Mole’s-Eye View of Classical Grammys

Third Annual Classical Grammy Pop Quiz: Which of the following took the Best Classical Album prize at last year’s Grammy presentations: (1) Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony conducted by Herbert von Karajan; (2) The James Levine-led/Metropolitan Opera “Walkure”; (3) “Live in Tokyo” with Placido Domingo and Kathleen Battle?

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. The most recent winner of a competition notorious for populism-pandering and recognizing only the rich and famous was the Deutsche Grammophon set of Bartok’s six daunting, elitist string quartets, performed by the masterful if hardly populist or plutocratic Emerson Quartet.

How did it happen? The explanation to which I subscribe is that it takes only a couple of hundred votes to put a release over the top, considering how few members of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences vote classical (a thousand, perhaps).

One-on-one lobbying works. Some schmoozing and hand-shaking, a bit of publicity in the right places. Nothing wallet-busting, back-breaking or underhanded.

The bulk of this modest argument cannot, however, be supported by facts since the academy, which presents the Grammys, treats requests for facts and figures as if they were the CIA and the researcher a known terrorist asking for names and addresses of their top operatives.

The academy further insists that the accounting firm they hire to tally votes will not allow them to release figures on the number of ballots returned, or to say how many members voted for a specific recording. (Do you let your accountant treat you like that?)

Anyway, while my predictions have been mostly on the mark over the years, my failure at the top last year--the Bartok/Emerson victory as overall Best Classical Album--proved so acute that I seriously considered retiring my chicken entrails.

But no. I was, after all, one of those responsible for deciding which classical recordings made it to the finals: a member of the committee of critics and others in the know set up by NARAS in 1989 to assure that Grammys would be awarded to Horowitz, Solti, Perlman, Pavarotti, the Atlanta Symphony (all prominent past winners) only if they earned them.

Regarding this year’s classical winners, some of the surprises are already behind us: the absence from among the finalists of such perennials as Kathleen Battle, Yo-Yo Ma and the late Herbert von Karajan. We won’t go into the dozens of worthy recordings that didn’t even survive the earliest cuts--the first eligibility list had 168 entries in the Best Classical Album category alone--among those excluded being all but one entry (Prokofiev’s “The Love for Three Oranges”) from the label that issued the greatest quantity of worthwhile new product in 1990, Virgin Classics.

The Best Classical Album category lists John Adams’ poignant “The Wound Dresser,” conducted by the composer--music with a constituency among both trendies and music-lovers; Hanson’s attractive Third and Sixth Symphonies, with Gerard Schwarz conducting the Seattle Symphony; an Ives program anchored by the Second Symphony, with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic; the inevitable “Last Recording” by Vladimir Horowitz, and Rachmaninoff’s Vespers, with Robert Shaw conducting his (non-Atlanta) Festival Singers.

The remaining Best Classical Album finalist is popularly referred to as “The Three Tenors” and officially listed as “Carreras, Domingo, Pavarotti in Concert.” It finds Placido and Luciano bawling their golden lungs out and Carreras straining with his now-limited equipment to match their decibel output and endeavoring (with sporadic success) to sing on pitch. The recording has been declared a “crossover hit.”

First fearless prognostication for the Wednesday awards: This will be a Bernstein/Ives year. The recent passing of America’s beloved, heart-on-sleeve, good-cause-associated, conductor-composer-educator--and the recording’s sheer beauty--will overwhelm the membership.

“Three Tenors” appears as well in the Best Vocal category, competing with the intelligent expressivity of Sanford Sylvan in “Wound Dresser”; the late Jan DeGaetani in one of her weakest recorded performances (songs by Berlioz and Mahler); Elly Ameling’s low-key contribution to the Hyperion Schubert-song project.

And, finally, Thomas Hampson’s recital of settings by Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, etc. of “Des Knaben Wunderhorn,” evidence that the American baritone’s hype doesn’t even do him justice. But while convinced that Hampson deserves the gold, I’m not calling this category. Those three tenors have me thoroughly spooked.

Best Orchestral Performance finalists this year include two in the running for overall best, Bernstein/Ives and Schwarz/Hanson, as well as two Shostakovich blockbusters: the First and Seventh Symphonies from Bernstein and the Chicago Symphony and the Eighth by Leonard Slatkin and his Saint Louis Symphony. Bringing up the rear, need- and interest-wise, is a pair of Beethoven symphonies from Sir Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony. Logic dictates a Bernstein/Ives victory.

