Thanks, Dave. I've read accounts accusing Claudia Cassidy of being vicious toward Kubelik implying it was purely out of a nasty disposition. It's good to hear one who has delved into the matter offer a contrasting view.
Some context; the BBC Symphony Orchestra wanted Kubelik to take over as Chief Conductor in 1950 after Adrian Boult's "retirement" but he preferred Chicago partly because of the ill-health of his wife. Covent Garden were happy with his 3 year tenure and wanted to keep him but there were dissenting voices partly from those who wanted British conductors. It's been indicated that the objections in Chicago were partly because he introduced too many contemporary works, demanded exhaustive rehearsals (which they probably needed?) and engaged several black artists. Was he ready to take over a really major orchestra which was probably underperforming at the time? - fair point. The BBC SO would probably have been a better fit for him with its wide repertoire, and despite postwar struggles would have already been well trained under Boult.
For a critic to still be discussed so long after her career tenure and her death is quite something. I remember in the early 1980s when I was in college in the north and surrounded by Chicago Heads that her name was like mud. I assume they were under sway of the prevailing narrative. The role of the critic, in part, as a booster for the city's cultural life, as Cassidy apparently was, is an interesting one, quite apart from the usual concerns of the critic.
WFMT used to have a spot on Sunday afternoon for three critics, Claudia Cassidy, Herman Kogan and another whose name escapes me. Cassidy won my support when she inveighed against standing ovations. At that time (1980), audiences stood and applauded any soloist in hopes of guilting him or her into an encore, regardless of how well the soloist performed in the concerto. I cannot remember hearing a bad performance by a soloist at the CSO, but I recall some lackluster ones followed by lackluster encores. Cassidy pointed out that this practice robbed standing ovations of any significance other than patrons trying to squeeze more for their ticket price. Alas, those were the days. Now the audience always stands at the end of any performance (this is true of the theatre as well as concerts). And they're not even looking for an encore (although I knew a symphony board member who expected an orchestral encore every two or three concerts). Sometimes I think they're just working towards a speedier exit.
Possible music chat: Discuss the sonic history of recordings. Early recordings on wax cylinders, advent mono recordings, 78s then 33s and 45s, advent of stereo, CDs, now digital....and how each of these influenced the industry. Thank you for your consideration.
I had the fortune to have met Ms. Cassidy in the early 70's. My critical, mentor, Dr. James Cokley, had a dinner party with a number of his critic pals from Northwestern University and the Chicago area-including, I must mention, the great choral director Margaret Hillis. As a stupid 18-year-old, it should go without saying I said little. Cassidy was charming to me, and when I mentioned I loved Berlioz, she was acerbic about my hero worship, but encouraging over my enthusiasm for the music. As a wounded artist once stated (sorry Dave), no one ever erected a statue to a critic, but surely her sway in Chicago merits your tribute to her. She was often wrong and biased (her reviews of Segovia, for example, were more love letters than critiques), but nobody accused her of a lack of intelligent opinion. I do remember, as a theatre critic, not being much taken with her critiques of more modern theatre, but she was certainly somewhat less vicious than John Simon in NY. I do remember that she trashed a production of Hamlet by Tyrone Guthrie and his Minnesota group, and Guthrie's response (which the like you may have received in your critical life, Dave) was "I am cheeky enough to think I know more about Hamlet than Claudia Cassidy"
@@bloodgrss Hello, your reply to my comment on the recent Nozze di Figaro Reference Recording video got blocked by UA-cam. Would you mind reposting? I can only see the first two lines or so. Looks like the start of an interesting post!
A very interesting assessment...much different than what I'd heard in my college days. It makes good sense. But...just wondering what might have come had Kubelik been given the time to grow in the position and as a musician/conductor. Thanks for this perspective on Cassidy. She had always been painted as the villainess who ran Kubelik and Martinon out of Chicago. I can now see the situation differently.
As a kid I remember my folks wincing over Acidy Cassidy...a shame she couldn't dial back on some of the nastiness. An interesting take, thank you for sharing it.
Fascinating review David, and truly a fascinating take on Kubelik's tenure with the Chicago SO, especially in relations with Ms. Cassidy. I wonder why Ms. Cassidy thought highly of Frederick Stock, Chicago Symphony's Music Director from 1905 through 1942. Granted that she didn't want this very fine ensemble to be deemed second best or get a second rate conductor, Stock was generally not rated as a top-tier conductor in comparison with, say, Reiner, Toscanini, Szell, Rodzinsky, Koussevitsky, Stokowski (although he was a great, innovative, programmer who promoted the music of Myaskovsky in particular). I should research this further. Thank you nevertheless as always.
