David Stahl Interview with Bruce Duffie . . . . . . . . .

Conductor David Stahl

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

David Stahl (November 4, 1949 – October 24, 2010) was an American conductor who served as the music director and Intendant of the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich, and the Music Director of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. A student of Leonard Bernstein, he was famous for his interpretation of Mahler's works.

Stahl was born in New York City, the son of Jewish émigré parents. David's father, Frank L. Stahl, was an engineer who took part in the restoration of the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1980s. He was born in Fürth, Germany and attended the same elementary school as Henry Kissinger. Edith Stahl, David's mother, immigrated to New York in 1938 from Essen, Germany. David's grandfather, Dr. Leo Stahl (m. Anna Regensburger), was the Jewish Community Leader of Fürth during the Nazi era. Leo was interned in Dachau concentration camp from November 11 to December 7, 1938, and emigrated to England in 1939. Arriving in New York in 1947, he was, according to Das Schicksal der jüdischen Rechtsanwälte in Bayern nach 1933, by Reinhard Weber, unsuccessful in business and died there in 1952, aged 67. Frank's sister Liselotte, after a time in Manchester, England, also came to New York, where she died in 2007.

David studied conducting at Queens College, City University of New York. After making his Carnegie Hall debut at age 23, he came under the tutelage of Leonard Bernstein, eventually taking over as music director of the Broadway production of West Side Story. [The recording conducted by the composer, in which Stahl assisted, is shown below.] In 1984, he became Music Director of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra; a position he remained in until his death 26 years later. In 1996 he was invited to be guest conductor at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz. He assumed the title of Music Director there from 1999. He also worked frequently as a guest conductor of operas and musicals at major theaters around the world, including the Bavarian State Opera, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the New York City Opera among others.

As an enthusiast of Bernstein, he had been behind several revivals of Candide, including conducting an acclaimed 2003 production, which was sung in the original English, with German narration spoken by Loriot. [A recording of this is shown below.] Stahl also led a 2008 production in Charleston, South Carolina. He was also involved in the staging of a notable production of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess in Charleston, the city where the opera is set, which went on to tour internationally in the early 1990s. In 2009 he celebrated 25 years at CSO and 10 years at the Gärtnerplatz.

David Stahl died of lymphoma on October 24, 2010. His wife, Karen, had died during the previous month. The couple had two children, Anna and Byron. David had met Karen when his daughter from his first marriage, Sonya, became a student in Karen's kindergarten class at Ashley River Creative Arts Elementary.

== An appreciation of David Stahl, by composer and double bassist Frank Proto, is at the bottom of this webpage
== Names which are links in this box and below refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website. BD

In the fall of 2000, David Stahl was in Chicago to conduct The Great Gatsby by John Harbison at Lyric Opera, featuring Jerry Hadley as the title character. Before the second performance, Stahl graciously took time to sit down with me for an interview. Portions were used on WNIB a few days later to promote more of the performances, and now, exactly a quarter-century later, I am pleased to present the entire conversation.

Bruce Duffie: You’re in Chicago conducting The Great Gatsby. This is the second production of the opera. At what point did you become involved, and know that you were going to be conducting the Chicago performances?
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David Stahl:   It’s been at least two and a half years. [At right are two portions of the review in The New York Times of the Chicago performance.]

BD:   So, it was before the premiere?

Stahl:   Before the premiere, yes.

BD:   Did you work with the original cast in New York at all?

Stahl:   No, never! All I had were scores and librettos going way back. Two years ago, Schirmer sent me draft copies of John Harbison’s libretto, and I would use that as bedtime reading. I would thumb through the very, very preliminary perusal score, which was marked with big letters PRELIMINARY and PERUSAL.

BD:   These were just to give you a general idea of where he was going?

Stahl:   The general idea of what he had been working on for fifteen years. But, as is the case, like most artists you are very involved in what you’re doing presently, and in the upcoming productions for the next two or three months, let alone what’s happening in two and half years. So, it was only just before that Met premiere where my wife and I went up to New York, and saw the premiere that I really wanted to get a handle on it.

BD:   Was it what you expected?

