Swollen orchestral manner and poor taste

'A lengthy, pompous, bourgeois sort of thing; it reflects the complacency and stodginess of the era of the antimacassar and pork-pie bonnets; it is affected by the poor taste and the swollen orchestral manner of the post-romantics' - Olin Downes reviews John Barbirolli's performance of Elgar's Second Symphony with the New York Philharmonic on 23rd March, 1939.

Music critics will always differ. George Bernard Shaw thought Elgar was carrying on Beethoven's business, and leading musicians had some interesting opinions about Elgar's music.
Sorry about the sleeve. This is one of the first CD releases of Boult's last recording of Elgar's masterly E flat symphony. EMI simply took the original LP artwork and ruined it with that logo. James the joiner is prancing around in Italy so the LP sleeve didn't get scanned in. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Berlin Philharmonic's first woman conductor

In 2005 the appointment of a woman music director by a major American orchestra caused a storm of controversy. So, it is surprising to find that it was back in 1930 that the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra was first conducted by a woman, and even more surprising to find she was an American. But the story doesn't have a happy ending. Despite receiving critical acclaim, Antonia Brico found doors closed to her when she returned to the US, and was forced to form her own orchestras to continue her conducting career. She is seen above conducting in New York in 1945. (Image credit Dr. Ralph Weizsäcker).

Antonia Brico was born Wilhelmina Wolthus in Rotterdam in the Netherlands in 1902, and emigrated to California with her foster parents in 1908. She attended high school in Oakland where she gained experience as a pianist and conductor. She went on to study liberal arts at the University of California, Berkeley, and also worked at the San Francisco Opera as an assistant to the director, Paul Steindorff. After graduating she studied piano under a variety of teachers, most notably under Sigismund Stojowski.

In 1927 she travelled to Europe to study at the Berlin State Academy of Music and was the first American to graduate from its master class in conducting. She then studied for three years with Karl Muck, who was conductor of the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra. While studying with Muck she had the distinction of working as a coach at Bayreuth. In 1930 Antonia Brico became the first woman to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic. This was not a token appearance. After her debut the critic of the influential Allgemeine Zeitung wrote that she "possesses more ability, cleverness and musicianship than certain of her male colleagues who bore us in Berlin."

But this positive press did not help her when she returned to the US after her Berlin debut. She was well received when she conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic, but was not appointed to a vacant post there. Following a tour of Poland and the Balkans, she returned to the US where she appeared as guest conductor of the Musicians' Symphony Orchestra in many major citiies. However, she failed to win an appointment with any of the established orchestras.

Rather than accept defeat Antonia Brico formed her own Women's Symphony Orchestra in 1934, with backing from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. In a wonderful example of reverse equality the orchestra changed its name to the Brico Symphony Orchestra in 1939 when it opened its ranks to male musicians. This review in Time of their concert in Manhattan Town Hall in March 1935 illustrates the prejudices that the Women's Symphony Orchestra faced:

Miss Beatrice Oliver played the oboe as if she had never heard of the doctors' treatises which warn all oboe-players against congestion in the head. She sounded A. The other players took the pitch. Conductor Brico appeared in a severe black jacket, bobbed her bushy head and the concert was off. The strings played soundly and vigorously through Beethoven's Egmont Overture, his Second Symphony, a Chopin concerto in which Pianist Sigismund Stojowski. once Brico's teacher, soloed academically. Brico conducted with force but not affectation. The strings were rarely delicate but they caught her determination. The trumpets were strident, too, but knew their notes. Only the French horns soured continuously. The women who played them seemed completely baffled.


The photo above was taken and shows Antonia Brico in 1938 with Mayor La Guardia of New York and Mayor Angelo Rossi of San Francisco. (Image credit NARA/SPB). In 1938 she had became the first woman to conduct an opera performance by a major New York company when she took the baton for the New York Hippodrome Opera production of Humperdinck's "Hansel and Gretel". And in 1938 she added another male scalp to her collection when she became the first woman to conduct the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. But she was sanguine about these achievements, saying in an interview "I do not call myself a woman conductor, I call myself a conductor who happens to be a woman"; words which were later echoed by a great woman composer.

Antonia Brico went on to conduct the Federal Orchestra at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Her programmes included contemporary American music, and among the premieres she presented was Elinor Remick Warren's The Harp Weaver at Carnegie Hall in 1936. She also taught, and her pupils included the child prodigy pianist and composer Philippa Schuyler for a short time in 1939. Brico resigned as Schuyler's teacher before the child's notoriously ruthless mother could fire her. Perceptively, in view of later events, the teacher wrote the following about her pupil: "Too many highly gifted childrem disaappear into oblivion because they play too many concerts during the formative years".

