by Paul E. Robinson

Composer Sergei Rachmaninov

Kirill Gerstein (photo: Marco Borggreve)

by Paul E. Robinson

In March 2009, I was a Guest Lecturer at the Central Conservatory of Music (CCOM) in Beijing, China. My audience was a class of young conductors. My lecture, titled “Stokowski: the Limits of Interpretation,” considered the many changes that Stokowski had made in the scores of the music he conducted and how these changes might be defended and justified. Moments before my talk was to begin, I had a distinguished surprise visitor, 92-year old Huang Feili (photo above left: Feili on right), the man who had founded the conducting department of this institution back in 1956. His presence not only did me great honour, but gave me great joy. I was delighted to see an old friend whom I had first met in Toronto in 1987.

Western Music in China

China has made extraordinary progress in the last 20 years, particularly in the growth of its economy, the well-being of its vast population – 1.3 billion at last count in the census of 2010 – and in the transformation of its infrastructure. The explosion of Western classical music in China in that same time period has been no less remarkable; as recently as 1976, the Chinese communist authorities had denounced Western music as decadent and bourgeois, and a corrupting influence. Chairman Mao Zedong’s wife Jiang Qing had made it her business to suppress any music except that which served the political purposes of the country’s communist regime.

The general history of Western music in China has been well told in a recent book called “Rhapsody in Red,” but my specific interest over the years has been the struggle faced by Chinese conductors to find opportunities for training and growth, and ultimately to become masters in their own house. At the very centre of that struggle was my old friend Huang Feili.

Shanghai’s International Settlement & Maestro Mario Paci

When Mario Paci arrived in Shanghai and played a concerto with local musicians, the residents of the International Settlement realized that this was the man they needed to take the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra (SMO) to a higher level. Paci accepted the challenge, reorganizing and reinvigorating the SMO from 1919 until 1942, when war with Japan ruined everything.

The quality of the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra should not be underestimated. There is no doubt that for more than 30 years, it was the finest symphony orchestra in the Far East. Among its members was Walter Joachim, principal cello of the SMO for eleven years. After settling in Canada in 1952, he became principal cello of the Montreal Symphony. Concertmaster of the SMO was Arrigo Foa. Recruited by Paci from his native Italy, Foa made Shanghai his home for 21 years. I met Foa in Hong Kong in the 1960s when I played double bass for the Hong Kong Philharmonic, which he conducted.

Huang Feili’s Musical Journey:  Defining the Mission

Growing up in Shanghai in the 1930s, Huang became familiar with Paci only after the Maestro had already vastly improved the SMO. While still in Primary School, he heard the orchestra for the first time playing an outdoor concert in Hongkou Park. Later, in Middle School, he attended his first SMO indoor concert at the Lyceum Theatre. Now a violin student, and old enough to appreciate the role of the conductor, he recalls the experience: “That was the first time I came into contact with a symphony orchestra and with Paci (photo: above). I watched my violin teacher sitting to the left of the concertmaster and I watched Paci’s conducting. For the first time I heard the wonderful sound of an orchestra come out of the hands of a conductor. I was greatly impressed.”

Later, with the help of his violin teacher, Huang regularly attended Paci’s rehearsals. Huang never had formal training in conducting. As he puts it, “My conducting was ’stolen’, mostly from Paci!” Interestingly, given my reason for being in Beijing in 2009, Huang also recalls another important influence on his conducting education in the 1930s: Stokowski’s 1937 film with Deanna Durbin “One Hundred Men and a Girl.” Musical life in Shanghai in those days was surprisingly rich and varied. Huang recalls recitals and concerto performances by artists of the stature of Heifetz, Szigeti, Elman, Moiseiwitsch and Chaliapin.

After the war, Huang moved to the United States to study music at Yale University. Among his teachers was the distinguished composer Paul Hindemith. By this time, Huang played the violin well enough to join the New Haven Symphony and work with soloists such as Serkin and Primrose. There were also opportunities to watch Koussevitsky, Monteux, Stokowski, Mitropoulos and others at work in nearby Boston and New York.

By 1956, Huang had had such an impact on the Central Conservatory of Music, the musical life of Beijing and nearby Tianjin that he was asked to start a Department of Conducting. His dream was to create, as he put it, “a Chinese School of Conducting.” What he had in mind was an approach to conducting that was uniquely Chinese, a “school of conducting” analogous to the schools which existed in other art forms in China such as the Peking Opera and its various “schools” which each feature unique singing and acting.

