Suzannah Lessard

The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family

by Suzannah Lessard

Book cover

I don't have a personal photo of the distinguished author Suzannah Lessard, who died on January 29, and the photos of her on the web are very likely copyrighted, so I am going for the cover of one of her books as the header.

I didn't know Lessard, though I am reasonably sure I was aware of the existence of The Architect of Desire; probably I read a review of it in the NY Times when it was published in the 1990s. But reading the Times obituary (gift link) for her, I was rather unnerved. Here's what got me, all quotations from the obit:

Ms. Lessard, her five sisters and their parents lived in a 19th-century farmhouse known as the Red Cottage. It had sloping floors, patched plaster walls and a fraught atmosphere, largely created by her father, who required quiet for his work as a composer, as well as other, more brutal concessions from his daughters. 

...

Ms. Lessard’s memoir was decades in the making. It was the book she could not write, and yet felt compelled to write, and the writer’s block she suffered often compromised her other work; for much of the time she was struggling with it, she was a staff writer at The New Yorker.

...

 Ms. Lessard had never previously spoken about how her father had visited her in her bedroom when she was a child. Yet on New Year’s Day in 1989, one of her sisters called a meeting of the siblings and, one by one, each sister confided that she, too, had experienced sexual encounters with their father.

Over the years, each had tried to convince herself that the encounters weren’t abuse — that their childhoods had been safe and that their father’s behavior was somehow normal. Their memories, finally voiced, gave Ms. Lessard “a sense of something like the sound barrier breaking,” she wrote, “a psychic reverberation.”

She added: “With it, the world cracked open, and inside was the world.” 

...

 After the sisters’ revelations, the family entered therapy, but their father claimed not to remember the encounters they described. (The Lessards had divorced decades earlier.) Ms. Lessard said that exposing her father in her book was not an act of revenge but of survival.

Right. He could not remember sexually abusing his six daughters over goodness knows how many years.

When I looked him up, I realized I was slightly acquainted with her father. Suzannah Lessard's composer father John Lessard was on the faculty of SUNY/Stony Brook when I was a student there from 1980 to 1982. Once I knew that, I had no trouble conjuring up an accurate picture of him.

He was by then married to his second wife, Sarah Fuller, a musicologist who was also on the faculty. He was retired from the faculty by the time The Architect of Desire was published, and died seven years later, but you bet I am now wondering about whether and what kind of discussions he might have had about the book and his past with Prof. Fuller, and how she reacted to what he said. They remained married until his death in 2003.

Julian Wachner Under Arrest

Back in 2022, conductor and composer Manhattan's Trinity Church fired its conductor Julian Wachner on grounds that it "concluded based on recent information that Julian has otherwise conducted himself in a manner that is inconsistent with our expectations of anyone who occupies a leadership position."

Juilliard decided against hiring him again based on accusations by one of its employees.

Wachner is now under arrest in Indiana on charges of possessing child sexual abuse material. He purchased it using cryptocurrency, which basically has no use other than in illegal transactions.

Note that Wachner denied all accusations against him in 2022 and that he had defenders at the time. I hope nobody defends him now, given the heinous accusations. Note that he was teaching fourth-grade children at the time of his arrest, and the school system, in notifying parents of his arrest, said that none of the alleged crimes took place at school. We can hope that's accurate.

Note the following, from IndyStar:

While serving a search warrant for Wachner's home, police found a black bag inside the primary bedroom's closet. The bag contained a "substantial quantity" of apparent cocaine and a laptop.

When detectives entered Wachner's login credentials for the laptop, a video of child sex abuse was displayed in full screen. Dozens more files appeared to have been recently accessed, and a forensic examination of the laptop is ongoing.

JFC.

Yes, he deserves representation in the courts! That's due process. But I hope folks can see the pattern in his behavior.

Pointer Report on Jaap van Zweden

Pointer is a platform in The Netherlands that describes itself this way:

Pointer is the platform for investigative journalism of KRO-NCRV on TV, radio and online. TV and radio makers, data journalists and researchers bring revealing, in-depth stories, with social impact. A platform that makes modern investigative journalism such as crowdsourcing and open source intelligence accessible to all Dutch people. In the middle of society, for and by the people.