Stahl:   Yes and no! On the one hand, it was extremely faithful to the story, tremendously so, and musically I was blown away with a lot of what I saw and heard.

BD:   At that premiere, were there places you thought you’d like to do this, or change that, or alter something else?

Stahl:   Yes! [Both laugh]

BD:   There are tapes of the broadcasts from the New York performance, and from this Chicago production. Is it going to be good for historians to compare the two?

Stahl:   I would imagine so. I would hope that historians and musicologists, but more significantly performers and music lovers would get to know John’s score, with his very carefully detailed markings, his metronome markings, and his tempo indications, because one should follow those pretty carefully. You can’t be a metronome on the podium or anywhere else, but if you follow them as closely as John has indicated them, you will be pretty close to what we achieved here, and that’s what I’m very proud of. [John von Rhein wrote in the Chicago Tribune, “The orchestra under debut-conductor David Stahl propels the drama with a leaner, more sharply defined drive than one recalls from James Levine's more elegiac performance at the Met.”] John [Harbison] came to all of the rehearsals, and we worked very closely together. In the coaching sessions, we had a lot of time to work in great detail with the whole cast. Jerry Hadley was the only one who had done it previously, and he was tremendously eager and open to re-look at it and approach it in a different way.

BD:   For you it was almost like a world premiere?

Stahl:   In some respects, yes. John made changes... he edited it and cut some things out, because we all thought it was a little too long in New York. It became a little bit more of a streamlined piece. There may still be some things that need to be changed in it.

BD:   I was going to ask if you finally got it right.

Stahl:   For what we had, I think we got it right. There are still a few things that I would like to see, but I’m not the composer. Now I know how poor Bruckner felt when all these friends kept telling him what they thought was better, and what to do. That’s why you have all those revised editions for his symphonies.

BD:   Then you have a choice of which version to use!

Stahl:   Which version! If you’re Günter Wand you do one version, and if you’re Celibidache you do another! [Both laugh] There’s no one right way, and ultimately what John will have is the last final edition. One doesn’t have to go back to the beginning. That’s more important in this than in a symphonic work, because opera is a theater piece. Unlike on Broadway, which is our American art form, when you do an opera, everyone is geared up for that world premiere. All the press, all the musicians, all the PR and the hype is geared up as if it were a [boxing] Title Fight! This becomes One Event, and let’s face it, opera houses and singers are all busy. Maybe they started rehearsing three or four weeks beforehand, and it barely got to that first performance. There’s no chance to really evaluate it in that time of rehearsal. You have a chance to work on the scenes in great detail, but you don’t have a chance to really play the piece in a context until almost the dress rehearsal.

BD:   Would you rather have a string of previews out of town, like they do for Broadway works?

Stahl:   That’s exactly my point. How wonderful it is here at Lyric, where we have had the opportunity for a theater piece for the artists, and the singers, and orchestra, and everyone to kind of work out what works dramatically, what doesn’t work. The composer might think back in 1993 it was great, but then six or seven years later, it may not work, or on stage it doesn’t work, and then another idea comes to mind. Lenny [Leonard Bernstein] wrote ‘Somewhere’ for West Side Story almost the night before it premiered in Washington in 1957. Other things were cut, and that song came out almost at the last minute. Miracles happen, and for an operatic work like this Gatsby, so much time, and effort, and money has been poured into it. There’s nothing wrong with giving it a chance to work itself out, either in a workshop situation, or in some kind of way, so that when it finally gets in front of the greedy public, they get the best possible production.

BD:   Are we, the public, too greedy?

Stahl:   We’ve become a public that expects everything to be absolutely totally right the first time. There’s a wonderful story of Joan Sutherland. I don’t know what work she was recording, but one aria in the recording session was so spectacular! Everyone’s mouths dropped open. Then, she listened to it in the playback room, and said they had to do it again. When asked why, she said it was because otherwise she could never sing this role again, because everyone would always expect it to be performed exactly this way.

BD:   So, she had to do it poorer???