Some say the old times were different, that the bosses used to be harsher, with discipline and language, its seems not just in music. Today its other extreme, everything has to be polished sometimes.
One of the best examples for me of Kubelik's erratic conducting was comparing his very good lithe performance of Mahler's 7th in Bavaria to his plodding, lugubrious performance with the New York Phil.
Reminds me of Martin Bernheimer's constant carping and sniping about Mehta during his LA stint. Mehta lasted 16 years though unlike Kubelik who left in 3 or so.I wonder if you have any thoughts about the Mehta/Bernheimer brouhaha,Dave ?
I'm not old enough to have followed the Bernheimer/Mehta brouhaha, but I did read Bernheimer's reviews in the eighties. He was of course a very gifted writer, but he was also a very hard man to please, with narrow and demanding tastes. Even his positive reviews were filled with misgivings, often expressed with an insouciant irony. I remember one "positive" review in particular, where he offered fulsome praise for Jeffrey Tate's conducting, but was very unhappy with Tate's choice of the Walton 1st for the second half of the program. He described it as a great performance of an absolutely terrible work. That kind of negativity was typical of his reviews. He was the glass is half-empty kind of guy.
I was just getting into classical music in college in 1971, and chanced to meet Martin Bernheimer coming out of a class he gave at UCLA. He didn't know me, but within 15 seconds was bragging to me how hard he was to please. Looking back on that conversation years later he seemed a total jerk; his trashing of Mehta probably deserves little weight. @@sivakumarvakkalanka4938
@@gregnyquist7714 A serious critic should be a glass-half-empty person. He or she stands against the pervasive hype in the artistic world and audiences who have to display their supposed sensitivity by cheering their lungs out and giving a standing ovation to every performance.
Do we know if Ms. Cassidy ever changed her mind over some performers? I'm thinking of critics like Harold C. Schonberg of the NY Times, who was an early detractor of Leonard Bernstein, but in later years gave Lenny some (grudging) respect and praise.
@@DavesClassicalGuide She was friends with Reiner`s wife(Carlotta)and a dinner guest,but accused Fritz of using concerts as rehearsals for RCA recordings.Would have loved to have been seated at that table!
Kubelik was hired at the Met Opera by newly appointed director Goeran Gentele. Unfortunately, Gentele was killed in a car crash before his first season started, so Kubelik lost his chief patron there, and may have not wanted to stay on after the loss of Gentele anyway. I did have the privilege of seeing the dress rehearsal of Berlioz' Les Troyens that Kubelik conducted at the Met that season. I did not know the opera well enough to comment on his interpretation. But seeing Jon Vickers sing the role of Aeneas, and Shirley Verrett taking on both the roles of Cassandra and Queen Dido (she was impressive in both) was quite an experience. The word among the orchestra players (I had a friend playing in the off-stage brass band) was that Kubelik had a "funny" beat, but he knew the score.
The truth is that the 1950 Mercury recording of 'Pictures' was celebrated for its then sonic blockbuster hifi recording of an orchestra and not for its conducting. I don't think that Kubelik was tempermentally suited to the week in, week out hurly burly of a subscription season, especially in the American postwar environment of publicity, schmoozing of donors and constant fundraising. He became famous at Covent Graden and later the Met for bringing Les Troyens back to life, but he really didn't last very long at either house as music director. He was much happier and more productive in the special cocooned habitat of a well-subsidized European radio orchestra, adequate rehearsal and few or no complaints but an adventurousness about repertoire. He could blossom there. (The elderly, post age 70 Toscanini also found a radio orchestra congenial at NBC.)
Hi Dave, why do you assume she was not taken seriously because she was a woman? Don't get me wrong: I am not saying it's not possible, but wasn't Pauline Kael writing at around the same time? and she was certainly taken seriously. Is it something about classical music establishment in particular?
I say that because I see what was said about her by her colleagues and those in the "business," and the same would never have been said has she been male.
Kubelik certain was an excellent conductor but I have never understood how some people just wax poetic about him without really grounding this praise in anything. Cassidy was very protective of the CSO, and Kubelik didn't have the gravitas or experience at that time to be its musical director. In my opinion, for example, Kubelik doesn't touch Bohm as a conductor, but people freak out if I suggest that.
Simon Rattle said recently that as 15 ears old Kubelík was his idol, and he used to go to his rehearsals and liked his polite approach with orchestra... its good that polite attitude is actually not about competition comparison, and according to some its actually the opposite because kindness is our true self.
