In Retrospect:
World Premiere of
Clinton
Carpenter’s Completion of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony
Teng-Leong
Chew Interviewing Gordon Peters
Gordon Peters received his bachelor's and master's degrees
from the Eastman School of Music, where he founded and directed the percussion
ensemble program. He made a splash on national television in the 1950s with his
Marimba Masters and studied conducting with Pierre Monteux. Before becoming
principal percussionist and assistant timpanist of the Chicago Symphony in
1959, Peters played with the Rochester Philharmonic and the Grant Park
Symphony. From 1950 to 1953 he held a similar position with the U.S. Military
Academy Band at West Point.
Peters has
appeared as soloist with the Chicago Symphony, taught at Northwestern
University, and completed a 22-year tenure as conductor and administrator of
the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. Peters served as music director of the Elmhurst
Symphony from 1968 to 1973 and was assistant conductor of the Youth Symphony of
Greater Chicago for 20 years. He composed "The Swords of Moda-Ling"
for percussion ensemble and wrote a 368-page treatise on percussion titled
"The Drummer: Man." Mr. Peters served for five years as the first president
of the Percussive Arts Society and was a member of the Board of Directors of
the Conductors' Guild.
TLC Today is
April 5, 2003, and we are conducting this interview for Naturlaut at the
main library of Northwestern University, exactly three days before the
twentieth anniversary of the world premiere of the Carpenter’s version of the
Tenth Symphony.
GP Oh, what a wonderful
coincident! I was not aware of that.
Historical Aspects
TLC When was the first time you
perform Mahler, as an orchestral musician? As a conductor?
GP It would
have been with the Rochester Philharmonic under Erich Leinsdorf, when he was
the director and I was a student at the Eastman Music School. I cannot remember
for sure, but that must have been in the 1950s. It may also have been at the
Monteaux School under Pierrre Monteaux. I studied with him for ten summers.
That would have been between 1952 and 1963, and we performed Kindertotenlieder.
Monteaux didn’t think very highly of Mahler’s music, as you know, even though
he respected Mahler as a conductor. Those were the earlier experiences. The
first real Mahlerian influence I was exposed to would be when I was playing
under Fritz Reiner. That would include the Mahler’s Fourth and Das Lied von
der Erde. I particularly remember Das Lied von der Erde, with the
tenor that we had, Richard Lewis. I still hear it in my head. This is at least
forty years ago. Reflecting on that, I hear some of Das Lied von der Erde
in the Mahler Tenth. The most impact of Mahler on me, feeling-wise and memory-wise
would be Solti and the Mahler Fifth, because of the six-week tour we did in
1971 to Europe. Our first tour with Solti. Needless to say, we played that work
many many times. And it almost became our theme song, and a part of us. It is
almost second nature to us all. Another fond memory was when we gave a tour to
the Southeastern part of the United States with Claudio Abbado, then the
principal guest conductor. That was the Mahler Seventh. I vividly remember that
the father of Mr. Clavenger, our first horn, died during the tour. The second
horn had to step up. And of course there was also the Ninth we performed with
Giulini. So those are some of my fond “Mahlerian” memories, aside form my own
involvement with the Tenth, which is “symphonically” as a conductor, my
greatest musical experience.
TLC But the Tenth premiere was not
the first time you have conducted Mahler.
GP No, not at all. I have
conducted Mahler before and after that event. I have conducted the First,
Fourth, Fifth and Ninth, and I have conducted the Sixth in rehearsal.
TLC How many years were you the
principal conductor of the Civic Orchestra?
GP I was first hired in 1966 by
Jean Martinon to be the administrator and to be one of the four conductors:
Jean Martinon was the music director, Erwin Hoffman the assistant conductor, Margaret Hillis and myself. We are the four so-called
“nucleus” conductors. We would do half concert each, and invite other young
conductors to conduct the second half of the concerts. And after the three of
them left, I started to conduct more and more, and it finally turned into me
becoming the principal conductor in the 70s.
TLC Tell me a little bit more
about the Civic Orchestra.
GP Ah, the history of Civic
Orchestra is very interesting. It is actually both a sociological as well as a
musical phenomenon. It was formed in 1891. Theodore Thomas was invited to come
in 1891 because of his reputation. He first played at the Auditorium, then he
wanted his own hall, which was built in 1904. He gave the first concert in the
new Orchestra Hall in 1904, that’s when Frederick Stock came into the picture.
Stock was a violinist in the orchestra. Oh, I have to interrupt myself: German
was the official spoken language until 1915 for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
So of course when the First World War occurred, not only the entire orchestra,
which mainly consisted of Germans, had to go, Frederick Stock himself almost
had to leave. So the need for musicians in the orchestra became an issue
because you could no longer import the musicians from Germany. So what did he
do? He formed a training orchestra! And at that time of course, there were
musicians in the cabarets, bands, and radio. They were good, but they didn’t
know the classical literature. So they were not students per se, but
actually professionals that needed to re-trained. The World War II came, Stock
died, more students and women joined the orchestra because many young men were
sent to the battlefields.[1]
So it slowly turned into an old people community orchestra. So we weren’t even
training young people as we were supposed to!
