WQED fm PSO Tour Blog

I ran into Rolf Beck, the Intendant of the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, after the Pittsburgh Symphony’s concert. He was delighted to see Manfred Honeck, who he has known and admired for more than twenty years.

Brahms guards the pretzels and Champagne

Brahms guards the pretzels and Champagne

Also on hand for the Saturday concert was Dr. Steven Paul, who works for the North German NDR network which presents three orchestras in the Laeiszhalle. Conductor Thomas Hengelbrock soon takes over the NDR Orchestra. Hamburg is where conductor Christoph von Dohnanyi based his European career. His brother served as Hamburg’s Mayor. Joanne Rogers has been a lifelong friend of Christoph since she studied piano in Florida with his father, the noted composer Ernst von Dohnanyi, best remembered for his Variations on a Nursery Tune for piano and orchestra. Joanne and Fred were there for Christoph’s wedding. I’m digressing.

Steven Paul had been in Pittsburgh working for Sony as Associate Producer when soprano Kathleen Battle recorded Victor Herbert songs with Lorin Maazel. She wasn’t happy with the way they turned out, and refused to give her okay to release them. They sit in the “ice box,” as Paul called it. Steven Paul is a big fan of Manfred Honeck.

Applause at the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg

Applause for the PSO at the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg

It was thundering feet and cheers for the Mahler Symphony #5 from the Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck at the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, Germany. Anne-Sophie Mutter wowed them again, and there was television coverage of this event in the Schleswig-Holstein Festival. A huge crowd turned up for the CD signing afterward. The house was full, with tickets at over $140 the last to go at the box office. I checked with Michael Pegher, a student of violinist Albert Tan who also studied with Lorenzo Malfatti in Pittsburgh and now lives not far away from Hamburg where he has a contract singing with a regional opera house.

This concert had been scheduled for Hamburg’s new Elbphilharmonie, or Elb Philharmonic Hall, which is still under construction after massive cost overruns and delays now expected to extend through 2015.

At the Telemann Museum

Erich Braun-Egidius at the Telemann Museum

I had an amazing visit at the Brahms Museum and the Telemann Museum. It was the 40th anniversary of the Brahms Museum on Peterstrasse, and admission was free.  There was a festive atmosphere and a quiz of Brahms biographical moments for visitors. I won a Brahms CD, although I think it might have been for my foreign accent as much as my knowledge of Brahms.

The Brahms Museum is near the site of the house in which he was born, which burned to the ground in WWII. There’s also an E.T.A. Hoffman Museum in Hamburg, commemorating the composer and author who inspired Jacques Offenbach’s opera, The Tales of Hoffmann. That and the massive art museum, the Kunsthalle, must be for next time. I asked my taxi driver if he knew the Beatles Platz, where there’s a statue in their memory. He was not German, and thought I was interested in meeting “nice women.” The statue is on the edge of one of the most notorious red light districts in the world, the Reeperbahn. John Lennon said “I was born in Liverpool but I grew up in Hamburg.” Malcom Gladwell, who wrote Outliers claims the Beatles became geniuses in part because they honed their craft through thousands of hours of rehearsals here in Hamburg.

Brahms' piano at the Brahms Museum

Brahms' piano at the Brahms Museum

The Telemann Museum is one of the newest additions to the Hamburg cultural scene. I recorded a tour with the museum’s Vorsitzender (chairman), Erich Braun-Egidius, who was one of the kindest people I have ever met in my travels with the Pittsburgh Symphony. After the tour, he told me that he’d been in management with Volkswagen most of his life. One day decided he wanted to follow his heart, and help to open the Telemann Museum. His son is studying in Boston and has toured the American history trail which brought him near Pittsburgh. Eleven years old at the end of WWII, Herr Braum-Egidius was extremely positive about Americans, and said he thinks George H. W. Bush is under-appreciated for his role in encouraging Germany’s reunification. He explained the fine points of the history of the Alsace-Lorraine where my grandfather Ortner’s father was born. We discussed in detail Telemann’s love of plants and gardening, and his list of flowers in Latin. It’s always stunning to me how some people will go out of their way to help a stranger.