Today, they released a report on Jaap van Zweden, the Dutch conductor who has been the music director of the Dallas Symphony, NY Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, and Seoul Philharmonic (among others) and who has guest conducted worldwide. Next year, he's conducting four concerts, including the opening gala, at the San Francisco Symphony, which has also announced that over three seasons (2025-26, 2026-27, and 2027-28), he'll be leading a cycle of the Beethoven symphonies.

Here's the start of the article on Pointer's web site:

In several orchestras where Jaap van Zweden was the conductor, there has been evidence of transgressive behavior. This is evident from research by Pointer (KRO-NCRV) based on conversations with dozens of musicians and other insiders. They outline a pattern of fear in places where the most famous conductor in the Netherlands has been in charge. Watch the extra long broadcast of Pointer on the YouTube channel of Pointer this afternoon at 4 p.m. and on Sunday evening on NPO 2.

In recent months, Pointer journalists spoke to more than 50 musicians, directors and staff members from seven of the orchestras that Jaap van Zweden conducted in the Netherlands and abroad over the past 25 years. Van Zweden's tough, sometimes intimidating manners keep recurring. Individual musicians from the Netherlands and abroad tell of being insulted and belittled in front of colleagues. For a number of them, working with the Dutchman has had a lasting impact.

There were reports about van Zweden behaving in a borderline abusive manner when he was at the Dallas Symphony before he was appointed to the NY Phil position. It was clear at the time that Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim had him in mind when she wrote her comments for this article, for example. And a friend mentioned that the Dallas News reported on these issues as well; here's a 2014 article about van Zweden.

I own that I have no idea what to make of "the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra became the best orchestra in the world under his leadership in 2019." Maybe Google Translate didn't accurately render that in English, but I do not think it likely that the Hong Kong Phil was somehow better than the Berlin Phil, the VPO, the LSO, Cleveland, etc., etc.

Over the last few years, U.S. musical institutions have shown at least some increased willingness to do something about abusive conductors and musicians. Plácido Domingo was disinvited from San Francisco Opera, Charles Dutoit has barely worked in the United States, the NY Phil appears to have finally fired two of their musicians, etc. I don't know what impact this report will have on van Zweden's future engagements at the San Francisco Symphony, but I do hope it means that he has no chance of being the next music director of SFS. I've never heard any rumors of abusive behavior on the part of Herbert Blomstedt, MTT, or Esa-Pekka Salonen, and I hope that SFS will continue to hire music directors of unimpeachable character.

International Women's Day

On International Women's Day, I can't do any better than point to composer Pauline Oliveros's 1970 NY Times essay on women composers. I am driven slightly mad by it, because what she said 55 years ago is still so true today. Take this, for example:

At last, the dying symphony and opera organizations may have to wake up to the fact that music of our time is necessary to draw audiences from the people under 30. The mass media, radio, TV and the press, could have greater influence in encouraging American music by ending the competition between music of the past and music of the present.

JFC, some things never change. Audience members who were under 30 in 1970 are now 55 and up. Then there's this:

The second trend is, of course, dependent on the first because of the cultural deprivation of women in the past. Critics do a great deal of damage by wishing to discover “greatness.” It does not matter that not all composers are great composers; it matters that this activity be encouraged among all the population, that we communicate with each other in non-destructive ways. Women composers are very often dismissed as minor or light weight talents on the basis of one work by critics who have never examined their scores or waited for later developments.

It's infinitely harder to get anywhere in classical music if you're a woman than if you're a man, from getting your music performed if you're a composer to getting into an orchestra or getting a principal position if you're an instrumentalist to getting a highly visible job if you're a conductor. Just think about how many top level orchestras in the U.S. have or about about to have women as their music directors: three (3). 

Those are the Atlanta Symphony, where Nathalie Stutzmann is music director; the Buffalo Philharmonic, an orchestra that seriously punches about its budget, where JoAnn Falletta has been music director for many years, following in the footsteps of Lukas Foss, MTT, and other fine conductors, and the New Jersey Philharmonic, where Xian Zhang is shortly moving to the Seattle Symphony. Do you think a woman will replace her? I suppose we can hope that one or more of the LA Phil, SFS, and Cleveland might hire women, not that I'm holding my breath over this.