Stahl:   She did it a little less refined, and perhaps with a few rough edges but the public, because of technology, because of recordings, because of television, knows only that final document which is immutable, unchangeable. You can play a recording of Herbert von Karajan, or Joan Sutherland, or Birgit Nilsson, or anybody for fifty years, and it won’t change.
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BD:   Yet, each of us changes a little bit inside every day.

Stahl:   Every day, and the tremendous irony of it is that this is an art form of human emotion, of the soul, where the spontaneity of the artist is so crucial, and where you have to allow for individuality of the artist to interpret the individuality of the composer. So if it’s locked in absolutely like a computer, it leaves something to be desired. So your question as to whether we are too demanding, yes, we’re demanding. We have tremendously high standards, as well we should have. If you listen to orchestras and singers from seven or eight years ago, with the exception of very few, by far we have much higher levels today in so many areas of the performing arts.

BD:   We have higher levels technically. Do we also have higher levels musically?

Stahl:   In some respects, we do. We’re a little bit further away from some of the traditions, such as that quintessentially Italian sound of what Enrico Caruso was able to do, or what Jussi Björling was able to do, or what Jascha Heifetz was able to do. It’s a question of the ages. We have tremendous technical abilities, but too many people don’t spend enough time getting underneath the music, and getting into the soul of the music. That’s something which is very important to me.

* * * * *

BD:   You’ve worked on this opera, which is almost a premiere, and some other premieres. Does that help you or change your idea when you’re working with La Traviata or Tristan und Isolde?

Stahl:   Never! I approach every piece from my heart and soul, trying to get into the composer’s heart and soul, and also the heart and soul of a piece. It’s funny you should say Tristan. There’s nothing like that work. When you immerse yourself in it, the world stops. My wife almost couldn’t live with me... It was about six or seven years ago, and my whole life was taken up with Tristan. It just totally took over the house, and for months I was obsessed by it, and that was good. It became my Bible. There was something about it that was on another level, that was beyond anything one could imagine, and we learned to deal with it in our own way. It’s our challenges as artists to bring the great works to life, and to live up to the audiences’ expectations, especially with a repertoire piece. That’s much harder to do. We’re preparing a new Traviata in the spring in Munich. We will do it in German at the Gärtnerplatztheater, which is my house. It’s always a challenge when you do the repertoire in German, whether it’s French or Italian. It requires a tremendous amount of thought and commitment to the work, so that the public and their expectations, at least musically, are met. I’m not talking about dramatically and production-wise, because you never know what’s going to happen. When August Everding works, it’s honest and straightforward. There are no hidden agendas and directors’ egos trying to get in the way. It’s the composer and the work that’s first and foremost.

BD:   [With mock horror] My God, an honest production!!! [Both laugh] Is that rare? [Vis-à-vis the recording shown at right, see my interviews with Kiri Te Kanawa, Tatiana Troyanos, Marilyn Horne, and Angelina Réaux.]

Stahl:   I’m always optimistic, and it’s coming back more and more. There’s what we call ‘Eurotrash’ across the pond, and that’s created a lot of havoc in certain cities, where the public won’t come, and operas are playing nightly to 30% houses. The government subsidies are going down, and there are major, major problems. The idea of government subsidizing terrible productions is going to end, and that’s good. That’s healthy. I had the good fortune to work with Everding in his last production. We did Capriccio in Munich, and it was one of those honest productions. You took the score, and it was as if Strauss was sitting in the audience reminding him what to do. Or it could be Verdi telling Toscanini what was needed to be done to get honestly into the piece.

BD:   Is it then your responsibility to uphold this tradition in whatever repertoire you are conducting at the moment?

Stahl:   Musically, yes. Sometimes you don’t have a choice, such as if you are a guest somewhere, with a director and a production that’s already set. With my house, I’m learning a great deal in terms of working with directors, finding out what I will allow and what I won’t allow anymore.

BD:   Does this influence whether you will accept a contract, because of the director, or whether you hire a certain director in your house?

Stahl:   I work very closely with the Intendant, who is the General Director. He has the final word, and he knows what I expect. But he also works with me because he knows that we have to present a certain profile in our house that’s different than the Staatsoper [Bavarian State Opera]. If they do a production in a certain way, we can’t come anywhere near doing a similar production of the same work. So there has to be some kind of dichotomy going on, although we rarely do many of the same works. Sure, they have a Carmen and we have a Carmen, and they have a Traviata and we’re going to have our German Traviata.

