November/December 1998
By Si Wakesberg
Si Wakesberg is New York bureau chief for Scrap.
I’d arranged to have lunch in Paris with Pierre Gerin-Jean, president of Societe Miniere et Metallurgique de Penarroya S.A., one of France’s most powerful metal companies. It was 1985, and I remembered the excellent talk Gerin-Jean had given at the 1984 convention of my employer, the National Association of Recycling Industries (NARI). Even though I’d been instrumental in securing him as a speaker on the outlook for the world lead market, I had little opportunity to socialize with him during the convention crush.
Our visit in Paris would be different, I thought. There, we’d be able to discuss his views of the complex lead situation over lunch in a more intimate setting.
Lunch in Paris, of course, isn’t the slapdash affair it has become in New York. In Paris, you can linger as long as you like, delay the order, and sip your wine slowly. I looked forward to an interesting afternoon.
At the beginning of our conversation, I asked Gerin-Jean, “Do you occasionally come to the United States?”
I was surprised when he replied, “As a matter of fact, I was just in New York two weeks ago, and I went to a concert by the New York Philharmonic.”
As a certified classical music enthusiast, my ears perked up. “You went to hear a concert? In New York?” Gerin-Jean sipped his wine reflectively. “Yes. It was to hear Mahler’s 5th Symphony.” “Ah, Mahler!” I said appreciatively. “Then you must like Mahler very much to hear his music played while you are away from home?”
“Indeed I do,” replied Gerin-Jean with enthusiasm. “And I have traveled to Vienna to hear Leonard Bernstein conduct Mahler as well.”
“It so happens,” I answered, “that I’m a member of the Gustav Mahler Society of New York and am somewhat familiar with his music.”
We were both amazed at this musical coincidence and lifted our glasses to toast the memory of the great musical master, composer of 10 symphonies and a number of magical song cycles. Did we ever get to talk about the lead market? Sadly, no. Time passed quickly and there was much Mahler—and other composers—to discuss.
This incident was hardly the only time in my career that music intersected with the metal markets. Like the time I was in Tokyo and got in touch with Alfred Younghem of Overseas Metal Co. Ltd., a genial and interesting metal trader who had lived in Japan for nearly a quarter of a century. At the American Club where we had dinner, the subject somehow turned to music.
“Do you like chamber music?” Younghem asked after we’d skimmed the world aluminum, copper, lead, and zinc markets. After I answered with a firm “yes,” he promptly invited me to his home to hear his astonishing record collection.
It was astonishing for two reasons. First, it was enormous, with records lining the shelves all around one room, making it probably one of the best collections of its kind anywhere. And second, his collection consisted of 78 rpm records. At that time, in the mid-1980s, 78s had long since been supplanted by LPs and LPs, in turn, were succumbing to CDs. But Younghem eschewed these latter-day technologies, clinging instead to what he considered the “classical” in chamber music.
When he put on one of Beethoven’s quartets (Opus 59, No. 2, if memory serves me), there was the old reliable Budapest String Quartet, one of the musical glories of the 20th century, at its prime best. There was also the scratching of the needle on the record, which Younghem patently ignored. He must have played those records over and over so many times. We spent that evening not talking much about metals but listening to the classical masters in the home of a scrap merchant who was living in far-off Japan.
In my concertgoing years, I also bumped into many scrap executives, classical music aficionados all. At Carnegie Hall, for instance, I often ran into Bob Blum of Lion Metals Inc., a man who knows his Beethoven and Schubert as well as his copper, lead, and zinc. Or Gregor Leinsdorf, then with Minorco (USA) Marketing Corp., whose father Eric Leinsdorf was the famous conductor of the New York Philharmonic.
And that reminds me of a connection: Ted Gruen of International Minerals and Metals Corp., who served as a president of NARI, was a passionate music lover as well as an outstanding copper executive. I was privileged to visit him at his home where he proudly showed me his collection of classical records.
When I drove up to Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, I would often meet Simon Strauss, executive vice president of Asarco Inc., who had a season seat at that venue.
Memory also brings into focus the many times I attended concerts with Kurt Leburg of Schiavone-Bonomo Corp., who was not only a neighbor but a friend and whose grasp of nonferrous markets I always held in high esteem. But he also had a firm grasp on classical music and attended the Juilliard series regularly.
Perhaps one of the strangest stories concerning music occurred early in my career. When I was an editor of Waste Trade Journal, I received a call from a young lady who lived in my neighborhood. Her younger brother was being discharged from the Army and was looking for an editorial job. Could I help him? she asked. At that time, I didn’t have the power to hire, but I could recommend potential employees to the editor-in-chief. So I asked the young lady to have her brother visit me at home.
In came an articulate young man whose entire experience in journalism had been serving as sports editor on the City College newspaper. We began to talk about jobs, journalism, editors, and somehow got diverted when it turned out that he had extensive knowledge about one Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Mozart, in fact, became the subject of an intense evening discussion, and I listened in wonder when he began to discuss some of the unfamiliar Mozart operas and particularly the vocal arias and the artists who had recorded them. His knowledge of the subject was surprisingly vast, especially considering that this was long before Mozart was popularized in plays, movies, and Mostly Mozart festivals.
My view was that anyone who loved music and who was so knowledgeable about Mozart in particular would definitely be a good editor, or for that matter, a good anything. So on that basis, I recommended him and he was hired.
Si Lippa became not just a good editor, but an outstanding one. He left us shortly to join Fairchild Publications and eventually became managing editor of Women’s Wear Daily, a prestigious position. He became an arbiter of fashion, a respected market analyst in the garment industry, a writer well-known throughout the world of fashion. And all because he liked Mozart!
The old literary masters understood the power of music. Joseph Addison said, “A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture is like one who has another sense.” William Shakespeare commented, “The man who has no music in himself/ Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds/ Is fit for treasons, strategems, and spoils/The motions of his spirit are dull as night.” Perhaps Herbert Spencer said it best: “Music must rank as the highest of the arts—as the one, which more than any other, ministers to human welfare.”
Or, as a metal merchant once said to me: “After the hurly-burly of Comex, the day’s mad rush to buy and sell copper, it’s like moving into another world when I sit down, turn on my record player, and listen to Beethoven.” •
I’d arranged to have lunch in Paris with Pierre Gerin-Jean, president of Societe Miniere et Metallurgique de Penarroya S.A., one of France’s most powerful metal companies. It was 1985, and I remembered the excellent talk Gerin-Jean had given at the 1984 convention of my employer, the National Association of Recycling Industries (NARI). Even though I’d been instrumental in securing him as a speaker on the outlook for the world lead market, I had little opportunity to socialize with him during the convention crush.