Marin Alsop

by tristero

Last night I heard my friend Marin Alsop conduct the Baltimore Symphony at Carnegie Hall in a program of Strauss, Debussy, Stravinsky, and Mackey. There were two remarkable things about this concert.

First and foremost, the music-making was extraordinary. Alsop, conducting without a score, took deeply unusual approaches to the standard repertory, all the while conducting with the kind of passion that recalled Leonard Bernstein, under whom Alsop studied at Tanglewood.

Just as incredible was that this was Alsop’s formal debut at Carnegie, as the leader of a major American orchestra. And what made that so remarkable is that Marin is the first woman ever to do so. To be clear: What makes this so remarkable that it took until 2008 for this to happen, even given the enormous extent of Marin Alsop’s musical talent.

This should give pause to those amongst us who think sexism is a thing of the past. These days, it is more than likely that American conservatories are graduating a majority of women musicians. And it is a fact that today’s classical musicians are, as a group, the finest ever. Furthermore, many of the most interesting artists – Helene Grimaud, Angela Hewitt, Hilary Hahn, or Leila Josefowicz, for example – are women. But where are the conductors? And why was Marin, a world-class conductor, not appointed to a major post 15 years earlier?

Only sexism explains the tracking of women by music schools away from the serious study of orchestral conducting – only a few conductors have dared resist the prejudices. And only sexism explains why, in this day and age, we are seeing the first woman as head of a major orchestra debut debut at Carnegie Hall.

However, I think it is a mistake to reduce Alsop’s concert (or for that matter, her career) to a cultural/political moment, as that distracts from the music-making. First and foremost, what was on display last night was a great conductor practicing her art. Surely, Marin will enter American music history because of her gender, but had she been a man, she would also be in the history books as Lenny’s natural heir. She is an enormously talented conductor (and also a great proselytizer for classical music). There will be no asterisks to hedge her achievements.