Mad About Music

JAMES HOGE is Editor of Foreign Affairs, a bi-monthly magazine of analysis and commentary on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy. Prior to joining Foreign Affairs in 1992, he spent three decades in newspaper journalism as a Washington correspondent, then editor and publisher of The Chicago Sun-Times and finally as publisher and president of The New York Daily News. He has been a Fellow at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, the Freedom Forum Media Center at Columbia University and on the American Political Science Association's Congressional program. He is Chairman of the International Center for Journalists, a director of Human Rights Watch, and a director of the Center for Global Affairs at New York University.

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Giacomo Puccini Tosca [conclusion of Act I]. La Scala Orchestra. Victor de Sabata. Giuseppe di Stefano. EMI Classics 56304. Johann Sebastian Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 1, BWV 1046. First movement. Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Sir Neville Marriner. Philips 400 076-2.

Franz Schubert Piano Sonata in B-flat major, D960 [conclusion]. Alfred Brendel, piano. Philips 289 456 573-2.

Richard Rodgers South Pacific “Some Enchanted Evening”. Ezio Pinza. GSS 5324.

Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111. First movement [excerpt]. Richard Goode, piano. Elektra/Nonesuch 9 79211-2.

Benjamin Britten War Requiem, Op. 66 [excerpt]. City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus and Orchestra. Sir Simon Rattle. EMI 50999 5 05909 2.

Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 4. Third movement [excerpt]. The Cleveland Orchestra. George Szell. SBK 46535.

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GILBERT KAPLAN: Welcome back to “Mad About Music” where my guest this evening is the Editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, JAMES HOGE.

[Theme Music]

KAPLAN: He hit the nation’s capitol as a cub reporter in 1958 and stayed three decades as a Washington correspondent, for the Chicago Sun-Times – rising to become the paper’s editor and publisher. Then he came here to New York in 1984 to become the publisher and president of the Daily News. And since 1992 he has served as editor of Foreign Affairs magazine with a global circulation of about 165,000 – up at least 50% since he assumed the editor’s chair. It is not an exaggeration to say that Foreign Affairs is the most widely read and surely the most influential publication covering the explosive international issues of the day. JAMES HOGE, welcome to “Mad About Music”.

JAMES HOGE: Thank you Gil. It’s a great pleasure to be here and to talk about something besides the problems of this world.

KAPLAN: All right, I’d like to start with a subject that always fascinates me and it is that moment when someone first encounters classical music or opera and knows that it might have a place in their future.

HOGE: It came fairly early for me and it’s the luck of the draw. I had two parents who both loved music and they wanted to make sure that I at least had a chance to find out if I loved music. So I went to my first opera when I was in my early teens. The only problem was that my parents had a subscription to the old Metropolitan and the one that was coming up when I was back from school break was Parsifal.

KAPLAN: Oh my.

HOGE: My memory of Parsifal was how hard I tried to stay awake. And I left in a rather dower mood saying if this is what opera is all about, I’m not sure it’s for me. Now I should say that I in later years learned to appreciate at least the first act of Parsifal which is glorious music. But lucky for me the second one in the draw, and I was still in town, was Tosca which is a great drama with all sorts of blood and guts and beautiful music and hair-raising scary figures like Scarpia. And that one hooked me, it really hooked me. I have loved opera ever since. I’ve gone all of my life – in Chicago when I lived there and in New York when I’ve lived here. When I’m traveling I’ll stop in when I can to the Paris Opera or in Vienna and so on. I also was introduced to ballet and symphony by my mother. My father was the great opera fan. What they didn’t have much of a taste for was jazz or American blues. But I picked that up on my own. I became as passionate a lover of that, those styles of music as I am of classical music. But opera, like with my father, opera is probably at the heart of what I like most. And Tosca is one of the ones that I never get tired of listening to and maybe we ought to start with that.

[Music]

KAPLAN: The remarkable Giuseppe di Stefano singing the role of the evil and corrupt police chief Scarpia at the conclusion of the first act of Puccini’s Tosca, the Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala conducted by Victor de Sabata, the first selection of my guest on “Mad About Music”, the Editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, JAMES HOGE. Now as someone whose introduction to opera was such a daunting work as Parsifal, what opera would you pick for a money-back guarantee that a first listening experience will be pure joy for a teenager?

HOGE: Well, I think I’d start with the ones that are really quite tuneful, not too long and involve passions like love. Obviously La Bohème fits that very well. So does Traviata. But as we’re going up the ladder, I would pick a couple very dramatic ones that have always registered with me every time I’ve seen them. Don Carlos would be one; Otello would be another. And I think the further you go the more Verdi’s last two operas, Otello and Falstaff have so many sort of hidden charms and ingenuities to them that you can listen to them over and over again and come away with different view than you had before.

