REVIEW POTPOURRI – Conductor/violinist: Lorin Maazel

Lorin Maazel

Peter Catesby 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.

I’M JUST CURIOUS: Strange home remedies

by Debbie Walker

My newsletter from Farmer’s Almanac dated 2/22/22 is titled , 20 Strange Remedies That Work looked like something to share and maybe a few extra comments. As with any other column dealing with health issues, please don’t take my word for it. Questions? Discuss with your doctor or nurse.

Let’s start:

1. Cuticle infection: White vinegar treat torn up and infected cuticles – glass of equal parts distilled white vinegar and warm water. Soak for 15 minutes once a day until infection heals.

2. Hiccups: Wasn’t there a song about ‘a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down’? In this case the sugar stops the spasm that cause hiccups.

3. Removing warts: Yet another use for duct tape. Apply a strip of duct tape over the wart. Keep it on for three days; remove, rub, rub the wart area with a pumice stone and then reapply with new tape. It suffocates the virus. Another cure I have tried is to cover wart with nail polish. After a day pull off the polish then cover again. Been there, done it and it did work.

4. Beets for constipation: This one was new to me. Eat fresh steamed beets, then drink the water.

5. Potatoes for bug bites: Create a poultice by grating a peeled potato and put into a piece of cloth. Secure with a rubber band. Apply to cleaned bite until the potato is dry.

6. “Drunkin” raisin for joint pain relief: I know my Mom tried this but I don’t know what her opinion was. Soak golden raisins in gin over night and eat ten daily. Don’t drive until you know the effect on you!

7. Banana peels for poison ivy relief: Rub the inside of a banana peel against the poison ivy rash. It’s supposed to relieve itching. You can also shine your shoes.

These next ones are from an article called The Very Best Old-Time Remedies.

I don’t know where they came from originally.

  • If you carry three potatoes with you at all times and pain will not settle in your bones when you are old.
  • Never leave the clippings from your hair on the floor because doing so will cause the achy kind of arthritis to settle in your bones when you are old.
  • Eat an onion a day to keep your blood flowing smoothly. You will be less likely to have a heart attack or stroke. (Won’t have many people hanging around you either.)
  • Include at least one clove of garlic in your diet each day and you may never need to worry about having too much cholesterol in your blood.
  • Each morning and evening, pat orange juice onto the skin around the eyes. You will be rewarded with wrinkle-free skin for all of your life.
  • Sip warm onion soup at bedtime and you will be able to sleep in a short time.
  • Never allow hate to live in your body. It will stir up the mind, corrode the spirit and lead to an early death and sleepless nights.

Enough for now.

I’m just curious what old cures you have heard over the years. Contact me please with questions and comments at DebbieWalker@townline.org. Have a great week and thanks for reading!

REVIEW POTPOURRI – Movie: Something’s Gotta Give; Journalist: Christine Sadler

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Something’s Gotta Give

Frances McDormand

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.

Amanda Peet

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.

Christine Sadler

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.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Mahler Symphony

George B. Shaw

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Mahler Symphony

Gustav Mahler

The Mahler Symphony I would pick for beginners is the First, composed in 1888 when he was 28 years old. It has melodic appeal, it evokes the sounds of the natural world with coloristic sonorities from the woodwinds and double basses to heighten brooding, spooky tension and finally it utilizes brass and percussion for blazing crescendos.

I first encountered the piece via the 1962 Boston Symphony recording under then newly-appointed Music Director Erich Leinsdorf (1912-1993), a very inspired performance with the orchestra in peak form. A number of other distinguished recordings are available, such as those of Seiji Ozawa, Jascha Horenstein, Sir Adrian Boult, Hans Rosbaud, Sir Georg Solti etcs. but this Leinsdorf remains a first choice.

It is also accessible on YouTube.

A couple of quotes

Sir Richard Burton

As the world turns with what is perhaps rightfully perceived as extra stress, I am a bit haunted by a couple of quotes.

First the 19th century author of travel books, Richard Burton once wrote, “Peace is the dream of the wise. War is the history of mankind.”

The main character of James Joyce’s difficult to read masterpiece, Ulysses, states that “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken.”

