Sounds & Fury

Sleeping With The Enemy

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 4:42 PM Eastern on 1 May. See below.]

In response to our Displaying Sounds & Fury page (permanent link located in the left-hand sidebar) which, among other items, notes that this blog is best viewed using Internet Explorer, and our similar advisory located on our About & Contact page (permanent link also located in the left-hand sidebar), an earnest reader sends us the link to this page urging us to abjure our "allegiance to the enemy," as he put it, and take part in the Good Fight.

Why is it that activist zealots are almost always left-of-center types, and why is it that they're all so paranoid-loony (not to mention almost always in error)?

It's a rhetorical question, actually. We're convinced the answer is simply that it's the way God intended things to be.

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Update (4:42 PM Eastern on 1 May): Aha! Here's the real story behind the campaign against Internet Explorer, which (surprise!) isn't at all the story as put forward in the paranoid-zealot gibberish to be found on the page linked to above.

Sidebar Changes (Administrative Note)

The ordering of the content of our sidebars has changed, and a new navigation link has been added. Our Culture Blogs and Culture Sites listings now appear on the left sidebar, and we've added to our Site Navigation list a link to our Archives page.

With Friends Like This, Enemies Are A Redundancy

That great friend and supporter of classical music, ardent populist, music journalist, and wannabe author Greg Sandow is at it yet once again:

The classical music world is trying to figure out its relationship to the rest of the world. The rest of the world listens to pop (and jazz, and country, and hiphop, and dance music, and world music, and Latin music, and lots more). We live, as far as they’re all concerned, in a closed little box. We need to show them we’re human, too, and that we live in the same world they do. And that many of us listen to their music, which — because we live in the same world — is our music, too.

A more wrongheaded, even imbecile, statement is difficult to imagine. "We need to show them we’re human, too"? Why, for Christ's sake, do we need to show them anything whatsoever? The very idea is perfectly absurd.

And, "[M]any of us listen to their music, which — because we live in the same world — is our music, too"? Excuse me? Many of us who are devoted to classical music "live in the same world" as the airheads, and consider "their music ... is our music, too"? Well, some of us clearly do, but I suggest to Mr. Sandow that in future he limit himself to speaking for himself and his postmodern-sixties-sensibility fellows alone, and not for the classical music community at large who no more consider the music of the backward-baseball-cap crowd "their music" than they consider ours theirs.

(For a more reasoned and sober argument contra Mr. Sandow's notions, see this post by James Reel of KUAT-FM Blog.)

Worthwhile Reading

George Hunka of the theater blog Superfluities posts, for a change of pace, a thoughtful interview with pianist Marilyn Nonken, "a pianist who has dedicated her career to modern and contemporary chamber music," to quote from the preface to the interview. Ms. Nonken's answers to the questions posed by Mr. Hunka make for interesting if at times tedious reading because of their tendency to over-intellectualization,* but all in all the interview is well worth your time perusing.

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* I confess that as I read through some of Ms. Nonken's answers I found myself muttering snarkily, "You wouldn't have to concern yourself with all that esoteric baggage if you'd confine yourself to performing only real music instead of all that self-indulgent, avant-garde, quasi-music crap." But that's just me. Your mileage may differ.

Beginnings Of A New Trend?

Perhaps this encouraging report is signaling the beginnings of a unique new European trend in opera production: mounting an opera not according to the whims of the current director, but as the opera composer wrote it.

The Frankfurt Opera's new "Parsifal" is remarkable in a German context: a detailed staging that tells the story as it is written.

Christof Nel, often ferociously deconstructive, has delved into Wagner's 1882 work and come up with a treatment that is both profound and literal. The spear is a spear, the grail is a grail and Kundry drops dead when she's meant to.

Much as we would sorely miss gleefully savaging Eurotrash productions and the self-involved, self-indulgent twits responsible for them, we cannot help but wish that the Frankfurt Opera's production above described becomes in underlying concept (you should pardon the term) the new model for all opera production, and for all of Europe's (and America's) opera houses, even though that production is not quite the Real Deal yet (e.g., "[Director Christof] Nel blends ancient with modern, mystery with clarity. These [Grail] knights wear [modern-day] suits beneath their breast plates....").

