On the campus of Lincoln Center is the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and it has an auditorium: the Bruno Walter Auditorium (named for the great German-born conductor, who lived from 1876 to 1962). On Saturday, January 6, this auditorium was the scene of an unusual and excellent recital, headed “L.A. Story.” The performers were Brinton Averil Smith, cello, and Evelyn Chen, piano. As they bowed, the cellist often had his arm around the pianist. Too familiar? No, they are married—and their daughter turned pages. It was a family affair, in addition to an unusual and excellent one.
Smith is the principal cellist of the Houston Symphony, and before that he played in the New York Philharmonic. Chen has had a diverse career in many parts of the world. She also had a gold-plated education: Harvard, the New England Conservatory, and Juilliard.
When your name is Smith, it helps to have an unusual first name. This Smith is covered, with “Brinton,” and, to make doubly sure, he has the middle name of “Averil.” There will be no mixing him up with another Smith.
The Smith-Chen recital was called “L.A. Story” because it brought us music by composers who went from Europe to Los Angeles. Hitler & Co. were responsible for a lot of this. In his wonderful program notes, Smith writes about the extraordinary milieu: the milieu of all those émigrés and refugees.
To read the notes, go here.
Among the composers in L.A. were Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Korngold. Among the performers were Heifetz, Piatigorsky, Klemperer, and Lehmann. Among the writers were Mann, Brecht, Auden, and Werfel.
The recital at Bruno Walter Auditorium had thirteen pieces by twelve composers (Rachmaninoff got a double dip). As you might guess, the pieces were quite short, which was different and nice. Most recitals are composed of a few long pieces. Rare is the recital that gives you a smorgasbord of shorties.
Some of the composers were very well-known—Rachmaninoff et al. Others were less well-known, such as Joseph Achron, Ernst Toch, Alexandre Tansman, and Louis Gruenberg. Until Smith and Chen played one of his Jazzettes, I knew Gruenberg only for his opera Emperor Jones, and, really, for only one aria from it, if it can be called an aria: “It’s Me, O Lord, Standin’ in de Need of Prayer.” (The aria would be impermissible today, if the vernacular were retained.) Many of us knew a recording by Lawrence Tibbett, the great baritone (who grew up in L.A., by the way).
Before I continue, let me give you a story about Stravinsky—about Stravinsky and Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Finnish conductor who for many years led the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In 2011, I interviewed him before a small audience at the Salzburg Festival. Here is part of my ensuing write-up:
He is a great lover of Stravinsky, and while he was living and working in Los Angeles, he considered buying Stravinsky’s house. It was on the market. Indeed, it was in foreclosure. The price was very good.
He went to visit. There were still signs of Stravinsky about. There had been only one owner since the Stravinskys lived there. You could see the marks from his piano in the wall-to-wall carpeting. You could see the hook where Vera (Mrs. Stravinsky) tethered the goat. Igor was allergic to cow’s milk, you see, so drank goat’s milk.
Now, Salonen is a composer, as well as a conductor. And a friend said to him, “Say you’re sitting in Stravinsky’s studio. You’re about to write a piece. Can you get down one note?” Salonen decided not, and passed on the house.
He tells us that someone else bought it, razed it, and built another in its place. He grew the hedges very high around the new house—to discourage pilgrims.
As Smith and Chen played their recital, I heard a dog not barking: no one was talking. I mean, no one was talking from the stage, which was a miracle. They were just playing. If you wanted to read the program notes, you could. Otherwise, it was a recital, not a concert-lecture.
I was almost dizzy with gratitude (to echo a line from William F. Buckley Jr.).
Only at the end, before playing the final work on the printed program, did Smith talk. He was about to play Waxman’s Carmen Fantasie, which is hard enough on the violin, to say nothing of the cello. Smith said something like this: “This is the first New York performance of the Fantasie on the cello—and maybe the last.”
Afterward, I thought, “What could they play for an encore?” It occurred to me that they could play Gershwin—but then I realized that Gershwin was not foreign-born. (He was a New Yorker in L.A. for a while.) You know what? Smith said exactly this to the audience. Then he and Chen played Gershwin anyway: “It Ain’t Necessarily So.”
It occurred to me later that one could include André Previn, born in Berlin in 1929.
I have not mentioned anything about the playing, either of Smith or of Chen. They were very good indeed. It was such a satisfying recital. But I refrain from reviewing them as Smith is a friend of mine. More appropriate to tell about the program.
From Brinton Smith’s bio, I learned something—but before relating it, I would like to relate something else: I know a young conductor who majored in physics at Johns Hopkins University. I have said to him, “No matter how high you rise in conducting—even if you become a great like Toscanini, Reiner, and Celi—I will always be most impressed by the fact that you majored in physics. At Johns Hopkins.”
Well, try this on for size: “The son of a mathematician and a pianist, Brinton Averil Smith was admitted to Arizona State University at age 10, where he took courses in mathematics and German and, at age 17, completed a B.A. in mathematics.”
I think I’ll go practice counting my fingers and toes now.