رونوشت کامل Interview Only w/ Anthony Tommasini - Remembering The “Voice Of A Century”

Jackie Robinson, the biggest pathbreaker in baseball history. If you were writing a book about him, was he also one of the great, great players? Yes, actually he was, but we forget that, all we remember, and in a way that's happened to her. So I think he knew I would tell the story well and be sensitive to it, but in a way he wanted the Times critic to say, well, make a case for her, you know, artistically. I mean, So that's why the book, the subtitle, The Life and Artistry, I spent a lot of time writing about her recordings, her voice, her approach, how she, when she was rejected from music school, she learned this stuff on her own. But, but it's, she was a major, major artist. 00:07:08 Speaker 1: So what, it is interesting, you know, her, her life story growing up in Philadelphia and not having these opportunities. And it's a, It's such a reminder. I mean, I'll be honest. I've always said one of the reasons why I'm not a professional French horn player is I remember the first time I heard somebody not as good as I was technically make a better sound. And there is something called a gift. We all know it. And you have it or you don't. And the way you describe her voice is terrific. Because I think a lot of people can sing. But can you... Can you amplify on your own? 00:07:49 Speaker 2: Right. 00:07:49 Speaker 1: And she was doing it without all the modern help that everybody has today to boost sound or to boost different decibels within your sound. So describe her sound a little bit, because I think that must be what really jumped out at you when you heard those recordings. 00:08:07 Speaker 2: And I think also what jumps out at all people who hear those recordings and heard her in her church. One thing I learned, which I is that from Mahalia Jackson to Marian Anderson to Beyonce today, to Dionne Warwick, to Leon Price, growing up in the black church was everything, everything, everything in their lives. And for her, that was true too. She was conscripted into the junior choir at six years old. And before long, everybody was bragging about the baby contralto. So already this child had a kind of low set voice. But Anderson, both as a young woman and throughout her career, also had this wonderful middle and upper range too. She could get, but it was a haunting, beautiful thing about her voice that when she got into soprano terrain, it was beautiful and radiant, but it sounded like it was emanating from that awesome low voice. 00:09:11 Speaker 1: Well, you can go high. and low and you're using your low you're using your diaphragm to support it i mean you can hear thin versus full absolutely you would never describe her her her high range is thin. 00:09:25 Speaker 2: No no no she she it just emanated from everything was supported and. 00:09:31 Speaker 1: So that's the gift isn't it this isn't some like training mechanism i mean you know i went through diaphragm breathing exercises back in the day and all of those things and you know i'm sure she did learn those things over time but This was just a gift that she had, wasn't it? 00:09:45 Speaker 2: Yes, I think that's a gift. Also, her younger sisters both have very good voices. They actually thought about maybe could they have a career. 00:09:57 Speaker 1: Mom and dad must have had some good voices as well. 00:09:58 Speaker 2: Well, her mother, not her father so much, but her mother did. And, but yeah, I mean, she, so yes, the voice, that's a gift. Musicality, just having instincts for music, that's a gift. You either have it or you don't. The intellectual, analytic part of music that you can learn. that you learn by going to school, by studying harmony, by working with composers, by working with coaches. And that's what she had to find her way around. I mean, I tell the story in the book that she was taking private lessons and finally at around 17, she says, okay, I have to get serious. And she takes herself off to the Philadelphia Musical Academy, which no longer exists. And she tries to get an application and she, kind of snippy, young, pretty, blonde receptionist says, oh, we don't take colored. And Anderson talked with her journalist friend, Emily Kimbrough, 50 years later about it. It's still hurt. She said, I finally came face to face with what it means to be a Negro in this country. And the shock, you know, was like something physical. You would think she knew that already, but somehow having that happened to her. So even then, She wasn't going to go to music school. She had to keep learning from expert coaches and teachers, which is why she eventually made herself, just found a way to get to Europe. 00:11:26 Speaker 1: Well, I was just going to say, I mean, this is, there's a lot of our 20th century black music history had to be popularized in Europe and respected in Europe. The musicians got more respect in Europe before they ever got back here. This has been true of multiple genres of music. So how did she get there? 00:11:45 Speaker 2: Well, it was 1927. She had just turned 30. She had saved money. The church raised money for her, and she finally took herself off to London, and she stayed there for a year. And by the end, she sang at a London proms concert, believe it or not. I mean, that was a big deal. So it was kind of a big success. Then she came back home, and then The second time she went to Europe, that was in 1930, and she applied for a Rosenwald Fund scholarship. And she wrote the most poignant letter where she said she wants to be a fine artist who will be accredited to her people. And she got a fellowship to go study in Germany. This was 1930 in Germany, 1931 in Germany. 00:12:36 Speaker 1: Can we say that again? Early 1930s Germany. Here's this black woman. 00:12:42 Speaker 2: Black woman. And it's really interesting. There's a scholar and historian, Kira Thurman, who's written a lot about this, about trying to parse the reception she got. And like German leader, we're so central to the identity of German culture and

