• About Jeff von der Schmidt, the Hà Nội New Music Ensemble & LA International New Music Festival

Sound Travels with Jeff von der Schmidt

~ A blog about new music, travel and food

Sound Travels with Jeff von der Schmidt

Tag Archives: Leonard Bernstein

From Vienna to Việt Nam with the Influence of Leonard Bernstein

14 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by Jeff von der Schmidt in Cong Ca Phe, Famous Father Girl, Hanoi, Hanoi New Music Ensemble, Jamie Bernstein, Leonard Bernstein, Tanglewood, Uncategorized, Vienna, Vienna Philharmonic, Vietnam

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Austria, Bayreuth, Beethoven, Cong Ca Phe, Famous Father Girl, Hanoi, Hanoi New Music Ensemble, Jamie Bernstein, Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Serge Prokofiev, Vienna, Vienna Philharmonic, Vietnam

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St. Joseph’s Cathedral from a Cộng Cà Phê in the Old Quarter of Hà Nội.

“There are no coincidences.” – Leonard Bernstein

A day before concluding my eleven week residency this April with the Hà Nội New Music Ensemble, I did something routine before I leave Việt Nam. I went across the street from where I stay to my local Cộng Cà Phê, which has hands down the world’s best coffee.

“Cho anh cà phê nâu đá,” I ordered in Vietnamese, which frankly I don’t need to do anymore. The young and attentive staff greet me, often generously coach me in Vietnamese pronunciation each morning and usually just show up with my order. Being older in Việt Nam has its advantages. “Hello, grandfather!” is their normal salutation.

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The Hamburg Elbphilharmonie & Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder

27 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by Jeff von der Schmidt in Arnold Schoenberg, Composers, Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, Hanoi New Music Ensemble, Kent Nagano, Music, Uncategorized, Vietnam, Walt Disney Concert Hall

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Alan Gilbert, Anja Silja, Arnold Schoenberg, Elbphilharmonie, Gurrelieder, Hamburg, Hamburg Staatskapelle, Hamburg Staatsoper, Hanoi New Music Ensemble, Johannes Brahms, Kent Nagano, Leonard Bernstein, Mari Kodama, Pierre Boulez, St. Michael's Church, Travel

2017-06-18 15.11.00

The shining new Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.

If you’re curious why Alan Gilbert is leaving the New York Philharmonic for Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie, here’s a statistic for you. My friend Kent Nagano’s entire ten concert season at the shining new hall with his Hamburg Staatsorchester is already completely sold out. How long did it take? One hour.

Welcome to Hamburg!

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Autumn in Asia: New Roles as Artistic Advisors in Hà Nội, Việt Nam Begin in October

17 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by Jeff von der Schmidt in Composers, Contemporary Music, Food, LA International New Music Festival, Music, REDCAT, Southwest Chamber Music, Travel, Vietnam

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Anthony Bourdain, Ascending Dragon, Asia, Hanoi, Hanoi Philharmonic Orchestra, Kim Ngoc Tran, LA International New Music Festival, Leonard Bernstein, Nguyen Thien Dao, Pham Minh Thanh, Song Hong Ensemble of Hanoi, Southwest Chamber Music, Tanglewood, Ton That Tiet, Vietnam, Vu Nhat Tan

Jan and I at

At Phở Sương, or Happy Noodle, in the Old Quarter of Hà Nội in 2013.

Jan and I are thrilled, honored, and excited to begin a new adventure this October, one which I am happy to share with all my blog readers around the world.

Soon after my last post about our Los Angeles International New Music Festival at REDCAT in Walt Disney Concert Hall, an official invitation arrived from Dr. Lê Anh Tuấn, Deputy Rector of the Việt Nam National Academy of Music in Hà Nội. Dr. Tuan was inviting us to serve as Artistic Advisors to the Hà Nội Philharmonic Orchestra and play a key role in the founding of the Hà Nội New Music Ensemble.

Our answer? An obvious and immediate YES, YES, YES!

