Fritz Reiner

April 14, 2024

Mäkelä: In the Shadow of Great Men

Last week, the Chicago Symphony’s former 82-year-old conductor had reason to be unhappy. By contrast, his successor and future occupier of that throne, a tall, energetic, and ambitious 28-year-old, was feeling on top of the world.

The latter, Klaus Mäkelä of Finland, failed to mention the most recent CSO Music Director in interviews celebrating his own designation as the ensemble’s leader beginning in 2027. Ricardo Muti, the former head of the glorious band, is the fellow whose name was absent.

Here is an excerpt from Mäkelä’s April 5th interview with WBEZ Radio’s Courtney Kueppers. The young man offers a telling description of the sound of the Chicago musicians and two of those who created it:

It’s an amazing sound. Its brilliance, its shine, its strength, its everything. And it’s really touching to hear. I was thinking about yesterday, when I started rehearsing, I listened to all the recordings — I love the old recordings and all the recordings of the past — and there were some moments when I thought: Oh my god, this sounds exactly like a Fritz Reiner recording [Reiner was CSO’s maestro in the 1950s] or a [Georg] Solti [the Chicago orchestra’s longtime music director] … And I think that’s incredible that they’ve managed to preserve it. And of course, my job is to also further develop it, but also preserve it. And I think it’s so wonderful because in today’s world, orchestras start sounding the same. And we need voices which are really original.

Hmm. Why might Mäkelä have neglected Muti, now the CSO’s Conductor Emeritus? No doubt, Maestro Muti believes he did more than “preserve” the orchestra’s qualities in his 13 years as top man.

But Mäkelä associated himself with the two most significant conductors in the Windy City since the middle of the last century. One gathers that he expects to fill their shoes. As Daniel Burnham, the architect who designed the CSO’s Orchestra Hall, wrote:

Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized.

Reiner and Solti would have agreed. They did more than “preservation” of the status quo. They made “no little plans.”

Fritz Reiner rebuilt a CSO in recovery from everything that had happened in Burnham’s building during the preceding 11 years.

“Papa” Frederick Stock, their leader since 1905, died in late 1942. He was followed to the podium by Desire Defauw, who stayed for a less-than-stellar four-year tenure. World War II complicated the Belgian’s time, leaving him with 11 new players in his first season.

Artur Rodzinski lasted only a season (1947-48), and the 36-year-old Rafael Kubelik just three (1950-53). Fritz Reiner’s arrival at the end of 1953 raised the CSO on all levels, not least their long-playing records, which remain perhaps the most consistently fine group of discs in its history.

Amsterdam’s  Royal Concertgebouw

Georg Solti’s contribution was different. A Hungarian like Reiner, Solti inherited many of the same players who performed with Reiner before Solti began as Music Director in 1969. The group included several fine personnel additions made by Jean Martinon, Reiner’s immediate successor, including Principal Horn Dale Clevenger.

Even so, the CSO had toured little domestically and never outside the USA. Solti made sure his new orchestra crossed the ocean. International fame and a flood of records followed, as did endless tours in the United States and abroad.

Klaus Mäkelä (K.M.) is in the habit of commending big, transformative names. Upon the news of becoming the future Chief Conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, he told Principal Double Bass Dominic Seldis of his admiration for Willem Mengelberg’s recorded legacy. The man K.M. named put that renowned ensemble on the map and led the first festival of Gustav Mahler’s complete Symphonies in 1920.

Mengelberg last conducted the Dutchmen in the 1940s. Mäkelä mentioned no one who served after that. 

It is easy to conclude that Chicago’s youngest-ever Music Director wants to change an orchestra that must adapt to survive in the post-Covid world. His charm seems to belie an extraordinary self-confidence.

The job is enormous, and he knows he must replace 15 players out of the gate.

Who might Klaus Mäkelä have named if he’d been appointed to the Boston Symphony? Serge Koussevitzky, no doubt. But that conductor’s mark involved more than insisting on a ravishing orchestral tonality and realizing his interpretive genius in concert and on disc.

The BSO leader commissioned countless works and steadfastly championed them, including those of American composers. His fingerprints are also on Ravel’s orchestral transcription of Pictures at an Exhibition and Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra.

