BENNINGTON — After 35 years as the conductor of Sage City Symphony, Michael Finckel will step down from the podium for the last time following the orchestra’s performance on Sunday, March 8, at 4 p.m. in Bennington College’s Greenwall Auditorium.
Finckel’s relationship with Sage City Symphony goes back to its earliest days in the 1970s when he performed as principal cellist under the direction of the ensemble’s first and only other long-term conductor, founder Louis Calabro. Finckel became musical director and conductor following Calabro’s death in 1991.
In a recent phone call with Vermont News & Media, Finckel said, “(t)he cellist Pablo Casals, whom I heard as a young kid at Marlboro, once said, when he was in his 90s and someone asked why he was still practicing, ‘I’m just beginning to get a hang of what this cello playing is all about.’”
For Finckel, there was still more to discover, more to learn as conductor. Although he’s sorry to step away, he also recognizes the importance of continuity on the podium.
“Christine Graham, Louis Calabro’s wife and co-founder of the orchestra, was very generous to me. She’s been very supportive the whole time. She did say not so long ago that planning a transition now may be wise, because if I were suddenly incapacitated, they would be stuck trying to find someone to take over the position. (It’s important that) the transition to a new director is smooth.”
In an email, Executive Board president and violinist Celia Murry described the process.
“The preferred way to change after a conductor retires is to take a year to give guest conductors a shot at the podium,” she wrote. “This gives the players and Board a chance to assess someone new as well as a potential new conductor an opportunity to decide if the orchestra is a good fit. We have a vote on a three-performance season for 26/27 to even out the number of rehearsals so that this process can operate fairly. There are members of the Board working on the process, but nothing is at a stage where names of guest conductors can be announced.”
After 35 years, Finckel has built strong relationships with many orchestra players, some going back to his days as a music student at Oberlin Conservatory.
Board member and violinist Cathy Hall-Schor first met Finckel at Oberlin, “(a)bout a million years ago,” she said. “But actually, my first connection to the Finckel family was when I heard my very first string quartet concert at age 5 and his father, the magnificent George Finckel, was the cellist. We’re talking 1950s! I have always had tremendous respect for Michael’s unfailingly solid musical instincts as well as his mastery of the cello.”
Gail Smith managed the orchestra for 20 years.
“He is a consummate musician with a sense of style, not just a good conductor,” she said. “One of our past French horn players, Lynn Trowbridge, was a musicologist. He often said of Mike that when Sage played Brahms it sounded like Brahms and when we played Mozart it sounded like Mozart.”
The appreciation of Finckel’s leadership, sensitive interpretation across the repertoire and his mastery as a cellist is widespread as members mark the upcoming transition.
Cellist Perri Morris credits Finckel for introducing her to the beauty of the art.
“I was 11 years old when Michael Finckel became my cello teacher. From Michael I learned about how sound affects us and that there is great beauty in it. I’ve never heard a cello sound as beautiful as when Michael plays it. That’s what I’ve been trying to do all these years. I want to play like that.”
“Michael doesn’t ‘do’ music,” said Morris. “He is music.”
She added, “After drifting apart for more than 10 years, I had a chance to hear Mike play in New York City with a cello quartet. When he began to tune I burst into tears. It was just as remembered.”
Finckel and his family, whose history as performers and music educators goes back some 80 years, have deep roots in southern Vermont. Finckel grew up on Harwood Hill in Shaftsbury and taught at Bennington College for 11 years. His father, George, a well-known cellist and professor, began teaching at Bennington in the early 1940s and taught for 30 years. His mother, Marianne, a pianist and former student, taught piano at the college for more than a decade.
Finckel’s career as a performer includes stints with major orchestras like the New York Philharmonic and the Israel Philharmonic under the guidance of icons Pierre Boulez and Lenard Bernstein.
With a chuckle Finckel recalled receiving impromptu notes from Bernstein about a mandolin part he was performing.
“During rehearsal Bernstein said, ‘Where are the tremolos, baby?’ I had no tremolos in my part, just plucked notes. He leaned close and held up the score. He had written in red, instead of the plucked notes, ‘tremolo steadily.’ I didn’t have the heart to tell him that when I had played under Boulez, the entire piece had been practiced without tremolo. Afterward, during a break downstairs at the urinal, he said to me, ‘If you’re going to learn the mandolin, you’ve got to learn how to tremolo, baby.’ I didn’t tell him that playing a short tremolo and then plucking a single note is next to impossible. But they let me do the performance.”
Finckel also played principal cello in the Vermont Symphony Orchestra and performed concertos with various orchestras around the region, developing his craft and voice on the instrument and as conductor.
“I remember very distinctly my first concert as substitute conductor (of the Sage City Symphony) when Louis Calabro was in the hospital. We were performing his Third Symphony, which has a very complicated sequence of mixed meters in one movement. I asked him, ‘How am I supposed to conduct this? What would you suggest?’ He said, ‘Mike, you’ve got to feel it.’ I’ve never forgotten that. That’s where I stand from the get-go.”
He’s carried that instinctively cultured sense throughout his tenure with Sage City. Though his time as conductor nears its end, Finckel will be back for an encore, this time as musician, to play the Brahms Double Concerto with the principal violinist in the final concert of the year.
“Mike Finckel’s remarkable 34-year career with Sage City Symphony has made an indelible mark on the community’s players and audience,” said Susan Abrams, board member and orchestra librarian and musician. “We will miss the brilliant musicianship, passion and joy he brings to the process of making beautiful music together.”
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