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George Frideric Handel Oboe Concerto in G minor. "Live" from Bellingham Festival of Music, Bellingham, Washington. The American Sinfonietta. Michael Palmer. Joseph Robinson, Oboe.

Johann Sebastian Bach Concerto for Two Violins and Strings, BWV 1043. (Second Movement: "Largo ma non tanto"). Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Isaac Stern and Pinchas Zukerman, Violin. CBS Masterworks MLK 45521.

Ludwig Van Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13 "Pathétique". [Second movement: "Adagio cantabile" Vladimir Horowitz, Piano. Sony Classical S2K 53457.

Eric Clapton and Jim Gordon "Layla". Derek and the Dominos. Eric Clapton, guitar and lead vocal. Polydor 31453 1820-2.

Serge Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet. [Excerpt] Berlin Philharmonic. Claudio Abbado. Deutsche Grammophon 289 453 439-2.

 

Kaplan President of television news and music lover, David Westin on today's edition of "Mad About Music."

[Theme Music]

Kaplan: This is Gilbert Kaplan and my guest on "Mad About Music" today is the President of ABC News, David Westin. A man who plays a pivotal role in determining what we see on the news. But for "Mad About Music" listeners, David Westin is significant because he joins a distinguished and growing club of my guests who went "wrong", by which I mean, people who abandoned their plans for a career in music. He joins President Bush's National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, who told us she was on her way to a career as a concert pianist before she jumped ship for international studies. And British Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath, who graduated as an organ major at Oxford before turning to politics. We'll soon explore all this; but for now, David Westin, welcome to "Mad About Music."

Westin: Thank you for having me.

Kaplan: So let's start with that abrupt turn in the road. You actually entered college, I understand, as a music major.

Westin: That's right, my first -

Kaplan: What happened?

Westin: I started as a freshman at University of Michigan music school as an oboe major. Michigan has a great music program and they had an outstanding oboe professor back then named Florian Mueller, with whom I had studied, actually, when I was in high school, because I graduated from high school in Ann Arbor. And Mueller had been the principal oboist for the Chicago Symphony for many years in the 40s and 50s and retired to go teach at Michigan. And so I started out as an oboe major, and I wanted to have a career in music. And in all honesty, I was seduced away by philosophy.

Kaplan: Philosophy? But what happened to music? Did you think that it would not be an interesting enough career, or did you think that maybe you were destined for more non-musical?

Westin: Well, I think it was two things, Gil, in honesty. One of them was, it became really laborious, those long hours in practice rooms. At least at Michigan, the way it was constructed, there were these small practice rooms with blond Yamaha pianos, uprights, and you'd go in for hours on end and practice, which I did. And it became really tedious and laborious. At the same time, in all honesty, I concluded that I could be better at other things than I could be at oboe playing. I was a good oboe player. I wasn't going to be a great oboe player.

Kaplan: Well, that's exactly what Condi Rice said. She said she'd be playing the piano at Nordstrom's and not Carnegie Hall.

Westin: Exactly!

Kaplan: All right, so I'm not surprised, then, to see the oboe in your first selection, which is Handel's Oboe Concerto, the one in G minor.

Westin: Right. My favorite of all the oboe pieces that I played. I played it for many, many years. And it's still the one I go back to first when I pick up the horn even today, which is unfortunately rare, but when I pick it up, it's the first I go back to. It's a beautiful work, and I personally believe the great oboe compositions came from the Baroque period. You know, 18th century, Handel, Bach, Telemann wrote beautifully for the oboe. But this one is particularly nuanced and sophisticated for Handel. And I love it dearly, and I listen to it fairly frequently even today.

[Music]

Kaplan: Handel's Oboe Concerto in G minor, Joseph Robinson, normally playing principal oboe for the New York Philharmonic, but here as a soloist with The American Sinfonietta in a live performance at the Bellingham Festival. The first selection of my guest on today's edition of "Mad About Music," ABC News President, David Westin.

You know, when we talk about violinists, we talk about the distinction between the instrument they play, their sound, their interest in color. What can you say about Joseph Robinson as a musician and in terms of the instrument he plays?