With time and experience, Huang came to realize that his dream was “impractical, impossible and even unnecessary.” Even the “immutable” schools of the Peking Opera have changed and living in a global village as we are today, Huang finally understood that change is probably inevitable and healthy.

The Department of Conducting at the CCOM had only a handful of students in its early years, most of them training to become choral conductors; while there were very few orchestras in China in the 1950s, there were a large number of amateur choirs.

Founding Father of the Beijing Symphony

Huang Feili (photo: right) not only became a respected teacher at the CCOM. but also one of the most prominent conductors in China. In the mid-1970s, he was invited to head up the ensemble that later became one of the finest professional orchestras in China, the Beijing Symphony. When Huang took over, the orchestra was a student group created to accompany the Beijing Song and Dance Ensemble. Xianglin Li, head of the Department of Culture of the Beijing Municipal Government, asked Huang to lead it and improve it. Shocked by what he heard at the first concert he attended, Huang described the experience with an expression Chinese orchestral musicians used at the time to refer to wrong notes: “There was artillery fire all over the sky.” Huang accepted Li’s invitation to lead and improve the ensemble, but laid down several conditions: it must become a concert orchestra rather than an accompanying ensemble; it must be large enough to play the standard orchestral literature; and the administration must be run like a professional orchestra.

By 1985, under Huang’s leadership, the orchestra had improved to the point of becoming fully professional and was renamed the Beijing Symphony. Huang Feili then went back to his full-time job at the Central Conservatory but continued to make regular appearances as a guest conductor with the Beijing Symphony until his final concert on February 26, 2009.

Cultural Revolution: Western Orchestras Serve Communist Cause

Without a doubt, Huang Feili had made an enormous contribution to the creation of one of China’s finest orchestras. The other great conducting pioneer, by the way, was Huang Feili’s contemporary and friend Li Delun, the man who led the Central Philharmonic (later known as the Chinese National Symphony Orchestra) through the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution and thereafter, until his death in 2001.

After years of turmoil in China through civil war, war with Japan, and the communist victory in 1949, it appeared that the New China would be more just and more stable. This was not to be. Under Mao’s leadership, millions starved to death in the 1950s and the turmoil continued. Then in 1966, came the Cultural Revolution, which the leadership of China today recognizes to have been a misguided attempt to restore the ideals of the communist revolution. For artists and intellectuals like Huang Feili, it was a terrible time. The Central Conservatory simply ceased to function; there was no music teaching and there were no concerts. Huang and his colleagues were sent to various military divisions to learn from the army.

The Cultural Revolution was really ten lost years in which meaningful artistic and intellectual activity was prohibited unless it conformed to prototypes or models determined by party officials, and frequently by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing. Artists and intellectuals were subjected to both verbal and physical abuse. Huang’s library of books and music was almost totally destroyed by the Red Guards.

Finally, this period of madness gave way to the era of Openness and Reform. Work at the CCM resumed and China even began to make overtures to the West. Nixon and Kissinger arrived in 1972, and Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra soon after. In spite of all the public euphoria which greeted these developments, behind the scenes life was far more complicated and difficult for Chinese musicians. Li Delun tried to bend with the constantly changing political winds, but it was a soul-destroying process: “It was all a power struggle, all politics – Jiang Qing just used music…We were all used by her, to give her something to do. I worked hard, but in my heart it was difficult.” (”Rhapsody in Red,” p. 287)

China Welcomes Back the Best of the West

When Ozawa and the Boston Symphony visited China in 1979, it was a momentous occasion. Ozawa, born in China, had a special affection for the country and its people. He had already conducted Li Delun’s Central Philharmonic a few years earlier and he and Li Delun had become very close. Ozawa demanded to see Li, but the officials lied and claimed he was busy in the south. By this time Li had been stripped of all his positions and was out of favour with the government.

Huang Feili also got to know Ozawa during his many visits to China. Ozawa gave a master class for conductors at the CCOM and soon became a conducting icon for young Chinese conductors. Huang Feili has great admiration for Ozawa, but felt that his students venerated the Maestro for the wrong reasons. They loved his flamboyant style on the podium and soon began to emulate it. Huang spent a good deal of time trying to get his students to understand that what made Ozawa great was not just the podium choreography – that was the superficial part; the more important part was his grasp of the music.

