Founder of the New Symphony

Symphony No. 5; Gustav Mahler, composer; BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra; Tadaaki Otaka, conducting

During my first academic year at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, the Philharmonia Orchestra, under the direction of Gerhard Samuel, received not only an invitation to perform at the International Mahler Festival in Paris, France, but also the opportunity to play the world premiere of a symphony. As the only American orchestra and the only collegiate orchestra to be granted a summons to the prestigious musical event, the powers what be at CCM were nothing less than thrilled to accept both invitations.

The world premiere of a major work always kindles excitement. The prospect of hearing something that has never been heard before stirs the heart and soul of the audience, the ensemble of performers, the conductor and the composer. And the real moment of triumph comes when the conductor can lead the composer out to the front of the stage after a gripping performance. But that didn’t happen at this premiere – for the symphony had been composed more than one hundred years before.

While attending the music conservatory in Vienna during the late 1870’s, the musically gifted Hans Rott studied composition and organ performance with Anton Bruckner and shared a room with fellow student Gustav Mahler. During the final year of his studies, Herr Rott set out to compose his first major work, and, in 1878, submitted the first movement of his Symphony in E Major to a composition contest. Nobody liked it. Gathering up all of the self-confidence he could muster, Rott finished the symphony in 1880 and began showing it around in an effort to get it performed. When he offered it to Brahms, the old master glanced at it and told the emotionally fragile Rott that he had wasted precious time and ink on rubbish, that he had no talent to speak of and that he should seek out another profession.

Lacking the inner resolve of his stout-hearted friend Gustav Mahler, the poor composer spiraled quickly into a depression that imminently led to mental instability. After two years in a mental hospital, he received a diagnosis claiming “hallucinatory insanity, persecution mania – recovery no longer to be expected”. He died six months later in June of 1884 at the tender age of twenty-five.

The Symphony in E Major landed in the hands of his friend Mahler. It was during Mahler’s perusal of the work that Rott’s genius was recognized. He wrote:

What music has lost in him cannot be estimated. Such is the height to which his genius soars in … [his] Symphony [in E Major], which he wrote as a twenty-year-old youth and makes him … the Founder of the New Symphony as I see it. To be sure, what he wanted is not quite what he achieved. … But I know where he aims.

Mr. Mahler took on the mantel of “Founder of the New Symphony”, set off in the direction that Mr. Rott pointed, and took the genre to impossible musical and emotional heights, famously declaring that, “the symphony must be like the world, it must embrace everything.”

In one of the concerts leading up to their trip to the Mahler festival, the Philharmonia Orchestra performed Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. I acquired my CD of this classic work from inside the cover of BBC Music Magazine Volume 1, Number 9, published in 1993.

On March 4, 1989, the Philharmonia Orchestra of CCM performed the world premiere of Symphony in E Major by Hans Rott in Corbett Auditorium on the campus of the University of Cincinnati. Six days later, they played it again at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris. The day after that, they traveled to London, England, to record the symphony.

A sad addendum: One of the horn players in the orchestra, Russell Kline, suffered an allergic reaction to peanut oil while dining out with friends on the last night in London. He tried to make it back to the hotel in time to take medication but didn’t make it. It seems that the legacy of Hans Rott’s symphony, beyond the triumphs accumulated by Gustav Mahler, is death and sadness.

Credits: To Gustav Mahler, on the occasion of the one-hundred fiftieth anniversary of his birth. Your symphonies are epic, maestro, but I really like your songs. Bravo.

Crossing the line

The Broadway Album; Barbra Streisand

My piano teacher, Dr. P., didn’t like the Hungarian Rhapsodies by Franz Liszt. As a matter of fact, he got particularly short with me when I brought a book of them into one of my lessons. Over the years, I’ve come around to seeing them in the same light that he did: Flash and Trash. Nominal music return for the effort invested. You might be able to pick up some chicks with them, though; as a matter of fact, that’s probably why they were composed.

Dr. P. didn’t like Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata, either. Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-Flat Major, Op. 106, takes forty-five minutes to perform. Four movements of uber-originality, with the last movement containing two more movements – and a Baroque style fugue. Why don’t you like it, Dr. P? I loved his answer: “It’s too Beethoveney.” You know, he was right on the money with that one. If only in this piece, Mr. Beethoven gives his Beethoven-ness priority over musicianship. Instead of putting us, as pianists, in the driver’s seat of a vintage Lincoln Cadillac, like he did with the other thirty-one piano sonatas, here he leaps up and down around our ankles like a dog, as if to say, “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!”