TLC How did
this evolve into the Civic Orchestra that we know today?
GP When I took over this
orchestra, I practically inherited this “mess”. There were orchestra members in
their 50s and 60s, and Jean Martinon auditioned me for the job. I met Martinon
when he was a conductor in Rochester, and he knew that I studied under Monteux,
and I had worked with the Chicago Youth Orchestra. He told me that if I wanted
the job, I had to get rid these old folks! Well, that’s easier said than done –
so it was really uphill. I have to do it little by little.
TLC The Civic Orchestra has
performed a total of 29 Chicago premieres of American works, 23 non-American
composers’ premieres and two world premieres between 1966 and 1987, while under
your direction. That was quite an impressive list of premieres for a student
orchestra. Did you actively seek out these unheard repertoires?
GP First, let me say that I
myself is a musician in an orchestra. And my fundamental mission was to prepare
these young musicians to be a member of a major orchestra, and to do that, they
have to go through the audition process and know the literature. So the first
priority was to do the so-called standard repertoire. The second was a matter
of program balance. You can’t ignore, regardless of orchestral training, works
that have validity, and the students need to balance themselves out. They
cannot just do audition materials, and they must be all-rounded. Although that’s
not always entirely possible, but you have to shoot for it. So, with the
recommendations from various friends, advisors, and through my own research, I
came up with these pieces that were seldom, if at all, performed. For example,
to my knowledge, the Chicago Symphony has never performed a work by Salieri!
Now, I don’t think Salieri is Mozart, but I think the public should hear it.
Then there is the subject of Chicago composers. Irwin Bazelon, for example. He
was trained at DePaul University – wrote good music. Why not? He submitted his
works to the Chicago Symphony, and hey, Carpenter submitted the Tenth to the
Chicago Symphony, but they just weren’t interested. Take Morton Gould’s Jekyll
and Hyde Variations for example. That was a marvelous classical piece! People
from “upstairs” told me it is quasi-pop, and we could not do it at the Symphony
Hall. That’s absolutely wrong! There was also a group of composers whom I
referred to as the “American Five”: John Becker, Henry Cowell, Charles Ives,
Wallingford Riegger and Carl Ruggles. We did the works of all these composers
and received great response from the audience. And there is Chou Wen-Chung’s
“And the Fallen Petals”. Chou taught at DeKalb University in Illinois. Again,
why not? We also gave the Chicago premiere of a Bela Bartok’s work – Four
Orchestral Pieces; can you believe we actually gave the Chicago premiere of a
work by Bartok? A closer Mahler connection here would be Malloch’s
transcription of the Art of Fugue. Besides the Carpenter’s Mahler Tenth, we
have also premiered Schubert’s Seventh Symphony, as realized by Brian Newbould.
So the Mahler Tenth realization was not unique to us.
Getting to know
the Carpenter Completion
TLC Now let’s talk about the
Tenth Symphony. Have you performed any other version of the Tenth before you
work on the Carpenter version, and who conducted the performance(s)?
GP Oh yes. I think both Levine
and Solti did the Cooke version. I really cannot remember for sure.
TLC Did Solti conducted the
full-length symphony or just the Adagio?
GP I cannot confirm this, but I
am pretty sure it was just the first movement[2].
But Levine did the whole thing in Ravinia. I don’t remember the date.
TLC How did you find out about
Carpenter's version?
GP That is actually a spin-off
from the Levine performance. Levine performed the Cooke version before my
performance of the Carpenter. I found out the Carpenter completion as it was
mentioned in the Cooke’s score. It was actually Alan Stout and William Malloch
that really brought this into my head, and they pointed out that Mr. Carpenter
lived in Mount Prospect, Illinois! There were also a few others such as my
assistant at the Civic Orchestra but Alan Stout and William Malloch were the
two main driving forces.
TLC Why did you choose the
Carpenter version over others'?
GP Actually it chose me! I
didn’t know about the others besides Cooke. And the “badgering” of these people
to do this made me accept it as a personal challenge. The man lives nearby and
I feel a sense of loyalty to perform it, especially since the version has never
been heard. And it is a perfect piece for the training orchestra, so I am going
after it. It’s silly not to [perform it]. It has been mentioned in the Cooke
score, and yet nobody has performed it. It is a Mahler piece, and hey, any
Mahler piece is good for the orchestra. And more importantly, Solti, Bernstein
and others have all turned it down; this is great for our programming!
TLC Did you initiate the
communication with Carpenter, or did he approach you?
