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Music open thread: Women timpanists [1]

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Date: 2022-08-29

I have written about women composers, particularly Clara Schumann. I have written about women conductors, too. And also about the gender pay gap in the orchestra. There was the case of a woman who plays flute in a major orchestra who got paid less than a man who plays oboe (the case has been settled, hopefully to everyone’s satisfaction).

But I don’t think I had given any thought to women timpanists. First one that comes to mind is the brilliant Evelyn Glennie, but she’s really more of a general percussionist who occasionally plays timpani (her recording with Jonathan Hass of the Philip Glass Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra might be the standard recording for a long time).

There’s no shortage of women drummers in popular music today. And in the orchestra, women have joined every section, though there are certain gender stereotypes that can still be discerned even today.

Harpist Anna Lelkes was the first woman to join the Vienna Philharmonic, and some people find the idea of a man playing the harp to be odd. The flute is also associated with women. That Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell in the movie Anchorman) plays flute is a marker of his eccentricity.

In college I knew a few women who play brass instruments. And if you look up the Verwandlungsmusik for Wagner’s Rheingold on YouTube, in one of the videos you might see a woman among the percussionists playing the anvils.

There are also women in positions of leadership in the orchestra. Violinist Emmanuelle Boisvert was the first woman to be concertmaster (leader, in British parlance) of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, playing under three music directors and several guest conductors.

Boisvert actually took a demotion to associate concertmaster to move to Dallas after the Detroit Symphony strike of 2010. And another woman, Anne Parsons, was the face of an orchestra management generous with raises for themselves and miserly with the musicians’ salaries (causing the aforementioned strike of 2010).

Because of Anne Parsons, the Detroit Symphony went from being a world class orchestra to being “a community-supported orchestra,” something that the musicians are understandably cynical about.

Okay, so there are women playing every woodwind, brass and string instrument in the orchestra, and there are women in management, and there are women percussionists. Where are the women timpanists?

The timpani are important because that’s often the only percussion in many major orchestral works, such as, for example, all but one of Beethoven’s nine symphonies and all but one or two of Bruckner’s symphonies.

I was looking for a YouTube video of Bruckner’s Overture in G minor when I came across this video:

x YouTube Video

Brass flubs aside, this is an excellent performance. The timpanist delivers powerful jabs and rolls without overpowering the rest of the orchestra, and also subtle rolls when needed. And then I noticed the timpanist has bare arms. A man would be required to wear the usual penguin suit. The timpanist in that orchestra is a woman.

And just last week I noticed in the video of a performance of Stenhammar’s Symphony No. 2 in G minor by the Australian Doctors Orchestra that the timpanist there is also a woman.

It actually seems like there are actually more women conductors than women timpanists. I can think of a few women conductors right off the top of my head: JoAnn Falleta, Marin Alsop, Ariane Matiakh (whose recording of Dohnányi’s Der Schleier der Pierrette should be considered the gold standard for interpretations of that piece).

Are there any women timpanists in major orchestras? Yes, there are, more than you can count on the fingers of your hands, but not too many more. In 2016, Norman Lebrecht compiled a list of nineteen of them:

1 Kate Eyre, English National Ballet 2 Josephine Frieze, Royal Liverpool Phil (dep) 3 Christine Turpin, Melbourne Symphony 4 Kimberly Toscano, Tucson Symphony 5 Angie Zator Nelson, Assistant Principal, Philadelphia 6 Erika Ohman, Assistant Principal, Hallé 7 Bonnie Lynn Adelson was principal timpanist for 30 years at Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and the Zagreb Philharmonic. She caught the eye of Carlos Kleiber ad became his confidante. 8 Joyce Aldous, timpanist with the Hallé 9 Katia Godart, Belgian national orchestra 10 Elayne Jones, ex-San Francisco Opera 11 Nancy Nelson, Houston Grand Opera 12 June Binnie of Jyväskylä Sinfonia, Finland 13 Yoko Kita, Sarasota Orchestra 14 Cynthia Yeh, Chicago Symphony 15 Heather Corbett, BBC Scottish Orchestra 16 Nancy Rowe, Bangor Symphony Orchestra (Maine) 17 Pam Dow – former Principal Percussion, RSNO. 18 Carol Stumpf – Charlotte Symphony 1982-2006 19 Rachel Gledhill, principal percussion ROH (former LPO)

I’m not sure if Lebrecht would have been able to include Alana Wiesling of the Tucson Symphony in his list. Stephen Laifer for International Musician:

Alana Wiesing is one of the few Black women timpanists to hold a principal position in a symphony orchestra. She hopes to change that and encourage others to break barriers—and the proverbial glass ceiling. A member of Local 33 (Tucson, AZ), Wiesing plays principal timpani in the Tucson Symphony Orchestra and also serves as an adjunct professor of percussion at the University of Arizona’s Fred Fox School of Music. She gains visibility in her role as an orchestra musician, but it is as an educator that she believes she can make the most impact.

Even if Lebrecht’s list requires upward revision, it doesn’t seem like there are many women timpanists in orchestras at all. And then if we get to specifying that they be the principal timpanist, are there any besides Wiesling?

Also, I’m a little confused by this concept of a principal timpanist. Over in the second violins, for example, there’s the principal second violinist and the assistant principal second violinists. The two of them share a stand at the conductor’s right, with the rest of the second violinists behind them.

Or perhaps more commonly these days, the principal and assistant principal second violinists are slightly to the conductor’s left, next to the concertmaster and assistant concertmaster.

But for timpani, there usually is only one player, even if that one player stands behind four drums. If there is a non-principal timpanist, is that player more like an understudy?

There are also women timpani soloists, such as Naomi Endres playing with the Anchorage Civic Orchestra:

x YouTube Video

The strings have a lot of intonation problems, and the acoustics of the place are all wrong for this piece. But that should not detract from the young soloist’s skill with the timpani.

The open thread question: had you given any thought to women timpanists in the orchestra?

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/29/2079701/-Music-open-thread-Women-timpanists

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