The Parsonnet Legacy

The Parsonnet name will always be associated with devotion to the New Jersey Symphony. Dr. Eugene Parsonnet, an amateur violinist, was a steadfast friend of the orchestra and a board member. His wife, Rose Parsonnet, was an active volunteer. Their son, renowned heart surgeon Dr. Victor Parsonnet, was appointed to the board in 1986. Victor’s love and support of the orchestra—as a loyal subscriber, board member, board chairman and now chairman emeritus— are well known and much admired in New Jersey’s arts community. How best to describe Victor Parsonnet’s history with the NJSO?—in his own words.

“Music has been a major part of my life. My mother was a musician and ran a music school behind Lincoln Park in Newark. My father was a doctor and also a musician. He played the fiddle and had a quartet called the Haftons, named because between the four of them, they weighed a half a ton. I grew up with music in the house all the time.

“My father also led the board of the symphony. After concerts, my parents often invited the soloists and members of the orchestra to our house for parties. I’d mill around with them. I remember Kenny Schermerhorn standing on his head.

“There’s one experience I’ll never forget. My mother was a good friend with the British pianist Dame Myra Hess. I was her page-turner at a matinee concert at Carnegie Hall. I was scared to death that I’d miss a page, or toss the music on the floor or bang my head on the piano. Once I did miss and she quickly turned the page and kept going. Once, she was playing an interminable Schubert sonata at a matinee. I was feeling sleepy,

“I’ve done a lot of things practicing medicine; relationship with the musicians and the New Jersey Symphony. It was a privilege to get to know them. It’s a thrill to watch these virtuosos work together to create music under a conductor. Many don’t have the opportunity to do what I did. I love the orchestra. I couldn’t have had a better life.”

Excerpts from interview with Lisa Winkler in 2019 the musicians. I invited people to my so I took a walk during intermission. I guess I was still sleepy, because I fell asleep on stage, and she had to turn the pages. I woke when the applause started.

“When my father died, I was asked to fill his spot on the board. I became chair in 1991 and served in that capacity for 17 years. I didn’t understand the orchestra at all when I joined. It took a while to learn. When you watch an orchestra play, you don’t relate to the individuals, you relate to the whole group. I started the other way around by getting to know the musicians as people. There had been a lot of tension between the board, the staff and ways, I was jealous of them. They could play music that most, and certainly not I, could never play. They’re playing the most beautiful music in the world. Each could perform as a soloist, yet they choose to do what they do because they like the experience of performing together. To me they were a family. I felt a great responsibility to treat them the same way I did my patients—to take care of them like a family.

“The orchestra gave me a wonderful gift. They invited me to play the piano with them in May 2008, and selected some Mozart. I’d never played on a concert grand before or sat on stage at NJPAC. It was terrifying! I remember Principal Flutist Bart Feller looking at me, skeptical, and then realizing I could really play. I was startled by the sound the piano could make. Neeme Järvi was the conductor. He would conduct with his eyebrows and with subtle movements of his shoulders. When he looked at me, it felt like my stomach was being pulled out. He said, ‘play out, play out’.”

Audiences and critics took notice. “One didn’t need a voltage meter at last night’s New Jersey Symphony Orchestra concert to judge how the musical electricity jumped when the group got its hands on a fresh, inspiring piece of music,” commented The Star-Ledger’s music critic Bradley Bamberger.

Järvi’s first two seasons introduced New Jerseyans to music by Estonian compatriots Arvo Pärt, Bohuslav Martinů and Eduard Tubin. Northern European composers cropped up frequently in his programming—with both well-known and rarely performed music by Grieg, Sibelius, Wilhelm Stenhammar, Johan Svendsen, Erkki-Sven Tüür and Carl Nielsen. Järvi charmed New Jersey audiences with the European tradition of the orchestra encores, which could be anything from Sibelius’ lush Andante festivo for strings to Frank Meacham’s popular march American Patrol

The innovative Winter Festivals begun in the Macal years continued under Järvi with a “Northern Lights” festival, Mozart festival, belle epoque French music festival and “Coming to America” festival which included Dvořák’s ”New World” Symphony and music by American immigrant composers Bartók, Hindemith and Stravinsky. Järvi continued to promote performing and commissioning contemporary music, and also programmed copious amounts of classic repertoire—all Haydn’s London symphonies, all Beethoven’s piano concerti and symphonies—which contributed significantly to increasing NJSO’s subscription base.