GP The catalytic evening occurred
in December of 1982, during a dinner at the Blackhawk Restaurant, located at
Randolph and Wabash. It was a no-holds-bar eating and drinking session, and Mr.
Malloch and Mr. Stout kept pounding on me on this issue, I got tired of the
intimidation, got my quarter out and went to the nearby pay-phone and dialed
the number. Sure enough, Mr. Carpenter picked up the phone, and that’s how it
all started.
TLC So that was about a year
before the world premiere…
GP Oh, you have to understand, up to
then all we had was a score, no parts. And we are talking about almost $7000 of
our limited budget to make the copies. And that’s twenty years ago, which would
turn into $21,000 these days. So there were budgetary implications. I didn’t
have the authority to say yes or no right away, I had to go through channels,
people like John Edwards, the manager of the orchestra. As I said, it turned
out to be over $7000 project. So it had to be spread over two seasons. This is
the before computer is used in the music business. Just to give you an idea,
there were more than 38 different parts to be hand-copied, and the first violin
part alone is nearly 40 pages long. Mahler’s near-fanatic change of keys in
this symphony meant that every line had to be proofread, and there were a lot
of errors even after the proofreading – as shown in the errata we distributed
during rehearsals. I still question the validity of certain parts of the copied
score. Anyway, we finally brought it to fruition, but we really didn’t start
rehearsing it till January of 1983. So that’s one year after Mr. Carpenter and
I first spoke.
TLC The Civic Orchestra is the
training orchestra of the Chicago Symphony, albeit an absolutely fine orchestra.
Why didn’t the Chicago Symphony itself perform the work? Have they ever been
approached?
GP Let me
first add that there is no one Civic Orchestra per se. The turnover rate
was very high; we got about forty to sixty percent returning musicians every
year. They all went through re-auditioning. So it’s a different orchestra every
year.
Mr. Clinton Carpenter approached various conductors,
including Solti[3] and
Bernstein, and the primary reason for the negative responses was their own
fundamental philosophy that there’s simply not enough of completion by Mahler
to warrant their effort and time when they had other commitments such the
symphonic concerts, guest conducting, recording and operas. And these
engagements are very taxing on conductors’ time. It was simply not high enough
a priority for them. There is also philosophy among musicians against the
subject of realization, completion, or transcription; I guess you would call
them purists. I respect their rights but I don’t agree with them, because music
is music, whether you play a string quartet with four strings as originally
intended or transcribed for marimba, it’s still music. They can label it as
perverse, but…
TLC And Mahler himself made
transcription and adaptation on numerous occasions.
GP Exactly!!
TLC Has the Civic Orchestra
played any Mahler’s Tenth before 1983?
GP You know, I think they have
not played Mahler’s Tenth before or after, actually. Ha!
TLC This event obviously
received a lot of attention from the local press, how has this performance
helped the Civic Orchestra?
GP I am critical of my own work as
much as everyone else. I would give questionnaires to the musicians every year
about the type of program and my conducting. I don’t know the particular effect
the Carpenter completion premiere had on the orchestra, but judging from the
positive response that I received from the audience, orchestral players,
reviews, and correspondence, I would say the effect was a very positive one.
Rehearsals and Performance
TLC How many rehearsals did the
Civic Orchestra have before the performance?
GP More than any other concert
we have given and certainly more than any professional orchestra could afford.
The rehearsals occurred between January and April of 1983. In that period we
actually have another concert to perform, so I had to work the preparation of
that concert into the Mahler schedule. But we did start rehearsing the Mahler
in January, more likely than not the strings parts first because they were the
most difficult. Then of course the errata started coming in[4].
Mr. Carpenter heard some of these mistakes during the rehearsal, and we had to
fix them. This slowed us down a little bit. We once in a while had tutti
strings rehearsal or woodwind rehearsal with nothing else. But overall, we have
sectional orchestra rehearsals weekly. There are basically seventeen “sections”
in an orchestra like this and the principals of the Chicago Symphony would meet
with the section each week. We would define the problems and organize these
rehearsals, tutti or sectionals, and tried to fix them. I cannot say exactly
how many rehearsal we had, probably as many as we can possibly jam into our
schedule considering the heterogeneous mixture of musicians from various
institutions with different schedules, and we also had to work around the
schedule of the Orchestral Hall. And the rent all came out of my budget. So
everything was micro-managed.
TLC What is the biggest
challenge you and the orchestra faced during the rehearsal?
GP First violin part. F-sharp
is not easy for violins, and Mahler added a lot of accidentals. Be it Mahler,
or Mahler-Carpenter or Carpenter, and in addition to that the tempi chosen …
what I am getting at is: should something be written for one instrument or
eighteen? Remember that Mahler did not have time to go back and revise this
thing, and he did not indicate the metronomic markings that he preferred. Had
he done so, he would have kept a lot of people out of trouble.
