Michael Steinberg
Michael Steinberg, American musicologist, was one of the finest writers on classical music of this or any age and a teacher and communicator whose knowledge and passion inspired the lives of countless people.
Born in Breslau, Germany, he was one of 10,000 Jewish children who owed their survival to the Kindertransport, the rescue mission that took place nine months before the outbreak of the second world war, during which he came to England in 1939. The Quakers found him an English family to live with, in Stapleforth, near Cambridge. He was educated at the Perse school. Then, in 1943, with his mother, he joined his 30-year-old brother Franz in St Louis, America.
Music had been part of the family home in Breslau, but by the time he was old enough to be taken to concerts, public events of the kind were forbidden to Jews, and it was in Cambridge, in 1940 – as described in his book, For the Love of Music (OUP, co-authored with Larry Rothe, 2006) – that he had his epiphany, when he saw the film Fantasia. "I saw it just once, because as a schoolboy on threepence a week in pocket money … I couldn't afford to go again … But I realised I did not need to see it again because the most important part was available for free.
Behind the sweet little fleabag [later the Arts Theatre] where Fantasia was playing there was this alley where I could stand every day after school, stand undisturbed, and listen to the soundtrack of Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra play Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Stravinsky."
In America, he studied at Princeton under Oliver Strunk, Edward Cone and Milton Babbitt and took a degree in musicology, then taught music history at various east coast colleges before joining the Boston Globe, where he became notorious as a feared and fearless critic, attacking sacred cows (Charles Munch's revered interpretation of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique was "abominable") and provoking angry calls for his dismissal. But his wit, his polished, easy writing, and above all his knowledge won him respect. Then, in a classic poacher-to-gamekeeper move, he surprised everyone by joining the very orchestra, the Boston Symphony, that he had chastised.
“Michael himself talked, with no apparent effort, in long, perfectly shaped sentences and in a voice that was warm and soft-spoken, in seeming contradiction to the sharpness of his criticism, which could draw blood. But if he was an unsparing critic he was also a profoundly positive one.”
(Photo left: Next Life - Director of Publications for Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1976-79)
(Above: Music @ Menlo, coaching chamber music)
Thereafter he worked as director of publications, programme-note writer and artistic adviser for a succession of orchestras – Boston, San Francisco, Minnesota – at the same time pursuing an active career as lecturer and chamber-music coach. He was revered throughout the US as a master of the pre-concert talk (a much more important, indeed integral, part of public music-making in America than in this country). His programme notes were so good that they were collected into fat, richly informative volumes. Perhaps best of all, his brilliant, authoritative analysis of the Beethoven quartets, which makes up half of The Beethoven Quartet Companion (1994), is the work of a modern Tovey.
With his second wife, the violinist Jorja Fleezanis, he regularly coached student ensembles at the west coast festival Music at Menlo and at the International Festival-Institute at Round Top, Texas, and also set up public poetry sessions, believing that performers could reach a better understanding of musical phrasing and rhythm by reading poetry aloud.
Michael himself talked, with no apparent effort, in long, perfectly shaped sentences and in a voice that was warm and soft-spoken, in seeming contradiction to the sharpness of his criticism, which could draw blood. But if he was an unsparing critic he was also a profoundly positive one. His consuming passion for the music he loved made him hostile to performers who, he felt, betrayed it. A typical Steinberg thrust is this (from The Symphony: a Listener's Guide, OUP, 1995), on the moment in the finale of Beethoven's Ninth when the introductory recitative gives way directly – the score is quite explicit, though it is virtually never observed – to the Ode to Joy theme, "without a second's pause for breath – a wonderful and characteristic detail wiped out by generation after generation of mindless conductors".
For him music was the centre of life: "Its capacity to give is as near to infinite as anything in this world." However, he never took himself too seriously. "Good programme notes and pre-concert talks are helpful ways of showing you the door in the wall and turning on some extra lights but the only thing that matters is what happens privately between you and the music." That was his faith, and it lit up his life's work.
(Taken from the Manchester Guardian Obituray, 2009)
(Above: The Boston Globe years with Lili Kraus, Hungarian born pianist)
Childhood photo, Breslau, Germany.
Michael spent 2 years in the Army and went to stenography school and served in that capacity.
At Manhattan School of Music. John Brown Lee (President of Manhattan School), Michael Steinberg, Walter Piston (composer), Hugo Weisgall (composer/conductor).
