Conductor projects a plan to promote active listening

Donald Rosenberg

Plain Dealer Music Critic

Carl Topilow was sitting in Severance Hall several years ago enjoying a Cleveland Orchestra performance of Elgar's symphonic study, "Falstaff," led by David Zinman. But the head of the conducting department at the Cleveland Institute of Music had one quibble.

"I didn't know what was going on," says Topilow, referring not to the playing or the interpretation but to Elgar's sonic portrait of the incorrigible Shakespearean knight. The experience spurred Topilow to figure out ways to draw audiences further into certain orchestral pieces.

With the CIM Orchestra and his National Repertory Orchestra in Breckenridge, Colo., he began distributing audience sheets containing pertinent information about the events in the music. When Topilow realized these explanations weren't easy to follow, especially in a darkened concert hall, he created supertitles for a screen above the orchestra, like the English texts projected in opera houses.

Topilow will make use of these artistic assists when he conducts the CIM Orchestra in Manuel de Falla's "The Three-Cornered Hat" and Ottorino Respighi's "The Pines of Rome" Wednesday at Severance Hall. The program also includes Morton Gould's "A Star Spangled Overture," for which the audience will be on its collective own.

"I'm not painting moods or images," Topilow says of his method. "They are descriptions of the action of the music, mainly ballets and tone poems."

In other words, don't expect to find Topilow conducting Beethoven's Fifth or other abstract classical works while themes or structural elements pop onto the screen. His point is to use texts or artwork during descriptive music to help concertgoers become more active listeners.

Topilow's educational endeavor introduces major pieces through several techniques. During the section in Richard Strauss' "Ein Heldenleben" ("A Hero's Life") known as "The Hero's Partner," which depicts the composer's temperamental wife in a prolonged violin solo, the supertitles evoke the woman's evolving moods. The 14 lines of text -- including "Hypocritically languishing," "Insolent" and "Tender and Lovingly" -- are projected at the exact moment the music tells the tale.

Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" comes with projections of the four extant pieces of art that inspired this popular collection. The audience at Wednesday's Severance Hall concert will be enlightened by lines of text that convey the activity in the Falla and Respighi blockbusters.

Topilow admits he'll do "anything to bring the pieces closer and make the emotional experience more meaningful for the audience." His communications arsenal includes speaking directly to the crowd, as he does so comfortably when leading his Cleveland Pops Orchestra (and often playing a red clarinet).

Providing audiences with more information in concert isn't new. The rise of the Internet, MTV and other visual elements in popular culture -- and the descent of arts education in American schools -- has created several generations that demand stimulation beyond their ears.

In recent decades, symphony orchestras have responded by adding projections, if sparingly, to lure more bodies to concert halls. The Cleveland Orchestra did so in February when Howard Shore conducted his music for "The Lord of the Rings" with drawings and maps to keep listeners on the dramatic track. Severance Hall was packed.

Topilow agrees that the use of projections is no substitute for appreciating music on its own, aural terms. And he insists that the enhancements and conductor comments must be engaging and first-rate.

"I'm very careful," he says. "You don't talk down to them or up to them. It's like a fireside chat of what you're going to hear. I've found when it's done well and I'm in the audience, I enjoy hearing it.

"I compare this to going to an art museum. I don't know what I'm looking at. But the audio guides help. They point things out to me that are very interesting. Personally, I think everybody should do it."