Well, it comes to repertoir i believe. Where Böhm nailed operas (but even in standard german repertoir I think he had his ups and downs), Kubelík nailed contemporary and more exotic, ergo national music (slavic, hungaric etc. and he also had his ups and downs). But they both did what they thought they do the best, and each did something a little different.
They criticized Smetana that he can not compose as deaf. As deaf he composed some most beautiful poems. Simon Rattle liked Kubelík´s Má Vlast. Maybe criticism is healthy for improvement, especially when they forget about criticism but not the improvement.
Sometimes what sticks with people in their opinion of critics is the way they criticize as much as the substance of their critiques. Claudia Cassidy and John Simon were both good critics, but their frequent nastiness left a bad taste in many reader's mouths.
Hmm… From John Simon’s infamous review of the play “Abelard and Héloïse”, which featured the leads in a nude scene: “Diana Rigg, the Héloïse, is built, alas, like a brick basilica with inadequate flying buttresses…” Seems a bit harsher than “honest”…
John Simon was insightful about the quality of acting, directing, script writing, set design, almost all the elements that go into a stage or film production. It's too bad that his criticism strayed into unnecessary savagery, including about players' looks. That said, he could be wickedly funny. About Shelley Winters, he wrote that in a role she was "a disaster, or in view of her girth, it would be more accurate to say a disaster area."
Indeed, as Dave indicates, they were honest with their own perspectives. But they also wrote to be employed, and clever or savage nastiness does sell...@@rickdarby3420
Thanks, Dave. I've read accounts accusing Claudia Cassidy of being vicious toward Kubelik implying it was purely out of a nasty disposition. It's good to hear one who has delved into the matter offer a contrasting view.
Some context; the BBC Symphony Orchestra wanted Kubelik to take over as Chief Conductor in 1950 after Adrian Boult's "retirement" but he preferred Chicago partly because of the ill-health of his wife. Covent Garden were happy with his 3 year tenure and wanted to keep him but there were dissenting voices partly from those who wanted British conductors. It's been indicated that the objections in Chicago were partly because he introduced too many contemporary works, demanded exhaustive rehearsals (which they probably needed?) and engaged several black artists. Was he ready to take over a really major orchestra which was probably underperforming at the time? - fair point. The BBC SO would probably have been a better fit for him with its wide repertoire, and despite postwar struggles would have already been well trained under Boult.
For a critic to still be discussed so long after her career tenure and her death is quite something. I remember in the early 1980s when I was in college in the north and surrounded by Chicago Heads that her name was like mud. I assume they were under sway of the prevailing narrative. The role of the critic, in part, as a booster for the city's cultural life, as Cassidy apparently was, is an interesting one, quite apart from the usual concerns of the critic.
WFMT used to have a spot on Sunday afternoon for three critics, Claudia Cassidy, Herman Kogan and another whose name escapes me. Cassidy won my support when she inveighed against standing ovations. At that time (1980), audiences stood and applauded any soloist in hopes of guilting him or her into an encore, regardless of how well the soloist performed in the concerto. I cannot remember hearing a bad performance by a soloist at the CSO, but I recall some lackluster ones followed by lackluster encores. Cassidy pointed out that this practice robbed standing ovations of any significance other than patrons trying to squeeze more for their ticket price.
Alas, those were the days. Now the audience always stands at the end of any performance (this is true of the theatre as well as concerts). And they're not even looking for an encore (although I knew a symphony board member who expected an orchestral encore every two or three concerts). Sometimes I think they're just working towards a speedier exit.
Studs Terkel!!! Please!!! Those were the glory days!
Possible music chat: Discuss the sonic history of recordings. Early recordings on wax cylinders, advent mono recordings, 78s then 33s and 45s, advent of stereo, CDs, now digital....and how each of these influenced the industry. Thank you for your consideration.
I had the fortune to have met Ms. Cassidy in the early 70's. My critical, mentor, Dr. James Cokley, had a dinner party with a number of his critic pals from Northwestern University and the Chicago area-including, I must mention, the great choral director Margaret Hillis. As a stupid 18-year-old, it should go without saying I said little. Cassidy was charming to me, and when I mentioned I loved Berlioz, she was acerbic about my hero worship, but encouraging over my enthusiasm for the music.
As a wounded artist once stated (sorry Dave), no one ever erected a statue to a critic, but surely her sway in Chicago merits your tribute to her. She was often wrong and biased (her reviews of Segovia, for example, were more love letters than critiques), but nobody accused her of a lack of intelligent opinion.