Michael Pegher outside the Laeiszhalle

Michael Pegher of the Oldenburgisches Staatstheater, outside the Laeiszhalle

Markus Frei, a journalist who is working on an article for Die Welt about the Pittsburgh Symphony, told me his article was delayed by the death of the German comic Loriot, a cross between Peter Sellars and Victor Borge whose sophisticated routines often had a classical music twist, with a chamber music ensemble rehearsing, or a conductor swatting insects, choreographed so that he conducted Coriolan with the Berlin Philharmonic as he attempted to kill the bug. Loriot never made it big it in the US, but he’s an enormous figure here. As I write, Radio Bremen TV is running the special, Erinnerungen an Loriot (Memories of Loriot).

I have lots more to say about the concert tonight in this beautiful century-old hall with a Brahms Platz  and modern monuments out front. It’s named for one of the great shipping figures in this port city. More tomorrow, as we head for Vilnius and the Pittsburgh Symphony’s debut concert in Lithuania. Manfred Honeck’s 12-year-old son, Simion, is traveling his Dad on this trip –what a guy –with a calm and concentration well beyond his years.

CDs for sale at the Kurhaus

CDs for sale at the Kurhaus

Composer Wolfgang Rihm took a bow after the European premiere of his concerto Lichtes Spiel with violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. The first concert on this tour also featured Anne-Sophie in the familiar Mendelssohn Concerto. Heading back to the hotel on the bus the comments centered on, “How does she do it?,” and “Isn’t it amazing that she can find something new to say in such a familiar piece?”

The Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck’s Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5 was for sale in the lobby along with the PSO’s new Mahler Third. Lots of Mutter fans sifted through her many recordings. Principal Second Violinist Jennifer Ross told me she was looking out at a very elegant, dressed-up audience. They politely held their applause until Manfred lowered his arms after the Tchaikovsky Fifth, then asked for two encores. It was a big sound in this 1,400 seat hall.

Rheingau Festival Director Michael Hermann warms up the crowd

Rheingau Musik Festival Director Michael Hermann welcomes the PSO

New Principal Flutist Lorna McGhee played the big solo in the Intermezzo from Bizet’s Carmen, and Principal Clarinetist Michael Rusinek added a lick from the Tchaikovsky Fifth to his solo in the middle of the Galop from Khachaturian’s Masquerade Suite.

Rheingau Festival Intendant Michael Hermann gave warm introductory remarks in German and drew some laughter. Pittsburgh Symphony CEO Larry Tamburri told me he’s glad the tour is underway.

Earlier, I bumped into Principal Cellist Anne Martindale Williams and violinist Christopher Wu as they returned from a rehearsal of the Barber Adagio, planned for ceremonies marking the tenth anniversary of 9/11 in Berlin. Somehow, they wore matching orange outfits since great musicians must always be on the same wavelength.

Anne Martindale Williams and Chris Wu in harmonized colors

Harmonized colors

I loved the Antiquariat Schallplatten vinyl record shop started by Manfred Eisele. He was very friendly, showing off the smallest record, which contains a Gitanes cigarette commercial; the extremely rare Beatles $32,000 “butcher” cover; and even Andre Previn’s A Different Kind of Blues album with Itzhak Perlman, recorded at Heinz Hall.

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Anne-Sophie Mutter

Anne-Sophie Mutter rehearses with the PSO in Wiesbaden

I just came from the Pittsburgh Symphony’s rehearsal with Anne-Sophie Mutter, who was relaxed and magisterial in the morning session with Music Director Manfred Honeck. A reporter from one of the German national networks – 3sat, I believe – was on the scene asking about the fact that the Philadelphia Orchestra and Pittsburgh are touring at the same time. The European press want to know why Philadelphia is bankrupt and Pittsburgh solvent.

I spoke with the founder of the Rheingau Festival, Michael Hermann, who was extremely cheerful about having Pittsburgh back at the end of a very successful festival summer. Larry Tamburri, the orchestra’s President and CEO, seemed well rested. He told me they are grateful to the tour sponsors BNY Mellon, LANXESS Corporation, and the Hillman Endowment, among others, who are covering the roughly $2 million cost.

Meissen poster shows large cup size

Meissen poster displays large cup size

Walking back to the hotel, I investigated a Meissen porcelain shop – the organization founded in 1710 in Germany. They seem to have updated their marketing efforts with a poster of a young woman who is inviting you to share a cup of tea while wearing her bathrobe. What’s in the tea leaves for the Pittsburgh Symphony? Stay tuned to this blog!

