The resignation of Edward Gordon as executive director of Ravinia, announced last week, marks the end of an era in Chicago music. Few others combined his managerial and fundraising skills with so deep an understanding of music and the art of performance. During his 22 seasons at the festival the piano-playing CEO managed to make Ravinia one of the most financially successful producers of summer music in the nation. That will stand as perhaps his most enduring legacy.
Gordon`s greatest regret, he says, is that he could never succeed in making Ravinia a prestigious international tourist mecca along the lines of the Salzburg Festival.
”Being in Middle America, in a densely populated residential community, it`s impossible,” Gordon says. ”We`re not a Salzburg situation. We worked very hard on it, (but) it just was damned impossible to get off the ground.”
The demographics simply weren`t there, nor did Salzburg ever have to contend with as rigidly limited a rehearsal schedule as the Chicago Symphony created for itself in the years that Gordon ran the festival.
And so Gordon and James Levine, whom he named Ravinia`s music director in 1973, set about to surround the CSO`s meat-and-potatoes programming with enough flavorful side-dishes to give festival patrons a reasonably nourishing meal. Composer marathons devoted to Bach and Mozart, preview concerts and recitals, featured-composer summers and a much-expanded series of chamber music programs in the small Murray Theatre represent a central element in the Gordon-Levine plan.
For years, the program formula worked. Levine`s seemingly tireless enthusiasm carried him over performance hurdles that would have sent a lesser musician sprawling. It was an enthusiasm that actually seemed to be fueled by the hothouse conditions under which music is made at Ravinia. And his enthusiasm was contagious, uniting performers and listeners in a kind of shared excitement that had marked the Sunday-afternoon new music concerts under Seiji Ozawa there in the late 1960s.
In recent years, unfortunately, a lot of the magic has gone out of the formula. Too many Levine performances have sounded perfunctory, as if they were mundane duties to be discharged between recording sessions and before catching the next jet to Bayreuth and Salzburg. This summer the music director restricted his Ravinia participation to only two weekends of dull programs, and he didn`t take part in any chamber concerts.
Gordon himself must know that something has gone awry, something that he no longer can fully control. He must sense that as Ravinia has attracted bigger and bigger audiences it has become ever more tightly locked into the safe, conservative, commercial mentality that governs America`s big-money summer fests.
If he believes that Levine is fixing to leave Ravinia when his contract with the Metropolitan Opera runs out or the Berlin Philharmonic beckons-whichever comes first-he is too politic to admit it. Still, one may assume that Gordon believes Ravinia will be searching for a new music director in a few years and that a new CEO should be installed as soon as possible to lead the search.
There is another element that might be called the Daniel Barenboim Factor. Barenboim will be taking over as CSO music director in 1991. He has already expressed a desire to arrange cooperative efforts between the Symphony and the other leading arts institutions of the area. In those summers when he is not involved at Bayreuth it is not inconceivable that the ambitious Barenboim would want to reestablish a presence at Ravinia that he hasn`t enjoyed there since the mid-`60s.
This, too, would mesh neatly with the aspirations of Henry Fogel, the orchestra`s equally ambitious executive director, who has wanted to consolidate his authority over both the summer and winter orchestra seasons but who has been largely frustrated in those attempts by Gordon`s insistence on maintaining Ravinia`s traditional autonomy from Orchestra Hall. Thus Gordon`s resignation could well lead to a power struggle whose outcome would impact considerably on Ravinia`s future.
What happens next? Gordon will continue to serve Ravinia in a lower-profile capacity, as festival consultant and advisor to his pet project, the Steans Institute for Young Artists. His value to the festival as a living resource is inestimable.
Ravinia trustees say they are determined to have a replacement for Gordon on board as early as December, and Gordon himself apparently will play a major role in choosing his successor. A short list of 10 to 12 candidates has been drawn up. Their identities are a state secret, of course, although there can be no doubt that Steven Ovitsky, general manager of Grant Park Concerts, is among the leading contenders.
Naming Ovitsky to head Ravinia would be eminently logical: Gordon himself began his career in festival management at Grant Park. Beyond that fact, however, Ovitsky is bright, experienced, exceptionally well qualified; he knows the local music scene as well as the national scene; and he is a professional musician.
If one`s suspicions are correct that conductor Dennis Russell Davies is being readied to take over from Levine on or before 1991 (and Davies would be an excellent choice), one foresees a Davies-Ovitsky administration as promising all sorts of good things for the Ravinia Festival. It is something for the trustees to consider very seriously.
– On another front, Ravinia has announced artists and dates for its second Fall Series of postseason concerts in Bennett Hall.
Concerts will be presented over four weekends in October and November, beginning Oct. 6 with the Ravinia debut of the Takacs String Quartet. This will be followed on Oct. 7 by the festival bow of American pianist Tzimon Barto, who is appearing this week at Grant Park.
The third event of the series` opening weekend, Oct. 8, will be a recital of American songs by soprano Joan Morris, accompanied by her husband, composer-pianist William Bolcom.
Here is the rest of the lineup:
Anthony Newman, harpsichord and fortepiano, Oct. 20; Stephen Hough, piano, Oct. 21; Ridge Quartet, Oct. 22; Misha Dichter, piano, Nov. 3; Dmitry Sitkovetsky, violin, Nov. 4; Ravinia Institute artists, Nov. 5; Matt Haimovitz, cello, Nov. 17; Borodin Trio, Nov. 18; and Marvis Martin, soprano, Nov. 19.
Performances are scheduled for 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. For ticket information, phone 433-8800.