BD:   I’m sure you’ve tried not to duplicate repertoire as much as you can.

Stahl:   No, but ours is a smaller house. We have a small pit. Unfortunately, we can’t do any Wagner in that house, though we do Strauss.

BD:   Do you then try to do some chamber works?

Stahl:   We do smaller works. We just did The Rake’s Progress this year, which was an enormous success. It was in German, which was very frustrating for me [laughs]. In fact, Jerry Hadley came by at the end of one performance. He was standing back stage, watching, and he loved the production. I teased him by asking if he wanted to do it in German. He looked at me and almost slugged me! [More laughter] He did not like the idea of singing Tom Rakewell ‘auf Deutsch’ [in German]. Our repertoire is quite fascinating in Munich, because we have the luxury of a 900-seat house and fifty-piece pit. We can do a lot of repertoire, but we cannot do Otello, and we cannot do The Ring. We do have access to the Prinzregententheater, which has a Wagner-sized pit, and in February of 2002 we’re doing Das Liebesverbot [a very early opera by Wagner], which was the idea of Wolfgang Wagner, since they don’t do any of the three earlier operas at Bayreuth [also Rienzi and Die Feen].

BD:   He probably just wants to see it!

Stahl:   Yes, while he’s still around! So, we’re going to do that, and we have other projects underway. But of the smaller works, we can do things like Die Gärtnerin aus Liebe [which is La Finta Giardiniera] of Mozart. We’ve actually done it in the Cuvilliés Theatre, which is the gorgeous Rococo residence theater, part of the old palace. Doing that opera there, or Don Pasquale is rather unique.

BD:   I think it would energize you.

Stahl:   Oh, yes. Mozart was in that pit with Idomeneo in 1781, and he walked those streets. He complained to his father that the pit was too small for his orchestra. We had to put the timpani in one of the side boxes! [Both laugh] But it’s absolutely fascinating when you’re walking those streets. All of us here who grew up in the U.S. reading about and studying about it, it seemed so far away. When you’re actually walking those streets and just breathing that air, it really means a lot. It’s a tremendous experience. It means a lot to my ability as an artist to interpret, and to just be part of that lifestyle.

BD:   Does that influence you when you’re in Charleston doing a Mozart symphony?

Stahl:   Oh my God, yes! When I come back home, I’m absolutely inspired, and ready to get to work, whether it’s Mozart or Brahms, or whatever. When you come back from Europe, you’ve been working with people who have centuries of tradition behind them. I remember coming back after conducting the Staatskapelle, Dresden. That’s 450 years of tradition [having been created in 1548]. All the Strauss operas were given there, as well as all those great works of Mendelssohn, and so many others. When I came back from Hamburg, having been in the Musikhalle, I was thinking of Brahms being there. It gives a vantage point to my younger players in Charleston of something that none of us ever had before, and I feel fortunate. They’ve sensed it a great deal, as well.

* * * * *

BD:   How do you divide your time between symphonic works and operas?

Stahl:   With great love and relish. I’m very fortunate in that regard. I have long believed that in the last couple of decades, the world, and this country in particular, have become much too specialized in that. When you think of the great conductors of the past, whether it’s Bruno Walter, Wilhelm Furtwängler, or Arthur Nikisch, they’re the Maestros. You didn’t say that any was a symphony conductor. You didn’t say any was an opera conductor. They were of the tradition. They grew up in opera houses, and then that gave them the background, and the flexibility, and the ability to do anything. So doing symphonic works become much easier. Georg Solti said this to me. In fact, it’s fascinating that here I am in Chicago now. The reason I took the Munich job was because of Solti. I had a wonderful hour with him, which was when he had his Solti Project at Carnegie Hall in 1994, I think. I had just come back from doing Tristan in Mannheim, so he was eager to know how it went. They have a great long Wagner tradition. Many of their players play in Bayreuth every summer. Furtwängler had been in Mannheim, so there really is a great Wagner tradition there. I talked to Solti about that, and then I mentioned to him that the Intendant there, who had invited me as a guest, talked to me about going to Munich. He was going to take over that house, and one day down the road there would something he’d like to bring me over for. They had a music director at the time who basically said point blank that every conductor must have experience in an opera house, because then he can conduct a symphony orchestra better! We talked about that for a while, and it made a lot of sense. It was not an easy decision. First, they wanted me to leave Charleston, so I said no for nine months. There were other personal reasons as well, but in the end they came back, and we worked it all out.