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Bahnhof

Wiesbaden Bahnhof

I ran into double bass player Jeffrey Grubbs on my way to the train station. Jeffrey was just back from some light shopping. The train station, the Bahnhof, was great for bakeries. At Kamps Backstube I picked up a cheese pretzel and raspberry streusel. Immer Ofenfrisch! Von Hand Gemacht! (Always oven-fresh! Hand made!) The Payot bookstore featured at least five titles on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 such as Der Heilige Krieg (The Holy War),  11/9: Zehn Jahr Danach (9/11: Ten Years After) by Mathias Bröckers, and Nine Eleven by Elmar Theuessen. There were also books in German about Paul Allen, Helmut Schmitt, the latest from Bill Bryson, and Der Arabische Frühling (The Arabian Spring) by Jörg Armbruster.  Stern Magazine has a cover story on why Germans are getting bigger, “Echt Fett Warum die Deutschen immer dicker werden und wer daran schuld ist,” (Why the Germans are really fat and who is to blame.) Remind me to ask at Kamps Backstube.

Cheese pretzel

Cheese pretzel

I love the German Saturn stores–a chain like Best Buy. In the CD department, Adele is #1. Someone I don’t know. Lady Gaga is big. So is a German rapper named  Samy Deluxe with a CD called Schwarz/Weiss, along with Kanye West and Jay Z. In the classical department, there was a 3-DVD set from BBC Video of Benjamin Britten as composer, pianist and conductor; Lang Lang’s latest release in honor of the Liszt bicentennial; and a multiple-disc set of Berlin Philharmonic recordings with a DVD of Simon Rattle conducting.

Then it was time for a stroll through the old part of town with the courthouse, or Rathaus, and church next door — the Marktkirche. A statue of Wilhelm I stands in front of the red brick church.

Marktkirche

Marktkirche

The imposing Hessian State Theater has a wonderful statue of Friedrich Schiller, the German playwright and poet. At the Kurhaus, where the Pittsburgh Symphony rehearses in the morning, I just had to time to try the raspberries with cream. Two tiny chocolate bowls contain sugar and raspberry sauce, and next to a glass of raspberries you have the whipped cream. The daily cocktail was a concoction of Pimm’s Cup, tonic, and mint with a slice of orange. Refreshing!

The evening concert featured the young French orchestra Les Siecles, and the Maitrise de Caen – a youth choir that turned up in the final moments of Liszt’s Dante Symphony in honor of the composer’s 200th birthday.

Tagescocktail

Tagescocktail

Francois-Xavier Roth conducted. The first half of the concert featured Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto played by a 23-year-old pianist from Russia, Denis Kozhukhin, who won a 15,000 Euro prize presented by the Rheingau Festival and its sponsor, the Hessian Lotto.

I’m just now turning off the TV, and I notice the German ads for McDonald’s which declare “Ich Liebe Es” (I’m Lovin’ It) in reference to the Milchshakes and McFlurrys.

Friedrich Ebert Allee in Wiesbaden

Friedrich Ebert Allee in Wiesbaden

Wiesbaden is on the Rhine River in the grape-growing region. Concertgoers will see a bunch of grapes pictured on every ticket to the festival. While I haven’t noticed any vineyards near the hotel, I took a walk of about a mile to the Kurhaus where the Pittsburgh Symphony will play their first concert on Friday night. It’s a lively part of town with elegant shops such as Cartier and Meissen China, restaurants, and a beautiful city park with a pond, fountain and ducks. A sudden thunderstorm dropped some rain but left the air soft and warm under a blue sky. The Rheingau Music Festival here, which started in June, has over 150 events. Pittsburgh will be next to last, before the Bamberg Symphony plays Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, (The Song of the Earth) to end the summer.

There’s still a literary festival in September with a special focus on Thomas Mann, and events in the Advent Festival which get underway with a Bach Trumpet Gala on September 12. This evening was typical for the festival with a concert by the Bach Collegium of Japan presenting the St. Matthew Passion at the Kloster Eberbach Monastery and a recital at the Schloss Johannisberg featuring violinist Isabelle van Keulen and pianist Ronald Brautigam.

