. . . Winter 2003 A
Maestro with a Mission A native of Buffalo, New York, Handel (who is not descended from the Baroque composer) studied violin as a child and began conducting in high school. As a student in the U-M School of Music, he was encouraged to design a program that combined his interests in violin, conducting and philosophy. At the urging of his violin teacher, Ruggiero Ricci, Handel wrote to Kurt Masur, who was then music director of the legendary Leipzig Gewandhaus, for a job. Masur interviewed Handel in Chicago in 1988 and invited him to serve for a year as an apprentice conductor in Leipzig. Thanks to efforts by Professor Emeritus Gustav Meier, who was Handel's advisor in the graduate conducting program, and to support from the Rackham School, Handel incorporated the apprenticeship into his master's program. It proved to be a pivotal experience. Handel found himself working and studying in an institution that Mendelssohn and Bach had once led, while in the streets East German citizens were leading protests that would culminate in the fall of the Berlin Wall. Masur, one of the most prominent cultural figures lobbying for peace and German reunification, fascinated Handel with his ability to select musical works that somehow gave voice to the audience's longing for reconciliation. "It was under Masur that I began to form a personal idea of the orchestra's potentially unique role in the cultural and sociopolitical life of a community, its potential impact and its unifying power," Handel says. Handel is modest about whether he can make a comparable impact in Bolivia, where the cultural and economic rifts are far deeper that those that separated East and West Germany. "We are not immune from the social problems," he says. "But I think that as an orchestra we've succeeded in reflecting the core values and cultural aspirations of the community we serve.—PC.
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