Classical music doesn't bite.
Afraid to attend a classical concert? Well, as one musician visiting Wilkes-Barre recently advised, "Just sit and see what happens, even if you daydream during the music. We don't care if you clap between the movements."
Those last words may seem sacrilege to the well-initiated classical music concertgoer. For those who hesitate to take part in the experience, however, for those who may not even realize that this music is written in "movements" - sections of a composition roughly equivalent to chapters of a book - this was the advice of Loretta O'Sullivan, cellist with the Four Nations Ensemble, a chamber ensemble with national reputation.
Since 1986 the Four Nations Ensemble has been playing music of the 17th and 18th centuries - Back, Mozart, Haydn and Vivaldi being leading names of the period. They have been visiting the Wilkes-Barre area four times a year for the last three years through a Chamber Music America Matching Grant program that has made them part of the King's College "Experiencing the Arts" series.
While the core group of three musicians - Andrew Appel, the harpsichordist and fortepianist who founded the ensemble, violinist Ryan Brown (the only married member of the group and father of two young sons) and cellist Loretta O'Sullivan - give classes for King's students, all concerts are open to the public.
Northeast Pennsylvania audiences have been treated to evening concerts in the King's College J. Carroll McCormick Campus Ministry Center and a loyal and steadily building body of Four Nations fans enjoys free noontime concerts at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church.
Chamber music was, as the name implies, originally intended to be performed in the music room of homes that would have been, indeed, grand but not as vast as a public concert hall. The experience is more intimate than listening to a symphonic orchestra - a few musicians with no conductor. What makes the Four Nations even more special is that their instruments are reproductions of the type of instruments played in the 1600s and 1700s.
While the outside appearance is essentially the same, the inside construction is different from that of modern-day instruments, which came into use around the mid-19th century.
Rhythms, emotions
The sparkle in Andrew Appel's eyes is apparent as this tall, learned pixie with thinning hair describes the difference in sound by saying that the instruments "shimmer."
Anyone who has ever heard a harpsichord can understand this: somewhat like the contrast between the beam of a searchlight and sunlight reflected on the sea.
At a recent concert at the McCormick Center at King's one could not only hear the quiver and flow of the sounds, one could see the rushes of rhythms and emotions as violinist Ryan Brown fairly danced in his seat: legs lifting from the toes and "daylight" momentarily flashing between his bottom and the chair as the bow worked across the strings.
WVIA was present this night. Earlier, the radio station had recorded the group playing for and interacting with an audience of children from area schools. This is the first in what the station proposes as a possible Public Radio series for children which would feature the Four Nations.
Tonight, their personnel were taping the concert, hidden behind a screen as Andy described, "like the Wizard of Oz."
The piece was a Mozart quartet in which the trio was joined by a guest artist culled from an "affinity group" of musicians which the three core members have established to meet such needs.
Musicians converge
While Andy resides in Germantown, NY, Loretta lives in New Jersey and Ryan Brown has made a home in Washington, DC, the three musicians converge to rehearse and give concerts on both the east and west coasts of the United States. It was not difficult for them to establish a pool of other fine musicians to add to the ensemble when a piece calls for more parts because of the wide exposure Appel, O'Sullivan and Brown have had in the music world.
The ensemble has performed at New York's Mostly Mozart Festival and at American festivals as far away as Washington State and Santa Rose, California.
They are being presented today at "Great Performances at Lincoln Center" and have been invited by the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC to perform there in October.
It is easy to meet other good artists when you have performed at the Spoleto Festival in Italy, have played with the Bach Ensemble for the BBC in England, have appeared with the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra or have been recorded on Sony, Decca, Bridge and other leading classical music record labels as individual members of the core group have.
Baroque in the Bronx
The lives of the three musicians are certainly not all glamour, however. Part of their time is spent in the bullet-ridden South Bronx of New York teaching 12 and 13-year-olds in the public schools about the Baroque period in an inventive program called "Noteworthy."
Andrew Appel raised funding for the program himself from the Department of Youth Services, the Herbert Goldman Foundation, the Rosenthal Foundation, the Josephine Bay Paul & C. Michael Paul Foundation and individual donors.
Music is presented to the students as a "product." They listen to it, learn about its history and structure, and then must "market" the product and sell it to their community. And they do.
The young people mount local concerts: acquiring a hall, handling publicity and promotion, selling tickets - the works.
"These are kids who most of the country says are hopeless," says Andrew, "but you should have heard them on a museum field trip recently, discussing whether a certain painting is or ‘ain't' Baroque. They argued about the use of color, unity, dimension and balance."
While this method of education is a far cry from Appel's teachings at the Julliard School (from which he obtained his doctorate as well as holding an international soloist degree from the Royal Conservatory in Antwerp) and Princeton University, and while he recognizes the fact that many of the children will, never-the-less, end up on the streets, he sees the project as proof that, "Everyone is elite."
