The Beckmesser Awards of 1987

It was a happy, sad, frustrating, exhilarating, discouraging, encouraging, soothing, frazzling, stimulating, depressing, uplifting, jolting, bracing, benumbing, painful, dull, exciting, hysterical, lackadaisical, exceptional, humdrum year. Just like 1986.

To commemorate the high--and low--points, we proudly and shamelessly presentthe 19th-annual awards dedicated to the spirit and memory of Nurnberg’s immortal and most noble, most misunderstood humanitarian, critic, musicologist, lutanist, poet, bon vivant and guardian of public virtue, Sixtus Beckmesser.

Let us know if we have overlooked anything.

Cheers

Maestros of the year: Andre Previn, conducting his Los Angeles Philharmonic in a sweeping, poignant, polished performance of the Rachmaninoff Second Symphony; Georg Solti, conducting the itinerant Chicago Symphony in a dazzling Beethoven Fifth at the Orange County Performing Arts Center; Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting a perfectly poetic and perfectly ecstatic “Poem of Ecstasy” with the Philharmonic.

More maestros of the year: Zubin Mehta (remember him?) at his heroic best in the Mahler Second; Pierre Boulez conducting Boulez and Stravinsky with calm, analytical clarity and virtuosic flair; Leonard Bernstein, on good, subdued behavior for a sensitive Mahler Fifth with the Vienna Philharmonic at Hollywood Bowl, of all places; Armin Jordan, transforming the gentle Orchestre de la Suisse Romande into the muscular apparatus required for the Shostakovich Fifth, in Orange County.

Pressurized-debut award: To young David Alan Miller, who covered himself with something akin to glory as a late replacement for an indisposed Previn.

Most-historic-exhumation award: To Robert Joffrey for permitting and facilitating the epochal re-creation and resuscitation of Nijinsky’s scandale -ridden “Sacre de printemps” of 1913.

Unexpected-sugarplum awards: To the San Francisco Ballet, for bringing a really delightful, unkitschy, child-oriented “Nutcracker” to San Diego; to American Ballet Theatre, for bringing a really lovely, unkitschy, adult-oriented “Nutcracker” to Shrine Auditorium.

Bolshoi-bravura awards: To the flying superman, Irek Mukhamedov, to the most glittery of ballerinas, Ludmila Semenyaka, and to the noblest danseur of them all, Alexei Fadeyechev.

Nicest realization: That opera can proliferate in Southern California, against the odds, with companies now flourishing (after a limited fashion) in Long Beach, Costa Mesa, San Diego, and even Los Angeles.

Most encouraging achievement: The steady growth, adventurous spirit and--a few major lapses notwithstanding--world-class attitudes of the Music Center Opera as led by Peter Hemmings.

Most outrageous and most stimulating opera production: The original Moliere-inspired “Ariadne on Naxos” as staged, superfunkily, by Christopher Alden for the Long Beach Opera. Close runner-up: Prokofiev’s wildly iconoclastic “Fiery Angel” as staged by Andrei Serban and designed by Robert Israel for the Music Center.

Fischer-Dieskau award for the most probing recital of the year: To Jorma Hynninen, who upheld the honor of the serious Lied at Ambassador Auditorium.

Neatest demonstration of decadent romanticism: Sidney Weiss’ elegant performance of the Korngold Violin Concerto with the Philharmonic.

Not-so-incidental music of the year: Georges Delerue’s jaunty, charming, stylish, live sound track for the restoration of Volkoff’s 1927 film, “Casanova.”

Lukas-Foss-is-the-Leonard-Bernstein-of-music award: To the ever-facile Foss himself, for his eminently clever piece d’occasion for Tashi, called, of all things, “Tashi.”

Nicest new locale for chamber music on a summer night: The reasonably intimate, gently remodelled Ford (a.k.a. Pilgrimage) Theater, across the freeway from Hollywood Bowl.

Most comforting sound on the airwaves: The calm, restrained and erudite voice of Gail Eichenthal on KUSC. Jeers

Biggest operatic bomb: Elijah Moshinsky’s Kabuki-nightmare “Macbeth” at the Music Center. First runner up: Frank Corsaro’s leaden “Cenerentola” production, same company. Second runner up: The tired “season” by the New York City Opera in Orange County.

Biggest balletic bomb: Gail Kachadurian’s “Altered States” at the Joffrey.

Biggest Bolshoi bomb: The simple-minded circus polemic Yuri Grigorovich called “The Golden Age.”

Biggest modern-dance bomb: The puerile Michael Clark show at the L.A. Festival. Runner-up: The slam-dance semi-punk quasi-orgy of La La La Human Steps under the same dubious, terminally trendy auspices.

Biggest symphonic bomb: The inexplicably tawdry performance by Kurt Masur and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra at Ambassador.

