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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Clarinet Quintet in A major K. 581. The Elysium String Quartet. Stanley Drucker, Clarinet. Elysium Recordings GRK 716.

Ludwig van Beethoven The Late String Quartets: Quartet Op. 130 in B-Flat. Guarneri Quartet. RCA Victor Gold Seal 60458-2.

Antonio Vivaldi, The Four Seasons. "Winter" Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Violin. Musical Heritage Society 515322A.

Frédéric Chopin "Mazurka," Op. 17, No. 4 in A Minor. Artur Rubinstein, Piano. RCA Red Seal 7863-55614-2.

George Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue. Philadelphia Orchestra. Eugene Ormandy. Oscar Levant, Piano. CBS MK 42514.

Kaplan Good evening and welcome back to "Mad About Music" as we continue to revisit shows of guests who are back in the news. Tonight, award-winning actor, director and writer, Alan Alda, who recently received his first Academy Award nomination for his performance in "The Aviator."

[Theme music]

Kaplan Alan Alda has earned international acclaim in Hollywood and on Broadway, but he is best known for his portrayal of Hawkeye Pierce in the classic television series M*A*S*H for which he also wrote and directed many episodes, winning Emmy Awards no less than five times. In fact, Alan Alda is the only person in the history of these Awards to be honored as a top performer, writer and director. And now we can add to that list his first nomination for an Academy Award for his performance in "The Aviator." Alan Alda, welcome to "Mad About Music".

Alda Thank you.

Kaplan Now I could have added, I suppose, the title of Music Director, because I understand that you had your hand in the music in sometimes showing up in M*A*S*H.

Alda Well, it would hardly make me the Music Director. When I would write the show, I would often think of it in musical terms and when we got to the last episode the story I wanted to tell about the Winchester character who loved music and that was his deepest love, I thought that the deepest wound he could suffer would be one related to music; and when a group of Chinese musicians is captured and they're in the stockade by the M*A*S*H unit, he can't resist going over and teaching them how to play the Mozart Clarinet Quintet, but of course there isn't a clarinet among them, you know, it's all on traditional Chinese instruments. But he devotes himself to this and it brings a little bit of joy to these horrible wartime conditions that he's living under. And then when they leave the camp and they're being taken someplace else, their truck is hit by a shell and they're all killed and it just tears the heart out of him. And that story alone interested me and it touched me, but what touched me even more - it was kind of a private joke, nobody really knew how much the piece meant to me - because the night I meet Arlene, my wife, she was already a professional musician and I was invited to hear chamber music at somebody's apartment; and then they start to play and the young woman who's playing clarinet in the Mozart Quintet is, I just fell in love with her, and I fell in love with her in a way through the music. That piece has always had a special place in my heart.

[Music]

Kaplan The First Movement of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet with The Elysium String Quartet and Stanley Drucker on the clarinet, a selection of my guest today, Alan Alda, on "Mad About Music." We should talk about the impact of television on classical music because I understand the following day after that last episode of M*A*S*H where you played the Mozart Quintet radio stations were flooded with queries about what was that music.

Alda Someone was quoted in The New York Times as saying that more people had heard that piece of music that night on M*A*S*H than had ever heard it since Mozart wrote it put together. On the other hand, you have to factor in the idea that they had never heard it played on traditional Chinese instruments before. It's ironic that the one time that all these millions of people heard it, they weren't hearing it the way Mozart would ever have imagined it being played.

Kaplan Well, M*A*S*H is of course a fantastic vehicle for spreading music and I should ask you about Beethoven, because I understand that Beethoven made its way into M*A*S*H at one point as well.

Alda Yeah, there was an episode called "Inga" where Hawkeye falls in love with a Swedish doctor who is assigned to the unit and as I remember he's trying to get romantic with her and he puts on the record that he thinks will really send her and he puts on a movement of the Opus 130 String Quartet that I just love. I pictured, you know, the character of Hawkeye having the same reaction to it and thinking this will just do the trick with Inga.

Kaplan How did you come to the music? Did you always listen to chamber music when you were young?