Kurhaus

Kurhaus

The Kurhaus had a full house for the Tchaikovsky Orchestra of Moscow led by Vladimir Fedoseyev playing a Glazunov Concert Waltz and Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with soloist Patricia Kopatchinskaya. She amazed me with her acrobatic forward lurches and a great encore by a Venezuelan composer Jorge Sanchez Chiong. The orchestra played three encores: Georgi Sviridov’s Waltz, and two Tchaikovsky favorites, Trepak from The Nutcracker and the Spanish Dance from Swan Lake, that brought a great roar from the audience though it didn’t get them to their feet. The first movement of the Tchaikovsky, with its spectacular coda, fooled the audience into applause and even fooled the operator of the house lights who brought them up during the movement break. The concert was being recorded for Deutschlandfunk TV.

I loved the scene in the elegant lobby with hundreds of champagne flutes lined up on white tablecloths. Lanson rosé champagne and Prosecco flowed freely. I sampled a concoction of apricot brandy, aperol, tonic water, and Prosecco garnished with a floating slice of orange–$8 euros. Makes the intermission fizz! Plus a Laugenbrezel pretzel for one Euro thirty.  We’ve got to have this in Pittsburgh!

Ceiling of the Kurhaus, Wiesbaden

Ceiling of the Kurhaus, Wiesbaden

I bought two CDs from the soloist: her Beethoven Concerto and a collection of solo pieces that includes her encore with its popping pizzicato and instrument slapping as well as Dinicu’s Hora Staccato. Coming soon to the QED Morning Show.

The hall is gorgeous. Its walls are lined with green marble columns and white marble gods and goddesses against gold leaf. The ceiling is robin’s-egg blue with various scenes painted scenes on it, and Latin words telling the history of the hall in tall letters around the edge of the concert hall–I could just see IPSO PRASENTE IMPERATORE ANNO P CHR N MCMVII FVNDITVS.

The arrangement of the musicians on stage was very different with basses along the back wall and the brass on the left with the percussion at the right. We think of the Russian orchestras as rough-edged, but this was very sophisticated, quiet, and refined playing, slow and creamy at the start of the Tchaikovsky — building to a furious finish.

My hotel room in Wiesbaden

My hotel room in Wiesbaden

Pittsburgh will bring its special sophistication into a great venue. There may be some few who remember the last visit in 1992 with Lorin Maazel not long after the festival began in 1987.

The PSO will play Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in honor of the festival theme — Mahler’s death 100 years ago, just a few months after the composer performed in Pittsburgh’s then-new Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall on tour with his New York Philharmonic.

On the way back to my hotel, I noticed the traffic signals indicate that it’s time for pedestrians and bicycles to cross.

Principal French Horn Bill Caballero kidded me that my room is better than that of the Principal Horn so here is the proof. Check out his comments as Audio-on-Demand at wqed.org/fm/.

Wilkommen nach Deutschland!  The Pittsburgh Symphony has arrived–at least the official group is here and it’s warm and sunny. I enjoyed catching up with some of the musicians on their summer activities since we last saw them at Hartwood Acres on July 3. Principal Horn William Caballero enjoyed three weeks playing and teaching in Sapporo, Japan where he’s gone for most summers over the last decade. His family made the cross-country journey to Jackson Hole, Wyoming where he has also been a regular. Bill flew to Sapporo, while his cellist wife, Kathleen, drove the family home to Pittsburgh. Kathleen is playing as a substitute on this tour.

It’s a bit odd that the tour began with a westward flight to Chicago before the Atlantic crossing, but I enjoyed catching up on the Chicago papers. The Chicago Tribune reported that the Lyric Opera has taken pay cuts for next season and there was a lengthy article on suburban Lynwood which has instituted a $750 fine for anyone caught wearing “saggy pants,” the hip-hop fashion of showing off one’s undergarments above the trouser line.

The Sun Times had Washington, DC’s new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on page one. Columnist Mary Mitchell suggested that Dr. King would have preferred that the $110 million be spent on the poor. Jesse Jackson reminded readers that King was a “drum major for justice” and would have liked the way he’s been sculpted.

