As the San Francisco Chronicle’s Music and Art critic from 1934 to 1965, the late Alfred Frankenstein was dedicated to the encouragement of resident artists, composers and performing musicians to the point where it was a mission. He pursued this not only in his coverage of the field but in his urging the principal institutions to do the same. After Frankenstein’s retirement, that point of view was carried on from 1965 to 1993 in the Tuesday classical music columns and Sunday music articles that were, until 1993, regular features. It is maintained in San Francisco Classical Voice. Frankenstein’s final Tuesday column on the subject makes a statement on the subject that is as apt today as it was those many years ago.

His particular target was the San Francisco Symphony, an institution that still has not changed an iota in its indifference to the artists and the musical scene that surrounds it and, in fact, feeds its prosperity. The policy of aloofness from the artistic community continued while Peter Pastreich was executive director and Nancy Bechtle was the Association’s president, and remains the same today under the executive directorship of Brent Assink and presidency of John Goldman. Some of the details have changed, but not the basic issue and attitude. Here is what the late Alfred Frankenstein wrote on June 28, 1979, while still the Chronicle’s art critic, 14 years after his retirement as music critic:

"I have not written about Bay Region music for this newspaper since 1965, but now that I am about to leave The Chronicle to take a job at the de Young Museum, I beg your indulgence to bring up a bit of old musical business about which our public should be informed. Every year, the San Francisco Symphony season having ended, the papers are full of hogwash about how the orchestra has improved or should be improved. Actually, we don’t need a new third contrabassoon or a new concertmaster or even a new conductor. We need leadership intelligent enough to recognize a community cultural organization's debt to the community that pays its bills. What I am especially concerned about here is the manner in which a cultural organization must pay its debts to its supporters: look over the community, find the people who are there as potential guest artists or as composers, and build a firm and active, relationship with them. All the museums do this sort of thing, and so does the opera, with its five or six companies working at different levels within the western states. The Symphony should be able to do the same, thanks to a Bay Region full of distinguished college music departments and independent schools, but it does nothing. Its list of guests each year is composed approximately half of international big shots and the other half of little people you have never heard of before and never will hear of again. They all come from the same handful of New York managers. In other words, in order to get someone you want from these merchants of talent, you have to take somebody you don't want, and to hell with musical life of the Bay Region. I have been screaming about this for decades, and some years ago, David Plant, having been elected president of the Symphony Association, and I discussed the matter with him. He responded favorably, appointed a committee to survey the field, and requested William Bernell, then the orchestra's artistic administrator to draw up a form on which the talent-hunt committee might submit its reports. Receipt of these reports was not acknowledged until a year and a half after they went in, when I threatened to complain about it before the Symphony Association's board of directors. David Plant was succeeded by Lawrence Metcalf, who began his administration by publishing a broadsheet containing the names of all the Symphony Association's committees and their members. Our committee was not mentioned. Metcalf’s explanation was that he had not been informed of the committee's existence, which probably was true. He later said [Seiji] Ozawa had disapproved of the proposal, which probably was not true, since, not being out of our minds, we had secured his OK before the committee was formed. Later Ozawa attended one of our meetings and expressed enthusiastic approval of what we were trying to do, since he was chasing all over the world and had no time for local auditions. (The people we selected were, of course, to pass a second screening with him.) Eventually, I offered the Symphony Association $2000 a year for local auditions and performance fees, the guest artist to be selected by [Ozawa’s successor] Edo de Waart and me. This project would be abandoned if it didn't succeed after five tries. If it did succeed, I would make the gift an annual affair and organize a committee to broaden it out. This proposal was rejected on the ground that de Waart didn’t need me to tell him who was good. He heard from some of our own people and turned them all down; the Bay Region apparently has no one as able as those little mediocrities from the bottom of the heap in New York. Maybe they’re all we deserve. But some of us are convinced that we are never going to create a genuinely musical situation here so long as that kind of ruthless commercialism runs the show. Meanwhile, the San Francisco Symphony has developed one of the best big choruses in the country, which is an index of the people who are available here and what can be done with them if the conductor and his sponsoring organization possess even a little sense of responsibility to their artistic and financial supporters."

There it is, vintage Frankenstein, telling it the way it was in 1979, is now and . . . ever shall be? Some institutions and situations seem not just out of touch but untouchable. We’ll see.

(Robert P. Commanday, the senior editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.)

©2002 Robert P. Commanday, all rights reserved

(From September 1, 1998 to October 15, 2002, we have published, in addition to the Music News, feature pieces and weekly editorials, 1275 reviews of Bay Area performances by: 43 symphony orchestras (272 reviews), 64 chamber groups (140), 32 new music ensembles and programs (152), 32 opera companies (181), 23 choral groups (84), 13 music festivals (57), 27 early music ensembles (76), 18 chamber orchestras (55), 5 musical theater groups (13), world music (11) and recitals (227), youth music (7).)