Earl Wild's 'Walk on the Wild Side'

American pianist Earl Wild (1915-2010) lived here in Columbus for several years while teaching at The Ohio State University. Columbus the city and a number of people here come off very well in Earl Wild's new memoir A Walk on the Wild Side. Several well placed members of the local arts community do not! No offense, but I suspect Earl Wild counted his OSU tenure as the least of his accomplishments.

Wild was a member of the WOSU family in the mid 19990s. He was host of a series I produced, Earl Wild's Grande Piano. He introduced great pianists going back eighty years. He included himself, but not much.

Earl spent the brief time I knew him taking about and threatening all with his impending autobiography. It had been in preparation for many years. Now, over a year after Earl Wild's death at 95, the book has arrived.

Wild Side? You don't know the half of it. Earl knew EVERYONE . From Rachmaninoff to Rubinstein, from Stokowski to Sid Caesar. Earl was Toscanini's pianist pianist at NBC and was active in the late days of radio through the early days of television. The first televised piano recital-ever-was given by Earl Wild in the late 1930s!

Not only did Earl know everybody, he had opinions about everybody and everything. He is not shy.

This is a 900 page book. It sorely needed editing, but you bet, this is Earl Wild's 'voice' as I knew him. Drag balls, night life, skewering enemies and praising friends-and rehabilitating artists like Arthur Fiedler, whose reputation never kept up with his fame. I do suspect publication was delayed until everyone was dead!

You'll never listen to Isaac Stern's recordings in the same way after reading this book, and you'll have new appreciation not only for Fielder but for Maria Callas and Lily Pons. Not to mention discovering Ruth Slenczynka, Ivan Davis, David Korevaar and the great Grygory Ginzburg.
Refreshingly, Earl describes his past vividly but he doesn't live there. Plenty of current pianists are discussed, admired and ...well, read the book . Remember that Earl Wild was active as a pianist at the highest level past his ninetieth birthday.

The book is long on minutia-though the Chapter Banging is for the Bedroom is a must for any serious music student. I know, I know. Read it anyway.

Earls talent seems to have come easily to him . One never gets the sense of struggle or torturous work during his quick ascent to fame. But work he did, and it was joyful work. Earl Wild stayed famous for eighty years for his musicianship. This artist fully exploited his great gifts, he had fun and he was fun. This book is a box of fudge for any music lover. Irresistible. At the last, A Walk on the Wild Side has me reaching for Earl's many recordings, and brings me back to music.

De Sabata's Tristan und Isolde

Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde.
Gertrud Gorb-Prandl, soprano
Victor De Sabata, conductor
La Sacala, Milan, December 13, 1951

It's fun discovering buried treasure This treasure was hardly a secret but until recently was unknown to me. (I need to get out more.) A performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde from La Scala, Milan on December 13, 1951. Gerturd Grob-Prandl and Max Lorenz took the title roles. The conductor was Victor De Sabata(1892-1967). De Sabata had a substantial American career. He was music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1950 and 1951. He was a fiery, passionate maestro unafraid of bringing the highest emotion to his music making. He also knew when to hold back and let the composer's work take shape on its own. He was de facto music director of La Scala for many years-and followed Toscanini as the second non-German to conduct at Bayreuth (1936 and 1937). He remained active in Italy during World War II, this despite his being part Jewish!

I had been reading a few reviews of this 1951 performance of Tristan. De Sabata was a busy man in 1951. All agree the recorded sound quality is terrible (I've heard worse). All agree that its a hot blooded, deeply sensual performance of this most erotic of all operas. I had this on the office while multi-tasking (oy!) With some recordings you can do that. Not with this one. I held on to every note for dear life during Act II. Max Lorenz's heldentenor was not the steadiest. Gerturd Grob-Prandl reputedly had the loudest voice in the business. Juice she's got when she needs it, but she also has a lovely float for much of the liebesnacht.

