Classical Conundrums

By MARK SWED

Dec. 29, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES MUSIC CRITIC

MaryAnn Bonino opens doors--to Frank Lloyd Wright houses and Spanish missions, to notable private homes and splendid churches. She has led us into a hillside “chateau” in Pasadena, the Hindu Temple in Malibu and the Lincoln Heights Jail. The reason for following her has been not just to look around, but to attend the series Chamber Music in Historic Sites, which she founded in 1980.

Bonino, a musicologist by training, matches music and space, acoustically and environmentally: Mozart’s “Hunt” and Haydn’s “Rider” quartets at the Santa Anita Turf Club; Haydn’s “Sunrise” quartet at the Mt. Wilson Observatory; jazz in the Lincoln Heights Jail; Marcus Roberts at the Dunbar, the first integrated hotel in Los Angeles.

Operated through Mount St. Mary’s College, where Bonino founded the Da Camera Society to present chamber music concerts, Sites has become a unique window onto the musical world. Every concert is an occasion, making Bonino, who is a popular speaker and classical music radio and television personality, one of the leading--and most eclectic--forces in revitalizing classical music in Los Angeles.

Question: You’ve been producing concerts for some 25 years, a period during which the classical music environment has changed considerably. We’ve witnessed booms and busts, fads have come and gone. What’s it like presenting music these days?

Answer: I thought you were going to ask what the state of classical music is today, and I have an answer.

Q: Perfect, what is it?

A: Classical music is just fine. Mozart’s operas, Haydn’s quartets, Monteverdi’s madrigals, Josquin’s motets--they’re thriving.

Q: In terms of growing audiences?

A: No, in a Platonic universe. The music is just great. The question really is: How are we? Are we availing ourselves of this rich treasure? We live in very naughty and noisy times. How are we making use of this heritage? There have been times when the answer would be that we’re not making use of it at all.

Q: What about now?

A: The question is not how is classical music doing, but how is the classical music market doing. It’s become basically a question of money. Money drives the market, and the market makes the music accessible to us.

Q: So, what is the state of the classical music market?

A: It depends upon whom you ask. If you ask me, our series is thriving. We’ve never done better. We have reached 101% of our income goals already [this season].

Q: What does that mean exactly?

A: It refers to what I need to sell. It’s not quite a sold-out number, because we have enough seats left to keep interest going. But I suspect that presenters who have larger halls to fill are not doing as well. Small record companies are thriving, but the majors are being bought out by bigger companies that have nothing to do with music.

Q: Does that mean that the classical music business as a whole has unreasonable expectations about growth, where success is measured by the fabulous sales figures of, say, the Three Tenors?

A: I submit that that’s not classical music. It doesn’t take three tenors to sing “Nessun dorma” any better. They’re wonderful artists, but here is a rare example where the whole is substantially less than the sum of its parts. It’s more a circus mentality. And you certainly get into trouble when you make the assumption that the masses who adore the Three Tenors are going to want to listen to [Schoenberg’s atonal monodrama] “Erwartung”or even [Mozart’s opera] “Don Giovanni.” Classical music is always going to attract smaller numbers, as it always has.

Q: Yet our symphonies and opera companies have become lavish operations with big budgets. Given the limited subsidies and corporate involvement these days, they clearly need big numbers.

A: It’s the equivalent of the military-industrial complex. Think of orchestras presenting three or four concerts a week in a 3,000-seat hall. How old of a phenomenon is that? During the decade between 1890 and 1900 in Vienna, the Vienna Philharmonic gave eight concerts a year; 95% of the concerts were of chamber ensembles or recitals. We’ve gotten ourselves into this mind-set that the musical life of a city centers on its symphony, which has grown Mahlerian in proportion, and it is an institution that has to be fed.

Q: And in many parts of the country that has become a real problem. Symphonies and classical music concerts are getting kicked out of the big cultural centers by touring road shows and pop music.

A: I say fine. I think it’s good for them, don’t you? Think about it. How often do you want to go into a 3,000-seat hall to hear a piano recital? I think all of this, while it’s very disconcerting, is healthy. It’s just change, that’s all.

Q: OK, so what has changed for you in the last quarter-century of putting on concerts?

