By Stephanie Chase
Guest Columnist
New York, NY, USA
Robert Sherman is an award-winning American
radio broadcaster, author, music critic, and educator, who is perhaps best
known for hosting radio programs that include “Woody’s Children,” a program
devoted to contemporary folk music, and “The Listening Room,” which were originally
broadcast by the station WQXR in New York.
For more than forty years he has been an
esteemed music critic and columnist for The
New York Times. Among the numerous books that he has written are two that
he co-authored with pianist and comedian Victor Borge, and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Classical Music. As an educator, he
has served on the faculty of The Juilliard School for nearly twenty years.
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| Robert Sherman |
STEPHANIE
CHASE: You have an extraordinary
lineage – your mother was the famed pianist and pedagogue Nadia Reisenberg and
your aunt was the noted thereminist Clara Rockmore, both of whom were born in
Vilnius, Lithuania – and you have written books about each artist. But who was
your father, and what was your childhood like?
ROBERT
SHERMAN: My father was a businessman, with
no musical training but he loved music, and he was enormously supportive of
Mother. I had a normal childhood, except I was aware of the special nature of
my family; we had famous musicians coming and going from home, Mother
occasionally performed at my public school, and there were house chamber music
parties.
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| Nadia Reisenberg |
STEPHANIE
CHASE: Did you take piano lessons
from your mother?
ROBERT
SHERMAN: I did take piano lessons from
Mother, which was probably a great mistake because she didn't scare me, so I
didn't feel I really had to work hard and I'd argue back about things like fingering
suggestions. I also hated to practice – though I loved to play my few party
pieces, over and over again – and would studiously avoid learning anything
difficult.
STEPHANIE
CHASE: When I first started doing
recital tours – back in my teens – one of my pianists, Judith Olson, had been a
student of your mother at Juilliard and spoke of her with great reverence.
ROBERT
SHERMAN: Mother used to joke that I
should never tell anybody I studied with her, because I wasn't typical of
pianists in her class.
STEPHANIE
CHASE: The ability to practice well
is one of the great challenges of being a successful artist; sometimes it feels
like a struggle between the analytical side of the brain and the side that
connects with the emotional content.
Each is important and needs equal recognition when learning a new work. I find the initial part of this pretty vexing,
but it is so important to practice carefully, otherwise we are practicing
mistakes.
The instrument played by your aunt, the
theremin, is probably little known to the Stay
Thirsty readers. Would you please describe it?
ROBERT
SHERMAN: You can find much more
educated and reliable accounts on Clara's CDs and even, these days, online. You
might also check the website I set up for Mother and Clara: the quick way to
get there is "nadia-clara.org". Basically, the theremin is a
mechanism for emitting radio waves, which are interrupted by the players'
hands; like the electric eye that opens doors, except with sound. The right
hand controls the pitch, the left hand the volume.
STEPHANIE
CHASE: I believe it was created in
the 1920’s, not so long after the invention of the radio. As a musical
instrument, is there something special about its sound and the kind of music
played on it?
ROBERT
SHERMAN: Most players slide from pitch
to pitch – wherefore the frequent use of the instrument to portray alien beings
or psychotic minds! – but Clara developed a finger technique that allowed her
to avoid such portamenti and produce staccato figures when called for. As you
may know, Clara was a concert violinist and been a student of Leopold Auer in
Russia and at Curtis here before a hand injury forced her to stop. Much of her
theremin repertoire involved pieces originally scored for strings.
STEPHANIE
CHASE: I have at least one of her recordings,
and her playing of “The Swan” by Saint-Saëns – which must have been one of her violin pieces – is
breathtakingly beautiful and a great inspiration. Incidentally, the instances
in which the theremin was used to depict aliens and psychotic minds include the
films The Day the Earth Stood Still
and The Lost Weekend. And, apparently,
the old Beach Boys’ song “Good Vibrations” uses a relative of the theremin.
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| Clara Rockmore with Leon Theremin |
Its inventor, Leon Theremin, was a distinguished Soviet scientist who also devised one of the most successful [acoustical] eavesdropping systems of its time, which was placed in the United States Ambassador’s residence in Moscow in 1945 and not discovered for seven years! How did your aunt meet him, and why did she find this electronic instrument so appealing?
Excerpt from "The Swan" (Clara Rockmore - Theremin)
ROBERT
SHERMAN: She met him while he was
demonstrating his instrument in New York [in 1928], tried it and found she had
an innate ability to control it. She turned to it as a substitute when she
could no longer continue playing the violin.