I also need to mention that there are a lot of leaps
in this work. Mahler broke a lot of melodic and harmonic rules are broken here.
Of course, Mahler was not the first one to do so. One of the first departures
like that was Beethoven in Missa Solemis. Try to sing that thing if you
are in the chorus, it is almost impossible. The same can be found in Mahler’s
Tenth. So we had to steadfastly rehearse the violin, as well as other
instruments, in slow motion to make sure we got it right.
Then there was the subject of balance and dynamics,
how do we connect the dots between Clinton Carpenter’s addition and that of
Mahler? And also, I didn’t know the piece! It was like a teacher trying to
study a chapter ahead of the students. I am very fortunate to have Mr.
Carpenter lending us all the assistance we needed, especially the four-hand piano
version of the symphony that he brought in, which I used for two obvious
reasons: First and foremost, to help me get this thing in my head. Secondly, to
get the two pianists who played with the Civic Orchestra but had nothing to do
with this concert something to do! And it was very good for them.
TLC That must have helped you
with the metronome markings for the performance.
GP Oh, yes.
It helped the metronomic markings tremendously. I think Mr. Carpenter is
getting tired of me trying to extract from him the best tempi for the
performance. Like I said, I didn’t know the piece that well. I am a firm
believer of metronomic markings, as did Solti. He would come to dress
rehearsals always with a metronome, to see that he was doing the tempo that he
had decided. He was terribly self-disciplining. He never asked more of us than
of himself. It’s a good lesson.
TLC Did Carpenter continue to
work on his score during the rehearsal? When was the last time he changed the
score, was it till the last minute?
GP (Nod) But he would not
interrupt us. He would make notes, and would come in with corrections and
changes. Rehearsal time is precious, and must be spent rehearsing and not
talking. I think I saw in the score that some changes were made in 1987, so he
was still making changes in 1987, and perhaps beyond that.
TLC Did you use split violin
sections for the performance?
GP No, and I am going to
comment on that. You can arbitrarily take one position versus the other. As you
know, Daniel Barenboim does this all the time with the Chicago Symphony. More
and more guest conductors, such as Pierre Boulez, put the seconds back with the
firsts. Stereophonic business may have been ok at the time these things were
written. The orchestras were smaller, the string sections were smaller, the
halls were smaller, and the acoustics of the hall might have been better, and
you can hear them. But the many concert halls in the United States and some of
the new ones in Europe the acoustics are very bad. So if you talk to any second
violins who now sits to the right of the conductor, they probably hate it,
because they cannot hear their colleagues. What would you think, as a string
player yourself, if I came along and demanded that the two violins in a string
quartet sit across from one another? Will you feel comfortable about that?
The best answer is the resolution of the question by
Leopold Stokowski. From left to right, first violins, second violins, violas,
behind them a row of celli, and behind the cello section, a row of double bass.
And to the conductor’s right, interestingly enough, flute 4, 3, 2, 1; oboe 1,
2, 3, 4; clarinet 4, 3, 2, 1; bassoon 1, 2, 3, 4, then horns, brass,
percussion. So you have the choirs together, and they can hear. I don’t agree
with today’s popular practice. It depends too much on the musicians, if you
have the best musicians, they can pull it off, simply because they are the
best. But it works to everyone’s disadvantage because you try so hard. If the
acoustics are good, then you relax and give your best to the music. Forgive me
for saying this, when I now hear the Chicago Symphony plays in the “altered
acoustic” hall, it is a very negative experience for me, very unfulfilling.
And, on an unrelated subject, I find the Chicago Symphony now plays perfectly
but with no passion. There are other reasons, which I won’t go into.
TLC WFMT recorded the
performance, and broadcasted it. Was it recorded live during the actual
performance?
GP Yes. But it was also
recorded the day before, straight through, sort of as a second performance, in
the event that there was any cataclysmic accident during the concert. And I
must mention that Mr. Norman Pellegrini did the recording. He regularly
recorded our concerts.
TLC Jack Diether, Harold Byrns,
and Jerry Bruck put in great effort in convincing Alma Mahler to lift the ban
on the performance. Did any of them come to the world premiere?
GP I have never met Jerry
Bruck. Jack Diether and his wife were at the performance. They were very
delightful people. Jack was a very informal guy. He had very individualistic
face, he was comfortably clad, shall we say. But he was so dedicated to
Mahler’s music. I am not at all trying to deprecate this great man, if anything
I meant it as a compliment. He was a regular Joe, very sincerely, and warm. He
has made wonderful contribution to the music of Mahler.
TLC And what
did he think of the performance?
GP He made positive and
negative comments. The negatives were kind and true. Well, I can’t remember the
details. He was supportive of the version, and he was very glad to have heard
it. Like any first performance of this magnitude, I continue to listen to the
tape of the performance, and I am making up criticism of my own performance.
