2014/6/25 Glenn Dicterow Discusses Leaving New York Philharmonic
Mediations and Mutiny Backstage
By MICHAEL COOPER JUNE 24, 2014
The open, empty violin case backstage at Avery Fisher Hall stood as a stark reminder that Glenn Dicterow, the longest-serving concertmaster in the history of the New York Philharmonic, would retire after Saturday night’s concert. It awaited the return of the 1727 Guarneri del Gesu violin that the Philharmonic had lent him as its first among equals.
It has been 34 years since Mr. Dicterow became the Philharmonic’s concertmaster, or principal first violinist. When he leaves to devote himself to teaching, he will have held the position for 6,033 performances; played as a soloist in 219 concerts; helped transmit the wishes of four music directors and more than 200 other conductors; and toured in 174 cities in 51 countries, lugging his belongings in an old trunk that once belonged to Leonard Bernstein.
“It’s going to be a tough Saturday night,” Mr. Dicterow, 65, said in an interview this week in his studio, as he prepared for a series of final performances of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, running through Saturday, with the pianist Yefim Bronfman and the orchestra’s principal cellist, Carter Brey. “The last one. Saying goodbye.”
Audiences know the concertmaster as the violinist who sits to the conductor’s left, leading the orchestra as it tunes up and playing solos. But behind the scenes, concertmasters can wield power to shape an orchestra’s sound - which is why they are the best-paid players in orchestras. (Mr. Dicterow was paid $523,647 in 2011, according
to the Philharmonic’s most recent tax filing.)
As he reflected on more than three decades in the concertmaster’s chair, Mr. Dicterow said that in the course of his duties, he had made decisions on how string passages should be bowed, mediated disputes between players and conductors, clowned around on television with Danny Kaye and, at least once, waged something of a benevolent mutiny.
That mutiny of sorts was before he came to New York, when he was the concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. William Steinberg, a respected conductor who was getting on in years, was leading a piece by Paul Hindemith when he got lost during a long pause before the final coda. “He thought that was the end,” Mr. Dicterow recalled. “Instead we had another two minutes to go. So while his hands were up, I said to myself, this is not going anywhere . and everybody watched me while I went to start the next section.”
Even when conductors do not get lost, they can sometimes be less than clear in communicating their wishes, so many players in the orchestra will rely on the concertmaster for their musical cues. “You lead like the first violinist in a string quartet,” Mr. Dicterow said.
Alan Gilbert, the Philharmonic’s music director, said in a recent interview that Mr. Dicterow had played a major role in molding the orchestra’s sound, and that replacing him would be the most important personnel decision he would make.
“The concertmaster is the single most important person in terms of being able to guide the flow of the music, and affecting the sound of the entire orchestra,” Mr. Gilbert said, adding that Mr. Dicterow was “unusually brilliant” at transmitting the wishes of conductors.
Sometimes the job involves diplomacy.
Mr. Dicterow recalled a rehearsal for an oratorio that took nearly an hour to get through the opening bars, as the conductor tried to coax more of a period sound out of the orchestra, which is better known for sounding brash than Baroque. “You just have to try to save it,” he said. “I think that’s what a great concertmaster needs to do. He needs to mediate, to be a secretary of state.”
Another incident he recalled involved Bernstein, the orchestra’s laureate conductor, who had been leading the ensemble in an open rehearsal that ran overtime, partly, some players felt, because he kept addressing the audience. As the overtime continued, the players were given the option to leave . and quite a few did. Bernstein stormed off the podium, Mr. Dicterow said. “Things like that, what do you do?” he asked.
But a shooting incident with a conductor was only a joke. It was a 1981 comedy concert conducted by Kaye, broadcast on public television. Mr. Dicterow played a false note, enraging Kaye, who yelled, “The concertmaster is the one who blows it?” before marching him off the stage. Shots rang out. A triumphant Mr. Dicterow returned.
Usually the job is lower profile, though. One of the most fundamental roles of the concertmaster is deciding the way passages should be bowed: Should the note be played with an up stroke or a down stroke? Mr. Dicterow said the music directors he had worked with sometimes had different ideas about it .-Lorin Maazel, a violin player himself, sometimes suggested idiosyncratic bowings - and he tried to strike a balance between their wishes and finding organic, comfortable bowings for the orchestra players.
On rare occasions, he would leave it up to the players, a sort of musical dealer’s choice. “There are times that I decide there shouldn’t be any bowing, when I’ll say, ‘It’s free bowing here,’ ” he said, noting that it had been a “trick” of the conductor Leopold Stokowski when he led the Philadelphia Orchestra. “I’ll say, ‘Just do what you
need to do to make it sound seamless.’ ”
Music, and the music business, have both changed quite a bit since Mr. Dicterow made his New York Philharmonic debut in 1967, at 18, performing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in a concert led by Andre Kostelanetz. (A review in The New York Times said that he had “blended talent and immaturity in his performance.”)
Mr. Dicterow said that playing had changed, to some extent. “It’s a given that you’re supposed to play perfectly, virtuosically,” he said. “But maybe there’s a bit of the generic quality in music making-people don’t have as much individual style. I think that’s just a product of the age we live in.”
He seemed genuinely taken aback when talking about the 2011 bankruptcy of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the current labor woes at the Metropolitan Opera, which is seeking to cut costs. And he lamented the disappearance of music education and the lack of government support for music. Speaking of art, and orchestras, he asked, “If we don’t have that, what do we have?”
But he said that he was looking forward to moving back to California- his father played in the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 52 years-to hold the Robert Mann Chair in Strings and Chamber Music at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music. And he said that while he would miss the Philharmonic, he would not miss the stress of sitting in the first chair.
Mr. Dicterow recalled a pep talk he received from a friend who had retired from the orchestra, who told him that he would enjoy listening to music without the responsibility. “He said that on the stage, you hear more or less what’s around you,” he said. “He said that it’s great to sit back and not worry about things- bringing people
in or playing solos.”
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A version of this article appears in print on June 25, 2014, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Mediations And Mutiny Backstage.