And of course, you are way more likely to be harassed or raped than a man when you're in school or in a male-dominated organization like an orchestra.

Updated, March 9, because I forgot Stutzmann at Atlanta.

University of Michigan Fires David Daniels

From the NY Times, the opening paragraphs of an article about UMich firing countertenor David Daniels; emphasis is mine:

The University of Michigan on Thursday fired David Daniels, a professor of voice and one of the world’s leading countertenors, one year after he and his husband were charged with sexually assaulting another singer. 

It was the first time in more than 60 years that the university’s Board of Regents had voted to dismiss a tenured faculty member, according to the board chairman, Ron Weiser. The board also denied Mr. Daniels severance pay. 

“At the heart of every decision of the board is the safety and well-being of our students, and the integrity of the instruction to which our students are entitled,” Mr. Weiser said. “When the board sees this jeopardized by a tenured member of the faculty, we believe it is necessary to take the extreme action of dismissal.”

I'm certainly glad that Daniels is gone; other reports make it clear that he had a reputation at Michigan as a harasser. But I can guarantee you that there is zero chance that he was the first tenured professor in sixty years to commit academic fraud, harass or assault a student or  staff member or fellow faculty member, or emotionally abuse a student. Where the hell has Michigan been since 1960? Not looking out for the safety of people on campus.

Gone Boy

You might have heard that both the Royal Opera and Met suspended / fired tenor Vittorio Grigolo the other week. The tenor groped another cast member during curtain calls, reports say.

He's really out, out, out of the upcoming Met Traviata:

New York, NY (December 12, 2019)—The Metropolitan Opera today announces two cast changes for its forthcoming production of Verdi’s La Traviata, opening January 10, 2020. Piero Pretti sings the role of Alfredo Germont at the performances on February 26, 29, March 5, 9, 13, and 19, 2020, replacing Vittorio Grigolo. Additionally, New York City Ballet principal dancer Sara Mearns joins the cast as the female solo dancer for the performances on January 10, 14, 18, 23, 26, February 3, March 5, 9, and 13, 2020.

As previously announced, Aleksandra Kurzak is Violetta, Dmytro Popov is Alfredo Germont, and Quinn Kelsey is Giorgio Germont in the eight initial performances of this revival of Michael Mayer’s production, opening January 10, 2020, conducted by Karel Mark Chichon. The production features choreography by Lorin Latarro.

La Traviata returns on February 26, 2020, for six additional performances, conducted by Bertrand de Billy and starring Lisette Oropesa as Violetta, Pretti as Alfredo Germont, and Luca Salsi as Giorgio Germont.

Another U Mich Accusation

Found at Musical America, thanks to a Tweet:

On Monday, an article appeared in The Michigan Daily , UMich’s student newspaper, accusing Stephen Shipps, chair of the strings department and director of the university's strings preparatory division, of sexual misconduct. The story has … 

MA is behind a paywall and I'm not a subscriber. Covered elsewhere:

• Deadline Detroit
• Michigan Daily, where the headline is "Former students bring 40 years of misconduct allegations by SMTD professor"

Jesus fucking christ. The preparatory division would be pre-college students.

Popcorn and Lawn Chair Time

Lincoln Center Fountain

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

February 28, 2018

Let me all encourage you to read Kalimac's excellent posting about James Levine, which he published earlier today. He took Johanna Fiedler's Molto Agitato: The Mayhem Behind the Music at the Metropolitan Opera out of the library and reports on what she had to say about Levine back in 2001. I will say no more; just read his post.

You might have thought that the Met's firing of Levine on Monday was the end of the story. Terry Teachout disagrees with this, as his column in the WSJ said. (I am not a subscriber and haven't read it yet.)

And today, well: James Levine is suing the Met, and that's the reason for my post title. The link is to Michael Cooper's article on the lawsuit.

