Teresa Sterne -- An Appreciation
Teresa Sterne, pioneering classical music producer and
director of Nonesuch Records from 1965-1979, died December 10, 2000 of amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis (Lou Gerhrig's disease). She was 73.
There have been a lot of obituaries written about Ms.
Sterne and she deserves every accolade she is being given. More than anyone else I can
think of, she shaped an entire generation of music lovers. This is where I assume my
quavery old coot voice and say: "You young 'uns have no idea what the classical
music scene was like back in 19-ought-65 …" (OK, let's lose the annoying voice.)
Well, maybe you don't. But I do. And what I remember is
that records cost a lot of money, or at least it seemed that way at the time. Further, if
you lived in a small town, as I did, there weren't a lot of labels to choose from. And the
selection was a lot slimmer than it is now. You had your German composers and your big
operas and ballets, but the recorded repertory was pretty unadventurous. Very little
Baroque music, other than Bach and Handel and there was no early music at all, unless you
counted Gregorian chant as performed by some group of monks over in France who weren't
even musicians really, just monks.
And forget it, if you were interested in what the native
music of Africa, Asia, or South America sounded like! You were far more likely to find
some dumbed-down piece of audio fluff, such as Fiestas in Hi-Fi, than you were to
find real Mexican music for fiestas.
If any single label and any single person, could be said to
have changed all that, that label was Nonesuch and that person was Teresa Sterne.
Nonesuch was a budget label, which initially survived by
licensing performances from European labels for release in the US. Under Ms. Sterne, the
label began issuing a revolutionary selection of music. For instance, the label actually commissioned
works by living American composers such as Charles Dodge, George Crumb, Elliott Carter,
Morton Subotnick, and Charles Wuorinen. I didn't find all of these guys accessible, but
I'd have never even have heard of them if not for Nonesuch. Maybe I never will
cotton to the mathematical spikiness of Dodge's Earth's Magnetic Field, but my life
would be poorer indeed had I lived it without ever hearing Crumb's Ancient Voices of
Children.
Nonesuch also unearthed off-the-beaten track earlier
American musical forms; recordings of Victorian-era music hall and vaudeville songs by
William Bolcom and Joan Morris, for example, as well as one of my personal all-time
favorites, the songs of Civil War-era composer Henry Clay Work. (I swear I'm not making
this up. The chorus to "Poor Kitty Popcorn" goes "Poor Kitty Popcorn/buried
in a snowdrift now -- /Never more shall ring the music of your charming song, Meyow! /Never
more shall ring the music of your charming song, Meyow!" Who could resist?)
This was incredible for an impressionable young music
lover. Imagine! Classical music was being composed in America right now -- and always had
been.
Not that Nonesuch neglected European composers. The
Boulez/ORTF Sacre de Printemps was astounding stuff (later bettered by the
Boulez/Cleveland Orchestra reading on Columbia, but for $1.99?) And I was instantly made a
Mahlerite by Horenstein's reading of the 1st Symphony.
The label also supported Baroque and Renaissance music in a
big way. And, as the original instrument and authentic performance movements began to
gather momentum, Nonesuch was one of the labels on which its proponents were welcome.
Even though it was a budget label, Nonesuch never acted
like one. Its discs came in brightly colored covers with original art that frequently
displayed laugh-out-loud wit. (Walter Scheidt's recording of Bach lute pieces on guitar
featured a phenomenally randy looking Bach, I always thought.) You weren't getting
old Angels, as with Seraphim, or ancient Columbias, as with Odyssey, you were getting a
new Nonesuch! And most of the time, they weren't like anything else on earth. To us
impressionable types, it was our label.
And then there was the Nonesuch Explorer Series -- a
collection of recordings that weren't like any other ethnomusicological records around.
I'm told the first Explorer Series recording was the one with the ketjak dance. It
was surely the first one I heard. Copies of this recording were treasures that were freely
shared -- I remember more than one party at the University of Virginia where the Allman
Brothers were followed on the turntable by the polyrhythmic monkey dance. And it didn't
slow the party down a bit -- we knew exactly where the monkey dancers were coming from!
Nonesuch's track record with the Explorer's Series was
amazingly good. Paul Berliner's two recordings of mbira (the African thumb piano)
remain two of the finest recordings of the pure instrumental style to date (although
Francis Beybey's later blending of synthesizer and mbira is also a lot of fun).
Nonesuch's gamelan recordings remain touchstones of that genre.
Ms. Sterne discovered some of my favorite performers and
she gave me the chance to discover them, too, by supporting them with release after
release. Chief among these is Paul Jacobs, who recorded some of the most transcendent
Debussy I've ever heard. Ms. Sterne not only gave him a recording contract, she was the
one who suggested he perform Debussy at a time when he specialized in contemporary
American music. Jacobs died tragically young -- if Ms. Sterne hadn't had the conviction to
record him when no one else had done so, we'd be deprived of his glorious music-making.
Instead, it has been preserved for all time.
I only had personal dealings with Ms. Sterne once. When I
worked at a classical label, she called up one day and politely enquired about several of
our … um, more obscure recordings -- one of Tibetan Meditation bowls and
another of a blend of Baroque music and jazz. She seemed amused that I'd heard of her, as
I stammered out my appreciation for all the years of pleasure she'd provided me.
I'd say I fell in love with her on the spot, but the fact
is, it had happened years earlier when I first embraced Nonesuch Records.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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