But it's De Sabata's show. He's a tsunami of musical vigor and sexuality. The prelude alone will have you in tears of grief or ecstast. Yes the broadcast sound is bad and yes there are a lot of cuts, but get this. I'm sure that in Milan on December 13, 1951 there wasn't a dry seat in the house.

Renato Zanelli et Margaret Sheridan Otello Duo 1er acte

Margaret Sheridan (1889-1958) is one of my new favorites. SHE was a favorite of Toscanini's at La Scala. Born in Ireland, Sheridan's career was based in Italy. Apparently it didn't last long-she retired in 1930 after some sort of vocal crisis. In this scene from Otello, Sheridan combines the 'cut' necessary for Italian opera with vocal beauty. She's joined here by Chilean tenor Renato Zanelli, who died young. Another marvelous voice. Listen especially how both of them give primacy to the words! I got the CD version of this from, God bless 'em-the Columbus Public Library! Cow town my ass!

Tennessee Ernie Ford and Odetta - What A Friend We Have

A great favorite of mine I wanted to share. One for the ages.

BUCKET LIST

This is my "Bucket List" as of today.
What's yours?
Do share!
...and remember, its a 'bucket list'-even if unrealistic

Go to the Monastic Settlements at Mt. Athos
Run the Boston Marathon (HA!)
Publish a novel
Learn Russian
Jump out of an airplane, with a parachute!
See Wagner's Ring cycle--same week, same cycle
Visit Italy-for Verdi and Monteverdi-San Marco, Venice
Sponsor a foster child
Hear all the Bruckner Symphonies performed 'live'
Get back on the radio with the Met in some capacity
Develop a fund guaranteeing employment to young adults
Eat and not worry!

Beverly Sills - Roberto Devereux - Final aria

Let's not forget Beverly Sills who would have been 83 this week. This was one of her most unforgettable performances: as Elizabeth I. Critics tended to disagree, thinking the role too heavy for her voice, which it was. Never mind. It distresses me that students today don't know Beverly and don't realize who she was to opera. It's timely to post this now, with news of the New York City Opera's impending demise. I hope not. It was and is a great company and a great resource.

Honor Flight

This short film is the work of several of my wonderful colleagues at WOSU. Today, with the death of Bin Laden, seems as good a day as any to share this. My father was a World War II vet. He is long deceased but Honor Flight would have meant the world to him, both watching it and being on the plane. This made me proud, and humbled.

Nice Picture

I like this picture. Dame Joan Sutherland, who died last year, with the Queen, who is going strong.
Just married off the grandson!
Dame Joan's grandson carried her medals at the memorial tribute at Westminster Abbey, attended by Prince Charles.

Thiry Years Ago!...Royal Wedding Ceremony of Charles & Diana (7/8)

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa letting the bright seraphim indeed at the other royal wedding, thirty years ago! There I was in NYC at 4 a.m. with a mini black and white TV. Thirty years. Charles and Diana walked off to unhappiness. Dame Kiri never lived down the popsicle inspired schmatte. But the music was great! Listen!

Mt. Athos on my Birthday

OK, I have 5 and a half years to get this done. I'd like to spend my 60th birthday, December 2, 2016 in Greece, among the monasteries of Mt. Athos. I knew a bit about this monastic settlement before last Sunday night's profile on '60 minutes'. This is the seat of the Orthodox faith going back to the time of Christ. There are 20+ monasteries on this island in the north of Greece. Monasteries, monks and not much else. There are Greek monasteries, Russian monasteries, Serbian monasteries, there are even a few Americans among the priests and brothers. It is a life of ceaseless prayer and work every day of the year. And once you are admitted it is expected you will never leave the island.

If the TV cameras don't lie, why would anyone leave such a paradise? The Aegean, the mountains, the cliffs, the sea-it does look like heaven. I suspect the ceaseless work and prayer can be a trial. This life is clearly not for the feint of body or heart. Eight hours at a clip of chanting the liturgy-in Greek yet and no women. Did I mention that no women are allowed anywhere on the island? As one news reporter-the first admitted in over thirty years -said, "A week is a long time without women!"