BD:   Now you can accommodate both?
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Stahl:   I can accommodate both, but it requires a lot of time on the plane.

BD:   You must get a lot of frequent flyer miles!

Stahl:   [Laughs] Yes, a lot of mileage! A certain airline loves me very much, but it’s very easy. From Charleston it’s a very quick hop, skip, and jump to Atlanta, and from there I can fly non-stop to Munich. I get a lot of work done, and also sleep on the plane.

BD:   Then you readjust your clock?

Stahl:   I have sometimes literally walked off a plane, gotten a taxi, and gone into the pit for an orchestra rehearsal. The adrenaline is going, and a couple of hours later you may conk out, but I take a nap in my office.

BD:   In the end, is it all worth it?

Stahl:   There are many things in life that we sell our souls to do. Everybody has to make an unwritten pact at some point, and the hardest thing for me is being away from my family. I’ve got two young children, and if I have four days off, I fly home. They also come overseas several times a year. My wife usually comes with them, and sometimes she comes alone, so we have some time alone. It’s worth it because I’m growing as an artist and as a human being. I am doing the most incredibly fulfilling work anyone can do. I’ve got the best job in the world. It’s incredible, because my son, who is in fifth grade, sees how much I love my work, and that music is my life. He comes to concerts. He plays the cello, but he’s also an athlete, and he’s a kid. He plays Pokémon, and does what everyone else does. He often says to me that one day he wants to find a job that I really like, like my dad! He sees how happy that makes the family.

BD:   Are you encouraging him to get into music, or are you keeping him as far away from it as possible?

Stahl:   It’s kind of both. I don’t want him to be a musician, but I want him to practice the cello so he becomes good enough that he can enjoy it. You never know where that will lead, whether it’s a scholarship to get into a certain school, and then he becomes a doctor, or one day at fourteen years old something hits him, and he decides this is so great, he loves it, and there’s a pretty girl in the orchestra, and he’s going to practice hard! He was a huge Michael Jordan fan — who wasn’t? — so he wanted to be a basketball player for many years. I encourage him to be happy, and to find whatever roads he can. But it requires parents who have to push sometimes, otherwise the child would spend too much time just playing the mindless things.

* * * * *

BD:   Let me ask the real easy question. What’s the purpose of music?

Stahl:   [Somewhat snidely] That’s a real easy question??? [Both laugh] Music to me has always been, and will always be a form of communication. It’s purpose is to move people, whether it’s to make them lean forward in their chair, as with the climax of a Tchaikovsky symphony, or to get sweaty palms during the first movement of a Mahler symphony. Think of the last act of Don Giovanni, or the second act of Tristan und Isolde, or the end of La Bohème, which is a three-handkerchief evening. When you can move an audience, that’s what music is. That’s art. That’s communication. The worst complement you can get from anyone after a performance is that it was interesting. It was okay. It’s a good piece. [Both groan] It’s so wonderful if you can turn on a few young people at a performance to the world of music, and to influence their lives. You can make them leave that performance thinking and being different than they were when they went in two or three hours earlier. It’s a form of communication that obviously hits the brain, but more the heart and soul. There are all forms of music, and we happen to be in what we call, generically, ‘classical music’. This is a tiny, minuscule portion of the musical world, and it’s wonderful when you can turn people on to it, and get people excited about it. To me, that’s the biggest thrill.

BD:   Should this classical music niche that we’re in, be for everyone?

Stahl:   I don’t know if it should be for everyone. It certainly isn’t, but it could be for more people than it actually is. I don’t know what percentage of the public is that really likes it, but it’s pretty small...

BD:   The record-buying public for the classical section is about 4%.