TLC Was Solti in the audience?
GP I don’t know. I read from
somewhere that he planned on coming. This was a touchy thing; his junior
affiliate is doing this to kind of upstage him… I think he was also out of town
at the time. This is a clear example of something the Chicago Symphony never
did but should have done. It had gained tremendous audience for the Civic
Orchestra.
Interpretation
TLC Do you share Carpenter's
view of the Tenth being the grim extension of Das Lied von der Erde and
the Ninth Symphony?
GP Yes. “Grim” may not be the
most appropriate word, but yes.
TLC Carpenter and Cooke, in
particular, held very different opinion of the symphony. While Carpenter saw it
as another tragic component of Mahler’s last trilogy, Cooke opined that Mahler
had moved into new musical territory. So I gather you disagree with Cooke’s
opinion that it is a more optimistic symphony?
GP I must first say that I am not a
music scholar. I have not discovered that in the Tenth Symphony. In performing
the Ninth, the Tenth, and Das Lied von der Erde, I feel that there is an
affinity. Actually I thought so [like Cooke] myself initially, especially from
the outrageous sound that I heard from the symphony. After immersing myself in
it so much, I now think it is a natural extension of those two works. I don’t
think it is something extraordinary and unrelated, or that Mahler has gone to
some never-never land in the Tenth.
TLC Do you think Carpenter’s
orchestration captures the essence of his view about the symphony?
GP Yes.
TLC More so than any other
version?
GP Not more
so, just different. Remo Mazzetti has done a magnificent job in his most recent
revision, which I think was recorded by the Cincinnati Symphony. I think Jesus
Lopez-Cobos interpreted the work well. Mazzetti’s version is probably
influenced by Carpenter’s work. I think his constant attention to Carpenter’s
completion and Mahler’s manuscript has produced a more balanced version. When I
performed the Carpenter version in 1983, I felt that some adjustments, minor adjustment,
must be made with regards to some of the textures and dynamics.
I must also comment on this a little further. I find
Carpenter’s orchestration at times naïve and inappropriate, just a little, not
much. But in terms of his perception of relative projections of the instruments
and the relative projections within those instruments of various ranges, he
didn’t show adequate knowledge as reflected in his actual orchestration and
dynamic structure. For instance, (flipping through the conductor score), in
this place[5]
he has the English Horn playing against sixty strings, and he has the English
Horn marked pianissimo. He was thinking about orchestral color, maybe.
But if you are going to hit registers that don’t speak, you have to make some
changes. They are very minor, and can be easily fixed. I wish I didn’t have to
be involved in so many things during rehearsal so that I can pay more attention
to this, even though I did pay a lot of attention to the orchestration. We
would make recordings of the rehearsals and I would write note to people and
tell them piano, not pianissimo, or mezzoforte, not piano.
But we finally ran out of time, and we had to go with what we had.
TLC Did you have the opportunity
to study the manuscript facsimile before the performance? If so, which one?
GP Unfortunately no, due to
time factor. I could have asked Mr. Carpenter for a copy or gone to the
Newberry Library, but I didn’t. We were fighting against deadlines in every
aspect. We were lucky to even have the strings part bowed. The bowings in this
score, by the way, are marvelous. Mr. Victor Aitay did them. I think Mr. Aitay[6]
was concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony at the time, and he coached the
section. I very much appreciated his help, and listening to the tape yesterday,
you can say whatever you want about the performance, but the first violin
section speaks.
TLC Mr. Carpenter has
engineered a handful of counterpoints that recall themes from Mahler’s other
works. Were you mindful of them during the rehearsal/performance, and did you
make any special effort in bringing them to foreground for the listeners?
GP No. My job was to bring out the
music as a whole. However, there are a few passages where Carpenter has
curiously marked espressivo for certain instruments, but they are buried
under heavy orchestration and there was no way I could have brought them
out.
TLC I want to devote some time
to the tempi issue of this symphony. Temporal relationship is one of the
biggest challenges in all of Mahler’s music, and especially so in the last
trilogy. In the case of the Tenth, this is of course even more problematic. Did
you or Carpenter decide on the tempi in the performance?
GP Absolutely! We sat for
hours, movement by movement, with the metronome, sometimes even with the
pianists.
TLC Mr. William Malloch argued
in his 1964 KPFK illustrated commentary about Cooke’s mistaken tempi in the
first Scherzo, and Mr. Carpenter himself holds strong opinion about the
tempo of the second movement, which he thinks should be slower than what is
regularly played. Do you think Mr. Carpenter handled these problematic tempi
better than Cooke?
GP As to Malloch’s comments on
Cooke’s tempo, I am not familiar with them. As to Carpenter’s handling of the Scherzi,
I think he handled them well. I am glad you bring up the tempo issue. It takes
me to an important point I want to make, particularly with the subject of the Scherzo.