German people and stuff that they confounded them that how could this black American woman sing our music so beautifully, you know, and she got reviews, rave reviews, but sometimes along the lines of, it's horrible to say it, but they would essentially were saying, she sings Schubert so well, you wouldn't know she was black. So they, they had to kind of, bleach out her color and just sort of, but then she wound up going to Scandinavia and she had a promoter there and she found an accompanist there, a Finnish man, Kosti Vahanen. And before long, Marian Fever gripped Scandinavia. 00:13:46 Speaker 1: How many different languages did she speak? Was she able to sing it? 00:13:51 Speaker 2: This is someone who barely finished high school and she became fluent in German. It's hard to know. She, she was pretty comfortable in French and the Scandinavian language is a little bit because she, she had a Finnish accompanist and she immersed herself in this songs and this stuff. But, but at least three, I'd say, you know, English and German and French. 00:14:14 Speaker 1: It's, it's, and, and those are the three that she's recorded in. There's recordings. 00:14:19 Speaker 2: She also recorded Italian arias, but the, the, opera but sort of brings up a whole nother. 00:14:26 Speaker 1: That's more of a fanatic or what. 00:14:29 Speaker 2: No no it's it's more that she no it's a beautiful language for singing it's that she from the start didn't see the point of studying too much italian opera because she wasn't going to get into opera companies in the united. 00:14:47 Speaker 1: States oh interesting so she just yeah so a whole genre that she might have been We may have missed out on a whole subsection of canon had she felt like she could have broken into. 00:15:03 Speaker 2: An opera company. In 1925, she won a competition for the New York Philharmonic to make her debut at Lewiston Stadium. And she won against several hundred other applicants. And the big aria that she sang was a Donizetti aria, O Mio Fernando. It knocked everybody out. At the London Proms concert, she also sang that aria. So it was exactly what you said. It was a hint of what she could have done. I mean, you mentioned her debut at the Met in 1955. First of all, that is not that long ago that the Metropolitan did not have black singers on its stage. But she had already sung in Carnegie Hall, in major halls in the 30s and 40s, Why not? What was wrong? The difference was on the Carnegie Hall stage, a black woman was sort of just a voice. On stage at the Met, you are a character. You could be somebody's lover or somebody's mother or somebody's brother or, I mean, sister. And the other singer would inevitably be white. And we couldn't have that. You know, you couldn't mix people, races on stage. There was still this issue of um uh you know casting again uh a casting that's still in a way troubles all the arts but but um i we've made huge progress over that i think. 00:16:33 Speaker 1: You make pretty clear yeah go ahead finish. 00:16:36 Speaker 2: That no that that was the inhibition that huh and but anyway she she did it and she had had no experience in opera whatsoever and it was a but she only sang in that one production of very Zimbalo and Mascara, a supporting but important role of El Rica. And it was a big triumph. And sitting in the audience that night, that was 1955, was a young soprano named Leontine Price. Oh, wow. Who said, she later told me, she anointed me that night. And she said, maybe someday I can sing on that stage. And she went, how did she? get to that stage, exactly what you said. She went off to Europe and she performed, Price performed in European companies. Then eventually in 1961, she had a triumphant Met debut. 00:17:31 Speaker 1: What, what, if she had been born 30 years later, what genre of music do you think she would be singing? 00:17:42 Speaker 2: She would have, she, she loved songs. She especially loved German leader. And we can talk more about what drew her to that if you want, but she would have sung opera. And in 1960, she did a long interview for ladies home journal, but the very good journalist, Emily Kimbrough, who was a friend of hers and tried to get her to really talk openly about as the article was called, you know, being black in a white America. And, and, And Emily said to her, well, you know, I know it was so tough, but you look at everything you've done. There's nothing you haven't accomplished. And Marian turned on her and said, nothing? What about opera? I wanted opera. But they didn't. I wish I could have offered. I could offer, you know, now what I could have offered then. But they didn't want it. They didn't want me. But she said, but at least I've broken this barrier for singers who will follow me. Which she absolutely did. So I think she would have had an opera career. 00:18:46 Speaker 1: It's interesting that she said it then because the portrait you paint of her early is not someone who was– she was not focused on being a trailblazer. She was focused on being a music singer. 00:19:00 Speaker 2: Right. 00:19:02 Speaker 1: And at times– look, I don't want to say you wrote critically about that, but it was almost like I could– you wrote with a bit of disappointment that she didn't fight harder. 