Stahl:   [Sighs] All you have to do is travel around the country and turn the radio knob, and it’s amazing what you hear and what you don’t hear! Obviously, this is nothing new, but people are just intimidated by it. They hear people singing in a foreign language with trained voices, and it’s sounds to them absolutely strange. They’ve never heard anything like it before. Yet, on the other hand, you have a movie like The Diva. [See my interview with Wilhelmenia Fernandez, who portrayed the title character.] I bet you that really started to get people more into the opera world, like the movie Fantasia may have done years ago. These cult things are good, as are concerts like The Three Tenors. We in the business kind of pooh-poohed it at time, but I would like to think that it’s actually turned people on to classical music, because they recognize some of these songs that the guys are signing.

BD:   I’ve always wondered if The Three Tenors concerts then put bodies in the seats at the opera house night after night.

Stahl:   It can’t hurt.

BD:   Are you optimistic about the whole future of musical performance?

Stahl:   For now, I am. What will happen in fifty years or a hundred years is absolutely another question. When you think how far and how quickly technology advances year after year, and month after month, what our children and grandchildren will have in the middle of this century is almost scary. They will have the ability to press a couple of buttons on their telephone, or on their television, and get a concert from the Concertgebouw, or something live from the Vienna Staatsoper. You will be able to get that in your home, and not have to deal with expensive tickets, and taxis, and babysitters, and traveling downtown in the winter weather, and...

BD:   At what point then does that become a complete overload, and we fry ourselves with all of the possibilities?

Stahl:   It’s like that now. How many cable television stations are there? You can sit with a remote control and watch six movies at once, and two baseball games, and yes, you’re fried. In the end, what do you get? What have you gotten?

BD:   Do you take this into account when you’re conducting? You’re often doing a work that is 50, or 100, or 150, or even 200 years old, which was written for a different time and a different mindset, yet behind you are all these people who would just as soon have remotes in their hands.

Stahl:   All I care about is what the musicians are performing on stage, how honest we are to the composer, and having a great evening of music. Hopefully, we will move that audience, as I said before, and communicate to them, and touch them in some way.

BD:   Does that help you to go along with the director who is trying to reach out to these people in his own direction?

Stahl:   Oh, there are certain new ways of approaching an opera, such as what Peter Sellars does. I’ve nothing against that as long as it makes sense. For me, one of the most brilliant Rings was the one Patrice Chéreau did at Bayreuth [the centennial production in 1976]. I’m a huge traditionalist Wagnerite, but I thought it was phenomenal. It helped me rethink the work from the beginning to the end. It was just a milestone.
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BD:   That’s what you want, to make people think?

Stahl:   To think, and feel, and to make them realize they’re human-beings, and to appreciate this short little [snaps fingers] pinprick of a moment we have in existence, and to be able to feel alive.

BD:   Vita brevis, ars longa [life is short, art is long]. Is it satisfying to you to be part of the ars half of that equation?

Stahl:   Tremendously! We can get into the whole meaning of life, Nietzsche and all this, but life is a gift, and every minute we’re here is a gift. If we can share it, if we can make people think and feel, we’ve done something for ourselves and for our fellow man, and sharing these great masterpieces is a part of it. It’s best with a live audience, as opposed to what hopefully won’t happen in 100 years, where you can click that dial. There’s nothing like a live audience hearing live musicians perform where the unknown, the unexpected moment seizes you.

* * * * *

BD:   You were talking earlier about the tradition, and being immersed in this tradition about these composers who have walked these streets. Are you helping to set up the tradition, especially in the American Musical Theater?

Stahl:   Sometimes you get this reputation, but the only musical I ever did was West Side Story. I did it the last time it was on Broadway, which was twenty years ago. The American Musical Theater is fabulous, but that’s not necessarily for me to do. I enjoy it. I enjoy doing excerpts in pops concerts, but I’d much rather do Don Giovanni or Tristan, or a Ring. But, for example, in Munich, we’ve done Candide in concert [CD shown at right]. I think of that more as an operetta, and it was a tremendous success! This was its first Munich performance.

