|
|
|
|
|
1967 – Maestro Pierre Boulez is greeted with a train whistle. Pierre Boulez
The
opening number was listed as the Schoenberg String Quartet No. 2, arranged for
string orchestra; its harmonics, according to the program notes, would be
“unconventional, even irrational.” Nobody
had said anything about a whistle.
When
train whistle and raised baton coincided for the third time, Maestro Boulez
walked off stage with just a touch of Gallic impatience.
He was replaced, after a hurried conference backstage, by Ted Lillefelt,
that year’s festival president.
An
apology was offered and a question posed to the assembled music lovers:
Would
it not be better if the opening number of the Ojai Festival 1967 were delayed
until such time as the orange train could continue on to Ojai’s packinghouse,
as it was required to do daily? There
it would reverse itself and come through town again, passing once more to the
rear of the Festivals Bowl.
The
first-night audience clapped its approval.
About
10 minutes later the orange train passed through once again, hooting jubilantly
as if wishing well to the proceedings.
There
was an answering applause from the audience, and then everybody settled down to
give Schoenberg his turn.
Open-air
concerts in Ojai’s Festival Bowl have included the gentle ostinato of resident
crickets and birds, a feature that Oliver Messiaen, a composer who has written
music in honor of birds, found to his liking during his tenure as resident
composer of the Ojai Festival.
The
birds still sing, but some things that once were are no longer.
There
will be no freight train whistle this weekend in Ojai for Maestro Boulez or, for
that matter, any future conductor of the festival.
The
orange train doesn’t run here anymore. 25 By Bob Bryan “Baton
not tuned to train’s wail” Home
| Events | History
| Exhibits | Join
Us!
| About | Maps
| Cam | Sponsors
| Links |
