- [Erich] Hey, I can't find the baton.

Has anybody seen that baton?

Oh, where did I quit that thing?

(upbeat music) - Erich.

Good, bad, hystErichally funny, annoying was one of the most interesting and unique people I've ever come in contact with.

It was always fun when Erich was around, always fun.

- [Speaker 1] And Erich Kunzel the Pops was Cincinnati.

(upbeat music) (energetic music) (energetic music) (audience applauds) - [Narrator] The story of Erich Kunzel begins as an AmErichan dream.

- They lived in a tenement in the German AmErichan part of New York City and from 1935 when Erich was born till after the war.

He can remember his father leaving the apartment in the morning with his wooden ladder his paint buckets and brushes, walking down the three flights of stairs and getting on the subway with that ladder and going to a job to paint a house.

And his mother, whose name was Elsie, she would always prepare sweets and wonderful food and always put more and more upon you.

And so there was a kind of a dichotomy there.

She was sweet and loving and Kurt was fairly stern and workman-like.

- Well, one day he brought in this old baby grand hunker of a piano.

And my mother and I look, oh my God, the only place you can put the thing is the living room to work on it.

So he worked on it for about three months and dad said, "That piano's yours."

- [Interviewer] When did it dawn on you that this is how you're gonna spend your life?

- I liked it, but I didn't think it would be a career.

In fact, I went to Dartmouth College entered as a chemistry major and then I got in a fight with the chemistry professor.

I thought he was an idiot.

Then I walked over to the music department, 'cause I knew my chemistry career just hit the doldrums.

And I said, here I am.

- [Speaker 2] Like, we all were when we were young, we enjoyed partying perhaps a little too much.

Erich liked his beer.

- [Narrator] Erich graduated from Dartmouth then got his first job conducting at the Santa Fe Opera.

He went back to graduate school at Harvard and Brown.

And after getting a master's degree, he worked as Monteux's assistant at the Pierre Monteux School for conductors.

That's when he met Max Rudolph.

- [Erich] He all of a sudden called up one day and said, "Erich, this is Max Rudolph.

Would you like to join me in Cincinnati?"

And I said, "Of course."

That was the beginning.

And I'm 42 years later, I'm still here.

They haven't kicked me out.

Yeah, well I've found the best thing it put right here in Cincinnati.

- [Narrator] Another passion he found that year was the Austrian beauty Brunhilde Strodel.

They made a home in a place so remote.

It was accessible only by ferry on Swan's Island, Maine.

It was a refuge he called Camelot.

- I was asked to be at his wedding which was in Swan's Island, Maine.

That's when I met Bruny.

And immediately I saw this woman this lady from a little Hamlet in Austria who was quiet, reserved, but sweet as could be.

She grounded Erich.

He was happiest on Swan's Island repairing a shed or repainting the shingles on the roof.

Erich was extremely happy doing those things.

- [Narrator] It was a sham.

Nobody was Erich Kunzel's boss.

- Erich was a very determined young man and that which he wanted to accomplish.

He found a way to accomplish.

And my job was to help him find a way to get it accomplished.

For whatever reason, he decided his future lay in being the best Pops conductor in the world.

- I was president of the Women's Committee in 1977 when he was named Conductor of the Pops.

So then we had a lot of interaction.

Past presidents of the Women's Committee were his girls.

And probably the closest relationship he had with one of those was with Louise Nipper.

He knew the value of people.

His explanation of pops is playing music people want to hear, it's what's popular.

- Pops incorporates many different types of genres including lots of classical music.

You know, the greatest hits by Tchaikovsky, for instance are very much in the pops realm.

And the great thing about Erich is he took what Arthur Fielder started and really created the genre that's there today.

- When he started, he was a young man and he was basically learning on the job.

He admitted many times he was totally green.

His legacy was that he brought the community to the orchestra and vice versa.

For 38 years, he took the orchestra into all of the parks.

Tens of thousands of people would hang from the trees.

Literally listening to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, Rogers and Hammerstein, Beethoven.

- It was always bigger than life.

It was always master of ceremonies.

It was kind of, oh, I don't know.

Jerry Lewis and Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson all thrown together.

And he would just, he'd turn around and go, "Welcome to the Cincinnati Pops."

And you know, for Erich, it was the center of the universe.

And because it was the center of the universe for Erich everybody thought they were in the coolest place on the planet.

- Erich had a way with the audience of talking to them like they were just in his living room.

And he was telling them a little bit about a piece of music.

- He wasn't aloof at all.

He was for the common working person.

- He never made you feel like he was above anyone.

- He embodied this city.

I mean, it's just part of it.

Erich Kunzel and the Pops was Cincinnati.

- People became introduced to the Cincinnati sound.

He liked to describe it as lush, a very bold, mellow, brass sound and lots of lush strings.