BD:   So, you are establishing the tradition there. Twenty years from now when they bring it back, will they say, “Stahl’s performance did such-and-such, and so-and-so”?

Stahl:   Oh, they will be remembering those performances. In fact, we just did Porgy and Bess in concert this year. It’s expected of me, as the American conductor there. Even though they have James Levine, and Lorin Maazel, and Zubin Mehta also there, it has fallen on my shoulders to do the big American stage works, which I embrace.

BD:   Are you going to bring Gatsby over there?

Stahl:   I’d like to, absolutely! My Intendant was here at the dress rehearsal, and both Jerry Hadley and I are so in love with this piece, it deserves to be heard over there. But people over there don’t know F. Scott Fitzgerald. A few do, but it’s not like they know it here.

BD:   Can’t they just approach it as they would another opera?

Stahl:   I think they could, especially with surtitles, like they do with Peter Grimes and Billy Budd, or any of those things.

BD:   Or like the works based on Schiller or Pushkin.

Stahl:   Exactly. You do a piece like The Queen of Spades [Tchaikovsky based on Pushkin] in Munich, so what kind of tradition that does have with its morbid tale? But I’m proud of being able to do the great, great works of our country in a first-class way. I’m very proud of that, and I will continue to do that.

BD:   [Noting that my guest was 50 years old] Are you at the point in your career that you want to be at this age?

Stahl:   [Thinks a moment] I would say yes. It’s one of those questions of what and why you sell your soul to the Devil! I am where I want to be as an artist. I’m doing symphonic and operatic works, sharing my life with an orchestra in America and an opera company in Europe. How many conductors in the world have an orchestra on one side of the Pond, and an opera company on the other? There aren’t that many... I know there’s another conductor in this city [referring to Daniel Barenboim, and both laugh] who has that, and Levine has got the Munich Philharmonic. I’m sure there are a few others, but it’s tremendously rewarding.

BD:   It’s a small club.

Stahl:   Yes, and I’d like to be doing a little bit more of the repertoire that I feel in my heart more and more that I can offer best. We are going to do a concert version of The Maid of Orleans [Joan of Arc] of Tchaikovsky this spring, which will be a lot of fun. It’s too big to do in our pit, but we can do it on stage at the Prinzregententheater in concert. I love doing opera in concert, because the immediacy between the audience and the singers is phenomenal. You don’t have a pit separating them. You don’t have sets and costumes and all that. The singers are literally in the lap of the audience, and it focuses on the musical intensity, the drama without being distracted by extraneous dramatical theatrical things. It can really focus on all the musical values. When we did Porgy and Bess in Munich, for example, I have never ever seen an audience go so wild before.

BD:   Does this make it harder to work on stage, when you have to have a director doing his ‘version’?

Stahl:   Oh, no. There’s something very special about the magic that goes on with the theater. It’s just that I happen to love the concert form as well.

BD:   I get the feeling you want it all!

Stahl:   Yes! [Sighs]

BD:   I hope you keep getting it all!

Stahl:   Thank you.

BD:   Thank you for spending the time with me today. and thank you for bring Gatsby here.

Stahl:   It’s been my pleasure. It’s a great work. I hope many Chicagoans will have a chance to listen to it during our run here.

BD:   How many performances are there?

Stahl:   There are nine performances in total. It’s a great new addition to the opera world, and a great addition to American music, because it’s brilliantly composed, and very memorable.

stahl An Appreciation by Frank Proto.

I met David in 1976 while a member of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. He joined the orchestra after having won the Exxon/Arts Endowment Conductors Program award. Discovering that we were both expatriate New Yorkers, a lifelong friendship began.

David's official position with the CSO was conducting assistant. This meant that unless there was a calamity of cataclysmic proportions, he would likely serve out his three-year stint never actually having the opportunity to conduct the orchestra. Conducting assistants generally attend rehearsals sitting score-in-hand, trying to stay alert in case the music director turns around and shouts something like "was the second horn OK in measure 465?" They also serve as general gofers at concerts and recording sessions, and being at the bottom of the orchestra's totem pole, suffer the wrath of management personnel, librarians, stage hands and musicians whenever a scapegoat is required in a face-saving situation.