To Wilkes-Barre area audiences the Four Nations' view of elitism means that, as Ryan says, "Enjoyment of classical music works on all levels. You don't need to know how to describe what you hear in order to enjoy it."
"People who listen to pop music rarely love a song until they have heard it repeated a number of times," adds Appel.
Andy goes on to explain that, while classical music is more complex, the basic difference between enjoying classical and enjoying pop is that, "this familiarity is more difficult with a 30-minute piece than it is with a 3-minute piece.
"Everyone is capable of being elite. Elitism is O.K. as long as it's not exclusionary." Everyone fears that his stomach will growl during the quiet or silent moments of a chamber concert. Everyone worries that he will suffer a loud coughing attack or applaud at the wrong place. It's part of the fun.
Whereas both Appel and Brown come from families of classical musicians, O'Sullivan did not hear a classical orchestra until one visited her elementary school when she was 8 years old. She began studies the following year and knew by age 10 that she would be a musician.
With hair of ash brown containing, perhaps, some barely perceptible gray, Loretta has the composure and outward serenity of a Renaissance lady; yet she possesses a craft forceful enough to reduce an audience to putty.
An almost breathless woman was standing with one hand perched upon her chest, staring down into the harpsichord after a November concert, saying, "It's so wonderful to hear this beautiful music that you have never heard before by someone that you have never heard of."
The program was titled "Dutch Treats" and featured works by Willem de Fesch and Peter Hellendaal, both virtually unknown to Americans. Presenting not only the already familiar but making the lost or obscure familiar as well is a specialty of the Four Nations. As historians, they often bring music "out of the closet," sometimes reviving pieces not heard in 100 years.
They have spent so much time researching old scores at the New York Public Library that they have recently been named Associate Performing Ensemble for the Special Music Collection there.
A session they conducted with a Literature, Arts & Civilization Honors Class at King's College last fall was a lesson in all those areas as well as history, cuisine and gender roles.
Music world gossip
In between playing snatches of various musical interpretations of the Orpheus myth, they discussed with students how watching variations on a given myth through generations betrays how eras differ in their regard of sexual identities.
They joked about Luciano Pavarotti's size; they taught that St. Cecilia is the patron saint of music; they likened French and Italian versions of arias on Orpheus to those countries differing, nationally characteristic approaches to food - even told the story of the chef in the court of Louis XV who invented whipped cream but committed suicide because he was dissatisfied with a spur-of-the-moment meal he had just been obliged to prepare for 150 guests.
They gossiped with the guest soprano about little-known adventures of Marie Antionette and Madam Pompadour the way most of us would gossip about Cher or Oprah.
Judy Plummer, director of student activities at King's College and a member of the Steering Committee for Chamber Music in Northeastern Pennsylvania, has been the Ensemble's liaison with the Wilkes-Barre community since they gave their first concert at the college five years ago. She has greeted audiences at each concert, making opening remarks of welcome.
At the most recent concert, however, Plummer had to explain that the 3-year grant from Chamber Music America was intended only to introduce the Ensemble to the community.
Funds are needed
Only four more concerts have been fully funded by C.M.A. and supported by the Josephine Bay Paul & C. Michael Paul Foundation, community contributors and the Lila Wallace - Reader's Digest Fund.
These concerts will be in February and April.
(Visions the Steering Committee has of sending the Four Nations and their music into the schools so that local children would be able to get the same kind of benefits as those obtained by those schoolchildren in the Bronx have not yet been funded at all.) King's College will be able to bring the Four Nations back as Artists-in-Residence for the 1995-96 school year so the relationship with the college students will continue; but if the community does not want to lose the relationship it must come up with the means to have the concerts continue.
"The steering committee is a small but very dedicated group of people," Ms. Plummer acknowledged. She urged concertgoers to sign the guestbook that keeps their names on the mailing list and invited them to work on the committee and to send donations for the Four Nations Residency Program to King's College.
The Four Nations' name represents the four Catholic monarchies in Europe at the time of Louis XIV - France, Spain, Austria and Savoy (which includes part of modern-day Italy).
Schnitzel, anyone?
Boscov's department store has been catering the luncheons that follow the St. Stephen's concerts, usually featuring wiener schnitzel or pasta or some other cuisine appropriate to one of those nations for $3 per person.
The classical music "insiders" and newcomers who have little musical knowledge but know what they like sit tableside together and chomp on Boscov's dishes.
Just coming off a "concert high" and after Plummer's sobering words, Barbara Morris, a frequent Four Nations concertgoer, was enjoying her luncheon when suddenly she said to her companions, "What would we do, where would we be without music?"
She stopped chewing, thought for a moment, then visibly shivered. No one wanted to answer the question.