00:19:13 Speaker 2: Except I think that's interesting that that that came through that way, too. I do present that that side of her, but on balance, I'm on her side. 00:19:27 Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to you by FanDuel baseball fans. Think you know who's hitting a homer today? 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was going to sing there, she was going to do it because she was a great artist. And that's what they want. You know, that's what they wanted. And she was afraid. And Sol Yurok, her manager, had to say, no, Marion, that's not what it's going to be like. People are people. They're not going to be banners. People are going to come. and express their support for you by savoring every moment of your artistry. And that's what happened. And that's why she was deeply moved by it. But it was, it was being an artist that drove her. You know, why didn't she speak out more? In 1937, she has her first concert at Princeton. She hasn't sung there before. She thinks she has a room at the Nassau Inn. Until she finds out, uh-uh, she can't stay there. She's there. What is she supposed to do? Word gets to a famous faculty member, a refugee from Nazi Germany, who had heard her at Carnegie Hall and come backstage meekly to meet her. Big fan, Albert Einstein. 00:24:31 Speaker 1: Wow. 00:24:32 Speaker 2: And he says, you must, you will come. His wife had just died. He said, you will come and stay with my stepdaughter and me and my personal secretary at my house on Mercer Street. So she did. And they took wonderful care of her, and he went to the concert, and they stayed up late. And he was ashamed of his adopted hometown that this magnificent woman honors your hotel by staying in it. And are you kidding? And they became fast friends, and there was one point of disagreement. He thought, why don't you speak out more? You have this platform. You're marrying, you know, and she was said, I can't know how she put it to him, but she probably said, well, basically, it's easy for you. You're Einstein. You know, you can go out and say whatever you want. 00:25:24 Speaker 1: Well, that's kind of what he was saying. It should be easy for you. 00:25:26 Speaker 2: But it wasn't. She was still trying to get through the door of an opera house in this company, in this country. You know, she was trying. There were still things, so many things closed to her. And she had to do it through the merits of her singing. through her artistry. So, yeah, I just think it was partly her nature. Maybe she wasn't bold enough. Paul Robeson spoke out all the time, but career-wise, as a singer, he paid a price for it. He lost a lot of opportunities. So, yeah, she could have been more outspoken, but she prevailed through her artistry, through her Great, you know, great voice. 00:26:12 Speaker 1: So let's, you know, did she, you know, sometimes some artists, they go to Europe and they never want to come back. 00:26:20 Speaker 2: Right. 00:26:20 Speaker 1: Because they're so, they were so frustrated with how poorly they were treated here, they stay there. I mean, and there's plenty of generations of artists have done that. 00:26:31 Speaker 2: Especially early in the 20th century. Early 20th century. Jazz musicians. 00:26:34 Speaker 1: A lot of black artists just basically left America because they felt like they were, frankly, safer. 00:26:40 Speaker 2: Right. In Europe. 00:26:41 Speaker 1: Why did she come back? 00:26:43 Speaker 2: She was an American. And she was proud to be an American. And she was comfortable in this country. And also, if she was not outspoken in a way that we would maybe admire even more today, she spoke all the time of my people. I want to be a credit to my people. She thought she... But she thought the way to do that was to be an example of excellence and possibility. Give us a chance. Look what we can do. And she wanted to prove herself that way in America. I think that's why she came back. But she kept going back to Europe. She would turn around and go have tours there and come back. She traveled a lot. But sure, she based herself here. And eventually all the doors did open for her, but she pried them open. 00:27:49 Speaker 1: You say that if the genre that obviously she missed the most with opera, what did she make of the rise? Because, you know, as she's becoming more well-known, that's also the rise of jazz. It's the early days of the crooners. Then we move from that to, you know, popular music and it goes from there what did she make of that genre and it at all interest her. 00:28:14 Speaker 2: Yes she was friends with duke ellington and she respected all that music tremendously i don't think she had great feeling for it or deep interest in it but she was very curious and respectful um i kind of rescue her in a chapter um where from interviews she gave where she would talk about uh You know, my upper higher music and, you know, that maybe that during it used to be that people favored popular things more than the song she sang, you know, the art song she sang. But during the war, singing for the troops and going to hospitals, it's amazing how often people ask for Schubert and Brahms songs. And she acted like the higher forms of music. She used that word, unfortunately. 00:29:05 Speaker 1: Well, it's funny. I mean, look, let's be honest, especially if you, you know, I was a music major for a while, right? And so there's this mindset that real music, the real difficult music is classical music, right? And opera is a derivative of that. 00:29:19 Speaker 2: Right. 00:29:20 Speaker 1: Um, popular music are, are for, are for singers who could do opera. Right. And I, and I'm sitting here being very obviously ham handed here, but that was sort of this mindset. And yet I, I look at somebody like Whitney Houston. It's like, well, if she'd chosen to do opera, she might've been a great opera singer. 00:29:35 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yes. I think there's this chapter I'm proud of that was called Why Schubert, where I try to explain what drew her to this art form. And I compare it to myself growing up in a Long Island suburb, but there was more, there was more music in her household than there was in mine. This grabbed me, I don't know how, I just, I was listening to Salzburg Festival radio concerts on the radio by myself when I was a kid. It

