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 In Praise of Teachers Who Can DoThe next time someone quotes the old saying "those who can't do, teach," just introduce them to a Juilliard teacher. Almost since the School's inception, faculty members have shared their talents as performers and recording artists in addition to being extraordinary teachers. So before the School's centennial celebrations come to an end, it's worth sampling some recorded highlights of Juilliard faculty, past and present. Of course, there is simply no way in the allotted space to include all of the worthy names, and we regret in advance the countless omissions that undoubtedly arise in such an exercise. That said, here are some high points of the past 100 years for your listening pleasure.
Few pianists better maintained careers as active performers and respected teachers longer than Gyorgy Sandor, a member of Juilliard's piano faculty from 1982 until his death in December 2005 at age 93. Sandor studied with Bela Bartok in his native Hungary, and while teaching at Juilliard nearly 50 years later, he strove to pass on the composer's intentions to his own students. In 1963, Sandor recorded Bartok's complete piano music, a set that won him the 1965 Grand Prix du Disque. Since being re-released on a 5-CD compilation (Vox 3610), it continues to set the standard, even outdoing the pianist's own 1990's Bartok recordings for Sony.
Among the current piano faculty to actively record is Seymour Lipkin, who, at 78, has been busy putting his stamp on the monumental Beethoven piano sonatas. Newport Classics has released his impressive performances of the 32 sonatas in three box sets (NCD60171/3-172/3-173/3). A standout is Volume 3, which features Lipkin's nuanced readings of the "Appassionata" and "Hammerklavier" sonatas. The complete set is also available on a single CD-ROM (NRM59001) of high-quality MP3s that comes with sheet music to all the sonatas in PDF format—a full 600 pages' worth—as well as program notes by Ted Libbey, and photos and biographical material on the performer.
New York-born violinist Joseph Fuchs (1899-1997) enjoyed a performing career that spanned a phenomenal 70 years. His final concert appearance took place in 1995 at Juilliard, where he had been a teacher since 1946 (he was also an alumnus, having attended the Institute of Musical Art intermittently from 1906 to 1924, picking up two diplomas along the way). While many of Fuchs's recordings have gone out of print, a CD of a live concert, recorded in December 1974, showcases the nimble violinist at age 75, performing sonatas by Mozart and Fauré, the Martinu Sonata for Two Violins (with his pupil Hamao Fujiwara), and pieces by Bach, Saint-Saëns, and Ravel (Video Arts International 1190). Joseph Fuch's sister, Lillian Fuchs (1902-1995) was also an alumna of I.M.A. who taught viola at Juilliard. She recorded many standard and non-standard pieces in the viola literature, including transcriptions of the Bach Cello Suites, currently available on DoReMi Records (DHR 7801/02).
Violinist Cho-Liang Lin, a Juilliard alum and faculty member since 1991, made numerous recordings of the standard repertoire while signed with Sony Classical during the 1980s and '90s. He's increasingly branched out into contemporary works as well, as heard on an Ondine CD featuring the Violin Concerto of Juilliard composition faculty member Christopher Rouse (Ondine 1016-2). Written expressly for Lin, and premiered by him in 2001 with the New York Philharmonic, the two-movement concerto, here performed with the Helsinki Philharmonic conducted by Leif Segerstam, shows Lin's broad interpretive range, from the rhapsodic first movement to the pyrotechnical finale. The disc also features Rouse's Der Gerettete Alberich (Fantasy for Solo Percussion and Orchestra), with soloist Evelyn Glennie.
During the late 1980s and early '90s, the Juilliard Orchestra made a series of recordings for New World Records—the "university press" of record labels—that focused on relatively neglected works by American composers. The discs also feature former and present directors of Juilliard's orchestral conducting program. On a New World CD (NW 368-2), the late Sixten Ehrling, who directed the program from 1973 to 1987, leads a taut performance of Copland's Connotations, an austere 12-tone work that seems perfectly tailored to the conductor's own rigorous style. Also represented are William Schuman's In Praise of Shahn (under the baton of another former director of orchestral conducting, Otto-Werner Mueller) and Roger Sessions' Suite from The Black Maskers (conducted by Paul Zukofsky).
Another disc on the same label features Juilliard's current director of conducting and orchestral studies, James DePreist, leading the Juilliard Orchestra in the Night Dances of Persichetti (New World 80396). A respected pedagogue in his own right, Persichetti, who taught at the School from 1947 to 1987, was DePreist's composition teacher at the Philadelphia Conservatory. The disc also features Milton Babbitt's Relata I and David Diamond's Fifth Symphony.