First off, the lawsuit is for breach of contract and defamation. Items of note: As music director emeritus, Levine was to be paid $400,000/year for ten years, plus $27,000 for every performance he conducts. Usually, you can only get this sort of thing from an institution's 990 form, an IRS form filed by nonprofits that is available to the public. 

Second, the lawsuit states that Levine's contract contains no provision for the Met to fire or suspend him. Well, I'd love to see that contract! It's common for contracts of this type to contain morals clauses, which lay out behaviors for which one party can be fired. If I were the Met, and I had a good lawyer (and you bet they do), and I had heard the rumors about Levine, well, any contracts I had with him would contain such a clause.

Third, of course Levine is denying everything, as he has from the start. 

Fourth, there's this:

The lawsuit, filed in New York State Supreme Court, states that Mr. Levine “has clearly and unequivocally denied any wrongdoing in connection with those allegations,” and paints his firing as a result of an effort by the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, “to oust Levine from the Met and completely erase his legacy from the organization.”

Let's stipulate that it just isn't possible to erase Levine's legacy from the organization. What could the Met do? Delete 2500 performances from the archive database? Round up every copy of every recording and video Levine made with the company and toss them in the Hudson?  Demand that the Times get rid of every review ever published of his performances?

UPDATE: A friend advises that the Met appears to have updated their website to remove Levine's name from the company history page and administration page. Okay, so he's no longer an administrator, but removing hims from the history page? However much they'd like to wash their hands of him, there he was, for 40+ years.[end update]

Seriously, they can remove his name from plaques and take down any portraits of him, but that's about it. The man's influence on the institution, for better and for worse, cannot be denied or erased.

As far as efforts to oust Levine from the Met: wow, that's going to be a tough one. I mean, it's entirely possible that Gelb wanted to remove Levine long ago. Levine's health problems would have been sufficient reason to move him out of the music directorship, and they have been evident for many years. The truth is that the Met kept him around long past the point when he should have been removed (or gently eased out....although my guess is that Levine fought, or would have fought, any attempts to ease him out).

Really, I hope this goes to trial. I can only imagine what will be turned up in discovery. Because Levine's suit discusses details of his contract with the Met, we might actually get to see the whole thing, and these contracts are super hush-hush. And one can imagine who might be deposed: Levine's victims? His long-time housemate / best friend Suzanne Thompson, a former oboist? 

Lastly, I'm waiting to see Levine file a defamation suit against the Boston Globe, over their story the other week. It sure looked well-sourced and well-reported to me, not like "vague and unsubstantiated accusations in the press."

Met Fires Levine

Michael Cooper has the story: James Levine's Final Act at the Met Ends in Disgrace.

What a surprise!

Yes, after 40 years of rumors, the Met was able to determine, in just three and a half months, that there's credible evidence that Levine abused young musicians over whom he had authority. They found evidence that this happened both before and during his employment at the Met. "During" is especially interesting, because the published reports are mostly from the late 60s and early 70s, before he joined the Met.

The Met is not releasing any details beyond saying that their investigation included interviews with more than 70 people. This part of the Times article is....interesting:

But some questions arose early on about how the company had handled the case, including the fact that it began its investigation more than a year after Peter Gelb, its general manager, was first told that the police in Illinois were investigating an accusation that Mr. Levine had sexually abused a teenage boy there in the 1980s.

Mr. Gelb has said he briefed the leadership of the Met’s board about the police investigation and spoke with Mr. Levine, who denied the accusations. But Mr. Gelb said that the company took no further action, waiting to see what the police found.

The Met said that its investigation, which was led by Robert J. Cleary, a partner at the Proskauer Rose law firm who was previously a United States attorney in New Jersey and Illinois, had determined that “any claims or rumors that members of the Met’s management or its board of directors engaged in a cover-up of information relating to these issues are completely unsubstantiated.”

Well, Anthony Bliss knew about the rumors, because of an anonymous letter, and he has to have passed the information along to his immediate successors (Bruce Crawford and Hugh Southern, then Joe Volpe). It's certainly curious that the Met was able to obtain enough information now to declare the accusations credible, but could not back in the day.

