critics and clueless tourists. Rumors abounded that Mostly Mozart would be joining its namesake in some powdered-wig heaven, thanks to routine performances, the too-large, acoustically unsympathetic Avery Fisher Hall, and soloists seemingly incapable of generating surprise.

When I finished reading this, I Googled “Gerard Schwarz Mostly Mozart,” and the very first link to come up was a 1998 evisceration of Schwarz by Greg Sandow in the Wall Street Journal. IMO, Sandow is the most trenchant critic around on classical music. To some, this story may be old news, but I’ve been a fan of his only a few years and hadn’t seen this astonishing piece before.

I will quote liberally, because you will enjoy it.

What almost killed the evening was the conductor, Gerard Schwarz, who’s been music director of Mostly Mozart for 16 years. In his favor, I can say that he kept the soloists, chorus and orchestra together and moved everything along at the proper speed.

But in his hands the music had no line, no motion from place to place. It had no color, only the most routine kind of clarity, and no sense of Mozart’s style.

Mr. Schwarz didn’t even breathe or phrase with the singers, giving them no support at all, as if to him they were just some minor element in an otherwise orchestral texture. Sometimes he’d demonstrate his control by emphasizing details—accented notes, or momentary counter-melodies, all of which seemed pointless in a performance with no tone or shape, no strong contrast between loud music and soft, and sometimes in fast passages (like the final chorus) not much rhythm.

Why, I might ask, should someone with so little to offer be entrusted with a major musical event, let alone one that so clearly demands a point of view?

In a festival of this emerging quality, Schwarz—once known for running chamber orchestras in New York, but now not much respected outside Seattle, where he leads the Seattle Symphony—wouldn’t be invited to conduct. That he should be music director is, quite simply, astonishing.

Then, on his web site, Sandow adds a coda, which is also a damning portrait of Schwarz as an artist:

[Some people find this review very strong. Maybe I should have added an explanation, which would have gone something like this:

We have two baseball teams in New York, and when there’s an issue concerning one of them, everybody knows it, sportswriters and fans alike. It’s debated intensely.

But that’s not true in classical music. There’s hardly any debate at all. Gerard Schwarz can be a washout as music director of Mostly Mozart and everybody in the business knows it—but it’s never discussed openly. The critics don’t say a word.

So I thought I’d try writing what everybody says backstage. …

Late flash—I got a phone call from a member of the Seattle Symphony, whom of course I won’t name, though I’ll stress that it’s someone I’d never met or spoken to. This musician wanted to thank me for this review, and said, assuring me that all but two or three players in the orchestra would agree: “If they fire him at Mostly Mozart, maybe that will make it easier for us to get rid of him here.”

Never before, after writing a review, have I gotten a call like this.]

And due to that code of discreet conduct Sandow refers to, never before have most music directors received a thrashing like this, and that was eight years ago—he may have left Mostly Mozart, but he’s still our city’s most visible (where, you might ask?) ambassador for classical music.

As Sandow cites, it’s no secret in the world of classical music that Schwarz is no great shakes. It’s too bad that the board of trustees of the symphony has decided that, since Schwarz is quite the fundraiser, it is better to carry on with lifeless programming and deadening pseudo-competence. American classical musicians are known for their technical training and wizardry, but criticized widely for their lack of inspiration and experimentation, their lack of artistic life. Sounds like Schwarz to a tee. Are technically proficient concerts enough?

Maybe Schwarz is capable of more. Maybe I’m selling him short. I’ve only been in his audience a handful of times because, frankly, his performances and his selections have bored me. But has anyone ever experienced a truly magical concert led by him? Or more than one? I’d like to hear from the lovers (OK, haters and the ambivalent, you’re welcome, too).


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His recordings of Hovhaness, Diamond, Creston are favorites. I won't say they are great. The interpretations are at least convincing, especially the performance of Diamond's 3rd. Sadly I've heard little of that side of Mr. Schwartz or this orchestra since I moved here.

Because our culture is so passive, and because you're really not supposed to say anything here unless it's something nice, and because this town is crawling with people who think they live in paradise, Seattle has to live with so much mediocrity. We can't call bullshit on bullshit around here, so we get the conductors, politicians, newspapers, transit "options," and Viaduct we deserve.

That's bullshit. Incompetence doesn't only exist in Seattle.

Aw, Schwarz. How we love to hate.

I've sat through two magical performances by Schwarz. His Mahler 2 from a couple years back was stunning, and his Mahler 7, from this season's closing concert, was revelatory.