In 1942, he established the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, which continues to support living composers. Moreover, Koussevitzky fashioned the New York Philharmonic’s summer concerts in the Berkshires into an annual warm-weather festival of the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood, focused on performance and the mentorship of young musicians.

Serge Koussevitzky

Successful conductors each possess a potent ego. One cannot stand before soloist-quality musicians of experience and intelligence without it. The players must be convinced you are worth their time, though they will carry you even if you aren’t. Everything suggests Mäkelä has the ego and technique to do the job.

The three conductors named by Mäkelä, as well as Koussevitzky, had that and more: a visionary quality that would take the men and women sitting before them somewhere beyond the next performance.

As Seldis noted in the Concertgebouw interview, Mäkelä’s new “office” — the glowing concert hall in which he will perform in Amsterdam — has 26 red-carpeted steps leading not far from the organ pipes down to the stage — a harrowing trip for some.

One can only hope that the steep descent he will walk signals nothing ominous about the talented baton-smith’s future. Two storied orchestras expect every bit of his capacity beginning in 2027. 

My suggestion? As Former U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt said:

Speak softly and carry a big stick.

For now, a Burnham-like “plan” will have to wait.

February 25, 2024

The Old CSO: Reiner, Stock, Garbousova and More

Royal Johnson might have been the cleverest man alive. Indeed, he kept his colleagues in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in stitches. Johnson served as a violinist with the CSO from 1938 to 1978.

Like many orchestral musicians of long-standing, the sheer volume of sound surrounding him took a toll on his hearing. The string player wore a hearing aid and joked about the irony of being a symphonic musician with auditory limitations.

One day, during a rehearsal in which the violinist wasn’t required to play, he sat in the auditorium to listen. The conductor was having trouble producing the balance he desired among the instruments and wondered how the troupe sounded in the hall itself.

Seeing Johnson several rows behind him, he shouted, “How does it sound?”

The replay came: “I can’t tell you how it sounds, but it looks great!” This story continues to be told by Chicago Symphony musicians who never met him, now over 45 years after Royal retired.

On one of the CSO’s tours to Europe, a group of his colleagues had occasion to play the Bruckner String Quintet. Johnson attended and congratulated his colleagues. He watched as the ensemble stood under a portrait of the composer for a group photo.

Bruckner remains a hard sell for some, and Royal didn’t appreciate his music. Looking up at the image of the composer on the wall behind his friends, he could only comment, “You know, he doesn’t even look sorry!”

The Chicago Symphony, like most fine orchestras, maintains a high standard of performance whether or not they encounter a maestro who is a master. Despite their best efforts, not all the resulting performances are up to their lofty expectations. Johnson is thought to have coined a phrase that captures the band’s sentiment as they walk off stage on those occasions:

“We would have played better, but he wouldn’t let us.”

Fritz Reiner by John Jensen:

In a rehearsal at the beginning of Fritz Reiner’s CSO tenure, the musicians already understood their new music director’s reputation as a gifted but sometimes sadistic conductor.

According to the principal horn, Phil Farkas:

In a two-hour rehearsal he pulled us apart and put us together again … and in the course of doing it actually fired one of the men. He said, ‘I don’t accept that kind of playing in my orchestra.’

We thought, ‘Gee, you haven’t even got the orchestra yet, it’s only an hour or so.’ But it was his orchestra, he had a contract to prove it. Anyhow, he took us apart and we needed it, we all knew that. And when he put it back together and we went straight through Ein Heldenleben (by Richard Strauss) the last hour of rehearsal, it was a revelation. …

But, as I say, he was rough. He spared no mercy on us at all. As he went out the door after the rehearsal, he was the only calm one. The rest of us were ringing wet. As he went out the door, one of our wags in the orchestra, Royal Johnson, said, ‘Well, not much of a conductor, but an awfully nice fellow!'”*

Ahead of another rehearsal not long after, the Symphony was waiting for Reiner’s arrival. Johnson sat in a chair on the aisle leading from the stage door to the rostrum. 

When Reiner entered, he got up and tiptoed behind him, peering over his shoulder. The violinist recognized a surgical scar on the back of his neck, something other musicians had already noted. Johnson retreated to his seat before the maestro reached the platform.

Royal turned to his stand-mate. “You know, that’s not his original head!”

