U.C. Dean Personifies Link Between Music and Medicine
It’s a funny thing
how medical school deans play the clarinet, professors of medicine play cello
and piano, and research scientists play the flute.
There is a definite link between music and medicine -- between music and science in general, witness Albert Einstein and his violin.
University of Cincinnati College of Medicine dean David Stern demonstrated this soundly as guest artist with the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra Sunday evening (Nov. 16) at the Anderson Center in Anderson Township. Stern performed Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with the CCO led by music director Mischa Santora.
The concert was part of the orchestra’s newly established Anderson Center Concert Series. Four times a year, the CCO performs in the 225-seat auditorium at Anderson Center, which it has adopted as its suburban performance home.
A sold-out crowd was on hand to meet them (though parking was a problem with a competing event taking place concurrently in the same building.)
It was highly enjoyable concert with a multi-media twist. In addition to music by Mozart and Haydn, there were spoken excerpts from Mozart’s letters read aloud and set in historical context by Santora.
Mozart was a prolific correspondent who left extremely valuable (and entertaining) accounts of his thoughts, feelings and observations on the contemporary scene. Each of the readings related in some way to the music being performed, which included Mozart’s Symphony No. 31, K.297 ("Paris"), in addition to the Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K.622.
Also on the program was Haydn’s Symphony No. 85 in B-flat Major, “La Reine” (“The Queen”) though, in the interest of time, only the last movement was actually performed. (Anderson Series concerts are geared to be about one-hour long.)
To introduce the Mozart Symphony, Santora chose letters the 22-year-old Mozart wrote to his father from Paris, a disappointing, even tragic time in his life when he not only achieved little success, but lost his mother. “The filth of Paris is indescribable (he wrote) . . .the French are terribly discourteous . . . if this were a place where people had ears to hear, hearts to feel and some measure of understanding of and taste for music, I could laugh heartily over these things, but (as regards music) I am living among brute beasts . . .”
He writes of the rehearsal of his new symphony: “Never in my life have I heard a worse performance. I had decided not to go to the concert, but I finally resolved to go with the proviso that if things went as ill as at the rehearsal, I would make my way into the orchestra, snatch Herr Lahouse’s (the first violin’s) instrument from his hand and conduct myself!” (It wasn’t necessary as the concert was enthusiastically received, he said.)
Santora led a fine performance of Mozart’s “Paris” Symphony. The opening Allegro was marked by remarkable ensemble unity and precision, followed by a charming Andante and a short, lively finale. (You could imagine Mozart heading for the Palais Royale after the premiere, where he “ate an ice” and went home happy.)
A native of New York, Stern studied clarinet with Leon Russianoff of the Juilliard and Manhattan Schools of Music. As a student at Yale, he was principal clarinet of the Yale Symphony and the American Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski. The Concert Artist’s Guild sponsored him in two solo recitals at Carnegie Hall.
Music took a back seat when Stern cast his lot with medicine at Harvard Medical School, but he began playing clarinet again after becoming dean, first of the Medical College of Georgia, and since 2005, of the U.C. College of Medicine. His performance with the CCO was his Cincinnati concerto debut.
Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto dates from the last year of his life (1791) when despite financial and health problems, his letters continue to reveal a childlike, voluble and fundamentally indomitable spirit. In an Oct. 1991 letter to his wife Constanze, read by Santora, the 35-year-old composer wrote of the positive audience reaction to his opera “The Magic Flute,” of playing billiards with “Herr von Mozart, the man who wrote the opera ” and of orchestrating “almost the whole of Stadler’s rondo” in one evening (the finale of the Clarinet Concerto, which Mozart wrote for Austrian clarinetist Anton Stadler).
Stern worked closely with Santora and the CCO in the Concerto, giving the opening Allegro a gracious, nuanced performance. After pausing “for a bit of plumbing,” i.e. to swath out his clarinet with a rag, he followed with a warm, mellifluous reading of the Adagio. The playful finale was preceded by another Mozart reading, from a 1787 letter to his friend Baron Gottfried von Jacquin, in which he noted the “pretty women” in Prague and the popularity of his opera “The Marriage of Figaro,” closing with a catalogue of pet names for his friends and family, the baron’s being “Hinkity Honky” (which drew giggles from the children in the audience). Stern’s capped the reading with a sparkling performance of the Rondo, rewarding the appreciative audience with a deep bow and an elfin smile.
The finale of Haydn’s “La Reine” (“The Queen,” named for Marie Antoinette) took on a darker meaning to close the concert. Santora read from an account describing her imprisonment during the French Revolution. Having noticed a harp in the corridor of the prison, she requested that it be tuned and brought to her. One of the pieces she found on the music stand was Haydn’s Symphony No. 85, dedicated to her.
The CCO stumbled a bit at the outset then recovered itself, perhaps like the queen, who reportedly broke into tears when she saw the music.
Santora and the CCO are performing three pairs of themed concerts this season, the first having been “Classic Relationships," featuring works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Next on the CCO schedule is a “Folk Music Festival” in March and April, featuring the CCO’s annual collaboration with the Vocal Arts Ensemble, and in June, “Spanish Legends: Don Quixote and Don Juan.” One concert from each series will be repeated at the Anderson Center.
For information and tickets, call (513) 723-1182, or visit www.ccocincinnati.com.