I don’t question the greatness Mr. Beethoven achieved with this composition. But he doesn’t give us an awful lot of time for ourselves. It’s all him, all the time. It’s Beethoven concentrate – in a can.

It reminds of me of a scene from the great Billy Wilder movie “Sunset Boulevard”. Gloria Swanson, as Norma Desmond, confronts her script editor William Holden, as Joe Gillis, about a portion of her screenplay, “Salome”, that he filed away into the trash.

GS: What’s that?

JG: Just a scene I threw out.

GS: Which scene?

JG: The one where you go to the slave market. It’s better to cut directly to John the Baptist.

GS: Cut away from me?

JG: Well, honestly, it’s a little too much of you…

OOoooooooooooooooooo.

I applaud Barbra Streisand for all the things that make her great: her singing, her acting and her directing. I especially enjoy her singing. Her approach to a song exemplifies original and glorious interpretation.

Regrettably, an encounter with Miss Babs, even in concert settings, comes drenched in politics, opinions and, all too often, an alienating worldview. Ms. Streisand is entitled to all of these things, certainly. I admire the fortitude of her convictions. But, how can fans, who see the world through glasses of a different hue, enjoy – the music – when they have to confront antithetical barbs (HA!) throughout the evening. Sorry, Ms. Streisand, but there’s a little too much of you.

Thankfully, when she recorded “The Broadway Album” in 1985, she was focused on the task at hand. The selections, the arrangements and the talent all come together to intimate Broadway’s finest fare in original and glorious light. I came to this album as one who had never heard most of the repertoire. Sometimes it’s hard to listen to these songs outside the treatment that they receive by Barbra Streisand and her musical friends on this album.

Maybe I was a little hard on old Hammy Bammy Beethoven. When you’re deaf as a post, can you really sound like anyone but yourself?

A joke: So if a deaf kid swears, does his mother make him wash his hands out with soap?

Credits: To Gloria Swanson, for playing herself on the big, silver screen. You were very brave and very brilliant. And a sight to see. Bravo.

Sad, Sad, Sad

No One Cares; Frank Sinatra

When I went to South Dakota All-State Music Camp in 1982, my friend D. from high school came, too. I have a rough time saying “from high school” because I know her from when we attended morning kindergarten in 1971. When Mrs. C. set places for us to sit in class, she sat me beside D. and we hit it off beautifully. So much so that, when the school needed a place in town on file to send me if weather conditions prohibited the school buses from going on their routes, I told Mom and Dad, I want to go to D.’s house.

Our friendship solidified as we discovered that we both had a passion for music. D. proved to be a fine pianist, singer and alto saxophonist. Her abilities on saxophone excelled to a point where our band director, Mr. D., suggested that she could learn far more from the saxophone instructor, and head of the music department, at SDSU. Dr. H. took her on as a student.

Both D. and I got placed in the Gold Jazz Band at music camp in 1982, me at the piano and D. in the saxophone section. Dr. H. directed the ensemble. We only had time during the week to learn two charts; one up-tempo tune and one ballad. The ballad called for an alto saxophone soloist and Dr. H. chose D. to play the solo. And she sounded awesome. I was so proud. The tune was called “Here’s That Rainy Day” with music by Jimmy Van Heusen and lyrics by Johnny Burke.

From the first few notes of this somber, sober yet elegant melody, I was captivated. The powerful torch song has entered my musical life many times over the years as I played it with various bands at receptions, accompanied a singer on a cruise ship and played it solo on the White House Steinway. I have suited up the song in several styles and fashions, but, no matter what she wears, her exotic shine and her come-hither-slowly luster never douses.

Some folks are never happy unless they’re miserable. Frank Sinatra’s album of melancholy ballads – “suicide songs” Mr. Sinatra calls them – from the beginning, never lets up with its despairing, crestfallen, woebegone intensity. Despite the inherent enchantment and the bewitching allure, even in my bluest moments, I can only listen to a few tracks at a time.

I remember when Bette Midler sang on Johnny Carson’s second-to-last “Tonight Show” in 1992. She had heard that one of his favorite songs was “Here’s That Rainy Day”. And after singing “One For My Baby” – with that unforgettable line, “And, John, I know you’re gettin’ anxious to close.” - she and Johnny fell into an impromptu “Rainy Day” duet. One of the greatest moments in television history.

Credits: To my friend D., for sharing her love for music with me. I think, by now, you’ve had an Oklahoma accent longer than you’ve had a South Dakota accent, my friend.

