Lockhart

Web posted on: Friday, July 02, 1999 6:04:03 PM EDT

By Porter Anderson
CNN Interactive Arts Writer

(CNN) -- They couldn't have timed the new Boston Pops Orchestra CD release better if ... well, actually, they did plan it this way.

Founded in 1885, the outfit has its timing down. And starting in 1930 with the tenure of late conductor Arthur Fiedler, the Pops has played its way into a unique position in the United States. Its wow-wow renditions of John Philip Sousa marches and its fêtes-and-fireworks outdoor concerts have made it almost synonymous with patriotic music among late-century Americans.

"You don't step in and say, 'I want to change A, B and C," says Keith Lockhart, now in his fifth year as conductor of the Pops. "It's become an American institution. After 115 years of it, one treads lightly."

But not too lightly.

Less than a week before Sunday's "Pops Goes the Fourth" holiday concert is aired on live television, RCA Victor has released a new album of Fourth-y froth. "A Splash of Pops" is the fifth Pops recording made under Lockhart's baton. Before the charcoal had even been doused with lighter fluid, that CD was showing up on shelves.

So lucrative a proposition is this link with the Pops for RCA Victor that the label has just renewed its contract, originally for six albums, with Lockhart. That's an "unusual commitment," as Lockhart points out, "particularly in the world of classical recordings."

In Sunday's big Fourth of July concert -- to be seen on television by some 500,000 people, the conductor estimates -- he'll share the podium at Hatch Shell on the Charles River Esplanade in Boston with outgoing Boston Symphony Orchestra music director Seiji Ozawa. The maestro is to do the honors on the obligatory rendition of Peter Illich Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture," one of the best-loved and least logical of American patriotic passions.

"One of the lasting ironies in classical music," Lockhart says, is that on the American Independence Day, "we use this piece written by a Russian to celebrate victory over the French in the 19th century."

The version of the "1812" performed today was premiered on a site that would later be considered the ground zero of Soviet cold-war rivalry with the United States. Originally written in 1870, Tchaikovsky's revised work, formally titled "The Year 1812" was first heard on August 20, 1882, at the consecration of the Cathedral of the Redeemer -- in the Kremlin.

The "1812" opens with a prayer for Moscow under threat of invasion by Napoleon's army. Then it becomes a celebration of the Russian snow that stopped France's soldiers in their "La Marseillaise"-singing tracks. This is why you hear those snatches of the French national anthem in the "dogfight" section, the scrappy work-up to the bells and cannons.

The piece isn't about the United States, the Fourth of July, the dawn's early light or the twilight's last gleaming. "From what I'm told," Lockhart says, "it wasn't even used for the Fourth of July even midway through this century. But it did start during Fiedler's time" in the leadership of the Pops.

It caught on and has stuck, to musicians' amusement and American audiences' unfazed pleasure. "I'd like to say it's used because of its air of solemn ceremony," Lockhart says. "But honestly, I think it's the cannon and the bells."

Lockhart will take over on Sunday night for more of the traditional sound and fury from Ozawa, who's to leave the BSO in 2002 to lead the Vienna State Opera.

Country-pop recording artist Trisha Yearwood is Lockhart's guest soloist for the show. "The Fourth concert can be an unparalleled opportunity for a soloist" to be seen by a vast audience, Lockhart says, "but it can also be a little nerve-wracking for them. This program goes together in a heartbeat. It's rehearsed quickly and then -- it's on live television."

Nevertheless, "knock on wood, I've never had to turn to a soloist yet and whisper, 'Your turn.'"

A&E will air the Ozawa-Lockhart program live. At 7:30 p.m. Eastern, the telecast starts with a 30-minute "making of" documentary about the new album. The live "Pops Goes the Fourth" concert then is to follow, from 8 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.

Lockhart took the helm of the Pops in 1995. The 20th conductor in the ensemble's history, he's the man who has filled the big space-walking shoes of composer-conductor John "Star Wars"/"Close Encounters"/"E.T." Williams in the post.

And to add a note of commercial reality to your music enjoyment, pay attention to Lockhart's looks. Note them on the cover photos of his four previous Pops recordings -- "American Visions" (an Obsession thousand-yard gaze); "Holiday Pops" (a Santa the Abercrombie & Fitch kids might party with); "The Celtic Album" (Old World tartan, New Order smile); and "Runnin' Wild" (Converses, street shorts and tailcoat, the skateboard must be just off-camera).

For the new "A Splash of Pops," it's into the pool, tux and all, another drenching of the agile, youthy, classics-you-can-use imagery. Not for nothing was Lockhart the youngest (35) conductor named to the post since Fiedler.

He conducts the "1812" on the new recording. And he's joined on the CD by a cast of thousands -- soloists Denyce Graves and Jason Danieley, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the Boston Pops Gospel Choir, members of the Boston Gay Men's Chorus and the Middlesex County Volunteers Fifes and Drums. It's hard to believe there are any of us left who aren't on that album.

His Madison Avenue mug notwithstanding, Lockhart has earned his sheet music, conducting more than 200 concerts and making 31 television shows including 19 new "Evening at Pops" shows for PBS. A native of Poughkeepsie, New York, he began studying piano at age 7 and holds degrees from Furman University and Carnegie-Mellon. His orchestral posts have included work with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute and he retains his position as music director of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra.

Lockhart's selections for the new CD include not only the Tchaikovsky but also Sousa's equally indispensable "Stars and Stripes Forever"; the "National Emblem March"; "The Star-Spangled Banner"; "American the Beautiful"; "Liberty Fanfare," a Williams composition; the overture to the Richard Rodgers musical "State Fair"; "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy"; and Paul Simon's "America."

"Lift Every Voice and Sing" is an 1899 piece written for an Abraham Lincoln commemoration. And the Middlesex fifes and drums get into the act on "Doodletown Fifers."

"With Voices Raised" is a much newer work from Tony Award-winning "Ragtime" composer and lyricist Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens -- the work was premiered May 5 by Lockhart and the Pops in concert. The piece includes spoken tributes to great Americans, voiced on the album by Blair Brown, Judy Kaye, Tommy Hollis and others.

"The goal of the Pops" in his tenure, Lockhart says, "is still to keep the music somehow reflective of the popular culture of the day, but also reach out. Really, you know, the Pops is the best cultural outreach tool we have for classical music. Fiedler would still recognize much of our repertoire."