THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 8, 1994 TAG: 9409080038
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By MARK MOBLEY, MUSIC CRITIC
LENGTH: Long : 413 lines
IT HAS A different name. It gives dozens of concerts a season, not just four. Players are paid. The music director is a woman with an international career.
Yet the Virginia Symphony, which begins its 75th season Friday, is in many ways the Norfolk Civic Symphony Orchestra of years ago. It has no hall of its own and has trouble making ends meet.
All that remain of the orchestra's early years are newspaper clippings, faded programs and a short book by a board member. But these and musicians' memories tell a story that encompasses more than rehearsals, concerts and pledge drives. It is the story of Hampton Roads - aspirations, accomplishments and conflicts in a region striving to come of age.
The orchestra's own collection of programs is incomplete. It begins with the 1923-24 season, three years after a group of Norfolk music lovers met to discuss starting a civic symphony.
Even before the ensemble played its first chord, Tidewater knew how classical music sounded. In the 1890s, various amateur orchestras, including YMCA ensembles, formed and disbanded. But the local musical appetite was also served by touring orchestras and opera companies.
As unlikely as it seems today, Norfolk had a spring festival that, after World War I, welcomed such luminaries as the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra. Among the soloists were star sopranos Rosa Ponselle and Frieda Hempel. They performed at the downtown Norfolk Armory, above the city market. The programs included fund-raising appeals for a new auditorium, which must have been made all the more attractive by the pungent smells wafting up from the market.
In October 1920, the Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch proclaimed, ``NORFOLK NOW HAS A `REGULAR' SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA.'' Over the summer, a roster of local musicians had been assembled. The City Council gave $1,000 for instruments and $150 for music.
Dr. Robert E. Whitehead, a physician and violist, told the paper: ``We will play no jazz. We intend to establish and hold to a high standard.'' He undoubtedly spun in his grave in 1975 as the orchestra played ``Shaft'' at pops concerts.
"Song in Their Hearts: Norfolk Symphony Orchestra 1920-1960,'' a history by longtime board member Grace Shepherd Ferebee, features a 1921 group portrait. The musicians' faces are indistinct, but none of them is black. There are many women - a half century would pass before the orchestra would select a man as concertmaster. There's just one double bass.
A young violin student, Adele Barrett, went to the first concert with her parents. By the second concert, in September 1921, she was in the orchestra. Today, she is Adele DeFord, living in a Norfolk retirement home amid musical memorabilia.
``In the beginning, nobody got paid for anything,'' recalled DeFord, 87. ``We had many different kinds of people back then - doctors, lawyers, barbers, teachers, housewives, students. Just anybody who liked to play.
``Once upon a time, there was an old gentleman who played the flute. The conductor put a new piece on the stand. He said, `Brother conductor, we've never played in this key before.' We had all kinds.''
But the orchestra was a community treasure. DeFord said: ``There was a man who played cello who was a barber. And he had all the influential men in Norfolk as customers. He'd get 'em in the chair and talk up the symphony, and they'd end up giving him money.''
In the 1923-24 season, the orchestra had its first wide-ranging search for a conductor. The local leader was replaced by a commuter, Bart Wirtz of the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. For two seasons, Wirtz arrived by boat Sunday mornings for the rehearsal and matinee, sailing out at dinner time to make his Monday morning classes.
And the four-concert season ended with the ensemble's first choral performance. Wirtz led the Ghent Methodist Choir, St. Luke's Episcopal Choir, Freemason Street Baptist Quartette, Second Presbyterian Choir, Knox Presbyterian Choir, Prince Quartette and other local individuals in Mendelssohn's Second Symphony, the ``Song of Praise.''
``The symphony orchestra was never in better condition,'' an unnamed Virginian-Pilot critic wrote. ``Under the masterful direction of Bart Wirtz, each number was performed with finished artistry; the harmonization was superb.'' Back then, The Virginian-Pilot ran reviews on the front page.
Adele DeFord has a Peabody Conservatory diploma signed by Wirtz. In the mid-'20s, she studied in Baltimore for two years, earning a teacher's certificate. After returning to Norfolk, she rejoined the orchestra, working her way up to the concertmaster's position.
DeFord, who was as nomadic as today's orchestra musicians, said: ``We rehearsed in a lot of funny places, like the basement of the post office building and the old Coca-Cola company and sometimes school auditoriums. When I first went there, we rehearsed in the City Council chamber.''