European tours continued for Antonia Brico, both as a pianist and a conductor, and she was invited by none other than Jean Sibelius to conduct the Helsinki Symphony Orchestra. The photo below shows her conducting the San Francisco Bay Region Symphony Orchestra in 1938. (Image credit NARA/SPB)


In 1942 Antonia Brico moved to Denver, Colorado. Again she founded her own ensembles, a Bach Society and the Women's String Ensemble. She also conducted the Denver Businessmen's Orchestra. In 1948 this unfortunately titled ensemble was renamed the Brico Symphony Orchestra. In the same year she was appointed conductor of the Denver Community Symphony (later the Denver Symphony Orchestra), and continued to guest conduct orchestras around the world, including the Japan Women's Symphony.

She also became a respected teacher in Denver. Her students there included the folksinger Judy Collins. In 1974 Judy Collins made a documentary film with Jill Godmilow about the life of her teacher titled "Antonia: A Portrait of a Woman". This film created considerable interest. In 1975 Brico was scheduled to conduct a single concert at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York. But this sold out so quickly that a second concert was hastily arranged, and CBS recorded the concerts for release on LP. She made her last New York appearance in 1977 conducting the Brooklyn Philharmonia. Antonia Brico died in 1989 in Denver, Colorado.

* Antonia Brico's Mozart LP is still available on a Sony CD.
* Another classical connection with Judy Collins is Joshua Rifkin. He wrote orchestral arrangements for three of her Collins' albums, In My Life, Wildflower and Whales and Nightingales. It was Rifkin's 1972 recording of the B minor Mass that pioneered the 'one voice per part' approach to Bach. In My Life includes a setting of Francesco Landini's Ecco la Primavera that uses sackbuts, viols, and a harmonium. Her 1967 version of Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now on Wildflower was a major chart hit for Judy Collins. On it Joshua Rifkind conducts his own arrangement and plays harpshichord.

Now read about the Berlin Philharmonic's first black conductor.
Sources:
- Trust Your Heart by Judy Collins, Houghton Mifflin ISBN 0395412854
- New York Times, August 5 1989
- Sony/BMG
- Time, March 5 1935
- Time, Feb 4 1935
- Music Web International, Elinor Remick Warren
- Composition In Black and White by Kathryn Talalay, Oxford University Press ISBN 0195113934
- New Deal Network
- DBH cultural event newsletter, June 26 2007
- Wikipedia entry
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

BBC Prom evokes memories of 'Glorious John'

Here are Pliable's personal picks for the coming week's BBC Proms, plus a wonderfully meandering path which leads eventually to Sir John Barbirolli (photo above) and the topical New York Philharmonic. All Proms are available for seven days online, detailed programmes and broadcast times for every concert are available from the BBC web site.

* July 25, 7.00pm - Marin Alsop and Bournemouth Symphony in a programme of Beethoven's Leonore No. 3, Barber's Violin Concerto, Copland's Symphony No. 3. Worth a listen. But if you had a top conductor, top orchestra, and top concert hall for the evening, not to mention a few million radio, TV and internet listeners, would you really give them that programme?

* July 25, 10.00pm - Hummel's Alma virgo and Schubert's Mass D950 with Richard Hickox and Collegium Musicum 90. Shouldn't have been bumped into the late night slot by that Fanfare for the Common Man.

* July 26, 7.30pm - a classic British music Prom including Tippet's neglected Triple Concerto, and Vaughan William's luminous Fifth Symphony, which for my money is one of the great twentieth century symphonies. Exactly the kind of programme the chief conductor of the BBC Symphony should be performing. Only problem is he isn't. Jiří Bĕlohlávek will be pursuing his operatic career fifty miles away in Glyndebourne, and rehearsing the London Philharmonic in Tristan. Which means Andrew Davis conducts. Which is probably not such a bad thing.

* July 27, 7.30pm - yet another bizarre "find me three works that together last for 90 minutes" programme from Nicholas Kenyon - R. Strauss Macbeth, Britten Our Hunting Fathers and Nielsen's Symphony No. 4. The justification for the programme is a 'Shakespeare and Auden theme', which leaves me struggling to find the connection with Nielsen 4. Suggestions for suitably bizarre encores on a postcard to On An Overgrown Path please. Anyway, the performance should blaze with Marc Elder conducting the Hallé Orchestra, and the Nielsen is the second truly great twentieth century symphony in the week.

