wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

GUEST: William McDonough

RECORDINGS:

Johann Sebastian Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 in F, BWV 1046. First Movement. Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Neville Marriner. Philips 400 076-2

Ludwig van Beethoven String Quartet Op. 127 in E flat. Finale. Quartetto Italiano. Philips 454 711-2.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet in A major, K. 581. Fourth Movement. Emerson String Quartet. David Shifrin, Clarinet. Deutsche Grammophon 289 459 641-2.

"Believe me if all those endearing young charms". John McCormack, Tenor. EMI Classics 7 64654 2.

Aaron Copland Appalachian Spring (Original Version). Excerpt. Aaron Copland. CBS Masterworks MK 42431.
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Kaplan: Central banker and music lover. William McDonough on today's edition of "Mad About Music."

[Theme music]

Kaplan: If there is a single person whose actions determine our interest rates, it would probably be the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Not that he sets rates, but that bank's trading activities execute the policy of the Fed in Washington, our central bank. But today we explore another side of William McDonough: his passion for music. William McDonough, welcome to "Mad About Music."

McDonough: It is indeed a great, great pleasure to be here and I am mad about music.

Kaplan: All right, now I include your boss, if you can regard yourself as having a boss, Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the big Fed in Washington on my list of musicians who went wrong. After all, he's a graduate of Juilliard in the woodwinds. Do you and he ever talk about music?

McDonough: We talk about music quite a lot. When he and I are traveling together, which is almost always to Basel, Switzerland for meetings of the G-10 central bank governors, we spend time together and very frequently talk about our shared love of music. Pieces, composers.

Kaplan: All right, music is a very much part of your life today, but was it always part of your life, at a very young age?

McDonough: At a very young age, I remember hearing my Irish immigrant father, who was a superb tenor, sing Irish songs. But I did not really become familiar with what most of us think of as classical music until I was at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts. I went into the library one day and found a superb music system - this was in 1954, sat down, put the earphones on, and heard the First Brandenburg Concerto of Bach. I thought it was magnificent, and I fell in love with classical music right at the moment.

Kaplan: Now did you have any musical lessons?

McDonough: As a child I had studied the piano. I studied the clarinet, which I played sufficiently badly that I stopped playing it. And then I learned to play the tuba and was a tuba player in a marching band in both high school and college and when in college, I also played tuba in a Dixie band. It's a great instrument for a Dixie band.

Kaplan: Well, then, I find it rather surprising when I look at your list of selections, and you mention the Bach Brandenburg Concerto, which we're going to come to in a minute, because I can imagine the music you were playing with that tuba. Therefore, I might have thought you would go for Wagner or Bruckner, but I see most of your selections today are very chamber-like, actually a lot of chamber music.

McDonough: I like classical music in general, but the first choice is chamber music, then orchestral music, and then opera. But I love it all so much that most people think I'm an opera buff.

Kaplan: I see. All right, then let's come back to that very first work you heard, because I see it is at the top of your list of your selections: Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 1. You mention you first heard that in college.

McDonough: I heard it, and it was by sheer chance, the first piece that I heard. I listened to it; I found it so wonderfully mathematically precise, so expressive, and so wonderful that I adored it.

[Music]

Kaplan: The first movement of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 1, The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Neville Marriner conducting. The first selection of my guest today on "Mad About Music," the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, William McDonough.
Now, beyond your passion for listening to music, you're also very active in the professional side of music. You serve on the board of the New York Philharmonic, you're a Vice-chairman there. And if I am correct, you are actually Chairman of the committee that selected the music director. Is that right?

McDonough: Yes, I have the honor of chairing the music committee at the New York Philharmonic, which put me in a rather automatic position to chair the search committee. Most of the members of the search committee were members of the Philharmonic, because I thought it essential that great music be made by a music director who's a gifted musician and wonderful orchestral players who wanted to work together.

Kaplan: Now, it's well known that in any selection of a music director, there will be different opinions about people, but also different opinions about what is most important. How did the committee divide up, not by name, but by concept?

McDonough: The New York Philharmonic players and I believe most of our audience really like the great works of classical music. We all believe that contemporary music is important, that there must be a mix in the season. But all of the people that we took seriously as candidates are conductors who are particularly interested in, I would say the great works of music from Haydn through Mahler, and an interest in the 20th century, but with a greater emphasis on the 18th and 19th centuries.

Kaplan: So a more conservative approach.

McDonough: Well, I would of course call it a more balanced approach.

Kaplan: Very well. In the balancing then, we should move to the next genre of your selections, which in a way is the same genre because the Bach Brandenburg Concerto we heard is a chamber-sized group, a very small one. And your next selection, I see, is in fact a string quartet - a Beethoven quartet.

McDonough: I like Beethoven very, very much as a composer and I find that the essence of his genius, a very broad-gauged genius, is best expressed in the string quartets. I like quite a number of the string quartets, but my favorite among them is Opus 127 and that's why I thought that that is the one that I would ask that you play for our friends in the audience today.

