The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2015-2016 season was
Ward Stare’s first year to program as the orchestra’s music director — he
officially took over the position in September 2014, and led several concerts
during that season, but its programming had already been set. And this season was,
by artistic and financial standards, a success.
Stare’s musicality and podium expertise have received a
strong response from the orchestra, which played outstandingly this year, as
well as from the RPO audience: the organization recently announced its first
increase in subscription sales since 2007-08, and also announced that single
ticket sales increased considerably last year, totaling $1.68 million.
The orchestra broadened its repertoire under its
Rochester-born conductor; classic and new American works, and such major pieces
(some rarely performed by the RPO) as Strauss’s “EinHeldenleben,” Rachmaninoff’s “Symphonic Dances,” and Roussel’s “Bacchus et Ariane” all appeared on this season’s
programming.
Last month, City met with Stare to get his thoughts on many
aspects of his first full programming year as a new music director, and his
plans for the RPO’s 2016-17 season, which include an American music festival
and a concert performance of Puccini’s “La Bohème.” An
edited transcript of that conversation follows.
City:
Can you talk about your goals and expectations as you came into the job? The
overall sound of the orchestra, the repertoire, the orchestra’s relation to its
audience, etc.
Ward
Stare: I had multiple goals, the most important of which was
developing a relationship with my orchestra and our sound together. But I also
wanted to develop the relationship between the community and me, and with the
organization as a whole. I was thinking about breaking down barriers, bringing new
people in, getting them excited about classical music again. And I think we did
pretty well. You’ve probably seen the announcement about the RPO’s increased
ticket sales. And contrary to national trends, our subscriptions sales are up.
People are coming back who had stopped subscribing, and I think that’s
fantastic.
I wanted to try expanding the repertoire by including pieces
the orchestra hadn’t done for a while. For example, Saint-Saëns’s “Bacchanale” — everybody knows it, and it’s a great piece,
but when I went back in the orchestra’s history, I found it had not been
performed since the 1940’s. When I saw that I said, “We’re bringing that back.”
Also the Albert Roussel “Bacchus et Ariane” suite,
which was brand new to the RPO.
Orchestrally speaking, things really started to get
interesting after January: We did the new Aaron Kernis
flute concerto with Marina Piccinini; two new pieces
by young American composers [Patrick Harlin’s
“Rapture” and Stephanie Berg’s “Ravish and Mayhem”]; and two Bartók piano concertos with Yuja
Wang, one of which is hardly ever played. After the first part of the season, I
felt we’d had our basic repertoire down and could start stepping out more.
The Kernis flute concerto is a very
complicated score, and something of a risk for us as it had just been premiered.
I remember how hard I had to work to learn it, and I was so proud on the first
day of rehearsal to find the orchestra so prepared. From that very first
rehearsal, we could shape phrases and make music. Both Aaron and Marina were there,
of course, and were over the moon about it.
It was the same with Yuja Wang’s
performance. Here were two concertos the orchestra hadn’t played in the recent
past, with a world-class soloist — everyone had to be on their game. It speaks
well for the orchestra that she felt comfortable asking for that. Yuja thanked me for agreeing to do the Bartók
First Concerto, saying “You have no idea how hard it is to get a conductor to
do this piece; it is really hard and it needs like six rehearsals.” And I said,
“Well, we’re up to the challenge.”
Are
there certain sections of the orchestra in which you’ve a seen a change in
sound?
The string section has opened out a lot. The “engagement
factor” decreases with players’ distance, so your conducting has to be more
intense to engage musicians sitting 20 or 30 feet away from you. I have noticed
in the big climactic moments of some of the pieces we’ve done that the string
section sounds fuller. [Former RPO Music Director] Christopher Seaman told me,
“Wow, the sound is really opening up; I can feel it. It’s your orchestra now. It’s
no longer my orchestra.”
The string section has a kind of intuitive cohesion. It
also seems that that brass sound has tightened up. Could that be due to your
background as a trombonist?
My idea of an orchestra’s sound is that it’s built from the
bottom up, in a kind of sonic pyramid. The lowest instruments, the basses and
the low brass — the bass line has to have clarity. On top of that, you can have
a broader, singing, more even tone. The highest, most penetrating instruments
are the cherry on top of the cake, but I still have to get them to hold back to
create a richer and more complex sound.
It’s mostly a lot of subtle balance things. There are always
things you want to work on. I often ask for more from the violas, the
trombones, the lower horns, the English horn, to create a richer sound. I’ll
tell instruments like the first violins and trumpet, or the percussion, they
have the advantage of register, and need to back off at times. If the sound is
not full enough, I will ask for more from the second violins, less from the
firsts. This is all part of the music director’s job: cultivating the
orchestra’s sound identity.
Do you find anything problematic about Kodak Hall’s
acoustics? Any aspects that you need to keep in mind as you conduct?
I am still learning the hall. We sometimes have difficulty
hearing each other on the stage, and I realize that some things I hear on the
podium are not what the listener in the hall hears. It’s a matter of isolating
those things in rehearsals and working on them.
When we have a guest conductor, I try to sit in various
places in the hall and listen, to see what the differences might be. I do know
that the sound in Kodak Hall can be dramatically different depending on where
you sit. That may not be unusual among concert halls, but it needs to be
considered.
How does the orchestra’s musical identity evidence
itself in repertoire? For example, I was struck by the number of times Samuel
Barber appeared this season, and I wonder if you thought his kind of romantic
lyricism paralleled the way the orchestra was coming together.