At least we should get to hear these works complete. Which is more than happened with the BBC Proms commission Substratum from Sam Hayden on Tuesday this week. Immediately before the first performance it was announced the BBC Symphony under David Robertson would only play the last three of the new works seven movements. The official reason given by the BBC was inadequate preparation time. But I wonder if the real reason was some audience participation in the unperformed part of the score?

Writing about Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 5 in D prompted me to play the CD of Sir John Barbirolli's classic account (EMI CDM 5651102) of that masterpiece. What a wonderful convergence of paths. Barbirolli's is one of the great readings of VW5, and 'Glorious John' was permanent conductor and music director of the New York Philharmonic from 1936 to 1941. Barbirolli was 37 when he took up the post, and the New York Philharmonic this week announced the appointment of the currently 40 year old Alan Gilbert to lead the orchestra from 2009. Sounds like a great decision, and a great antidote to the current round of complacent jet set maestros. But it won't all be plain sailing in New York, as Glorious John found out.

More on Barbirolli, Vaughan Williams and Bax's Tintagel (which is the coupling on the VW5 CD) on this overgrown path.
Sir John Barbirolli photo from EMI. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Youthful optimism will triumph

Today's Observer leader says it all - Julia Pryde is not a household name. She was a 23-year-old graduate biology student who wanted to encourage recycling at the cafeteria at Virginia Tech University. Her face is not as universally known as that of Cho Seung-hui, the man who shot her and 31 others on campus last week. Cho secured his status as an icon of infamy by taking time, amid the massacre, to send a video manifesto to a TV network. Cho wanted not only to terrorise his fellow students, but to stare the world in the face, or rather, to force the world to look him in the eye.

NBC has been criticised for showing the footage. Although there was a legitimate public interest in airing the material - it helped explain the dark motivation of the killer - the decision to run it on a constant loop within hours of the killings was clearly not taken with any consideration of sensitivity to survivors or victims' relatives. NBC apologised and toned down their coverage. But in the modern media age, Cho's broadcast would always have found a worldwide audience. He would still, one way or another, have forced everyone to hear his awful message: it is you who are responsible for this, not me.

That is not true, of course. Cho was a psychopath, determined to kill. It may be the case that his determination was expedited by easy access to guns. But that is a feature of American society and American politics with its own strange logic, immune to comment by outsiders.

The image of Cho striking murderous poses crosses all cultures. It is the face of modern, media-literate terror. That is not a fair emblem of modern American society. A truer symbol is found in the packed classrooms and lecture theatres of Virginia Tech, filled, just days after the massacre, with students who were determined to get on with their education - a triumph of youthful optimism over deadly nihilism.

Our thoughts have been with America this week. Last night we were at a performance in Norwich Cathedral of that life-affirming work, Haydn's Creation. And now playing, on a wonderful spring morning that the victims in Virginia will never see, is a hymn to the triumph of youthful optimism over nihilism. Bernstein's 1956 comic operetta Candide sums up the strange logic of American society and politics with its influences ranging from Offenbach to Gershwin, and use of Voltaire to denounce McCarthyism. The finale "Make our garden grow" also say it all.

* London is to get a new production of Candide. I just hope the music survives the staging. My header photo is of Bernstein's pupil Marin Alsop conducting the New York Philharmonic's semi-staged production - watch a video excerpt here.

Now read more on that strange logic here.
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Simply chic symphonies?

The Overgrown Path leads to the symphonies of Leonard Bernstein. There have been very perceptive posts from Hucbald (check his excellent blog A monk's musical musings) and Fairhaven Friend (who contributed my guest blog A year at the symphony) on my recent Mass post. These prompted me to listen last night to Bernstein’s Kaddish Symphony (No 3) in his own performance with the New York Philharmonic and soprano Jennie Tourel.

It strikes me that Bernstein’s symphonies contain the same blazing creativity that crackles through Mass, without the excesses and indulgences that flaw it. Why aren’t these works better known? Or am I wrong? Are these simply chic symphonies?

Whatever we think of his Mass and symphonies, there is no doubt that Bernstein was a larger than life figure. When I was at EMI/Angel in the ‘70s he was one of our artists. He was contracted with us to record with the French National Orchestra. I clearly recall a Milhaud album with La création du monde and the wonderful jazz inspired Le boeuf sur la toit, and was there also a Berlioz Harold in Italy?