On a related matter, here are more photos of the Robert Wilson production of Parsifal mounted last year by the Los Angeles Opera to go along with the photos we linked in our 21 February post on the production.

And our thanks for both the heads-up and the above links to attorney and culture blogger George M. Wallace of A Fool In The Forest whose excellent blog we now much too belatedly add to our exclusive Culture Blogs listing on the sidebar. Mr. Wallace attended the above referenced Robert Wilson production of Parsifal as well as the Wilson production of Madama Butterfly for the same company, and had this to say about them:

I had the pleasure of seeing Wilson’s Parsifal here in Los Angeles in December, and his Madama Butterfly in February, and I suspect based on those experiences that his Ring would be very much worth seeing. Both of the productions we had here have a "look" similar to what you see in the [Wilson production] Ring photos, and both productions served their music and text extremely well. Plácido Domingo was not particularly well cast as Parsifal – he’s too obviously too old for the character, and his voice was beset by an oncoming illness – but I thought Matti Salminen’s Gurnemanz more than made up for it. [...] Wilson’s Butterfly is frankly better than Puccini deserves; it is the only production of that opera that I would ever care to see again.

Concerning Mr. Wallace's sharp comments on Puccini and Madama Butterfly, we suspect that had we attended the Wilson production we would have voiced the very same sentiments.

Slipshod, Not Stupid

[Note: This post has been updated (2) as of 9:46 PM Eastern on 26 Apr. See below.]

Music journalist Marc Geelhoed of Marc Geelhoed: Deceptively Simple seems to have gotten himself into a bit of a snit over what he calls my snit, and challenges anyone to, "Call me stupid, I dare you." Writes Mr. Geelhoed in the post so titled:

Maybe I've missed something in A.C. Douglas' ongoing snit about Take a Friend to the Orchestra and the iPod generation(s), but I haven't found anywhere on Drew McManus' blog anything about building the "core audience," as A.C. calls it. The idea of TAFTO was to bring in new people who haven't gone to an orchestral concert before and see if they like it and maybe give them some tools to help. I wrote one of those essays myself.

Well, I wouldn't go so far as to call Mr. Geelhoed stupid. Merely, um, slipshod in his search — or too literal; something for which Mr. Geelhoed seems to have a penchant. Perhaps Mr. Geelhoed would find helpful the following extract from this post titled, "All About TAFTO 2006", which post took me all of thirty seconds to find on Mr. McManus's blog.

Throughout the month of April, Adaptistration will feature more than a dozen critics, bloggers, musicians, classical music enthusiasts, and administrators as they write about how average patrons throughout the country can invite friends who don't regularly participate in live music events to a performance in your area.

[...]

If this business [i.e., TAFTO classical music and the classical music concert] ever hopes to reverse the trend in declining ticket sales and lack of participation throughout their communities, they are going to need the help of the people who already care about classical music.

[...]

The more patrons who participate across the country throughout the month, the more likely the program [i.e., TAFTO] will develop and evolve into something uniquely capable of contributing a constructive influence in the development of tomorrow's classical music culture.

It's quite true that the term "core audience" is nowhere to be found in the above. But if not a core audience for classical music and the classical music concert, just what, exactly, does Mr. Geelhoed imagine is being described in this TAFTO statement of purpose as desirous of being built? A feel-good evening for the inviters, and a new experience for their invitees?

I would suggest to Mr. Geelhoed that in future he focus more on the concept, and less on the terms used to describe it.