- But Erich took it to a new level where he wanted to do popular music.

And he also was one of the first that really started to work with the great jazz artists of the day.

He worked with Ella Fitzgerald many times and Dave Brubeck and got these artists wanting to work with full symphonies instead of just their big band.

- The best CD that I have ever done.

And the most successful was done right here in this hall.

Trumpet Spectacular.

(gentle music) - It was completely sold out.

And I was as nervous as I'd ever been.

- To find myself in the presence of man like Erich Kunzel was quite a thrill.

(audience applauds) (gentle upbeat music) - So for me, this dream was sort of this farfetched thing.

I never told Erich that I had this interest in conducting, but I think he sensed it because I think that's part of what led him to get me going in that direction.

- Erich was a big (indistinct) and all the way down the hall in music hall, if he wanted to, you know the door would open and you would just hear this "Walk hard, get down here."

You know, and you'd all come running and wait for the next assignment.

Erich was famous for giving unsolicited advice.

It's impossible to be around Erich, have him care at all about you and not get lots of advice sometimes perhaps more than you needed or wanted at at the time.

- And I remember I walked into his office and the first time I get to meet him, he's sitting behind his desk and like he typically does with people, says, so kid you any good, we'd set up a music stand, put on the recordings, and he would just get six inches in front of my face and watch me do this and just critique everything, you had to know every single part.

He was a taskmaster and he demanded absolute perfection all the time.

- Conducting is not about beating some silly beat, orchestras don't need a metronome.

Conducting in the end is about making a positive difference on the podium to the sound that they make, having a feel of style and groove and line.

I think one of the great things that I learned from him and it's something he would say a lot was that music is music.

- Whether you're doing pops or classical, it doesn't matter whether you're playing The Beatles, or whether you're playing Gershwin.

Everything should be done with the same amount of integrity.

- When he would get in front of an ensemble, from the very first note that was played, you could hear that there was a real relationship there.

- They respected his incredible musicianship, his brilliant ideas that he would bring to the stage of Music Hall and at River Bend, he had crazy ideas.

And a lot of times people said, "That'll never work, that'll never work."

And he said, "You just watch me."

And he made it happen.

It was always fun when Erich was around.

Always fun.

- [Erich] When you are out in front of an audience, you don't give a hundred percent, you give a thousand percent, you're an entertainer.

And without an audience, we wouldn't exist.

So you well do the very very best you can at every concert, every moment.

(audience applauds) - It's not something one would wanna change or one could complain about.

Too much energy, too much productivity, too good.

No.

Erich was an incredibly intelligent man.

His intellect was off the charts, his ears were off the charts.

I mean a wrong note and an arrangement.

He knew it right now.

The man was brilliant.

You know, he wasn't always sweet and lovely.

He was driven.

- We always knew to expect the unexpected to be ready for really whatever.

One concert, I remember we did sort of a smokey in the bandit theme and he decided he would use an air horn from a semi.

And if you think the 1812 is loud, you do not know what an air horn on a semi-truck sounds like in Music Hall.

We did it, I think one time and then it went away.

One of my favorite memories was being one of the three Andrews sisters for a Halloween concert where we got to dress in costume.

And (indistinct) Kunzel had said, there's gonna be a prize for the best costume, and that's a steak dinner on me.

Well, the three of us, all men in the violin section did take the first prize.

And sure enough he took us all out for dinner and our wives as well.

So.

- I was here to do a pop show and he said we have them coming from the zoo with an elephant.

Oh, by the way, he said, I want you to ride out on the elephant.

Comes the moment and there's this elephant.

The trainer gives me a leg up and I'm sitting on the back of the elephant.

I ride out on the stage to great applause.

And when we came off stage, I'm still sitting on the elephant and the elephant trainer goes, "Boy."

I said, "What was that for?"

He said, "Well, nobody's ever read her before."

And I thought, Erich.

- Erich, even though he was a solid 25 years older than I was and when I first started working for with him I was a relatively young, 30 year old, had an amount of energy that none of us could quite comprehend.

Part of being Erich's assistant was going out to the restaurant that Erich wanted to go to, have a huge late night meal and a couple of beers.

And so we'd finish and you know, tottle home at, you know, 1, 1:30 in the morning and he would call a meeting to discuss for future projects with the orchestra at 7:30 or 8 o'clock the next morning.

And so all of us would've been out with him the previous night.

He somehow was storming around the room, yelling ideas.

Everybody is expected to respond and have brilliant things to say back.

And the rest of us are holding our heads in our hands at this point.

So, that was one of the biggest obstacles.

It was merely being able to keep up with him.

(gentle upbeat music) - Erich didn't waste time.

He lived his life as though there wasn't enough time.

He was always running to beat time.