The Levine Cult

Here's a stunning report from the Boston Globe about the cult that James Levine ran in Cleveland. It is creepy as hell, because of the way he manipulated the cult members into various sexual encounters and used various mind control techniques.

An enterprising reporter is eventually going to find someone who got paid off to keep quiet about Levine. You know such people are out there, right?

Process

I've been posted here and there on the internet about the Levine and Dutoit sexual abuse cases. I've gotten some comments about process and the swift ending of careers in the cases of both the conductors. Herein some thoughts on process.

There was an article in the Washington Post a couple of weeks back about a sexual harassment case in a completely different part of the public world, but it's awfully similar in some ways to what happened with Dutoit, different in other ways that bear on Dutoit.

The case in question is that of Judge Alex Kozinski. Some features of the situation:

• Kozinski has a long history of questionable behavior.
• Multiple women attesting to this.
• Incidents took place over decades.
• There's a whisper network of women warning each other about him.
• These women generally told friends and family what had happened contemporaneously with the harassment.
• Non-denial denials: "In an initial statement to The Post, Kozinski said he would 'never intentionally do anything to offend anyone and it is regrettable that a handful have been offended by something I may have said or done.'"
• The federal judiciary has a procedure for dealing with this stuff, and a judge asked Chief Justice Roberts to appoint a an investigator. Kozinsky resigned (retired) a few days later.

Kozinski was not reported earlier in part because clerking is a big stepping stone in a lawyer's career and women he'd behaved inappropriately with were concerned about the effects of complaining on their careers. That's also a feature of the Dutoit case, where the conductor could hire or not hire soloists, and it's a feature of other music business harassment cases, I expect - nobody knows how many unreported harassers there are.

Also regarding Dutoit, with several of these orchestras, he resigned ahead of being fired. What I understand is that music director contracts almost always have "morals clauses," which govern how the MD is to behave, including not making the orchestra look bad. Guest conductor contracts can contain clauses setting forth circumstances under which an orchestra can fire the conductor. I would expect that some of these do cover the conductor's behavior. So that is part of the process: Dutoit signed contracts knowing what they contained and what the expectations are.

It is difficult to set a procedure for how to handle incidents that are far in the past. There's the question of whether behavior is unacceptable or illegal. There are statutes of limitations that come into play, but an organization that has someone under contract is also not obliged to ignore reports of past bad behavior, especially when there are reports from unrelated people and the incidents took place over decades. The fact that Dutoit withdrew from some engagements is telling, also: if these incidents never happened, he is free to hire a lawyer and take action against the accusers. He is apparently not doing this and his denials are of the sort "something happened and they're interpreting it differently from me."

Earlier this week, another six women came forward about their past experiences with Dutoit. He is alleged to have raped one of these women. Several of the women went on the record, though not the rape victim. Anne Sophie Schmidt, a now-retired opera singer, says that Dutoit never hired her again after she refused him.

Dutoit's behavior hasn't been a secret. Back in 1995, journalist Natasha Gauthier reported on this; nobody denied it and no orchestras did anything about it. The Philadelphia Orchestra passed over him twice as a potential music director because of his reputation for "extreme flirtatiousness" (and what a euphemism / lie that is).

The problem isn't that abusers such as Levine and Dutoit are losing their careers because of a lack of process. The problem is that musical organizations didn't have processes in place to protect musicians and other members of their organizations.

Here's an example: Fiona Allan, who says that Dutoit assaulted her at Tanglewood, was told the following by the BSO's manager:  "Before you see maestro, I need to tell you something,” she recalled the manager saying. “Look, we advise, we’ve had some complaints, and I wouldn’t go in there alone." That was the BSO's process! What bullshit! This was in 1997, 20 years ago, when Allan was an intern at Tanglewood. So if you see the BSO claiming that they never knew about Dutoit, well, they are lying. And if the BSO knew, other orchestras knew also.

If you work at a big company, and you find evidence that an accountant - or the CFO - has embezzled a couple of million dollars, you fire that person right away, before the charges are filed or the trial is held. You can't keep someone like that around. And nobody would complain about "lack of process."