By the 1930s, rehearsals were led by Henry Cowles Whitehead, son of orchestra founder Robert E. Whitehead. The young Whitehead played horn as a teenager before entering the prestigious Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. After graduating, he played various gigs in New York before accepting, at 24, the directorship of the Norfolk Symphony.
He was also chief of the Norfolk Auxiliary Fire Force and program director of radio station WTAR. DeFord played in his WTAR Salon Orchestra, a seven-member outfit featured in a dinner broadcast every weekday from 1938 to 1947.
The Salon Orchestra was sponsored by Nolde's Bread. Norfolk Symphony concerts were sponsored in part by Fluffo Salad Oil.
Salon Orchestra musicians and a few others were still the only Norfolk Symphony members being paid to play. Today, a Virginia Symphony opening attracts scores of applicants from all over the country, who travel to Norfolk at their own expense to audition. Then, virtually all new talent came from local schools or military bases.
The orchestra's first performance, on April 21, 1921, began twice. When the sailor playing oboe didn't show, the conductor launched into Haydn's ``Military'' Symphony without him. After the Naval Base streetcar finally arrived, the ensemble stopped and took it from the top.
During World War II, the orchestra swelled with military musicians, including British Royal Marines. Among the arrivals was Carroll Bailey, a Navy trumpeter from Kokomo, Ind. A fellow bandsman talked him into attending a rehearsal.
``I didn't think that I wanted to do it. In fact, I was very much against it,'' Bailey recalled. But after he heard the orchestra, he was hooked. Today, at 72, he is still a member, though he has switched to double bass.
The program booklets of the 1943-44 season differ from those of previous years. They're very thin - probably a result of paper rationing. The ad on the back is from Colonial Stores Inc., and reads, ``To the home-front, kitchen wardens.''
The orchestra was called the Norfolk Symphony Orchestra instead of the Norfolk Civic Symphony Orchestra. Among the second violins was a teenager and future actor named Lee Lively. Someone has penciled the name ``Bailey'' under the trumpets. By the next concert, he was listed as ``William Bailey.''
Concerts were held at the new Center Theater, which was built largely to entertain servicemen. The second performance of the season opened with Liszt's ``Les Preludes'' - a difficult work, but the ensemble had played it in 1927 and tackled other Romantic favorites in the years since. The closer was Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture.
In between, the great Russian bass Alexander Kipnis sang Verdi arias and ``The Death of Boris'' from Mussorgsky's ``Boris Godunov.'' Pilot critic Warner Twyford rose to the occasion, writing: ``A Norfolk audience of 1,800 . has survived ages of depredation, invasion and conquest, will endure long after the sins of Adolf Hitler and his baby-killing hordes have been washed out in their own blood.''
Bailey worked his way up to principal trumpet but left the orchestra when he was reassigned at the end of the war. And in 1948, Whitehead, 38, died after a weeklong illness.
Whitehead's successor would become a central figure in Virginia musical history. Edgar Schenkman was a New Jersey native and Juilliard graduate who was married to a violinist, Marguerite Quarles. They arrived with five young children, one of whom, Peter, eventually appeared as cello soloist with the orchestra. (Grandson Eric Schenkman is now a guitarist in the rock group Spin Doctors.)
Edgar Schenkman instituted many immediate changes. Whitehead's programs often included light music; a 1945 concert followed the Beethoven Ninth with Rimsky-Korsakov's ``Dance of the Buffoons.'' Schenkman's repertoire was meat and potatoes. His debut included Schubert's Fifth Symphony and Dvorak's ``New World.''
``Schenkman was a superb musician,'' said Sidney Berg, 76, who became the orchestra's timpanist in 1946. ``I was just always amazed by how much he really knew about the string instruments. He brought to the orchestra a kind of professionalism we hadn't had before.''
The orchestra gave its first ``Messiah'' at the Arena in December 1949. It became an annual tradition until the 1951-52 season, when Schenkman led Verdi's Requiem and Honegger's music-drama ``King David.'' The conductor even programmed concert opera, a practice unheard of at today's Virginia Symphony. Tenor James McCracken appeared as Samson in Saint-Saens' ``Samson and Delilah.'' Bailey, now known as Lee Lively, narrated Mozart's ``Abduction From the Seraglio.''