Alda No, you know, when I was a boy, pretty much the only serious music I ever heard was Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F. But I had never heard a quartet, so I wanted to educate myself, you know, I was going to college, I was suddenly being introduced to ideas and art, and I thought I'm going to sit down -- the radio station WFUV FM was the college station and they were playing a quartet at one o'clock - so I sat down with a sandwich and a bottle of beer and I put on the radio and I could hear that they were warming up. I'm eating my sandwich, about 5 minutes goes by, they're still tuning up; maybe 10 minutes goes by, and then suddenly it hits me - they're not tuning up, this is the quartet. I had never heard one before. It was so complicated to me, the music. I couldn't hear the melodies; I didn't realize they were there. I'm always used to hearing one melody on top and that was it and now here they were intertwined and over one another and diving in and out and I couldn't recognize the sounds as meaningful. Well, that was a really interesting challenge for me and from then on I started to listen more carefully and try to figure it out and then one day I came across that beautiful movement which is to me so melodious and very romantic.

Kaplan Did it do the trick in the show? Does Hawkeye get the girl?

Alda Yeah, but then he wrecks it. He gets - he behaves a little bit like guys tend to do and certainly how they did then in the 50's. When I hear that tune, I just stop whatever I'm doing and I just listen to it because it just captures my spirit.

[Music]

Kaplan The Fourth Movement of Beethoven's String Quartet, Opus 130, performed by the Guarneri String Quartet, a selection of Alan Alda when he appeared earlier on "Mad About Music." When we return, we'll explore why there are no operas among Alan Alda's selections.

[Station Break]

Kaplan This is Gilbert Kaplan and we are revisiting Alan Alda's earlier appearance on "Mad About Music." Now, in light of his experience on the stage and his passion for music, I was surprised to see no operas among his selections.

Alda I'm sorry to say I'm among those people who are still coming late to opera. When I was a kid, I spent my junior year of college in Paris, and I used to go to the Opéra Comique every week, again to educate myself. I saw some delightfuls. I went to opera in Rome in those days. I saw, I remember seeing Traviata - I think Traviata was my first opera - and some of it delighted me, but the older I got, the more difficult it was for me to watch some of the acting and the staging. People would come out and wander around until their cue comes. I know what this sounds like to somebody who really knows it and loves it. I'm just giving you an outsider's view of it, which I hope is amusing to you.

Kaplan Do you find that the Broadway musical, for example, is better in staging and better in directing?

Alda Well, I think it has to be because it has to keep your interest or they go down the drain. Nobody endows a Broadway musical except a succession of unfortunate people who think they're going to strike it rich. But you've got to stay, just like Shakespeare had to stay, in touch with the audience.

Kaplan Do you think you would be capable of directing an opera that would come off with the staging and the drama and the acting that you think it really needs?

Alda I would find it very hard to find an opera that I would be interested in being involved, but first of all I should only do things that I love. I mean, I'm not trying to conquer new worlds. I saw Norma the other night and the libretto goes: "The Romans have defiled our altars (these are Druids singing) and we have to get rid of them and we have to stab them and kill them and make their blood flow like rivers." This is pretty strong stuff and the music goes "Yep ba ba da bump da bump da bump…." What is this? I wouldn't know how to direct that.

Kaplan All right, well then, let's turn to your next section, which comes from Vivaldi, The Four Seasons. Now you starred in a comedy called Four Seasons with Carol Burnett and Rita Moreno. The film was filled with Baroque music, including Vivaldi, is that where you came in touch with The Four Seasons?

Alda Well, I had always loved The Four Seasons from the first time I heard it and I got the idea to write the movie from the music..

Kaplan So it was the other way around?

Alda Yeah.

Kaplan You know the music and wanted to bring it to film?

Alda One time I was listening to The Four Seasons and I thought it would be interesting to use this. You know, I find music makes me write, it makes me want to explore something. When I hear the "Winter" movement of The Four Seasons for instance, I see each shot, because I cut it to the music. I spent, you know, many, many weeks cutting this picture moment by moment to the music, so I can't hear that without seeing those specific shots of the people skiing down the mountain, hitting the tree, picking each other up. You know, when he wrote it, people were supposed to see images in their head of the birds, and the winter, the summer storms and that kind of thing. Nobody sees images the way I do - it's completely programmed in my head which in one way is a good thing because the music is so much more meaningful to me than it would be otherwise. But on the other hand, it's limited by those images that I see. I've limited myself now with this.