Kaplan: It's always difficult to find a way to express why one loves a piece of music. You say you like it best. Can you try to articulate what you hear in it or what's different about it from some of the others, that attracts you to it?

McDonough: It's very difficult for me to verbalize, but for some reason, the Opus 127 to me is the full expression of Beethoven's genius. It's probing, questioning, trying, demanding, and yet at the same time, there's a wonderful sonority to it and for somebody as interested in mathematics as I am, it also has a wonderful mathematical precision to it.

[Music]

Kaplan: The finale of Beethoven's String Quartet, Opus 127, performed by Quartetto Italiano, a selection of my guest on "Mad About Music" today, New York Federal Reserve Bank President, William McDonough. You can learn more about William McDonough or sample any of our earlier shows by logging onto WNYC.org.

[Station break]

Kaplan: This is Gilbert Kaplan with my guest on "Mad About Music," the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, William McDonough. Now before, we were talking about your role at the New York Philharmonic as a member of the board. I'd like to ask you about the state of classical music financially. Being a banker, you would understand that very well. Every day we read about orchestras going out of business, funding is more difficult to achieve, ticket sales are off in many ways. What is your own sense of the state of affairs in classical music?

McDonough: I think the state of affairs in classical music is one of very considerable concern to all of us who love it and believe that it is terribly important that it be made available to the public. The presenters of classical music have been failing in a marketing mission in recent years. The people who attend classical music concerts are each year a year older. We are not going as good a job collectively as we should in interesting young people in classical music. The New York Philharmonic is trying very hard through its concerts in the parks, through its activities in schools, to interest young people in classical music, but I think that's been a failing of the classical music business in general. We do have to remember, Gil, that classical music, the presentation thereof, is in fact a business. It is a business in which the product is beautiful music but it is still something in which we must control our costs, we must get as large an audience as we possibly can, we must do everything necessary to be able to come pretty cost to covering the costs of production through the sale of tickets so that we do not become overly dependent on the benevolence of wealthier people who support classical music through their charitable contributions. We depend on them, but we have to be very careful that we don't become so dependent that we allow classical music to slip away from the public ear and eventually die.

Kaplan: Do you find that the economy and the stock market is making it much more difficult to raise money?

McDonough: It is certainly making it more difficult to raise contribution money. The problem of terrorism has exacerbated that by making some people more reluctant to go to public places, such as concert halls. But the combination of a very weak stock market in the last few years, some concern about people going to public places, is a near-lethal combination in cutting down the ticket sales and at the very same time when we need more contributions money, of reducing the flow.

Kaplan: All right. Well, then, let's come back to music and get away from politics and money. And your next selection is the Mozart Clarinet Quintet, which I should tell you, you have a fellow appearer on this show, Alan Alda, who also selected that. But he selected it not only because he liked the music, but because he had included that as a work played in the final episode of "M*A*S*H," and he told me that the New York Times estimated that more people heard the Mozart Clarinet Quintet that night than maybe had ever heard it in the history of the work itself. So, tell us what your special interest is in this work.

McDonough: My special interest is, first of all, in Mozart. He is my very most favorite composer. I like his chamber music and his string quartets, but that I find the Clarinet Quintet does, is it brings an instrument, a wind instrument, the clarinet, that was particularly loved by Mozart himself, to join the string quartet in a product in which four plus one equals a lot more than five. It's a quintet, but it just has a magnificence of beauty that I think is close to infinity.

[Music]

Kaplan: The final movement of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet in A major, performed by the Emerson String Quartet, with soloist David Shifrin on the clarinet, a selection of my guest New York Federal Reserve Bank President, William McDonough.
Now, as a result of your board position in New York, and you've been on other boards, also, you were the Chairman of the Ravinia Festival outside of Chicago, did that ever offer you an opportunity to get to know any of the performers well?

McDonough: I've had the great good fortune to become quite close friends with some of the world's great conductors, particularly with Georg Solti, who was the music director of the Chicago Symphony. Solti stayed at a hotel that was very next door to the apartment on East Lake Shore Drive, where my wife, Suzanne, and I lived. Very frequently after a concert, he would come over for a short glass of Le Freud, which was a very good single-malt whiskey and then we would give him some good, robust Hungarian food and red wine, and I would literally sit at his feet, because he had a rather stiff neck, and not in character, but in a physical ailment, so I would sit at his feet and he would teach me about music. In one of those late night sessions after he had conducted, I asked him if he thought that any orchestra was the single best orchestra in the world, and he said no. He said at that time - this was about 1989 - that he thought that there were three outstanding orchestras in the world, and it really depended on the repertoire. He thought that in Haydn and Mozart, no orchestra could compare with the Weiner Philharmoniker; he thought that in Beethoven that no orchestra could compare with the Berlin Philharmonic; and then he modestly with a sweet smile said, and of course, in Mahler, in Wagner, in Bruckner, it is the Chicago Symphony. The reciprocity was that I had to help him understand finance, and if I were half as good a student of music as he was of finance, I was very good indeed. He's a brilliant man who had a great interest in economics and finance.