Huang Feili’s Love of Western Music Continues to Bear Fruit

In 1987, Huang made a return visit to Yale University, his alma mater, and to Toronto, where I met him for the first time. The connection was made through Huang’s son, An-lun, now a professional musician and an exciting young composer living in Toronto. I had the honour of conducting the first performance of Huang An-lun’s Symphonic Overture No. 2 in 1989.

Remember the son Huang Feili had never seen when he agonized over whether to return to China in 1951? That was An-lun, a gifted young man who grew up in China in troubled times and who, like his father, suffered the misery of the Cultural Revolution. Huang An-lun today is one of China’s foremost composers.

Huang Feili is now 94 years old and living in Beijing. He was appointed conductor for life of the Golden Sail Youth Orchestra, but relinquished his conducting role with this orchestra four years ago. Every Saturday, however, he continues to conduct a rehearsal of the 80-voice Beijing Yuying Beimang Alumni choir, an ensemble that combines alumni from two schools founded by the American Congregational Church: Yuying (boys) and Beimang (girls) high schools.

Maestro Huang Feili did not create a “uniquely Chinese” school of conducting as he had originally dreamed of doing; he chose instead to train several generations of Chinese conductors well enough to lead their own orchestras around the world – an impressive achievement by any standard, but particularly given the social and political challenges faced by China in his lifetime.

Paul E. Robinson is the author of “Herbert von Karajan: the Maestro as Superstar,” and ”Sir Georg Solti: His Life and Music.” For friends: The Art of the Conductor podcast, “Classical Airs.”

Photo of Maestro Huang Felli with Paul E. Robinson by Marita

This entry is an excerpt from the first (”The Art of the Conductor: China”) in an upcoming series of books by Paul E. Robinson tracking the musical journeys of noteworthy conductors of Western classical music in various countries around the world.

by Paul E. Robinson

George Szell: A Life in Music
by Michael Charry
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011
412 pages

One of the conducting icons of my youth was George Szell. I had the good fortune to live within a few hundred miles of his home base in Cleveland and regularly heard Szell with his great orchestra in Cleveland, Toronto and at an annual Spring festival in London, Ontario. Many of Szell’s finest recordings come from this period. I idolized the man for his ability to galvanize an orchestra – whether through musicianship, by force of personality or fear, I wasn’t sure which at the time – and to present a substantial core repertoire with consummate authority. When Szell died suddenly in 1970, I felt the world had lost a truly great conductor, and more than 40 years later, I still feel the same way.

About the Author

Author Michael Charry passed the rigorous audition with Szell to become an Apprentice Conductor with the Cleveland Orchestra – James Levine was another notable apprentice conductor under Szell – and then joined the conducting staff of the orchestra. He saw Szell professionally on almost a daily basis for nine years. Charry went on to have an important career and he was a fine conductor. I remember with great respect and admiration a performance of Charles Ives’ incredibly difficult Fourth Symphony he conducted with the Cleveland Orchestra. Charry was eminently qualified to write a book about Szell, and it was obviously a labour of love.

Honest Portrait of a Conducting Legend

On the biographical side, Charry has gone well beyond his personal experience. For example, he has examined the letters between Richard Strauss and Franz Schalk, written when Strauss was about to become music director at the Vienna State Opera. Szell was already a Strauss protégée and insisted on taking Strauss with him from Berlin to Vienna as his assistant. Schalk was director of the house and was very reluctant to take Szell, in spite of Strauss’ persistence. Finally, he let slip that it was a matter of religion. Schalk understood that Szell was Jewish and in 1918, as it had been in Mahler’s time, it was unacceptable to be Jewish and hold an important position at the Vienna State Opera. As it happened, neither Schalk nor Strauss was aware that Szell (like Mahler) and his family had already converted to Roman Catholicism.

Another interesting story involves Szell’s guest conducting in St. Louis in 1930-31 – his first engagements in the United States – as a candidate for the music directorship, which ultimately went to Vladimir Golschmann. During this period, Szell formed a lasting friendship with Irma von Starkloff, the woman who later wrote “The Joy of Cooking.” In fact, Szell claimed that some of the recipes in the book came from him.