I used to read a lot May Sarton's works. She climbed the Parthenon on her 50th birthday, in 1962. A friend of mine went to Bayreuth to see the Ring for his 50th birthday. I doubt I'll ever climb the Appalachian Trail, or write a great novel, but Mt. Athos and the endless civilisation there is calling my name. See you in just over five years!

April 19 is Patriot's Day

You might want to write this down.

NOBODY Outside of New England knows from Patriot's Day.

Here's the skinny: The American Revolution began with the Battle of Lexington at dawn on April 19, 1775. Seventy-seven "minute men" stood up against 500+ advancing British troops who were enroute from Boston to Concord. (The were in boats, by the way. It was "two if by sea") There was an arsenal in Concord the British meant to seize. Now, the good people of Concord, and I love many f them, will tell you that the American Revolution begin in their attractive hamlet. It's true there was a full scale battle at Concord bridge, but with love to those deluded Concordians who insist otherwise, the American Revolution began on he town green in Lexington Massachusetts at dawn on April 19 1775.

I wasn't there. Growing up in Lexington April 19 was a huge holiday. Schools and businesses closed. There was the 6 a.m. reenactment of the Battle of Lexington, with uniforms proudly worn by the rapidly aging soldiery, who turned over in favor of sons and younger brothers every few years. Of course there were no female soldiers. Jeez. This was the monolithic age. A hapless teen was drafted to play Johnathan Harrington. He was mortally wounded that April morning, but managed to crawl across the Green to his house, where he looked up at his wife...and died. Why THAT hasn't been made into an opera yet is any one's guess.

The parade had floats, town selectmen, the occasional elderly Red Sox pitcher, and every high school marching band within thirty miles, complete with chubby majorettes and pimply tuba players. If you had to pee while watching the parade, and many of us did-you repaired to the yard of one of the stately homes lining Massachusetts Avenue and hid behind a tree--or not.

There were pancake breakfasts, neighborhood cookouts, fifes and drums out the wazoo and enough beer to float the saddest Irish wake (There is no such thing as a sad Irish wake, unless the potato salad is lousy) It was a wonderful community day, withal, and I miss it. Ninety percent of us wouldn't have known Captain Parker from Captain Crunch, but with all respect, who cared?

Today Lexington is awash in ethnic restaurants and banks. All the charm is gone. The beautifully maintained green and surrounding houses still look lovely, but Mass Ave is now a jumble in a town trying to be if not Cambridge, then maybe Monte Carlo. I wonder what date Princess Grace celebrated Parrot's Day?

Good times.

Today at the Circus

Life generally is a circus, but today I actually attended a three ring event. Under the big top. Well, actually under the barn roof at the Fairgrounds. Each year I'm asked to go and narrate the circus for kids from the Columbus School for the Blind-they listen on headsets. Some have parital sight-some have profound disabilities. All enjoy the day out. This is made possible by a group of Bell System retirees. I get a free trip to the circus and I get to spend the morning with scads of little kids. It's a circus in more way than one, and it's a joy. The challenge is to keep the banter up for the non sighted kids. And how many variants can you use to describe the same beefy Russian woman in pink tights? Is an elephant always an elephant? Maybe, but you can describe what the pachyderms are doing-and with all those animals...no ACCIDENTS! Nobody was eating poop this year.I work hard to keep the kids engaged.

Today a young boy with partial sight sat in back of me. He wanted to be buddies and he certainly was chatty. He wanted badly to pet the animals, and told about his love for snakes. "I've touched them at the zoo!" Wow. Not me. In front me sat a 12 year old boy with profound disabilities. He couldn't sit still, wore diapers, didn't speak. His aid-a saintly, patient young woman-said to me, "I don't want to bother you, but he wants to sit on your lap." He does? The honor is mine and God knows there's room. He sat on my lap, which quieted him while I helped him eat lunch...and the show, lions, tigers and bears...and the beefy ladies and elderly pigs and horses...went on. A good way to spend a morning.

