by Peter Cates

Herbert von Karajan

Herbert von Karajan’s 114th birthday anniversary is April 5. He may have been arguably the most powerful conductor to emerge in the entire world of classical music after World War II, around 1947, following de-Nazification proceedings (in order to work during the Hitler years, he had to join the Nazi party, like several million others, but he was not a war criminal and did have a Jewish wife whom he kept protected).

In the immediate aftermath of World War II and living in a very low profile manner (and from hand to mouth) in a shabby apartment in Vienna while it was still occupied by the Russians, an Englishman came visiting with bottles of brandy and several rolls of sausage. He was Walter Legge and he was in charge of recording at EMI in London. BTW, if Legge had been caught by the Russians with the brandy and sausages, he would have been thrown in prison several years for smuggling, if not shot.

Legge had created the world-renowned Philharmonia Orchestra primarily for studio recording and had recruited the finest musicians for its ranks. He also had a hard and fast rule in which each musician had to re-audition each year to maintain the Orchestra’s incomparable standard, unlike other major orchestras in which its members could rest a bit more comfortably on their backsides.

Legge had already hired such brilliant conductors as Walter Susskind, Alceo Galliera , Paul Kletzki, Rafael Kubelik and a few others as drillmasters but he wanted a more permanent music director. Karajan had already recorded several extraordinary 78 sets with orchestras in Ger­many, Holland, Italy and Vienna for such labels as Polydor and Columbia (Highly recommended are the Polydor recordings of Beethoven’s 7th, Brahms 1st, Dvorak’s New World and the Tchaikovsky Pathetique Symphonies, each of which Karajan left at least five different recordings. The Polydors were released in a CD set by Deutsche Grammophon a few years ago and are frequently available via the internet sources or accessible on youtube. ).

Until 1955, Karajan recorded a pile of distinguished recordings with the Philharmonia Orchestra and was Music Director during most of the 50s of the La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy.

Karajan unfortunately aroused the enmity of Germany’s then more powerful conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler (1886-1954) who was also an interpretive genius on a different, possibly more sublime level. And Furtwangler reigned supreme as the music director of the Berlin Philharmonic. The older conductor did everything he could to make Karajan’s life difficult in blocking the younger man’s ability to work. The two had one huge personality conflict.

However, after Furtwangler’s death in 1954, the story is related that that orchestra was feeling demoralized, its management appointed Karajan, he came to the first rehearsal and he stated to the players that, “We will play great music as we always did in the past.”

Karajan also made millions of dollars for the orchestra and himself over the next 30 years through the recordings and videos, few of which have gone out of print.

Out of the many Karajan recordings on my shelves, I recommend the 1982 live Mahler 9th Symphony, the 1961 Puccini Tosca with Leontyne Price, the mid ‘60s Mascagni Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncovallo Pagliacci, any one of his Beethoven Symphony cycles and his gripping performance of the Sibelius 4th Symphony.

Herbert von Karajan died in 1989 at the age of 81.

by Peter Cates

Lorin Maazel

Conductor/violinist Lorin Maazel (1930-2015) was a child prodigy and at 9 years of age guest-conducted the New York Philharmonic at the 1939 World’s Fair at the invitation of Leopold Stokowski.

Maazel had a reputation for being a little supercilious prig; when he inquired at a rehearsal, “What are we playing today, gentlemen?”, someone yelled out, “How about cowboys and Indians?”

When he was in third grade, he was enrolled in advanced French and calculus. As a teenager, he was a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony during its years under the holy terror leadership of Fritz Reiner and was one of the founding members of that city’s renowned Fine Arts Quartet (its cellist George Sopkin retired to the Maine woods in the late 70s).

Maazel headed to Europe for further study and made an impression in guest-conducting engagements. In 1960, he was the first American to conduct at the summer Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, Germany.

By 1965, he was music director of the West Berlin Deutsche Opera and Radio Symphony Orchestra, with which he recorded Verdi’s Traviata, Beethoven’s Fidelio, and Puccini’s Tosca at the opera and Bach’s B minor Mass and Mozart’s Symphonies 38 and 39, to name a few that stand out.

Also exemplary were sets of the Tchaikovsky 6 Symphonies and Sibelius’s 7 with the Vienna Philharmonic.

Maazel’s conducting style was a strange mixture of very exciting and willfully hum drum, as though he was either ignited by a particular piece or didn’t give a hoot. Interestingly, I noticed in having attended two of his concerts that, when he was willfully hum drum in the performance, he seemed to be enjoying himself and quite transfixed.

His technique was crystal clear, he had a photogenic memory and he learned new works at the speed of light.

His appearances in the United States were slow to come but he did guest-conduct several times with the New York Philharmonic during the early to mid ‘60s when Leonard Bernstein was out of town.

Then in 1972, he succeeded the late George Szell as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and won Grammies for the orchestra’s recordings of the complete Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet ballet and George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess.

His appointment there did spark controversy. He was one of four candidates with the others being Istvan Kertesz, Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos and Claudio Abbado and was the last choice in a poll taken among the players in the orchestra, but the trustees and other moneymen pulled a fast one and chose Maazel.

I cherish his Cleveland sets of the Beethoven 9 and Brahms 4 Symphonies for, again, their feisty and perverse eccentricities and the very colorful Moussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition.

From 1982 to 1985, Maazel spent very turbulent years as music director of the Vienna State Opera, succeeded André Previn in Pittsburgh in 1988, took a position in 1996 with the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, in Munich, and then led the New York Philharmonic from 2002 to 2008.