Kaplan So every time you listen to it you see those images. You can't ever relax then and just listen to The Four Seasons?

Alda I always see the winter scenes that I shot and not the winter scenes that were in Vivaldi's head when he wrote it.

[Music]

Kaplan "Winter" from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Herbert von Karajan and Anne-Sophie Mutter on the violin, a selection of my guest actor Alan Alda. Now I suppose all that's left is for you to become a musician in a classical performance. Have you ever come close to that?

Alda I have come close to that. At least it felt close to me. I did the Carnival of the Animals and it was really thrilling to me because I had to do my little poems in time with them. It had to be, it had to fit in with what they were playing.

Kaplan Like an instrument, almost….

Alda Yeah, I really felt like I was one of the instruments.

Kaplan But I can attest to you actually being musical, being a musician, because I attended your performance at Lincoln Center "QED" and as you know you portray a nuclear physicist who happens to have a passion for an instrument that resembles a bongo type drum and I thought you demonstrated a superb sense of rhythm. Now did that take a lot of practice?

Alda I'm smiling as you say this. It did take kind of a lot of practice.

Kaplan Well all right, let's talk a little about a different aspect of music. I remember reading an article about you some years ago that described you as "everyone's ideal for the sensitive male". Now does that sensitivity show up in your response to music; what I'm thinking of, does music produce a particular emotional reaction in you? Does it touch you in a personal way? Do you cry when you listen to music?

Alda No, I don't. I don't. For a long time I was like what's his name? The famous comedian who said that he was so emotional he cried at card tricks? But I don't cry that easily anymore and I also have never, as far as I know, I have never been that moved, or moved in that way, by music. And I always envied people who could be. For instance, I envied my wife Arlene who when she hears several pieces by Brahms she tears up. It really affects her deeply and I've always wondered what that was, how people can get that kind of contact with music. And then one day Arlene, who's first instrument was the piano - has gone back to practicing the piano almost every day; when she started to work on a "Mazurka" by Chopin, every time that music went through the house, I'd be in another room working on something, I'd turn away from the computer and just listen to it and it made me both sad and it filled me with images of longing and romance and introspection and I had a powerful emotional reaction to it, so much so that when she starts to play it, I think, oh, not now, I don't want to get sad now, wait a minute, but don't, just hold off for a few minutes.

[Music]

Kaplan Chopin's "Mazurka," Opus 17, No. 4. Artur Rubinstein at the piano, the choice of Alan Alda when he appeared earlier on "Mad About Music." When we return, we'll explore Alan Alda's remarkable introduction to Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.

[Station Break]

Kaplan This is Gilbert Kaplan and we are revisiting shows where a guest is back in the news. In Alan Alda's case, the news is his first Academy Award nomination for his role in "The Aviator." Now, at the beginning of the show, you mentioned that your first exposure to music was Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. How old were you when you first heard that?

Alda I think I was 7 years old and the reason I heard it was that my father was playing the part of George Gershwin in the movie called "Rhapsody in Blue" which was the film biography of Gershwin. He didn't know how to play the piano but he had to train for weeks to be able to get the precise fingering of all the pieces that he would play in the movie. A recording made by Oscar Levant would be the music that was played and he would do the fingering that was appropriate to that and sometimes when they came in very tight on the hands it would be Oscar Levant's hands. But a real musician looking at my father would think he was actually playing the piano. And I had to do that years later for a movie called "Mephisto Waltz" and then I even got to do that just as my father had in the movie "Rhapsody in Blue". I sat down in a concert hall and played some - what was it? - I think Liszt, and there was the audience standing up cheering and it was some other guy playing the music but my fingers were on the keyboard.