Lenny (right) came to London's Royal Festival Hall on tour with the Vienna Philharmonic. At the time he was having a mutual, and passionate , affair with the orchestra. He conducted a typically over-the-top Eroica which included all sorts of gymnastics on the podium. Immediately after the applause died down my wife and I ducked round backstage to congratulate him on cloning Martha Graham with Beethoven. In the Green Room the maestro was stark naked apart from a skimpy shot-silk bath robe. As we both went to congratulate him he started to play with the chord fastening the robe. I’m still trying to work out who that performance was for.

* My photo actually shows Bernstein with sister Shirley in the Green Room at Carnegie Hall after a performance with the Israel Philarmonic, March 1951. The image credit is an interesting article Leonard Bernstein Talks About the Theremin, the Ondes Martenot and the Tape Recorder, which also allows me to add another Overgrown Path my own theremin article Neil Armstrong finally reveals his moon music.

Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
If you enjoyed this post take the overgrown path to My first classical record

* This article was originally published on August 2, 2005, and is reblogged here as part of On An Overgrown Path's second anniversary celebrations of Music beyond borders. Follow this link to read the comments posted to the original article.

'Glorious John' in New York

'Barbirolli's appointment was announced by the New York Philharmonic Society's directorial board on 7th April 1936. The musical world rubbed incredulous eyes. Barbirolli, said the announcement, was to open the forthcoming season, conducting twenty-six concerts out of a season's total of eighty-four. In much newspaper comment the following day surprise verged on perplexity. Nobody had heard of John Barbirolli. The official statement carried a hundred or two words of biographical matter which fed without satisfying. Not a line in the newspaper morgues. Not a word in the New York Times' elephantine index, a fact about which the New York Times did not omit to exclaim.

The New York Philharmonic was the greatest orchestra in the world. Every New Yorker knew that. There were people in Vienna, Berlin, London and Milan who knew it as well. What sense was there in giving the New York Philharmonic to a man who had never been on an American front page before or, so far as could be made out, on any front page of moment anywhere?' From John Barbirolli by Charles Read, published 1971

John Giovanni Batista Barbirolli was born in London in 1899 to a musical family. His father and grandfather were leading Italian violinists, and his mother was French. After studying at the Royal Academy of Music he started his career as a cellist with leading London orchestras, and was the soloist in an early performance of Elgar's Cello Concerto. He was also an acclaimed opera conductor who worked with the British National Opera and Covent Garden Companies. In 1933 he was appointed permanent conductor of the Scottish National Orchestra, and it was while holding this position that he received a cablegram from Arthur Judson, manager of the New York Philharmonic, inviting him to a ten week try out for the permanent conductor's position in succession to the legendary Toscanini.

Money was the main reason for Toscanini's departure from the Philharmonic, and his re-emergence in the same city with the reconstituted NBC Orchestra. The depression had hit America hard, and the New York Philharmonic had run up a quarter of a million dollar deficit in their 1935-36 season. They had been unable to reach an acceptable financial agreeement with Toscanini for 1936-37, so the search had started for an alternative. Stokowski was unwilling to make the time available, Fritz Busch had commitments in Denmark and London. Furtwängler was favoured, but made a politic withdrawal after his Nazi connections prompted major protests. Finding themselves between a rock and a hard place the board of the Philharmonic announced Barbirolli's probationary appointment in April 1936.

The programme for Barbirolli's first ever concert in New York on 5th November, 1936 was Berlioz, Bax (The Tale the Pines Knew - unknown in America), Mozart, and concluded with Brahms' Fourth Symphony. In his probationary season there were three works from American composers not previously performed by the Philharmonic, Charles Martin Loeffler's tonepoem Memories of my Childhood, a symphony by Anis Fuleihan, and Philip James' Bret Harte overture. He also performed Koussevitzky's Double Bass Concerto.

Barbirolli was an immediate success with both players and audience. Soon after an acclaimed Tchaikosky Fifth a deputation of players told the Philharmoic management that they would be happy for Barbirolli to be appointed to a permanent position. The outcome of this was an invitation to him to become Music Director and Permanent Conductor for three years starting with the 1937-38 season. In fact he spent a total of seven seasons in New York.