Maryisms

My mother would be 90 years old next week. Mass is being said for her at her church in Lexington, a church to which she was devoted and muy pissed when in my teenage rebellion I refused to go. It was a bit sad to call there and arrange this Mass and realize nobody is around who remembers her. She died in 1986.

Well, I remember of course. Herewith some of her best sayings:

Wearing her mumu, Bud Lite in hand: "What time is the 5 o'clock mass for crissakes"?

"Your poor father's sisters are lovely women. Could never live with them."

"No beer? There's no beer?! Get in the car an go over to your Uncle Jack's basement. He always keeps a stash...never mind breaking in , just do it!"

"I think its very nice your friends are gay. Young people should be happy."

"If the nuns are gonna walk around without the habit they may as well go to the damned hairdresser. They all look like men."

"Glory be to Peter!"

When as a five year old I asked why a nun never had a baby she replied, "Jesus Mary and Joseph! God love you...ask the pope!--the schools today are much too progressive..."

More to come!

"Our job is to lie, cheat and steal"

Here's a paragraph from the end of an entertaining new book, The War for Late Night, When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy by Bill Carter. He writes with a real "You are there" perspective. This story concerns Lorne Michaels, the long time chief of Saturday Night Live. Years ago Michaels became dissatisfied with SNL, and wanted to leave. HE went in to the office of NBC Entertainment Chief Irwin Seglestein, intending to resign. Here's what Segelstein had to say:

" When you leave, the show will get worse. But not all of a sudden, gradually. And it will take the audience a while to figure that out. Maybe two, maybe three years. And when it gets to be , you know, awful, and the audience has abandoned it, then we will cancel it. And the show will be gone, but we will still be here, because we're the network and we are eternal. If you read your contract closely, it says the show is to be ninety minutes in length. It is to cost X. That's the budget. Nowhere in that do we ever say it as to be good. And if you are so robotic and driven that you feel pressure to push yourself in that way to make it good, don't come to us and say you've been treated unfairly, because you're trying hard to make it good and we're getting in your way. Because at no point did we ask for it to be good. That you're neurotic is a bonus to us. Our job is to lie, cheat and steal. Your job is to do the show."

That Horrible F Word

Well, there I was, pretty in pink all ready to go on the air with a live chat show I get to host 2x month. Today's topics were arts and culture. I invited three guests who well represent the local arts community. Two were charming, articulate, smart and made great radio. The third was someone I didn't know except by (excellent) reputation. I did know he had that sort of "angry young man" thing going on. It's all about good radio, about engaging the community, giving the community useful information, being entertaining and having fun.

Five minutes into the broadcast didn't my new friend chose to answer a question with, "Well I spend half my time loving it here and the other half wanting to get the fuck out."

I'm a guest host. I love this gig. This is live radio with no delay at all, which I made clear to everyone, even our angry young man newbie and there it was after three minutes, what my late mother always referred to as "That Horrible F Word."

Guest no. 1 blanched a bit but was calm and professional. Guest #2 shot a look hat could kill. Your obedient servant, the host, fumbled a bit and went on. The AYM was nonplussed. Doesn't everyone speak this way? (Yes, most of us do but as I explained before AND after NOT ON LIVE BROADCAST). What threw me was that HE wasn't the least bit fazed. Had he never heard of George Carlin and the infamous 7 words ? At the first break I kicked him out of the studio. Go. Who knows what he would say next? It's a shame because he was off to a good start.

He sent an e mail apology stating again he didn't know cursing was forbidden. Dear God.
For the record YOU CANNOT CURSE ON A LIVE BROADCAST

Happily our wonderful producer hit a button just in time and "that horrible F word" did not go out live. The TV feed and podcast have to be cleaned up. That's better than being screwed by the FCC. Somebody called in and complained that I cut off the guest. The screener said THE GUY SAID FUCK IN THE AIR! 'Nuf said.

