Turning Rock Into ‘Stone’

When Paul McCartney wrote his first large-scale work for orchestra and chorus, “Liverpool Oratorio,” in 1991, the former Beatle took some grief for relying on another composer, Carl Davis, in the writing.

With “Standing Stone,” his second major work, which gets back-to-back Southland performances this weekend, the 56-year-old McCartney has done more on his own. He took took four years to create the four-movement, 75-minute work, which premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Oct. 14, 1997.

Still, he credits a team of four composers as advisors on the project--Richard Rodney Bennett, John Harle, David Matthews and Steve Lodder.

Maybe it’s because his subject is vast: the creation of the world, the origins of man, his evolution through time and the purpose of life.

Once again, critical reception has been mixed. Yet conductors involved in recent and upcoming performances--Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center and Sunday in Los Angeles--both dedicated by the conductors and groups to Linda McCartney, who died of breast cancer in April at age 56--spring to the work’s defense.

McCartney’s fans don’t feel the need; they love what he does without the big talk.

“I find it hard to find polite words for the critics,” said conductor Lawrence Foster, who led the world as well as the East and West Coast premieres of “Standing Stone,” plus the EMI CD recorded performance by the London Symphony Orchestra. “I’ve seen all the negative press. I read it, I look at it. I find it snobbish and ill-informed.

“I just don’t even see what the people’s problem with it is. It’s a completely valid artistic work. I think it’s beautiful. A lot of people are vicious. That’s all.”

When McCartney attended all six sessions it took to record the work in May 1997, Foster said, the composer “could articulate like the best conductor exactly what he wanted and how to do it.”

“He wasn’t beyond correcting intonation in chords: ‘Why is that B sharp in this chord?’ he’d say. He hears everything, almost to the point that I was relieved he wasn’t in San Francisco,” Foster said, referring to the West Coast premiere earlier this month. In a very nice, modest way, he’s in total command of what he’s doing.”

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Conductor John Mauceri, who will lead the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra in the work Sunday, said prejudice against popular songwriters turning to larger forms goes back at least to the 19th century.

Pianist and songwriter Robert Schumann, he said, got bad press when he started writing symphonies. In this century, Gershwin came under attack, too, when he wrote “Rhapsody in Blue” and “Porgy and Bess.”

“Why there has been traditionally an antipathy toward the songwriter daring to enter the concert hall is the subject of a large piece, or a book,” Mauceri said.

The criticism is always the same.

“When ‘Standing Stone’ was recorded, once again we started reading that Paul McCartney doesn’t read music,” Mauceri said. “Already, he’s out of the club. That Richard Rodney Bennett was the advisor. Therefore, we’re already saying a committee wrote it. And Paul McCartney, who is a scrupulously honest man only does what no 19th century composer did: He gave credit to his assistants.”

Neither Mauceri nor Foster has conducted McCartney’s first effort, “Liverpool Oratorio.”

William Hall, who leads “Standing Stone” on Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, has. In fact, Hall introduced “Liverpool Oratorio” to the West Coast in 1992.

“This piece structurally is so much stronger,” Hall said. “The other had a story line talking about families and relationships. This is far more monumental. I haven’t seen a score like this in a long time. It has such inordinately difficult writing for a number of different instruments. The trumpet [part] is the largest I have ever seen for any work of any period.”

One of Hall’s singers is baritone David Svoboda, a systems analyst at Rockwell International, who recently joined the chorale.

“I would have to say it was ‘Standing Stone’ that got me back into singing,” Svoboda said. “I saw an ad that they were looking for male voices. I had been a music major in college, but I haven’t sung in a choral group in about 19 years. I dropped out of music and got into computers. Had I not known about it, I might not have auditioned.”

Svoboda was familiar with “Liverpool Oratorio” but doesn’t like it as much as the new work.

“It’s a good piece, but I didn’t get the same feeling from it. This is fun and colorful, but it’s not only fun. It’s moving. You can’t come away from it and not be emotionally moved.”

Svoboda’s commitment to the chorale will last at least a year. “They like you to sign a contract,” he said. “Choral music is just wonderful. There’s something magical about it.”

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One of Hall’s musicians is Roxie Persi, a violinist who recently returned to school to become a doctor of psychology. She played for Hall in “Liverpool Oratorio.” The die-hard McCartney fan definitely will be back for “Standing Stone.”

“I was a Beatles fan since I saw them on ‘Ed Sullivan,’ ” Persi said. “Paul McCartney has a violin-shaped bass. It curves in at the waistline, so it doesn’t look funny when he plays it left-handed. My mother convinced me that the violin was in the same family of instruments as Paul’s guitar. That’s why I began studying violin, that’s how I got into music.”

Persi learned the truth not too long after, and in the process--unfortunately--the way music is compartmentalized.

“My teacher would never let me play Beatle songs,” she said. “I would have practiced like crazy. Now they let people incorporate commercial music. I was at a recording session with four or five violinists, L.A.’s best. We were playing these straight chords, and they broke into ‘Eleanor Rigby.’ I was thinking that music, too, but was too shy to pop it out.”

For Persi, there is no division between pop and classical music.

“As Paul said, ‘It just depends on what’s good.’ I agree with that.”

Persi considers “Standing Stone” an advance for McCartney and hears affectionate musical echoes of both classical composers and the Beatles in it.

“The Beatles were always very free with acknowledging other artists,” she said. “There are snippets in this of Beethoven and a little bit of Berlioz. Also, there’s a John Lennon nod: ‘Number Nine Dream.’ Paul just quotes that out of the blue in the second movement. It’s just a little moment. Paul is nodding to John.

“So this is a Beatles piece. Bill [Hall] will see it as a classical piece. But as a Beatles fan, I can find things like that in it.”

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And those fans have been buying up the album, according to Mike Lefebvre, co-founder of Pepperland Music, an Orange-based shop specializing in Beatles memorabilia, who describes himself as a “first-generation Beatle fan.”

“We have very, very few of them left,” Lefebvre said. “We’ve sold quite a few through the store.”

Actually, “Standing Stone” has sold only 84,000 copies since September 1997, according SoundScan, an industry monitoring service for record sales. By contrast, McCartney’s “Flaming Pie,” a rock release, has sold 632,000 copies since May 1997.

But Lefebvre isn’t discouraged by the numbers.

“Any time you’re exposed to something and get something out of it that’s positive, it definitely opens you up,” he said. “It always worked for me.”

The work, of course, will have a life beyond the weekend performances. Foster will conduct it in September in Bucharest, as part of the Georges Enesco Festival. He believes McCartney will come to that performance. He’s not expected in California.

“You have to understand what that will mean in Romania,” Foster said. “During the revolution [against Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989], the students in the square were singing McCartney songs loud and clear--’Let It Be’--answering back to the police. At least 13 young people were killed. His visit will be bigger than any state visit of any politician.”

* William Hall will conduct his Master Chorale in the Southern California premiere of Paul McCartney’s “Standing Stone” at 8 p.m. Saturday. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $22-$65. (714) 556-2787.

* John Mauceri will lead the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and Los Angeles Master Chorale in the work at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Los Angeles. Gloria Stuart will be the speaker $3-$85. (323) 850-2000.