Interview Transcripts

Interview With Adolph Herseth
(2003)

Interview With
Adolph Herseth
(2003)

By John Hagstrom

Adolph “Bud” Herseth spent fifty-three years as the principal trumpet of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. There is hardly a superlative left that has not been used to honor his singular legacy. It would be difficult to overstate his influence and significance to musicians all over the world.

It has been my honor and privilege to be the second trumpet of the Chicago Symphony, sitting next to the man who has set a timeless standard for orchestral trumpet playing. As a native Chicagoan, I grew up listening to this orchestra, dreaming of one day having the opportunity to play professionally myself. Like so many other trumpet players in the last half of the twentieth century, it was the sound and style of Adolph Herseth that led me to a life in music. I learned everything I could about the world’s most renowned principal trumpet player by reading everything written about him and from others who had worked with him, but I never thought I would have the chance to learn from him directly.

It still is difficult for me to believe that I have had the good fortune to learn from him on a daily basis. He has given so much of himself for the sake of the music, and he is still disciplining himself to learn new things that lead to further progress. Despite his legendary achievements, he remains gracious and often self-effacing.

In the course of working with him every week, he has shared insights and stories that have been very helpful to my development. However, I had seen virtually none of this information in any of the resources I studied before I joined the Chicago Symphony. I approached Mr. Herseth several months ago about sitting down for an interview that would reveal answers to questions regarding certain details of his career and work habits he had not discussed in previous interviews. He kindly agreed, and this is the result. In an effort to authentically convey the experience of speaking with Adolph Herseth, I have transcribed his answers in the conversational style in which he responded. In an effort to authentically convey the experience of speaking with Adolph Herseth, I have transcribed his answers in the conversational style in which he responded.

After his retirement from playing principal in 2001, Adolph Herseth held the position of Principal Trumpet Emeritus in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra until 2004. In this position he played extra section parts, and in this photo he is seen playing one of the cornet parts in Debussy’s La Mer under the direction of Daniel Barenboim on May 22nd, 2003.

Hagstrom:
What was it like starting out as first trumpet of the Chicago Symphony under the working conditions that existed back then?

Herseth:
When I joined the orchestra, you could be let go anytime they wanted–in the middle of the year if they felt like it–for whatever reason, in those days. Let’s see… I started in the summer of 1948 at Ravinia, which was a nice way of starting, and I got to play under conductors like Ormandy, Fritz Reiner (that’s before he got the permanent job, of course). So I got exposed to a lot of good music and some very nice conductors, and for a total greenhorn, which is what I was in terms of symphonic playing, it was a marvelous experience. Then we had the first two winter seasons here with guest conductors because Artur Rodzinski, the conductor that hired me, had been fired by the time I started with the orchestra. It’s kind of interesting too because I played an audition for him in his 5th Avenue apartment in New York because George Mager, my teacher in Boston, knew Rodzinski. Rodzinski had a summer place in Tanglewood (the Boston Symphony’s summer home), so I got a telegram from the manager here (George Kuyper) to go to New York to play for Rodzinski. Yeah, I played about an hour. I had heard a lot of this stuff by the Boston Symphony and on the New York Philharmonic broadcasts on Sunday afternoons, and that sort of thing. There weren’t as many records around as there are today, so I took all the trumpet parts I could find from the conservatory music library and also the Boston Public Library music section. I just said, “I’m going to play this,” and “I’m going to play that” and then “I’m going to play that,” and he would say, “Well try to play it a little faster, or can you give it a little difference?” or whatever, and when I got all done, he said, “Well, you’re my next principal trumpet player.” And I said, “Okay, I’ll go home and practice.” But he said, “I would also like to hear you in Orchestra Hall in Chicago where the orchestra performs.” I think all he wanted to do was to see if I could do it again. That’s all. No question. I made it that time, too, and so when I finished, he was there with John Weicher, the concertmaster, and he said, “Well, you have passed summa cum laude.” I said, “Well, I’m glad I studied Latin because I know what that means. Thank you.” (hearty laughter) And the first two seasons were all guest conductors–seven of them–from big orchestras, Europe and here, and several of them were kind of looking for the job–get their foot in the door a little bit, you know–and so they were all allowed to come with their biggest, most familiar repertoire that they really liked to do, so I suppose I would consider that in those first two summers and winter seasons I was probably exposed to as much big-time repertoire in those two seasons [those two years] as I would have been in maybe three or four normal years. So it was terrific. I went in and enjoyed it every day and worked my butt off–and you know what that means–(laughs) and enjoyed it, and we had a lot more time off then so we’d jump in the car and head up to Minnesota where Avis and I are both from and off we’d go and spend three or four weeks at the lake eating Walleyes. (laughs)

“My whole attitude has always been to go in every day and give it your best. What else can you do? Give it your best. If it doesn’t work, find something else.”