Taken at 25th Anniversary of Boston Music Center in the Berkshires at Serenak, 1965. Aaron Copland (composer), Michael Steinberg, Seymour Lipkin, Viola Aliferis, David del Tredici.
The Boston Symphony years, 1976-79. Michael Steinberg, Louis Krasner (violinist), Itzhak Perlman (violinist), Seiji Ozawa (conductor). Louis Krasner premiered The Berg Violin Concerto in 1935. Perlman played it with the Boston Symphony with Ozawa conducting.
The Boston Symphony years, 1976-79.
Leading a poetry reading with students aged 10-25 at Music @ Menlo Festival.
Beckoning a young student to read their poem, Music @ Menlo poetry reading.
Music @ Menlo coaching session.
Observing a young quartet performance, Music @ Menlo.
Jorja Fleezanis
(Above: Jorja Fleezanis with John Adams at the world premiere of his violin concerto, performed with the Minnesota Orchestra, Edo de Waart conducting.)
Jorja Fleezanis joined the faculty at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in 2009 as Professor of Violin holding the Henry Upper Chair in Orchestral Studies. In 2016 she received the Dorothy Richard Starling Chair that she held until her retirement in 2020. She currently holds the title of Visiting Faculty for Creative Orchestral Studies at the Interlochen Center for the Arts.
In 1989 she was appointed concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra, the first of two women to ever hold this post which she did for twenty years. Previously she had been the associate concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony and a member of the Chicago Symphony.
Ms. Fleezanis has been guest concertmaster for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Louisiana Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Mexican National Symphony Orchestra and the London Classical Players. She has been a frequent guest artist and teacher at: the Aldeburgh Britten Pears School, Prussia Cove Chamber Music sessions in England, New World Symphony, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Music@Menlo Festival, Interlochen Center for the Arts, Madeline Island Music Camp, Round Top International Festival Institute, the Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music and The Music Academy of the West.
She performed regularly with two recital partnerships, her French pianist, Cyril Huvé, and her long-term partner, Karl Paulnack. Her interest in historical performance led her to record the complete violin sonatas of Beethoven with Cyril Huvé on fortepiano that was released in 2003 on the Cyprés label. She was also a member of the FOG Trio with cellist Michael Grebanier and pianist Garrick Ohlsson, based in San Francisco.
Her passion for new music led to the Minnesota Orchestra commissioning two major solo works for her, the John Adams Violin Concerto and the Ikon of Eros by John Tavener, the latter recorded on Reference Records. Other commissions include Aaron Jay Kernis’s Brilliant Sky, Infinite Sky on CRI, commissioned for her by the Schubert Club of St. Paul, Minnesota and recorded on CRI. The world premier of Nicholas Maw’s Sonata for Solo Violin was commissioned for her by Minnesota Public Radio and broadcast on Public Radio International’s Saint Paul Sunday Morning in 1998, followed in 1999 with the British premiere at the Chester Summer Festival.
In 1998, she was the violin soloist in the American premiere of Britten’s recently discovered Double Concerto for Violin and Viola with violist Thomas Turner and the Minnesota Orchestra. Among her treasured collaborators was pianist Garrick Ohlsson with whom she recorded the Violin Sonata by Stefan Wolpe for Koch International.
Ms. Fleezanis has also been an adjunct faculty member at the San Francisco Conservatory and the University of Minnesota. She now plays on a violin made in 1700 by the Venetian maker, Matteo Goffriller.
From left to right: Jorja Fleezanis (violin), Jack Walters (clarinet), Benjamin Fryxell (cello), Stephen Yoakam (actor/narrator), Conor Hannick (piano), Justin Merritt (composer). Taken after the California premiere of Justin Merritt's commission Ithaka at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, summer of 2016.
From left to right: Stephen Yoakam, narrator, Justin Merritt, composer, Joseph Johnson, cello, Jorja Fleezanis, violin, Karl Paulnack, piano and David Pharris, clarinet; St Olaf College after performance of Ithaka.
Taken in San Francisco, 1992
In Davies Symphony Hall after Michael's pre-concert talk. John Adams (composer), Deborah O'Grady (wife and photographer), Michael Steinberg, Jorja Fleezanis.
At rehearsals on the Adams violin concerto prior to the world premiere. Edo De Waart, conductor with Jorja Fleezanis as soloist.