The early years were a honeymoon period. Barbirolli's main strength was in the romantic repertoire. In his first season he performed 183 works by seventy-five composers. Wagner was most frequent with sixty performances, Beethoven second with thirty-nine, followed by Brahms, Berlioz, Richard Strauss, Weber and Mendelssohn. This programming did not please all his New York audiences, where for instance was crowd pleaser Tchaikovsky? Thus at this early stage were the small seeds of discontent sowed that were ultimately to cause his departure. But overall the early seasons were a triumph. The 1937-38 season was one of the most successful in the Philharmonic's history. Average attendances reached almost two and a half thousand, and critic Olin Downes, of whom we shall hear more later, wrote "Nearly every performance of the evening, good or bad, was applauded with practically equal fervour and tumult".

New music was a central feature of Barbirolli's New York programmes. During his first season he read through more than fifty new scores from American resident composer's. Subsequently he programmed works from Daniel Gregory Mason, Joseph Deems Taylor (excerpts from his comic opera Peter Ibbetson), Abram Chasins, Samuel Barber, Ernst Toch, Arkady Dubensky, Charles Wakefield Cadman, Quinto Maganini, Gardner Read, Charles Griffes and Quincy Porter. Among the works from American based composers that he premiered were Lucien Cailliet's fantasia and fugue on O Susanna, and Paul Creston's Threnody.

Barbirollis exploration of new music ranged wider than North America. His programmes also included Ibert's Chamber Concertino, Eugene Goosen's Concertina for double string orchestra, Bliss' Double Piano Concerto, and two important works from Britten, the Violin Concerto and Sinfonia da Requiem. But his championing of contemporary music again brought him into conflict with the all important subscribers. He was told by an associate manager of the orchestra that when first performances were announced many subscribers asked to swap their tickets for other concerts which did not feature contemporary works. The evangelical Barbirolli was shocked by this, and concluded that the subscribers were ... "prepared to damn a new work before hearing it... If a person hears such a work and doesn't like it he is entitled to his opinion. But just to stay away when one is programmed certainly does not help the Society or the conductor in their efforts to give new music a proper chance." But the approbium of subscribers was not reserved exclusively for contemporary works. An inspired performance by Sergei Rachmaninov, no less, as soloist in Beethoven's First Piano Concerto was followed by an audience walk-out after the first movement of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony.

Ultimately it was the combination of New York critics and audiences that were Barbirolli's undoing. By the 1939-40 season Arthur Judson was becoming concerned about subscription sales. The critics started to turn, and the glowing reviews from his early years with the orchestra turned into what contemporary writer David Ewen called 'a rain of critical denunciation'. This was led by Olin Downes writing for the New York Times and Virgil Thomson in the Herald Tribune. The quality and insight of this 'criticism' can be guaged by quoting a contemporary review by Virgil Thomson, not of a Barbirolli performance, but of the work being performed...."Elgar's Enigma Variations are an academic effort not at all lacking in musical charm. I call them academic because the composer's interet in the musical devices he was employing was greater than his effort towards a direct and forceful expression of anything in particular......Mr. Elgar's variations are mostly a pretext for orchestration, a pretty pretext and a graceful one, not without charm and a modicum of sincerity but a pretext for fancy work all the same, for that massively frivolous patchwork in pastel shades of which one sees such quantities in any intellectual British suburban dwelling".

John Barbirolli's last concert as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic was on 7th March 1943. In April he sailed for a war torn Britain via Lisbon, and the position of permanent conductor of the Hallé Orchestra where he excelled. New York's loss was Manchester's gain, and Barbirolli was to continue his association with the Hallé until his death in 1970 (when he had the last laugh on Virgil Thomson by instructing that Nimrod from the Enigma Variations should be played at his funeral). From 1960-67 he was conductor-in-chief at the Houston Symphony. It is appropriate that when he first returned to guest conduct the New York Philharmonic in 1959 his opening concert included Vaughan Williams' Eighth Symphony which he had premiered in Manchester just three years earlier. This symphony is dedicated by the composer 'For glorious John, with love and admiration from Ralph'.

The New York critics played a major part in Glorious John's premature departure from the city. So it is fitting to give the last words to Harold C. Schonberg: - 'Barbirolli . . illuminated for us, incandescently the meaning of the notes that great men put on paper'.

If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Furtwangler and the forgotten new music
Picture credits: Barbirolli header - Barbirolli Society, Statue of Liberty - South Georgia College, Barbirolli conducting - Bach Cantatas, Barbirolli sketch - Princeton images , Barbirolli footer - Manchester City Council .Please report any broken links, missing images, or other errors to overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk