Concert 90; An Interview with Maestro Frederick Fennell

Hello this is Susan Giles of concert ninety And I'm joined today by Maestro Frederick finale good to have you here sir. Nice to be here with you Susan. As we know maestro for now works with I say when orchestra and he is the founder of the Eastman wind ensemble. He's here today to tell us about a couple of new recordings that he's coming out with and one is where the Dallas Wind Symphony now the first one maybe to talk about his the recording with the Khosi wind orchestra which is simply called Hungary and Rhapsody. You know it's more difficult to pick a title for recording it than anybody can imagine. In the old days I imagine it was very difficult to choose names for all of those railroad Pullman cars and things like that a classy band overture is how do you pick the right title it's very very difficult. But hunger in Rhapsody was the one for this one because it was one of the six titles that are on the recording and a rather good one to begin with and something of an ear and eye catcher I would say

yes. How do you go about choosing what you're going to record. Well. What you think will make first of all of a kind of profile recording something that will have some sort of architecture is a little bit different even with a compact disc than it used to be with the LAPD has the LP you had the mass of turning over the record to the other side and the listener had a break in his or her listening experience. And you did have to make allowances because the the final grooves of the LP record were the critical ones and you don't want 6 Julian volts of sound coming at you when a groat grooves are that close together. But on the compact disc that's not a consideration. Everything just goes down his numbers and comes out the same way. So you don't have to have that hanging over your head. That question of are you going to break somebody's speaker up the other way. But when you choose it you try to do things that you think reflect what your group

does. And in this case this is a recording entirely of transcriptions from orchestral and orchestral operatic literature. A ballet music and other things from opera as well as things from the forever popular repertory of. Waltzes by your own Strauss. Actually the repertory is hunger in Rhapsody number two. The very famous one the prayer and the dream pantomime from Hansel and Gretel by who predict the original Hooper think. Then ballet music from finest. All of it beautifully arranged by our string country bass player whose master master of the transcription then voices of spring Strauss much slower Tchaikovsky. And finally Finlandia Sabet is all those great and wonderful titles happen to be except for the fast ballet music and first recordings for me. And when was this recorded. This was done in

a year ago in Tokyo. And something that I had planned rather carefully for a long period of time. We have to do it when everything is together and you must know that it's rather difficult. First of all to find an available hall. I don't see a good job because there are exceedingly endless number of marvelous halls in Tokyo and environs. But it's not just that it's a question of getting into a studio for a mix and then getting in line for the preparation and the pressings all this week of a compact disc because everybody in the IRL world wants to make a compact disc today and Japan is very very big in this business and so you just have to prepare and wait your time in line. Finally if they say you're going to have it by a certain date you will but you do have to wait in line. Let's talk about the other recording with the Dallas 170. First about this one if I may. The Dallas Wind

Symphony recently organized by a man by the name Howard Dunn. He was the Director of Music at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and he'd always felt that we needed another professional group in the world making recordings of the band's principal literature and being in the position that he was there he had the rehearsal room the music stands there the lights the chairs everything that was basic to making any kind of musical performance. And he also had the interest and enthusiasm of a great many people in the Dallas area who are what you might call the casual professional players and not necessarily members of the Dallas Symphony or the ballet orchestra or the opera orchestra but they were interested in joining him in this. And like every other group in the United States it basically has been subsidized by the players. They contribute their time.

They contribute their enthusiasm their talent their gift and then later maybe somebody gives some money. But the first thing is that it's the wonderful thing that musicians in every city in the United States every orchestra was started by musicians not by society not by socialites not by rich people but by the musicians themselves. And this is one of those groups and. In it the completion of some of their time they asked me if I could help them out because I did have this relationship to the record market. And I'm very happy to do anything I can to help try to keep the Dallas Wind Symphony alive. I just cannot see anything like this die. It's and believe me once it's dead it is gone. And I don't want to see that happen. If I can contribute something to it I'm very happy to do that and they asked me if I would. So this is the first one with them that I did as they call it. Frederick for now live at the Meyerson Myerson is the big new hall in Dallas or the home of the Dallas

Symphony Orchestra. And this recording was one of those dangerous Russian roulette type operations. A concert that you record you don't get a second chance. There's no there's no no splicing in of anything what you play is what you hear and that's what is on this recording. And that's as a matter of fact of it's it's an exciting way to do something. I don't plan to do an awful lot of it again. Could you tell me about the McDowell Winterbottom sketches that you have the woodland sketches as are especially nice. Well this is. McDowell's ten pieces that he wrote for The Piano. I think most likely along with the piano concertos and Indian suite most likely the pieces by which he is remembered and these are the pieces that all of us tried to play some of them at least when we were little kids at the piano and they are marvelous miniatures little vignettes

very subtle and I think very deeply felt comments on the aspects of life that are represented by it. And to a wild rose what Water Lily the deserted farm. To an Indian lodge. There's the titles are very evocative of what the music might be. This particular transcription was made by the British band master and the transcriber of Frank Winterbottom. He was a distinguished organist in England and he became a member of the faculty at the knower Hall School of Music of military music school in Japan. And these men were hired to make these transcriptions for the British military bands at this time spread out all over the world and they had these principal publishers blues in Hawke's bars worth chapel. They. Made these transcriptions and they were sold to the bands of the

regiments on a on a commissioned basis on a on a subscription basis and he had a special gift for making a twenty eight piece band sound extremely well. And that's what the that's what the rule was. Because in Rangoon and wherever the British military band was there was 28 players. The ones that you see in London when you go for the changing of the guard the large group well that's two twenty eight piece groups put together to make a 56 piece band of the Scots Guards that you maybe see or hear. But their group is only 28 players and that's what he scored this for. And we used more than 28 to make this recording. But the lines and voices that he laid down were laid down for 28 players and with a few minor changes that I made for today's music making. I think it's a very successful venture into all of this very difficult attitude

of taking something from one level which is the piano and putting it into something like the wind band which has no pedal and no built in sonority. But he did it very well. I see on the how verson work you transcribe the entry of the march of the Boyers. Well that's it goes back to my high school days before I was even in high school I was in junior high school and I went to an evening of the John Adams High School presentation of a play and before the play the high school orchestra performed and one of the pieces they performed was the entry of the boy. And I just went nuts for this piece and always did like it very very much I was at this time a percussion player and wonderful little solos for the for the snare drum in this piece that attracted me to it. But since then of course I'm interested in so many more things than alone the snare drum and my wife who is a publisher. The owner of the Ludwig music publishing company

she had a transcription of this that had been made for her and I told her that I thought it needed to be upgraded a little bit so she allowed me to do it. And this is in these spirit of the when group of the day and the march of the boy I says matter of fact was first of all part of a ballet and didn't have very much of a consequence about it. But when the the the wife of Mr. Howe verse and was the daughter of the composer Edward Greig. And when Greg heard this tune he arranged for piano. And once that was done the piece was very fast and off and running and it became then around the world in a rather very was very well accepted and I think very interesting and little different March. I really enjoy your English folk songs with a chuckle. I say when orchestra I wonder if you're going to delve into

folk songs from other parts of the world. We hope to do a little bit of everything. I hope I live long enough to do half of what's on my brain to do and what's on the papers to suggest that we might do. We have done the British we've done a few of the American. We have done some of the you have to say we've done some of the Russian because anytime you're doing a ballet suite by a couple obscure Khatchadourian you're over your ears in Russian folk songs and music that is an edge of sounding like a Russian folk song if my name the only original with them. And that music is very fascinating. Enjoy that very much. It's very good for us to do. What's what's next for you. Maestra for now. Well next is the release from the recording that was made in in Tokyo just before I came back home in November. A recording of music that I called a contemporary

mix and it ranges from the most far out 12 tone music to the most close in very happy and pleasant music. It begins with a piece of music that has an interesting title called peace of mind and it's spelled PCI e c. It's by the young American composer Dana Wilson. And Dana put this piece together. I I think it's kind of a musical autobiography therefore movements are thinking. Remembering. Feeling and being. And in these four movements he takes from the first four notes that he sets out of the piece. It kind of in a wonderfully jagged. Business things that happen to all of us. Things coming coming in and out of our brain all day long little flashes of ideas things to thinking about or that you'd like to remember or that you can't help remember or whatever those little

flashes are pieces of our mind. And that's the name of his four movement pieces and really a contemporary masterwork of 22 minutes and marvelously scored and while of course they were an orchestra very very brilliantly played. And then the next piece in this recording is the P.S. The resistance of the 12 tone of the wind orchestras repertory called scenes by the American composer Vern Reynolds who is professor of horn at the Eastman School of Music and is also very very agile and remarkable composer. And this is a piece for 33 soloists. There is no doubling in this record. There are 33 solo players are involved in is a piece in six scenes that will unfold in front of you without any stop. But it is totally 12 tone music and I think a lot of people who are scared away when you use those terms won't be scared

away if they just just give it the time to listen it's about for about 17 minutes. But it's masterfully done and I must say by the players masterfully played with an enormous and brilliant virtuoso performance by individual players and it will go as I say it's 33 soloists performing in this group. Next is a piece of a change of pace again. This is by the German by the English composer Joseph Hoar of it and some of your listeners may remember listening to a piece that I know I've heard you use here play on in the U.S. after the Bakkers on Blue Ridge. He's the composer of that and he wrote this on a commission from the cause they were an orchestra. This is simply called Dance suite. There are three. Three very different very varied styles of dance. He was for many years a ballet conductor as well as composer in in England. He's one of those who happily escaped from Vienna in the

early 1930s and has lived in England ever since. A very well-known composer there very happy to have that piece. Next is a piece by Walter Hartley an American composer whose music is constantly gaining ground. The recording I made with Eastman wind ensemble so many years ago has just been released on the Mercury label. That one music for it was a concerto for 23 wins next after that is a piece by a 25 year old young hot shot Japanese. This was written for the All Japan band contest of nineteen ninety one. It is four minutes and 30 seconds of the most difficult music I have ever conducted. And because they went orchestra has ever played. It is just as forbidding and forbiddingly difficult as you can imagine but the performance is really smashing. It was the hit of the alder pen band contest this year which is it. How many do and how many junior

or senior high school bands would take on this piece and so many of them did. And I think listeners to this program will find it a rather unusual piece it's called stones in time. And then after this there comes a piece that I commissions the first piece of music I have ever commissioned in all my years as a conductor. I was visiting. First of all it begins one because a window doctor had completed a tour in the area nearby to Hiroshima in 1989 and I had an business engagement the next day with some people who wanted to do some things with video for me. And I met them for dinner. At that at I took a train from where we were to Hiroshima got there and we had a late dinner and I was really kind of really flushed out from 10 days of tour. And after dinner I went to my room and I

I I don't think I even took my clothes off I just sort of threw myself on the bed and went to sleep. And I didn't pull any drapes or anything. And I was awakened the next morning by a room ablaze with sunlight. Straight on sunlight coming straight at me like I had never ever experienced before in my life. I was a I was a prisoner in that bed with this light and also with my thoughts that here I am in Hiroshima and here is this. Like this morning and I am about to get up and go to my day's work. And there was a time when nobody got up and nobody went to work. I said this has to be celebrated with a piece of music that was never written before. When I got back to the United States I met my friend Ron Nelson wonderfully talented American composer whom I helped raise at the Eastman School.

And as I told him my story in that. Will you write me a piece. And he put aside a string quartet on which he was working and he delivered this chord to me on the 1st of March in time for parts to be copied and the following me that was after the November because they were dorks to play the first performance of it in Hiroshima. Our very own will gift to the people of Russia. That's the end of the week. That's a wonderful story Meister for now. Are you going to be talking a lot this year. Oh yes. I'm I'm on my way from here next back to Dallas for a concert which will then be recorded in June. And with the same reference record does the new company doing that one very excellent company wonderful young people and marvelous engineer and Keith Johnson who's considered in the profession to be one of the best ever.

I go back to Japan in the middle of March for some concerts there and back here for more concerts and then back to Japan and back to Japan in the middle of April for another recording. This is going to be a very interesting one which is there's no way we could avoid it. Not throwing this one. I know many people will wonder why. But from the players and from the profession of most listeners we're going to record what I call the Roman trilogy the festivals the fountains and the pines. We're speaking of a speech. And that will be our recording for April. What we're going to be doing in October. We're still we're still kind of talking about that when nothing is really definitely set but it's going to be music off of our chamber music series that's definite. We have a new chair music series that we play in in

Casals Hall in Tokyo. It's a beautiful new Chamber Music Hall. It's a shoe box long building like a symphony hall Boston. It does. It was built by the owners of the largest Women's Wear Daily magazine in Japan you know the young ladies in Japan have gone absolutely mad for style and they. They there are their closets are full of the very latest clothes they spending their money on clothes and shoes and matching handbags and all of they have gone just crazy for style and they're buying so much Women's Wear Daily that Women's Wear Daily had to get rid of their money somehow and happily they put it in a chamber music hall. What better to put your money. It will go on forever. And they named it for the great public art and fashion will last I have but castles will and heart will and music will and we are doing concerts there every October.

And we all adore those very much because this is the pair's our group down to the Chamber Music size sometimes it was as small as the octet But then many different size like this. Is that like the Stravinsky when symphonies for instance which is the one section of the orchestra size then the Strauss serenades which go up to maybe 14 players or the big Mozart which went up to 15 players. With things of this kind. We all look forward to those wonderful operas and this is a great great haw wonderful sound and marvelous place to play. Can we expect to hear from you in performances here on the west coast of Florida any time soon. I don't conduct here at all. I I keep a very low profile that way. Here for instance I think Mr. Paul Wolf who has done such an in a really wonderful job of building the attitude for this infamy orchestra in the Sarasota area.

He needs all the support he can get from anybody and I try to give him that. And I at this point have no plans to get myself involved in it with any performance group here. I need to get my energy restored I need to do a lot of thinking a lot of writing and lot of editing when I'm back here and get ready to go back to Japan and oh maybe one of these years far out somewhere I might decide what I would really of course like to do and what I'm hoping we can do. Is it somewhere in the immediate future we can announce that there will be a United States tour of the the Tokyo because they want orchestra. However it sounds on recordings you'll have to hear any group in person. I don't care what the group is. You can have the greatest recording and the greatest everything that you can think of but it's nothing like the chemistry of being in the same room where the same people are really playing.

And I hope we can come certainly not later than 1994. That will be my 80th birthday and I hope we can swing around and do a few things at that time. Well I look forward to that time when you can bring the Tokyo car say one orchestra here something unusual is happening this summer which I'd like to share with you. There's a Japanese man. Who is. Who had when he was in high school was a bit of a euphonium player. That's the that's the instrument that looks like the tuba but is smaller than the tuba and the instrument without which we don't have that baritone voice in the wind group brass group. And he enjoyed that and he became a record fan and he bought my records with Eastman when ensemble and collected them. And he has become one of the most successful jewelry. It's difficult for me to call him manufacturer but I mean he does have a large

factory where a very gifted young people design and put together high quality jewelry of the kind that the Japanese fashion ladies just can't live without. And has done very well with this. And he wants to give something back to the community of Kofu that spelled k o f u and of course it's pronounced cough and in cough he is building a three story new office building of the most modern design. I don't mean in his what it looks like but the inside of it will be the latest in everything. And he said since the when you look at the plans and it was this big flat roof he said hey I've always wanted to have a concert hall and die. He then got in touch with the management of the cause a wind orchestra to ask me would I agree to having him name a

concert hall after me because I thought this was like well like some of my Texas band director friends but putting me on you know a big joke. Well on the contrary Tokyo which is his name he was on the contrary very very serious. And my wife Elizabeth and I went to see the beginnings the leaders steal the basics deal was up when we went to see it last October twenty seventh. And of course by now everything's all closed and they expect it at that time he said they were in the in the 12th month of the 18 month cycle of building. And so they had six to go to finish. And on the Tokyo course a wind orchestra and I will play the dedicatory concert on the 17th of July. I can't believe it. That's wonderful. I can't believe it but it is happening. Kind of crazy isn't it.

So wonderful trivia. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming today. My pleasure. Now as you know I'm a very avid listener. Through many hours of the day and I do sometimes many things besides study and write or read. And when I fuss around in my library putting music back together so I can use it again or make it maybe making a little something in a small shop I have. I always listen as well as when I drive. And I I hope that people will understand that this is a unique and extraordinary treasure of music in this part of Florida. And we need this. Everybody needs this. The availability of it. If you only or if you want to hear something that is wonderful going on all at home just dial in.

This Is It concert night which I enjoy very much. Thank you for your many generous plays on some of the things I do. Well I always enjoy hearing them I wonder if you do you do any composing. I know when I was when I was 18 years old I wrote a piece in the composition class at Interlochen and I won among pieces that we are asked to write that somebody do these kinds of things. Toward the end of it I wrote a march and I. The conductor of the high school band Dr. Harding I had heard that I'd done that and he said will I would you like to run through it with where the high school bands which I did. And then he asked me to do that and to make my debut as a conductor at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1933. The last concert of the summer the camp had moved to the World's Fair for this eighth week and that was my

debut as a conductor. And the last thing I intended to write as a composer because I did get this piece published I thought I better quit while I was ahead more than more than that. I always knew that what I was to do was I was just spend my life conducting other people's music getting to know other people's music as well as I could know it and not clutter up the world with a lot of music it really didn't need that bio by a man who really wasn't a composer. And I think there's some who have done that but that's their business. But in my instance I felt my gift was to be a conductor. And that's where I have been poured all my marbles and I'm very happy that I did. Do you think you'll ever write a book. I'm in the process yes. I've been what I call jotting I've been jotting for about 10 years and no end.