Invisible concept of the year: Jonathan Miller’s vision of Wagner’s Isolde as a vampirical angel of death--a vision that seemed intriguing when stated in an interview but could not be found in Jeannine Altmeyer’s performance at the Music Center.

Slipping-duty ballet prize: To American Ballet Theatre for its all-too-somnolent “Sleeping Beauty” at the Shrine.

Slipping-duty music prize: To Claudio Abbado and the Vienna Philharmonic for an evening of rote Beethoven at Ambassador.

Re-inventing-the-wheel award: To the glitterati-come-lately who suddenly discovered opera because a chic artist named Hockney happened to design a new “Tristan.”

Music-is-alive-but-not-so-well award: To the beleaguered San Diego Symphony, a feeble phoenix that has risen from the fiscal ashes--just barely.

Ho-hum-again award: To the perpetual celebrations of mediocrity that pass for alfresco culture at Hollywood Bowl.

Oldest-profession awards: To the various needy-greedy institutions around the country--the Music Center is next--that program “Plump Jack,” a vapid mini-opera that happens to have been written by a poor little rich composer named Gordon Getty.

Musical rape of the year: Maguy Marin’s contradiction--no, abuse--of Prokofiev in her macabre-doll “Cendrillon.” Runner-up: Marin’s willful way with Mahler’s “Kindertotenlieder” in “Babel.”

Do-we-really-need-this? award: To Placido Domingo, for demonstrating that a fine tenor is not necessarily a fine conductor.

Truth-in-advertising awards: To Opera Pacific for claiming (falsely) that Luciano Pavarotti had never sung in a Southern California concert hall; to UCLA for claiming (falsely) that Mark Morris had never danced in L.A.; to the Pacific Symphony for claiming (falsely) that Claudio Arrau hadn’t played a local concert in eight years; and to the Opera Company of Philadelphia for claiming (falsely) that its production of Britten’s “Death in Venice” was the first to originate in the U.S. (apparently no one in the City of Brotherly Love had ever heard of San Francisco and Long Beach).

Long-dark-summer award: To the powers in Orange County, for keeping their much-vaunted Performing Arts Center closed during beach season.

Most vexing on-going question: Will the Orange County center ever be more than a glamorous booking house for touring attractions?

Year’s klutziest piano pounder: Lazar Berman, returning to Ambassador in the glow of glasnost .

This-is-opera? award: To Opera Pacific, for thinking a tacky-stock version of “West Side Story” belongs in its meager three-piece repertory and is planning “Kismet” for an encore.

Much-ado-about-little award: To the folks who waxed hysterical over the minimal delights of John Adams’ “Nixon in China” as premiered in Houston’s glitzy new opera house.

Jingle of the year: Leonard Bernstein’s raunchy ode to an admired academic dean, sung to the tune of “A Bicycle Built for Two,” as regurgitated in Joan Peyser’s controversial biography of the conductor-composer-pianist-raconteur.

Year’s most dubious executive decision: The firing of Murry Sidlin, music director of the Long Beach Symphony.

Who-cares?-biography-of-the-year: “Nothing to Hide” (288 pp., Donald I. Fine Inc.: $18.95) by baby ballerino Robert La Fosse.

There’s-no-biz-like-show-biz award: To the Civic Light Philistines who booked and sold the Bolshoi Ballet as if it were just another schlock musical comedy.

Most discouraging achievement: The unsteady decline of the Los Angeles Master Chorale as reconstituted in its post-Wagnerian days by John Currie.

Where-is-Hanslick-when-we need-him? award: To the sometimes-informative, ever self-important, long-lecturing Robert Winter.

The Glenn Gould award for mid-performance impetuosity: To Norberto Cappone, for deciding that he didn’t want to finish the Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto with the American Youth Symphony, or to continue his career either, but was coaxed to the cadence anyway by the redoubtable Mehli Mehta.

Quotable Quotes

Opera-film critic of the year: Placido Domingo, who said this to Opera News about the Zeffirelli perversion of “Otello”--”It could have been better. . . . I would have liked more concentration on what I was expressing, rather than having the camera cut away. . . . I was upset that Franco cut the music. . . . The picture really was harmed by improper synchronization. . . . If I had the chance, I might do another Otello on film. The next time, I would demand some artistic control.”

Ballet critic of the year: Mikhail Baryshnikov, who said this to Rolling Stone about the U.S. tour of the Bolshoi Ballet--”I saw just one performance of ‘Giselle,’ and it was a disaster. I was very disappointed and embarrassed for Russian Ballet. Everything was wrong: terrible sets, dancing, staging, mediocre interpretations, the leading dancers were talented kids, but kids, no depths.”