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Update (2:35 PM Eastern on 26 Apr): Marc Geelhoed responds. As to my suggestion that Mr. Geelhoed seems to have a penchant for literalness, I didn't "back up [my] claim," as Mr. Geelhoed puts it, as my evidence, as Mr. Geelhoed correctly surmises, is indeed contained in an eMail sent to me by Mr. Geelhoed. Mr. Geelhoed's claim that he intended what he wrote therein merely as a joke, however, would be dispelled instantly the wording of his eMail be read. When I first received it, I looked long and hard for any indication he intended what he wrote as a joke, but, alas, with no success, and with Mr. Geelhoed's permission I'll post publicly his verbatim words so that readers may decide for themselves whether what he wrote was written in jest or not. As to the rest of Mr. Geelhoed's response, I defer absolutely to Mr. Geelhoed's cute kitties against whom one is powerless to argue.

Update 2 (9:46 PM Eastern on 26 Apr): Mr. Geelhoed eMails his permission to reprint his eMail to me referenced above. That eMail was in response to my writing in this post concerning the singing by a boy soprano of the second-act Queen of The Night aria from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte:

Just caught up with this. And jaw-dropping amazing it is, too. Puts to shame 90% of coloraturas who have the balls to even attempt this impossible aria,

to which Mr. Geelhoed responded by eMail (which eMail I here quote verbatim and in toto and without further comment):

I'm sure someone's already emailed you abt. this, but the percentage of coloratura sopranos who have the balls to sing the Queen of the Night aria is actually zero, rather than 90. Just a thought. The little guy's pretty impressive, ain't he?

Neat And Spot-On

Surely only God himself, in his infinite, all-knowing wisdom, knows how I could have missed seeing this first-rate piece by Andrew Clark, chief music critic for The Financial Times, who, with scalpel in hand and at the ready, goes right to the heart of an egregious trend rampant today within the ranks of the classical music concert marketing crowd (and even, I'm deeply chagrined to have to acknowledge, to some extent within the classical music critical fraternity) made up of well-meaning, well-intentioned suits with a seeming terminal inability to distinguish the difference between merely putting butts in seats and what's really required for the long-term good of classical music and the classical music concert.

Speaking to the [classical music concert] audience is on the increase, especially in the UK and US. Concert-goers love it because it breaks the “glass wall” between stage and audience. It makes them feel part of the performance process; concerts are less stuffy.

[...]

It’s not just audiences who enjoy the speaking element. Concert promoters and orchestra managers are falling over themselves to encourage it. They advance the careers of conductors they think are good at it — despite the fact that the best platform-speakers are rarely the best interpreters of the music. The idea is that if the concert experience is more user-friendly, attendances will rise.

[...]

This sort of thinking is insidious. It signifies a fear that classical music may not be sufficiently communicative or “entertaining”. No one will admit to this fear. You don’t have to explain jazz to anybody, but the implication is that you do with classical music — for reasons that are phoney.

[...]

The problem for classical music in the 21st century is that it is competing with the high decibel count, the simplistic beat and the narcotic effect of rock and pop, beside which it seems “boring”. No wonder it is considered a minority interest. Demystifying the concert experience is part of a desperate attempt to give it more street-cred and develop enough support to sustain it.

The trouble with speaking to the audience is that it limits the imaginative scope of the music. Listening to someone discussing a piece of music before you have a chance to hear it pre-programmes your responses. The music has no chance to communicate freely. You are left with a number of objective ideas about what to think and feel, circumscribing the subjective impressions that music seeks to create in the listener through the medium of sound.

Music begins where words end: the whole purpose is to express things that are not possible in words. The traditional concert format — uniform dress, subdued lighting, no speaking — evolved with this in mind: it’s not some silly old-fashioned ritual. It was designed to throw a cloak of impersonality over the concert process, to create a directness of communication between music and listener, to detach you from everyday discourse. That has always been part of the sanctity of a classical concert. When performers start speaking they break the spell; they prick the illusion of a transcendent force.

[...]

But most promoters today would be embarrassed by [and I, ACD, would add, contemptuous of] talk of “sanctity”. The whole drift of cultural provision is away from the idea of a pure aesthetic experience. The consumer is king: heaven forbid that anyone should be required to make an effort. That explains the drive to make concerts more informal, to persuade the audience it’s all jolly.

