Page 4 of 5
"The classical music business is globalizing like all other business," says Kathryn Takach, a manager with the Thea Dispeker agency in New York. "The European agencies are stronger, bolder, and obviously the American presenter is encouraging the move. American presenters are more sophisticated, too, which helps."
These trends all trouble Mariedi Anders. She's not much interested in Web culture. She'd rather not dabble in world music. And she is nostalgic for the traditions that kept European agents from representing their artists stateside. Those traditions, she explains, are what gave Anders her business in the first place.
But those old customs and the classical music boom are gone now.
"I had preferred it the other way," she says.
Her preferences aside, there's really no need to feel sorry for Mariedi Anders.
When she moans that the modern world is passing her by, Anders is actually indulging in a bit of backhanded modesty. Her Old World graces, polyculturalism, globe-hopping energy, and mince-no-words stubbornness are particularly suited to the brave new world she's found herself in.
As classical music presenters sort through ever more pitches, electronic and otherwise, they find themselves turning to names they know, and agents whose judgment they can trust. And they know that Anders enjoys a reputation for impeccable taste in musicians.
"There is so much mediocrity in this business. I have no problem with first-class singers, first-class conductors. If they're mediocre, they don't make it, and you hear them blame classical music itself for their failure," she says.
She has earned her reputation as a brilliant aesthete by spotting unknown, talented musicians and doing the hard work of building their names.
"If I take them, nobody knows them. Nobody! Ninety-nine percent of my artists are unknown when I get them. I have to start from scratch. I have to familiarize the music world to their talents. Perhaps I will arrange a tour for two weeks, with eight concerts -- and I goddamn have to come up with eight concerts! If I can get eight, the next 80 are easy," she says. "I'll call maybe 30 directors of university concert series, then send disks, biographies, programs. If out of 30 one is going to take my client, I am thrilled, thrilled, because the first one is always the hardest."
While it is only recently that businesses of all sorts have become more globally oriented, Anders has flitted effortlessly from one culture to the next for most of her life. While her exhausting schedule would seem more suited to someone decades younger, once you see Anders lithely bound from her chair to take a phone call, you realize no one could do her job any better.
"She is one of the most impressive women I have ever met," says Viennese conductor Carlos Kalmar. "Though she's been a very, very long time in the States, we still recognize her as the charming Austrian lady."
"She combines a remarkable combination of knowledge, of sophistication, of feistiness; she's a good agent," says John Gingrich, owner of a New York management agency. "She knows her clients, she knows her buyers, and her taste is very highly regarded. She's also smart. She's clever. She knows when to go for a low fee. If it means taking a low fee to make a tour, she'll do it. She's got a great craftsmanship there. She knows exactly when to knock another thousand off to wrap up a deal."
Or, as one rival West Coast agent put it: "There's tenacity, there's perseverance; she's a tough gal. She's been around a long time, because she's tough."
But her hard side is in some ways a manifestation of the emotional bonds she forms with people close to her -- including musicians on her list. She is an emotional person in the Germanic style, loyal to a fault and impatient with people she believes are not.
"I pick artists that are not so proud," she says. "If they give me trouble, I get rid of them."
Some who have been close to her recount a softer side.
Hella Stroeher, who worked as Anders' maid from 1973 to 1981, recalls her former boss as a kind, generous woman who bought her season tickets to the opera and the symphony, and showered her with compliments about her cooking and her gardening.
Sometimes, after concerts, the musicians would come to Anders' for dinner. If it was a chamber ensemble, they might play in the living room until late at night for Anders, her guests, and Hella.
"She's an artist in her character," says Stroeher, who now works as maitre d' at an Indian restaurant in Mountain View. "Every year she would spend three or four months in Europe. She would write to me: 'I'm in DYsseldorf, tomorrow I will be in Moscow.' She was so nice to me. I think so often about how she would buy me gorgeous presents when she went to Europe. She would always bring back something from Harrods for me. She would never forget my birthday, my anniversary. When she went on trips, I would get a postcard from Vienna, from London -- I don't know how she found the time," says Stroeher. "If I had to do it again, I would have never left her."
And that's the same way some of her artists feel.
"She cares like crazy for us," says Robert Spano, conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic. "I feel very lucky. She's one of the great managers. She's been with me since before I was a professional."
The cachet Anders has earned in Europe with musicians and conductors during the past 35 years has made her as well-prepared as anyone for the new regime of free trade in classical music. A recent coup: Anders got Spano a date to conduct at the legendary La Scala theater in Milan.
Under the old regime, Spano's European manager would have made the La Scala booking. But Anders convinced Spano to let her take over his European management from the Schmidt agency a year ago.