You won't find a more compelling recording of a Juilliard master class (or any master class for that matter) than EMI's 3-CD set Maria Callas at Juilliard (EMI 65082), which pares down 46 hours of recordings of the soprano's historic master classes at the School in 1971 and 1972. Although the celebrated soprano was not on the Juilliard faculty, her classes drew crowds of adoring fans and later became the subject of Terrence McNally's hit play, Master Class, and the book Callas at Juilliard, edited by John Ardoin (Amadeus Press). The CD set carries particular immediacy and has the bonus of featuring recordings of Callas singing the very same roles that she was coaching.
Robert White, a member of the voice faculty since 1992, and alumnus Lowell Liebermann, a composer and pianist, make a natural and sympathetic pair on a 1997 CD of Liebermann's songs (Arabesque Z6770). Liebermann has particular flair for vocal writing as the debut of his second opera, Miss Lonelyhearts, made clear last month in performances by the Juilliard Opera Center. White has a natural affinity with Liebermann's neo-Romantic language, delivering affecting and poetic interpretations here.
As the School's oldest chamber ensemble-in-residence, the Juilliard String Quartet, marks its 60th anniversary in 2006, the Testament label offers a chance to hear the group as it sounded in the late 1950s and early '60s, with several recordings originally made for RCA. One standout is a disc pairing the Ravel and Debussy Quartets (SBT 1375). The J.S.Q.'s personnel at the time were Robert Mann (still on the School's faculty) and Isidore Cohen, violins; Raphael Hillyer; viola; and Claus Adam, cello—musicians known for their modernist tastes and tightness of ensemble, as this disc nicely illustrates. Going back even further in time, to its beginnings, the original ensemble—Robert Mann and Robert Koff, violins; Raphael Hillyer, viola; Arthur Winograd, cello—can be heard on a 2-CD set of the complete Bartok String Quartets, originally recorded in 1950 (Pearl GEMS 0147). These works have been associated with the J.S.Q. since its founding, and these early recordings set a standard that has yet to be surpassed.
Composer David Diamond, a longtime Juilliard faculty member who died in June 2005 at 89, was perhaps best known for his symphonies, yet he devoted considerable effort to chamber music as well. Last year, the Washington, D.C.-based Potomac String Quartet finished a complete set of the composer's 10 string quartets for Albany Records. The set shows Diamond's evolution from a post-Romantic to the writer of leaner, more dissonant, and yet highly expressive chamber music, and the members of the Potomac Quartet—George Marsh and Sally McLain, violins; Tsuna Sakamoto, viola; Steven Honigberg, cello—give intelligent readings of these unjustly neglected works.
Finally, not to be overlooked is the American Brass Quintet, another of the School's chamber ensembles-in-residence. This month, the A.B.Q. celebrates its 45th anniversary with a concert featuring the premiere of a work by Joan Tower (see story on Page 1). Five years ago, to mark its 40th anniversary, the quintet released the CD Quintessence (Summit 263), a disc featuring several Renaissance-era works, a reading of Bach's Contrapunctus VII from The Art of Fugue, and more recent works by Anthony Plog and Henri Lazarof. Brass lovers should relish the group's diverse choice of repertoire and immaculate performances.
While Juilliard's Jazz Studies program is just five years old, jazz pedagogy is not entirely unprecedented at the School. Swing pianist Teddy Wilson was a faculty member of the Juilliard Summer School from 1946 to 1952, teaching both classical and jazz piano. Wilson played with many leading swing musicians of his era, most notably Benny Goodman, in the process breaking important ground in the struggle against segregation. The majority of the tracks on Best of Teddy Wilson and His Orchestra (Collector's Choice 126) are actually recordings of Wilson's performances while he was in Goodman's band.
Clarinetist and saxophonist Victor Goines cut his teeth as a member of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the Wynton Marsalis Septet for more than a decade. Since becoming the artistic director of Juilliard's Jazz Studies program in 2001, Goines hasn't slowed down his recording career. After appearing on several albums with the Wycliffe Gordon Sextet and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, he makes his debut as a bandleader with New Adventures (Criss Cross Jazz 1274), a program mixing pungent originals with jazz standards like "The Nearness of You" and Sidney Bechet's "Petite Fleur." Brian Wise is a producer at WNYC radio and writes about music for The New York Times, Time Out New York, Opera News, and other publications. |
