When the San José Symphony declared bankruptcy recently ("Requiem for an Orchestra" by David Dubal in the November 2002 issue), many of the musicians started taking jobs elsewhere and looking to move to other parts of the country. Ballet San José Silicon Valley uses many of the musicians from the Symphony in our own ballet orchestra. (We have had a separate contract with them for several years.) The management of our ballet company decided that we had to do something to keep these treasured artists here… so we started our own symphony: Symphony San José Silicon Valley.

This just made sense for us. We already had a staff of marketing people, a box office, a music librarian, a contract with the musicians, a relationship with them, a board of trustees that is committed to the performing arts. We are expanding the classical product we can offer to the community, but have not expanded our infrastructure or governance structure. (This is more common in Europe than in our own country—one set of management operating two or more performance groups.) Right now, we have only scheduled four concerts, but the first one on November 23 was a huge success.

LEE KOPP
Publicist
Ballet San José Silicon Valley

"One should not eat cherries with great men," Brahms once wrote in a letter to Richard Wagner, and what he meant by the German proverb was, "I know I shouldn't tangle with powerful people…." But he did so anyway, because he had something on his mind.

I see a bowl of cherries before my eyes as I write to take issue with Roger Norrington, after reading his claims that a Brahms symphony should be played without vibrato (Daniel Wachs's interview with Roger Norrington, "One Brahms Symphony, Hold the Vibrato," December/January issue). "That is how Brahms would have expected his symphony to sound," Maestro Norrington is quoted as saying. Cherry in hesitant hand, I venture to say that it is not as simple as that.

For one thing, Brahms is the very last person in the musical world to insist that there was only one "correct" way to play his music. This is the man who said that his blood and a metronome didn't go well together, and who once offered to provide a friend, for a goodly sum of money, a weekly subscription for tempo markings, "because with normal people they cannot remain valid for more than a week." This is also the man who wrote piano and chamber music with a little Graf or even a beautiful Erard at hand, but as soon as he had the clout, insisted on performing those works in public only on American Steinways (yes!) and Bechsteins. As a composer, Brahms was a man who welcomed new possibilities, so long as they were genuinely felt.

I agree wholeheartedly with Maestro Norrington when he says that "the scholarship is simply there to sort out the problems." In the case of Brahms, recent scholarship, consisting of a close study of his letters, newspaper reviews, and the memoirs of his friends, provides a great deal of information about performing his music, without offering support for Maestro Norrington's conclusions.

Several years ago, I asked Felix Galimir about vibrato and Brahms's music. After all, Felix grew up and was educated in Vienna, where many people were still alive and performing who had known Brahms and had heard his music performed during the composer's lifetime. What did Felix think about the idea of playing Brahms without vibrato? "Are they meshuggah (crazy)?!" broke out of him in an outraged tone. "But of course," he added quickly, "they didn't play with as much vibrato as we do now." Felix was a member of the Vienna Philharmonic in the 1930s, something worth remembering in the discussion at hand here.

We know for sure, too, that some of Brahms's favorite instrumentalists—David Popper and Robert Hausmann come to mind immediately—played with vibrato, Popper in particular using it much as it is used today. This was true of his playing even in the 1860s, something documented in an amusing contemporary newspaper controversy. Popper, by the way, was appointed solo cellist at the Court Opera in Vienna in 1868, and it is hard to believe that he gave up his vibrato for the occasion. By his later years, Brahms himself was asking for vibrato in his music, neatly and specifically documented by an eye- and ear-witness to a run-through of his C-Minor Piano Trio with his friends, the great violinist Joseph Joachim, and Hausmann. Joachim too—whose name often comes up in "no-vibrato-in-Brahms" conversations—was altering his conception of violin playing; see his directions for one of the Hungarian Dances arranged by him for violin and piano. The violinist Bronislaw Huberman was Joachim's last great pupil, and played Brahms's concerto for him while still a lad. Brahms so approved he promised a new piece for the youngster, but died before he could turn intention into reality. A recording by Huberman, made almost directly after Brahms's death, clearly displays vibrato.