He accounted for every minute that he was going to be here, how much time was in rehearsal, how much time in coaching, who he had to meet with, how long he was gonna meet with them, when he might slip in a meal.

There was not a moment to be wasted.

If it hadn't been for the letterhead on the desks, he probably wouldn't have known what city he was in because he was just always on the move.

- It didn't matter how many flights he had to take in a single day, it didn't matter how many hours of sleep he had or didn't need to have.

If he had the chance to conduct, he would do it.

And I think for anyone who's really hungry and really passionate about music making, they're gonna have that same trade.

And you see that with a number of conductors where they'll be flying from city to city.

You know, if there's not time to go to bed, don't go to bed, go conduct because you know you can always sleep the next day.

Right?

- He made about a hundred recordings with the Pops Orchestra.

We sold about almost 10 million.

Had a lot to do with our continuing international touring.

Certainly had a lot to do with the continuing recording just the presence of Cincinnati throughout the country.

The word Cincinnati on the front of Symphony Orchestra or Pops was great for us.

- [Narrator] Kunzel also had regular gigs away in Naples, Florida, Revinia Festival and Boston.

He took the Pops on tour to enthusiastic audiences in the US and as far away as Asia.

- When we were invited to play in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, this was an invitation Erich would make certain we wouldn't turn down.

Yeah, it was very important to Erich.

It was one of the highlights in his career.

- [Narrator] Perhaps Erich had some of his proudest moments while conducting the national concerts in Washington, DC.

Something he did every 4th of July and Memorial Day for 18 years.

- How he cherished freedom, freedom of expression, freedom to speak.

He loved, loved, loved this country.

- [Speaker 2] And I just loved the idea that Erich had arrived by his boat.

And so it was just funny to think of popping over on your boat and conducting right in front of the Capitol, the United States.

♪ Can you see ♪ - [Erich] The greatest thrill yet in my life is turning around from conducting the National Symphony Orchestra.

And you'd conduct this national anthem with half a million people in front of you between the stage and the Capitol building.

And you see the AmErichan flag there and to conduct (indistinct) can you see it's, I mean, your heart is up in your throat.

(gentle music) - [Speaker 3] There was a fire in the auditorium at SCPA so he wrote a letter to the school and addressed it to the students and said he wanted to build them a new school.

And that's how it started.

- He sort of, you know, drew out for me a sketch about, okay here's music hall and here's where the auditorium's gonna be and here's where we can have dormitory housing for kids.

And so he had this entire plan for, you know, a five block area around Music Hall.

And back then, you know, he was very optimistic about his vision.

There were a lot of people that supported him.

And so he thought it would take maybe no about five or six years to come to fruition.

And he had no idea it would take 16 years to eventually come into being.

(roaring) - It's wonderful voice that we all knew would call Popsie, hey, Popsie and out would come pop from behind the scenes.

And Erich was so thrilled.

- [Erich] Come on, come on girl.

Popsie, Popsie.

Okay here.

- Erich was one of those incredible people literally brushed with genius.

He did so much for our zoo.

He had us do a complete show for him based around the animals.

And this cat, in fact was part of the show.

A cheetah has a, their energy is so powerful and yet so contained.

They have this wonderful walk, but at an instant notice, they can go 60 miles an hour in three points, four seconds.

Could Erich Kunzel do that?

Oh man, absolutely.

- One thing that I feel very fortunate for is having had the chance to come back to Cincinnati and work with Erich as his assistant.

His final year.

(gentle music) - They were leaving Naples, Florida to drive to Swans Island, Maine.

And on the way they got to the Florida, Georgia border.

And he apparently had been out for dinner the night before, but had terrible stomach pains and thought it was all because of having eaten out that night.

But he called his doctor in Cincinnati and described what he was going through and his doctor told him to get on a plane and fly to Cincinnati.

- I happened to be in the hospital room with him on April 29th.

And that's when the doctor came in and gave Erich the grave news that he thought was going to be coming.

The doctor just came right out and said, "Erich, you have cancer and it's not good."

He said, "It's in the pancreas, it's in the liver, it's in the colon."

As far as wanting to fight it and things like that.

He'd always say, well, we have the technology, we've got the technology.

No matter whether we're gonna put, you know, fireworks in Music hall or fight cancer, we've got the technology.

- He said, "It didn't fit into the schedule."

He said to me, "It's a nuisance.

That stuff is a nuisance."

The next time he called me was July 27th.

That was our last conversation.

He was getting ready for his final concert, it would be his final concert at River Bend Music Center.

And he was planning a Rogers and Hammerstein performance.

In between, unbelievably in between his July 4th concert and Riverbend, he had flown to Beijing.

And that's when I tried to get him to reminisce a little bit.

And finally he said to me, "Honey, I ain't dead yet."

And of course we both laughed.

- I would say it was in July, late July, early August the chemo wasn't working anymore.

