【Gilbert Kaplan】【柯璞兰】【首演】1982年9月9日-马勒第二交响曲第五乐章

1982年9月9日  纽约林肯中心，41岁的投资出版商柯璞兰 (Gilber E. Kaplan）在2700名各国银行首脑及财政大臣面前第一次登台指挥马勒 《第二交响曲》。“我有一种感觉，他们在怂恿我去完成我的梦想，因为他们每个人心中都有秘密的未能实现的野心。”(柯璞兰/ 作者专访）

吉尔伯特·柯璞兰（Gilbert Kaplan，1941——2016）是一位美国经济学家、记者和商人，他立志成为一名管弦乐队指挥，尤其是他对古斯塔夫·马勒（Gustav Mahler）的第二交响曲（《复活》）的痴迷，引起了更广泛的关注，他指挥了100多次交响曲。一些人认为他是一个骗子，一个华尔街的百万富翁，通过向一贫如洗的管弦乐队慷慨捐赠，“买通”了自己登上 指挥台的道路。其他人则认为他为音乐提供了一种全新的见解，没有被传统的诠释方法和音乐学院系统的制度化训练所玷污。在很多方面，他都在追随爱德华·希思走过的道路，希思通过指导和鼓励柯璞兰的努力来放松自己。     

“我是个业余爱好者，”柯璞兰坚称道，随后他登上了世界各大音乐厅的指挥台，并补充说“这是从最恰当的意义上来说的”。如果真是这样，那他无疑是一位严谨且痴迷的爱好者。他拥有并编辑了《复活交响曲》的原始乐谱，声称在该曲首次出版时发现了 300 处错误；将马勒送给妻子阿尔玛的唯一一枚戒指送给了自己的妻子；还用作曲家曾使用的指挥棒指挥过一场演出。更为罕见的是，柯璞兰拒绝扩大自己的演奏曲目范围。他很少演奏马勒的其他作品，更不用说其他作曲家的作品了。而当洛杉矶爱乐乐团要求他率领乐团以及 13000 名观众在好莱坞露天剧场演奏美国国歌时，柯璞兰“出了一身冷汗”。      

吉尔伯特·埃德蒙·柯璞兰于 1941 年 3 月 3 日出生在纽约，他是约瑟夫·布鲁克斯的弟弟，约瑟夫·布鲁克斯后来成为了一位获得奥斯卡奖的作曲家。他的父亲是一位衬衫制造商，有着优美的男中音嗓音。小时候，吉尔伯特曾接受过法国号和钢琴的课程学习，但他的母亲——一位银行家，因他不愿练习而终止了他的学习。他在北卡罗来纳州的杜克大学学习经济学，在华尔街担任金融家，并于 1967 年，从威士忌大亨杰拉尔德·布朗弗曼那里借了 10 万美元，创办了《机构投资者》杂志——“银行家们的《名利场》”，这是它当时的描述。    

卡普兰首次领略到马勒对死亡与重生的描绘，是在 1965 年，当时由莱奥波尔德·斯托科夫斯基指挥的美国交响乐团在卡内基音乐厅进行了演出。2003 年，他回忆道：“我独自走进那个音乐厅，然后走出时却已变成了另一个人——我感觉自己仿佛有一道闪电穿过身体。”       

接下来的 17 年里，他致力于学习指挥艺术的各个方面，尤其是马勒作品的指挥技巧。他得到了查尔斯·博恩斯坦的帮助，此人是来自茱莉亚音乐学院的一位年轻指挥家。最终，在 1982 年纪念《机构投资者》杂志创刊 15 周年之际，卡普兰在纽约预订了一个音乐厅，并聘请了同一批美国交响乐团——该乐团同意演出，但条件是演出仅限于他的 2800 名朋友和同事，并且不进行任何宣传。      

根据柯璞兰本人的叙述，当时到场的两位以个人身份参与的评论家无视了这一限制，发表了夸赞性的文章，从而助力了他初露头角的音乐事业。1984 年，他以约 7500 万美元的价格出售了自己的出版帝国，但此后多年他一直担任《机构投资者》杂志的主编，该杂志在金融界依然颇具影响力。         

柯璞兰曾多次将他的马勒作品带到欧洲，指挥过诸如英国的爱乐乐团和奥地利的维也纳爱乐乐团等乐团，并与德意志留声机公司合作录制了这部作品。似乎只有柏林爱乐乐团未能被他选中。“西蒙·拉特尔就是那里的指挥，他指挥这部作品的水平非常高。”他承认道。          

他继续让自己的批评者们产生了分歧，尤其是那些管弦乐演奏家们。伦敦交响乐团的杰出单簧管演奏家杰克·布莱默曾表示，卡普兰“严谨、细致、掌控自如，演奏起来令人愉悦”，但最近纽约爱乐乐团的长号手大卫·芬利森发表的一篇精彩博客则宣称，在卡普兰的指挥下，马勒交响曲中那些令人难忘的片段“就像调皮的音乐弹簧一样溜走了”。           

无论音乐家们如何看待他，到他去世时，柯璞兰已不再像 20 世纪 80 年代那样被视为一个“沃尔特·米蒂式的人物”了。相反，他已成为一位备受尊敬的这位作曲家的研究者。                      