Yes indeed. All quite right. And a neater, more succinct, more spot-on vivisection of this pernicious trend is difficult to imagine. Mr. Clark, however, was somewhat remiss in not noting the existence of this loathsome little horror. When measured against it, a conductor speaking to the audience from the podium before turning to the orchestra to begin the piece to hand, or a composer explaining his new work to the audience moments before it's heard, seems merely a benign if clumsy indulgence.

RTWT here.

Updated Post (Administrative Note)

Two interesting updates to our post on The iPod People.

Musical Bon Mot Of The Year

We nominate the following, slightly truncated extract as Most Wittily Insightful Musical Bon Mot of The Year:

Beethoven — crafty, original and sometimes downright funny — creates tight formats, but not quite the ones he leads listeners to expect. [His] is the art of interruption and sudden spillover. Mahler [,on the other hand,] belongs to the "and furthermore" school of composition.

—Bernard Holland, from a review for The New York Times.

But How Will Susan McClary Explain All Those Patriarchal Cadences?

The secret is finally out. The great Bach was in reality not Johann Sebastian, but Anna Magdalena:

A study by an academic who has spent more than 30 years looking at Bach's work claims that Anna Magdalena Bach, traditionally believed to be Bach's musical copyist, actually wrote some of his best-loved works, including his Six Cello Suites.

Martin Jarvis, a professor at Charles Darwin University School of Music in Darwin and the conductor of the city's symphony orchestra, said that "a number of books would need to be rewritten" after presenting his findings to a Bach symposium last week.

The findings have been described as "highly important" by Bach scholars and will be published in a doctorate, later this year.

Be prepared to next learn that Anna Magdalena was in reality both black and a lesbian.

RTWT here.

The iPod People — Or, Village Of The Damned 2006

[Note: This post has been updated (2) as of 4:01 PM Eastern on 24 Apr. See below.]

Not to stir this particularly contentious pot again, but this is so spot-on an epitome of the epicenter of what I called the "pernicious new cultural paradigm" of the iPod Generation that I can't resist linking to it. Here's the money quote:

[E]ven though I enjoy performing classical music as a vocalist and chorus member, I can't say that I thoroughly enjoy classical symphony concerts as an audience member. Unless I am very familiar with the work being performed, I experience what feels like long periods of detachment until something in the music really grabs me. Often, this means detachment through an entire movement of a symphony!

If it is like this for me, as a somewhat "educated" classical audience, I find it hard to imagine how it might be experienced by the average potential audience member that we're trying to cultivate. It's one thing to experience classical music as a background experience while other things are going on, such as at home, in the workplace, or in a bookstore. It's another thing entirely to face an orchestra and listen attentively for 90 minutes or more. I can't honestly say that I usually enjoy the classical concert experience as fully as a movie or highly engaging (lots of patter) pops concert. [emphasis mine]

No further comment necessary or called for.

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Update (10:38 AM Eastern on 24 Apr): In response to the above, Brian Sacawa of Sounds Like Now writes in part:

Footnote: I thought a lot about composing an insightful riposte to this example of an attitude that isn't winning classical music any new supporters opinion [i.e., the above post], but decided against it because rather than make people feel small for expressing their opinions, I think it's important to listen to what everyone has to say — even if you don't happen to agree with them.

I would just like to point out to Mr. Sacawa that if he was concerned about making me feel small, he needn't have concerned himself, and it of course wasn't my intention to make anyone feel small, either. It was my intention to set in relief a paradigmatic example of the "pernicious new cultural paradigm," as I called it, that is the iPod Generation to make perfectly clear to all those well-intentioned Pollyannas with their ultimately and inevitably effete warm and fuzzy notions of how to go about building a new core audience for classical music what it is they're actually up against as they seem deaf and blind both to the nature and depth of the problem. It's a delightful gesture, certainly, to take a non-concertgoing friend to a classical music concert to attempt to win a new supporter for classical music. But even if repeated on a large scale it's but a gesture only, and has about as much chance of building a new core audience for classical music as would giving a non-oyster-eater an introduction to raw oysters in the hope of making a raw-oyster-eater out of him, and thereby, if repeated on a large enough scale, build a new consumer base for this subtle and complex gastronomic delicacy.