Hagstrom:
And during the time the orchestra had off you used to also play dance band jobs…

Herseth:
Well, I used to do quite a bit of dance band playing, especially in the Navy during World War II, and I had done some when I was going to college out in Iowa before the war on Saturday nights once in a while, you know, a little local group. And we had little get-togethers to try to imitate Benny Goodman records. (laughs) And, of course, in the dance band experience, and I’ve said this many times (especially playing lead trumpet), you have to be very positive all the time, and you have to have some different sense of style for the different kinds of tunes, and you have to be able to improvise once in a while too, which is fun. There was a lead trumpet player who I went overseas with to the South Pacific, and he was from some of the early big-time Stan Kenton type bands out in California–Gunnar Sorensen, a Danish gentleman who came to this country–a really nice guy and really good lead trumpet player, and I learned a lot just sitting next to him. It’s a little different playing lead in a 110-piece symphony than it is playing in a 25- piece dance band or 18-piece jazz band or 5-piece little jazz outfit, you know, but those were marvelous background experiences. They were just as important to me as being a cornet soloist when I was in grade school and high school and college and in the Navy too because we did square dance stuff as well as dance band stuff, all important things in the background. At that time, of course, I had no idea how it was going to end up, but I got lucky.

Hagstrom:
When you came to the Chicago Symphony, there were no guarantees of job security, even after many years of playing successfully with the orchestra. How would you describe your approach to that uncertainty?

Herseth:
My whole attitude has always been go in every day and give it your best. What else can you do? Give it your best. If it doesn’t work, find something else. Like I said, I was lucky to get here, lucky to be here all that time, lucky to still be around.

Hagstrom:
How was your second trumpet player, Gerald Huffman, helpful to you when you started out?

Herseth:
Yeah, he was very, very good to me. He was very helpful, and he would make certain little suggestions about–you know, the first time I’m going to play a Mahler Symphony, the first time I’m going to play a Bruckner Symphony, because even then some of those were starting to come into the repertoire, and of course, Beethoven and all that stuff. He was very helpful. He was very nice about it. He only stayed in the orchestra a couple of years after that, but he was very helpful to me I must say. Well, so was Reynold Schilke who was in the section then as third trumpet. Frank Holz was our fourth trumpet, and he was an old-time guy from Germany who came over with a little German band and stayed here, and he was a fiddle player as well, so when they didn’t need fourth trumpet, he played in the fiddle section. (laughs)

Hagstrom:
That was job security…

Herseth:
Yeah, there you go.

Hagstrom:
Did Georges Mager, who was then the principal trumpet of the Boston Symphony and your teacher at the New England Conservatory, give you any advice when you got this job?

Herseth:
Oh yeah. He put it very nicely. He said, “You’ll do very well, but…My main advice is when you have a very heavy week, a lot of hard playing to do, practice not so much and gently. When you have an easy week–Mozart Symphony, piano concerto, some kind of little overture–then practice hard.” So, of course, I thanked him and nodded. I didn’t want to say it, but I was thinking, “What the hell…” In those days I was a young punk and thought, “Any time of the day or night I’ll play anything they put in front of me.” It took me six weeks to find out he was right. (laughs)

“Yeah, you learn from other people, of course, but it’s your own individual expression of musical thought that really counts...”

Hagstrom:
Can you make any other comments about coping with the kind of repertoire and concert schedule that the Chicago Symphony has, having to go from a Bruckner Symphony one week to a delicate piccolo trumpet part the next?

Herseth:
Well, you know, I must be very honest and say that that was never a big concern for me. I practiced the piccolo trumpet all the time. Every week for two or three days I would play half an hour on the piccolo just to stay familiar with it so that when I wanted to do it or needed to do it on something, I could–and as soon as I got the German trumpets, then too, I’d practice this many times. I’d split my practicing everyday, changing from piston valve to rotary valve just so I’d feel at home when I wanted to change–and to learn the difference in the response too, of course, and solo etudes and all of that stuff all of the time, but somehow that was never a major concern of mine. I’d see how much fun I could have and let it all hang out. (laughs)

Hagstrom:
Can you talk about learning from your colleagues in the orchestra when you came? How did you work to fit into the style of the orchestra as it was back then?