just hooked me. 00:30:10 Speaker 1: You don't have that parent or grandparent that said, hey, take a listen to this. I mean, I did have that. I had a father who had eclectic and stuff, so I was hearing it in my house a little bit. 00:30:23 Speaker 2: No, I screened for, I went to piano, I went to lessons. It was through me. Finally, at eight years old, I got one, but It wasn't through my parents. Everyone in her family sang. Music and music at their church was, you know, crucial to her. But what I say is that when she heard these songs, like Roland Hayes singing Schubert, it wasn't, she may have used the word higher, but she didn't mean, she ended every recital she ever gave with spirituals, singing Negro spirituals. 00:30:56 Speaker 1: Was that always connected to her first recording contract? 00:30:59 Speaker 2: That was the first recording she was asked to do were spirituals. But soon after, you know, other things. But it was her way of saying these works are every bit as profound and great as any song by any European composer that I've sung already. But what I think did grab her about classical music was, yes, it was the subtext of things. It was the multi-layered quality of it. Why is it that a Schubert song, on the surface, seems so cheerful, but yet there's this undertow? There's this sadness. There's this longing. What's going on there? It's the subtleties and inner workings of it. I think that's what hooked her, that she had to figure out what is that. She used the word higher, but it wasn't higher. 00:31:54 Speaker 1: Was she also a piano player? 00:31:57 Speaker 2: Yes. I figured. Most singers are. She took piano lessons. There wasn't a lot of money for them, but she learned a lot on her own. 00:32:05 Speaker 1: And was she a music reader or did she learn it by ear? 00:32:08 Speaker 2: Oh, no, no. Yeah, she did learn to read. Yeah. And all that stuff. But not being able to get into the music academy. What she never did was like take a course in harmony or something like that. 00:32:20 Speaker 1: Gotcha. 00:32:20 Speaker 2: Or counterpoint or these things that all music students do. Right. 00:32:25 Speaker 1: She was not doing like rudimentary composition. 00:32:28 Speaker 2: And things like that. No, she wasn't doing that. But again, she worked with really, really interesting- I have scars. 00:32:34 Speaker 1: By the way, I still have scars from my music composition professor who went to Yale who absolutely eviscerated one of my first attempts at a Bach chorale. And I'm like still scarred from this. 00:32:46 Speaker 2: Oh, that's terrible. 00:32:47 Speaker 1: I'm so glad she, I'm so glad she didn't have to fear that. 00:32:50 Speaker 2: Yeah. But normal in classical music training, that usually by studying counterpoint and writing pieces in the style of Bach chorales and, and harmony, it's not that you become a master of this, but it changes the way you hear. You really do. You hear, ah, you're alert to what you're listening to, I think. So she did miss that, but yeah. 00:33:17 Speaker 1: She is somebody, I get the impression that when you did your review and Skip Gates reached out to you, that in some ways what Skip Gates is concerned about is some of these folks getting lost. Because I do think, and it goes back to this pioneer and this breaking barrier mindset that we have, the pioneers- will always have their pages in the history books. There's a whole group of people who, you know, she was a pioneer. She didn't choose to advertise being a pioneer. 00:33:48 Speaker 2: Right. 00:33:49 Speaker 1: As we keep, as basically we've spent 20 minutes talking about. That doesn't make her any less relevant to the music, to the history of music in the 20th century. And ultimately, I feel like with this book is you can't tell the history of American singing of the 20th century without her. 00:34:07 Speaker 2: Absolutely not. And she, even in the moment of being a pioneer, she was going to make the larger points about artistry. And, for example, the Lincoln Memorial Concert. Okay, she agrees to do it. There she is. She opens up singing America. She's so flustered to look at 75,000 people, black and white, all mink. 00:34:31 Speaker 1: Was that the largest audience she'd ever had? Performed in front of them. 00:34:34 Speaker 2: That was the largest audience that had ever been at the Lincoln Memorial. And, you know, 24 years later for the I Have a Dream speech, it absolutely hearkened back to the Anderson concert. You know, like in a way it was a reference to that. It was really one of the seminal events of the civil rights movement, that concert in 1939. So she sings America. She flubs the words a little because she's so flustered. It's only a half-hour concert. It's going to include a Schubert Ave Maria and three spirituals. The second piece she sang was the longest, that Donizetti aria I mentioned before. O Mio Fernando, seven minutes before an audience. It was then an obscure aria. How many people among those 75,000, even radio listeners, would have known anything about it? She said, I'm going to show them. This is real, even if this is a civil rights milestone, I'm gonna also show them. And newspaper reporters surveying the crowd said people were awestruck. They didn't know what she was singing about, but just that a voice could do this, really. That's what gets forgotten about that concert when it's written about. How well did she sing? Well, that day she sure did. 00:36:04 Speaker 1: Is there a really good recording of that concert? 00:36:07 Speaker 2: Yes, the radio broadcast. There's a radio broadcast of it on NBC, and it was broadcast. But the other thing that people forget about that concert, okay, there's a platform of sponsors, Supreme Court justices and senators and Katharine Hepburn and people like that, and 75,000 people. She's greeted. It's a big— of course, her mother— And her two younger sisters come from Philadelphia for this big day. And she's, you know, news