On a more cheerful note, George Bernard Shaw recalled, “I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”

Harry Truman gently but tartly rebuked the cynics, “A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.”

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Nikita Khruschev

Nikita Khruschev

Peter Catesby 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.

REVIEW POTPOURRI – Writer: Sarah Orne Jewett

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Sarah Orne Jewett

Sarah Orne Jewett

I have read very little of Maine writer Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) but that little includes a story I very much consider a masterpiece, The White Heron. It depicts a nine-year-old girl, Sylvia, who lives with her grandmother on a farm in a seaside community based on the ones near Jewett’s native South Berwick, such as Wells Beach, Ogunquit and Kittery.

Sylvia has the daily task of driving a cow back from the woods surrounding the house for milking. While doing so, she hears from a visiting hunter that he has seen a white heron, which is a rarity in Maine:

“‘You would know the heron if you saw it….A queen tall white bird with soft feathers and long thin legs. And it would have a nest perhaps in the top of a high tree, made of sticks, something like a hawk’s nest.'”

The description of Sylvia climbing 100 feet or more to the top of an adjoining pine tree atop the highest ridge to get a closer look at the heron and its nest constitutes one of the scariest passages in a story for any reader such as myself who suffer from vertigo:

“Sylvia’s face was like a pale star, if one had seen it from the ground, when the last thorny bough was past, and she stood trembling and tired but wholly triumphant, high in the tree-top….Westward, the woodlands and farms reached miles and miles into the distance; here and there were church steeples, and white villages; truly it was a vast and awesome world.”

Nebraska novelist Willa Cather (1874-1948) once commented that My Antonia was heavily influenced by Sarah Orne Jewett’s own sense of place.

The Mississippi writer Eudora Welty (1909-2001) wrote the following about place in fiction: “the goodness-validity in the raw material of writing…the goodness in the writing itself-the achieved world of appearance, through which the novelist has his whole say and puts his whole case.”

In her depiction of Sylvia’s own peak experience atop those dangerous heights, Sarah Orne Jewett achieved a magnificent sense of place.

REVIEW POTPOURRI – Composer: George F. Handel; Tenor: Enrico Caruso; TV: Ray Donovan

George F. Handel

Peter Catesby 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

Liev Schribeer

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.

 

 

 

 

REVIEW POTPOURRI – Conductor: Takashi Asahina

Takashi Asahina

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Takashi Asahina

Japanese conductor Takashi Asahina (1908-2001) achieved renown in his native country throughout most of his lifetime but was little known elsewhere until the early 1990s when he was 85.

I found out the general details during a phone interview with former Chicago Symphony manager Henry Fogel. He was visiting friends in Japan and invited to attend a symphony concert. He told of witnessing an elderly gentleman hobbling to the podium and figuring that the concert would be nothing special.

He quickly found out that this presumption was erroneous. The scheduled work was the Alpine Symphony of Richard Strauss, a piece demanding not only the usual 100 musicians, but also extra brass and percussion including a wind machine, and an organ.

And the moment the elderly gentleman lifted his baton, sheer power and magic occurred. Henry told of being so unexpectedly stunned by an unknown conductor that he went to a record store in Tokyo and spent $250 or more on every recording of Asahina that was in shock.

Daniel Barenboim

Upon his return to Chicago, he told then- Music Director Daniel Barenboim of his experience and suggested Asahina for a guest conducting gig; to which Barenboim smiled skeptically. Pulling out a CD of one of the Bruckner Symphonies, he then pleaded with that Maestro to just listen for 20 minutes.

After 10 minutes, Barenboim told Henry to engage Asahina for three weeks of guest appearances. Those concerts were a hit with orchestra players and audiences.

A CD of Mahler’s hyper intense and gorgeous 6th Symphony features Asahina conducting the Osaka Philhar­monic, one of several orchestras he regularly appeared with in Japan. He gave a performance that built from beginning to end with an astute balancing of rhythm, dynamics and subtlety of detail.

At the Symphony’s first performance during the early 1900s, the composer was a nervous wreck before it began, wringing his hands and crying like a baby.