I do remember, as a theatre critic, not being much taken with her critiques of more modern theatre, but she was certainly somewhat less vicious than John Simon in NY. I do remember that she trashed a production of Hamlet by Tyrone Guthrie and his Minnesota group, and Guthrie's response (which the like you may have received in your critical life, Dave) was "I am cheeky enough to think I know more about Hamlet than Claudia Cassidy"
Guthrie had much worse to say about her than that. On the plus side, she was responsible for making (and saving) the career of Tennessee Williams.
Yes indeed! Guthrie was quite a character himself. I actually have that pleasant memory of her, and admired her immensely...@@DavesClassicalGuide
@@bloodgrss Hello, your reply to my comment on the recent Nozze di Figaro Reference Recording video got blocked by UA-cam. Would you mind reposting? I can only see the first two lines or so. Looks like the start of an interesting post!
A very interesting assessment...much different than what I'd heard in my college days. It makes good sense. But...just wondering what might have come had Kubelik been given the time to grow in the position and as a musician/conductor.
Thanks for this perspective on Cassidy. She had always been painted as the villainess who ran Kubelik and Martinon out of Chicago. I can now see the situation differently.
As a kid I remember my folks wincing over Acidy Cassidy...a shame she couldn't dial back on some of the nastiness. An interesting take, thank you for sharing it.
Fascinating review David, and truly a fascinating take on Kubelik's tenure with the Chicago SO, especially in relations with Ms. Cassidy.
I wonder why Ms. Cassidy thought highly of Frederick Stock, Chicago Symphony's Music Director from 1905 through 1942. Granted that she didn't want this very fine ensemble to be deemed second best or get a second rate conductor, Stock was generally not rated as a top-tier conductor in comparison with, say, Reiner, Toscanini, Szell, Rodzinsky, Koussevitsky, Stokowski (although he was a great, innovative, programmer who promoted the music of Myaskovsky in particular). I should research this further.
Thank you nevertheless as always.
She was there and we weren't.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Apparently. Thanks nonetheless.
As Czech artists use to say you wouldn´t want to share a semi-detached house with some people.
Americans say "Man´s rejection is a God´s protection."
Some say the old times were different, that the bosses used to be harsher, with discipline and language, its seems not just in music.
Today its other extreme, everything has to be polished sometimes.
One of the best examples for me of Kubelik's erratic conducting was comparing his very good lithe performance of Mahler's 7th in Bavaria to his plodding, lugubrious performance with the New York Phil.
Very interesting. I had heard only part of that. I still like those Mercury recordings!
Kubelik and Cassidy actually died just three weeks apart (Jul-Aug 1996).
i would be interested in hearing your comments about c.c. re: reiner and szell (sic)--never knew he 'had' chicago
Reminds me of Martin Bernheimer's constant carping and sniping about Mehta during his LA stint. Mehta lasted 16 years though unlike Kubelik who left in 3 or so.I wonder if you have any thoughts about the Mehta/Bernheimer brouhaha,Dave ?
I honestly wasn't paying attention back then and didn't look into it subsequently, so I can't really comment.
I'm not old enough to have followed the Bernheimer/Mehta brouhaha, but I did read Bernheimer's reviews in the eighties. He was of course a very gifted writer, but he was also a very hard man to please, with narrow and demanding tastes. Even his positive reviews were filled with misgivings, often expressed with an insouciant irony. I remember one "positive" review in particular, where he offered fulsome praise for Jeffrey Tate's conducting, but was very unhappy with Tate's choice of the Walton 1st for the second half of the program. He described it as a great performance of an absolutely terrible work. That kind of negativity was typical of his reviews. He was the glass is half-empty kind of guy.
@@DavesClassicalGuideGot it, thanks for replying.
I was just getting into classical music in college in 1971, and chanced to meet Martin Bernheimer coming out of a class he gave at UCLA. He didn't know me, but within 15 seconds was bragging to me how hard he was to please. Looking back on that conversation years later he seemed a total jerk; his trashing of Mehta probably deserves little weight. @@sivakumarvakkalanka4938
@@gregnyquist7714 A serious critic should be a glass-half-empty person. He or she stands against the pervasive hype in the artistic world and audiences who have to display their supposed sensitivity by cheering their lungs out and giving a standing ovation to every performance.
What is your take on the current music criticism at the New York Times Dave?
I really don't have one.
Do we know if Ms. Cassidy ever changed her mind over some performers? I'm thinking of critics like Harold C. Schonberg of the NY Times, who was an early detractor of Leonard Bernstein, but in later years gave Lenny some (grudging) respect and praise.
Were she still around, I wonder who Cassidy would select as Muti’s successor.