KAPLAN: Well, let’s leave opera and come to your next selection which now is something much more modest in scope but not more modest in its impact and that’s Bach.

HOGE: Well Bach, I suppose I came to relatively late. And once you’ve come to Bach you’ll never fully fathom all that you’re going to hear. His Goldberg Variations are some of the most magnificent piano music I know and I love piano music. The Brandenburg Concertos which I think we’re going to talk about tonight are for me, epitomize Bach’s almost joyous and grateful sense of thanksgiving for his life, for life itself, for the possibilities of human life. And then of course there’s just the sheer mastery of a particular musical form that nobody has ever matched. And again, it’s music that is so deep and varied, that you can hear it and hear different things all the time. I never get tired of it.

[Music]

KAPLAN: The first movement of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 1, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, conducted by Neville Marriner, a selection by guest on “Mad About Music”, the Editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, JAMES HOGE. All right, let’s continue talking about how music developed in your life. And as we’re sitting here in Carnegie Hall it’s probably a good place to ask you, did you study music as a child?

HOGE: I go way back with Carnegie Hall. I was in a private elementary school here in New York, and for reasons I can no longer remember, the chorus of that school, Buckley School, ended up on the stage of Carnegie Hall. And there we were, all of us with our voices yet to change, in our little blue short pants, marching out and singing a warrior song of which I can only remember: “Men of harkness, be brave” and so forth and so on in our squeaky little voices. And I hardly sang because I was so stunned when I got out on that stage, remarkably beautiful hall.

KAPLAN: Aside from being a choirboy on the stage of Carnegie, did you ever study an instrument?

HOGE: I did. I studied the piano very briefly. It came at a time in life when I was very big into athletics. I wanted to throw balls, kick balls, hit balls, whatever, and I don’t know, it just didn’t take with the piano teacher I had. So, I regret ever since -- I would like to. Now, I have a son who is ten years old and he is learning the guitar and I’ve gone out and bought myself one and I’m going to start taking lessons with him. So at an advanced stage in musical life, I may end up with an instrument I can play somewhat.

KAPLAN: Wonderful. You’ll be able to play duets with your son.

HOGE: That’s right.

KAPLAN: All right, let’s turn back to the music you don’t play but you love to listen to and I see your next choice is Schubert, the final work he wrote for the piano.

HOGE: Yes. You know, the classic style, whether we’re talking about art or painting or music, when it hits its high point, it is almost always imbued with a tremendous sense of optimism and a kind of confidence about life. And this piece has all of that, and particularly the ending which is so exuberant. It also has some beautiful melodies and a lot of ingenuity in the way it’s put together. When I listen to this B-flat major Sonata, I almost always come away kind of invigorated, and with a smile on my face. And as I put it, it’s a great piece of music to have a good martini with.

KAPLAN: You know, before we play it, I should point out that you’re the third person to be on the show to have selected one of these final sonatas. Philippe de Montebello, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example, described the remarkable “Andantino” movement which he picked from the next to last sonata as “achingly nostalgic and sad”. And so when you say that you come away feeling good, you have to get to the end of that, don’t you.

HOGE: You do, you do.

KAPLAN: Because the slow movements, and here I am speaking particularly about Schubert’s slow movements, they really go deep into the soul. And that brings me to the other guest who selected this music, the former British Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath. He unfortunately passed away a few years ago, but when he was here, he wanted to play the slow movement we’re about to hear. And I thought it might be interesting for you and for our listeners to hear the moving words with which he spoke about this music.

“This was his last sonata. I played it myself when I was much younger. But it has about it, when properly played, the quality of eternity. I remember the first time I heard it and it was in a lovely church and it was played there so beautifully, some would say, slowly, that it just went on and on and on and on. And I felt, you know, this is eternity, we should never stop.”

KAPLAN: He was a remarkable guest on the show, Sir Edward Heath. What do you think about what he just said?

HOGE: Oh, I think he’s right on. The slow movements are really beautiful. And we’re going to talk about a couple of other slow movements; I have a weakness for great slow movements. But in this particular piece, I’m always sort of carried away by the finale which sort of – it’s like a resurrection. You’re coming out of a valley, and as Sir Edward Heath says, you can see forever, it’s like eternity is in front of you. I subscribe to his comments.