It wasn't doing anything except making him sick and feel awful.

And that was what was so difficult being a student and a protege of his was seeing this grand man, this maestro that could really pull off anything, not be able to battle this.

When he came to the realization he couldn't fight it he said, let's stop the chemo.

There's no, I'm not gonna do these surgeries.

It's about my quality of life right now and getting my things in order with my wife and my family.

That was really rough to prepare for that.

He was very good about it.

He had it all set in his mind.

He was okay and he was taking care of business.

- That day that he was planning to jump on a plane and fly to Washington and then he would be coming to Cincinnati.

As it turned out, I think he had to cancel everything.

He became very ill.

He barely made it to Cincinnati.

He barely made it to the stage.

He had to will himself to be there.

- The day of the closing of the 25th anniversary season of River Bend.

And Erich really, really wanted to do this.

There were no words, he just looked at me and had this look and we both had a good cry for about 5 or 10 minutes and he just hold, held my hand the whole time.

And we knew then that this was gonna be the last one.

He stood up and we walked him out.

It was an amazing moment to walk on the stage.

And of course the audience which was packed that night, was immediately on their feet just for him walking on the stage.

And it was definitely the music when he started to conduct the music you could see the life come into his eyes.

- I remember a lot of times when he was conducting the buttons on his red jacket would click and that started happening.

And it was just Erich console, right back again.

- By the end of the concert, he was actually standing up with the soloist and I was conducting the encore and he was singing along sing a song.

♪ Sing a song ♪ ♪ Sing a song ♪ Erich made a really nice speech in the concert.

(audience applauds) - And we realize that a conductor's baton is only so much it's the guts of the orchestra that make the beautiful sound and so featuring fantastic musicians.

They don't even know that what I'm gonna do here.

So they're probably wondering, Erich flipped his flopper, they are now going to play the 1957 beautiful story of Cinderella, the walls and they're going to do it without a conductor.

(gentle upbeat music) - And he started them and the orchestra played so beautifully and Erich just sat down next to me and we just listened.

And both of us were grinning ear to ear.

It was an amazing moment.

He was physically spent good emotionally.

He was on a real high, he was on an incredible high after that concert.

And it was a great way to have a final concert because I know he was extremely happy.

It was bittersweet because he knew the end was near and he faced it so bravely and with such dignity.

- He thought of himself as an unstoppable force of nature.

And I think that's really one of the things that was most poignant in his last months, is that he finally had to come to grips with something that could stop him and did eventually stop him.

- It was tough while he was in Swan's Island after he went there.

And I think he made the decision that he didn't wanna go on life support.

- I saw him less than two weeks before he died.

I brought my wife up to Swan's Island to his retreat up there at the beginning of his illness.

I'm sure he was convinced he could just beat it down by pure energy, which he'd done to every other obstacle.

And by this point he'd figured out that that wasn't gonna happen.

And he was very matter of fact talking about his own death.

He kind of stopped for a moment and he said, "You know, I really wish I'd spent more time here."

I think Erich always thought he was immortal.

I think he thought there would be time at the end to enjoy all those things that he created because of that hard work.

So I suppose if I take a larger lesson outta my time with Erich, it would be to take advantage of all of your life, live all of your life, but all to define before it's too late what parts of that life are most important to you.

And to make sure that you embrace them as well.

- I don't think he was ready to finish his life or his work and he had big plans and the bigger, the better.

- Two days before he died, he sent me an email and outlined what the continued vision would be and he told me I had strong shoulders.

And to continue the vision.

- Death came suddenly to Erich.

He passed away the first week of September of 09.

We all expected even that last day that he and Bruny would be taking the ferry home.

His last words to me were, "I have to go."

- And he donated his body to science.

He said, if there's any peace in part that's still worth salvaging and having that's good for anybody else, let him have at it.

(gentle upbeat music) - I think everyone had trouble saying no to the maestro.

So consequently, we have this school today.

- The Pops and Erich and the symphony.

All these things are part and parcel of the city.

But more importantly in this, what's so exciting tonight is about education.

- It's all about the kids.

That's what we tried to do.

- To be able to come here to develop their art form anywhere from kindergarten up through high school.

It's absolutely amazing.

- And I think this is the greatest thing this is just fantastic.

Cincinnati is on the map, aren't we?

We're on the map.

(violin plays) - You try to learn everything you can from those go who go before you.

You try to stand on their shoulders and eventually you find yourself in this strange position of responsibility where people look to you in the same sort of way.

- There are shoes that will be impossible to fill.

There will never be another Erich Kunzel.

- I feel him with me constantly.

Every time before I go on stage we have a good little conversation with each other.

So it's pretty nice that I remember the first words he ever said to me were so kid you any good.

And the last thing he ever said to me two days before he passed away was always make me proud of you.

(gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music)