By Gigi Yellen, JTNews Correspondent
June 18 marks the Seattle Symphony’s last performance with Gerard Schwarz conducting as music director. After 26 years, the man who has influenced not only the orchestra and its work, but also the shape of the city itself, will become “Conductor Laureate,” returning now and then as guest conductor. Ludovic Morlot is the orchestra’s music director-designate.
This “farewell season” has included 18 world premieres commissioned from American composers Schwarz himself has chosen (“the Gund/Simonyi commissions”). The final two are by Jewish composers: Paul Schoenfield (June 2, 4 and 5) and Philip Glass (June 16 and 18).
The name of Schoenfield’s “Freilach,” (Yiddish for “cheerful”) is, in fact, a classic Jewish musical form. The composer calls it “a joyous and sometimes frenetic style of music.”
“The Jewish musicians that performed in this style were called badchonim (literally, “˜merry makers’),” he writes. “There is a story in the Talmud of a rabbi who asked these musicians what was their profession….Their response was, “˜We are Badchonim, and our job is to gladden the sad.’”
Schoenfeld wrote that Schwarz’s “warmth, kindness and encouragement over the years have been invaluable,” he continued. “I could think of nothing better than a Freilach to express my appreciation.”
The concert version of “Harmonium Mountain,” by the American Jewish composer Philip Glass, is Schwarz’s choice for the premiere at his final two concerts. Glass’s new music was heard earlier this year in the form of a film score.
The centerpiece of those June 16 and 18 concerts will be a monumentally spiritual piece by Vienna’s most famously conflicted Jewish-born conductor: Gustav Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony.
But besides all the new music, and a slew of Grammy nominations, and Schwarz’s historic contribution to the revitalization of downtown Seattle — the efforts that made the now-world-famous Benaroya Hall possible — there’s another Schwarz legacy in Seattle: His Jewish one.
“I’m not just Jewish, I’m a believer,” Schwarz emphasized in our farewell-season interview with JTNews. “When you stand up and embrace who you are, whatever it may be, it is always gutsy. Because it’s always easiest to blend in. You blend in, no one notices. [But] If you make a statement that says I belong to this temple, and I give these talks, and I work with the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, and I write music for the Music of Remembrance, and I helped them establish themselves, you’re actually going a little further.”
Schwarz has, indeed, gone that far. He and wife Jody and their family are longtime members of Temple De Hirsch Sinai. He’s given JCC talks on Jews in music (including one on June 5). He has performed for, and advised, the multi-year recording and broadcast project known as the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music. And he has nurtured, advised, conducted, and composed for Seattle’s Holocaust-memorial chamber music project, Music of Remembrance.
Schwarz’s involvement in Holocaust-related music is personal: His Viennese grandparents, Rudolf and Jeanette Weiss, denied exit visas, were murdered near a concentration camp in 1942. Schwarz’s parents managed to get to the U.S. in 1939. He composed and conducted “Rudolf and Jeanette” for MOR in 2007. So it makes sense that, unlike many in professional music families, the Schwarz children would be raised with heightened Jewish awareness.
His MOR involvement has also included son Julian, now launching a concert career as a cellist, who soloed in the 2005 world premiere of Gerard Schwarz’s composition “In Memoriam.”
“Julian, interestingly enough, is really a committed Jew,” says Schwarz of the young cellist, who begins studies at his father’s alma mater, Juilliard, this fall. “He loves to go to services. He reads Hebrew quite well — cares about it deeply. So does Gabriella,” Julian’s older sister, now a producer at CNN.
Schwarz’s entire family plans to gather for the season finale in June, including his two older children, Alysandra, a surgeon in Milwaukee; and Dan, a bass player who lives in Seattle and works with music his dad doesn’t touch — country and rock.
There won’t be lengthy partying, though: One week after his final SSO concert, Schwarz will be on the podium at his other musical home, North Carolina’s Eastern Music Festival, celebrating its 50th anniversary.
Meanwhile, Schwarz and his team still await final funding for the ambitious TV project called “All-Star Orchestra,” discussed in this paper in our Feb. 3 edition. Schwarz’s chief fundraiser for the project, Seattle attorney Marlys Palumbo, says this multimedia effort — producing complete orchestral performances with interactive video and other educational tools — still requires another $1.5 million before they can do the recording they hope to do in New York in August.
“We can do just the production side for less,” says Palumbo, “but we prefer not to launch without the educational pieces.”
Both Palumbo, a lifetime Seattle Symphony board member, and Schwarz emphasize that they are proceeding with sensitivity to the needs of Seattle Symphony and other local arts organizations: they are seeking donors whose priorities extend beyond Seattle.
What does Schwarz take greatest pride in, among his accomplishments in Seattle? Aside from his role in the creation of Benaroya Hall, he says it’s his addition of great players to the orchestra. Calling the selection of performers the most important job of a music director, he describes his choice of John Cerminaro, principal French horn, as his “most important appointment.”
Any regrets? “Well, I would not use the word “˜regret.’ I see my time as music director in Seattle as vibrant, lively, energetic.” But still: “Maybe one exception. We didn’t do any significant touring.” Their one East Coast tour, in 2004, including SSO’s Carnegie Hall debut, was nearly cancelled, but it actually wound up making “quite a profit,” according to Schwarz.
And with a nod toward the orchestra’s next generation of performers and audiences, he adds, “We could have and hopefully will do much more to work with the technology community to bring the orchestra into the 21st century.”