around the world. Of course, none of the Anderson women in 1939 could stay at any hotel in Washington, D.C. So from all this, she has to rely on it had been arranged. Gifford Pinchot was the former progressive Republican governor, two-term governor of Pennsylvania, her home state. His wife was a big supporter of women's rights. They had the Anderson women stay with them at their home in Washington. I mean, that's the part of our history that we keep. It's not only that she, as an artist, I think is underrated, but even what she did as a civil rights pioneer is forgotten. That she had to face the humiliation of not being able to stay anyplace in Washington. 00:37:28 Speaker 1: Your source material, you had quite a bit. Obviously, you had to go into multiple languages to see how she was received in Germany. But I'm curious about her. You note in her memoir that she left certain details, including about her father and his business, out. 00:37:44 Speaker 2: Oh, yes. He had a side business in selling alcohol. 00:37:49 Speaker 1: Which I guess she didn't– you get a sense of why she left that out. And what else did she leave out of that memoir? 00:37:58 Speaker 2: She left out any mention of, well, and throughout her whole life, the only romantic relationship she ever owned up to was with Orpheus Fisher, the man she eventually married until 1943. And she, you know, she went to, in 1935, she was on a tour. of Europe, and she made it to the Soviet Union, if you can imagine, in 1935. Two tours. And the Soviet government puts her up at a spa for two weeks as a gift from the government. And there she has a fling with a younger Russian Jewish man who was an actor and reader, and who was apparently very passionate. And there are, we have his letters, but not hers. And she, of course, never, ever, ever mentioned this, you know, So there are things like that. And also the other thing I do talk about in the book, this is how much– so she worked with a ghostwriter, Howard Taubman, who was very, very faithful to the recorded tapes, which you can hear at the University of Pennsylvania at the library. 00:39:07 Speaker 1: Is that where all of her stuff is? 00:39:08 Speaker 2: That's where all of her stuff is. Yeah. And he, by the way, talking about conflict of interest in journalism, he had my job. He was the chief classical music critic of the New York Times at the time. He wrote, he was her ghostwriter. They kept it quiet. His name was not given. And even... mentioned. 00:39:30 Speaker 1: Not even in the acknowledgements or anything like that? 00:39:32 Speaker 2: No, in the acknowledgements, yes, for editorial help, but not that he actually wrote, you know. And he was left out of all the reviews. He was getting, sharing money that he made from it. It would be like I, if I had, as a critic, was the ghostwriter for Renee Fleming's memoir. And we kept it quiet, and we were both making money, and I kept reviewing her positively. I mean, that was just a total different era of journalism. 00:40:00 Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean, I always say, be careful when you ask about the good old days of journalism. You don't want to know what some of the rules used to be. 00:40:06 Speaker 2: Exactly, exactly. But when she finally got the draft of the book from Howard Taubman, her first thing was she wanted everything about the Lincoln Memorial Concert taken out. 00:40:21 Speaker 1: Hey, this episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to you by Ethos. Look, let me tell you about life insurance. As you know, Ethos is an incredible portal for helping you find the right life insurance policy. I'm a huge believer in life insurance. I wouldn't have gotten to college in Washington, D.C. without life insurance. 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Get your free quote at ethos.com slash chuck. That is E-T-H-O-S dot com slash chuck. Application times may vary. The rates may vary. That Trustpilot rating was as of August of 2026. That's why are we doing the book, right? 00:42:01 Speaker 2: And her lawyer, whom she trusted, and her husband. And Taubman had to convince her, no, no, that is quite wrong. But she didn't, she wasn't- But you don't open with it. 00:42:14 Speaker 1: You know, and I almost feel like now listening to that story, that your decision not to open with the Washington concert, I feel like was an homage to her. 00:42:23 Speaker 2: Yeah. Also, what I, I wanted to make clear how, how for Black, for all of us, But especially black people, even today, but especially back then, you can't overstate how important it is to have a model, to see somebody, ah, doing that. So I begin with Leontine Price, who's still with us at 99. So Anderson comes back from Europe and she starts singing here again. And she has a concert in Jackson, Mississippi. And one day Leontine Price's Mother says to her, well, Marian Anderson is not going to be coming to Laurel, Mississippi, but she is singing in Jackson and we're going to take the bus and we're going to go there and hear her. So they did. They went to