But lest you think all CSO stories involve Royal J., here is an anecdote involving George Sopkin, the founding cellist of the Fine Arts String Quartet, and himself a CSO member from 1935 to 1942. Upon the 18-year-old’s arrival for his audition, the Music Director Frederick Stock, asked, “So we’re taking Boy Scouts now?” No matter his youth, George got the job.

This was an era of once legendary instrumentalists, some of whom are all but forgotten. Raya Garbousova, the cellist-dedicatee of Samuel Barber’s Cello Concerto, appeared as a featured soloist at Orchestra Hall more than once. Garbousova was a fabulous artist and a woman of striking loveliness. One might say movie star-beautiful.

Stock, approaching 70, admired her in every regard, including the latter. At a quiet moment during the rehearsal, the Music Director smiled as he leaned toward Sopkin in the cello section and whispered, “Ah, to be that cello!”

Such was life within a group of almost all-male orchestral forces at that time.

Stock died later in the year Sopkin departed to become a full-time chamber musician. The cellist felt a fatherly connection to the man who had hired him to be a member of the CSO as a teenager.

A child was born to the Sopkins on October 20, 1942, the day of the conductor’s death. The couple called her Frederica.

———-

The first photo is of Fritz Reiner. The second is Frederick Stock. Next comes a caricature of Reiner by John Jensen, with his permission. It is followed by a picture of Raya Garbousova. Finally, the Fine Arts String Quartet, from left to right: Leonard Sorkin, Abram Loft, George Sopkin, and Gerald Stanick.

*Hillyer, The Podium, 3, 1979, 22.

May 2, 2014

Fred Spector: From Combat to Friendship with Fritz Reiner

Fred SpectorWhat part does courage play in being an orchestral musician? In the life of 89-year-old Fred Spector, that part was not small. A Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) violinist from 1956 to 2003, his early career progress was interrupted by World War II.  But the experience prepared him for his eventual contact with Fritz Reiner, orchestral martinet nonpareil, as well as one of the greatest conductors of all time.

Fred entered the Army Air Forces in 1943 as an 18-year-old navigator of a B-25 aircraft. Mortal combat, not playing the fiddle, was now his life. Once the war ended, Fred took up the violin again for the first time in three years. Living on Kyushu Island in Japan, he was asked by a priest to give a classical violin recital. With his commander’s encouragement and lots of practice, Fred gave the first post-war concert in that area along with an accompanist in 1946.

After returning to the USA, Spector’s aspiration to become a CSO member returned. Indeed, he had taken lessons with John Weicher, the Chicago Symphony’s concertmaster, before entering the Army Air Forces, as a stepping stone to his eventual goal. For the next decade Fred spent time with the Civic Orchestra (the CSO’s training orchestra) as its concertmaster, played recitals, worked on radio broadcasts, performed in night clubs, and conducted Broadway shows that were touring. His reputation spread until Fritz Reiner hired him in 1956 to join the CSO’s second violins.

fritz-reiner

Reiner was notorious for “testing” musicians he didn’t know. It wasn’t long before Fred’s turn came. Leon Brenner, then the assistant leader of the second violins, became ill. Fred was moved from well into the section to the spot that was almost within the conductor’s reach.

During one rehearsal of two or more hours, Reiner targeted the young Spector, then a man with flaming, bright red hair. According to Fred:

Every 10 or 15 minutes he would stop the orchestra and say, ‘Spector, you are playing wrong!’ He wouldn’t tell me what I was doing wrong. We’d start again and 10 or 15 minutes later: ‘You are playing wrong!’ This went on for the whole rehearsal. I asked Francis Akos (the leader of the seconds, who was sitting next to me) what I was doing wrong. He said, ‘I don’t know what you’re doing wrong.’ (After that day) I sat there in the same seat (while Brenner was ill) and Reiner said not a word to me.

When Leon came back, Reiner made one of his few jokes. While I was going back to my regular seat he said, ‘Spector, you played very well. Spector De la Rosa (referring to my red hair).’ He laughed and the whole orchestra laughed. (Thereafter) I got to know him and became very friendly with him because of photography. Photography was a hobby (we shared) and I was the unofficial photographer of the CSO… I took some very good pictures of Reiner that he loved.

