The maestro's moment
Donald Portnoy's 31-year Carolina career has been defined by change
Posted on: May 1, 2017; Updated on: May 1, 2017
By Melinda Waldrop, melwal@mailbox.sc.edu, 803-777-3685
When Donald Portnoy arrived in Columbia, he brought change with him. For three decades, that change defined the career of the conductor and music director of the USC Symphony Orchestra, and it will shape his new path.
“When you’re at a university, students always look the same age, so you figure you must be the same ago, too, until you look at your friends and go, ‘Oh my God, you’ve gotten so old,’ ” says Portnoy, who conducted his last USC Symphony concert April 18. “Then you look in the mirror, and you go, ‘Oh my God, me too.’ ”
When Portnoy accepted the University of South Carolina’s Ira McKissick Endowed Chair for the Fine Arts in 1986, 13 students from West Virginia University, where he had conducted the orchestra for two decades, came to Columbia with him. “Immediately, the orchestra here improved,” he says.
But he was unimpressed with the space where his new orchestra was slated to perform and asked where the city orchestra played. The answer: the Township Auditorium.
“I said, ‘OK, then we’ll perform at Township,’ ” says Portnoy, who was then informed there wasn’t a budget for that. “I said, ‘Then we’ll charge.’ I was told, ‘We’ve never charged.’ I said, ‘OK, then we’ll charge.’ And that’s what we started doing, and we got full houses.”
Audiences have kept coming for 31 years.
“What I love to do is build programs,” he says. “I’ve run the USC Symphony like a professional orchestra, and I’ve been very proud of that.”
Portnoy’s finale exemplified that approach. It featured Israeli violin virtuoso Vadim Gluzman, who played Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major on his 1690 Stradivarius and personified Portnoy’s commitment to bringing world-renowned artists to town.
“Giving students and the audience the opportunity to hear and work with great international soloists — that has been his greatest achievement,” says Tayloe Harding, dean of the School of Music. “Most university orchestras are designed primarily for the students. Our orchestra is designed to benefit the students and the audience, the people that he’s attracted to it, like a professional orchestra. It’s about the whole Columbia and Midlands community.”
Portnoy began his teaching career in 1959 at West Virginia and has served as conductor of the United States Chamber Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Civic Symphony, the Pittsburgh Opera Theater and the Augusta Symphony. He also has conducted extensively in Europe, Asia and South America. In 2004, he received Columbia University’s distinguished Ditson Conductor’s Award, which honors conductors for their commitment to the performance of American music.
He stresses to aspiring conductors that leading an orchestra also includes programming and fund-raising responsibilities.
“I spend more time talking to groups — Kiwanis and Rotary clubs and individuals — having breakfast, having lunch,” he says. “It can seem like, ‘Well, this is a university, so what’s the big deal? If somebody comes to a concert, fine. If they don’t come, it’s OK.’ But when you walk out on stage as a player and you see an empty audience, you don’t feel like playing. When the orchestra walks out and sees the hall full, they go, ‘Wow! They’re here to hear me!’ It’s a totally different experience.”
What I love to do is build programs. I’ve run (the USC Symphony) like a professional orchestra, and I’ve been very proud of that.
Donald Portnoy
In his semi-retirement, Portnoy will continue to conduct the Aiken Symphony Orchestra he helped found in 2015. He’s also discussing recording projects with a European orchestra and plans to return this summer to China, where he served as principal guest conductor for the National Chinese Dance and Opera Orchestra in Beijing and the Harbin Orchestra in Harbin.
He also will continue to teach violin at Carolina and to oversee the university’s prestigious Conductors Institute.
“He’s absolutely dedicated to making sure that great music gets to as many people as it possibly can,” Harding says. “He’s going to continue to seek every opportunity he can to make music for students and for people.”
Portnoy’s own relationship with music began when he took up the violin as a 7-year-old in his native Philadelphia. “Like every other kid, I didn’t want to practice,” he says.
His interest intensified in junior high and took permanent root with scholarships to the Philadelphia Conservatory and Julliard. After earning a master’s of music from Catholic University and a doctorate from Peabody Conservatory, Portnoy served in the U.S. Marine Corps and was a violinist in the USMC Chamber Orchestra.
“I’ve been fortunate,” Portnoy says. “I’ve had a chance to see the world, a chance to work with a lot of different people, and a chance to impart my knowledge to future conductors. It’s nice to know that you may have had some impact on some people. Maybe I led them into the music business, so they can blame me or be thankful.”
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