The orchestra went on the road in 1949, giving concerts at the Virginia May Festival in Charlottesville. Forty years later, the Virginia Symphony would make the trip to accompany ``Thief of Bagdad'' at the Virginia Festival of American Film.
Schenkman was ambitious. He started a community music school in Norfolk and in 1957 founded the Richmond Symphony. He hired first-class soloists, many of whom were emerging artists. The guests included pianists Jorge Bolet, John Browning and Mieczsylaw Horszowski and violinists Joseph Silverstein, Robert Mann and Michael Rabin.
The orchestra's budget was $39,000. In a dark foreshadowing of future Virginia Symphony business, the orchestra had hired its first professional manager five years earlier, only to eliminate the position after the budget jumped to an unprecedented $42,000.
For decades, the Norfolk Symphony was the only orchestra between Baltimore and Atlanta. The ensemble was not well known nationally, but it was the pride Tidewater. The Dec. 5, 1960, Ledger-Dispatch included a picture page headlined ``The True Measure of a City's Greatness.'' There, along with ``An Oyster Bowl Crowd,'' ``Blight of Slums Erased'' and ``First Norfolk-Portsmouth Tunnel'' was ``Norfolk Symphony and Chorus.''
``Back then, the museum was stuffed owls,'' said former symphony president Clay Barr. ``The only game in town was the orchestra and the community concert series when I was growing up.''
The orchestra, Berg said, ``had all the backing of the society crowd. It had a congealed backing that you don't get nowadays. I think the area has become fractionalized because of the fund-raising pressures and the pressures of the other groups.''
Cooper said: ``It used to be only one night a month. If you didn't go, people noticed.''
Well, white people noticed. The orchestra and its audience were not integrated until the appointment of Russell Stanger as music director in 1966. Schenkman resigned that year, retaining his Richmond Symphony post. Stanger, a young Massachusetts native, came to town insisting on open auditions.
James M. Reeves was the orchestra's first black member, entering at the back of the double basses. ``I had tried out under Edgar Schenkman,'' Reeves said. ``He said, `You play all right, but you don't play head and shoulders above everyone in the orchestra, so I can't justify taking a black into the orchestra.'
``I said, `I play tuba, too. Can I try out on that?' He said, `Yeah! You're good on tuba, too! But I don't need but one.' ''
Reeves, who is now 75 and a member of the Chesapeake School Board, got a frosty reception at his first rehearsal.
``I felt like I was ostracized by just about everyone in the orchestra,'' he said. ``Nobody talked to me except the first bass player when he told me what to do. It took, I guess, a year or so before people seemed to have warmed up to me.''
Reeves worked his way up to principal before resigning in 1981. Today's auditions are held behind a screen, so the race and gender of an applicant are not known until the final round.
Stanger, who once served as Leonard Bernstein's assistant, fashioned himself as the local Lenny. He lectured and played the piano at children's concerts. His new compositions ranged from a piece narrated by Captain Kangaroo to an epic Bicentennial pageant called ``Episodes '76.''
He also served as a one-man employment agency for musicians, who had to seek outside work to make ends meet. He hooked up a Taiwanese cellist with a doctor and was later surprised to learn the young man was drawing patients' blood between rehearsals.
But Stanger's primary achievement was his conducting.
``Russell was a very inspiring conductor,'' Berg said. ``He was sort of a disorganized guy. I don't know if he would really plan a rehearsal or not. Everything would fall together. He was sort of the miracle man.''
A tape from the opening concert of the orchestra's 50th season bears Berg out. The Oct. 13, 1969, performance concluded with Liszt's ``Les Preludes.'' Aside from a few technical slips, the sound is surprisingly good. Stanger's interpretation is bracing. The string tone is full and the lines are long - qualities that returned to the orchestra only in the '90s.
In the '70s, things changed for Stanger and the orchestra. In 1972, the orchestra showed a deficit early in the year, after which the executive director resigned. In the fall, the orchestra musicians struck for the first time. They were out for a month, and the settlement was a base pay of $1,000 for 60 concerts and rehearsals a year.
The orchestra also moved to the new Chrysler Hall, which had half again as many seats as the old Center Theater and thus more room for subscribers. But the hall, designed by a local architect, turned out to be an acoustic disaster. An electronic enhancement system would later be installed by a Portsmouth company that had never built one before.
