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The Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio, Elaine Guregian Column: Who'Ll Get Baton?

Posted on: Thursday, 23 February 2006, 18:01 CST

By Elaine Guregian, The Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio

Feb. 23--After months of auditions, the Akron Symphony Orchestra is nearing its time of reckoning.

On Saturday night, its final candidate to be the next music director will audition. After Paul Polivnick leads the orchestra at E.J. Thomas Hall, it'll be up to the search committee to make a choice. Next fall, the orchestra will have a new leader on the podium.

Polivnick is the only one of the five candidates to have been a candidate the last time around, when Ya-Hui Wang was selected. Like John Morris Russell, he has worked in Northeast Ohio before, having served from 1997-2002 as the music director of the Oberlin Conservatory Orchestras.

Polivnick sat for an interview at the Radisson Hotel on Tuesday. He had arrived the night before for a week of rehearsals and get-acquainted meetings around town. A fit 58-year-old, Polivnick's conversational style races. Businesslike and professional, he had a ready response to the question of why he wants the job in Akron. "You have to bear in mind that I'm auditioning Akron this week as well as they are auditioning me. That question of 'Why do you want the job?' would be perhaps more appropriate after the week is finished."

A good impression of the orchestra and chorus the first time around made him interested in returning, he said. The primary thing to find out, he said, is how he and the orchestra get along. You can talk all you want about secondary issues, but if the chemistry with the players isn't right, as he put it, "why bother?"

Polivnick was born in Atlantic City, N.J., and began playing the trumpet at age 8. He got hit in the mouth playing Little League baseball and picked up the violin while his stitches were healing, and continued playing both instruments through high school.

At age 10, the family moved to the community of Briarcliff Manor, north of New York City, where his dad was "Mister Music" for the community. Sidney Polivnick led orchestras, bands, dance bands, and the first youth orchestra that Polivnick joined. At age 16, Polivnick had his first chance to study conducting, with the director of a local youth orchestra. He conducted an overture on a program where he was also trumpet soloist and violin soloist. "I was totally fearless," he remembered.

Polivnick followed his well-regarded violin teacher, Oscar Shumsky, to the Juilliard School. His initial goal was to be a concertmaster, and he filled that position in the school orchestra his senior year. But he gravitated to conducting, studying under Jean Morel.

At age 22, right out of school, Polivnick got the gig leading the Debut Orchestra, sponsored by the Young Musicians Foundation of Los Angeles. The first year, he recalled, all was well. Having the chance to lead masterworks for the first time was "like candy." Then came the second year, when he was assigned an adviser, an older, well-established musician whose name he chose not to reveal.

"This person sat there through rehearsals, shaking his head and looking at me as if I were a complete and utter moron. I had a few lessons with him, if you can call them lessons. He would say things like, 'Conductors have to be perfect. You can't make any mistakes. You're a god.' "

November rolled around, and with it a rehearsal of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2. Polivnick found himself unable to do his job. "I had this overwhelming sensation that I was worthless," he said. He excused himself and went back to his apartment to think. "All of a sudden, it was as if somebody went 'Boom!' with the lights on and I said, 'It's HIM!'... This person was making it his life's work to make me feel totally worthless, you know? That was his intention, to destroy me."

Polivnick went back to rehearsal the next day feeling better than ever.

"It was a good lesson for me as a young conductor, because many many years later, I've been through so many tough situations. I've been guest (conducting) all over the world and you've got jet lag and the piece is hard and so is the orchestra; you've got resistance to something. You have to know what you're all about. You have to know what your job is, why you're standing on that podium and that you have a right to be there. I crossed that bridge when I was 23 years old. I'm very happy that I crossed it way back then, not when I was conducting the New York Philharmonic!"

Polivnick went on to stints as associate conductor with the Indianapolis Symphony (where he met his wife, Marsha) and the Milwaukee Symphony before landing his first job as a music director at the Alabama Symphony in Birmingham in 1985. There, he recorded with the orchestra, performed on statewide TV broadcasts and took the group to the Kennedy Center.

At first, money was flowing. A $1 million line item in the state budget allowed them to tour three times a year to rural Alabama, doing educational programs and concerts. The season increased from 40 weeks to 46. But when the recession hit in the late '80s and early '90s, the orchestra was adversely affected along with everyone else.

No matter what the economic conditions, it's important for an orchestra to set a vision and then strive for it, Polivnick said.

"I do think individual people have incredible power and most folks don't use but a little of it. When you try to be the best at something, that's aligning with who you are. It aligns with your potential... Where you have trouble is when you violate that, when you say, 'Oh, I'm only in Akron,' or 'I'm not in the New York Philharmonic.' Or organizationally, when you say, 'We're only this little town, we can't expect to have this.' You're finished. The groups in America that have the biggest trouble are the ones that aren't aspiring."

On Saturday night's program in Akron, Polivnick will lead a timpani concerto by Russell Peck that was originally commissioned by a consortium of 39 American orchestras. Over the years, Polivnick has conducted many pieces by Peck, whom he calls "a contemporary (Maurice) Ravel." Peck is a colorful orchestrator who takes great care in detail, and derives many of his materials from American popular music of the past, Polivnick said.

Also on the program is Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 and Mozart's Overture to The Marriage of Figaro.

As at other concerts, the audience will be asked to fill out a survey giving their opinion of the conductor. If you're interested in this important decision, it's the last chance to listen and make your voice heard.

Elaine Guregian can be reached at 330-996-3574 or eguregian@thebeaconjournal.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio

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Source: Akron Beacon Journal (Akron, Ohio)

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