see her. Now, of course, in this big auditorium, they're sitting in the colored section, you know, and this woman walks out and elegant, beautiful and starts singing. And Price has this epiphany and she looks at her and says to herself, I'm going to be her. That's my future. At the time, Price was the star of her church choir. She was taking piano lessons. She thought, maybe I could be a music teacher. Maybe I could be a voice singer and do some concerts. Then she thought, ah, that. I'm going to do that. And what does she do? She goes out and does it. She becomes the most famous opera singer in the world. 00:43:58 Speaker 1: It's a wonderful way to open because the whole point is that she did break barriers first. 00:44:03 Speaker 2: She did, yeah. 00:44:03 Speaker 1: For the next generation. 00:44:04 Speaker 2: And then, so Price is in the audience when Anderson makes her debut. When Price makes her debut in 1961, who's in the audience? Marian Anderson. I mean, wow, that's really moving. 00:44:21 Speaker 1: What, somebody listening right now, one recording, where would you tell people to start? 00:44:28 Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm such an advocate of wanting her. Can I pick two? I'd say one is Schubert's Ave Maria because it's so famous. And I think even to people new to this music, the eloquence, the personalness, the authenticity, the sensitivity she brings to it is overwhelming. But the other one is this spiritual crucifixion. 00:44:58 Speaker 1: Wow. 00:45:01 Speaker 2: She recorded it in 1941. It wasn't released for years and years. I don't know why, because maybe she thought it was too personal. The spiritual is amazing. It's profound. The words are, they begin, they crucified my Lord. And he never said a mumbling word. Not a word, not a word, not a word. So the spiritual is about Jesus' reaction. That he never, even with this punishment, he never said a word in his defense. The spiritual, it's a profound piece. It's meant to be sung very slowly. Anderson sings it at this glacial tempo. So slow, you think she's taking a risk that the music is going to lose any kind of rhythmic thread. It's just going to go limp. But it's so intense. So, the sound is so tremulous. and grabs you, and so heart wrenching, you hang on every word. It's just, it's four and a half minutes, and it's one of the most profound vocal music recordings of the whole 20th century. And I'll tell you, she sang it in 1935 in Salzburg. Of course she couldn't sing at the Salzburg Festival, black woman, Nazis were overrunning Austria. but the lobby of a hotel was rented for her, and it was kind of an informal concert for a few hundred people. Two people show up, famous conductors, Bruno Walter and Arturo Toscanini. And on the program, she sings some spirituals, and one of them is crucifixion. And the reporter reporting on the concert said, at the end of crucifixion, no one applauded, not a sound. You know, and they were overcome. 00:47:02 Speaker 1: It just sounds haunting the way you,

and look, it's the subject matter itself of this is your fate. This is the moment. And it sounds like she interpreted it that deeply. 00:47:13 Speaker 2: Absolutely. This gets to the title of my book, which we don't have to go into, but Toscanini goes up to her afterwards and congratulates her. Then he says, and this is the best quote we have is from her accompanist who was standing right next to him. He says, what I just heard, one is privileged to hear only once in a hundred years. So naturally, her big shot manager, Sol Yura, grabs that comment and tweaks it into something much catchier and promotional. So all of a sudden, her posters are plastered with Marian Anderson, quote, the voice of the century, Arturo Toscanini. And he never said that. He never said that. 00:47:58 Speaker 1: The social media of that day, huh? That would have been immediately tweeted out and Instagrammed and all of that, right? 00:48:04 Speaker 2: But the president of Penguin encouraged me to tweak that phrase into voice of a century. I didn't want to go anywhere because it's ambiguous. I love that, that it's not the voice it's voice. It's like, it almost means she exemplified the century. She embodied this. She sang for it. She spoke for it, both the possibilities and the horrible shortcomings, you know, of it. It's all there. So, and also by the way, it implies a little, she happened to also have one of the great voices of the century, but, but, but Toscanini also said, what I loved about his quote, he didn't say, the voice I have just heard. He said, what I have just heard, meaning everything, your artistry, your interpretation, your sensibility, and of course the voice. 00:49:04 Speaker 1: Well, look, it's a tremendous story. Congratulations that you got to do this because you get to put your imprint on this. Before I let you go, I'm curious of your thoughts on the state of classical music. And I say this as I watch, you know, my last music professor was second chair at the national symphony still is still is at the national symphony. They don't have a home. 00:49:35 Speaker 2: They don't have a home. 00:49:38 Speaker 1: You know, it is look, one of the things that I've always said, I talked myself out of, of, of trying to go into music as a career was, you know, the opportunities are fewer and fewer all the time. No, unless you're the best of the best. It is, it is really, you want to talk about, it's not 1%. It's the one, you know, one 10th of 1% are able to truly make a living in classical music. Um, What's your sense of it as a public genre and what's your sense of it? You know, how do we create a new youth movement? 