Maazel owned a 600-acre farm in Castleton, Virginia, where he and his third wife set up a summer music school and festival during the 2000s.

By early 2014, the conductor’s health was failing and he died in July of that year.

His widow is still running the Castleton Summer Music Festival.

Much of Lorin Maazel’s music making can be accessed on YouTube.

by Peter Cates

Something’s Gotta Give

Something’s Gotta Give was a mildly pleasant 2003 comedy via which Diane Keaton, Frances McDormand, and Amanda Peet stole the show from the obnoxiously overrated Jack Nicholson and the pallid Keanu Reeves.

Credit is also due for the fine acting of Paul Michael Glaser as Keaton’s ex-husband and Rachel Ticotin, who made a most vivid presence as Doctor Martinez.

Accessible on You­Tube, the soundtrack has a charm­ingly eclectic array of performances that include Django Reinhardt’s Brazil, Satchmo’s La Vie en Rose and Eartha Kitt’s vibrant C’Est Si Bon.

Finally, the best cinematic moments were those of Paris in the evening at the hotel and bistro and on the bridge overlooking the Seine.

Christine Sadler

A Washington Post journalist, Christine Sadler (1902-1983), was the first woman ever allowed to cover a Presidential convention; in 1963, she published an original paperback, America’s First Ladies, which ends at Jackie Kennedy.

Our very first First Lady, Martha Custis Washington (1731-1802), was a 28-year-old, very wealthy widow when she married George in 1759 at what was called the White House Plantation, in tidewater Virginia.

Sadler described Mrs. Washington as follows: “Martha loved to dance, was passable at cards, embroidered expertly, handled servants with finesse, played the harpsichord, knew about weaving, preserving, feeding guests,… was vain about her excellent teeth, pretty hands and tiny feet.”

Courtesy of a philandering father, Martha had two illegitimate half siblings including an African-American sister, in addition to her seven younger brothers and sisters, all of whom she outlived.

Her husband’s own splendid career as General and “Father of our Country” has been amply documented elsewhere.

by Peter Cates

Nikita Khruschev

During these times of conflict in Ukraine, I was led to read up on former Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev (1894-1971), as he was the head Rus­sian grizzly in Moscow for most of my formative years between 1953 and 1964. I vividly remember first encountering his toothy grin and shiny bald headed dome via the AP wire photos on the front page of the Waterville Morning Sentinel when he toured the U.S. in 1959 (the one of Khruschev with former President Ike Eisenhower, whose own broad smile and similar bald top got my innocent mind thinking they were brothers.).

Also Khruschev was born and brought up in Ukraine. Through his own shrewd intelligence, he overcame his impoverished background and became quite the useful yes man to Joseph Stalin by the 1930s Great Terror. In 1937, Stalin appointed him Deputy Comissar of Ukraine, whereupon Khruschev initiated mass arrests and executions.

In his Memoirs, which should be taken with a grain of salt, Khruschev tells of first meeting Laventi Beria (1899-1953), who was the KGB Chief for over 12 years and whom Stalin proudly introduced to FDR and Churchill as “my Himmler. ”

Khruschev tells of how they were both fellow Ukrainians, drinking buddies and connoisseurs of dirty jokes. It was only later on when Beria was becoming the number two man to Stalin and gladly ordered arrests, torture and executions on a grand scale that Khruschev and others in Stalin’s inner circle realized what a sociopath Beria was.

After Stalin’s death in March 1953, Beria was scheming to replace Stalin and had much of the security apparatus under his control. Khruschev and his like-minded colleagues lured Beria to a secret meeting where he was kidnapped, imprisoned, and executed along with five of his subordinates.

The fascinating details can also be read in Wikipedia and other sources.

Compared to Stalin, Khruschev was quite easy going but far from democratic in his own mix of good and bad, and Wikipedia goes into exhaustive detail.

In October 1962, Khruschev and former U.S. President John F. Kennedy locked heads during the Cuban missile crisis; two years later, Khruschev was replaced by Alexei Kosygin and Leonid Brezhnev.

by Peter Cates

George F. Handel

German composer George Frederick Handel (1685-1759) was known for his love of food. When he once went to a cafe, he ordered three plates of the house special. The waiter inquired politely if the other two plates should be kept warm until his guests arrived.

Handel replied, “No, bring them also; I am those guests.”

The composer’s Largo from his opera Xerxes, the Messiah and the Water Music are considered by many Handel’s most popular works for good reasons; they are beautiful music with melodies that stay in the memory.

In Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town which celebrates small town life during the early 1900s, newspaper editor Webb comments that there’s not that much culture in the village except for Robinson Crusoe, Whistler’s Mother and Handel’s Largo.

Enrico Caruso

Enrico Caruso (1873-1921), John McCormack (1884-1945) and Evan Williams (1867-1918) were Victor’s three tenors whose records sold in the millions. Caruso not only had phenomenal vocal control and musicianship but also an enthusiasm for making records and a shrewd business sense of their potential for profit, despite the primitive sound. And, unlike others, he had a voice that recorded well, as did McCormack and Williams.

Caruso’s widow Dorothy was 20 years younger than her husband, outlived him by 34 years and wrote two biographies about him.

Ray Donovan

Showtime Anytime is the channel for my current favorite TV show, Ray Donovan, starring Liev Schreiber in the title role as a problem solver for the rich and famous in Hollywood. Among the supporting cast is Jon Voight as Ray’s father Mickey, a Boston gangster who consistently messes up the lives of anyone he comes into contact with.

I am presently immersed in its fourth of seven seasons. Highly recommended first class suspense.