Contenders for the Grammy Throne--This Time, the Real Thing

The tone of my annual handicapper’s guide to the classical Grammys has in the past tended to be rather contentious.

That this latest version may seem relatively mellow has much to do with a growing feeling that any attention paid to putatively high art is better than no attention at all.

Furthermore, the contenders for this year’s classical Grammys, to be distributed on Wednesday at Shrine Auditorium, represent the real thing, as distinct from those proliferating, PBS-style, crossover “celebrations,” which are classical music for people who don’t really like classical music.

The feeling that the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which governs and awards the Grammys, is run by folks who care becomes inescapable for anyone lately involved in the complex processes of the academy.

And not just caring about the pop-oriented masses and the billions of pop dollars. The academy leadership has increasingly gained credibility among the classically oriented members for its efforts at rectifying past abuses, such as allowing virtually pro forma awards to some artists with questionable credentials but unquestioned voting clout, and at least trying to gain more TV air time for the classical awards.

So, onward with the traditional prelude to these predictions: the Classical Grammy Pop Quiz. And paste a little Grammy sticker on your forehead if you score 100%:

Which of these artists will be a winner in the best classical album category?

a) Itzhak Perlman

b) Jessye Norman

c) Claudio Abbado

d) Yo-Yo Ma

e) Fat Man With Hankie

Which of these composers will share in the Grammy glory?

a) J. S. Bach

b) Verdi

c) Schubert

d) Szymanowski

e) Stravinsky

Sorry. The answer to both questions is “none,” since none are among the finalists--with the single, kinky exception: Polish composer Karol Szymanowski emerges a darkest-horse hopeful in best chamber music performance, for his two strikingly original string quartets, played by Switzerland’s Carmina Quartet.

Contenders for the biggest-money title, best classical album--and don’t believe anyone who tells you that winning a Grammy doesn’t affect sales--include the late Leonard Bernstein, for his 1979 (but just released) Mahler Ninth Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic, and conductor Georg Solti--the all-time classical Grammy winner, with 29 awards to date, and a tribute-worthy 80 years old, to boot--for Richard Strauss’ hardly mass-appealing opera, “Die Frau ohne Schatten.”

Also in the running are the wildly talented mezzo-soprano, Cecilia Bartoli, for her Rossini arias; the nine Beethoven symphonies played by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Nikolaus Harnoncourt, taut, wiry, anti-Romantic performances of a sort that would once have been rejected in early balloting by the academy’s conservative membership, and, even less likely, as it was an unlikely bestseller, Polish composer Henryk Gorecki’s profoundly contemplative Third Symphony, conducted by David Zinman and with soprano soloist Dawn Upshaw, a name with strong, positive identification among the academy membership of music industry professionals.

The winner? Bernstein’s Mahler, with both sentiment (Grammy has a big heart) and artistic merit going for it.

Runner-up: “Die Frau ohne Schatten,” for Solti and the vote-enhancing presence of Placido Domingo, although the production is dominated by the prize-winning (in my book) contributions of soprano Julia Varady and baritone Jose van Dam.

The best orchestral performance face-off should have the aforementioned Harnoncourt-Beethoven, Bernstein-Mahler and Gorecki-Zinman asserting dominance over Myun-Whun Chung conducting the Bastille Opera Orchestra in Messiaen’s vast turnoff, the “Turangalila” Symphony, and from Leonard Slatkin and his Saint Louis Symphony, forgettable music by William Schuman.

If logic prevails (never a Grammy given), it’s Bernstein/Mahler again, with Harnoncourt (because it’s Beethoven) and Gorecki (because Grammy can be an unpredictable, of late even underdog-loving, beast) making respectable showings. But we’ll never know how respectable, the tabulations being, for reasons that escape this inquiring mind, a closely guarded secret.

Best opera recording entries are gratifying, what with two works of which we actually needed new recordings, operas dependent more on style and smarts than the golden glottises in short supply today: a grand period performance, conducted by Rene Jacobs, of Handel’s “Giulio Cesare,” with a pair of stunning young mezzo-sopranos, Jennifer Larmore and Bernarda Fink, as well as an ensemble opera, Janacek’s enchanting “The Cunning Little Vixen,” with an admirable cast of British singing actors conducted by Simon Rattle.

But neither has a chance of gaining the gold. That will be reserved for Solti’s “Frau ohne Schatten,” with Wagner’s “Siegfried,” a spotty Metropolitan Opera production led by James Levine (Grammy likes recordings from this source) a possibility. An equally flawed Tchaikovsky “Pique Dame,” from Boston but with a largely Russian cast, is no more in the running than my doomed favorites.