Thanks to the continuing efforts of the Symphony, generations of New Jersey children have been introduced to symphonic music. However, in the absence of ticket income, support for education programs depends completely on government support, and the generosity of foundations and corporations.

As the 2006-08 recession deepened, the NJSO’s commitment to music education received a much-needed boost from the New Jersey Department of Education, with an unprecedented $2 million, two-year grant.

Another major financial boost at a critical time came from the 2008 sale of the Symphony’s prized Golden Age Collection of historic instruments. The new owners, New York investors who were amateur violinists, generously offered the New Jersey players continued use of the instruments for a five-year period. The sadness of losing ownership of the prized instruments was made more tolerable by newly acquired organizational stability. “After all that has happened, the orchestra is in a better position now than it was in 2003,” NJSO CEO André Gremillet commented when the sale was announced publicly. “We’re debt-free for the first time in 11 years.”

Neeme Järvi, ever energetic a conductor on the stage as well as in the recording studio, became chief conductor of the Resedentie Orchestra of the Hague in 2005. Following his resignation as NJSO music director in 2009, he began spending more time in Europe and Estonia, where he has presented master classes with the Neeme Järvi Summer Academy, and now with the Järvi Academy of the Pärnu Music Festival. He has also been a keen observer of the success of his two conductor sons, Paavo and Kristjan, and his flutist daughter, Maarika.

Board Chairman Emeritus Victor Parsonnet said that while each of the previous music directors he knew took the orchestra forward, “the biggest leap—in the music and in connection with the audience— came with Neeme.”

Carl Orff’s explosive oratorio Carmina Burana proved to be an excellent repertoire selection by Jacques Lacombe in his audition for the NJSO’s 12th music director. The Star Ledger’s Bradley Bamberger pronounced Lacombe a musician’s conductor—“blessed with a rare memory, he worked without a score, maximizing his eye contact with the orchestra and chorus, the intimacy aurally apparent.”

Working with Neeme Järvi, who stayed on as conductor laureate and artistic advisor, preparations were made for Lacombe’s first season, 2010–11. The French Canadian’s innovative approach to programming was evident in his multi-season Winter Festival, “Man & Nature: Exploring the Elements in Music,” with Handel’s Water Music, Debussy’s La Mer, Elgar’s Sea Pictures and newer works by Edward T. Cone, Tan Dun and Tobias Picker featuring in the Water Festival. Subsequent festivals were themed around Fire and Earth, with Lacombe commenting “the idea behind the ‘Man & Nature’ Winter Festivals is to connect what we do on the concert stage to our daily lives, using nature and the environment as a link … I’m very pleased with … how we in the concert hall were able to reflect on our world, on the beauty of nature and how important it is to treat it well … in four seasons we have included many groups from our communities in the Winter Festival— theater companies, choirs, environmental organizations.”

With the sparkling showcase of NJPAC’s Prudential Hall and its proximity to New York, the administration had determined that annual performances at Carnegie Hall, an expensive tradition for many years, were no longer a priority. After the orchestra’s six-year absence from NYC stages, President and CEO André Gremillet was thrilled to receive an invitation for what would be the orchestra’s 22nd performance at Carnegie Hall, this time as participant in the 2012 Spring for Music Festival. An unconventional program of music by Varèse, Weill and Busoni, with Canadian Marc-André Hamelin as soloist in Busoni’s massive piano concerto, earned Lacombe and the NJSO excellent reviews from the often hard-edged New York music critics.