Didn't Cassidy sour over Fritz Reiner over time? Also, can't forget that Kubelik lasted about 6 months as Music Director at the Met.
She didn't like him personally, I believe, but she didn't question his fitness for the position.
He would have told her where to go.
A biography of Renier stated that she thought his programing at the CSO was too overly delegated to RCA's recording projects.
@@DavesClassicalGuide She was friends with Reiner`s wife(Carlotta)and a dinner guest,but accused Fritz of using concerts as rehearsals for RCA recordings.Would have loved to have been seated at that table!
Kubelik was hired at the Met Opera by newly appointed director Goeran Gentele. Unfortunately, Gentele was killed in a car crash before his first season started, so Kubelik lost his chief patron there, and may have not wanted to stay on after the loss of Gentele anyway.
I did have the privilege of seeing the dress rehearsal of Berlioz' Les Troyens that Kubelik conducted at the Met that season. I did not know the opera well enough to comment on his interpretation. But seeing Jon Vickers sing the role of Aeneas, and Shirley Verrett taking on both the roles of Cassandra and Queen Dido (she was impressive in both) was quite an experience. The word among the orchestra players (I had a friend playing in the off-stage brass band) was that Kubelik had a "funny" beat, but he knew the score.
Cassidy died in 1996, 3 weeks before Kubelik.
The truth is that the 1950 Mercury recording of 'Pictures' was celebrated for its then sonic blockbuster hifi recording of an orchestra and not for its conducting.
I don't think that Kubelik was tempermentally suited to the week in, week out hurly burly of a subscription season, especially in the American postwar environment of publicity, schmoozing of donors and constant fundraising. He became famous at Covent Graden and later the Met for bringing Les Troyens back to life, but he really didn't last very long at either house as music director. He was much happier and more productive in the special cocooned habitat of a well-subsidized European radio orchestra, adequate rehearsal and few or no complaints but an adventurousness about repertoire. He could blossom there. (The elderly, post age 70 Toscanini also found a radio orchestra congenial at NBC.)
Hi Dave, why do you assume she was not taken seriously because she was a woman? Don't get me wrong: I am not saying it's not possible, but wasn't Pauline Kael writing at around the same time? and she was certainly taken seriously. Is it something about classical music establishment in particular?
I say that because I see what was said about her by her colleagues and those in the "business," and the same would never have been said has she been male.
No dis-respect to Claudia Cassidy. How well versed was she in classical music
Very.
Kubelik certain was an excellent conductor but I have never understood how some people just wax poetic about him without really grounding this praise in anything. Cassidy was very protective of the CSO, and Kubelik didn't have the gravitas or experience at that time to be its musical director. In my opinion, for example, Kubelik doesn't touch Bohm as a conductor, but people freak out if I suggest that.
Simon Rattle said recently that as 15 ears old Kubelík was his idol, and he used to go to his rehearsals and liked his polite approach with orchestra... its good that polite attitude is actually not about competition comparison, and according to some its actually the opposite because kindness is our true self.
Well, it comes to repertoir i believe. Where Böhm nailed operas (but even in standard german repertoir I think he had his ups and downs), Kubelík nailed contemporary and more exotic, ergo national music (slavic, hungaric etc. and he also had his ups and downs). But they both did what they thought they do the best, and each did something a little different.
They criticized Smetana that he can not compose as deaf. As deaf he composed some most beautiful poems. Simon Rattle liked Kubelík´s Má Vlast. Maybe criticism is healthy for improvement, especially when they forget about criticism but not the improvement.
Sometimes what sticks with people in their opinion of critics is the way they criticize as much as the substance of their critiques. Claudia Cassidy and John Simon were both good critics, but their frequent nastiness left a bad taste in many reader's mouths.
Criticism is a nasty business. They were honest.
Hmm… From John Simon’s infamous review of the play “Abelard and Héloïse”, which featured the leads in a nude scene: “Diana Rigg, the Héloïse, is built, alas, like a brick basilica with inadequate flying buttresses…” Seems a bit harsher than “honest”…
Has to be said, Simon once said of an actor that he did not belong ever on a stage anywhere in the world, Wow...@@musicianinseattle
John Simon was insightful about the quality of acting, directing, script writing, set design, almost all the elements that go into a stage or film production.
It's too bad that his criticism strayed into unnecessary savagery, including about players' looks. That said, he could be wickedly funny. About Shelley Winters, he wrote that in a role she was "a disaster, or in view of her girth, it would be more accurate to say a disaster area."
Indeed, as Dave indicates, they were honest with their own perspectives. But they also wrote to be employed, and clever or savage nastiness does sell...@@rickdarby3420