In Memoriam: Gerhard Samuel
A conductor who had a major impact on music in the Bay Area, Gerhard Samuel, died at the age of 83 on March 23 in his Seattle home. An excellent, fitting obituary appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle on March 29 (accessible through the paper’s Web site). He was the music director of the Oakland Symphony and founding director of the Cabrillo Music Festival. As someone who worked with him (I was director of the Oakland Symphony and Festival Choruses), I’d like to add some memories and thoughts.
Gerhard Samuel
For readers who were not here during his tenure, 1959 1971, it should be told that he quickly turned the Oakland Symphony into a fully professional orchestra of superior quality, able to deliver first class performances of the best and the most challenging orchestra repertory. He was a very good conductor, not inspirational with the super qualities that set the great ones apart, but he was a solid musician, and a sound craftsman, who would forge fine, unified performances, demanding the best without ever being severe, harsh, temperamental, or overbearing.
Unlike the other regional orchestras, with the exception of the former San Jose Symphony, his Oakland Symphony did not depend upon individual ringers drawn from other communities, but had its own full complement of musicians under contract. It was, in fact, a source of ringers for other ensembles, and a major reservoir of talent for chamber music and other classical music needs throughout the area. Indeed, Samuel’s Oakland Symphony served as the San Francisco Ballet’s orchestra for two or three years (he was also the Ballet’s music director).
In a typical season (1965 1966), the orchestra played six pairs of concerts and one triple on its regular subscription, eight concerts that were run outs to communities as far off as Davis and Stanford, six separate chamber orchestra concerts, and two youth programs. Samuel’s artistic and imaginative programming was all important in drawing a solid and devoted following to the Oakland Auditorium Theater (subsequently renamed the Calvin Simmons Theater, and later closed). That was a finer orchestral hall than any in the Bay Area, then and now. Yes, it wasn’t beautiful, the seats were of wood and the lobby and hallways were confining and hardly elegant, but the acoustics and the proximity of every listener to the stage were unequaled. You were immersed in the orchestral sound, psychologically within it. That was a big force in helping transform new and inexperienced listeners into devotees, and into music lovers.
As for the programming, Gary, the name by which everyone addressed him, had a deep curiosity for the literature. A composer himself, he found and performed overlooked important works by the most well known and also by the greatly respected but ignored composers. Unlike most of his colleagues then and since, he did not glorify the music of the Soviet Union at the expense of 20th century American composers. Quite the contrary. He played a higher proportion of 20th century and contemporary music than most, but placed these works selectively, premiere after premiere, including local first performances of modern classics.
The new pieces benefited from the effects of the repertory works surrounding them — and in turn, the interplay heightened perception of the classical and romantic pieces. He also presented major artists in his seasons, artists that were at the top and appearing with the leading orchestras, as well as outstanding artists of the next generation who were major in every way except perhaps celebrity. He did the major choral works, even Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, rarely attempted by regional orchestras, and it was memorable.
Gary introduced many major works to the Bay Area, and was the first to perform Charles Ives’ Fourth Symphony, Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite, and Stravinsky’s Persephone, just three examples that come to mind. At his Cabrillo Festival, with its orchestra drawn from the Oakland Symphony, he gave the first West Coast performances of Mozart’s Idomeneo, Rameau’s opera Hyppolyte et Aricie, the great Swiss composer Frank Martin’s Le vin herbé, Haydn’s Orpheus and Eurydice, and Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito long before it came to the San Francisco Opera’s Spring Opera.
As a result, Samuel and his orchestra created a great and devoted following, a big percentage of it from Berkeley and UC Berkeley. When the fortunes of the Oakland Symphony declined much later, and after its bankruptcy, much of that audience turned to the Berkeley Symphony as it gradually was professionalized. Samuel’s Oakland Symphony benefited from the low estate into which the San Francisco Symphony had declined during this period, under the leadership of Enrique Jorda.
The comparison in terms of energy and excitement was embarrassing. This led the president of the San Francisco Symphony, the late J.D. Zellerbach, who was chiefly responsible for the appointment of Jorda (and more regrettably, the renewal of his contract), to try and eliminate the Oakland Symphony and draw its board and patrons to his side (specifically for the contributed income). The deal he cut collapsed on the eve of its consummation with the heart attack that felled the Oakland Symphony’s president.
Nevertheless, some of the less musically aware Oakland board members kept sniping at Samuel, principally because of the occasional unfamiliar work that was performed. One self-important East Bay executive got on Samuel’s case because Gary wasn’t hiring as many of the world’s most famous artists (from the glamorous and prohibitively expensive short list of soloists that that man had heard of ) and “was not playing enough Mozart” (which was of course untrue).
Push came to shove and Samuel, a man of high principle, shoved off, first for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, as associate conductor, later for a post on the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music faculty. Meanwhile he was considerably involved composing music, eventually settling into a position teaching composition at the University of Washington. It is more than sad that he is only recalled publicly just now, in memoriam. Regional orchestra associations have notoriously short memories and their current directors have a misguided self interest in neglecting the recognition of their predecessors.
It is unlikely that the historical materials pertaining to the original Oakland Symphony are properly preserved and available and so I am turning my saved programs and clippings over to the Museum of Performance and Design (the former PALM). It would be a good contribution if other former colleagues (the players) and patrons were to do the same, in memory of a distinguished musician — one who earned a place in the Bay Area’s pantheon of artists.
Robert P. Commanday, founding editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle from 1965 to 1993, and before that a conductor and lecturer at UC Berkeley.
©2008 By Robert P. Commanday, all rights reserved.