Predictable Partners in Classical Grammy Waltz : An academy member explains the choices--or lack thereof--in non-pop categories

Quick! Who has won the most Grammys? Streisand? Sinatra? Aretha? Stand in the corner, dummy! It’s Sir Georg Solti, of course, with 26 (and counting). No. 2 with 22 (and counting as well) is Vladimir Horowitz. (No. 3, FYI, is Henry Mancini.)

What does this suggest about the Grammys? That those who make the decisions--the 6,000-plus voting members of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), musicians or technicians involved in the making of recordings--care more about classical music than they do about pop, and that they are rabid Solti and Horowitz fans? Hardly.

It’s unlikely that classical folk make up the majority of membership. (NARAS doesn’t divide members into such categories, so there are no figures.) Paying your $85 annual membership dues licenses you to vote in 60-odd pop categories as well as the 11 reserved for us effete types. (A new classical category is, reportedly, in the offing: Best Beethoven Ninth Recording of the year).

Cynics might enumerate four major qualifications for winning a classical Grammy:

1. Having behind you a big record company with the means to promote the bejeezus out of its product.

2. Being named Solti or Horowitz, at worst Itzhak Perlman.

3. Having previously won a Grammy, which means that category 1 is already taken care of and you’re headed for inclusion in numero zwei, e.g., crossover king Wynton Marsalis.

4. Being from Atlanta.

Nos. 1 & 2 need no explanation. No. 3 means that your recognition factor is high: The non -classical membership will vote for you because your name is so familiar. No. 4 is an unfunny industry in-joke, with origins in NARAS’s sizable Atlanta membership, drawn principally from the Atlanta Symphony and its affiliates. They are, simply, able to vote themselves a Grammy, a likelihood on Wednesday. Which is not to say that their Verdi Requiem (on Telarc), for instance, is at all unworthy of recognition. The system, not the product, is at fault.

Among potential repeat big winners in this week’s fest are Horowitz, for his Mozart on the Deutsche Grammophon label; Solti for four different recordings, three on London, one (in which he trades baton for keyboard) for CBS; and the Atlanta Symphony for, likewise, more than one recording, on more than one label. DG’s Leonard Bernstein has three different recordings, including the Mahler Second Symphony, contending in various categories.

There are other big names around: Herbert von Karajan, never a major player in the Grammy sweepstakes, although perhaps still the most respected--and best-selling--conductor in the world; the Guarneri String Quartet; Isaac Stern; and, going head to head with Horowitz’s Mozart, such class piano acts as Alicia de Larrocha playing Albeniz; Maurizio Pollini’s Schubert; Alfred Brendel, who in his 30-year recording career has never won a Grammy, playing Liszt; and jazzmaster Keith Jarrett having a go at unjazzed Bach.

Grammy’s opera category this year mixes tired-superstar (Sutherland and Pavarotti) offerings with the obligatory Solti (Wagner’s “Lohengrin,” helped in the popularity polls by the presence of Placido Domingo and Jessye Norman, both miscast), all on the London label; a chic novelty, “Nixon in China,” by minimalist John Adams on the smallish Nonesuch label; and, presumably for sentimental reasons, birthday-boy (his 70th) Bernstein’s own coolly received opera “A Quiet Place” and his universally excoriated encounter with “La Boheme.”

Absent among the operatic finalists are five exemplars of quality without biggest-name involvement. These are Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” (CBS) with Samuel Ramey and Eva Marton and a pair by Ravel, “L’Heure espagnole” and “L’Enfant et les sortileges” from Erato/RCA. Then, a pair of dazzling Baroque operas in period performance: Monteverdi’s “Orfeo” led by John Eliot Gardiner (DG) and Handel’s “Acis and Galatea,” done to perfection by young American artists on the upstart Newport Classics label.

There are, as ever, instructive inequities of label size and performer celebrity in a couple of categories this year. For “Best Classical Vocal Soloist” Jessye Norman (Philips) and Man-with-Hankie (London) should crush, if simply by body weight, the superior competing recordings from Arleen Auger (Delos) and Jan DeGaetani (Nonesuch). Schubert’s glum song-cycle, “Winterreise” (on DG), could pull an upset here: not because of the vocal presence of Christa Ludwig but because perennial Grammy laureate James Levine is the piano accompanist.

The Instrumental Soloist (with Orchestra) contest this year surprisingly has an L.A. musician, clarinetist Gary Gray and his terrific Copland Concerto on the wee Unicorn-Kanchana label, pitted against Horowitz, Marsalis, Stern, Perlman and a major-label (Philips) dark horse, Hungarian pianist Zoltan Kocsis.

Passed over for consideration were such smashing 1988 performances as those by young violinists Nigel Kennedy of the Sibelius concerto (Angel) and Midori of Paganini (Philips) as well as fortepianist Malcolm Bilson’s state-of-the-art Mozart concertos on DG.

Returning to a previous conceit, in the Best Orchestral Recording there’s a switch on the expected this year: the Beethoven Ninth, not in a star-studded reading but rather from Roger Norrington and his London Classical Players. It, along with the Bach “Christmas Oratorio” led by John Eliot Gardiner and Vivaldi’s “Gloria” under Trevor Pinnock (both DG) in the Best Choral Performance category, at least recognize the burgeoning period-performance movement. But I wouldn’t give any of them much chance against the front-running Robert Shaw/Atlanta Symphony Verdi Requiem or the Solti/Chicago Symphony Bach “St. Matthew Passion,” a stylistic abomination.

Angel, which issued Norrington’s ear-opening Beethoven Ninth, offers more--and more varied--classical product annually than any other label. Yet only two other Angel entries have made the final cut this time: a Copland program from Leonard Slatkin and his Saint Louis Symphony, and the inevitable Perlman (playing Bruch).

NARAS did better by Angel, however, than by another industry giant, RCA, which shows no finalist in any of the 11 categories, in spite of having submitted for consideration such significant 1988 releases as the new Flute Concerto of American composer John Corigliano, played by James Galway; important symphonies by the 20th-Century Czech Bohuslav Martinu; and ear-catching playing--but not of the most popular repertory--by the bright new kid, pianist Barry Douglas.

RCA’s problem would seem to be that it acts rather like a small, enterprising label and that the Grammys, essentially a popularity contest, are unlikely to reward enterprise.

Since this article began with a pop quiz, let’s end with another. Guess, within five, the total number of Grammys won by the following active, veteran artists: Bernard Haitink, Claudio Arrau, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Riccardo Muti, Nicolai Gedda, Renata Scotto, Zubin Mehta, Maurice Andre, Elly Ameling, Jose Carreras, Murray Perahia, Jon Vickers, Christoph von Dohnanyi, James Galway, Claudio Abbado, Mirella Freni, Heinz Holliger, Charles Dutoit, Rafael Kubelik, the Guarneri Quartet, Christa Ludwig, Carlo Bergonzi, Gidon Kremer, Seiji Ozawa.

Correct, none. And they continue to cry all the way to their respective banks.