Conservatory is losing a good leader, listener
Daniel Steiner has been president of New England Conservatory for only six years, but he has left a deeper imprint on the institution than some who served far longer. On Wednesday Steiner, 72, announced his resignation, citing ill health, but agreed to continue through this academic year, or until a successor is found.
Steiner's appointment surprised some because he was the first president of NEC who was not a musician, although he had been a music lover all his life; he'd served as president of the board of Boston Baroque and joined the NEC board in 1995. His primary career had been in law, and he served as general counsel of Harvard University from 1970 to 1992. After the resignation of his NEC predecessor, Robert Freeman, in 1999 following a controversial two-year presidency, Steiner stepped up to the plate and agreed to serve as acting president for a year, ruling himself out as a candidate for the post. But things went so well that board members and faculty urged him to stay, and Steiner was enjoying himself so much that he agreed; he was named president in 2000. At the time, he said that he liked the idea of running an educational institution of modest size. ''After all," he said, ''I didn't run Harvard."
Steiner strengthened the school's shaky finances and in 2003 launched a $100 million capital campaign, scheduled to end in 2008; to date, $65 million has been raised. He increased scholarships and recruited major teachers to the faculty, who in turn attracted advanced students. He helped create a joint degree program with Harvard, and during his presidency initiatives were developed within the school, such as the Professional String Quartet Training program that has helped the Biava, Jupiter, Kuss, and Parker quartets win victories in competitions and launch their careers.
Despite chronic lung disease and other medical issues, Steiner accomplished all of this with the aid of musicians he trusted and who trusted him. And he did it in a very unostentatious manner, avoiding self-celebration.
Among the most admirable human accomplishments are those achieved by people who didn't have to achieve them, who voluntarily accepted responsibilities and shouldered burdens. Steiner was past the usual retirement age when he began his presidential tenure; he could have rested on his Harvard laurels and taken it easy. Instead he transformed NEC, not by making radical and sweeping changes but by using its traditions and strengths as building blocks. He relied not just on his own shrewd judgment and vast experience but also on the judgment and experience of others who knew things he didn't. Loving music taught him to be a good listener.
A lobby of note
Boston Symphony Orchestra managing director Mark Volpe wielded a large pair of scissors and cut a red velvet ribbon to open the $1.5 million lobby, box-office area, and women's restroom in Symphony Hall Tuesday afternoon.
The ceremony took place outside Symphony Hall before a small audience of people waiting to buy tickets, BSO staff, passersby, and representatives of the construction firm Walsh Brothers Inc. and the architects AnnBeha Associates.
The box office now faces Massachusetts Avenue and has its own entrance. A small flight of stairs and a new mechanical lift, providing wheelchair access, leads to the expanded lobby area, about twice the size of the previous lobby. New white marble tiles complement the well-worn steps up to the auditorium; the walls are painted a pale green, which was the original color more than a century ago. The new, capacious women's room is to the left as you move down the corridor on the Massachusetts Avenue side of the building.
The renovation was designed in part to end the gridlock created by two intersecting lines of foot traffic, one aimed at the box office, the other ticket-holders making their way across the lobby into the auditorium. Wednesday, however, people waiting to get to the box office relapsed into old habits and were still lined up across the lobby.
Longy festival
The Longy School of Music opens its fall season with Septemberfest, a five-concert festival designed to show off its faculty and the music taught at the institution. The opening event, Sept. 16 at 8 p.m., brings the first performance by violist Roger Tapping as a Boston-based artist. The former violist of the Takacs String Quartet, he played here with the quartet often. At Longy he plays the Brahms F-minor Sonata with Longy president Kwang-Wu Kim. The program also features the Lifson-Shlyam Piano Duo and mezzo Myran Parker Brass, who sings songs by African-American women, with Frederika King at the piano. A concert Sept. 17 at 8 p.m. features music for multiple pianos, a Mendelssohn String Quartet, and works by Longy composer Howard Frazin. The afternoon of Sept. 18 brings duo pianists Leslie Amper and Randall Hodgkinson, the Chuck Gabriel Jazz Septet, and a Longy ensemble playing Schubert's ''Trout" Quintet.
The festival continues Sept. 23 (music of Bartok and Longy student Eva Kendrick) and Sept. 24 (music by Patricia Van Ness performed by Tapestry, and Bartok performed by the Sandy Hebert and Eileen Hutchins piano duo).