In most recordings that I have listened to, other than the Carpenter, the
weakness is that the interpreter has decided, perhaps unconsciously, that the
first Scherzo and the second Scherzo are in the same tempo.
Wrong. Well, who am I to say wrong?
Well, you do your research and you go with your intuition, and you talk to Mr.
Carpenter, who knows the work far better than I do.
Specifically, Mahler indicated Schnelle Viertel,
essentially “fast and four to the bar”. Mr. Carpenter, in two of my different
metronome guides for orchestra and myself, indicates quarter-144; in another
note I have 160. In the third movement, the Purgatorio[7],
Mr. Carpenter indicated quarter note-84.In the fourth movement, he indicated
dotted half note-60, or 180 to the quarter, and Mahler indicated Allegro
pesante. The fact that the dotted half note is to be the pulse indicates to
me that I should beat them in one. Note that in Carpenter’s case the underlying
pulses, at least to start each movement, are to be placed as: First Scherzo
144-160, Purgatorio 168, second Scherzo 180. If the three
movements are taken at the same pulse rate, as we have heard in numerous
performances, these three movements sound like one movement! Again, Mahler’s
directions for the three movements are Schnelle Viertel, Allegretto
moderato, and Allegro pesante. These indications certainly suggest
other than the same pulse speed.
One can further speculate on the subject of speed by
asking: What are the relative speed of Schnelle and Allegro? My
suggested solution after weighing all these factors we just talked about is to
look at the material at hand, the actual music. Particularly the first violin
parts, and other difficult passage work elsewhere. Does going beyond a certain
speed make the instruments scramble or sound “forced”? My test always is to
practice singing the music with the metronome, trying different speeds and
using one’s experience and feeling as to which sounds most natural, the best. I
feel very strongly about finding the “right” tempo within the confines of the
directions given.
TLC Do you know Mr. Theodore
Bloomfield?
GP Yes, I do.
TLC One hallmark of Bloomfield’s
interpretation of Mahler’s Tenth is his steadfast observation of the temporal
symmetry of the five movements. While timing is not everything, how important
do you think this architectural symmetry is in your own performance?
GP Well, first off, I think that
“timing” is, if not “everything”, certainly a higher priority than many
conductors give it. As to “architectural symmetry” in my own performance,
frankly, due to the many constraints at the time, I admit I never got that far.
There were other priorities to be resolved as previously stated.
TLC Theodore Bloomfield gave a widely acclaimed performance of
the Carpenter completion in 1986 during the Mahler X symposium in Utrecht,
Netherlands with the combined Gelders and Brabant orchestras. Did you have the
opportunity to go the symposium?
GP No, I didn’t.
TLC Mr. Carpenter must have
injected many of his ideas into the performance. As a conductor, did you feel
that your own interpretation of the work was overpowered?
GP I had my hands full with
being the “birth doctor” for Carpenter’s completion, and I truly felt I owed
him every attention to bring “his” Tenth to the world the way he conceived it.
This is one time I did not go my way to interpret. It can be said that I should
have, I don’t know. I think Mr. Carpenter earned at least one hearing
his way. Whether he agrees that I achieved that is open to question; but that
was always my plan. Had it not been a set of these unique circumstances, other
approaches, particularly comparative interpretations would have been taken into
consideration. I worked with Mr. Carpenter and two Civic Orchestra pianists to
try to make the work a part of me, so that, in a sense, “Clinton would be
conducting”. Needless to say, this will never be a true reality.
TLC Was there any disagreement
in the matter of interpretation at all?
GP There wasn’t really any
disagreement. Perhaps Mr. Carpenter may say otherwise. As I said before, I was
always in the mindset that I should do this his way, for two reasons: He’d
earned it, and I didn’t know the work. On the other hand, you cannot completely
subvert your own ideas and intuition, so I made suggestions; some accepted,
some questioned, some rejected. As you can see from my own score, there are
certain things that are written in my hand. But none of these will be done
without his approval. I can honestly say that I have done this whole thing his
way, within the framework of my own musical logic. It was a healthy
collaboration, but it was wearing on both of us.
TLC Mahler
scribbled a lot of personal notes onto the manuscript of the Tenth Symphony,
some of them, as we know, addressed directly to Alma. Had these affected your
interpretation of the work in any way?
GP I did
not pay heed to them, except at the very end of the last movement. Note the way
Mr. Carpenter juxtaposes the two violin sections, with repeated notes on the
same pitch. He tried to communicate Mahler’s final anguish here in my judgment.
Regrettably, my attempt somewhat failed here, as I should have asked the
violins to accent each of the re-entrances. Carpenter’s idea is far better here
than just a sustained note as it is in the Cooke version. Anyway, for the most
part, yes, I went strictly with the notes, and not Mahler’s programmatic
outbursts. Today I would have considered them.