Best choral work: If Grammy were just (and in my opinion the only consideration), the easy winner would be Haydn’s oratorio, “The Seasons,” from the Monteverdi Choir and other period notables conducted by John Eliot Gardiner. But Grammy has never loved Haydn.

Other entrants are a tame performance of Janacek’s marvelously mad “Glagolitic” Mass from the London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, a name known to academy members (a decided advantage); the 36th CD “Messiah” (so why should anyone care?) from an outfit called Boston Baroque; Mahler’s little-known “Das Klagende Lied,” conducted by Riccardo Chailly, with a chorus from Dusseldorf, a city that never gets respect, and the likely winner (with Janacek, because of Tilson Thomas’ presence, having a chance), Orff’s familiar, trashy “Carmina Burana” with San Francisco forces conducted by Herbert Blomstedt.

The best classical vocal performance list includes Bartoli’s irresistible Rossini arias and a recital of the same composer’s songs by a tired-sounding Marilyn Horne (but she did sing at the Clinton inauguration).

The inevitable Kathleen Battle entry is her Carnegie Hall recital of Handel, Mozart, Liszt, etc., which you’ll like if you like that sort of thing (and the academy membership has shown that it does). And while Thomas Hampson sings Delius’ “Sea Drift” handsomely, it’s neither the best Hampson of the year nor repertory with which you’re likely to win.

The same, as regards repertory, could be said for the superb recital of Hugo Wolf songs by soprano Arleen Auger, who suffered an apparently career-ending stroke shortly after this recording was made.

Personally, it’s a tossup between dissimilars, Bartoli and Auger. But the voting majority will likely opt for Battle.

I won’t bother you with the list of recordings I submitted as personal picks for best instrumental soloist with orchestra. Suffice to say that none of my choices made the final cut. Rather, the official entries are headed by Grammy regulars Alicia de Larrocha, whose artistry is barely revealed in the Mozart concertos for which she was nominated, and Yo-Yo Ma, who sounds bored by his Prokofiev-Tchaikovsky program.

But one of them will win (I lean toward Ma) in the face of an insufficiently experienced Anne-Sophie Mutter lobby (she plays music by Bartok), an outre bid by pianist Geoffrey Tozer (who?) with the late-Romantic effluvia of Russian composer Nikolai Medtner, and Horacio Gutierrez’s addition to Rachmaninoff concerto overabundance.

Artists vying to be best without benefit of orchestral support are five pianists: the late, but ever-present Vladimir Horowitz with a program of “Discovered Treasures”; the hysterically hyped Russian wunder -, if no longer - kind , Yevgeny Kissin, with some loud Schubert, Brahms and Liszt; unexceptional, unexceptionable Brahms and Ravel recitals from, respectively, Emanuel Ax (well-known) and Jean-Yves Thibaudet (not). And Keith Jarrett playing Shostakovich’s fascinating Preludes and Fugues.

The most interesting member of this quintet is Jarrett--who may also get a few votes from the inhabitants of his other world, jazz. My hopes and sensibilities are with him (and Shostakovich). My money’s on Horowitz.

The remaining category of immediate concern is chamber music performance, dominated not by permanent ensembles but by starry ad hoc lineups, such as Isaac Stern, Cho-Liang Lin, Yo-Yo Ma and their glamorous ilk playing the Brahms sextets, and the Ma-Ax duo, which offers Brahms sonatas.

Stern & Co. is the odds-on favorite, over such true team efforts as those of the Tokyo Quartet (late-Beethoven), octogenarian pianist Rudolf Firkusny with the Muir Quartet (Dvorak quintets) and the aforementioned Carmina Quartet/ Szymanowski.

In conclusion, my usual (partial) listing of veteran performers who never want for audiences or favorable reviews and who make pots of money without ever having clutched a Grammy to their breasts:

Riccardo Muti, Alfred Brendel, Elly Ameling, Bernard Haitink, James Galway, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Edita Gruberova, the Alban Berg, Guarneri and Kronos Quartets, Richard Goode, Mirella Freni, Charles Dutoit, Gidon Kremer, Claudio Abbado, Barbara Hendricks, the Beaux Arts Trio, Sherrill Milnes, Rafael Kubelik, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Peter Schreier, Zubin Mehta, Anne-Sophie Mutter, the late Claudio Arrau.

Which is hardly to say that it hurts to have won a Grammy.