He apologized by e mail. I told him it was bad and serious and immature but that he was a gifted guy with a lot of good work to do. And yes, I told him I was in no position to criticize someone else's language but I DON'T CURSE ON THE AIR

Oy.
And people wonder....

Mozart

I'm listening to Mozart's Symphony 36 in C- the Linz.

This past weekend Opera Columbus did a good job with The Marriage of Figaro. In my pre performance talks I mentioned that some productions of this work depict Count Almaviva not only as unpleasant but as violent-a wife beater. The Countess becomes an abused wife. I can't hear this at all in Mozart's music. Mozart did everything in music better than anyone else (except Bach-although Bach wrote no operas) What Mozart did not do was violence. There's no raging bloodshed in any Mozart I've ever heard, opera or otherwise. There's joy, sorrow, grief, anger, sex, love, love and more love, laughter, fear, unhappiness, even tragedy. But where is Mozart ever violent? I don't hear it. His music is all about grace and proportion, and the humanity that lives within. But blood and guts, not really. The human heart and all its joys and perils, yes.

Now, back to the Linz. What a gift on a rather dreary day!

The Listening Table

This past weekend's Columbus Symphony program was superb. I'm so pleased we got a fine live broadcast Saturday night. Larry Rachleff conducted Rachmaninoff' s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and the Symphony 11 of Shostakovitch, The Year 1905. Kirill Gerstein was the piano soloist in the Rachmaninoff and he was dazzling. The audience fell in love with him. Conductor Rachleff was unknown to me (where have I been?!?) Sensational. He had an immediate grasp of Shostakovitch's gripping score-and he sold it it brilliantly. I could have heard the entire concert all over again and I suspect most of the audience felt the same way.

Inspired by this, I've put away Bellini and Monteverdi and Maria Callas temporarily and am now concentrating on

Shostakovitch String Quartets
Bartok Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta
Dvorak Symphony 8
Liszt Piano Sonata in b minor (with Kirill Gerstein)

A wonderful journey awaits.

Greatest Composers?

A young friend recently e mailed to ask if I'd seen the New York Times series by Anthony Tommasini naming the 10 greatest composers. Here's my reply:

I saw the Times piece and the media. I imagine Tommasini was told by his editors to do something really provocative, hence this study. I never do these "best of" lists well. I can't get away from subjectivity. To me, greatness in any endeavor belongs to those who break the mold and force the rest of us to think in a different way. So my list would be something like this:

Josquin Missa Pape Marcellae
Monteverdi Vespers of 1610, L'Orfeo, Poppea
Bach Passions, Brandenburg Concerti, Cello Suites, everything
Haydn-perfecting the string quartet
Mozart everything
Beethoven symphonies, quartets, Missa Solemnis, everything
Wagner Tristan und Isolde
Mahler Symphony 3, Das Lied von der Erde
Stravinsky Rite of Spring
Schonberg Moses und Aron
Ives Concord Sonata

That's 11 , not 10-but its my blog so what the hell.

And yes, it breaks my heart to omit Verdi and Puccini. Their operas have given me more pleasure then many of the above named, but truly great in the mold breaking sense, I'm afraid. One could argue for Gershwin. Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Dvorak, all magnificent (what's more exquisite than Schubert's Die Forelle?) but they don't predict what is to come.

Anybody want to list their favorite composers?

Just Kids

La boheme, with its description of student poverty and fatal illness amid the rooftops of Paris is only romantic and beautiful because of Puccini's music. It may be true that a lot of us keep a fond memory of our basement apartments and hopeless love affairs from a time gone by, but who really wants to turn back the clock? Poet-Rocker Patti Smith does just that with her book Just Kids. This was the National Book Award Winner and gave new profile to an artist I knew best from Gilda Radner's SNL riff in the '70s as "Candy Slice". ("Let's get together....and get sick!")