The 1973-74 season brought a round of budget cuts that would become familiar to any Virginia Symphony fan. Stanger programmed a season with five instead of the expected eight guest soloists. Yet the orchestra also presented outside artists, including the Budapest Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna Choir Boys. Stanger and the orchestra accompanied the organist Virgil Fox and Indian musician Ravi Shankar (the latter in a program that also included Boston Pops favorites).
The resident pianist was Walter Noona, a Norfolk native who had played concertos with the ensemble as a teenager. He would soon be leading his own orchestra, the Virginia Beach Pops. The last chair percussionist in the Junior Youth Symphony was Robert Cross, a Kempsville High School student who would join the Virginia Symphony as a player and administrator.
Not all the concerts were at Chrysler Hall. The orchestra performed ``runouts'' at schools in Smithfield and Isle of Wight. Performances at Old Dominion University and Norfolk State University included the schools' choirs.
``I think we were the forerunners of regionalism,'' Barr said. The orchestra made its boldest step in that direction in December 1978, when it announced a merger with Noona's pops group and the Peninsula Symphony, led by Cary McMurran.
Stanger announced his intent to resign less than a year later, citing a need to pursue other artistic opportunities. The sound of the orchestra on a 1978 tape is not as pretty as it was a decade earlier.
But before Stanger left the orchestra, now called the Virginia Philharmonic, it performed the most ambitious concert in its history. The ensemble traveled to Washington's newly completed Kennedy Center for a concert with pianist Shura Cherkassky. The program was ingenious: A recreation of a 1937 Metropolitan Opera House concert by the legendary virtuoso Josef Hofmann. Reviews were favorable.
The search for Stanger's replacement was cut short when the board decided to hire its first finalist, Cedar Rapids Symphony music director Richard Williams. Thus two promising young conductors, Yoel Levi, now the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra music director, and Isaiah Jackson, who has a worldwide guest conducting career, were not auditioned.
Williams' four-year tenure included a number of notable concerts. In 1984, the orchestra's first concert at the Virginia Beach Pavilion Theater was broadcast live statewide. He programmed music by Thea Musgrave, whose operas had been produced by Virginia Opera. Noona led a Philharmonic concert including the premiere of a timpani concerto by local composer Thomas N. Rice.
But Williams' work was overshadowed by the outbreak of a pops war that would last a decade. Noona was fired by the board of directors, who believed the joint administration of Williams and Noona was untenable. They also raised questions about Noona's competence as a conductor.
``There were some people who felt we would never survive the dismissal of Walter Noona, said so publicly and walked from the board at that time,'' said Barr, who was president of the board. ``It has come to pass that one of those has apologized more than once.
``I felt I had a responsibility to look after the future of the orchestra. There would be fallout and we would survive the fallout and go on.''
The fallout included Noona and his supporters' starting a new pops orchestra that competed for funds and audiences with the Virginia Philharmonic's pops series. The Virginia Beach Arts and Humanities voted to refuse the Philharmonic's request for city funds but was overruled by the City Council. Noona's Virginia Beach Pops would amass a fervent band of subscribers and a budget of almost $500,000 before folding in 1992.
But Barr and a small group of fellow board members were looking west as well as east. She said that in the '80s, there were ``several secret, clandestine meetings in Williamsburg'' to investigate the possibility of a merger with the Richmond Symphony. But studies determined that the orchestras were stronger apart than together.
Under the administrative leadership of executive director Jerry Haynie, the orchestra embarked on a period of ambitious growth, increasing the concert schedule and musicians' pay.
Williams announced his intent to resign in 1984, citing a need to pursue other artistic opportunities. Orchestra members were pleased, citing declining attendance and criticizing Williams' musicianship.
His successor was an unknown Israeli conductor, Winston Dan Vogel, who wowed the board with his authoritarian manner and a dramatic audition concert. They passed over Alan Balter, music director of the Memphis and Akron orchestras, and Paul Polivnick, music director of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra.
Vogel proved extremely unpopular with the musicians.
``The most unhappy rehearsals were with Winston,'' said Bailey, who had returned to Norfolk and rejoined the orchestra in 1962. ``He was not a joyful person to work with.''
Vogel's performances were erratic. The orchestra's finest moment in his tenure was under another conductor, John Miner of the Joffrey Ballet, who was in the pit for an overwhelming reading of Stravinsky's ``Rite of Spring.''