Supertitle critic of the year: John Adams, who said this to the New York Times after the premiere of his “Nixon in China” (which employed microphones so some of the words might be understood)--”I really don’t like supertitles. I think people tend to keep looking up and down, following all that motion, and the music is lost. . . . I wouldn’t allow them to be used.”

Salesman of the year: Andre Previn, the often bland but ever resourceful conductor who expressed these sentiments in a prominent ad campaign--”Substance makes music a universal language. Music is not as simple as printed notes on a page, it’s the thought behind them. The composer’s intention cannot be realized without a conductor and musicians to interpret, instruments to play and an audience to listen. The Gold MasterCard is not simply a card I carry in my wallet. It’s an instrument of credit that speaks a universal language. . . .”

Milestones

Enough-already award: To the trendy myopians at the L.A. Festival who gave us too much John Cage--on the occasion of his 75th birthday--and not much of any other composer.

Youngest, most formidable nonagenarian: The wry, sly and astonishing Nicolas Slonimsky, at 94.

Bel-cantist of the year, or decade, or decades: Alfredo Kraus, who turned 60 and sang an eternally youthful, golden-age Romeo with the otherwise pretty dismal San Francisco Opera.

Reports-of-his-death-are-greatly-exaggerated award: To the idiot at the Los Angeles Times ( this idiot) who wrote, mistakenly, that Marko Rothmuller, a fine baritone and notable expert on Jewish music, was among the departed.

Singer whose retirement should, alas, be imminent: Joan Sutherland.

Dancer whose retirement is most urgently overdue: Rudolf Nureyev, who, nearing 50, continues to appear with “friends” and his over-rated Paris Opera Ballet and in the process besmirches glorious memories.

Shortest, most ballyhooed comeback of the year: Van Cliburn’s serenade to, and with, the gemutlich Gorbachevs at the White House.

Ave atque vale (the list is longer and even more painful than usual, due to the advent of AIDS): George R. Marek, William Judd, Eugen Jochum, Edwin McArthur, Carol Longone, Gregory Ismailoff, Ray Bolger, Lilliana Teruzzi, James Bossert, Curtis Stearns, Harold Rosenthal, Wladziu Valentino Liberace, Henry Brandon, Richard Leach, Mura Dehn, Danny Kaye, Nora Kaye, Sammy Kaye, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Fredric R. Mann, Mimi Rudulph, Donald J. Grout, Toshiaki Kunii, Bruce Wurl, Gerald Moore, Lawrence Skrobacs, Eugene Seaman, Joy Simpson, Harold Haskin, Rita Streich, Tatunosuke Onoe, Dorothy Huttenback, James Stagliano, Anni Frind, Enrico Caruso Jr., Antony Tudor, Tom Abbott, Ernest Pagnano, Cal Culver, Anne Machamer, Jack Romann, Lawrence Morton, Robert Jacobson, David Katz, Cynthia Auerbach, Erwin Nyiregyhazi, Olive Behrendt, Jerome Weitzman, Lucille Ollendorff, Charles Ludlam, Constance Wash, Hal Wiener, Andres Segovia, Violet Stevens, B.H. Haggin, Serge Kotlarsky, Alexander Iolas, Fred Astaire, Abram Chasins, Orville H. Schell Jr., Gabor Rejto, Federico Mompou, Michael Bennett, Hariett Johnson, Paul Fromm, Bernard U. Taylor, Lon Tuck, Nicholas Harsanyi, Gary Clark, James Hawthorne, Peter Coe, Forbes Robinson, Natalie Hinderas, Louis Da Pron, Carmelita Maracci, Michael Moores, J.L. Nuckolls, Carl Bamberger, Helen Dowling, Hubert Weldon Lamb, Jorge Samaniego, George A. Kuyper, Maria Swoboda, Ross Reimueller, Vincent Persichetti, Peter Schidlof, Elaine Brody, George Kast, Jan Popper, Wilhelm Strienz, Raimon Torres, Morton Feldman, Lee Theodore, Blake Gower Champion, Nathan Fain, Ron Pratt, Barry Laine, Bob Fosse, Norman Luboff, Wolfgang Fortner, Lee Connor, Henry Reese, Maria Ivogun, George Weingart, Leo Podolsky, Roberto Lorca, Jacqueline DuPre, Marie Kryl, Woody Herman, Vladimir Ruzdak, Robert Cowart, Mary Van Kirk, Charles Holland, Wilbur Dale Talley, Placido Domingo Ferrer, Simon Semenoff, Choo San Goh, James Atherton, George W. Korngold, Marian van Tuyl, Marta Feuchtwanger, Clara Petrella, Marvin Schwartz, Izler Solomon, Jascha Heifetz, Louis Graeler, Maria-Theresa Duncan.