STEPHANIE
CHASE: She must have been a
remarkable violinist as well, and I wish I could have heard her play.
A number of years ago I saw an American
documentary on Theremin, which was fascinating – after having lived in New York
from the late 1920’s into the late 30’s he abruptly disappeared without
explanation, returned to the USSR, and was forced to work in a laboratory for
nine years, where he worked on bugging devices.
Did you ever aspire to become a professional
musician?
ROBERT
SHERMAN: No, as I said I hated to
practice and knew I didn't have the discipline for any kind of real performing
career. I was good enough, talent-wise, to fool people into thinking I was a
real pianist – quite a few times as a matter of fact – and given a month or two
I could probably play the one Mozart 4-Hand Sonata I know – treble part only; I
don't read bass clef very well – and fool them again. Just don't ask me for
anything else. I loved to be around music, though, and finally settled on radio
as a way to be involved with it that didn't involve practicing.
STEPHANIE
CHASE: So how did this aspect of your
career begin?
ROBERT
SHERMAN: Well, I wanted to do something
in music, other than performance, and since I grew up listening to the radio,
in particular WQXR, I applied for a job there, while l was still in the army. Truth
in advertising: a little nepotism was involved. Mother had performed on the
station many times, and the Chasins were family friends. Abram [Chasin, a former
concert pianist and professor who was music director of WQXR starting in 1946],
in fact, probably alerted me to the opening, and probably put in a good word
for me. In any case, I had learned to type in the army, and thus began as a
clerk in the music department.
STEPHANIE
CHASE: That startles me – that your
typing skills got you started at WQXR!
Over many decades, your illustrious career in television, radio and print, includes hosting music programs and as a classical music critic for the New York Times. I would think that music criticism is an especially challenging job; would you please describe your own approach to reviewing a concert?
Over many decades, your illustrious career in television, radio and print, includes hosting music programs and as a classical music critic for the New York Times. I would think that music criticism is an especially challenging job; would you please describe your own approach to reviewing a concert?
ROBERT
SHERMAN: I don't really have an
approach. I'm basically easy-going, because I know that even the worst pianist
in the world plays 100 times better than I do. So I just listen, and try to
recount how the performances moved me, or – as a reporter – how the audience
reacted or what a new piece sounded like.
STEPHANIE
CHASE: On behalf of the many
performers who have both respected and feared concert coverage by the Times, I want to say how grateful I am
for your attitude! My husband used to know an American music critic who covered
New York concerts for a prominent British publication, and invariably he would
nitpick his way through each concert and make lots of negative comments, which
could be quite destructive on many levels, whereas the British-based
journalists had a much more positive viewpoint, as if they really liked music
and enjoyed their work.
You have undoubtedly witnessed many outstanding
concerts, particularly in New York. Are there any that you recall as truly
memorable events – and why?
ROBERT
SHERMAN: [There are] too many to
conjure up at this late date. My most memorable, perhaps, was a New York
Philharmonic concert when Mother introduced the Kabalevsky Second Piano
Concerto, a delightful score, and I've never understood why it is not played
more often. What made the event memorable, though, was my first in-concert
hearing of the Beethoven Fifth [Symphony]. Astonishing piece when you encounter
it fresh – I was 13 at the time.
STEPHANIE
CHASE: I first encountered it at the
same age, during my first year at the pre-college division at Juilliard. We
probably played it rather bombastically. Incidentally, a few years back I
attended a rehearsal, at Carnegie Hall, of the El Sistema orchestra conducted
by [Gustavo] Dudamel. I’ve never seen a larger orchestra onstage, but they were
able to play [this Symphony] astonishingly softly at times, and the string
players used unconventional bowings that worked great.
So, some classical musicians are, to put it
kindly, rather eccentric. Did you ever have a radio interview go really, I mean
really, wrong?
ROBERT
SHERMAN: Quite a few, but I'd rather
not name names, to protect the guilty. One was a distinguished composer who
referred to various conductors with such obscene comments that our chief
engineer rushed into the control room, waving the FCC regulations at me. Or the
famous instrumentalist who described a colleague having cut off a finger in an
accident, and proceeded to joke about it. Or the Met Opera singer who, in a
master-class situation, terrified a student – before she had sung a note – to
such an extent that she broke down in tears. Or the celebrated actor who
referred to an equally celebrated conductor as "turning everything she
touches into S..t." Yes, live broadcasts are fun.