American Unhistory

Stan Freberg Presents The United States Of America, Part One; Stan Freberg

My friend Bud knows more songs than anybody I’ve ever known. We worked together on the Delta Queen steamboat. I once heard him say that he owns nearly twenty-thousand LPs. And not only that, he knows the words and music to virtually all of the songs that they archive. He possesses one of those minds that can latch onto a song in record time (HA!) and retain it forever. It doesn’t matter whether he sang a song last month or last decade, when it’s time to sing it, he has it.

Bud would do his own show on one of the evenings during each cruise. Just he and his guitar. He would start off singing a couple of his own favorites. Then he would do a section where he would start a song, then stop … and let the audience finish the lyric:

Bud: Little Sir Echo, how do you do?

Audience: Hello.

Bud: Hello.

Audience: Hello.

Bud: Hello.

And …

Bud: Did you ever see a dream walking?

Audience: Well, I did.

Bud: Did you ever hear a dream talking?

Audience: Well, I did.

The audience always knew the words.

Then he would sing a series of songs that had hilarious endings, like this favorite of mine:

Last night I sang a song beneath your window

My song was filled with elegance and love

The moon was shining bright as I sang to you last night

And the little stars were twinkling high above

My song was filled with eloquence and romance

I crooned to you beneath the silvery moon

Last night I sang a song beneath your window

And today I learned you moved away last June

Yes, Bud has comedic timing. I’ve never heard anyone tell a story or a joke better than Bud.

One day, while eating lunch, he mentioned Stan Freberg. I told him, I love Stan Freberg. Then he started spouting off hilarious lines that I’d never heard before. Bud, where is this stuff from? “You’ve never heard ‘Stan Freberg Presents The United States Of America’?” No. “When we get back to New Orleans, you’ve got to pick up a copy of this masterpiece. As much as I love ‘St. George And The Dragonet’, ‘The United States Of America’ tops anything he’s ever done.”

And Bud was not wrong. With the witty and brilliant composer/arranger Billy May at the music helm, and a cast with the likes of Paul Frees, Jesse White, Peter Leeds and June Foray, this musical satire of American history has all of the quality of a staged Broadway show and does nothing more than, and nothing short of, poke some innocent fun at some patriotic American icons who have grown a little stiff over the years. I think of it as the Dean Martin Roast that Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Betsy Ross never got and would have enjoyed.

Like Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles”, this recording could never be made today. Too many ethnics groups would feel compelled to show offense. It’s what we do best anymore, isn’t it? I don’t go out of my way to be politically correct, although, I don’t want to hurt anyone, either. I try to be culturally color-blind. But I DO like red, white and blue.

Credits: To my friend Bud, for funny songs, funny stories, funny jokes, funny skits and a funny man. I leave you, my friend, with this final thought: If a man offends you, walk for a mile in his shoes. And if he still offends you, you’re a mile away and you’ve got his shoes.

Only one hundred days left! Top forty-five begins on August 23!

Pastures

Wildwood Flower; June Carter Cash

We had five pastures on our farm. Dad kept the first-year heifers on a long strip of grass southeast of the barn. After their year-long probation, they joined the larger herd of cows in the four separate pastures to the north and east of the trees surrounding our farm. A charming, half-mile long lane separated two of the cornfields and served as kind of a bovine boulevard, leading from the cattle yard around the barn to, first, one pasture, to the right, and then one more at its end. The far side of the second pasture granted access to a third pasture, and the far east end of the third pasture led to a fourth.

Our farm had a well. It provided water for our house, via a cistern. It also provided water for the cows. Whoever spent the day around the house in the summer time received the task of keeping the stock tanks full of water. The pump had a switch under the windmill and by virtue of a complicated network of hoses, pipes and valves, we transported water to the stock tanks. We had one on the south side of the barn for the heifers, one on the north side for the bulls, and two on the northeast side for the cows and calves. If the cows grazed in the first of the three pastures, the cows ambled down the lane to drink from the tank in the cattle yard.

Make no mistake; the water from the well was cold. Despite the rogue one hundred degree temperature day, the water in the tanks stayed very cool. So much so, that Dad kept his cans of beer in the tanks.

I swear, one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever held down was the one to remember to shut off the water pump so that the tank didn’t run over. The ability to focus on a long-term, time sensitive mission at twelve to sixteen years of age provides the basis for one of the greatest hit-or-miss challenges in human history. I “missed” sooooooooo many times. Sometimes the cows stood in a foot of mud to drink from the tank because I forgot to shut off the pump. Dad would get so mad.