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From 100 to 103: The Wisdom of Elliott Carter

18 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by Jeff von der Schmidt in Composers, Contemporary Music, Elliott Carter, Evan Hughes, LA International New Music Festival, Los Angeles, Music, New York City, REDCAT, Southwest Chamber Music, Tambuco Percussion Ensemble, Walt Disney Concert Hall

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Abdiel Gonzalez, Betty Freeman, E.E. Cummings, Elissa Johnston, Elliott Carter, Ezra Pound, Jon Lee Keenan, LA International New Music Festival, Leonard Bernstein, Leonard Stein, Marianne Moore, Pierre Boulez, Strand Bookstore, Tambuco Percussion Ensemble, Wallace Stevens

Elliott Carter at work in his Greenwich Village apartment on W. 12th.

Elliott Carter at work in his Greenwich Village apartment on W. 12th Street.

Around 2:30 P.M. on the afternoon of June 7th, 2012 my wife Jan and I arrived at Elliott Carter’s apartment for what was to be our last meeting together.  With Jan’s family in Brooklyn and New Jersey, we’d drop in on Elliott every opportunity we could and have luckily lost count just how many times we’d visited.  As Elliott entered his late 90s, each meeting became a special occasion. He was 103 that final late spring day.

The days of lunches prepared by his wife Helen were long gone by that point, but we still remember her simple New England tomato soup, and often quietly wear the scarf she gave Jan or the tie she gave me. And Carter was not far, about a block down and over, from the apartment of Charles Ives, which we’d sometimes go and see after visiting with Carter.

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The Autumn Gold of Vienna

12 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by Jeff von der Schmidt in Austria, Food, Uncategorized, Vienna

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Arnold Schoenberg, Cafe Demel, Cafe Landtmann, E. Randol Schoenberg, Gustav Klimt, Hollywood Exiles, Leonard Bernstein, Roland Berger, Solti Ring Cycle, The Seccession Building, The Woman in Gold, Vienna, Vienna Philharmonic

The Seccession in Vienna.

The Seccession in Vienna.

To the Time, Its Art. To the Art, Its Freedom.

My home of Hollywood was the exiled haven of a legendary list of emigres, my mom serving many of them at 20th Century Fox or Chasen’s. Older teachers and colleagues spoke rapturously of working with Otto Klemperer and Bruno Walter when they were with the Los Angeles Philharmonic or Columbia Symphony. That meant discovering Mahler would not be far away. Lotte Lehmann was at the Music Academy in Santa Barbara. Erich Wolfgang Korngold invents the film score here, his violinist granddaughter Katie living down the street from our house in Eagle Rock. Alma Mahler lives with Franz Werfel in Beverly Hills. Schoenberg is friends with Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers and his entire family are now great friends. And a very young Zubin Mehta was leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic, recording Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Varese and William Kraft, so the name Hans Swarowsky was in the air.

Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (I could stop right there but it wouldn’t be honest) Schubert, Brahms, the Strauss Family, Bruckner, Wolf, Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern. The strongest list of local composers on Planet Earth. The Viennese feel they own this music so in September of 1977 I set out to find out their secrets.

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From Old Hollywood to Old Vienna

29 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by Jeff von der Schmidt in Austria, Contemporary Music, Education, LA International New Music Festival, Music, Southwest Chamber Music, Travel, Uncategorized, Vienna Philharmonic

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Arnold Schoenberg, Bayreuth Festival, Bertolt Brecht, Chasen's Restaurant, Georg Eisler, Hanns Eisler, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Leonard Bernstein, Leonard Stein, Otto Klemperer, Patrice Chereau, Pierre Boulez, Roland Berger, Vienna Philharmonic

A gorgeous Viennese spring day.

A gorgeous Viennese spring day.

“Am I boring you?”

I was 22 years old in September of 1977. I had dreamed and worked and worked and dreamed of studying music in Vienna. At the time I played the French horn, which I retired in 1998 to devote myself to conducting. But for 25 years or more the horn was my voice, my love, my sound. And the person who had the greatest sound in the world was in Vienna, Roland Berger of the Vienna Philharmonic. All that money washing dishes in my parents’ restaurant was beginning to pay off.

