Nov. 24--So assimilated have female conductors become in today's classical music world that it's easy to forget how long it took for them to gain acceptance in a traditionally male-dominated area of the performing arts.
Just a decade ago, for example, controversy erupted over the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's announcement that Marin Alsop would become its next music director, making her the first woman to be appointed to a major American orchestra. The players' committee objected to the search process leading to her appointment, and some orchestra members took issue with her artistic expertise. Alsop later met with the players, and objections were smoothed over.
Nine seasons into her tenure, Alsop and the orchestra are riding what appears to be an unprecedented high. The 59-year-old maestra has energized the public behind the orchestra; revitalized the ensemble artistically; restored the BSO as a force in the recording market and initiated an outreach program that provides music education to hundreds of children in some of Baltimore's poorest neighborhoods.
On top of that, Alsop has proved herself to be a formidable musician and an eloquent communicator, not unlike her great teacher and mentor, Leonard Bernstein. Her contract with the BSO, which took effect in 2007, has been renewed through 2020-21.
This weekend, Alsop will be making her long-awaited subscription-series debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a little more than 13 years after she conducted the CSO for the first time, at Ravinia. A tireless advocate for American music, the New York native is devoting the first half of her concerts to works by George Gershwin, Samuel Barber and former CSO resident composer Anna Clyne. Dvorak's Symphony No. 7 will complete the program.
"I can't wait," Alsop said in a telephone interview following a rehearsal with her Baltimoreans.
While some Baltimore Symphony players have chosen the orchestra's centennial season to complain about their increased workload, unfilled vacancies in the ranks and a base salary they believe doesn't measure up to that of players in comparable U.S. orchestras, none have challenged Alsop's statement that theirs is "a relationship that has grown over the long term and is based on mutual respect."
"I went into this position with very clear objectives, which the orchestra and I have been able to achieve," Alsop said. "I think we are very comfortable together, artistically as well as personally. The musicians see how much I value them and what an advocate I am for this orchestra, not only in Baltimore but throughout the world. I'm very proud of them."
Alsop said she's encouraged by how far up the professional ladder female conductors have climbed but stresses the continuing need for industry-wide "vigilance."
"In recent years, we've seen a dramatic uptick in the number of women conductors around the world," said Alsop, who in 2008 became the first woman ever to lead a British orchestra (the Bournemouth Symphony) as principal conductor.
"One of the main issues is that it's very difficult for them to get professional experience when they are just starting a career, where they are free to make mistakes and learn from them. When you're not offered the opportunity to fail, it really inhibits your ability to finally succeed, in my opinion."
For that reason, in 2002 Alsop launched the Taki Concordia Conducting Fellowship, a program of career support, mentoring and performance opportunities for gifted, emerging female conductors. Since then, several other conductors, including Robert Spano, Giancarlo Guerrero and even Vassily Petrenko (who two years ago referred to female conductors in terms many found sexist) have joined her in her efforts "to create for women conductors as many opportunities as possible," as she explained.
In the past 13 years the quantity and quality has risen exponentially, Alsop said. "This year we had 60 applicants from 17 countries. None were Americans, but the winner, an Italian woman (Valentina Peleggi), and the two associate fellows, from Poland (Marzena Diakun) and Germany (Ruth Reinhardt), are all fantastic. I will work with them and they will assist me at the various orchestras I conduct. Peleggi will be my new assistant conductor in Brazil."
But while Alsop said she is heartened by the steady advance of gender equality on the podium (Mei-Ann Chen, music director of the Chicago Sinfonietta, is a past Taki Concordia Fellowship winner), she points to the fact that no major world orchestra as yet has named a woman music director, so more work needs to be done. "We don't have to scale quite as steep a mountain anymore, but it's still a climb."
Alsop's informative website (marinalsop.com) contains more than 20 videos of her speaking about musical matters, including how she became a conductor and why Bernstein remains her towering hero. She also notes that, last season alone, she logged some 116,000 miles flying between podium engagements, conducting 10 orchestras in eight countries on three continents. "I tell you, one trip wipes out all those frequent-flier miles," she said with a laugh.
