By David Amos
SAN DIEGO–I read a book titled The Pleasure of Their Company, Reminiscence, by Howard Taubman. Mr. Taubman had a long and distinguished career (forty two years) with the New York Times, serving as reporter, music editor, chief music critic, drama critic, and critic at large. For a decade and a half after his retirement, he was a consultant to the Exxon Corporation, and was one of the creative minds behind the highly successful television series Great Performances.
This book is an interesting collection of many personalities which he met and befriended, as well as stories of his start as a writer and his involvement with the armed forces. His anecdotes on the giant figures in the performing arts of the Twentieth Century are both interesting and insightful. It makes not only for entertaining reading (perfect for those long plane flights and those dreadful waits at airports), but also gives us a fresh dimension into the public and private lives of people of whom you and I read about, but most probably never met.
There are stories about Casals, Bernstein, Shostakovitch, Alfred Lunt, Marian Anderson, Copland, Ingrid Bergman, Horowitz, Richard Burton, Oscar Levant, Menotti, Birgit Nilsson, Lawrence Olivier, Rachmaninoff, Hindemith, Jessye Norman, Samuel Barber, Stokowski, and many others. Here is a sampling of my favorite commentaries and anecdotes from this book:
–On Ernest Bloch: Bloch did not enjoy being called a Jewish composer, simply because he was of Jewish origin and wrote Schelomo, Three Jewish Poems, Baal Shem Suite, the Israel Symphony, a setting of the Sacred Service, and other pieces of Jewish inspiration. “I wrote a great deal that had no Jewish source”, he declared. “Must we look for roots in everything?”
–Diplomats, like nobility, sometimes behave as if the old attitude toward artists is still in effect; they are little more than servants to be patronized.
–At a time when conductor Serge Koussevitzky was the director of the Boston Symphony, there was some friction because the Orchestra was losing radio and recording engagements, and seeking an end to confrontation and turmoil, he urged a change of policy on the Orchestra’s trustees. When the members of the board refused, he reminded them that they were not the Boston Symphony. “We the musicians are the orchestra,” he admonished the trustees. “Without you, we are still an orchestra, but without us, what are you?”
–Arturo Toscanini functioned as a conductor until he was eighty six. His final concert with the NBC Symphony was for him a tragic one. He knew that it would be followed by the dissolution of the orchestra, and he was distressed. I attended the last rehearsal for this concert in Studio 8H in Radio City. After the last downbeat he stood on the podium like a person in mourning. The baton dropped from his hand. No one on the orchestra moved to pick it up. Jimmy Dolan, the orchestra’s librarian, recovered and kept it when Toscanini used another one for the final concert. Dolan presented the fallen baton to me. In a simple frame, it hangs in my home.
–On music drama and criticism: I recall that Archibald MacLeish, poet and playwright, once turned to me and asked, “What can we do to improve criticism”? My answer, “You must educate publishers and chief editors about the importance of the arts, so that they will look seriously for people who can bring knowledge and sympathy to the task”.
–On artists’ ability to accept criticism, and the enormous influence which reviews in the New York Times had: It can not be easy to be subjected to judgments that differ from one’s own, and that can have so profound an effect on one’s career.
–Artur Rubinstein enjoyed recalling a time when he was assailed by a stubborn case of hoarseness. The press was full of perils of smoking. Must he give up Havana cigars? The prudent thing to do was to consult a throat specialist, who examined him for thirty minutes. “I searched his face for a clue”, Rubinstein recalled. “It was expressionless. He told me to come back the next day. I didn’t sleep that night.” The next day, another long examination, and again an ominous silence. “Tell me”, Rubinstein exclaimed. “I can stand the truth. I’ve lived a full, rich life. What is wrong with me?” The physician looked at him coldly and said, “You talk too much!”
–George Szell had the reputation of being the most arrogant of conductors. Certainly, he was one of the most arrogant, but he had a lot to be arrogant about. He turned the Cleveland Orchestra into one of the best in the world. It has been argued that conductors who have been pianists as Szell had do not equal those who have been string players in the subtleties they achieve with an orchestra. Having heard the Cleveland under Szell, I have my doubts. But I have none about his conviction that he was always right.
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An extra treat in The Pleasure of Their Company is the generous amount of photographs which were taken from the New York Times archives, and Taubman’s personal albums. The book is published by Amadeus Press, Portland, Oregon.
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Amos is conductor of the Tifereth Israel Community Orchestra and has guest conducted professional orchestras around the world.