Charry obviously has great admiration for Szell, but he doesn’t soft-pedal the man’s less endearing qualities. Szell was a child prodigy pianist and composer and grew up a spoiled brat. He had extraordinary musical skills, but considered himself an authority on any subject, and didn’t hesitate to lecture anyone on anything. He was a man who liked to take charge. This is an essential quality for a conductor and in an age when conductors hired and fired orchestra members at will, Szell was known for being as ruthless and as nasty as any of them. Charry makes him out to be a benevolent dictator, more benevolent as he got older, but there is no doubt that he was more feared than loved by his musicians. Charry gives us all the details on the firing of key players such as oboist Marc Lifschey, and on Szell’s dubious machinations in hiring players such as Josef Gingold away from other orchestras.

Szell routinely intimidated musicians. He also had run-ins with managers and critics. When Rudolf Bing was general manager of the Met, he and Szell had a row in 1954 that lasted a lifetime. Szell had devoted most of his early career to conducting opera and during the war years he was a fixture at the Met, but when he couldn’t get his way concerning a production of Tannhäuser he walked out. A few years earlier, he had walked out of the Glyndebourne Festival when Bing was in charge there. Twice burned, Bing had had enough and vowed he would never hire Szell again.

One of the Finest in the World

Szell will be remembered primarily for the years he spent building the Cleveland Orchestra from a provincial band into one of the finest orchestras in the world. Szell had other offers – most notably from the Chicago Symphony (twice) and from the Concertgebouw Orchestra – but he stayed in Cleveland. He was appreciated there and he had made a commitment. During the winter season, Szell conducted most of the orchestra’s main series concerts – staff conductors like Louis Lane did the Pops and children’s concerts – and each June, Szell and his wife went to Europe for four months. While there, Szell conducted at all the major summer festivals and played a good deal of golf and bridge. The couple’s European base was Zurich and from there they would drive their Cadillac (stored in Paris) to all the major cities.

The Lighter Side of Szell

In spite of his reputation as a martinet, Szell was in many ways an “old world” gentleman; he dressed in a suit and tie nearly every day and wrote hundreds of business and “thank you” letters. Many of these letters – the majority warm and literate – are quoted by Charry. A few are caustic. Others are funny. The maestro did have a sense of humour and often played practical jokes, especially as a youth.

Szell was very friendly with violinist Henri Temianka from the days when they worked together at the Scottish National Orchestra in the 1930s. Charry quotes a letter (p. 36) sent by Szell to Temianka from Australia, which first appeared in Temianka’s book Facing the Music:

Dear Friend,

Just now I bought a new bottle of Shaeffer’s fountain pen ink (the kind that you tip before opening so as to let some ink flow into a small compartment – which makes it easier to fill the pen). There’s a label on the bottle with the following admonition: SCREW TIGHTLY BEFORE TIPPING. What would you think of making it obligatory to hang this sign around the necks of all hotel chambermaids?

Yours very cordially,

Szell

It was this same George Szell who nearly threw a fit when Severance Hall personnel started wearing miniskirts in 1968. He tore several strips off general manager Beverly Barksdale over this matter: “If I see a single one on my return there will be a scandal… I, for one, am nauseated by what I have to see.” When Barksdale assured him that there would be new rules enforced regarding appropriate attire Szell was somewhat mollified: “Thank you for the good news that I shall not be exposed any further to nausea by the exposition of elephant trotters up to the genitals.” (p. 273)

This Reader Left Wanting More…

Charry’s book includes lists of Szell’s repertoire in Cleveland and elsewhere, with some surprises. In his later years, Szell was a champion of William Walton’s music, but I always wondered why he never played Walton’s greatest work, the Symphony No. 1. Charry’s research indicates that while Szell never conducted the work in Cleveland, he did programme it when he was in Scotland and Australia before the war. As the maestro was also a Richard Strauss protégée and became one of his authoritative interpreters, I was puzzled why he never conducted works like “Ein Heldenleben” and “Also Sprach Zarathustra.” Apparently he did conduct “Ein Heldenleben” once in Cleveland and afterwards, according to Louis Lane as quoted by Charry, said “Never again!” But why? Neither Lane nor Charry tells us what Szell didn’t like about “Ein Heldenleben” or, for that matter, why he never conducted a work as important and as popular as Berlioz’ “Symphonie Fantastique?”