However as I now look back, one man took me under his wing, guided me, encouraged me, talked to me, questioned me. And I know that I learned as much, if not more, from renowned Austrian painter Georg Eisler than any musical mentor I would encounter. His father, composer Hanns Eisler, was nominated for two Academy Awards in the 1940s. Somewhat more ominously, Hanns was the prime target of Richard Nixon and the House Un-American Activities Committee, known as HUAC.

“Am I boring you?”

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The Housatonic at Stockbridge

31 Saturday May 2014

Posted by Jeff von der Schmidt in Composers, Contemporary Music, LA International New Music Festival, Los Angeles, Music, Southwest Chamber Music, Travel, Uncategorized

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American Music, Berkshires, Boston Symphony, Brooklyn Bridge, Charles Ives, Charles Wuorinen, Elliott Carter, Gloria Cheng, Hollywood Boulevard, John De Keyser, Leonard Bernstein, New York City, Tanglewood, When Pigs Fly Farm

The Housatonic at Stockbridge.

The Housatonic at Stockbridge.

Maybe I was fated to fall in love in the Berkshires…

Let me flashback to a hot summer afternoon on Hollywood Boulevard in 1968. The bookstores, record shops, head joints, Indian restaurants, foot traffic and motorcycle gangs of Hell’s Angels were prodigious. I’d been inspired hearing The Fourth of July on a CBS Young Persons concert with Leonard Bernstein. Who was this American composer, Charles Ives? Our “Emerson, Twain and Thoreau all rolled into one” as Bernstein had described him.

John Kirkpatrick had recorded the Concord Sonata and I had gobbled it up like a piece of pumpkin pie when I saw the record at an old Hollywood Boulevard legend, Phil Harris Records. No bar lines? No meter? Fists on the piano? Forget the Mahler revival underway, my passion revolved around this American composer from Danbury, Connecticut. Next door to Phil Harris Records was a legendary music shop, our Doblinger’s or Patelson’s, owned by John de Keyser. Oversized scores of Boulez’s Pli selon pli and Penderecki’s St. Luke Passion were in the window display enticing me to enter.

I looked in awe at an item on the shelf. There was the great white whale of American music, The Concord Sonata by Charles Ives.

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Hanoi in Hollywood 3

01 Thursday May 2014

Posted by Jeff von der Schmidt in Betty Freeman, Composers, Contemporary Music, John Cage, LA International New Music Festival, Los Angeles, Southwest Chamber Music, Travel, Uncategorized, Vietnam

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Betty Freeman, Bruce Weigl, Claude Debussy, Elliott Carter, Emperor Bao Dai, Hanoi, Igor Stravinsky, LA International New Music Festival, Leonard Bernstein, Los Angeles, Mark Swed, Paris, Song Hong Ensemble of Hanoi, Ton That Tiet, Venice Beach Walkway, Vu Nhat Tan, Walt Disney Concert Hall

 

Song Hong selfie going up Bunker Hill to Disney Hall.

Song Hong selfie going up Bunker Hill to Disney Hall.

I’ve always thought of Los Angeles as the New Vienna of classical music. Because if you care about the 20th century story of classical music, the chapters about LA are page turners.

Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky for monumental starters. Martha Graham is from Santa Barbara cutting her teeth here as a young woman. John Cage is born here in 1912 (and Merce Cunningham dances in the world premiere of Appalachian Spring, which was composed mostly when Copland was at MGM). Erich Wolfgang Korngold establishes the film score and let’s be culturally honest and admit that movies have had an influence on the world. Pierre Boulez conducts his American debut at the Monday Evening Concerts, the oldest continuing series of new music in the world. And the LA Philharmonic’s Minimalist Jukebox Festival this season proves that a big institution can move forward.

And God bless Betty Freeman, who commissioned everybody and took pictures of them all (mine with Elliott Carter and Oliver Knussen are great lifetime memories). Driving past Hillcrest Dr. in Beverly Hills where she lived, just up the road from where I grew up in West Hollywood, never feels the same anymore……

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