›› MUSiC
Rock us, Amadeus For classical music to thrive, it’s going to have to retune its ways by G r e g Cahill
C
lassical music is dead, long live classiI tracked him down through his wife, cal music. Marta Montanez Martinez (the widow of the In 2002, shortly after starting my job legendary cellist Pablo Casals), then president as the editor of Strings, a San of the prestigious ManhatAnselmo-based magazine for tan School of Music in New COMING SOON players of bowed stringed inYork. On the phone, Istomin The acclaimed ATOS Trio struments, I had the chance proved gracious, though of Germany will perform to interview Eugene Istomin, formal. He had pedigree. Beethoven, Brahms and one of the greatest pianists of As a younger man, he had Cassado on Sunday, Feb. 21, all time. performed in a string trio at 5pm, at the Mt. Tamalpais Methodist Church, 410 I thought about this rethat included violinist Isaac Sycamore Ave., Mill Valley. cently after reading a deluge Stern and cellist Leonard $25. 800/838-3006. of articles in the Washington Rose. Istomin mentioned Post, the New Yorker and elsethat his pedagogical lineage where about the dwindling extended through his teachaudience for classical music, er Mieczyslaw Horszowski, the pros and cons of prowho had studied with Karol gramming new works and Mikuli, a pupil of Chopin, the fiscal woes facing orchesand Beethoven’s pupil Carl tras big and small. Czerny. I had noticed that Istomin, Istomin thought Yo-Yo 77, was hosting a web chat on Ma was an upstart, devotthe United States Library of ing too much time to such Congress site with cellist Yocrossover projects as the Silk Yo Ma, his longtime friend. Road Ensemble, which Istomin thought diIstomin, the grand old man, on the web! luted the purity of classical music. That intrigued me. We chatted for an hour. He lamented that
Istomin, above, once lamented, ‘Everyone is a consumer of culture today.†We have a plethora of projects to popularize the arts. But the public worships celebrity, not art.’
he was nearing the end of his life (he would succumb to liver cancer the following year) and that he was saddened to see classical music had lost respect in the world. I tried to cheer him up. I told him that I had heard about a major string quartet that had a summer residency on a Navajo reservation, where the string players helped local teens arrange their own heavy metal and hard rock compositions for string quartet. Those arrangements were then performed off the
reservation at a nearby concert hall. The experience left the teens awestruck by the power of string music and it gave audiences a new appreciation for the teens’ music. My point was that this sort of eclecticism shouldn’t be misconstrued as disrespect. After all, Beethoven need not be placed on a pedestal for someone to admire his music or fathom his status as a musical titan. Istomin didn’t buy this argument. Rather, he circled the intellectual wagons, in effect, saying there was no room for eclecticism in the classical music world, not Yo-Yo Ma’s globe-trotting influences, or modern music or anything else. Besides, he said, everyone knows who Shakespeare is, “but that doesn’t mean that most folks actually read those great works.” His sadness was disconcerting. I felt he was wrong, because I knew many teens who listened to hip-hop and the Kronos Quartet. (And who understood that West Side Story is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, for that matter.) I still think he’s wrong, despite all those recent obituaries declaring the death of classical music. What has changed is the way fans listen to this music. True, fewer attend live concerts. But studies show that most Americans now get their Mozart fix in their cars, often through an MP3 device loaded with tunes downloaded from the Internet. That’s bad news for symphony orchestras or chamber ensembles struggling to make ends meet by relying on live shows; but it’s good news for those with enough initiative to record and sell their work over the Internet. Yes, we’re witnessing the end of an era, but let’s ask ourselves, what lies over the horizon? Classical music is dead, long live classical music. ✹ Email Greg Cahill at gcahill51@gmail.com. Tune up to the Marin music scene at
›› pacificsun.com 22 PACIFIC SUN FEBRARY 12 - FEBRUARY 18, 2010