All those things. I’ve always loved Barber’s music, and I’ve
conducted it often. And in its rich texture and its detail, it does play to the
RPO’s strengths as well as to things we want to work on. His First Symphony,
for example, does everything a Mahler symphony does in 20 minutes — it’s a
complete workout for the orchestra.
Are there any composers in next season’s lineup
whom you feel are underrepresented?
Well, next season is about American music — not just in the
American Music Festival, but throughout the season. We want to highlight the
diversity in American music, from Charles Ives, which is of course very old, to
works having their premieres. Other countries have been melting pots, but I
think American music is more diverse than any national genre. This orchestra
can play a sensational pops concert or a great jazz concert, and I thought that
ability went hand-in-glove with American music.
In looking at American composers you’ve programmed,
such as Barber and Alan Hovhaness, I’m sure you’re aware that many of their
works were originally performed and recorded here in Rochester.
Absolutely. If you look at the list of artists who have
played in Rochester over the years, and the number of premieres, it’s
astounding. Rochester was an epicenter of activity in American music for a long
time.
Do you see this festival as an annual thing or a
regular feature of the RPO’s programming?
I don’t think we’ll continue with a three-weekend festival
each year; we have only so many weeks a year and there are lots of things I want
to do. American music is near and dear to my heart, so it will always be part
of my programming. When I saw what a great job the orchestra did with the Kernis flute concerto, I knew they were ready to tackle
another really hard American piece like the John Adams “Doctor Atomic Symphony,”
or the Copland Third Symphony. I hadn’t hesitated before, but that was a nice
affirmation.
I think by the end of the season, the orchestra really
coalesced on a new level — in the core rep like “EinHeldenleben,” then building on that in another difficult
piece, the Rachmaninoff “Symphonic Dances,” and then in the Kernis
and the Bartók concertos, and the new American works.
We thought the Beethoven Fourth Symphony was also
extremely well done.
That was on the same concert as the Kernis
flute concerto. It was a case of: “Oh, if I had 15 more minutes in rehearsal, I
could have fixed up this and this and this…” But if you have a good, very
engaged orchestra, a conductor can keep working even during the performance. I
thought that piece ended up in a very good space by the end of the week.
For next season, you’ve also scheduled an opera in
concert, “La Bohème.” I know you’re also an experienced
opera conductor. Do you plan to do this regularly?
A couple of years ago, you’ll remember, we did “La Traviata” for one night only. The demand for opera in
Rochester is strange: There’s a small group that loves it and will go to see
everything, and then there’s a large audience that doesn’t know much about it
and tends to stay away. We ended up with 1,500 or 1,700 people, which we
thought was very good, and the audience loved it. So I decided, this is
something we’ll do regularly and we’ll plan ahead from here on out. We’d
received funds specifically for opera and dance collaborations, but we couldn’t
find a date that worked in ’15-16, so we made sure there was a slot in ’16-17.
It often seems like there is a subtle through-line in your
programming: you not only want to find an original way to connect the audience
to the music, but also want to recalibrate its tastes. Do you feel you’ve
gained the RPO audience’s trust and that your 2017-18 season will be even more
adventurous?
We’re just beginning. But after this season I can say that
things are going as I’d hoped they would. The idea is to ratchet things up
gradually without turning anyone off, so people can hear music that’s new to
them and realize they like it. The Bartók First Piano
Concerto, people told me they loved it, ditto with the Kernis
Flute Concerto and Roussel’s “Bacchus et Ariane.”
That’s a great indicator, and I’d like to have a longer list of new pieces like
that each season.
Building that kind of trust takes a few years. I think of
Michael Tilson Thomas in San Francisco: he has
definitely built that trust with his audience, and they’ll accept whatever he
wants to do. But it took him 20 years of hard work.
It seems that it’s not just about programming new or old music,
but the way you program them. For example, the concert which ended with
Strauss’s “Four Last Songs” was very moving – not really like any concert I’d
ever heard. [The RPO’s March 17 and 19 concert program consisted of Patrick Harlin’s “Rapture,” Barber’s First Symphony, Vaughan
Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, and
Richard Strauss’s “Four Last Songs” — a emotional progression from violent distress
to serenity in the face of death.]
Of all the programs we did this year, I think I am most proud
of that. “Four Last Songs” rarely close a program; Erin Wall, the soprano who
sang them with us, said she’d never done them at the end of a concert before. Usually
they close the first half of a concert. But I find that if you do these songs
right, you don’t really want to hear anything else afterwards.
The way I put the program together, the whole concert built
to the songs — from the extremes of emotion in the Harlin
and Barber works, to the serenity of the Vaughan Williams Fantasia and even
more so in the Strauss. It all made sense in my brain, but it was wonderful to
see it work in the concert.
We want to ask about your working relationship with
RPO President and CEO Ralph Craviso. What’s the
dynamic like between financial goals and creative goals? Where is that moving?
I’m really pleased to be working with Ralph and pleased he
renewed his commitment to us. He is the architect of our five-year financial
plan. I take care of the artistic side, being mindful of fiscal responsibility,
and he takes care of the operational and financial side. Artistically I think
we’re doing great; the financial side needs a lot more work, though I am very
happy with our progress there, too. And I think our success artistically buoys
our finances. My job is to make the music work to reach those goals.
This article appears in Jul 6-12, 2016.
