Thursday, October 21, 1999
CSO guest conductor rising star in Chicago
BY JANELLE GELFAND
The Cincinnati Enquirer
William Eddins was a nervous wreck. The young maestro, who is resident conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, was opening the season last month in the dual role of conductor and piano soloist for the Beethoven Triple Concerto.
His fellow artists were superstar violinist Pinchas Zukerman and cellist Lynn Harrell.
“No pressure, of course,” Mr. Eddins says facetiously from his home in Minneapolis. “I get excited, but I don't usually get nervous. But for an hour before I was onstage, I was pacing Orchestra Hall. I was beside myself.”
He need not have worried. The 34-year-old conductor, who makes his debut with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra this weekend, is one of America's most gifted rising musical stars.
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IF YOU GO
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• What: Cincinati Symphony Orchestra, William Eddins, conductor; Alexander Toradze, pianist
• When: 11 a.m. Friday; 8 p.m. Saturday
• Where: Music Hall
• Tickets: $12-$46; $10 students. Half price on day of concert, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. 381-3300.
www.cincinnatisymphony.org.
• The program: Nino Rota, Concerto for Strings; Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No. 3; Rachmaninoff, Symphonic Dances.
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On the staff of the Chicago Symphony since 1992, Mr. Eddins was planning to leave last year. Instead, music director Daniel Barenboim created a new position to keep him on, the first in the orchestra's 108-year-old history. Now, besides outreach and other duties, he has his own subscription concerts.
The difference between how he has grown since he began working in Chicago “is so astronomical, it's frightening,” he says. He keeps reminding himself of what the legendary pianist Rudolf Serkin once told him: “I'm still learning.”
“This was Serkin, who had played everything with everybody,” Mr. Eddins says. “I didn't realize what he meant, but the more I do this, the more I know exactly what he was talking about.
“I'll wake up in the middle of the night with music running through my brain, trying to get a handle on what I do.”
Mr. Eddins grew up in Buffalo, N.Y. He learned to play piano on a Wurlitzer grand that once belonged to operetta composer Sigmund Romberg. His parents had bought it at a garage sale.
His earliest childhood memory intertwines music and baseball.
“On Saturday afternoons, my dad used to turn on the TV to the baseball game, and turn down the sound. He'd turn up radio with the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts,” he says. “You'd hear conflicted statements like "Nice play!' and "Sing that high note!' coming from the living room.”
He took to the piano early, and soon his teachers were wondering if he'd be the next Vladimir Horowitz. In college at the Eastman School of Music (where at age 18 he was the youngest graduate in the history of the institution) he became bored with playing solo piano literature.
He studied conducting there with David Effron. But it wasn't until he went to play keyboards with the New World Symphony in Miami under Michael Tilson Thomas that “the epiphany hit.”
It was at a rehearsal of a 20th-century work with a guest conductor. “My part was up and down the keyboard ... I remember looking up. When a musician in an orchestra looks up, the only thing they're really interested in is ... Where is the one (beat)?”
“This guy was conducting wind through the trees and sunlight on the flowers, and I just wanted to know where the damn beat was,” he says. At that moment, he decided he had to be a conductor. He owed it to his colleagues.
He called up the University of Southern California, and was accepted into a program with Daniel Lewis, “probably the last great conducting teacher of the previous generation.”
Soon he was working his way up with major orchestras.
He feels strongly about musicians of this country, and is puzzled as to why symphony boards have ignored young Americans in favor of European conductors.
“Boards seem to think if a person has a foreign accent that means they'll be a better musician and bigger asset for the orchestra,” he says. It may be a risk to hire an American, but “with any conductor, you're taking a risk.”
The role of the conductor in this country has to change, he believes. “We are first and foremost entertainers. If you are going to entertain people, you have to be able to connect with an audience.
“Secondly, we simply must take advantage of the fact that in this country we have 100 years of brilliant music. There is no reason why we should be ignoring it.”
If he had his own orchestra, he would not campaign exclusively to attract African-Americans, Hispanics, or any other minority audience to his concerts.
“The emphasis is to bring everybody to the hall. You can't say, hey, it's African-American week. That's ridiculous,” he says. “What you do is to make everyone feel welcome, to aggressively program interesting music which reflects all segments of the society.”
Finally, he believes in striving for the best artistic performance possible. But along with high calibre, for him it must be fun.
“The second I walk offstage and realize I haven't had fun doing what I like to do, I come home. In my desk, is a completely filled out application to the Culinary Institute of America,” says Mr. Eddins, who confides that he is “a hell of a chef.”
“The only thing I have to do is drop it in the mail and I will never walk onstage again.”
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