Having started at the bottom, Robert Page loves the view now.

	Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette Robert Page Click photo for larger image.

Seated in the living room of his high-rise apartment, the choral conductor can view most of Oakland's landmarks, from St. Paul Cathedral to the Cathedral of Learning, from the University of Pittsburgh's Music School to its Petersen Events Center. After years of climbing the ladder in the music industry, he, too, is at the top of his field.

"Bob is one of the great choral leaders internationally right now," says Ronald Schiller, board chairman of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh.

Tonight will be Page's final concert as full-time music director of this nearly 100-year-old ensemble that performs with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra as well as holds its own concerts. He'll remain a music professor and director of choral studies at Carnegie Mellon University and still have a presence with the group, but after 26 years at the helm, Page is retiring.

A lifetime of building

Robert Page may hold the title of choral conductor, but choral rehabilitator may be more accurate. As he reflects on the work he did to raise the Mendelssohn Choir to prominence, his legacy is on his mind.

"I took one of my choirs to a festival, and it was rated high," says Page, not of the Mendelsohn Choir, but of a high school in Odessa, Texas, in 1948. That was his first position, but he quickly climbed the ladder, establishing a program at Eastern New Mexico University.

He later would improve choral programs at Temple University and CMU, as well as the choirs of the Philadelphia and Cleveland orchestras, before taking over a "really bad" Mendelssohn Choir, as he calls it, here in 1979.

"What a struggle it was to get it off its feet," Page says. But he prevailed, increasing its budget and persuading the likes of PSO director Andre Previn to give the choir a second chance, although Previn had sworn not to after an error-ridden performance.

"That was a turning point of the Mendelssohn," Page says.

"Bob has, in the last 26 years, established the Mendelssohn choir as one of the top symphonic choirs in the country," Schiller says.

Along the way

Page created the Robert Page Singers in Cleveland, co-founded what would eventually become Chorus America and collaborated on the creation of the music theater program at CMU. But first he had to build up his own confidence as a musician and leader.

"I was so naive, I just grabbed every opportunity," he says.

It seems surprising that, despite a career that includes Grammy Awards, world-premiere performances and elbow-rubbing with the crme de la crme of classical music, Page was often quite insecure about his abilities and knowledge.

"I have had so many years of self-hate, I can't tell you," he says.

Page was born in tiny Abilene, Texas, in April 27, 1927, the eighth of 10 children. His mother insisted that her children take piano lessons, but it was the shape-note and a cappella singing at the family church that hooked him. In high school, he joined the Glee Club and other choirs, but he still resisted music as a career. Page instead focused on becoming a journalist.

Joining the U.S. Navy in 1945 as a yeoman and chaplain's assistant in San Diego, he was more proud of his words per minute on the typewriter than his ability on a musical keyboard. Soon enough, though, music's lure proved too strong, stemming in part from his professional debut as a tenor in "H.M.S. Pinafore" with the San Diego Light Opera Company.

"I loved singing," Page says .

When he returned to civilian life, he finished at Abilene Christian College (now University), and switched his major to music. But he felt the education did not prepare him well for his career. "I took sight singing under a blind man," Page says, adding that the school also didn't teach him how to read a conductor's score or offer any music education courses.

None of that slowed Page from getting that first job at the high school in Odessa. "I had been doing choral music in the church for all those years, so the whole idea was natural." Plus, the newlywed had the backing of his wife, Glynn, with whom he had two children.

At Eastern New Mexico University, Page found more deficiencies to be overcome, both in its music programs and with his training.

"I started an opera program, though I had never seen one," he says.

Later, he was asked to replace an ailing Hans Lange to conduct the "Messiah," with Page's choir and the Albuquerque Symphony. While Page had sung it numerous times, "I had never even looked at an orchestral score!" he recalls with still lingering exasperation.

Page not only made it through the performance but found it "began to whet the appetite" for conducting more choral pieces with orchestra. He found time to get a master's degree in music at Indiana University and followed that with a grant to study at New York University for the 1954-55 school year.

"That's where I changed arenas," Page says. "I had my kingdom built in Eastern New Mexico; I never had any designs on staying in the East."

But the pull of Philadelphia and Temple University was too great. There, he had 19 years of building that choral program, enjoyed a fruitful association with Philadelphia Orchestra music director Eugene Ormandy and finally came into his own as a conductor.

Choral conductor in an orchestral realm

It was in Philadelphia in 1967 that Page won his first Grammy, for Orff's "Catulli Carmina" with the Philadelphia Orchestra and his Temple Choir, and became fully immersed in the orchestral world. He made friends with Samuel Barber, found a "second father" in Ormandy and gave many important Philadelphia premieres.

By the time he went to Cleveland in 1971 to take over what once was the famed conductor Robert Shaw's choir at the Cleveland Orchestra, Page had a firm idea about how to fix choirs and also the industry as a whole.

"I inherited a chorus that wasn't very good, with only 80 members," he says. Shaw had been gone for several years. After implementing stricter practices and adopting higher standards, the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus responded. They won a Grammy together with the Cleveland Orchestra in 1975, this time for Orff's more famous "Carmina Burana."

Now, however, Page realized that the orchestral world needed better to respect singers to ensure that higher standards would exist everywhere. Money was, as usual, at the base of the issue -- singers weren't paid well, if at all.

"I dedicated the rest of my life to creating opportunities for professional singers," he says. "In that day and age, they worshipped the amateur."

Page's efforts led him to be a charter member of Chorus America in 1977, serving as its president from 1990 to '93. When he was being wooed to take over the Mendelssohn Choir in 1979, he made that a sticking point. What had been a volunteer group now has around 20 professional singers.

"I said I would take the job if I had a core of professional singers and a position with the symphony," and he received the title of Director of Special Projects and Choral Activities at the PSO. The story goes that the Mendelssohn asked Page for advice on who to hire, but choir leaders really wanted Page to take the job himself, which he eventually did.

Page also was known to the Mendelssohn Choir, in part, because of his work at CMU, where he had been on the faculty since 1975. That's where he met the local composer Nancy Galbraith. Page premiered her "Missa Mysteriorum" in 1999 and will unveil her "Requiem" today in his last concert.

"I am a Nancy Galbraith fan," he says. "From the moment I commissioned her last work, I knew I wanted another." Selections from Rachmaninoff's "Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom" also will be on the program.

As the Mendelssohn Choir searches for a successor, and it hopes to have someone named by next January, Page is assisting it in the transition. He will participate in the preparation of concerts in the fall, and he will conduct the Mendelssohn Choir in Handel's "Messiah" in December. And after this concert and for a gala dinner in his honor June 17, Page will be music director emeritus.

Page looks forward to doing more guest conducting around the country, and he will continue to push for the respect singers deserve in the field. But mostly, he'll keep on building wherever he's called to do so, even as he looks back and enjoys the view of his own long career.