Kaplan: I can confirm your observation of George Solti because I experienced his great interest as a speculator in the stock market. He was always interested in the stock market and I had the impression is that he did rather well. All right, speaking of speculation and cards, we now come to a section of the show which we call the "wild card," where you have an opportunity to pick a selection from any genre of music outside of classical or opera music, and people have ranged far a field on this, and so what have you brought us today as your wild card?

McDonough: I have brought you today a very beautiful wild card, John McCormack, the great Irish tenor who was a star of both Irish songs and of opera, singing "Believe me, if all those endearing young charms," a song that I remember with great joy because my fine Irish tenor father used to sing it for my mother.

[Music]

Kaplan:"Believe me, if all those endearing young charms," sung by tenor John McCormack, a selection of my guest Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William McDonough, who once heard his father, maybe many times heard his father, sing this song to his mother. When we return, we'll hear William McDonough's final selection.

[Station break]

Kaplan: This is Gilbert Kaplan with my guest on "Mad About Music" today, William McDonough, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Now, in focusing on the selections, which are so chamber-like in their character, I didn't see any contemporary music, and you mentioned that the New York Philharmonic was a bit, as I would say, conservative, you said balanced. But I wonder where does contemporary composing fit within your interest?

McDonough: I like contemporary music very much, Corigliano's work I like, but the selection of contemporary music that I've asked that you play is Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring. My interest in Copland came from meeting him; I was a State Department foreign service officer in Latin America, in Montevideo, Uruguay. Copland visited and I got to know him reasonably well. The enormously wonderful, exuberant personality, the incredible fascination for music, so my first interest is really in Copland the composer. I particularly like Appalachian Spring because I think it captures so much the exuberance of his character, and I particularly like his use of a wonderful Quaker hymn as a principal part of the music.

Kaplan: And it is in your honor that we will play the original version, because when Copland wrote it, as a ballet for Martha Graham, he was told that the pit where the musicians would play was very small, so he actually composed this for 13 instruments.

[Music]

Kaplan: An excerpt from Copland's Appalachian Spring with Aaron Copland conducting 13 musicians, the original size ensemble for which he composed the work. The final selection of my guest on today's edition of "Mad About Music," Federal Reserve Bank of New York President, William McDonough.
Now, thinking about your rich and diverse musical interests, and experiences, have you ever thought what life would have been like if you had become a musician? If music had been your profession?

McDonough: Oh, I've really thought about it quite a lot, because I love music, I was thought by some people to be a good enough tenor myself that I could have made a profession at it. I don't think in operatic music, but rather more in musical theater, because I also did a lot of acting as a young man. However, by the time that I got out of the U.S. Navy and would have been able to think of that, I was a father of two children, heading to be a father of four, and somehow becoming a banker seemed a more likely way to actually be able to support those children. So my love of music has been listening to it, and as we've noted in your program, very active involvement in boards of directors of the New York Philharmonic, the Ravinia Festival outside of Chicago, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Kaplan: Well, we can all feel much better that a man who affects our financial lives so much brings a musician's sensibility to that task. William McDonough, thank you for appearing today. This is Gilbert Kaplan for "Mad About Music."

[Credits]

About William McDonough

President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, William McDonough took office on July 19, 1993, as the eighth chief executive of the Second District Federal Reserve Bank, at New York. In that capacity, he serves as the vice chairman and a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee. He is currently serving a full term that began March 1, 2001.

Mr. McDonough was born on April 21, 1934, in Chicago, Illinois. He earned a master's degree in economics from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1962, and a bachelor's degree, also in economics, from Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1956.

He joined the bank in January 1992. Before his present appointment, Mr. McDonough was executive vice president and head of the financial markets group of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which includes domestic open market and foreign exchange operations and U.S. government securities market surveillance. In conjunction with that post, he was the manager of open market operations for the Federal Open Market Committee.

Mr. McDonough retired from First Chicago Corp. and its bank, First National Bank of Chicago, in 1989 after a 22-year career there. After leaving First Chicago, Mr. McDonough served in a variety of executive roles, including adviser to the World Bank and International Finance Corporation on the selection of outside auditors, special adviser to the president of the Inter-American Development Bank, and chairman of the Illinois Commission on the Future of Public Service.

At First Chicago, he was vice chairman of the board and a director of the bank holding company from 1986 until his retirement. Between 1980 and 1986, he was executive vice president and chief financial officer of the bank and, from 1973 to 1980, was executive vice president and head of worldwide banking. Prior to his career with First Chicago, Mr. McDonough was with the U.S. State Department from 1961 to 1967 and with the U.S. Navy from 1956 to 1961.

Mr. McDonough serves as a member of the board of directors of the Bank for International Settlements and as chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. He is also a member of the board of governors of the New York Academy of Sciences, the board of governors of the Foreign Policy Association, the board of directors of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a member of the Trilateral Commission and chairman of the board of trustees of The Economic Club of New York.