The center of this book is Smith's long relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. They began as nice kids from suburbia. Mapplethorpe was an altar boy from a devout Catholic family. They met and connected in New York. Patti was on a blind date that was not going well. A young man walked by and she managed to whisper, "Hey, pretend you're a friend and help me get out of here." Robert did. And for several years, the two were inseparable.

These years, late 60s, early 70s, were years of homelessness-sleeping on front stoops in Brooklyn, panhandling and squats. They were years when two people were struggling to create: poetry and pictures-which morphed into music and photography. The days of controversy over Mapplethorpe's photography ("Piss Christ") postdate this book. This is a memoir about becoming. Along the way they live in New York's seedy and wonderful Chelsea Hotel (Virgil Thomson upstairs and Martha Graham down the hall) and we frequent the adjacent El Quixote or Max's Kansas City. Janis Joplin and Andy Warhol and his coterie make regular appearances. But the book is about Patti and Robert, friends, soul mates (overused but there's no better word here) lovers. They are two people who can't live without each other until sucess and sexualty separate them. Both get to the top of their fields, but there is no ego in this book .The tone is of truth telling. There's nothing sensational in this writing of two lives that were, frankly sensational.

At night, after trudging through the snow I found him waiting for me in our apartment, ready to rub my hands to make them warm. He seemed always in motion, heating water on the stove, unlacing my boots, hanging up my coat, always with one eye on the drawing he was working on. He would stop for a moment if he noticed something. Most of the time, it seemed as if the piece was fully formed in his mind. He was not one for improvising. It was more a question of executing something he saw in a flash.


Patti's album Horses-for which Mapplethorpe did the photography- launched her career. Mapplethorpe found a patron and created the images that disturb many to this day. Patti Smith married in 1980 and had two children. Robert Mapplethorpe died in 1989 at the age of 43. Don't miss Just Kids. It's poignant and moving and sad and lovely.

Fathers and Sons

A new book called The Last of His Mind by John Thorndike was laying around the office. I took it home and found it was one of those books! The author spent a year caring for his father who was slowly -and agonizingly-fading away from Alzheimer's. Joseph Thorndike had a very distinguished career in journalism, including stints at LIFE magazine with Henry Luce. He was an emotionally reticent man who was deeply intellectual. John and his brother's upbringing had been complicate by his parent's divorce and his mother's alcoholism and mental illness. John Thorndike when we meet him is a man in his 60s, with his own complicated martial history, and a grown son of his own. He leaves a business and a life in Athens Ohio to move in with his Dad on Cape Cod. He writes, with humor and compassion of all of the indignities of old age: the forgetfulness, the slow fade, the incontinence. He is clearly not ashamed of his father and wants to spare him any embarrassment over these indignities. What John Thorndike has written is nothing less than a love story of a son to a father-a father who has never been emotionally available, but a beloved father nonetheless.

I picked up Thorndike's earlier memoir, Another Way Home tells of the author's life as as single parent to a toddler called Janir. Janir's mother is a Central American woman Thorndike met while in the Peace Corps. What began as a blissful relationship disintegrated quickly as Clarisa too, disintegrated into mental illness. Thorndike writes of diapers, play groups, sleep overs, kick ball, poop, and the life he builds for Janir, now a married man with a child of his own. It's another love story but this father to son. The world needs more of such stories, especially as well written as Another Way Home.

Ron Reagan has written his first book, Ronald Reagan at 100. I'm no fan of Ronald Reagan's politics. But the Reagan children have always fascinated me. There are two sets of siblings kept apart, another emotionally absent but benevolent father and a (step) mother who ran the show. Ron Reagan concentrates on unearthing his father's past going back to the Ireland of several generations ago. The book has been criticised since the author writes candidly that his father was showing signs of Alzheimer's in the White House. (This has been hotly disputed, not least by Reagan's older son, Michael.) It is clear Ron loved his father and even felt loved by him. It's another son to father love letter. I suspect if Ronald Reagan were alive today his son Ron would easily find the words to tell his father he loves him, even if the former president was abashed uncomfortable. This lovely book will have to do.