He's damn fine with big boned romantics like Mahler and Strauss, and he's not too shabby with neo-romantic American composers like John Harbison. In the "Made in America" program this season, he made a very strong showing of a piece by Pierre Jalbert (who is American, funny French name notwithstanding).

That Mahler 7? I own recordings by Abbado, Sotli, Haitink, Sinopoli, Tilson-Thomas and Bernstein. I've seen film of Bernstein with the Vienna Philharmonic. I've seen Tilson-Thomas conduct it live with San Francisco. These are the greats, the heavies. Schwarz blew them all to dust with a reading that was breathless in its exuberance, clear in its argument and extremely well balanced in color and weight.

Also on the program that night was Schubert's landmark "Unfinished" - model of late-classical poise and efficiency and a staple on orchestral programs from here to Timbuktu. Schwarz's performance was flat, slack and chaotic. One minutes into the development section of the first movement, he almost lost his players, waving his arms like an angry schizophrenic, giving his players way more information than they needed to navigate the score. The first movement, when it was working, was all about big, self-indulgent rubatos at the climaxes, and a second movement that had no wit, class or direction - commodities that come standard with competent Schubert.

Now, how can a man who can finish the "Unfinished" make such great art out of Mahler 7, unquestionably his hardest work? Musicians will tell you the answer's easy: Mahler wrote everything in score. When to speed up suddenly, when to play with "the greatest vehemence possible," when to go to the damn bathroom. It's all there, they'll say, and all Schwarz has to do is paint by numbers.

But, Tilson Thomas, Haitink, Sinopoli and even Bernstein don't paint by those numbers as compellingly as Schwarz does. There's something going on there, something verging on brilliance in Schwarz's Mahler.

Now, of course, there's so much more to music than Mahler. Schwarz makes mush out of the "Eroica," pacifies the "Rite of Spring" and can’t get Brahms 1 off the launch pad. He's a hack, and we – with the best acoustic hall on the West Coast, and dream players on stage – deserve better. If Schwarz wants to take the SSO to the “next level” he ought to quit – he’s really the only thing keeping them down. But, goddamn, that Mahler is good.

Maybe it's just me but when I was thumbing through the new SSO ticket sales flyer it seems that there's an alarming uptick in the number of pop-ish guest performers on this year's schedule. Come on Bo Diddley? The Cowboy Junkies? The Mills Brothers? (And aren't they all dead? The last time I saw them was when my mother let me stay up to watch The Dean martin Show.)

When you look at it - what does this say about the SSO's opinion of its potential audience?

Can we blame Gerry for this too?

Oh please oh please ohe please!

I’m an aficionado of Alan Hovaness. I was grateful that Schwartz put together a tribute concert exclusively of his music—that was magical.

Jen Graves should read her own paper. I've seen the seattle symphony several times over the last few seasons. I think the Stranger's classical writer has a better, calmer assessment.

I'm with mahlerite, even though I grew up with MTT in SF, where his mahler and especially Copland were SENSATIONS. Since moving here in 2000, I have yet to hear a sensation come out of Benaroya. The big works are only average, like the Eroica was very disappointing. The piano is also very blah, too many kids who have no feeling but a lot of power. and almost no Chopin, which filled the house every time in SF.
Someone new, please, someone exciting and full of life and PASSION in buckets, like MTT.

In the style of another person who's outlived his usefulness:

Is Schwarz a good fundraiser? Yes.

Can he conduct a Symphony better than me? Certainly!

Is his conducting style unorthodox? You bet.

Does it make music professors cringe? I think so.

Has he been here for a very, very, long time? Yes.

Is he held in high esteem by his peers? Probably not.

Does he have the respect of the orchestra he conducts? It sure doesn't look like it.

Is it time to show him the door? History will judge.

In the style of another person who's outlived his usefulness:

Is Schwarz a good fundraiser? Yes.

Can he conduct a Symphony better than me? Certainly!

Is his conducting style unorthodox? You bet.

Does it make music professors cringe? I think so.

Has he been here for a very, very, long time? Yes.

Is he held in high esteem by his peers? Probably not.

Does he have the respect of the orchestra he conducts? It sure doesn't look like it.

Is it time to show him the door? History will judge.

Setting the style aside, in all seriousness, Schwarz has his brilliant moments, but he's ossified, and Seattle's music program has ossified with him. Creativity requires change and new blood periodically. Schwarz brought something to Seattle's program that it didn't have before, and we should thank him for it--and move on. This would require some risk, however. Schwarz is popular with the old ladies who write the checks, and I fear that the Symphony's board is stuck in the mindset that, somehow, we're too small a city to attract better. Sometimes creativity requires risk.

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