If I were a cow, back when we lived on the farm, I would have spent my winters and springs looking forward to the day in late June when Farmer Glen opened up the gate to the fourth pasture. It sat on a rise in the middle of the section where the breezes blow and you could see for miles. Surrounded on all sides by fields, away from the paparazzi and those rude cows two farms over, it offered all the privacy a cow could require. And best of all … a stock pond. No longer would I have to depend on those forgetful kids. Cow self-sufficiency; there ain’t nothing like it.

At least twice a day, Dad checked the cows. Where’s the bull, any injuries, any diseases, how many calves, how many cows, is the fence intact, any guest cows? Et Cetera. Sometimes, while he was there, he hunted pocket gophers. Sometimes, he mended a fence. But, I think, mostly, he just sat for a little while and relished a few quiet moments out in the country. His country.

For as long as I can remember, Dad would get up early on his birthday, jump in the pickup and drive out to the fourth pasture to check on the cows. While he was there, he would look for wild tiger lilies. Once he found some, he picked them and took them home to Mom for his birthday.

The countryside may not have the din of the city or the sounds of urban life, but you won’t find silence. The prairie wind, the leaves in the trees and the grain stalks in the fields that sway in the breeze, the birds, the lowing of the cattle and the farm machinery working the land all contribute to a different kind of pastoral symphony.

Not all tractors sound the same, and I suppose that a true tractor connoisseur would learn to discern which farmer is on what tractor in which field simply by listening. My mom, my sisters and I, however, listened for something else: singing. Dad’s singing could be heard above the sound of the tractor at a distance of three quarters of a mile away. Typically, it was the same song, marked as the default setting in his song preferences. No words, just pure bluegrass melody. Ask him to sing and the first sound out of his mouth would be this song.

He once told me that it was called “The Mountain Wild Flower”. I searched for it for years with no success. But I found it … in the movie “Walk The Line”. Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash sings sad words, that I’ve never heard, to a gentle, simple melody that hung around our Dad’s voice like a halo. “The Wildwood Flower” sounds just as good with a piano accompaniment as it does with tractor accompaniment. It sits in a place of honor on my iPod.

Credits: To Dad, on what would have been his eightieth birthday. For the fourteenth consecutive year, the wild tiger lilies remain untouched in Paradise Pasture near Bruce, South Dakota. We love you. We miss you.

Hot in Finland

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy; Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

My first job with Sam Butera took place in Finland at the Pori Jazz Festival, the largest annual event in the country. Since its inception in 1966, the nine-day festival has drawn as many as two-hundred fifty thousand to hear the likes of Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, Art Blakey, Carlos Santana, Wayne Shorter, James Brown, Phil Collins and Sting. A wide variety of performance venues scattered throughout the coastal city of Pori gives jazz enthusiasts a wide palette of jazz styles, including blues, soul, funk, hip hop, Afro-Cuban and world music.

The invitation extended to Sam Butera and the Wildest in 2003, and, subsequently, his acceptance of said invitation, caught the attention of the committee that planned the VIP dinner the night before the festival opened. Out of all the big-name artists who had received an invite to bring their artistry to Finland’s jazz fans, they asked Sam if he and his band would entertain the men and women who had ponied up the dough to sponsor various aspects of the festival, with a two-set concert. What an honor! THIS … was my first gig with Sam.

We had gone through Sam’s book of charts two or three times at the house in Las Vegas before asking Sam to go through the music with us. It was just a run-through of the music to nail down the road map of the songs. This was the first time I met Sam. He was just your normal, every-day seventy-two-year-old man carrying a tenor sax. At the various airports, nothing particularly distinguished him from any other senior flying the friendly skies that day.

When Sam hit the stage that first night in Pori, I saw a man transformed. His eyes were bright, his grin was dazzling, his sax solos were vibrant, his feet were dancing, his soul was alive. The energy of one of the men credited with inventing the Las Vegas lounge act was kicking up a cloud of shuffle dust this audience would not soon forget. Nor would I.

During the break, a young gentleman entered the green room, took a moment to shake hands with Sam, then headed toward me with hand extended. “Hi, I’m Joshua Levy. I play piano with the Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. You’re tearing it up out there.” Well, I’m kind of feeling my way through. It’s my first night backing up the master out there. “You’re kidding! Well, nobody would know.” Thanks. What brings you here? “I’ve been a Sam Butera fan since, I don’t know when. We’re playing a concert tomorrow night at the same time as you guys. So, if I wanted to hear Sam, this was it.” I’ve got one of your albums. You guys have a great sound and you’re an awesome piano player. “Thanks.”