他回忆起曾与乔治·索尔蒂爵士讨论过《复活交响曲》：“他说：‘能与一位来自华尔街的人一起探讨音乐真是太愉快了，因为当我与同事们见面时，我们谈论的无非就是钱。’”            

柯璞兰在音乐节大厅里与瑞典室内设计师莉娜·比奥克相遇，当时她坐在他的身旁。他们于 1970 年结婚。她一直陪伴在他身边，直至他离世，他们育有四个孩子。
　

今日视频：1、 柯璞兰首演1982年9月9日-马勒第二交响曲第五乐章。1982年9月9日，联合国国际货币基金组织内部专场音乐会上，卡普兰指挥了《复活》交响曲；2、 柯璞兰与维也纳爱乐乐团《马勒：第二交响曲》；3、 纪录片《马勒与百万富翁》。
　

Gilbert Kaplan, who has died aged 74, was an American economist, journalist and businessman who came to wider attention through his determination to be an orchestral conductor and in particular his obsession with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No 2 (the Resurrection), a work that he conducted on more than 100 occasions.

Some saw him as a charlatan, a Wall Street millionaire who had “bought” his way on to the podium with his lavish donations to impecunious orchestras. Others felt that he offered a fresh insight into the music, unsullied by a traditional approach to interpretation and the institutionalised training of the conservatoire system.

In many ways he was following a road trodden by Edward Heath, who relaxed by conducting and encouraged Kaplan in his endeavours.

“I am an amateur,” Kaplan insisted, as he mounted the podiums of the world’s great concert halls, adding “in the best sense of the word”. If so, he was a thorough and obsessive one. He owned and edited the original manuscript of the Resurrection Symphony, claiming to have uncovered 300 errors in its first publication; presented his wife with the only ring that Mahler gave to his wife, Alma; and conducted with a baton once used by the composer.

Even more unusual was Kaplan’s refusal to broaden his repertoire. Rarely would he tackle Mahler’s other works, let alone those of other composers. And when the Los Angeles Philharmonic insisted that he lead the orchestra and an audience of 13,000 at the Hollywood Bowl in the US national anthem, Kaplan “broke out in a sweat”.

Gilbert Edmund Kaplan was born in New York on March 3 1941, the younger brother of Joseph Brooks, who became an Academy Award-winning composer. His father was a shirt manufacturer with a fine baritone voice. As a child Gilbert took lessons on the French horn and piano, but his mother, a banker, stopped them on account of his refusal to practise. He studied Economics at Duke University, North Carolina, worked as a financier on Wall Street, and in 1967, with $100,000 borrowed from Gerald Bronfman, the whisky magnate, founded the magazine Institutional Investor – “Vanity Fair for bankers”, as it was described.

Kaplan first encounter with Mahler’s portrayal of death and rebirth was in 1965 at a performance by the American Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski at Carnegie Hall. “I walked into that hall one person and I walked out a different person – I felt as if a bolt of lightning had gone through me,” he recalled in 2003.

The next 17 years were spent learning every aspect of conducting in general and Mahler’s work in particular, assisted by Charles Bornstein, a young conductor from the Juilliard School. Eventually, to mark the 15th anniversary of Institutional Investor in 1982, Kaplan booked a concert hall in New York and hired the same American Symphony Orchestra – which agreed to perform providing that the performance was only for his 2,800 friends and colleagues and there would be no publicity.

By Kaplan’s own account, two critics who were present in a personal capacity ignored that stricture and published flattering accounts, encouraging his nascent musical career. He sold his publishing empire in 1984 for a figure believed to be $75 million, but for many years remained as editor in chief of Institutional Investor, which continues to thrive among the financial community.

Kaplan brought his Mahler show to Europe on several occasions, conducting orchestras such as the Philharmonia in Britain and the Vienna Philharmonic in Austria, with whom he also recorded the work for Deutsche Grammophon. It seemed that only the Berlin Philharmonic eluded him. “Simon Rattle is the conductor there and does this piece extremely well,” he conceded.

He continued to divide his critics, especially among orchestral musicians. Jack Brymer, the distinguished clarinettist of the London Symphony Orchestra, once said that Kaplan was “precise, meticulous, well in command, and a pleasure to play for”, but more recently a coruscating blog by David Finlayson, a trombonist in the New York Philharmonic, declared that under Kaplan the haunting moments of Mahler’s symphony “slipped away like some wayward musical slinky”.

Whatever the musicians’ views, by the time of his death Kaplan was no longer seen as a Walter Mitty character, as he had been in the 1980s. Rather, he had become a respected scholar on the composer.


He recalled discussing the Resurrection Symphony with Sir George Solti: “He said, 'What a pleasure it is to meet a man from Wall Street with whom I talk about music, because when I meet my colleagues all I talk about is money.’ ”

Kaplan met his wife Lena Biörck, a Swedish interior designer, when she sat next to him at the Festival Hall. They were married in 1970. She survives him with their four children.

Gilbert Kaplan, born March 3 1941, died January 1 2016

Today's Video: 1. Koppulan's debut performance - 5th movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 2. On September 9, 1982, at an internal concert of the United Nations International Monetary Fund, Koppulan conducted the "Resurrection" Symphony; 2. Koppulan and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra - "Mahler: Symphony No. 2";  3. Documentary "Mahler and the Millionaire".
　

  《马勒：第二交响曲》Gilbert Kaplan卡普兰 维也纳爱乐乐团CD Quality

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