CGF Newsletter 33: The Secret Lives of Violins
Conductors are weird loaners; a crosstown rivalry; pour one out for the Gabfest of old
Name That Tune
This week’s Name That Tune is a Joey special, and I’m going full Double Bass mode. No hint today!
As always, your goal is to provide as much accurate analysis as possible. First try to get the nationality, year, and genre, then make educated guesses about the composer and — if possible— the piece. If you know the piece immediately, send us an email at classicalgabfest@gmail.com instead of commenting so the rest of us can have fun guessing.
Last Week’s Results
CGF Newsletter 32
Howard Hanson, Symphony No. 1
I immediately knew this was Howard Hanson. I’ve conducted his second symphony on two separate occasions and his Merry Mount Suite… also on two separate occasions.
With just a bit of triangulation, I also knew that this was Hanson’s first, the “Nordic.” It’s a piece that I’ve considered programming but I never found that I liked it enough. In fact, when I went hunting for the YouTube link, I noticed this bit of commentary:
Sorry Howard! Anyway, none of the rest of you guessed.
Think you can stump your fellow Listeners? Go ahead and try!
Head to our Google Form to upload a 30-second clip of an unidentified piece of classical music for us to try to identify.
Viola Voilà
Since 2019, an anonymous donor has been lending rare, fine Italian string instruments to members of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. This week, that anonymous donor was revealed in the pages of the Washington Post as non other than NSO music director Gianandrea Noseda:
Since 2011, Noseda, 58, has quietly amassed an impressive collection of string instruments, and since 2019, he’s been covertly feeding those instruments into the orchestra. Currently, eight of Noseda’s secret stash are in the hands of NSO players – seven violins and one viola.
Noseda’s personal investment in the instruments — collectively valued at $5 million — is less the indulgence of a collector than the intervention of an artist. Though the instruments account for a fraction of the string section, and while the average ear might not register their individual timbral nuances and tonal hues, the net effect, to Noseda, is a closer connection between his players and the music.
Where did Noseda get the money to become a high-end instrument collector? There are more fortunes hiding in plain sight in music than there are in politics.
David, Meet Goliath
The Philly Pops is suing a certain other orchestra in the City of Brotherly Love. Billboard (Billboard!) reports:
In a lawsuit filed Thursday, the Philly Pops accused the Philadelphia Orchestra of violating federal antitrust laws by abusing its control over local concert venues and ticketing services to try to crush its smaller rival.
According to the lawsuit, the Orchestra “substantially and unreasonably” increased fees for the Pops to perform at the Kimmel Center and slowed down the sale of tickets to previously scheduled shows. It then hired a PR firm to “create media messaging” that the Pops would be absorbed by the Orchestra after the 2023 season.
When the Pops said it would not go along with such a plan, the Orchestra “summarily evicted the POPS from the Kimmel Center forcing the POPS to cancel and postpone its concerts [there] and scramble for different but substantially less viable indoor venues.”
Podcast Post-Mortem
In the process of doing my taxes last week, I was confronted with the fact that I’m still paying to host The Classical Gabfest on Buzzsprout (our podcast platform of choice) to the tune of $18 a month. That might not sound like much, but $206 a year isn’t chump change either. Especially for a project that is over and not coming back.
Alas, that’s the sad reality that my accounting has forced me to acknowledge. Producing the podcast was a labor of love and I remain immensely proud of the show’s two-year, 106-episode run. I personally think it remains the best classical music podcast yet created, and I think it rates very highly among the class of roundtable culture podcasts more generally.
For most of the show’s run, my co-hosts were much busier than I was; this was counterbalanced by the fact that I did the lion’s share of the work, but I’m still impressed that they stayed with it for as long as they did. I hope it is something that our whole team—Tiffany, Kensho, Joey, Sunny, Desmond, Christopher—along with all of our guests and guest hosts, and of course our loyal Listeners will look back upon with fondness.
The show was a product of the free time foisted upon us during the Covid era, but Kensho and I had talked about starting a podcast at least a year or two before we launched. More than anything, it was an outgrowth of my twisted desire to self present as a public intellectual. What can I say? I watched too much Charlie Rose growing up.
After I finished my e-filing, I logged into Buzzsprout and changed our account from the $18/month plan to a free plan. With this option, episodes are hosted for 90 days and then deleted from the server. I don’t know if that means that when this month’s renewal is over that all the episodes currently in the feed will be deleted, or if they’ll start disappearing one by one over the next months and years. But the Rubicon has been crossed, and before long, the CGF feed will be empty.
The Gabfest won’t have totally vanished from the face of the earth though—it costs nothing to host a YouTube channel, so all the episodes will remain available over there. And of course, there’s this newsletter, my little sandbox with Joey and a couple of you die-hard tune namers, a much lower-pressure, lower-effort way to stay engaged with the goings-on in our field and to keep up the playful spirit we fostered on the pod towards this incredible music that brings so much meaning to our lives.
Classical Mixtape
William White, Desiderata
Joey thought that this week’s Mixtape should honor 4/20; I thought it should honor his upcoming recital. This piece kills two birds with one stone.
The podcast post-mortem was cathartic.
LUV Desiderata. I’m going to see if my duet-buddy Suzy wants to give it a try. Of course, we would have to -- shudder -- practice in order to get anywhere near