TLC Your thoughts, as the
principal percussionist of a major orchestra, on the drum strokes at the
beginning of the last movement – Mahler has reportedly incorporated the muffled
drum strokes he heard during a funeral procession of a slain fireman in New
York. What is your thought about the many versions of these drum strokes?
GP If Mahler heard them in a
distance, they must have been whacked pretty good, but the drum would have been
covered with something, most likely a thin black cloth. I have played in
funerals, unfortunately many of them when I was in the band at West Point where
we buried many soldiers who were killed in Korea. We either covered the drum,
or muffled the drum with a hand to try to get a “dead” sound. So I think in the
transition between the fourth and the fifth movements the drum strokes should
be jarring, mezzoforte, marcato but not overdone. Again, it is a
matter of intuition. It has to fit into the orchestration. We are talking about
death or premonition to death. You have to create a respectful sound; it should
be audible, but not loud. Basically, are we going to “club the corpse to death
the second time”, or reverentially, honor his passing? Having played in
funerals, the latter has always been the case. I do not accept Cooke’s fortissimo.
TLC You have heard the two
commercial recordings by Andrew Litton and Harold Farberman. What do you think
of their interpretation?
GP Mr. Litton is a negative.
Mr. Farberman is a positive with reservation. There is something driven in
Farberman’s recording. I know Harold. I know his personality and it’s somewhat
revealed in this performance. It doesn’t breathe; there is something not
totally natural about it. I would say it is because he didn’t have Carpenter on
his side. You can say great many things about my performance, but it DOES
reflect more Carpenter’s wishes than many other performance. In all
objectivity, the premiere that I did was beset with the unusual set of
circumstances of “birthing”; plus a student orchestra, constant changes,
learning the work through Carpenter’s eyes, and adopting his tempi. So in a
sense you have with our premiere performance 1. Mahler, his torso, unfinished,
unrevised; 2. Carpenter, studying previous Mahler’s works, writing in “Mahler-styled
fill-ins”; 3. Peters, trying to bring it all together, organizing, teaching a
student orchestra, and restraining self to a degree in favor of the “Clintonian
approach”. I say this in no way as an excuse for what we may have achieved or
NOT achieved, that’s the truth.
TLC
Looking back in retrospect, how has your
perspective of this work changed? Would you have changed anything in your
performance if you can do it all over again?
GP Oh of course, many things. At the time probably not,
as I was very exhausted. However, with a space for time to pass, especially
twenty years later, I would want to go to Cooke, Mazzetti and Wheeler and
STUDY. Then I would come back to the Carpenter version and adjust the places
where clarity, orchestration and balances need to be fixed.
So,
the dream would be to be able to do it all over again. But only under
circumstance wherein I would be the editor of my version based on
Mahler-Carpenter. I say that with no disrespect to Mr. Carpenter. And I would
love to do this with a first rate orchestra. But practically this symphony is a
monster. And a realization like this will require a lot of time, and
professional orchestra is very expensive. So it remains a dream, but I think it
does answer your question. When we performed it, it was based on Mahler’s
incomplete torso, and it was Carpenter’s incomplete torso, and as far as I am
concerned it was my incomplete interpretation. This [pointing to the conductor
score] is nothing but for “laboratory” use. Not that it is invalid, but the
flower hasn’t opened yet in my premiere performance.
TLC So what did Mr. Carpenter think of your performance?
GP You have to ask him. He was very kind. But he was
very frustrated and tired, like I was at the time. Look, we finally turned it
into reality. It may not be wonderful, but the parts are there, and it is
possible now.
Miscellaneous
TLC Which recording of Mahler’s
Tenth Symphony is your favorite?
GP Hard to say. I would love to
listen to the new Italian [referring to the completion by Giuseppe Mazzuca and
Nicola Samale] version. And I am interested in hearing the Bloomfield, which
you gave me. I am not prepared to answer that question yet.
TLC Maestro
Clifford Gilmore conducted the combined New Amsterdam Symphony and New York
Festival Orchestra at the Symphony Space on Upper Broadway a few months after
the premiere in Chicago. Did you have a chance to attend that concert?
GP No, I did not.
TLC Mr. Remo Mazzetti helped
prepare the performance of Carpenter’s Tenth in New York, was he involved in anyway in the Civic Orchestra performance? Were you in
communication with one another afterward?
GP I have never met
Mr. Mazzetti. At the time of the Chicago premiere I have never heard of him.
TLC Do you have a
favorite Mahler Symphony, and why?
GP The Fifth,
probably. Solti took the Chicago Symphony on a very successful European tour
with the Fifth, so for us in the orchestra that symphony has a special meaning.
But my favorite constantly changes. Oh, I think the one that is the most fun
for me is the Eighth. It is like listening to the Beethoven’s Ninth with good
acoustics, particularly if you are in the orchestra playing the piece yourself.
