Marita and I flew into Philadelphia the week of November 12th to hear some great music-making, visit the Stokowski Collection at the University of Pennsylvania, and to spend a few days with friends Laura and Jack in legendary Bucks County.

As everyone knows by now, Christoph Eschenbach’s tenure as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra is coming to an end next spring. From the start many musicians in the band resented not being properly consulted about the Maestro’s appointment and things deteriorated from there.

A sensational tour to the Midwest and West Coast earlier this year, however, has prompted some second thoughts. Over the course of the tour, critics were falling over themselves to praise the wonderful results produced by the Eschenbach-Philadelphia Orchestra collaboration. Then came the announcement that Eschenbach would have an ongoing relationship with the orchestra after all. Indeed, Eschenbach will continue to make recordings (for Ondine) in Philadelphia and he is leading the orchestra on its tour of China in June, 2008 and on its European tour in 2009.

At the time of our arrival in Philadelphia, Eschenbach had just returned from a tour of China, Japan and South Korea with his other ensemble, the Orchestre de Paris. Several of the China (Beijing Music Festival) concerts featured Lang Lang as soloist. Whereas Lang Lang is a superstar around the world, in China he is virtually Mr. Music. Over a span of several weeks during the festival he appeared not only with the Orchestre de Paris but also with two other orchestras.

But back to Eschenbach. No sooner had he landed back in Philadelphia than he was seated at the keyboard taking part in a special concert at the Curtis Institute. Billed as “Richard Woodhams and Friends”, the concert featured the distinguished principal oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra along with some of his orchestra colleagues – all of them also Curtis graduates. Eschenbach and Woodhams played the Schumann Romances just about as exquisitely as they could be played. I never cease to marvel at the degrees of softness Eschenbach can coax out of a Steinway, not to mention his uncanny ability to breathe and phrase with singers and soloists.

The next morning we were in Verizon Hall listening to the last rehearsal for that week’s Philadelphia Orchestra concerts. The program included two works by Stravinsky – the Circus Polka and the Violin Concerto – Brahms Variations on a Theme by Haydn, and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings.

The unstated theme linking all these works was Neoclassicism. The two Stravinsky works are from his neoclassical period in which he incorporated elements of the classical style (Mozart and Haydn, etc) into his music. Brahms, in his Haydn Variations, also looks back to the classical period at least for his theme. And finally, Tchaikovsky greatly admired Mozart and in several works including the Serenade he used classical elements.

Eschenbach was strictly business in rehearsal. He began by reading a list of notes to the players on passages to be corrected. These were mostly in the nature of a little softer here or louder there, a longer note here or a shorter note there. Then he played through the piece without stopping. At the end of each piece he went back to replay passages which needed improvement, usually where there was a tempo change or a pickup note that might have caused uncertainty. David Kim, the orchestra’s concertmaster was the soloist in the Stravinsky and he was terrific. The Brahms had been prepared and played in concert about a month earlier in the season so it needed little attention. But the Tchaikovsky was being recorded live by Ondine. Not surprisingly, Eschenbach was particularly detailed in his preparation of this piece.

In the evening we returned to Verizon Hall for the concert. It was excellent. The Stravinsky pieces were crisp and stylish and David Kim played with passion and authority. After intermission, the Brahms was beautifully balanced and graceful with great nobility in the peroration. The Tchaikovsky demonstrated that the Philadelphians still have one of the finest string sections of any orchestra. Critics still rave about the wonders of the Stokowski and Ormandy eras but the technical standard and the depth of tone were peerless on this night too. Eschenbach led an intense performance that sustained the long line through pauses and rests in the Elegie. As is customary, Ondine is recording all three performances of the Serenade and will pick the best of them for release.

Later this season Eschenbach will conduct performances of Mahler’s massive Eighth Symphony in Philadelphia, New York and Paris. The Paris performances will be recorded for later release on DVD, part of a complete Mahler DVD cycle with Eschenbach and the Orchestre de Paris. For more about Maestro Eschenbach, check out his website.

While in Philadelphia, I spent some time checking out the Stokowski Collection at the University of Pennsylvania. I am completing revisions to my Stokowski book for publication in the Spring of 2008. I had some questions I thought might find answers to there. Most of the Stokowski material had been given to the Curtis Institute, but they could barely store all the boxes of scores and other items let alone catalogue it. It was transferred to the university across town in 1997 and 1999 and catalogued a few years later with the assistance of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Virtually all of Stokowski’s scores (and parts) are here and they are a treasure trove for anyone interested in how Stokowski achieved what he did. He was notorious for making changes in the scores he conducted but while he was alive it was impossible to know exactly what he did. I will include some detailed analysis in my book.

Before returning to Austin we spent a few days with our friends Laura and Jack in Bucks County. This was our first visit and we were enchanted by what we discovered. To drive through Bucks is to go back in time, perhaps even back to rural England. Bucks is short for Buckinghamshire, by the way – William Penn’s home county in England. One travels on seemingly endless winding roads past scattered stone houses, some of them more than 200 years old. The main road is highway 32 or River Road which follows the Delaware River. One of the historic sites is Washington Crossing where America’s first president crossed the Delaware with his troops to defeat the British in a crucial battle in the revolutionary war.

One of the most famous residents of Bucks County was Pearl Buck. We have an abiding interest in China going back to our Hong Kong years and we greatly enjoyed our visit to Pearl Buck’s house in Perkasie. She grew up in China and lived there for years in the early twentieth century, wrote numerous popular novels about China – she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938 – and worked tirelessly to help Chinese orphans.

Another famous resident of Bucks was James Michener, also a popular novelist, and the museum in Doylestown which bears his name is a great place to see some of the best work of American impressionists such as Redfield and Garber. The Garber House is also one of the landmarks of Bucks County.

Bucks became known over the years as a kind of artists colony, partly because of its special character and also because it was located midway between New York and Philadelphia, and so attracted many luminaries looking for a place in the country within driving distance. Among the literary figures who lived here were Nathanael West, S.J. Perelman, Moss Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, George S. Kaufman and Dorothy Parker. For a pretty thorough look at all the big names who lived and worked in Bucks in years past read The Genius Belt: the Story of the Arts in Bucks County, edited by George S. Bush and published in 1996 by the Michener Arts Museum.

Bucks is still a favorite retreat for artists and writers and we met several during our visit. One of them is concert violinist Elizabeth Pitcairn, proud owner of the Red Violin. Another is the well-known writer of 89 (and still counting!) children’s books, Steven Kroll. Finally, I must mention the artist and painter Arthur Ritter who surprised us by presenting us with one of his own drawings of the CNE in Toronto when we met him in Bucks County.  Bucks is a magical and inspiring place and we expect to return.

It was less than two months ago that I heard Bernard Haitink conduct Wagner and Mahler in Chicago. Now he is in London about to conduct Parsifal at Covent Garden. As he grows older he seems to be becoming an ever more profound conductor, but also wiser and funnier as a man. It made my day to read an interview with Haitink by Richard Morrison in the Times. Rarely if ever does one expect to hear a “great” conductor mock a venerated piece he is about to conduct. In the interview Haitink quotes Boulez recounting a conversation with Klemperer on the subject of Parsifal. Klemperer once said to him, “How on earth can you conduct Parsifal, it has such an idiotic story? Boulez’ answer: “I don’t care. I just love the music.” To which Haitink adds, “This half-Christian, half God-knows what thing in Parsifal is very suspicious, I think. Yet I have to admit that, as I rehearse it, I find it terribly moving. When you read the text, it’s horrible! But then Wagner transforms it with music that is fantastic.” Amen.

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