The death of Denver conductor Antonia Brico last month marked the end of an era that for her never was.
Eighty-seven-year-old Brico - for decades the only woman conductor in the world to be taken seriously - suffered spiritual death when she was forced from the podium several years ago by the very orchestra that had borne her name for two decades.Her physical demise merely completes the neglect of a talent appreciated in its best years by almost no one.
Following some spectacular concerts in New York in the '30s, Brico was forgotten by the nation long ago. Locally, she will be remembered - if at all - as a conversation piece of no particular musical significance.
That's a view that calls for correction, and let me start by stating the qualifications that permit me to say that.
I arrived in Colorado in 1956, the year that Brico was called on to conduct the newly founded Boulder Philharmonic, an ensemble that she guided through a painful infancy.
When I read in the press at that time that Brico had conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in her student years, I scoffed. I had lived in Berlin and knew that in an earlier day even top Europeans orchestras sold themselves to anyone who could cover the podium with the correct currency.
Even an appeal for community support couldn't get me to buy a ticket to hear her conduct in Boulder.
Some years later, however, I met a musician who had escaped from Berlin when Hitler took over. When he heard that I was from the Denver region, he asked whether I knew Brico.
"She lived at our home in the '20s," he said. "I heard her conduct the Berlin Philharmonic. If she weren't a woman she'd be among the top conductors in the world today."
I knew this man's musical judgment could be trusted and I was pres-ent at Brico's first fall concert that season. It was 1962, and the ensemble was still known as the Business and Professional Men's Symphony. (Despite the name, it was largely housewives who occupied its chairs.)
Bruckner's Seventh Symphony was the major work on the program, a score hardly to be heard in Colorado in those days.
In Europe, I had heard the old guard - Furtwaengler, Klemperer, Kleiber and Walter - and it was immediately clear to me that Brico was of their blood.
In Berlin, Brico had studied with Karl Muck, a master whose American career was ended by the anti-German sentiment that embellished World War I. Brico was one of three students accepted by him.
Even with the inadequate resources at her disposal in Denver, it was obvious to me that Muck knew what he was doing when he took Brico on. He would, I think, have been honored and pleased by the Bruckner that I heard.
I was present at every concert that Brico gave for the next decade and rarely did I come home without goose bumps. There were disasters, to be sure, usually caused by undertalented soloists. Symphonic fare, however, was fantastic.
And the bigger the work, the better Brico did.
She conducted Mahler's Second with a sense of profundity that made me wish I were a millionaire. For if I had had the funds, I would have bought her an orchestra and recorded all the Mahler and Bruckner in her repertory.
Brico missed being a child of the 19th century by only two years, and in spirit she was at home in that age of Romantic monumentality.
I grew increasingly curious about the woman. I wanted to know what made her tick and what fueled such energy in the face of so much defeat. (The story was that she had been brought to Denver with the assurance that she would be named conductor of its symphony; her talents, however, were left to lie fallow while that position was held by a nonentity named Saul Caston.)
I learned what I could about Brico, but it wasn't much. Scorned by the insiders of Denver's elitist musical circle, she made a living largely as a piano teacher - she had 40 regular students then - and as a vocal coach. Now and then some perceptive kid took the risk of studying conducting with her.
Brico and I talked for the first time after a master class for pianists in her Denver home. The rooms were a museum of memorabilia of the musicians she admired. Twin marble busts of Sibelius and Brico faced each other on the mantle.
At the second piano Brico became the orchestra for a student who played the Schumann Concerto.
The result was a magic that recalled the invisible music heard by a person playing on a mock-up keyboard in Selma Lagerlof's "Gosta Berling."
I stayed behind, and we chatted.
"Why haven't you gotten in touch before?" she asked in German, a language that she loved to speak.
I tried to make up for lost time; I attended rehearsal, had an occasional dinner with her - and I began to see that Brico's failure was not solely a matter of gender.
I sang in the choir for several of her concerts: Beethoven's Ninth and the Missa Solemnis remain unforgettable - along with the fun of opera evenings that included the triumphal march from "Aida" and bits of Wagner.
But charismatic as she could be, Brico couldn't hold on to her supporters; she drove people from her. Why, I really don't know, but I too drifted away. I used a year in Canada to establish distance.
Brico was a prima donna, and at times her act was hard to take.
She was unable to use rehearsal time wisely and took long breaks to tell of the summers in Bayreuth, where Muck took her as an assistant.
The stories were great. She had known Wagner's widow Cosima and his son Siegfried, then in charge of the Bayreuth Festival.
Siegfried once hoisted her into the air to test equipment designed to buoy up the Rhinemaidens in the "Ring."
Brico sang as she soared above the Festspielhaus stage.
"You don't have to sing," shouted a disturbed Siegfried.
"But I want to be able to say that I've sung in Bayreuth!" insisted Brico.
The stories paled, however, upon second and third hearing.
She lived in a past that had not led to a future of fulfillment.
"I have two great weaknesses," Brico told me in a rare quiet hour. "I don't answer letters and I don't return phone calls."
The implication was that she had passed up major opportunities.
There was a late flicker of promise in 1974 when Denver-born Judy Collins - once a Brico pupil - made the film "Antonia: Portrait of the Woman." Conducting engagements included an appearance at New York's "Mostly Mozart" Festival, which even resulted in a record.
The disc, however, catalogued more of Brico's weaknesses than her strengths; tempi are uneven, and the heavy Germanic hand so magnificent in Mahler and Bruckner is unflattering to Mozart.
She returned to Denver - bound for oblivion.
And now she is gone, missed only by the few who heard the great music behind the ego and the showmanship that for most people was Antonia Brico.