KAPLAN: All right. Now that you had a sample at least of the slow music you can have your martini music. The grand conclusion of Schubert’s final piano sonata.

[Music]

KAPLAN: An excerpt from the final movement of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in B-flat major, the final work he composed for the piano, here performed by Alfred Brendel, music chosen by my guest on “Mad About Music”, the Editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, JAMES HOGE. When we return we’ll talk about the role music has recently been playing in international diplomacy.

[Station Break]

This is Gilbert KAPLAN with my guest on today’s edition of “Mad About Music”, the Editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, JAMES HOGE. All right, we only talk about music on this show and never about a guest’s profession, but with you it might be possible to combine what you do with music. So, let’s talk about music and foreign affairs. I’m sure you’re aware that the New York Philharmonic recently made a trip to North Korea. What did you think about that?

HOGE: I’m all for that sort of cultural interchanges. It’s almost impossible for them to do damage and there’s a great possibility for them to help build a more favorable environment for serious political discussions that go on later. You remember the ping-pong introduction of the United States and China way back when we were opening relations. I thought that was a terrific thing to do and it seemed to work well.

KAPLAN: I suppose you’d have this same view about Daniel Barenboim’s initiative where he’s combined Israeli and Arab musicians into a new orchestra.

HOGE: Oh even more so. I think that is, look politics needs a favorable cultural environment to be flexible and for negotiations to go forward. And one of the things that happens when you don’t talk to your potential adversaries, when cultures barricade themselves off from each other, is you get terribly distorted views of who people are, of how they live, of what they think, of what they’re feeling. And one of the things about interaction -- and culture is one of the best ways to do it -- is you come away saying they’re not that much different than we. Now that doesn’t solve the problems, but it creates an environment in which you can have a better chance of keeping the world peaceable.

KAPLAN: You know, the musicians found that a really wild ride to go there.

HOGE: I’ll bet.

KAPLAN: So I regard these conversations as a good transition into the “Wildcard” which is what we call the section of the show where you can talk about music other than classical music or opera. So, what wildcard did you bring us tonight?

HOGE: Well, it’s sort of topical. A revival of the great musical South Pacific is in town. And my parents again, particularly my father just loved Broadway shows and I happened to be a teenager and he was an adult at probably the golden era of American Broadway musicals. And South Pacific was the first one I was taken to. Again I was in my teens. It’s relevant to me today for the following reason. But first, I was absolutely taken by the music, but particularly by Ezio Pinza whose voice I just thought was marvelous, whose stage presence was great and whose song, “Some Enchanted Evening”, was so romantic. And that’s the one that has stayed with me and here’s the reason why. Many, many years later, in fact about ten years ago now, I was a bachelor in-between marriages and I went to a benefit dinner for women who were running for public office. And I didn’t have much on my mind except to support that and go home and read a book. And I looked across this room in the hostess’s apartment and saw this absolutely beatific smile and a couple sparkling eyes. And I did something that’s very, very uncommon for me. I’m your classic New England wasp; very cautious, don’t believe in love at first sight. I just went blank in my mind, marched across the room saying “excuse me” as I was headed towards that smile and I found myself humming “Some Enchanted Evening”.

KAPLAN: That’s wonderful. Across a crowded room.

HOGE: Across a crowded room. And I talked to her. And then I was seated at a different table for dinner and I kept looking over and trying to find a way to get back over to this lady. And then she finally got up with the man she’d come with to leave. And as she walked by, I reverted to my awkward waspishness and said “would it be rude if I were to give you a call”, and she said “no, not at all” and walked off. And I said she didn’t give me a phone number. And I went after her and she said, without turning around, she said “it’s in the phonebook”. But it wasn’t in the phone book. It took me three weeks to run her down and a lot of persuading. But it really was some enchanted evening, across a crowded room, because for the last ten years she’s been my wife.

[Music]

KAPLAN: “Some Enchanted Evening” from Richard Rodgers’ South Pacific sung by the legendary Ezio Pinza, the “wildcard” selection of my guest on “Mad About Music”, the Editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, JAMES HOGE. Music that could well have been a soundtrack for the first encounter with the woman who as he reported just now became his wife. Now at the beginning of the show you were talking about Tosca. And you focused on Scarpia who is of course a wonderful baritone - bass in some places. I have a feeling that voice really appeals to you.

HOGE: Well it does. And I have a weakness both for really good villains and they tend to be bass or bass-baritones. And for some reason, when they have a great aria like the King in Don Carlos, where there’s almost a revelation of the person underneath this stern, deep-voiced commanding figure, of the vulnerabilities of his life of the longings that were never satisfied, of that kind of really strong passions all the way from rage to unrequited love. It probably says something about me but it always gets my attention. And it does when it’s humorous as well; Baron Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier gives me a kick. There is something about a really great bass, bass-baritone voice that touches me.