I learned a great deal about Szell and his career from this book, but there are some matters that seem to be either overlooked or avoided. Szell’s wife Helene, for example, is mentioned frequently, but never really comes to life. We don’t learn much about who she was, what she did with her life, what she thought and what the relationship was like with her husband. Nor do we hear about Szell’s own family. His parents Kalman and Malvin Szél appear as encouraging figures for the child prodigy in the early pages of the book. We learn later that they left Vienna in the 1930s to find refuge in southern France (p. 57), but that is the last we hear of them.

And what were George Szell’s views on politics? He lived through World War II, during which his native country (Szell was born in Budapest and grew up in Vienna) was invaded and then afterwards occupied by Stalinist forces. Szell must have had strong views on these matters, but disappointingly, we don’t learn what they were in Charry’s book. In the 1960’s, protests raged against the Vietnam War while Szell was music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, and on May 4, 1970 thirteen students were shot and four of them killed by Ohio National Guard troops at nearby Kent State University. Charry tells us that shortly afterward the incident. Szell addressed the Severance Hall audience before a concert: “Would you please join us in standing silently for a few moments, in simple human recognition of the tragic events of this week.”

This is the minimum Szell could have done and under the circumstances it comes perilously close to being non-committal. What did Szell think of the Vietnam War and the protests against it? Szell wrote hundreds of letters and Charry had access to all of them. I would be astonished to learn that Szell had never written about these matters at a time when the whole country was being torn apart by these issues.

Missing: Details on the Art of Conducting

I am also disappointed that while the book is full of interesting detail about Szell’s career, it lacks what Charry was so uniquely qualified to give us. Many biographers could have researched the facts about the concerts Szell conducted and how he spent his summers; however, only a trained conductor like Charry could have told us about Szell’s preparation of scores, how he marked his scores, especially for basic repertoire such as the Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann symphonies, how he rehearsed the orchestra, how the recordings were made and what made his performances special.

In the final analysis, much of Szell’s work survives him, by way of studio sessions and live recordings. We can say that we were moved or thrilled by Szell’s performance of the Eroica or Don Juan, but Charry could have shared with us how the maestro got the results he did. Surely, in some measure, it had to do with the way he marked a score indicating bowing, articulation and dynamic details not written down by the composer. Charry could have given us some examples and exposed Szell’s “secrets” to young conductors for study purposes.

I recently listened to a BBC live recording of the Beethoven Eighth conducted by Szell in 1968. I was struck by the power of the timpani in certain sections. Szell made a studio recording of the Eighth with the Cleveland Orchestra in 1961 and in that performance the timpani is far more restrained. The 1968 performance was certainly not a matter of Szell – or the timpanist – getting carried away in the heat of performance; it was the way Szell wanted it done that week and he had undoubtedly marked the score that way and made sure it was played that way in rehearsal. Charry worked closely with Szell through the 1960s. Did Szell change the way he approached the Beethoven symphonies between 1961 and 1968? Specifically, did he change the way he conducted the Eighth Symphony? If so, how and why?

Szell professed great respect for composers and yet he often “revised” their scores. Charry includes in the book an essay by Szell on the occasion of Schumann’s 150th anniversary. Szell strongly defends Schumann’s skills as an orchestrator while at the same time claiming that any conductor worth his salt must give Schumann some help with balances, but nowhere does Szell say what “help” he applied to Schumann, nor does Charry broach the subject.

Similarly, Charry says nothing about changes Szell made in the Schubert symphonies. In the Ninth, Szell clearly adds horns to the winds in several places and in the first movement of the “Unfinished,” Szell famously “corrected” some wrong notes in his 1960 recording, but to most listeners, the “corrections” themselves sound more like wrong notes. I would like to have heard from Charry whether or not Szell continued to employ these “corrections” in later performances.

Please Sir, I want some more!

One could go on. Perhaps it was Charry’s publisher who restricted him to 412 pages, thereby inhibiting his story-telling. If so, since Charry is uniquely qualified to discuss such matters and time is running out, perhaps he will soon fill in the blanks by writing articles on the ‘nuts and bolts’ of Szell’s conducting. Many of those who played under Szell or who worked with him – Marc Lifschey died in 2000, Robert Shaw in 1999, for example – are no longer with us. Charry has certainly given us an important biography of the maestro, but there is much more to be written about George Szell and Charry is the man to write it.

Paul E. Robinson is the author of “Herbert von Karajan: the Maestro as Superstar,” and ”Sir Georg Solti: His Life and Music.” For friends: The Art of the Conductor podcast, “Classical Airs.”