A: There are the changes that everybody talks about--the reduction in funding, the increase in social and education obligations that are being delegated to arts organizations. Someone said that the next thing they are going to be asking us to do is to repair manholes. We have more than three times as many programs at schools than public concerts. But I have only a small window on a small world, so we haven’t been buffeted by economic changes.

Q: Still, you can’t bring in the large ensembles that you once presented because there are no longer so many subsidies to support blockbuster tours. Nor can you afford the stellar performers you once had, although, of course, many of those performers were not yet stellar, such as the Kronos Quartet or Anonymous 4, when you first presented them.

A: The whole issue of stellar is a critical one. Celebrity is a major problem in our society; celebrity doesn’t necessarily mean the best. The difference between the superstar and the next down on the ladder is not demonstrated by the difference in the fee. And if we don’t have the access to the big names and the big ensembles, we do have access to young, smaller ensembles that are first-rate. They seem to be coming out of the cracks of the sidewalk. Beautifully trained musicians, extraordinary talent.

Q: You said the reason you have weathered hard times is because you are a small series without the hungry budget of the big boys. Does that mean you’ve resisted growth?

A: We, too, have mirrored the general confusion of the fin de siecle, the boom of the ‘80s and the bust of the ‘90s. In the ‘80s, we doubled our schedule every year, and this decade we’ve cut back. But it was less for financial concerns than sheer overload. We were spending all of our time talking about marketing issues. We learned that bigger is not necessarily better.

Q: To what else do you credit your success? Here you are an early music specialist presenting everything from chant to jazz in historic sites in a town that supposedly has no sense of history. And, ironically, the historic sites idea hasn’t caught on anywhere else.

A: It really is an L.A. experience. I remember talking to [the late New Yorker architecture critic] Brendan Gill once over drinks about the idea of doing this in New York, and he looked over and said, “My dear, like every good play, you’ll open last in New York.” He’s probably right. I think the reason it flourishes here has to do with the nature of who we are in this city.

Q: And our peculiar sense of history?

A: Do you remember the moment in Steve Martin’s movie “L.A. Story” when they’re driving down the street and he points out a building and says it’s 20 years old--that’s a historic building? There is some truth to that. But we also have landmarks, such as the missions that go back 200 years. We have excellent architecture from the beginning of this century. We have architectural references in other buildings, like the Mayan Theater downtown, which is pre-Columbian but in a 1920s context.

Q: Is there something didactic in all this, coming out of your background as a professor of early music? Is that what led you into historical presentations?

A: I had no idea I was going in that direction. I had reached a point where I was a little bored with teaching. I would teach chant to students who were resistant, and all I had to use were scratchy old records of poor performances. Talk about how things have changed! [Early music] performances on record now are thoughtful and beautiful.

Q: And chant has developed a mass audience.

A: How do you explain that?

Q: How do you explain it?

A: I don’t. But if I put chant on a program I know that it will work. I remember once at an NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] meeting in Washington, we had such a difficult, contentious session that some of us went to the hotel bar straight away. And there were the monks: chant as background music in the bar! I thought, [What’s] going on here. It certainly calmed us down, though.

Q. It’s background music for chilling out?

A: I don’t think so: People will go to concerts and listen to very difficult repertory, mesmerized. I’m mystified, but I’m grateful.

Q: Could it be that people simply have more exposure and more knowledge about this music now that there are good recordings, and, thanks to you, good performances in proper settings?

A: I don’t know. But whatever it takes. Everything goes in cycles. I can’t predict that classical music will continue as we know it, but I do know that there are more opportunities to hear better performances in a variety of formats and venues than there ever were before. It’s certainly a lot better than when I was growing up.

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Crossroads

The daily Calendar section will continue through Jan. 7 its series of interviews, conducted by Times critics, with leaders in the arts and entertainment.

MONDAY

Movies: Steven Spielberg

TODAY

Classical music: MaryAnn Bonino

WEDNESDAY

Television: Jeff Greenfield

THURSDAY

Jazz: Tommy LiPuma

FRIDAY

Dance: Garth Fagan

SATURDAY

Restaurants: Nobu Matsuhisa