The 15-passenger van rolls into Ravinia’s south parking lot. It is shortly after 8 on an already warm July morning. The van stops, the doors open and the young musicians, their instruments in tow, file into the John D. Harza Building. They are the first wave of the day’s occupation forces. Others soon will follow.
Before long the practice studios are alive with the sounds of violinists, violists and cellists warming up on scales and pianists rippling through arpeggios. Shortly the faculty members will arrive, and another day at the Steans Institute for Young Artists will begin.
Some of these pianists and string players are American, but many are European and Asian. Regardless of their different ethnic heritages, they have one thing in common, and that is their dedication to a life of making music. It is why they have given up the better part of their summers to come to Highland Park, on full scholarship, to work under the guidance of noted artist-faculty members. Their joint goal: to sharpen and refine the skills needed to base successful solo careers.
It’s what sets the Steans Institute apart from other summer music schools such as Tanglewood and Aspen. Numerous institutions teach technique and try to pass along musical knowledge. But few try to impart musical wisdom.
And wisdom is what these young musicians in the van, and those who will arrive later, hope to develop as they go through a typically intensive sequence of coaching sessions, lessons, rehearsals, master classes with Ravinia music director Christoph Eschenbach and other major artists and, not least, chamber music and solo concerts in Bennett-Gordon Hall.
If the Harza Building is saturated with music for the five weeks that it is occupied by young instrumentalists, followed by a three-week session for singers, the participants would have it no other way. They know that when it’s time to leave Ravinia and return to New York or Germany or Russia or China, they will have received an array of musical experiences available in few other places.
That’s why they happily put in long days that can extend from early morning to late at night. Some participants in fact attend the evening Pavilion concerts then return to Harza for a few more hours of practice before catching the last van departing for the young artists’ dormitory in Lake Forest at 11 p.m.
Certainly nothing like the Steans Institute had existed in 1988 when Edward Gordon, Ravinia’s late executive director, made good on his long-cherished dream of providing young artists with a place where the why of making music mattered as much as the how. Four years later, his successor, Zarin Mehta, addressed a further need when he created the program for young singers, aimed at those who want to explore in depth the art song and lieder repertoire.
From the outset the goal was to inspire participants to ask the questions that will help them define themselves as professionals on the road to musical maturity. If even a quarter of them succeed in making the career leap from the Harza Building to the Pavilion just across the Ravinia lawn, the institute will have amply justified its existence.
Word about the Steans Institute has spread far and wide. Well over 400 applications were received for this summer’s programs, which mark the beginning of the institute’s second decade. This has made the selection process especially tough for Miriam Fried, director of the piano and strings program, which this summer numbers 38 participants; and David Owen Norris, head of the vocal program, which has an enrollment of 18 singers.
“We are certainly blessed with an embarrassment of riches in terms of the applications received, and it’s getting richer all the time,” reports Fried, a globe-hopping concert violinist in her non-Ravinia life.
Norris, an equally well-traveled pianist, says the rich playing field has helped take the vocal program to a more sophisticated and intensive level. “Because I select a very mature band of singers–mature vocally as well as mentally–we’ve got the sort of people here who can take the strain of listening to eight different master teachers telling them things they can use to advance their own progress to mastery.”
As for the participants themselves, many report that the guidance they received at the institute has been a defining element in their musical lives.
“Everything is done in an atmosphere of real support, care and consideration of other people’s feelings,” pianist Audrey Andrist, one of the institute’s original crop of young artists, told the Tribune in 1988. “Everybody is very open to change, more than willing to take things apart and put them back together. It’s like being allowed to visit heaven for five weeks.”
Soprano Sharla Nafziger, one of last year’s group of Steans enrollees, active as a concert and recording musician, agrees. “I think in some ways I learned more in three weeks than in about 10 years of study. The encouraging and non-competitive atmosphere was really wonderful, and I think that made the difference in terms of what I was able to get out of the program.”
Named after two of Ravinia’s most important benefactors, Lois and Harrison Steans, the Steans Institute over the past decade has slowly emerged from the shadow of the long-established Aspen and Tanglewood music schools to stake out its own national and international reputation.
One measure of the respect in which the institute is held nationally and internationally is the fact that distinguished solo artists like German tenor Peter Schreier return each summer to give master classes. Schreier — who in August will perform Schubert’s song cycle “Die schoene Muellerin,” accompanied by Eschenbach at the piano, as well as singing and conducting an all-Bach concert — says the level of singers last summer was higher than he encounters at his master classes in Salzburg, or anywhere else he has taught.