I had these vivid memories of lying on the carpet when I was seven, eight, nine years old, listening over and over again to the recordings from the movie itself. But the experience of hearing at that age, music that to me was just exciting music, it wasn't music that I was supposed to like. Nobody said to me, "Listen to this, it'll do you good." It wasn't like eating your vegetables - to me it was ice cream. I loved hearing it and I can still smell the rug as I lay on the floor. I can still smell the electronics in the big cabinet and see the vinyl record going around and that glissando that comes out at the beginning, on the clarinet, and of course it has a very personal feeling for me because when I met Arlene, my wife, it was watching her play the clarinet, and as we got to know each other I can remember the evening in her apartment she took out the clarinet and I asked her to play that glissando because it was one of my favorite things and the way she played it was better than I had ever heard it played and I've never heard it played better since. I love the way she slides on that clarinet.

[Music]

Kaplan George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Eugene Ormandy. Oscar Levant at the piano, the final selection of my guest Alan Alda when he appeared earlier on "Mad About Music." On that note, I thanked Alan Alda for joining us, for his passion for music and for using the power and reach of mass culture, such as M*A*S*H, as a vehicle to spread Mozart and Beethoven to millions. Next month, on May 1st, at our usual time - Sunday evening at 9 - we'll continue our series of revisits, this time with opera star Renée Fleming. Until then, this is Gilbert Kaplan for "Mad About Music."

[Credits]

About Alan Alda
Alan Alda has earned international recognition as an actor, writer and director in films. These include his portrayals in "Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Everyone Says I Love You," "Flirting With Disaster," "Manhattan Murder Mystery," "And The Band Played On," "Same Time, Next Year" and "California Suite," as well as "The Seduction of Joe Tynan," which he wrote, and "The Four Seasons," "Sweet Liberty," "A New Life," and "Betsy's Wedding," which he wrote and directed. This year, he appears in Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator," for which he received a nomination for an Academy Award and was also nominated for a British Academy Award.

On the Broadway stage, he recently appeared as the physicist Richard Feynman in "QED". He starred in the first American production of the international hit play "ART." He was nominated for the Tony Award for his performances in Neil Simon's "Jake's Women" and the musical "The Apple Tree." This spring, he will appear on Broadway in a revival of David Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross."

He also appeared in "The Owl and the Pussycat," "Purlie Victorious" and "Fair Game for Lovers" for which he received a Theatre World Award.

He is the host of the award winning series "Scientific American Frontiers" on PBS. On television this season, he is appearing on "The West Wing."

He played Hawkeye Pierce on the classic television series "M*A*S*H," and also wrote and directed many of the episodes. In eleven years on "M*A*S*H," Alda won the Emmy Award five times and is the only person to be honored by the TV Academy as top performer, writer and director. In all, he has been nominated for 30 Emmys including a nomination in 1999 for his performance on ER. In 1994 he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame. In addition, he has won the Director's Guild Award three times, has received six Golden Globes from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and seven People's Choice Awards, and has been nominated for two Writer's Guild Awards.

For his role in Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors" he won the D.W. Griffith Award, the NY Film Critics Award, and was nominated for a British Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor.

Alan Alda was born in New York City, the son of the distinguished actor, Robert Alda. His introduction to the theater came at the age of 16 in summer stock at Barnesville, Pennsylvania.

During his junior year at Fordham University, he studied in Europe where he performed on the stage in Rome and on television in Amsterdam with his father.

After college, he acted at the Cleveland Playhouse on a Ford Foundation grant. On his return to New York, he was seen on Broadway, off-Broadway and on television. He later acquired improvisational training with "Second City" in New York and "Compass" at Hyannisport. That background in political and social satire led to his work as a regular on television's "That Was the Week That Was."

Alda's first motion picture part came in "Gone Are the Days," in which he recreated his stage role from "Purlie Victorious." He later appeared in "The Moonshine War," "Jenny," "The Mephisto Waltz," and "Paper Lion." Television performances include Truman Capote's "The Glass House" and "Kill Me If You Can" for which he received an Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Caryl Chessman.

For twenty years he was a member of the Board of the Museum of Television & Radio, and for ten years, from 1989 to 1999, he was a Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation.

His wife, Arlene, is the author of eleven children's books. An award winning professional photographer, her work has appeared in a number of magazines and books. They have three daughters and seven grandchildren.