I asked Fred if he ever questioned Reiner about what he was doing “wrong” once he and the conductor became friendly.

We were at a party that he threw and I was sitting at a table with him and David Greenbaum (longtime CSO cellist), and David’s wife and Reiner’s wife were there, too. Reiner’s wife had David do some imitations of Reiner and then (Reiner kidded) David: ‘So now that you did that, where are you going to work next year?’ And at that point I asked Reiner, ‘Remember, three or four years ago, you were telling me I played wrong all the time?’ He said, ‘Yes, yes.’ ‘What did I do that was wrong?’ He said, ‘Nothing. I just wanted to see if you would get nervous.’ I didn’t get nervous, I was great!

I then questioned Fred about how he managed to keep his composure, since Reiner was notorious for breaking the confidence of many seasoned and talented musicians.

It really wasn’t difficult for me. I guess, compared to combat, that was nothing.

Fred Spector, as he enters his 90th year, has seen it all, done it all, and then some.

 ====

The 2010 photo of Fred Spector is courtesy of his son, J.B. Spector. It was sourced from Wikimedia Commons. The second photo is Fritz Reiner.

 

 

October 12, 2013

Fritz Reiner: A Marriage of Talent and Terror

Fritz Reiner

People were afraid of Fritz Reiner. Talented people, self-assured people, decent people. He was notorious for finding a small crack in your confidence and opening it wide. But he was also known for something else.

Fritz Reiner was not just a sadist, but a genius. One of the greatest conductors ever and the man who took the Chicago Symphony, from 1953 to 1962, and fashioned a legend. According to Igor Stravinsky, Reiner “made the Chicago  Symphony into the most precise and flexible orchestra in the world.”

For those who want individuals to be neatly categorized as all good or all bad, Reiner is confounding: both a great artist and a questionable human. He brings to mind Toscanini’s comment about the composer Richard Strauss: “To Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to Strauss the man I put it back on again.”

Fritz Reiner was a conductor who had virtually no flaws, however flawed he was personally. His repertoire ranged from the light music of Johann Strauss, Jr. and Richard Rogers’ musical theater Carousel, to the gravity of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. Equally at home in the German, Russian, and French repertoire, he played music from Bach to Bartok and much in between. But the road was hard for those musicians who joined him on his artistic quests: demanding if you were on his good side, career-threatening if you were not.

According to Gunther Schuller, who played principal horn under Reiner at the Metropolitan Opera:

He clearly had a sadistic streak in him, and truly enjoyed making musicians uncomfortable, making them squirm, humiliating them. He was the type (who)… inflicted his particular sadistic gratifications in a coolly clinical, perfectly controlled manner, a type we have seen many times in films caricaturing Prussian or Nazi officers and the like… With Reiner I clearly sensed that he was deriving a certain emotional and intellectual pleasure from torturing his victims… (He was a person who) would not only deliver his stinging sarcasm in utter calculated calm, but would also pursue his victim until the person broke, it being symptomatic of this type of verbal sadist that he can easily sense a weakling who is unable to stand up to the abuse; this type of sadist hunts down his prey until the kill has been accomplished.*

Fritz Reiner by John Jensen:

Fritz Reiner by John Jensen: http://www.Johnjensen.co.uk

Reiner’s twin capacity to inflict discomfort and create staggering musical moments combined in the surgical precision of his approach to his musicians. Through his movements and his words, the conductor was able to inflect the musical line or inflict personal pain as he chose.

Reiner took a minimalist approach to the use of his baton, in what came to be called a “vest pocket beat.” As Philip Farkas (principal horn for most of Reiner’s CSO tenure) recalled:

He conducted with everything he had, not only with his hands. I recall he’d be looking at the first violins, so we’d get only a profile. A big brass entrance would come in. He’d suddenly turn his head and, still directing his hands toward the violins, would look at us and puff out his cheeks right on the beat, which was a real demonstration of when the winds should come in. Then, if we’d had that attack he gave us with his cheeks, if he wanted a crescendo, his eyebrows would go slowly higher. While still working with the first violins, he might kick out in back of him and bring in the violas with his foot**

Clearly, Reiner knew his business and knew what he could achieve by talent and by intimidation, as Farkas illustrated in recalling Reiner’s first rehearsal with the CSO as its new Music Director:

We’d had a long number of years of lax discipline and too many guest conductors. The men were good, it was a good orchestra, but undisciplined and far from being a cohesive group. So Reiner took over and tore that orchestra apart. In a two-hour rehearsal he pulled us apart and put us together again — literally — and in the course of doing it actually fired one of the men. He said, “I don’t accept that kind of playing in my orchestra.” We thought, “Gee, you haven’t even got the orchestra yet, it’s only an hour or so.” But it was his orchestra, he had a contract to prove it. Anyhow, he took us apart and we needed it, we all knew that. And when he put it back together and we went straight through Ein Heldenleben (by Richard Strauss) the last hour of rehearsal, it was a revelation. There we had it, and we knew we had it, but we couldn’t do it until he came along. When he did it, it was great. But, as I say, he was rough. He spared no mercy on us at all. As he went out the door after the rehearsal, he was the only calm one. The rest of us were ringing wet. As he went out the door, one of our wags in the orchestra, (the violinist) Royal Johnson, said, “Well, not much of a conductor, but an awfully nice fellow!”***

Reiner’s reputation had preceded him. Indeed, one attributed feature of his almost demonic musicianship was the ability to give every player the feeling that he and he alone was being watched by the conductor at every moment. Perhaps it was that quality that accounts for the following CSO story, also involving Royal Johnson. Johnson was seated on stage — on the aisle that led to the stage door. At an early rehearsal in Reiner’s tenure, Johnson got up as Reiner moved past him to the podium and walked very quietly just behind the conductor, peering over his shoulder. What he observed was an apparent surgical scar that Reiner had on the back of his neck, something other musicians had already commented on. Johnson quickly returned to his seat before Reiner noticed anything unusual. The violinist turned to his stand-mate and said, “You know, that’s not his original head!”

For Gunther Schuller, Adolph (Bud) Herseth (the CSO’s legendary principal trumpet), and many others, the key to survival under these conditions, was to stand up to the conductor — to look Reiner in the eyes as he stared you down and to keep playing well, no matter how many times he might ask you to repeat a phrase in order to “test” you. Reiner claimed that he wanted musicians he could rely on, who he could depend upon “in the trenches.” If you passed his tests and didn’t break, he usually left you alone thereafter. But, it was a day before strong musicians’ committees and contracts that protected the players. The conductor did, indeed, have your professional life and livelihood in his hands.

Could he have achieved what he wanted without being ruthless? Theoretically, the answer is, of course. But, at a human level, our strengths are frequently also our weaknesses. His ability to lead and his unyielding dominance were probably inextricably intermingled.

The cost of Reiner’s achievement was doubtless a high one. But often, it must be admitted, that combination of talent and terror led to something special. Never more than on a CSO tour concert in 1958. Philip Farkas relates the story:

As time went along on this Boston concert, it was obvious that we had a “no-hitter” going. Tension was mounting — there hadn’t been the slightest flaw, no scratch. Intermission came, and we said, “Jeez, what’s going on? We’re playing even better than usual.” So at the end of the concert — nobody had scratched a note anywhere during the entire concert. We were all aware of this, and very excited about it. When we went off stage after the applause had stopped, Reiner was there shaking everybody’s hand, tears streaming down his face. “All my life I’ve waited for this moment: a perfect concert. The only one I’ve ever experienced.” And it was, so far as I know. I came out the door, and there was (Arthur) Fiedler (conductor of the Boston Pops): “You’re not men — you’re gods,” he said.****

Gods? You can find out for yourself. Sony has just issued every recording the CSO made with Reiner for RCA:
Fritz Reiner — Chicago Symphony Orchestra: The Complete RCA Recordings.

Reiner complete—

Special thanks to John Jensen for permission to use his Reiner caricature. Other excellent images can be found at: http://www.johnjensen.co.uk/

*Gunther Schuller, Gunther Schuller: A Life In Pursuit of Music and Beauty (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2011), 378.

**Hillyer, Stephen C., ed. “The Podium” 2, no. 2, (Country Club Hills, IL: The Fritz Reiner Society, 1978), Reiner Symposium in Bloomington, IN, March 11, 1978, 12.

***Hillyer, “The Podium,” 12.

****Hillyer, “The Podium” 3, 1979, 22.