00:50:17 Speaker 2: That's a huge topic. And we got two minutes. 00:50:20 Speaker 1: No, I'm kidding. 00:50:22 Speaker 2: Well, the Kennedy Center story, the tragedy there is that maintaining a symphony orchestra, maintaining an opera company is already so challenging. even if you have the most supportive board of trustees and people and patrons, it's still so hard. And so to have politics just take over and run the place into the ground is just incredibly tragic. 00:50:54 Speaker 1: No, it's a gut punch. 00:50:57 Speaker 2: But, you know, the thing, the great hope I have is, In a way, AI could maybe, even though we're all afraid of it, help this. I know you've said things like this on your podcast, that it might drive people back to the original. 00:51:18 Speaker 1: Oh, I am a believer in this, that the unintended consequence of the artificialness of everything is going to make us appreciate the original everything. 00:51:32 Speaker 2: And when you were talking to Bob Spitz about the book on the Rolling Stones, you were both talking about the kind of mystique of live instruments. We've been losing that, and even in that field, we have to get it back. But my mantra in writing about this field and loving this field and promoting it and encouraging people is this is one field, art form, you have to hear live. You think you don't chamber music? A string quartet? 00:52:05 Speaker 1: What? No, and unfortunately, I think the digitalization of it has turned it all into elevator music, and it's not fair. 00:52:11 Speaker 2: If you hear a string quartet playing in a hall that seats three or four hundred people, no amplification, I'm sorry. When I was a kid, I knew nothing about opera. I got seats at the Met, the old Met, when I was really young. I had no idea what these operas were about. But the sound of these voices coming up and encircling me, no amplification, was enthralling. Every time I've brought some neophyte to the Met Opera in New York who doesn't, they'll ask 10 times, there's no amplification? I said, no, no. You know, a symphony or to hear a great orchestra at Carnegie Hall, that sound is... You cannot record that. We all love our recordings, obviously. They're wonderful. It's like, Toscanini once said, it's like getting a kiss over, no, Stravinsky, I'm sorry, once said, it's like getting a kiss over the telephone. But yeah, but I think if young people could just hear this stuff and hear it in the places where it's meant to be performed, I mean, it's just enthralling. It captivates you. And if the demand, the demand has to be there. But it's a very expensive art form. You know, putting on opera is very, very labor intensive. But I believe in the genre. I believe in the art form. I believe in its sustaining power. And it's never going to have the big audiences that, of course, pop music has. But we can sustain it. We have sustained it. 00:53:50 Speaker 1: Well, I always love to tell some of my friends who... who are not really maybe fluent in classical music or just sort of, you know, appreciate it when it's in a cool movie score, you know, which can, which can is, is sort of, and then they go to a rock concert that brings on, you know, a brass, at least a brass accompaniment, right. Or, um, might have 20, um, uh, instrumentalists behind them, you know, a couple of trumpets, a couple

of French horns, a couple of violins, And it just, it just fills the stadium in a way that no synthesizer could. And no matter how many of those speakers you stack up, right? When for the people that sit on the floor seats. 00:54:36 Speaker 2: Also in the kind of concert you're describing, but also think of the symphony orchestra on a big concert stage. there's a spatial element to listening that, you know, basses are here and the brasses are here and it's coming from different parts, you know, and you have a solo oboe sort of standing up against the whole orchestra. And there's that kinetic kind of spatial thing is also, you have to be there to hear it. 00:55:02 Speaker 1: There's really no recording yet. I feel like that has truly been able to capture that sort of fullness, no matter what kind of, you know, You could have the best, and I'm, you know, I was an audiophile until I got kids, right? And then it's just sort of like there's only so much hobbies you could keep up with. But you can have the best sort of setup to, you know, whether you're playing vinyl or you're playing something that, you know, through the best version, digital version you could get, and it's never going to fill the room the way live fills the room. 00:55:35 Speaker 2: No, you're singing my gospel. No, I agree. Again, as someone who loves recordings, and especially historic recordings, all of Anderson's recordings. I mean, I never heard her live, and so it's all I have. And I cherish them. But no, I agree. I would rather hear. 00:56:00 Speaker 2: Than the most highly touted, best engineered, amazingly performed recording of, let's say, Beethoven's Eroica Symphony. I'd rather hear this Juilliard Orchestra play it live, you know, or the Manhattan School Music Orchestra play it live. because those kids have never played it before, usually. They're thrilled. And they're also, by the way, very good. They're very talented. They're technically incredible. 00:56:26 Speaker 1: As someone who couldn't get into Juilliard, I will tell you that. Well, there you go. 00:56:30 Speaker 2: Maybe it all worked out for the best. 00:56:33 Speaker 1: You know, it all works out. Let me, if you could pick one, if you cannot see classical music live, what is your preferred recording? Is it vinyl? Is it a high-end digital sort of recording? Is it a 78 rather than a 33 on the vinyl? Do you have a preference? 00:56:59 Speaker 2: In a way, you're asking the wrong person, Beth. I have found that many musicians and first and foremost, I was a pianist and played a lot of concerts and are not audio files because you can listen through anything. I can listen through any old scratchy recording. And so when digital came along, for me, just pragmatically, it's clean, it's not gonna deteriorate, it's reliable, it's maybe a little colder than vinyl sound, you know, an analog sound, but. 00:57:36 Speaker 1: There's a warmth to vinyl that's hard to recreate anywhere else. 00:57:39 Speaker 2: There is, but you

