Music clubs hold lingering note of more genteel era

Thursday, February 24, 2000

Music clubs hold lingering note of more genteel era

In age of MTV, music enthusiasts still gather to perform, enjoy arias and sponsor up-and-coming players

On the first Monday of February, strains of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” echoed through the halls of the Westwood Cheviot Church of Christ. The meeting of the West Hills Music Club, held in the homey church parlor, was under way.

“Now leave out all the pronouns,” instructed accordionist Geri Schloemer, who was leading the sing-along on a Valentine theme. The ice-breaker soon had the club's 50 women and three men laughing as they struggled with the words on their pink programs.

“I just love music,” says Audrey Hudepohl of Westwood, who plays piano and sings. “I love to come and listen.”

Music clubs have existed in Cincinnati for more than a century. Today, despite MTV, e-mail and working mothers, they remain, a vestige of a bygone era. On virtually every day of the week, a music club is meeting somewhere around the Tristate.

At the end of the West Hills Music Club program, pianist Farhad Minwalla of White Oak gives an impromptu performance of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.

“It gives me an incentive to really practice up one piece a year, and try to get all the mistakes out of something that I'm playing,” says Mr. Minwalla, who is an actuary.

Some clubs are casual and invite anyone to join or listen. Others have stringent rules about performing ability and require letters of recommendation to join. Almost all of the members are women who want to maintain their musical skills by performing for each other.

“What I like is the opportunity to meet people involved in music, and to continue practicing and learning new repertoire,” says Atarah Jablonsky of Wyoming, a faculty member at the College of Mount St. Joseph and a member of several clubs.

All of the clubs have a “tea” or lunch afterward. But “it's not merely a social experience,” Mrs. Jablonsky says. “We also do good works.”

Those good works include performing for nursing homes and senior citizen centers. The Symphony Club, founded in 1923, raises money for the Lollipop Concerts by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

Most clubs offer scholarships to aspiring musicians and follow the careers of their recipients like proud parents.

“The scholarship is the most important thing we do to encourage young people who are studying music,” says Virginia Skinner, president of the Wyoming Music Club, founded in 1926. When member Claribel Schlemmer died, her husband established an endowment in her memory. Its income provides grants to high school and college-age students.

The Clifton Music Club, founded during World War I by a group of women, has awarded scholarships to rising stars early in their careers: Alyssa Park, a violinist; opera singers Kathleen Battle, Catherine Keen and Mark Oswald, and singer/songwriter and ex-Bengal Mike Reid.

Many clubs, such as the Keyboard Club, Music Lovers and the Woman's Clef Music Club, hold meetings in members' homes throughout the city.

On a snowy Wednesday, assorted chairs are squeezed into every nook of Irmela Pogue's home in Clifton, for the February meeting of the Woman's Clef Music Club. In the dining room, a table is set with a linen cloth and tea service. Upstairs, musicians can be heard warming up on violin and cello.

They are anticipating a stimulating program by recipients of a scholarship the club awards to students at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

Standing ovation
The members are attentive as soprano Anna Evans, 21, sings an aria from a Bach cantata. She is accompanied by Mrs. Pogue, a flutist, and Michael Balke, a CCM piano student. Later, the Brunsvik Trio, a student ensemble, gives an exceptional performance of trios by Beethoven and Shostakovich. The members are moved to a standing ovation.

“I sit here and hear these young people and marvel at the talent and musicianship. It's amazing,” says co-president Shirley Schnizer, a Blue Ash pianist and teacher. “It's inspiring. It makes you think, you'd better get home and work instead of falling back on something old.”

“It's the quality of the playing,” says Sally Brown, a pianist who is a member of several music clubs and lives in Indian Hill. “When you think of all the people who could have had a big career, but chose to have a family instead, they manage to maintain their interest. This town is alive with wonderful musicians.”

Music clubs are an offshoot of the Tristate's rich musical history, spurred by the first Cincinnati May Festival performances in 1873 and the building of Music Hall in 1878. In the 1880s, the Musical Club, led by president Lucien Wulsin, a partner of the Baldwin Piano Co., offered evenings of chamber music.

In 1893, the Middletown Music Club (then called the Saint Cecilia Club) was founded.

“They started out as ladies who didn't work, with meetings of long performances in elegant homes,” says president Marilyn Ifcic of Middletown.

Today, members are music teachers or church musicians. To join, they are auditioned — secretly.

“Sometimes we sneak into a church to hear them,” she says. “We find out about their (musical) background. I find it archaic, but it's probably in the by-laws from 1893.”

Still, times — and members — have changed since the Enquirer's society writer Marian Devereaux wrote in 1913: “Music Lovers is an organization composed of 25 clever and talented girls, who leave themselves enough leisure from their social obligations to woo the muse of music.”

Rising stars
The Matinee Musicale Club, which will celebrate its 90th anniversary next season, has regular meetings of formal performances by members, many of whom dash off to teach in studios afterward.

It also sponsors a recital series open to the public, which goes back to 1913. The artist roster reads like a Who's Who in music, including: Violinist Jacques Thibaud (1914); pianist Nadia Boulanger (1925); contralto Marian Anderson (1937); pianist Arthur Rubinstein (1938); the Budapest String Quartet (1947); pianist Van Cliburn (1955); soprano Beverly Sills (1969); tenor John Alexander (1969-1985); violinist Nigel Kennedy (1989).

“Most of the time, we get them before they've established a big reputation,” says president Nancy Walker of Mount Lookout. “For instance, (violinist) Itzhak Perlman's contract (in 1966) was for $1,500. You couldn't hire him today for less than $50,000.”

Many renowned artists made their Cincinnati — and even American — debuts with Matinee Musicale. Even today, symphony managers can be spotted in the audience. It is not unusual to see those performers the next season in Music Hall.

Programs of the MacDowell Society, which promotes all the arts — music, drama, visual art, letters, dance, architecture — were elaborate productions at one time, covered extensively in the newspaper society pages, recalls member Charlotte Shockley of Wyoming.

“We had a medieval night in a home that looked like a castle in Walnut Hills. There were trumpeters and medieval costumes,” Miss Shockley says. “The most amazing people belonged. One time, (the poet) Robert Frost came, and our members performed his Masque of Reason. He was there to oversee it.”

Declining membership
Today, some music clubs struggle with dwindling memberships. In the last decade, the Norwood and Euterpe music clubs have folded. This year, two clubs — the Woman's Music Club (founded in 1909) and Clef Music Club (founded in 1925) — merged into one.

“We aren't getting the young members because they are busy with their careers,” Miss Shockley says. “The arts used to be something to belong to. You felt you were one of the artistic group of the city, and you were meeting with people of like minds and hearts. I don't think there's quite that esprit anymore.”

Simultaneously, selling tickets to Matinee Musicale's daytime concerts has become difficult. In the '70s, the women sold more than 1,100 subscriptions to concerts in the Omni Netherland Hotel's Hall of Mirrors. Today, the series, now in Scottish Rite Auditorium, has 325 subscribers.

“I worry about the diminishing audiences,” Mrs. Walker says. “It's a new era. More women are working. Of course, in the age of all kinds of entertainment right in your home, it's hard to get people to go out.”

Matinee Musicale is addressing the issue of whether to admit men as members. There is precedent: The MacDowell Society has always had men. West Hills Music Club has had prominent male members of the music scene, such as former CSO concertmaster Sigmund Effron.

Yet music clubs persevere. Many believe that a century from now, members still will be giving programs in living rooms on wintry afternoons, learning new music, awarding scholarships and pouring tea.



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