The Best Instrumental Soloist with Orchestra menu is weird, if only for the inclusion of Howard Hanson’s nugatory “Fantasy Variations,” a filler for the Seattle Hanson symphonies. The brief, obscure piece, unexceptionably played by pianist Carol Rosenberger, is unnaturally situated amid the powerhouse--and by no means populist--competition offered by pianist Garrick Ohlsson in Henri Lazarof’s elegant, brainy “Tableaux” (again with Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony), Itzhak Perlman’s thunderous Shostakovich and Glazunov violin concertos (the likely winner), and pianist Paul Crossley’s icily fascinating Stravinsky program with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting.

The opera category proved vexing, too, with the membership continuing to disdain period performance, including such potent entries as the first-ever recording of Handel’s “Flavio” and Monteverdi’s “L’Incoronazione di Poppea,” the latter featuring a searing Arleen Auger in the title role.

There is compensation, however, by way of two non-standard finalists: the aforementioned, delectably nasty “Love for Three Oranges,” with Lyon Opera forces brilliantly led by Kent Nagano, and the Riccardo Muti/La Scala production of Verdi’s early “Attila,” with Samuel Ramey and Cheryl Studer singing up celestial storms.

The likely winner, though, is the Levine/Metropolitan Opera “Rheingold,” with its high identification factor (based in part on winning last year with Wagner’s “Walkure”), while the Prokofiev--a well-publicized dark horse--is in the running.

And, while we’re mixing the sport-of-kings metaphor, note that a lumpishly led (by Mstislav Rostropovich) “Boris Godunov,” with the lightweight Ruggero Raimondi in the heavyweight title role, lags the field.

The choral recording race is a tough one to call, but if past predilections count, the period entries--a John Eliot Gardiner-led Bach “St. Matthew Passion” and the Nicholas McGegan/Philharmonia Baroque Handel “Susanna”--will be dumped. The way is then cleared for the sterling work of the London Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra under Bernard Haitink (who has never won a Grammy) in Vaughan Williams’ “Sea Symphony” to duke it out with a humdrum but high-visibility Robert Shaw-Atlanta program of Walton and Bernstein, with the gorgeous Shaw-led Rachmaninoff Vespers falling by the wayside.

The chamber-music category pits a heavily-favored, if hardly necessary, Perlman/Barenboim Brahms recital against the thrilling, by no means hors de combat program featuring Bartok’s “Contrasts” from the Stoltzmans (Richard and Lucy) and Richard Goode. The Kronos Quartet, despite appeal extending beyond the usual classical circles, is unlikely to win with their too-mixed 20th-Century bag.

The Kronos is also involved in the Best Contemporary Composition race, performing Terry Riley’s vast, intriguing “Salome Dances for Peace” (Kronos had last year’s winner in this category, Steve Reich’s “Different Trains”) in a close but losing battle with John Adams’ “Wound-Dresser” and the sentimental favorite, Bernstein’s lovable “Arias & Barcarolles.”

The list for Best Instrumental Soloist (without orchestra) criminally neglects Rudolf Firkusny’s glorious Janacek recital, but does show the classy modernist pianist Ursula Oppens in some tough Carter and Adams (no way); pianist Mitsuko Uchida playing the Debussy Etudes with much more flair than she does the Mozart on which her reputation has been built; Horowitz’s “Last Recording” (no comment); the wonderful Alicia de Larrocha’s uncharacteristically drab Mozart recital, and the presumed victor, violinist Midori for her musically rewarding and technically dazzling Paganini Caprices.

As Wednesday’s winners are cheered, heaven will continue to resound with the mocking laughter of these penurious underachievers who have never won a Grammy:

Murray Perahia, Zubin Mehta, Kyung Wha Chung, Peter Schreier, James Galway, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Kurt Masur, Alfred Brendel, Charles Dutoit, the Alban Berg, Tokyo and Guarneri Quartets, Riccardo Muti, Heinz Holliger, Mirella Freni, Mieczyslaw Horszowski, Claudio Abbado.

Let’s hear it for the losers, too!