Herseth:
Well, yes, of course I tried to adapt to the style of the orchestra. Frank Crisafulli was playing first trombone then, and in my second year Phil Farkas came and joined us (he was here quite a while before he went to Indiana University), and yeah, I learned a lot from listening to them. There were several others who had played for Dvorak, and people like that. There were some very interesting stylistic ideas that you pick up sitting in a group like that because they had their own traditional style of playing–in some ways more traditional than it is now. I tried my best to fit into that, but yet, you know, it’s all chamber music in a certain sense anyway. Everybody’s going to try to fit together. Yeah, I learned a lot just sitting there hearing what people were doing around me. I picked up a lot.

Hagstrom:
I’ve heard you say in the past, “There are no good teachers, just good students.”

Herseth:
Yes, that’s Mager’s remark. I heard him say that several times.

Hagstrom:
How do you feel that applies to the way you developed in your role here as first trumpet?

Herseth:
Well, yes, there’s no question about that. Everybody did some adjusting, even day to day as well as over a period of time stylistically and sound-wise and everything else… and I’m still looking for the perfect combination of mouthpiece and trumpet, and there isn’t any, of course. There might be a perfect one for today, but not tomorrow. It depends on the repertoire you’re working on or the way you feel. (laughs)

Hagstrom:
Arnold Jacobs always used to speak about you by saying that you were his greatest teacher, describing the examples you set musically and personally, yet he never took formal lessons with you. Was it more of a collegial influence?

Herseth:
Yeah, exactly… in many cases, stretched over a length of time that’s just as important as individual private lessons because the end result you want from private lessons is what you are going to do with the group anyway, unless you want to be a soloist, and that’s another story.

“I would hear a clarinet player playing a lick, and I’d think, “My God, if I ever got a lick like that, I wish I could do that.”

Hagstrom:
On the subject of conductors, I’ve heard you remark several times that you thought the best conductors were the ones who met the orchestra half way.

Herseth:
Fifty-fifty. That’s it. The podium gives its best, the band gives its best, individually and collectively. That’s when the best things happen. And there are conductors who it’s seventy-five twenty-five. They are going to change the way the band plays. I’m not going to mention any names, but sometimes the results then are not quite what they should be. We’ve all seen that. There are conductors who may not be the most musically gifted people, but they are personally gifted in their contact with fellow workers. Let’s put it that way.

Hagstrom:
So a conductor who is too rigid about how everything should sound can be a problem?

Herseth:
Yeah, but I would say I prefer that to the kind of improvising that we’re all familiar with where it’s a little unpredictable one day to the next…

Hagstrom:
Have you felt over the years a change in the level of discipline on the part of conductors?

Herseth:
Well, back in the days when I came in the business, so many of the conductors came from the old European school, and there, of course, they were conducting both opera and symphony, and they used to have a saying: Stay in the pit with the opera until you’re 50 and then go on the stage with the symphony. (laughs) But then there are others who put it the other way around. Most of them had both opera and symphony as background and may have been individual soloists also. Well, that’s still the case with a lot of them obviously because there are gifted musicians all over the world, but I found that things were different in those days. I’m not going to say that they were better, but they were different in those days, partly in the sense that the repertoire was a little bit more limited than it is today, and of course, that is one of the problems that orchestras are experiencing now all over the world. How much of this contemporary stuff do you mix with the old standard stuff, and of the old standard stuff, which ones are you going to choose and which ones are you going to ignore? That’s not an easy question.

Adolph Herseth and John Hagstrom

Hagstrom:
Can you describe your “Blue Book” and when you started making these notes? (It is a small 3- ring notebook with a blue cover containing notes he has made to himself over the years.)

Herseth:
Well, I started it in January of 1962 to make notes to myself so that when I wanted to double check on something that I had really enjoyed a few years ago, and couldn’t quite remember what I was talking about or what equipment I used, this would remind me… here is an entry for November 12, 1995, and that’s the year I got that Musical America Award as the performer of the year, and then I wrote “Coming up: Scriabin Poem of Ecstasy–try everything. Forget Musical America…” And the latest note is “Keep making notes. It’s never too late.” (laughs) So, look at all the paper I’ve got to fill yet (fans through remaining blank pages).

“I was lucky to get here, lucky to be here all that time, lucky to still be around...”

Hagstrom:
What other sorts of notes did you make?