But Vogel also was given the unpleasant duty of making personnel changes. ``He demoted me,'' Bailey said. ``He called me in and said, `You play too well for me to fire you but not well enough to remain as assistant principal.' ''
The signal event of Vogel's tenure was a six-week musicians' strike in 1988. The players asked for a contract that would raise their base pay by half, to $14,000 a year. They received a three-year contract that increased gradually to $12,000. Thus three players' combined salary equaled the entire budget of the orchestra 30 years before.
Relations between the musicians and board members have improved since the strike. Players now volunteer for such activities as fund-raising and promotion. But Barr still regrets the strike, insisting that it kept the board from completing a $4 million endowment campaign. The endowment was later reduced by $1 million when funds were removed to cover an accumulated deficit.
Bailey, who believes the strike brought positive change, said: ``My personal feeling was that the day would come that the symphony administration would be thankful that we had that strike. It forced them to think more of the betterment of the musicians. More money, more attention to a decent contract.''
Vogel suddenly announced his intent to resign in 1989, citing a need to pursue other artistic opportunities. His final subscription concert included the Beethoven Ninth, with the newly formed and extremely loud Virginia Symphony Chorus.
Eminent violinist and conductor Joseph Silverstein served as music advisor during the conductor search. The candidate list was the orchestra's most promising to date. All the hopefuls were young and American, but their most important qualification was an active career. In the past, the board had preferred conductors willing to live in Hampton Roads full-time. Thus their choices were limited to conductors without much work.
The orchestra hired busy JoAnn Falletta, music director of three other orchestras and one of the most highly publicized young conductors.
``I think we've been through a series of conductors until we've finally gotten one I think is terrific,'' Barr said. ``I think we're in better hands now than we ever have been.'' And after a decade of short-term, variously talented concertmasters, the orchestra hired Vahn Armstrong, the former second violinist of the respected New World Quartet.
``During my tenure here, this is the first time they've had artistic leadership with any idea of what a professional orchestra's about,'' Cross said. After attending the New England Conservatory, he joined the orchestra in 1981, eventually rising to principal percussionist. He served as interim executive director last season and is now the general manager under executive director Daniel Hart.
``I've always felt that the orchestra has not scratched the surface of the opportunities and the potential out in the community, both to build audiences and to raise money,'' Cross said. ``The people that they've hired administratively have not had a vision for the organization.
``It's weird. It's like something always holds it back.''
Friday's Beethoven Ninth concert is a time for celebration, though two symphony supporters will be absent. Adele DeFord doesn't go to concerts anymore, because hearing music is difficult for her. But she'll read the review just as she always does, in her room at the retirement home, with her former stand partner, Natalie Arnoux, in the room next door.
``The most important thing is I really was just one of many who kept that spark alive,'' DeFord said. ``And the Norfolk people responded to what we did.''
Clay Barr's husband, Jay Barr, died in July after an extended battle with brain cancer. They attended last season's opening concert together.
``We went on Friday night,'' she said. ``On Saturday, I came into the bedroom and Jay was sitting there with tears in his eyes. He thought there was so much beauty in the world, he couldn't die and leave it. He sat there and cried over how beautiful that concert was.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Henry Cowles Whitehead leads a section rehearsal of the early
Norfolk Symphony.
Henry Cowles Whitehead became director of the Norfolk Symphony at
age 24.
Russell Sttanger became music director in 1966 and integrated the
orchestra.
Richard Williams' four-year tenure was marred by a pops war with
Walter Noona's group.
Edgar Schenkman instituted many changes, including starting a music
school.
Russell Stanger, who opened auditions for the symphony to all,
conducts a children's concert. At left is James M. Reeves, the
orchestra's first black member.
Winston Dan Vogel's directorship was marred by a musicians strike in
1988.
JoAnn Falletta has brought an international reputation to the
symphony.
The newly organized Norfolk Civic Symphony Orchestra in its first
formal picture - in 1921.
FILE STAFF PHOTO
John Bourque, a trumpet player with the symphony, was among pickets
signaling to passing motorists during a musicians strike in 1988.
Winston Dan Vogel leads the orchestra in a ``runout'' performance in
Suffolk.
KEYWORDS: HISTORY VIRGINIA SYMPHONY NORFOLK SYMPHONY by CNB