Besides Baltimore, the ensemble with which she enjoys the closest affiliation is the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra in Brazil, where she has been music director since 2013, and where her tenure has been extended through 2019. The orchestra she describes as "fantastic to work with," the musicians "warm and engaging" and the concert hall "absolutely beautiful." Her project with the Naxos label to record the complete Prokofiev symphonies with the Sao Paulo orchestra is nearing completion.
"I wasn't looking to work full time in Sao Paulo, but after I went there as a guest conductor I just fell in love with the orchestra," Alsop said. "The musicians are so hungry to make music. Brazil is having an economic downturn, so it's a bit of a tough time for the orchestra. But it's wonderful to be in a city where people clamor for art and other things that enhance their quality of life.
"In Brazil, there's a real appreciation for music and a need to be part of the larger classical music world. The government is very supportive of the arts and particularly music, because they believe that, by enabling people to perform and play music together, they are promoting tolerance and peace, which they value highly. It's a different paradigm (from elsewhere)."
Marin Alsop will conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in subscription concerts at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 3 p.m. Sunday; Jon Kimura Parker is the piano soloist; $36-$265; Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave.; 312-294-3000, www.cso.org.
Chorale salutes Arvo Part at 80
The great expatriate Estonian composer Arvo Part turned 80 in September, and the Chicago Chorale under its enterprising director, Bruce Tammen, celebrated over the weekend with a thoughtfully planned program containing five brief Part motets, along with other a cappella choral works by Baltic, Scandinavian and English contemporaries working in his stylistic orbit.
I hadn't heard the Chicago Chorale in years and was reminded of what a first-rate chorus this group of 62 mixed voices is, and how superbly disciplined and deeply expressive are their performances. Saturday's program was about music of spiritual contemplation, whose purity, radiance and serenity offered timely consolation to the audience gathered at St. Vincent DePaul Parish in Lincoln Park.
The motets spanned Part's late period of austere minimalism, from the neo-medieval chanting of "Summa" (1977) to the inward yet emotionally intense "Da pacem Domine" (2004). The chorus' finely prepared performances, with their acute matching of pitches and sensitive blending and balancing of voices, revealed a through-line of style and feeling. Particularly striking was "Nunc dimittis" (2001), with part-writing that moved through fine degrees of dissonance with growing fervor before arriving at a highly charged climax.
There were some intriguing discoveries along the way. Swedish composer Jan Sandstrom's "Gloria" (1995) set solo and massed voices in consonant diatonic dialogue, set off by the pungent babel of voices in the Norwegian Knut Nystedt's "Audi" (1968), and the repetitive rhythms and syncopations of the Estonian Urmas Sisask's incantatory "Benedicto" (1996).
"Pater noster," a 1994 setting of the Lord's Prayer by the Lithuanian Vytautas Miskinis, mirrored the exultant spirit of the text through shifting homophonic and polyphonic textures. Like the late John Tavener's justly popular "Song for Athene" (1993), it challenged the chorus' technical and musical abilities to the utmost, and the singers did not disappoint. The resonant acoustics lent an aptly ethereal afterglow to their fine performances.
Sharps and flats
-- As part of its 150th anniversary celebration, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, from Oberlin, Ohio, will make its Chicago debut with a pair of concerts in January, performed by two of its student groups.
The Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble will present recent works by Jesse Jones, Andrew Norman, Stephen Hartke, Augusta Read Thomas and others at 7 p.m. Jan. 29 in Ganz Hall, Roosevelt University, 430 S. Michigan Ave.
Concluding the residency will be a performance of Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" and other works by the Oberlin Orchestra under Raphael Jimenez, at 8 p.m. Jan. 30 in Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave.
Tickets are free for both events, but reservations are required; go to www.oberlin.edu/chicago2016.
jvonrhein@tribpub.com