The period between 1976 and 1980 was a tumultuous one for the Cincinnati Symphony. Music director Thomas Shippers, an important mentor in David's life, fell ill. He missed most of the 1976 season and passed away in 1977. The orchestra management was constantly scrambling for last-minute guest conductors and the lowly conducting assistant was the last thing that occupied anyone's mind. David was searching for ways to hone his skills.

Opportunity knocked in an unusual way one day. The orchestra was preparing a fund-raiser in which musicians would offer their services, musical or otherwise, to patrons who agreed to donate a set amount of money. With our brilliant young principal cellist, Peter Wiley, we cooked up a plan where I would write a cello concerto which Peter would play and David would conduct if someone would donate $2000.00 to the orchestra. We then convinced Walter Susskind, who was serving as the orchestra's Music Advisor until a new Music Director could be found, to approve the plan, promising to schedule the work on a future subscription concert. Since most musicians' premiums were listed at around $50.00 to $100.00 we weren't given much chance to sell ours. As it turned out, an interested contemporary music aficionado, in the person of Marion Rawson, bought our premium and the new concerto was played during the 1978-79 season. For most of the Cincinnati audience this was the first opportunity they had to see David conduct. They responded with a huge ovation at the end of his concert which ended with a roaring Symphonie Fantastique.

The following year we submitted another premium for the fund-raiser. This time David would conduct a new double bass concerto that I would write for François Rabbath. We ran into a bit of trouble at first: "Bass concerto! you guys are crazy. No one will ever buy that one!" Tripling our price didn't seem to be a wise move either. But, wonder of wonders, Marion Rawson again came forward. Still, some P.R. department doubts and worries about attendance at a concert with an unknown bass player and a young conductor existed. But a determined David was out doing interviews all over the place. His official stint with the orchestra was over and he was now appearing as a guest conductor. His concert drew the 2nd largest audience of the 1981-82 season.

Later in 1982 I wrote the Fantasy for Double Bass and Orchestra, again for Rabbath. After the premiere with the Houston Symphony, I wanted to record the piece. David took the score, learned it in less than a month & conducted the sessions like a seasoned pro. He was barely 30 years old. A couple of years after that he took over the reins in Charleston, and slowly built a first-class sounding ensemble. During my years in Cincinnati we raided David's orchestra several times, getting principal clarinetist Richard Hawley, and concertmasters Alexander Kerr and Timothy Lees to fill the same positions in our CSO.

Fate with the bass continued to strike, when in 1993 Rabbath and I went to Charleston to perform and record my Carmen Fantasy for Double Bass and Orchestra. Despite having a full week of concerts, including a couple of huge symphonies, David delivered a beautiful performance and recording of the work, filling out our new CD: Works for Double Bass and Orchestra. His orchestra continued to move in an upward arc both musically and technically. Working in the confines of a small orchestra and operating on a shoestring budget, is challenging for the best musicians, but we can see how it was preparing him for his eventual appointment as music director of the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich. I wish I had a recording of David's phone call making the announcement. He was at the top of the world!

A few years later we collaborated still again. This time on a violin concerto for former Charleston (Cincinnati and Royal Concertgebouw) concertmaster Alexander Kerr. David, who was passionate about the Holocaust, wanted a big violin concerto, to be performed on the 60th anniversary of Kristallnacht. He encouraged me to educate myself on the subject before writing a note. I took his advice and will be eternally grateful for it. A thoroughly mature David Stahl brought Can This Be Man? to life in 1998. The tears that the performance by David and Alex brought to the audience that night quickly revisited me when I learned of his passing on October 24, 2010.

So David, a last Ciao and a big thank you for bringing good things to so many lives while you were with us.

Frank Proto
October 29, 2010

This conversation was recorded in Chicago on October 6, 2000. Portions were broadcast on WNIB five days later. This transcription was made in 2025, and posted on this website at that time. My thanks to British soprano Una Barry for her help in preparing this website presentation.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here. To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

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Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he continued his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.

You are invited to visit his website for more information about his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a full list of his guests. He would also like to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a century ago. You may also send him E-Mail with comments, questions and suggestions.