have to have really good equipment and it's just, you know, it's- And any old CD player can really, you know, so it's a convenience in a way that, but Anderson made some recordings from the early eras, you know, a recording that are full of crackles and stuff that doesn't bother me. I can listen right through, you know, to hear what I want to hear. Let me get you. 00:58:06 Speaker 1: Out of here. 00:58:07 Speaker 2: Yeah, go ahead. 00:58:07 Speaker 1: Finish. 00:58:07 Speaker 2: I'd say go hear something live. Yes. 00:58:11 Speaker 1: I think we can't emphasize that. I mean, You know, even if it's something one of my favorite summer programs that we have here in D.C. is the National Symphony would do movie night at Wolf Trap. 00:58:23 Speaker 2: Right. Wonderful. Right. 00:58:24 Speaker 1: And you do a movie and then they do the score live. And it's just it's actually a great way to get to bring your kids into something. 00:58:31 Speaker 2: Right. 00:58:32 Speaker 1: Right. Right. 00:58:32 Speaker 2: Sort of, you know, what music music do your kids listen to? 00:58:38 Speaker 1: Oh, my my daughter's Taylor Swift and everybody else, my friend. 00:58:45 Speaker 2: She's awfully good. 00:58:45 Speaker 1: No, and it got my daughter to pick up a guitar. I mean, look, I insisted on piano lessons. Let's just say it was a chore for them when they were younger. But, you know, I believe music is a language that you learn. And so even a rudimentary understanding of music is only going to help you in life down the road. Let me get you out of here on this because this used to be a fun little conversation. I would have over the years when I was more active in the classical music world. Who would you say is the, what's the premier symphony to get into now? You'd have these little debates. There was the Cleveland Orchestra, there's New York, and there's Philadelphia, and there's You know, they all had their strengths. Chicago, you know, some would argue. Boston, of course, you know, they had arguably the most famous conductors for a while, you know. Who's got the belt right now? Who's the number one symphony in the country? Where do the musicians going, no matter where they are, they go, I want to go there. 00:59:54 Speaker 2: I guess I have, again, a sort of different take on that because it's it's not just like you can calculate uh the excellence or. 01:00:05 Speaker 1: Well i feel like it's hard to tell the difference but it my guess is it's it in some ways it might be even director specific. 01:00:12 Speaker 2: Yes absolutely i was just going to say it's you know for example the uh los angeles philharmonic um just became beat first under the composer, conductor, Esa-Pek Salonen, and then Gustavo Dudamel, who's now coming this fall to the New York Philharmonic. They were so, such adventurous, such an adventurous whole institution. There was a real connection between the conductors, those two conductors, especially Gustavo, and the audience and those players. And the programs, they really had, they just made every concert seem important, you know. And it's, was it, were they playing greater than the Chicago Symphony? It's not that. It's just something that was really happening there. You know, like, you could compare to, we now look back, you can read reviews criticizing Bernstein when he was a, you know, at the New York. Oh, sure. 01:01:17 Speaker 1: Arthur Fiedler at the Boston Pops would get criticized, but it was fun. 01:01:20 Speaker 2: We look back at Bernstein now in those years. Are you kidding? That was like the golden age ever, you know. 01:01:25 Speaker 1: Everybody wanted to be with him and in New York. 01:01:27 Speaker 2: That was just, those concerts were incredible when, you know, he, so it's really the mix that makes an orchestra really great. 01:01:38 Speaker 1: I mean, basically there's eight to 10 great symphonies to belong to And it's really director-specific, really, that sort of drives the moment. 01:01:45 Speaker 2: Yeah, but, you know, the Alabama Symphony came to Carnegie Hall once to play a concert, and it was a really good concert, and they played really well, and it was a new piece. And so I said, you know, I'm sorry. Sitting there that last night, this was as good as any concert I can remember, you know, so... Uh, it doesn't quite work that way, but yeah, when you have, let's see what Gustavo does in New York, you know, uh, he's got some big plans and, uh, it could, he could be, uh, bringing all, all his, you know, charisma and energy and ideas. 01:02:24 Speaker 1: We'll see, you know, well, I, I, um, that's something to look forward to. Uh, I'm glad to hear that. Uh, Tony, this was great. Um, thanks for, uh, Thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing this book. 01:02:37 Speaker 2: I much appreciate it. 01:02:38 Speaker 1: Yeah, and I know it comes out in about a week or so. 01:02:40 Speaker 2: Yeah, a little longer, September 8th. And it's a couple of few weeks. And yes, thanks. I'm honored. I'm very glad that you invited me. Thank you so much.