The point to be made, I think, is that music-making was changing, and Brahms was not rigidly opposed, but rather, interested in new possibilities. What Brahms expected or heard at one time or other in his life is not an especially useful indicator of how we should (or may) play his music now. Brahms required intelligence, education, and excellence from his ideal performer; after that, he left you on your own. Play the Symphony without vibrato? Well, why not, for a change (although how do you justify no vibrato at all on the C after the gorgeous, resonant, open-string G up-beat for the opening of the main theme in the last movement of the First Symphony?)—but to say that this is how it "ought" to be played or how it "must" be played is truly antithetical to the spirit of Brahms.

While it may well be that Brahms heard orchestras playing without vibrato, it is not possible to say with certainty what he expected to hear, and not at all possible to say what he wanted to hear.

STYRA AVINS

The writer is the author of "Performing Brahms, Clues From His Letters," in Performing Brahms (Cambridge University Press), ed. by Michael Musgrave and Bernard Sherman, scheduled for publication in March. She is also the author of Johannes Brahms, Life and Letters, Oxford University Press (1997).

Apprehension and dread filled my soul as I read, incredulous, Daniel Wachs's interview with Roger Norrington, "One Brahms Symphony, Hold the Vibrato" (December/ January). Must we endure another "gimmick"? We have suffered through "authentic," "period" performances, no two of which are alike—as, sad to say, cassettes and CDs from the Baroque era have not survived. Now must we stomach vibrato-less orchestras? We wind players and string players have devoted our essence to imitating the singing voice. Are singers next in line to be deprived of the warmth, colors, yes, expressive power of their uniquely intimate, most human (in the best sense) instrument? Singing sans vibrato—I shudder at the thought! A vibrato-less tone is incapable of rising above the infantile in expression. A vibrato-less tone is cold and dead, chilling and hopeless, the horrible negation of the message of music—love, hope, optimism, amity among peoples, across all borders. Is a fresh cult in the offing? Are venerable academies and conservatories to be rendered useless, null and void? When will the pecuniary exploitation of passing fad and fashion, current rage and craze, come to a richly-deserved end?

I have just listened to Bach's "Christmas Oratorio" on local NPR, performed in Talinn, Estonia, by a Danish choir and Estonian singers and Baroque ensemble... shades of Mr. Norrington! The instrumentalists were "kosher"—no trace of vibrato—but the singers (ugh!) shamelessly, brazenly, wantonly, outrageously wallowed in indecent, throbbing, pulsating vocal tremors. I believe this is called—mercy me—vibrato! Tough world, Mr. Norrington. Even the "authentic," "period" avant-garde can't get it right!

HANOCH TEL-OREN
(DIP '48, flute)

I enjoyed reading the article by Joseph Drew about the Pre-College Chamber Orchestra ("Seeing the Big Potential in a Small Orchestra," December/January). I was a bit perplexed, however, by the mention of Eugene Becker as the founder [in 1980] and only previous conductor of this group. I think you can see the reason for my confusion by looking at the dates of the enclosed concert programs and their listing of me as the conductor at the time.

SAL SCECCHITANO
(B.M. '78, organ; M.M. '82, orchestral conducting)

Andrew Thomas, director of the Pre-College Division, answers:

The history of the ensemble is, in fact, somewhat older. Salvatore Scecchitano came to the Pre-College Division as assistant conductor of the Junior Chamber Orchestra, and was appointed director of the Chamber Orchestra at the end of the 1977-78 season. He led the P.C.C.O in programs from December 1979 through May 1980. Prior to Scecchitano's tenure, Shirley Givens conducted the orchestra from 1976-1978, Dora Short from 1975-1976, the cellist Channing Robbins from 1972 through 1975, and Wesley Sontag from 1969-1971.

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