YouTubes abound of Asahina’s broadcasts and are well worth exploring.

REVIEW POTPOURRI – Poet: Leo Connellan; Composer: Anton Bruckner

Leo Connellan

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Poet Leo Connellan

Poet Leo Connellan (1928-2001) was born in Portland, grew up in Rockland, lived in Greenwich Village, New York City, during the late ‘50s as part of the generation of beat poets and, upon moving to Connecticut during his later years as a college professor, became recognized as a poet laureate .

He saw the encouragement of young poets showing talent in his classes as his mission in life.

His own poems achieved renown for their simplicity of theme and celebration of daily life among regular folks.

Blueberry Boy draws on his own childhood memories and his Aunt Madge who was a beloved maternal figure after the death of his mother when he was 8 years old, and who made the best blueberry muffins this side of Heaven. The poem also conveys his own goal as a writer to take the special moments of the life experience that suddenly happen and then disappear and give them some permanence on paper:

“I only wish I could have it just once more, you go back and the place looks dull and small in its mosquito biting green.
I was a Blueberry boy in that childhood,
the sun would flush my freckles out
from where winter hid them in the
sallow pale color of snow and I would
run the meadow for blueberries that
my aunt Madge would turn into muffins
I have longed for down the tripup of manhood.
Just a minute again, on my knees, picking
frantically with expectant watered tongue,
ignorant of what lay out of the woods.”

Anton Bruckner

Anton Bruckner

Wilhelm Furtwangler

A masterful Symphony that celebrates nature is the 4th of German composer Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) and numerous performances of it abound on YouTube.

One in particular is an October 22, 1951, broadcast of the Vienna Philhar­monic under Wilhelm Furtwangler (1886-1954).

Despite the primitive sound, it is a performance that breathes with life as only Furtwangler’s interpretive genius could convey. Somebody commented that the piece sounded as if it were sung by voices instead of played by instruments.

 

 

 

REVIEW POTPOURRI – Singer: Meatloaf, Conductor: Artur Rodzinski

Bernstein and Rodzinski in 1943.

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Meatloaf

Meatloaf

Rock singer Meatloaf, born Marvin Lee Aday, died this past weekend from covid at the age of 74. His 1977 album Bat Out of Hell has sold 65 million copies worldwide, still logging in annual sales of 200,000. In recent years, he guest-appeared on the BBC comedy show Benidorm and the CBS’ Elementary.

I need to confess that the title Bat Out of Hell quashed any interest in hearing his music making, much as the music making of such late ‘70s groups as Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath. But his singing on Benidorm was appealing and he will be missed by many.

Artur Rodzinski

Artur Rodzinski

Artur Rodzinski’s recording legacy is represented by a number of discs on my shelves and one of his finest is the 1945 Columbia Masterworks album of Wagner’s complete Act 3 of Die Walkure with the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera chorus performing the roles of Valkyrie warriors and soprano Helen Traubel (1899-1972) as Brunnhilde and baritone Herbert Janssen as Brunnhilde’s father and king of the Norse gods, Wotan.

The eight 12-inch 78s contained a magnificent one hour stretch of music that encompassed a large dynamic and emotional range evoking both tenderness and wrath.

Because this conductor had fired his fair share of bad musicians from both the Cleveland Orchestra and New York, he got his share of death threats and carried a loaded pistol to rehearsals, which he knew how to use.

Leonard Bernstein

During Rodzinski’s tenure as music director in New York from 1943-47, he invited Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), who would himself become music director in 1958, to become his assistant. But their relationship soon soured.

Both men had huge egos. Bernstein would try to upstage Rodzinski publically. One time, he was giving a lecture with the piano while Rodzinski was observing from the back and yelled, “Artur, come turn pages for me if you’d be so kind.”

He also gave interviews and statements to the press and got more favorable reviews than the older man. Finally, Rodzinski lost his temper, grabbed Bernstein by the throat and threw him against the wall. Bernstein commented later that Rodzinski was as strong as a bull.

However, Rodzinski was a loving husband and father (his widow Halina published a memoir of their life together) and was a secret pal to more than a few musicians going through hard times.