This is no different. Don't tell me all about how Dutoit and Levine's careers were destroyed because of lack of process. Their own actions destroyed their careers. It's too bad that didn't happen decades ago, before they had the chance to damage their victims' lives and careers.

More on Dutoit and Levine

It's been a couple of weeks since the allegations about Charles Dutoit came out.  Here are some follow-up articles about him and about James Levine.

Dutoit Denies Accusations (AP) Dutoit's comments; apparently he thinks that whatever happened was "informal physical contact." We'll see whether he actually takes legal action to defend himself.

"The allegations made against me are as shocking to me as they are to my friends and colleagues. I do not recognize the man or the actions being described in the media," Dutoit said in a brief statement emailed to the Associated Press.

"Whilst informal physical contact is commonplace in the arts world as a mutual gesture of friendship, the serious accusations made involving coercion and forced physical contact have absolutely no basis in truth. I am taking legal advice and plan to meaningfully defend myself and I believe within this current climate, media accusations on serious physical abuse do not help society tackle these issues properly if the claims are in fact not true."

By the time this article was published on December 23, Dutoit had withdrawn from or been relieved of engagements with eight (8) orchestras in the US, Europe, and Australia.

Montreal Symphony Orchestra Launches Probe (AP) This probe, at an orchestra where Dutoit was music director for 25, involves a fifth woman, in addition to the four who had previously come forward. These days, Dutoit is a guest conductor there only.

Dutoit Out at Eight Orchestras (AP) "The four women who spoke to AP said Dutoit attacked them on the sidelines of rehearsals and performances with orchestras in five cities — Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Saratoga Springs, New York. All four told the AP they never filed formal complaints because they were young and Dutoit was the maestro; they figured they would lose their jobs, not him."

Mark Swed says some dumb things about James Levine: Among other comments: "The age-old discussion of whether you can separate art from the artist has once more been ignited." No, Mark, he's not dead and buried, like Wagner, where that is the issue. The problem with Levine is whether someone who committed unethical acts should be hired to conduct, especially given his enormous stature and influence. This is someone who could and possibly still can make or break careers. How much power do you want to give him? Do you want to let him anywhere near, say, 16-year-old, male, aspiring singers?

More stupidity: "But before everyone starts throwing stones, let me point out that we make peace with politicians, Wall Street and Silicon Valley. We convince ourselves that this is the way things must be because it is the culture, until we get a Weinsteinian shock." Speak for yourself, Mark. Women have been trying to get this crap changed for, you know, decades. (Centuries?) You're old enough to remember Anita Hill, right?

And more: "It would not be unreasonable to assume that the young Levine lacked emotional maturity. The most successful musicians spend much of their lives alone practicing. They bask in praise. They attend conservatories, institutional hothouses where they hone their aggressively competitive skills to make it to the big time. They are pawns of the Wilfords, who look after careers, not lives." Oh, come on! It is amazing how many men manage not to be sexual abusers.

And more: "Levine also brought the Met into the 20th century, greatly expanding the repertory." Mark, take a look in the goddamn Met archives. This just isn't very true.

And more: "Not coincidentally, opera is an art form that abounds in the value of forgiveness and the potential for redemption." SO? Real life doesn't work that way. This is a terrible, terrible argument. Is it...a call for the men abused by Levine to forgive him? Did you read about how the abuse eroded their confidence and affected them for years and decades?

Nobody is disputing the greatness of Levine's musicianship. That's not the question and it's not central to whether he should continue to work and in what position. The question is the extent of his past acts of abuse - do you really believe they stopped in the 1970s? - and whether or not he should continue to work. (His health problems also bear on whether he should continue to conduct.)

UPDATE, re Swed: He's making lots of attempts to explain and excuse Levine, and none to hold him responsible. That's the problem.

Dutoit Banned From Davies

Well, that's what this San Francisco Symphony press release amounts to, since he has been removed from upcoming concerts with both SFS and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Separately, the Philadelphia Orchestra issued a statement basically saying they're shocked.

SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY SEVERS TIES WITH CONDUCTOR CHARLES DUTOIT IN RESPONSE TO ALLEGATIONS OF SEXUAL MISCONDUCT

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—The San Francisco Symphony has severed all ties with Charles Dutoit in response to allegations of sexual misconduct that have been brought against the conductor. This decision is the result of the serious nature of the allegations, internal and external discussions, and the San Francisco Symphony’s strong commitment to a zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment in the workplace.
           

Charles Dutoit was scheduled to conduct the San Francisco Symphony in two weeks of concerts in April, including a program of music by Debussy and Ravel, and a program including Holst’s The Planets. A new conductor for these concerts will be announced at a later date. Dutoit was also scheduled to conduct the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on tour in January as a part of the Orchestra’s Great Performers Series. He will not be appearing in Davies Symphony Hall for these concerts.

ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

Ø  Great Performers Series

Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 7:30 pm

TBD conductor Gautier Capuçon cello Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

DEBUSSY (arr. Büsser)  Petite Suite HAYDN Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major , H.VIIb:1 STRAVINSKY The Firebird

ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA Ø  Great Performers Series Monday, January 29, 2018 at 8 pm TBD conductor Jean-Yves Thibaudet piano Royal Philharmonic Orchestra RESPIGHI  Fountains of Rome (Fontane di Roma) LISZT Piano Concerto No. 2 in A major, S.125 STRAVINSKY Petrushka

SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY

Thursday, April 19, 2018 at 8 pm
Friday, April 20, 2018 at 8 pm
Saturday, April 21, 2018 at 8 pm

TBD conductor
Susan Graham mezzo-soprano
San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Ragnar Bohlin director
San Francisco Symphony

DEBUSSY (orch. Ravel)	Sarabande from Pour le Piano
DEBUSSY (orch. Ravel)	Danse
RAVEL RAVEL	Shéhérazade Daphnis et Chloé [complete]

SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY

Thursday, April 26, 2018 at 10 am (Open Rehearsal)
Thursday, April 26, 2018 at 8 pm
Friday, April 27, 2018 at 8 pm
Sunday, April 29, 2018 at 2 pm

TBD conductor
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet piano
Women of San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Ragnar Bohlin director
San Francisco Symphony

NICOLAI	Overture to The Merry Wives of Windsor
LISZT	Piano Concerto No. 2 in A major
HOLST	The Planets, Opus 32

More on Sexual Abuse in the Classical Music World

I woke up today to the news that three singers and an instrumentalist have accused Charles Dutoit of sexual assault. You can read all about it in this AP article, published at the Time Magazine web site. or at other outlets that have picked up the story. A tiny amount of research shows that the deceased veteran soprano who warned Paula Rasmussen about Dutoit during the run of Les Troyens in LA must have been Carol Neblett, who died only weeks ago.

In the article about Dutoit, note, particularly, people who don't want their names printed because it might affect their ability to get work. This should not happen.

A few more good articles have been published recently on the subject of sexual abuse:

• Anne Midgette minces no words, warning orchestras and opera companies everywhere about the consequences of ignoring what might be going on within their institutions: Institutions raced to dump James Levine. They should look hard at themselves.
• Anthony Tommasini minces words, as usual, saying, oh, he'll move his Levine recordings out of the living room. How's that for a decisive move? (Follow-up on January 2: who cares what Tommasini does with his Levine recordings? It is completely immaterial to what really matters, which is 1) policies that protect performers from predatory peers, conductors, administrators, etc. 2) administrators who act on those policies.)
• Ellen McSweeney sums up a few things: Advocates Have Found Five Qualities Associated With Sexual Violence. The Classical Music World Hits Four of Them. Omitted: almost all general directors of performing arts orgs are male. The very few exceptions include the NY Philharmonic (Deborah Borda), San Francisco Performances (founded by Ruth Felt, who was president for around 35 years, Melanie Smith is currently president), Washington Performing Arts (Jenny Bilfield, formerly of Stanford Lively Arts, er, Stanford Live), Kennedy Center (Deborah Rutter), and Lincoln Center (Deborah Spar). I would have mentioned concertmasters as having unusual power and prestige within an orchestra. 
• Jeremy Eicher has a few things to say. In classical music, a year of urgency and of reckoning