STEPHANIE
CHASE: And you as the host have to
maintain your decorum while inside you must be screaming.
When I was perhaps 20 years old I played a live
recital for a New York station, WBAI, and vividly recall warming up in a small
soundproof room and witnessing a fist fight right outside through its window –
I think an engineer suspected another guy of messing with his equipment. There
was literally blood on the wall!
To change the subject: in this administration,
government support for the arts is likely to end – at least, how we have known
it – which will affect the NEA, NEH and NPR, for example. Would you care to
comment on this?
ROBERT
SHERMAN: Government officials who have
no respect for the arts, which really define our civilization, should be thrown
out of office. Or impeached, as the case may be.
STEPHANIE
CHASE: I’m also feeling dismayed
about it. I think the arts have a great power to unite people, in so many ways,
and enable us to express our humanity. To allocate so much money for military
efforts but so little for supporting artistic creation would seem to bring us
down several notches as a civilized nation.
But let’s go onward: What advice would you give
a talented young classical musician who is hoping to embark on a performing
career?
ROBERT
SHERMAN: Learn how the music business
works: what a manager does and, more importantly, doesn't do, what a good
letter should include, how to write an effective bio, the best way to handle an
interview, etc. etc.
STEPHANIE
CHASE: That’s excellent advice – I
think artist managers are under a lot of pressure to provide good
“entertainers” rather than good musicians, which is part of the problem. And we
can’t count on them to write our material well, or effectively. But it also
seems that many performers are broadening their ideas about repertoire and what
constitutes a performance; if this is done with integrity then it can be
artistically stimulating and wonderful for the audience.
Your career has been immensely varied and you
have many admirers throughout the US. What fact about you would surprise them
the most? Personally, I am surprised that you began your career as a typist!
ROBERT
SHERMAN: That I'm basically shy and
uncomfortable in most public social situations, that my most frequent question,
actually plea, to my partner at such occasions is "can we leave yet?"
STEPHANIE
CHASE: That is surprising, given your
ease and experience in so many settings. What are some of your current and
upcoming projects?
ROBERT
SHERMAN: Aside from the usual –
preparing my weekly Young Artists Showcase and the contemporary folk show
Woody's Children, for WQXR and WFUV respectively – my summer plans include
hosting a panel for the Heifetz Symposium at the University of Connecticut,
interviewing Elaine Malbin for an event at the Paley Center, hosting an Oscar
Brand tribute at the Clearwater Festival, narrating Patrick Burns' "I Loved Well Those Cities"
with the Westchester Symphonic Winds at Caramoor, hosting panels and narrating
"Peter and the Wolf" for the National Orchestral Institute at the University
of Maryland, and narrating Stravinsky's L’Histoire
du Soldat with DeCoda [a New York based chamber orchestra] at Skidmore
College.
STEPHANIE
CHASE: That’s an impressive lineup –
I guess you don’t take much vacation time!
ROBERT
SHERMAN: The biggie in the fall is the
40th anniversary of the Young Artists Showcase, to be recorded in the Greene Space
[in the WQXR building] on October 24th. The program includes a world
premiere of a piece by William Bolcom and John Corigliano's “Gazebo Dances” in
new transcriptions for brass quintet. I'm hoping both composers will be there
for early celebrations of their 80th birthdays. As you can tell, I love being
retired.
STEPHANIE
CHASE: Congratulations for this
anniversary! You have accomplished so much during your career and, personally,
I am very grateful for the support and exposure you gave me as a young artist through
my appearances on WQXR. Are there additional projects or accomplishments that
you want to mention?
ROBERT
SHERMAN: What I am very proud of is the
work I've done to see to the reissuing of virtually all of Mother's and Clara's
recordings, including previously unissued performances. The most recent CD [on
the Romeo label] has live in-concert performances of chamber music with the
Davids Glazer and Soyer, the Budapest and Galimir Quartets and even some solo
pieces I recorded at home before you were born.
STEPHANIE CHASE: Along with your mother and aunt, these are some of the most
distinguished musicians of the 20th century and I look forward to
hearing these – and your solo pieces! Thank you so much for the privilege of
our conversation, and for providing so many years of artistic inspiration and
enjoyment.
Links:
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| Stephanie Chase |