Finland was experiencing a heat wave while we visited their country. So, after my encounter with Mr. Levy, I hustled out of the room to find some cold water. When I came back, here was Sam and the rest of the band, receiving accolades from an enthusiastic, well-dressed, red-headed woman. When I walked into the room, she was just saying, “It’s hot, isn’t it? It’s not usually like this.” Sam turned on his grin and said, “We live in Las Vegas. We’re used to it.” She smiled, turned to leave the room, saw me and asked, “You play the piano, yes?” That’s right, ma’am. She took my hand, bowed her head, and moved to the next room. I turned to my friend Jay and asked, Who was that? “The president of Finland.”

It takes a special kind of talent to shake hands with the president of another country without knowing that it’s happening.

Credits: To Willis Haviland Carrier, for inventing the modern electric air conditioner. After four days in Finland and eight months in Las Vegas, I’m a big … fan.

Mountains

Eine Alpensinifonie; Richard Strauss, composer; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Daniel Barenboim, conducting

In June of 1980, my sister K. boarded the Empire Builder at the Amtrak Station in Fargo, North Dakota, bound for Montana, just days after Mount St. Helens had erupted. She had taken a job at Sperry Chalet, a remote lodge deep in the wilderness of Glacier National Park and accessible only by hiking or by horseback. A few weeks later, we started receiving letters that chronicled her adventures. She also sent pictures.

Before that time, mountains were tall, far-flung landforms that I read about in encyclopedias and saw in the movies. What could they matter to me? I had never seen one and knew of nobody who lived near one … until now. K.’s photographs opened my mind and soul to the beauty of snow-capped peaks, flora-clad valleys, deep lakes, ancient glaciers, cautious sheep, curious goats, comedic marmots and noble moose. If this is what you saw when you went to the mountains, then I wanted to leave to see them yesterday.

In June of 1983, I, my sister D. and the Sioux Valley High School Band and Chorus boarded coaches headed for Colorado Springs, Colorado, for a music festival. I don’t remember where on the map we started to see mountains, but from the moment that I saw them, I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. They were almost two hundred miles away … and I could see them plain as day. I was at pains to drink in the scope of this beautiful sight. And those pains didn’t let up throughout the entire trip.

During the spring of 1987, I determined to do something different over the summer. I landed a gig as a waiter at the Grand Lake Lodge in Grand Lake, Colorado, right outside the west entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. My friend G. was driving to a job at the Very Large Array in Socorro, New Mexico, and offered to drop me off at my job on the way to his. This necessitated a spin through Rocky Mountain National Park. Like before, the magnitude of beautify and dimension stunned me; and I couldn’t believe that I would be spending my whole summer here.

On the summer solstice, the management closed the lodge early so that all of the crew and staff could ride up to the highest point in the park attainable by car. We sat on an outcropping of rock on a carpet of fragile tundra to watch the sun descend beyond a sea of pine trees, casting color residue in the vestiges of clouds that hovered above the grandeur. About twenty minutes later, we turned to the east to see the lights of Boulder and an electric thunderhead down in the valley. Then a full moon made his entrance behind the city lights, climbing effortlessly in the sky, endeavoring to bathe nature’s resplendence with an eerily decorative, lunar glow.

“An Alpine Symphony”, Richard Strauss’ fifty-minute long tone poem, decries its designation as a symphony by forgoing the traditional three to four movement structure. Nothing less than twenty-two continuous sections of music tell the story of an eleven-hour trek (from just before dawn to nightfall) over an Alpine mountain. The twenty-two sections have labels that depict the view or activity during the hike: Entry into the Wood, Wandering by the Brook, At the Waterfall, On Flowering Meadows, On the Glacier and many more. I find it interesting to note that, in 1983, the 1981 Berlin Philharmonic’s recording of Strauss’ “Eine Alpensymphonie”, under the baton of Herbert von Karajan, became the first compact disc ever to be pressed.

I haven’t had that many paying jobs that strayed very far from music. I pulled volunteer corn out of the bean fields for our neighbors. I once moved desks from one campus to another in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for my aunt who worked in Continuing Education at SDSU. And in 1987, I was a singing waiter at a tourist haven in the mountains of Colorado. I was a good singer. I was not a good waiter.

Credits: To the Grand Lake Lodge, a rustic mom and pop joint that offered more fun than glamour. She is for sale if you would like her.