With renovations under way at Heinz Hall, The Pittsburgh Symphony had six intense tour rehearsals at Pittsburgh Opera’s facility in the strip district, where they gave two concerts for small groups of patrons. Some players felt they heard too much Liberty Avenue traffic, especially during George Vosburgh’s dramatic trumpet solo that begins Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. There will be another full rehearsal Friday morning here in Germany.

Heinz Hall manager Carl Mancuso told the musicians as they boarded the airport shuttle bus that hall renovations are going well and should be mostly finished in time for the PSO’s Musique de Monde gala concert on September 17th.

Wiesbaden is still a large military base for the U.S. Wagner started writing Die Meistersinger here. Max Reger studied here. Brahms spent a few days here. 14-year-old Priscilla Presley met 24 year old Elvis here. Her Dad was in the army with Elvis. Dieter Rams, the industrial designer for Braun shavers, was born here–there was a nice profile of Dieter in the Wall Street Journal just a few days ago. Filmmaker Volker Schloendorff and Adolphus Busch of Anheuser Busch beer all started here. Now the Pittsburgh Symphony has returned to add to their illustrious history at the Kurhaus on Friday night.

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is off to Europe and WQED-FM 89.3 will cover the tour from beginning to end! From August 24th to September 12th, Jim Cunningham will be traveling with the Orchestra and will file daily reports back to Pittsburgh. Travel along with the PSO as they perform at the prestigious BBC Proms concerts at London’s famed Royal Albert Hall.

In addition to the Proms, the PSO will perform at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, the Berlin Festival and Beethoven Festival in Germany, and the Grafenegg Festival in Austria, as well as give concerts in Wiesbaden and Hamburg, Germany; Vilnius, Lithuania; and Paris.

PSO Music Director Manfred Honeck will conduct the orchestra which tours with guest soloists Helene Grimaud, piano, and Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin.

Check back often for blog updates and pictures from Jim Cunningham.

Here’s some video footage from the Pittsburgh Symphony’s 2010 European Tour.

Part 1

Part 2

Click any photo for more pictures

Click any photo for more pictures

The Pittsburgh Symphony’s European Tour 2010 is history, with a final playing of Grieg, Khachaturian, and Brahms encores. Cellist Jan Vogler played the Schumann Concerto and a Bach encore with distinction. At intermission, Vogler said his colleagues at the Dresden Festival, where the Pittsburgh played last week, thought the Pittsburgh visit was the highlight of the festival. He said he liked that he was able to bring an American orchestra to a formerly communist country. After World War II, the two countries were on opposite sides but are now friends. On the second half of the program, Manfred Honeck conducted the powerful Symphony No. 5 by Shostakovich.

I spent the afternoon with Vladimir Assejev, the grandson of former Pittsburgh Symphony Music Director Fritz Reiner, who in the decade from 1938-1948 spent more time in Pittsburgh than at Cincinnati, Chicago or the Met. Vladimir remembered Carlotta Reiner, the third Mrs. Reiner, as a very strong-willed woman who helped to organize Dr. Reiner’s gypsy life. The first and third wives had met in Budapest on a congenial evening.

Manfred Honeck with Fritz Reiner's grandson, Vladimir Assejev

Manfred Honeck and Vladimir Assejev

Mr. Assejev had the most cheerful and warm outlook and recalled his grandfather sending wonderful presents and signing affectionate notes, “Dein Vati.” But he did remember at least one occasion when Grandpa had given his mother the famous look — from the eye of a hawk — suggesting the quality that caused his players to say about Reiner, “In him, the milk of human kindness curdled.” Vladimir Assejev also showed me a set of Wagner 78′s with the Pittsburgh Symphony, which Reiner had sent from across the ocean in Pittsburgh.

Ljubljana’s Cankarjev Dom concert hall is named for a popular poet. It is vast in a city center square built by a Slovenian architect after WWII. It suggests the Communist socialist ethic with enormous statues in the adjoining park. Nearby are embassies and tall concrete block office buildings. The city was charming even with threatening rainclouds. At the end, all agreed it was a successful tour — one of the best ever for the Pittsburgh Symphony. Watch this space for more, but just now I’m three hours away from the long trip home through Munich and Chicago. I’ll sort out and share all the photos, videos and materials I’ve picked up along the way. Thanks to you for hanging in there with me, and to Bayer Corporation for making it all possible.