Photo: Shawn Miller/Library of Congress.
The Dalí Quartet, accompanied by Ricardo Morales on clarinet, performs during the Library of Congress’ Stradivari concert in Coolidge Auditorium in 2023.
I can see why, as National Public Radio suggests, the music program in today’s story has been staying under the radar. Under the radar is the place many good activities and people feel safest these days.
NPR’s Tom Huizenga reported recently on a little-known cultural venue in Washington DC.
“The year is 1925. The Great Gatsby is published, the jazz age is swinging, and on October 28th, a new concert hall opens at an unlikely spot — the Library of Congress, in Washington D.C. If only its cream-colored walls could talk. For 100 years, performers of all stripes have graced the Library stage, from classical music luminaries like Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky to Stevie Wonder, Audra McDonald and Max Roach. Today, it remains one of the capitol city’s most beautiful, best sounding and perhaps best kept secrets.
“The idea [came] from philanthropist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge — and one bespoke piece of bipartisan legislation. ‘She was indefatigable and intrepid,’ says Anne McLean, senior producer for concerts at the Library, ‘a remarkable woman, six feet tall, a brilliant pianist.’ …
“Coolidge was born into a wealthy Chicago family in 1864. She studied music, traveled abroad, married a Harvard-trained orthopedic surgeon and, in 1924, came to Washington to establish a foothold in the nation’s capitol. She approached Carl Engel, the Library’s music chief, about the possibility of adding a small concert hall to the Library’s voluptuous — and voluminous — Thomas Jefferson building. …
“Eager to get started, Coolidge wrote a check for $60,000 to the Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam, on Nov. 12, 1924. And yet there was no legal mechanism in place for a civilian to make such a monetary gift to the U.S. government. Congress worked quickly, taking only a little over a month to pass a bill allowing such a contribution.
“It took less than six months to build the hall itself — the intimate, 485-seat Coolidge Auditorium, with its warm precise acoustics. ‘There are a lot of secrets to it,’ McLean says. ‘The back wall of the auditorium is slightly shaved to be concave and extremely responsive to string sound. Underneath the stage is hollow. But that hollowness is a factor, as is the cork floor, which was very unusual for its time.’ McLean says the sound blossoms in the hall. …
“The most famous [Coolidge] commission became one of America’s most iconic pieces of music. Aaron Copland‘s ballet Appalachian Spring, written for dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, received its world premiere at Coolidge Auditorium on Oct. 30, 1944. …
“And the commissions keep coming, thanks in part to generous women who followed in Coolidge’s philanthropic footsteps. Composers commissioned for the 100th anniversary include MacArthur fellows Tyshawn Sorey and Vijay Iyer, plus Pulitzer winner Raven Chacon, George Benjamin and the electronic artist Jlin. Pulitzer-winning composer Tania León had her own world premiere earlier in this 100th anniversary season. Para Violin y Piano was commissioned by the Library’s Leonora Jackson McKim Fund. …
“Situated inside the Library of Congress, Coolidge Auditorium benefits from the Library’s substantial acquisitions. In the mid-1930s, another philanthropist, Gertrude Clarke Whittall, gave the Library a set of rare Stradivarius instruments. …
” ‘When they were first acquired, there wasn’t a resident ensemble. And the concept was, “How do we keep them in great shape?” So they were occasionally hiring musicians to play them for $2.50 an hour,’ McLean says with a laugh. …
“These days, the Strads can be played by any string quartet booked for a concert at the Library. But McLean says there’s a catch: The musicians need to show up a couple days early to learn how to control them.
‘The secret of the [Strads] is that they are like racehorses, they’re thoroughbreds, and they can get away from you if you don’t have a chance to get used to them.’
“Cellist Daniel McDonough and his bandmates in the Jupiter String Quartet got used to them when they played the Strads at the Library earlier this year. I asked McDonough if playing one of the instruments was anything like finding yourself behind the wheel of a Ferrari.
” ‘Yes, the automotive analogy is a good one,’ he says. ‘Sometimes I say it has a fifth gear. These instruments, because they’ve been played for hundreds of years and because they’ve aged and grown into themselves so beautifully, have a kind of ringing tone that I think no other instrument’ has.”
More at NPR, here. Nice photos. No firewall.
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