KAPLAN: Do you have any favorites who are singing today?

HOGE: James Morris, I suppose, would be at the top of my list at the moment and René Pape. If we go back a bit Sherrill Milnes is one I grew up with, van Dam is one I think is particularly good with Mahler.

KAPLAN: You know I would like to return to music and politics because we spoke about that before in the international sense and now let’s talk about music and the election. I must confess that the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd gave me this idea by reading her column in which she described Hillary Clinton in relation to opera. I’ll read you a short excerpt. She said that “Hillary has a lot in common with the Marschallin in Strauss’ bittersweet comic opera Rosenkavalier. The Marschallin is a princess married to a Viennese field marshal and she has a liaison with a younger man, Count Octavian. She instructs the young man on the ways of love and then gracefully sets him on his way to find his own happiness. Whether or not she wins”, this is Ms. Dowd writing still, “Hillary has given noble service as a sophisticated political tutor for Obama, providing her younger colleague with a much needed seasoning. Who else was going to toughen him up? Howard Dean, John Edwards?” So what do you think, would Hillary be a good Marschallin?

HOGE: Well, I think it’s quite a stretch to go from the Marschallin to Hillary. They may have ended up in the same place which is educating a young man how to get by better but the spirit was entirely different. The Marschallin is a wonderfully cosmopolitan, graceful, European woman of a certain age, who if you don’t understand that she’s still quite a subject worthy of eroticism you don’t get it. And she passes the young man on with a wonderful kind of sadness but not so deep as to suggest that her life is over, no, she’s going to have another chapter too. Hillary, if she’s teaching Obama anything it’s by way of the hard-rock school which is let me hit you again and maybe on one of these punches you’ll stand up straight and slap me back. So, she’s not the Marschallin that I would want to see. Let me put it that way.

KAPLAN: OK, well if Barack Obama is to be Octavian, what roll could you imagine for John McCain?

HOGE: That’s not as easy a one because you have kind of two ways to go; one, kind of an old man trying to do something an old man shouldn’t, and then maybe we’re talking about The Barber of Seville or we’re talking about a commanding figure like the comandante in Don Giovanni.

KAPLAN: I like that better.

HOGE: I thought you would. And I think so far we’ve seen more of that, which is, he’s going to try to take control, and so far he’s doing it.

KAPLAN: Well maybe we should get back to Beethoven then, and the piano, which I see if your next selection.

HOGE: Particularly the late piano works by Beethoven. When I listen to them, they are some of the most ingenuous music ever written and powerful, but what really gets to me while I’m listening to it, I have the feeling that he’s just now creating it. In other words it wasn’t done several hundred years ago and I’m listening to it - it has that kind of almost impromptu freshness to it for me. Where is he going next with this piece, and I know the pieces pretty well by this time. And there’s no better example than Opus 111. I have several sets of Beethoven’s piano music by different pianists and I like them all, but there is one that I have a particular feeling about, and that’s Richard Goode’s work and maybe again because there is somewhat of a personal connection. I spend weekends when I can get free at a house up in Northwest Connecticut, in Litchfield County and there is a remarkable congregational church there, remarkable in two ways, it’s a beautiful piece of architecture and it has magnificent acoustics and it’s relatively small. Richard Goode, a few years back, had been spending most of his time in ensemble recitals. He’s a shy man and he was not doing solo work. And he decided to brave it again and he would come up here to give sort of preliminary performances before coming down to the great Carnegie Hall. I used to go and hear him when he would come up and play and it has sort of given me a sense of personal affection every time I hear him play for real at Carnegie Hall.

[Music]

KAPLAN: An excerpt from the opening movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32, performed by Richard Goode, an artist my guest on “Mad About Music” came to know from hearing him practice in a local church near his country home, preparing for an upcoming Carnegie Hall recital, my guest being the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, JAMES HOGE. When we return, we’ll hear JAMES HOGE’s final selections and I’ll be asking him to reveal, as I do with every guest, his musical fantasy.

[Station Break]

This is Gilbert KAPLAN with my guest today on “Mad About Music”, the Editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, JAMES HOGE. All right, as we continue to explore your musical selections, I must tell you that your next work strikes me as a bit of an aberration compared to the rest of your choices. This one is about war. Now of course, all musical genre’s have some powerful examples of antiwar music and you’ve picked a big one, you’ve picked Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, which mixes antiwar poetry in English with traditional Latin texts of a requiem. Is it the music that appeals to you or his message? I mean, it is certainly a unique work.