Westin: I actually came across Joe Robinson when he was playing at my church up in Westchester for an anthem, and I was not familiar with his playing for the New York Philharmonic. And I was drawn to him because he has a beautiful sound. A sound that actually reminds me of Florian Mueller, my teacher. It's a rounded, beautiful, sweet sound, which is quite different from what one hears, for example, in the German oboist, or the English oboist, who tend to be more nasal with a wider vibrato. And he has that round, mellow, beautiful sweet sound. He plays beautifully, he's now my favorite oboist and I'm happy to say, a good friend.

Kaplan: Well, what can you say, though, about his view of you as a musician? Has he ever heard you play?

Westin: He's never heard me play. He got me back playing because his assistant plays the same kind of horn I do and she managed to get it rehabilitated for me, and he's offered me, I'm delighted to say, a free lesson or two, but I haven't taken him up on it yet! So he hasn't heard me.

Kaplan: I see. Now, you mentioned that the horn you play, and of course the oboe is a type of horn, but did you start off to play a wind instrument?

Westin: I started with piano when I was very young, first grade. I took piano for several years back in Michigan where I lived. And then I took one year of clarinet in the fourth grade in public music. Public music education is very big in the state of Michigan; it's a very strong program throughout the state. I took one year of clarinet and I switched to oboe when I was in the fifth grade.

Kaplan: And did you continue to play in school? Did you play in the band or the orchestra?

Westin: I played in band - there were symphonic bands in Michigan, first in Flint, then in Ann Arbor, as well as orchestra and pit orchestras. For example, we played West Side Story when I was a junior in high school and I played Ruddigore, Gilbert and Sullivan, which is an awful lot of fun.

Kaplan: All right, well let's turn to television, your work and television in the context of classical music. There was a time when classical music was really big-time on television. You had NBC with its own orchestra conducted by Toscanini. Today, there's almost no coverage of classical music at all.

Westin: There's actually relatively little coverage of any music in the major broadcast news organizations. Frankly, because, for a very simple reason - the broadcasters want to obtain very, very large audiences, and I've learned through programming, not just on the news side, but on the entertainment side, music is inherently splintering. Even if you get within a particular genre, say, country-western music, there are fans for different kinds of country music, and as a result, it's very difficult to program music for very large numbers. Now, we cover music in the news. We just recently had a report, for example, on the substantial investments being made in many cities in their concert halls for pipe organs. They're refurbishing and rebuilding pipe organs. And we cover Yo-Yo Ma, for example, some of the more popular, better-known artists out there, we cover as a matter of news. But in terms of programming music itself, it's very, very difficult to program for large audiences, music.

Kaplan: I always thought that if as children, we were exposed to more music than most children are today, that the adult audience might be a lot larger for classical music, but it is those moments as a child, and I'm wondering, do you have a moment as a child where you heard a piece of music that you found just captivating?

Westin: Well, I was blessed by having parents, both my mother and my father played piano and sang quite a bit, and I grew up listening to Bach particularly, my father was a big fan of Bach. And some of the Mozart wind octets and things, we would learn quite a bit. Now, Bach has always been a favorite of mine, remains a favorite of mine for a whole host of reasons. And there is a beautiful piece that's for two violins originally, the way it was written, that is a gorgeous piece that I love to listen to. I actually had a chance to play it, as I got older, in a transcription that was done for clarinet and oboe, a version of that.

The thing I love about this piece of music is the interplay of the two voices. They play off of each other, as co-equals in a remarkable way. And when I listen to it today, I remember the experience of playing with that clarinet.

[Music]

Kaplan: The Second Movement of the Bach Double Concerto with Isaac Stern and Pinchas Zukerman on the violins, and Zukerman also conducting the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. An early favorite of my guest on "Mad About Music," ABC News President, David Westin.

You can learn more about David Westin or listen to any of our prior shows, or just read the transcript by logging on to WNYC.org and then click on "Mad About Music."

Meanwhile, when we return, we will discuss the musical decision that most of our listeners have had to make, namely what music would you like to be played when you walk in for your wedding?

[Station break]

Kaplan: This is Gilbert Kaplan with my guest on "Mad About Music," ABC News President, David Westin. So, with your first choices, Handel and Bach, I guess it's fair to say that the Baroque period is your favorite.

