by PHK
If you haven’t heard the German violinist Axel Strauss play, you should.
This early thirties something San Francisco Conservatory-based professor and violin virtuoso performed in Santa Fe last weekend – first in a private chamber music concert for symphony supporters, then in a sold-out performance of Spanish and Latin American works with the Santa Fe Symphony under guest conductor Guillermo Figueroa, the conductor of the Albuquerque-based New Mexico Symphony.
Axel Strauss, the first German artist to win the Naumburg Violin Competition (1998), is worth pulling yourself away from the television set and the never-ending play-offs of that never-ending season and into the concert hall – regardless of size and time of day. Yes, Strauss effortlessly performed the whipped cream type works that make for an easy listening, wow the audience-type performance, but his presentation of the rarely played unaccompanied Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita, No 2 was no less than breathtaking.
This was music of rare beauty – and rarer emotion in a time of too much technical brilliance among too many young performers that too often turns into an emotional wasteland.
The Partita, composed in 1720 upon Bach’s return to Vienna - whereupon he only then learned of his first wife’s death - may have been a requiem – or at least a tribute to her – perhaps along the lines of that incredibly beautiful mausoleum, the Taj Mahal, that Shah Jahan, the 17th century Mughal Emperor had constructed to honor his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal upon her death.
Just as the Taj Mahal is unique, Bach’s Partita # 2 also defies classification: it is polyphonic. It is melodic. Its depth goes well beyond its time, well beyond Bach’s contemporaries – George Philipp Telemann, Domenico Scarlatti, and George Fridric Handel. This Partita just doesn’t fit neatly into any musicologist’s drawer. At the Friday night chamber concert, you could have heard a pin drop. Members of the audience - including and perhaps especially the professional musicians in the room - were mesmerized.
Years ago when I was in the Foreign Service posted abroad, Strauss would have been just the sort of musician we would have loved to sponsor – providing, of course, he was an American citizen. As an Assistant Cultural Affairs Officer, a Center Director, or a Cultural Affairs Officer, I would have arranged for an artist of Strauss’ caliber to perform in a variety of venues.
Instead of a chamber music evening for Santa Fe Symphony supporters, I would have set up a similar event at the Ambassador’s residence for as many as 100 or more invited guests. If I had access to a larger concert hall such as the one in the Hellenic American Union in Athens, the AUA in Bangkok, or an even larger one I might have arranged for a public concert as well.
I would have learned about Strauss’s talents and availability through an office in what is now the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in the State Department and I would have had the funds to make his presentation possible overseas.
During the 1990s – perhaps beginning somewhat earlier – such opportunities, however, all but disappeared. First, the entire “vetting” process became over bureaucratized when the National Endowment for the Arts was assigned the selection task. Frankly, the quality of State Department recognized performers declined from what I had experienced as the norm in those earlier “heady” days in Thailand, Greece and the Soviet Union when State Department and later USIA – officials made recommendations based on their own best judgment and informed of us the possibilities from which we could choose.
In my view, the State or USIA staffers not only had a far better feel for what America had to offer, but also what and who would “sell” best overseas. An artist’s graciousness, adaptability and stamina may also have played a role in who was selected, but the bottom line was performance quality. Gary Burton, Dizzy Gillespie and Bella Fleck were smash hits. So too were the Juilliard String Quartet, the Martha Graham Dance Company and pianists Richard Goode and Gary Graffman.
Unfortunately, Arts America, the office in USIA that oversaw these overseas performance tours was put out of business in the mid-1990s. Its doors were simply shuttered. Even the very few staff members - I think they numbered no more than four - who remained under cover to deal with the miniscule remnants of a once robust program no longer even had the wherewithal to notify US Embassies of American performers traveling under private management who just might be traveling in their area and pleased to perform a concert at the residence under Embassy sponsorship.
The fact that the U.S. Government got out of the business of sending performing artists to perform abroad probably didn’t matter as much in Western Europe and Japan where local impresarios had pretty much already taken over years before. It did, however, deprive the Embassies in those countries of knowing about upcoming visits of American performers in the event a culturally inclined Ambassador, Cultural Attache or other Embassy official might wish to host a cocktail party, a dinner or even a concert at the residence or elsewhere in the visiting artists’ or traveling group’s honor.
But the closure of the Arts America office mattered a lot in countries where the local arts management infrastructure was weak, overly bureaucratic or non-existent. These countries included China and India, places that the Secretary of State recently highlighted as increasingly important to U.S. interests in her talk on “Transformational Diplomacy” at Georgetown University last week. I understand that sending American performers - or teachers - abroad under U.S. Government sponsorship picked up a bit after 9/11, but I doubt that either this administration's priorities or funding commitments begin to match the needs.
And if you don’t think Chinese ears are culturally attuned to western, as well as Chinese, music, think again.
I heard Yundi Li, for instance, the 23 year old wunderkind Chinese trained, Chinese pianist from Chongxing (a large port city on the Yangtze River in China’s interior) play at Johns Hopkins University’s Shriver Hall Concert Series last May – the series first ever sell-out. His too was a formidable performance. Many of the audience came from the Baltimore-Washington Chinese community. 
Interestingly, the Chinese Ambassador in Washington honored Yundi Li with a special reception in 2003 where he performed for U.S. State Department officials and guests – including a former U.S. Secretary of State.
Of course, the Chinese Government also believes in funding Confucius Centers or Chinese language teaching and cultural institutes as a way of extending Chinese influence overseas. Yet, another thing the U.S. Government gave up years ago – because it didn’t recognize such centers as important tools in the winning hearts and minds game.
Given that Axel Strauss is a German citizen (as is his opera singer wife Anja), I’m surprised that the German Embassy or German Consulates in the US haven’t paid him or her more attention – or perhaps they have and I don’t know.
Regardless, top class musicians and music are sides of America’s public face that need to be shown far more abroad. Violinists, jazz musicians, singers, composers and pianists win friends. Tanks and bombing raids on villagers do not.
Photo sources: Axel Strauss photo - Oehms classics; Yundi Li photo Omm.de; Anja Strauss photo - Oakland Lyric Opera