Some 275 pianists and string players, and 109 singers, representing 30 countries and ranging from 16 to 27, have passed through the Ravinia program since its inception. Of the first class of young artists, all but one are professionally engaged in music. A recent survey of participants shows that 99 alumni are under contract to concert managements, 70 hold positions in major orchestras, 72 play in established chamber music groups, 57 teach in major music schools or universities and 53 have sung with major opera companies.
But statistics don’t tell everything. They don’t tell what a profound impression Ravinia artist-teachers like Eschenbach, singers Christa Ludwig and Elisabeth Soederstrom, pianist Menahem Pressler and cellist Lynn Harrell can make on young performers still grappling with their musical identities. They don’t measure what it means to an inner-city child to discover the joys of classical music as played by Steans Institute artists at one of their outreach programs.
Interaction with senior musicians is critical to the special synergy of the institute. Participants one week might start rehearsing a Brahms piano quartet with pianist Claude Frank and finish up a week later with cellist Bernard Greenhouse. “The young artists regularly get differing and equally valid viewpoints on the same piece,” explains Mehta. “They grow up a lot by that kind of interaction.”
Fried is responsible for increasing the amount of chamber music studied and performed during the instrumental program and for involving a greater number of faculty in those performances, including herself and her husband, violist Paul Biss. She rightly believes there is no better training for young instrumentalists than playing–and thinking–chamber music.
“We try and make sure that everybody performs approximately the same number of times,” she says, “whether it’s quartets or quintets or trios. And we don’t single out individuals in a way that would arouse jealousies. I’m sure there are jealousies, but they are not fueled by us.”
Robert Mann, the retired founder and first violinist of the Juilliard Quartet who served as artistic director during the institute’s shaky inaugural season, liked to challenge the participants’ interpretations with a brutal frankness that eventually cost him his job. Fried marches to a different philosophical drummer.
“My philosophy is you don’t really get the best out of people by being confrontational or aggressive,” she explains. “In fact, I hope one of the things participants learn here is how to work with one another without being personal. It’s not easy when you’re dealing with so many strong personalities, different nationalities and cultural norms. How do you keep your personality outside the playing?
“What we’ve been seeing over these 10 years has been a steady rise in the level of proficiency of these players. I’m not sure the level of musical understanding has risen along with it. It takes time to assimilate the wealth of cultural information you need as a finished artist. That’s why the phenomenon of parading younger and younger soloists in front of the public, pretending they are mature musicians, is to nobody’s advantage.”
So Fried and her fellow faculty members have their work cut out for them, feeding their young charges not only musical knowledge but that more elusive commodity, musical wisdom.
“There are certain things I believe in as a musician that must influence my choices of who enters the institute,” the instrumental program director explains. “I believe in being truthful to the score and yet saying something very individual about it. It’s a very fine line: When do you impose yourself on the music, when do you enhance what’s there through your special personality? And so we look for highly gifted young people who can walk that line and are open to learning new approaches.”
Adds Norris: “The point is to find out how (young artists) can improve and to encourage them to do so. However good they are, however good they know they are, there’s still the possibility of learning something else. That’s where this program can be of profound and lasting value to them.”
Happy 10th anniversary, Steans Institute.
HOW TO HEAR THEM
It’s the best-kept secret in Chicago music. Throughout the summer, young pianists, string players and singers taking part in Ravinia’s Steans Institute for Young Artists are presenting early-evening concerts–free to holders of lawn admission or Pavilion seats–in the acoustically splendid Bennett-Gordon Hall, John D. Harza Building, on the festival grounds in Highland Park.
In addition, major visiting artists and ensembles are presenting master classes which are open to the public free of charge. Here is the schedule of remaining events:
Program for piano and strings, concerts
5 p.m. Sunday
6 p.m. July 18, 21, 24, 25
6 and 10 p.m. July 31
Sunday afternoon chamber music concerts
2 and 5 p.m. July 19
2 and 5 p.m. July 26
Piano and strings master classes
2 p.m. Tuesday Christoph Eschenbach, piano
2 p.m. July 23 Gary Hoffman, cello
2 p.m. July 28 Miriam Fried, violin
Program for singers, concerts
6 p.m. Aug. 8, 14, 15, 17, 21 and 22
5 p.m. Aug. 9, 16
Vocal master classes
2 p.m. Aug. 6 David Owen Norris, piano
2 p.m. Aug. 11 Christoph Eschenbach, piano
2 p.m. Aug. 19 Frederica von Stade, mezzo-soprano
