Over fifty years ago, I spent a few hours in the presence of a great genius. My participation was insignificant, and yet, here I am talking to you today because of those few moments with a wizened old man.
London, a Recording Studio, 1973.
As a member of the London Symphony Orchestra Chorus, I earned five pounds sterling per concert, but today I was going to earn five pounds an hour, so it was a good gig, and I happily showed up at a studio for a half-days work. We were recording what was to be Stokowski’s final vinyl: Mahler’s Second Symphony, otherwise known as the “Resurrection” Symphony. Resurrection indeed. What did I need to know about the resurrection? I was 25 and had the world on a string. However, as it turns out, here I am, fifty years later, pondering that day when a frail 92-year-old taught me about strength and power, about resurrection.
Back in those days, when all serious classical music was being distributed on vinyl LPs, one could imagine nothing else when recording an oversized 19th-century symphonic work meant crowding as many people as would fit in a studio, enough to qualify for sardine status, chair to chair, cheek to cheek, exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide at a withering pace, exposing those whose Gillette Right Guard had failed them. In those old days, you started at the beginning of a composition and didn’t stop until you were finished, and in the case of the Mahler 2nd, that would be more than an hour and a quarter after the downbeat. The chorus was dormant until after the fourth movement. Perhaps you have noticed that geniuses tend to overdo things, and Mahler, this grandiose, rule-breaking, boundary-stretching composer, had added a fifth movement to the formulaic four.
Just before the lengthy recording session began, Stokowski entered the studio, an aide on each side, a high-stepping troika carefully negotiating the labyrinth of electronic flotsam proliferating in studios in the ‘70s. They paused by the podium before executing ergonomically perfect choreography, turning just so and then this way and that, and without an obvious boost, Stokowski was on the podium and immediately presented himself as strong and vigorous. He became super-human, taking command of the orchestra.
The music was both exulting and exhausting. Imagine a passage called the Death Shriek. It is a spine-tingling moment in musical experiences, but also inspires caricatures of conductors, flailing long-hair and tuxedo tails, arms akimbo, out of control, drool, and spittle.
All this was quite exciting. However, I was a fresh-air-deprived soprano, already suffering from Restless Legs Syndrome with a touch of claustrophobia thrown in, and those middle movements did go on a bit. The second movement, “a remembrance of happier times;” the third movement, “a view of life as meaningless activity” and then we were at the fourth movement, “a wish for release from life without meaning”.
If I was wilted and sweat-soaked, what must Stowkowski have been? How would he pull this huge choir together, 120 well-trained voices, but now mute and motionless for over an hour? And more challenging, we were supposed to begin our opening ppp, triple pianissimo, meaning barely above a whisper, so the audience almost felt sound before they heard it, lending verisimilitude to “a fervent hope for everlasting, transcendent renewal.” Resurrection, indeed!
But I had forgotten that Stokowski had been the model for the opening of the original 1940 milestone movie Fantasia, where animated mimicry made music come alive in a way never imagined. He was the silhouetted conductor who stood erect, without a baton, holding arms outstretched to the sides, beckoning life and breath and sound. This day, Stokowski had been bent nearly prone over the orchestra as if paying homage, bowing towards us, bowing with the strings, arms alternating between the strokes of an Olympic swimmer and a painter of a vast canvas, stirring, swirling, yet calculated, disciplined movements emanating from the armpits.
As he was conducting the final phrases of the fourth movement, his gaze began to steadily rise above the heads of the orchestral musicians to where we singers were perched, numb, crowded. I was at his ten o’clock. He caught my eye. He looked at us intently as he slowly straightened his spine far beyond what should have been possible for anyone in their nineties. Enlivened by his strength, his hyper-awareness, our torsos stretched inches out of our lumbars. He lifted his chest. We grew taller. He relaxed his jowls. We opened our throats. He held our gaze. We became keenly alert. He opened his palms. We opened our hearts. He raised his arms, and we breathed as one, lifting our soft palates to create the rounded sound one needs to perfectly intone “aaahhhh” in tune, becoming the angels welcoming you to paradise, able to project to the back of the hall, now singing so softly as to be barely audible, raising the hairs on the arms of anyone leaning forward to hear the first word “Auferstehen”, which challenges us to stand up and rise again.
All these years later, I still remember when an individual conductor, small of stature, weather-beaten, and aged, inspired me to lift my spirit, to be my best, to be resurrected from the mundane, even in an overheated, uncomfortable situation.
So, thanks for taking a moment with me to reflect and I hope to be with you again next week. Stay safe and enjoy life’s inspirations and pleasures wherever you find them.