There is something about music with voices. I remember this is with Riccardo
Chailly at Ravinia, we were doing something with voices, I can’t recall
exactly, it was a small mass, probably by Bruckner. Percussionists are very
lucky. We are right in the middle of the stage, surrounded by the rest of the
orchestra and the chorus. I mean there is nothing like it, particularly with a
good maestro. What a wonderful experience! So I think the Mahler Eighth
certainly gives you that sensational feeling. Also, I forgot to mention that we
recorded Mahler’s Eighth with Solti in Vienna, at a historical place called
Sofiensaal.
TLC Yes,
and unfortunately the Sofiensaal has been destroyed by fire…
GP Really?
That is most unfortunate. Oh well, in any case, it was a magnificent place to
make recordings. I wish I had my pictures to show you our recording session.
And of course, the best part was that there was a great deli in the foyer of
the Sofiensaal, and each time we had a break, the orchestra would just hang out
there and had Viennese food!
TLC Among all the
conductors you have worked with during your tenure at the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra, who do you think has been the better Mahler interpreter?
GP Reiner, Solti,
Abbado, Giulini… Giulini is one of the beautiful human being I know. When you
have a music that is agonizing, sad, and dark, such as Verdi’s Requiem,
Mahler’s Ninth, then Giulini is at his best.
TLC Were there any
Mahler performances by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra that struck you as
particularly profound?
GP The Fifth, I would think. Yes,
that’s a Solti piece. That is a good marriage of conductor, orchestra and
symphony. He essentially took this orchestra on a great tour with this piece,
and it was a triumphant success. You have no idea about the response of the
audiences. Jokingly and seriously, this WAS the loudest orchestra. The European
orchestras don’t play this loud. So you have this highly virtuosic orchestra… I
mean we just tore the place up. The European tradition was that after ten or
fifteen minutes of applause the orchestra would leave the stage. But Solti had
to continue to come out to accept the ovation, even when the stage had no
orchestra. You have to see it to believe it. It’s the same everywhere, we
thought: Wow! This is extraordinary. We can do no wrong!
TLC In retrospect,
after hearing the various versions you have come across, which “completion” you
think best serves the uncompleted manuscript?
GP Mazzetti and
Carpenter, not necessarily in that order. They are equal, but different. I
should add that all completions or versions have their strengths and
weaknesses. As both a conductor and an instrumentalist I cannot help to be
somewhat influenced by the quality of the performance I am listening to. The
frustration of it all comes back always to “What would Mahler have done with
the torso had he had time to complete AND revised what he had already written.
I have essentially composed one work, “The Sword of Moda-Ling”, for percussion
ensemble in the late 1950s. In the late 1960s, I revised it, added a small
mid-section for piano, and later extended the ending. And even last year, 2002,
made STILL another revision. So to compare Mazzetti, who has time to revised
and re-revise, AND had the benefit of Cooke, Wheeler, and Carpenter versions to
study, is unfair. We really cannot compare Carpenter to Mazzetti, as Carpenter
version as I performed it is really a double “torsos” – an unrevised
“completion” of an uncompleted statement by Mahler.
Like I said, I don’t know where
Carpenter’s score stands at this point, but I am sure it is beyond what we have
done in the [world premiere] performance. You know, Mr. Carpenter is an enigma.
He went to Eastman School of Music, hoping to become a conductor; he didn’t
make that dream come true. For some reasons he chose not to make a living in
music, but went into business, insurance, instead. But he had this obsession.
The word “obsession” has a negative connotation; I mean it to be positive here.
It is one of those things you must do before you die. We all have those things
at the back of our mind, some get to surface, some don’t. So this was his
thing, and it’s great we brought it to fruition, and we went through some
rather interesting journey to get there.
TLC Any special thought looking back
to the past twenty years?
GP In general or about the Tenth?
TLC About this historical event.
GP Well… it certainly has made
me a better musician. It posed a great challenge for me, and I met it. But I
truly and naively didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I think it
substantiated the belief I always had that realizations and transcriptions are
better than not having anything at all. And it is amazing the number of people
in the profession, educators and performers alike, who have a perverse
inflexibility to even consider things like that. Think of the pianists who must
have been offended by Malloch’s adaptation of the Art of Fugue. But then again,
I just read about the New York performance of this piece by some Octet, and
there are also quintet versions. If you start research this thing, you are
going to find various “perversity” of arrangements of some or all movements of
the Art of Fugue. The thing you have to ask now is: Why? Because it is a great
piece of music! How many people are going to hear the Art of Fugue left in its
original form?
To get back to your question, retrospectively,
considering what was involved, and looking back twenty years, I think the Civic
and I gave the best and utmost effort we could muster at the time under all the
pressure of time constraints and unfamiliarity. Seriously, no regrets. A
musical growth for all!
TLC Thank you for your time and
for the interview.
GP You are
most welcome.