Westin: It is my favorite.

Kaplan: And you also mentioned that the oboe music written during that period is probably the high point of oboe writing.

Westin: In my opinion, yes. I think the greatest oboe writing was done during the Baroque period.

Kaplan: Are there any composers composing for the oboe today? Who produce works you admire?

Westin: That's interesting. Actually, Florian Mueller wrote a fair amount, my teacher, wrote a fair amount. Just personal taste, I don't think anything written today compares with Telemann, Bach, Handel, for oboe.

Kaplan: Yes. Now what about listening in general? I mean, are there mainstream composers that we always hear, but just don't appeal to you?

Westin: Well, it's a personal prejudice, I have to say. The farther you go into late Romantic, Impressionist, late 19th century, I start to lose interest. I said earlier, Bach is probably my favorite composer, if it makes sense to have a favorite composer, but I use this sometimes even in my work, as an analogy. It strikes me that Bach was a particular kind of genius because he composed within such constraints. I mean, at the time - it was both time constraints, often getting ready for Sunday services, having to compose things, but also, as you know, voice-leading constraints. Parallel fourths and parallel fifths and all sorts of rules, key signatures, things like that - and within those constraints he could create such genius, such amazing genius and therefore I find it somewhat less interesting when you throw out all the rules, and you simply - you have chromaticism, you can go into different keys willy-nilly whenever you want, it can go on as long as you want. I just personally find it somewhat less interesting, so when you get into Debussy, for example, I just - it doesn't excite me the same as Bach does.

Kaplan: But I also noticed in the movements you've selected, you seem to favor slow movements.

Westin: I do, I tend to favor slow and minor. Which may say something dark about my personality, I don't know! But I do tend to favor slow and minor keys.

Kaplan: All right, well, looking over your list, we stay with the slow movements and continue with your next selection, which actually brings us past Baroque to Beethoven and I understand, to your wedding.

Westin: It does indeed. We were married in a small, beautiful white church in Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard, and it was a very small service. There were only five, six, seven of us there. When it came time to pick music for the processional, I did pick the "Pathétique," which I had known, again, since childhood, because I grew up, as I said earlier, in Michigan, listening to Karl Haas, with a radio program that was on WJR Radio.

Kaplan: That was his theme, wasn't it?

Westin: It was his theme, and I believe he played it himself, for "Adventures in Good Music," it was called, which was a wonderful program. And I've always loved that singing voice at the piano, through the "Pathétique," it's so charming and reassuring and beautiful, it moves me deeply, actually, and it was beautiful to have a pianist play it as my bride walked down the aisle.

[Music]

Kaplan: The Second Movement of Beethoven's "Pathétique" Sonata, with Vladimir Horowitz on the piano. A selection chosen for his processional wedding music by my guest on today's edition of "Mad About Music," ABC News President, David Westin.

Let's talk about music in your life today. Running a network news operation is a 24-hour job, they say, but obviously there's time in between. Do you have time to attend concerts or operas?

Westin: I don't attend nearly as often as I'd like. When I first came to New York, now, twelve years ago or so, I shared in a box at the Met for opera for three seasons or so, which was wonderful. But it is very time-consuming, and as I moved into news - you're right, it is a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job, so we don't get to go nearly as often as we would like. I love it when I get the chance to go, but unfortunately, I'm relegated to listening at home, playing a little bit-

Kaplan: What about playing?

Westin: Well, I play piano fairly regularly now-

Kaplan: So you're back to piano?

Westin: Well, I've always played some piano throughout. It's a real release for me. It's therapeutic. It's a way - if I'm playing piano, I can't be thinking about what went on or didn't go on at the office. It consumes me, my mind. But just recently, I say with a little bit of embarrassment, I've actually taken lessons again for the first time in 40 years, I think it must be. We have an eight-year-old little girl who is taking piano at school, and during the summer her teacher comes up to us, and so now I've added on to her lesson on Wednesday nights, and it is an experience, going back after 40 years.

Kaplan: What are you studying?