HOGE: Yes, it is a little unique, and it fits into another part of my life. I’m an amateur historian. I took most of my graduate education in history at the University of Chicago. And from those days on, even right up until this day, one of the sort of great historical puzzles for me, and tragedies, is World War I, even more so than World War II. There are so many different explanations as to why it happened, why it was so destructive. None of them really fully answer the question how did a culture, a civilization that had reached such a peak of accomplishment across such a broad scale of human activities that was so interactive with each other literally destroy itself? And in some ways we have never recovered. And I find this piece of music, others as well, but this one more than most, in music, captures the senses I have about that great historical tragedy and the prices we have paid for it, the carnage at the time, and the effects on how we all live since. And the message of the War Requiem is twofold; first of all it does paint a very horrific picture of what war is like in musical terms. And then it ends with I think one of the more moving sort of pleas for reconciliation, for don’t let this happen again and of course this has happened again in different forms. It seems to be a part of life on this planet. But, great poetry, great novels and I think great music are absolutely essential and music more probably than the other two art forms for me. Great unexplainable things in life, sadnesses of life, ending of life, that’s where music probably has more effect for me than anything else.

[Music]

KAPLAN: An excerpt from Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, with Simon Rattle on the podium, a selection of my guest on “Mad About Music” this evening, the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, JAMES HOGE. You know, so much of what you’ve talked about today with the music you’ve selected focuses on music that touches you in a personal way or deals with difficult moments, war, death - you just mentioned, so I hope you won’t mind my asking you whether you have made a decision and considered what music you might want played at your funeral.

HOGE: Gil, I have not - and maybe I ought to. I’m getting up to an age where I guess I should think about that. I still feel so much involved in living a life that I really haven’t thought about how I want to be saluted on the way out.

KAPLAN: You know I asked you that partly because I thought you might have mentioned the next work you’re going to play which is by Gustav Mahler. And you pick his Fourth Symphony, the slow movement, which would certainly do the job in anyone’s funeral. You may find it interesting, because I think you were taken aback a bit by my question. I ask this often on this show because I discovered surprisingly a number of very young healthy people do think about that, particularly people who love music. But let’s come on now and talk about Mahler, the Fourth Symphony in particular, you had that dreamy third movement you’d like us to play.

HOGE: Well, I do think about that every once in a while, but usually when I’m going to somebody else’s funeral, and I hear something and I say that would be very nice, maybe when my time comes I should think I should put that in. But, we talked earlier about slow movements, there are a number of slow movements, particularly in Mahler, that touch me very deeply. This one I think is the most evocative one of all. It just, it kind of stays with you as it slowly peter’s out. It’s beautiful, it is mournful, it is sad, but it’s not the end. He takes you through the valley, and of course, when you leave the movement you go on and by the time you are through with the symphony he’s got you back on the high mountain and it’s that combination I guess. But I just find Mahler’s slow movements to be probably some of the best work that he did and this one is the best of them all.

[Music]

KAPLAN: An excerpt from the third movement from Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. The Cleveland Orchestra under the baton of George Szell, the final selection of my guest tonight on “Mad About Music”, the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, JAMES HOGE. You know that dreamy music evokes different pictures in people’s minds; you might find it interesting to know that Mahler once described it as his mother smiling through tears. I think it’s a wonderful description. All right, well, we come now to the final section of the show which is an absolute must for every guest and it’s called “Fantasyland”, there’s no escape, true confessions and it deals with musical fantasies. I have been trying to picture what yours might be -- to become a conductor; you’re a leader of organizations, the editor of publications, then you like bass-baritones. I can’t really tell. So if you could be a star in music what would it be?

HOGE: You hit it right on the head that last one. It’s been very consistent since I first heard that great bass-baritone Ezio Pinza. I want to be a bass-baritone and I haven’t got a prayer.

KAPLAN: “Across the crowded room.”

HOGE: That plus opera. The voice isn’t there, the spirit is!

KAPLAN: You bet. I’m sure it is. Well, on that fantasy we come to the conclusion of our show, and let me conclude by saying JAMES HOGE, you’ve been just a superb guest. This is Gilbert KAPLAN for “Mad About Music”.

“Mad About Music”
Gilbert KAPLAN, Executive Producer
Heidi Bryson, Producer
Marcela Silva, Associate Producer
Leszek Wojcik, Recording Engineer