Herseth:
Well, I’ll just find an example. January 22nd… It’s got to be 1977 because that last one here is December of 1976. All right…“January 22nd: Test yesterday on the cornet for [Lt.] Kije. Mouthpiece: 1/26/24 (a designation for a Bach #1 rim and cup with a #26 throat hole size and a #24 backbore contour) was the best.” All right. “Also tested mouthpieces on my 239 large bore C trumpet. Found the 1/26/24 and the 1B/25 to be very good. The most sound came from the new one 1C/ 26/24.” Okay here we are… “January 22nd continued- Played through the Hummel on the E trumpet with a 7 DW cornet mouthpiece on the old Bach adapter. Marvelous intonation response, sound, endurance, flexibility all great. Must pursue this under this wider rim.” Ah, yeah, so it was a 7 DW which I had actually dug out so it was a little deeper, and a cornet mouthpiece in a Bach trumpet mouthpiece adapter, you know, to fit it in the trumpet, and that, I think was probably when I was getting ready to play it with Solti on the E trumpet which, okay… Here we are…“April 3rd:”…and this would have been with Barenboim, I think… “A week ago recorded Schumann First Symphony on a Heckel, the Second on a Monke, and the Third on the Yamaha (all are rotary valved C trumpets). Used the new 1B/26/24 on all, and later on Schumann Fourth with another Monke. And then we recorded Russian Easter Overture and Cappricio Espagnol.” I did that on the Bach (piston valve C trumpet). “…played performances of Dvorak’s New World Symphony on the Monke with the 1B/26/24, but switched to the Bach for the recording using old 1B. May be time to switch back.” (laughs) That’s what a lot of this stuff is.

Hagstrom:
Did you set out to be the best?

Herseth:
It was never in my mind–that thought–really. Everybody’s good at something, but nobody’s good at everything, so I got lucky, I guess.

Hagstrom:
Can you describe the influence of listening to the Chicago Symphony’s broadcasts on your musical choices over the years?

Herseth:
Well, they used to tape every concert for broadcast on WFMT, and in those days I think about 300 stations around the world used to carry them. And I would listen to them. In fact, I’ve got tapes of–I can’t tell you how many of them– audio tapes, and I would listen to them. But, of course, a broadcast doesn’t give you the total picture of what it sounds like live in the hall or on stage as a player, but I would hear certain passages, and I would say to myself, “Well, okay, okay, next time I’m going to do that a little different. I’m going to do something else because there’s a better way now. This was okay but next time I hope I get it a little more this way.” And I can’t tell you how many times I heard players in our orchestra, and especially when I hear, well, other American orchestras, but European orchestras (I’m talking decades ago when they still had much more of their traditional style than they do today- Vienna is probably the only one that keeps almost entirely their old traditional style), and I would hear a clarinet player playing a lick, and I’d think “My God, if I ever got a lick like that, I wish I could do that.” Or I’d hear a flute player doing something unbelievable–and this is what really keeps your musical mind open, you know? Hopefully you learn something every time.

Hagstrom:
What are your feelings about the reputation you’ve developed and the respect you’ve earned over many years as the standard of orchestral greatness in trumpet playing?

Herseth:
Well, I can’t totally agree with that. I’m sorry. (laughs) I mean orchestral playing is collective. I never wanted to be designated in that position. Yeah, like anybody else, you prepare yourself as much as you can. You want to give it your best all the time and enjoy what you’re doing, even when it’s a tough day..

Adolph Herseth with the rest of the CSO Trumpet section: Tage Larsen, Mark Ridenour, John Hagstrom, and Craig Morris. (2003)

John Hagstrom has been a
member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra trumpet section since 1996 when he won the position of 4th trumpet. A year later he auditioned for and won the 2nd trumpet position, continuing the tradition of brass section teamwork for which the Chicago Symphony is famous. Since joining the CSO he has been a faculty member at DePaul University.

Hagstrom:
So many trumpet players are impressed by the things you’ve done and they try to emulate you and develop in a way that is similar in style and sound. What are your thoughts about this?

Herseth:
Nobody should try to imitate somebody else. Yeah, of course I learned a lot hearing Mager playing all the time in the Boston Symphony. I heard some nice things from hearing Roger Voisin, who was assistant then, and also hearing Bill Vacchiano with the New York Philharmonic every Sunday. Yeah, you learn from other people, of course, but it’s your own individual expression of musical thought that really counts, and of course, in a collective sense when it’s with a band, but when you are playing the lead part or a solo or important parts like that, if you try to sound like somebody else, you’re steering the wrong way. I hope I can pass on to others some of the wonderful concepts and ideas I have received from other people over the years. We’re all music lovers.