Westin: She's working with me on a Mozart sonata, in D Major. A piece that I really didn't know particularly well, but it's difficult enough that it makes me reach, but it's not so difficult that I simply become frustrated. And I love it. I play now every night, some. It's great fun.

Kaplan: Wonderful. Now, with your next selection, I'm sure we'll move away from Baroque or any classical music for that matter, because we now come to that part of the show called the "wild card," where our regular listeners know that you are permitted to pick a work outside of the traditional classical repertoire, it can be anything. And just to give you an idea of how all over the musical map this portion of the show is, we've had President Jimmy Carter pick Glenn Miller's Moonlight Serenade; German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, The Beatles; author William Buckley picked Elvis Presley; Felix Rohatyn picked The Girl From Ipanema. So, what "wild card" did you bring us today?

Westin: I picked "Layla," by Derek and the Dominoes, with Eric Clapton on guitar. Which is, I should note, up-tempo, not slow, and major, at least for the chorus. The verse is in minor, but the chorus is in major.

Kaplan: Is this just a favorite of yours or does it have some connection in your life to this?

Westin: It's a little bit of a Walter Mitty moment for me. I have, for some time, thought that Eric Clapton is the greatest living guitar player, for me. I've seen him actually live in concert doing blues. He's a brilliant guitar player. He can do things with the guitar no one else can do, in my opinion. And I have, for many years, going back to music school, high school, I've played acoustic guitar. But I've never played electric guitar, so for my 50th birthday, my wife bought me a 1968 Fender Telecaster, a vintage, wonderful electric guitar, with an amplifier. And I now have my best of Eric Clapton CDed and my tablature, it's called, there's a special way that you write so that you can follow lead guitar, and I try to play along with Eric Clapton, including "Layla," sometimes late at night when no one's paying attention.

Kaplan: How do you do?

Westin: Well, fortunately, if I turn up the CD loud enough, you can't really tell which is Eric and which is me. But I'm learning it, slowly but surely. I'm never going to have his talent, I don't aspire to, but it is really good fun, and it is a fun song to play.

[Music]

Kaplan: "Layla," performed by Derek and the Dominos with Eric Clapton on lead guitar. A selection of my guest on "Mad About Music," ABC News President, David Westin, who's wife presented him on his 50th birthday with a Fender guitar, the same brand played by Eric Clapton. When we return, we'll hear David Westin's final selection, a work he experienced while he visited the Kremlin in Moscow as a teenager.

[Station break]

Kaplan: This is Gilbert Kaplan with my guest, ABC News President, David Westin. You know, presidents at corporations often refer to themselves as maestros of their corporations. Of course, most presidents don't have the slightest idea what a conductor really does, but you do. And I'm wondering in your role at ABC News, where you have to oversee so many different shows, these could be like sections of an orchestra. And you have lead anchors, producers, reporters; these are sort of the divas of the news, which are not so different from divas in the opera world. How would you compare your role to what an orchestra conductor does?

Westin: Well, you stretch me, because I haven't thought of it in those terms. I'll tell you why there may, I would hope, be similarities. Anyone who's familiar with a great symphony orchestra knows that the individual players are superb. And much of the genius comes from those individual players, whoever they are, the oboists or string players or trumpet, cello, whatever. And some people sometimes wonder, well, couldn't the orchestra just do it on its own? They're so talented, they know these works backwards and forwards, they're geniuses in their own right, couldn't they do it on their own? And the same thing is certainly true in what I do. I mean, if you're dealing with a Peter Jennings or a Ted Koppel or a Diane Sawyer or Barbara Walters, these people are really talented, very devoted people who know what they're doing. I would hope, at least when I'm at my best, that when I'm there, I can bring them all together and point them in the same direction and maybe even lift their game and bring out the very best of what they have to offer, which is what I think of as an orchestra conductor's primary mission.

Kaplan: But you know, in the history of conducting, there have been different types of conductors. Some absolute tyrants, like Toscanini; and I think your predecessor, Roone Arledge, probably would have fallen into that category of being sort of a dictator type. He had his ideas and he made them happen. Where would you fit in in this terms of style?

Westin: Well, Roone, I don't know if one would call him a tyrant, he had a very set -
Kaplan I said dictator!

Westin: A dictator, I beg your pardon! He had a very set idea about what he wanted to get done overall with the organization. But in fact, he was very hands off, for much of his administration. He had other people who worked with him and if anything, he led by sometimes being removed. He was not overly intrusive at all. My style is to be more involved in the details of what goes on, to try to lead by persuasion. We are blessed in our organization at ABC News with very intelligent people, and I believe that at least over time, if I have the right answer or an answer I can persuade people of, that I can do much more by sitting with people and bringing them into the process and talking to them about it, talking them through it, and over time, get them to go in the direction I believe we need to go in. So I think I'm probably more active day to day with people; but I would hope I share, and I believe I share with Roone, a very set idea of where we need to go, and over time, a determination that we will get there.

Kaplan: So it sounds more like a choreographer than a conductor, which in a way is a good description because it leads to your next selection, which is a ballet. Your final selection, which is Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, rather romantic music, not particularly your style, you said.

Westin: And it's also a different time period from what I normally listen to and appreciate. This is my favorite ballet music. By a margin, this is my favorite ballet music. Now, as you mentioned earlier, I have a bit of a history with this. When I was 17 years old, I was taking Russian in the public schools back in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and a small group of us, I think about eight or ten, went over with our Russian teacher, Gospodin Ambrazhevich, was his name. A wonderful man.

And he took us over in the dead of March, because in March, Moscow is pretty cold, at least when I was there. And it was the height of the Cold War. We went over and we stayed at a little rundown hotel called the Bucharest, which was across the Moscow River from the Kremlin. And one of the nights we were there, we were there about six nights as I recall, one of the nights we walked across to a place called the Palace of the Congresses, which is a modern building inside the Kremlin, but a very, very large auditorium, where the Bolshoi Ballet was performing Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. And I had never seen a ballet before; I only dimly understood the plot line of the Romeo and Juliet because we were doing West Side Story back in the pit orchestra I was serving in back in high school.

It was striking. It was one of those moments in your life that this is something entirely new and fascinating, even a little bit frightening, because it was so muscular and so angular and it had such kinetic energy, and I loved it. I just loved it. And to this day, I love to put on the music. It is sometimes even jarring the way Prokofiev can be. But it is really uplifting and powerful. I love it.

[Music]

Kaplan: An excerpt from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, the Berlin Philharmonic led by Claudio Abbado, the final selection of my guest on "Mad About Music" today, ABC News President, David Westin.

Now, you've been a wonderful guest, and your passion for music is so apparent, so I hope you'll understand if before we conclude, I feel bound to ask you the question we started with, about abandoning your career in music. When you're in the midst of all that tension, the pressure and the give and take and the fights within the television news business, do you sometimes regret you left a music career behind?

Westin: I love what I do. So I have no regrets. There is nothing I think that I would find more satisfying or more rewarding than what I do today, even at its most frustrating. At the same time, I must say I don't feel that I left it entirely behind. I mean, quite apart from at home, I have a little CD player in my office, and I have Telemann that I can put on whenever I need to during the day, and I turn to music regularly, and I find it a very enriching part of my life, so I think I have the best of both worlds, for me.

Kaplan: It's interesting that you say that you do listen to music when you work. Because I think that only people who like Baroque music probably can do that, because it does become wonderful atmospheric music, whereas as if you're listening to Wagner or Shostakovich, it would be so intrusive, I suppose you couldn't put it on and continue to do your work, you would just be sucked in and -

Westin: Well, that's true, well, I get sucked into Baroque as well, but I think the other big difference just on a very technical level. Baroque music, given the way that it is orchestrated, has a much smaller dynamic range in general than, for example, Wagner, that you referred to. And there's a problem if you try to put Wagner on in your office because either you have it down so low that you can't hear large portions of it because they're too soft; or you have it so loud that when you reach fortissimo, you're blowing out offices on either side of you. So Baroque, I think, is better because it has a dynamic range that's more neutral.

Kaplan: Well, I'm at least grateful that someone with a musician's sensibility has been entrusted with the responsibility that comes with overseeing a network news operation. David Westin, thank you for appearing today. This is Gilbert Kaplan for "Mad About Music."

[Credits]