More often than not, pointing out the truth of anything is a less than pleasant affair, but still a necessary one if the truth wants and needs to be known.

Update 2 (4:01 PM Eastern on 24 Apr): Brian Sacawa responds to our last (scroll down to the updates). Writes Mr. Sacawa in part:

ACD holds that "if you fail to get 'em very young, you mostly don't get 'em at all." [...] My question is, [W]hat does that mean for "most" people who were not exposed to classical music at a young age? Are they simply lost causes, who've been hopelessly corrupted by the ills of society? Should we just round them up and ship them off to an island where they won't pass on their "iPod Generation" genes to any offspring so that we can (finally) begin to cultivate an appropriately cultured society?

I must say that Mr. Sacawa has an astonishingly good idea there, but, alas, an impractical one. I do think, however, that for the most part — Mr. Sacawa's experience of his own late-coming to an appreciation of classical music notwithstanding — we simply have to pretty much write off such people in terms of building a new core audience for classical music. The odds, even in the very best of circumstances, are monstrously against achieving any meaningful measure of success with them. Just how monstrously against may be inferred from the inescapable fact that only a tiny proportion of even those properly exposed to classical music as children develop a real love for it of the sort that lasts a lifetime, which love is the sole common denominator of classical music's core audience.

Life's a bitch.

Screwed-up Links (Administrative Note)

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 11:45 PM Eastern on 22 Apr. See below.]

The links in our Culture Blog and Culture Sites links lists on the sidebar have ceased working as they should, and are now effectively inoperative. Not our fault. Something screwy on TypePad's end. We've alerted TypePad Support, and are awaiting their response solution to the problem.

Patience.

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Update (11:45 PM Eastern on 22 Apr): All links in our Culture Blogs and Culture Sites listings on the sidebar are now in working order — but not as we would like them to work. In its infinite wisdom TypePad has changed its code, and it now refuses to accept the subversive little HTML trick we used to get the links to open in a new window. So now when a link is clicked, it will open in the same window occupied by Sounds & Fury, which means if you want to get back to Sounds & Fury you'll have to hit the BACK button on your browser.

We are not a happy TypePad camper.

Listen Up!

Don't ask any questions. Simply go to this page, and click on each of the three MP3 excerpts from a composition (a string quintet) titled unpromisingly, Current Events. It will do wonders for your heart, mind, and soul, and convince those of you who regard the 21st century as a bleak one for worthy new classical music (among whose number I often count myself) that perhaps things are not nearly so bleak as they might at times seem.

(Thanks to Iron Tongue of Midnight for the link to composer Alex Shapiro's blog, Notes From The Kelp, which blog led us to Ms. Shapiro's website linked above. Needless to say, we're also adding Ms. Shapiro's blog to our exclusive Culture Blogs listing on the sidebar.)

Feeling Deprived

From time to time writers in the cultural blogosphere have reported whimsically (but few as whimsically as in this account) on the weird or inapposite keywords or keyword combinations for search-engine searches that have brought readers to their sites. On average, approximately 20%-25% of our daily unique visitors reach Sounds & Fury via search-engine searches (that figure rises as high as 35% during midterm and final exams seasons; apparently Sounds & Fury is a hot source for student crib data), and not so much as once has a single inapposite or weird keyword or keyword combination been specified as part of the search criteria.

We can't quite decide whether that's indicative of us doing something wrong or something right, but whatever the case, we're feeling just a smidge deprived.

Good News In The War Against The Health Nazis

[Note: We interrupt our culture-related commentary to present this special report.]

Things have been looking rather grim lately, not to say alarming, for all we rational, civilized inhabitants of this planet. The Anti-smoking Nazis have prevailed almost everywhere in translating their bogus "second-hand smoke" data into lunatic, real-world legislation banning smoking — indoors and out — in just about every public facility and location imaginable; and the lunatic "obesity-epidemic" scare invented by the Health-food Nazis has made it almost impossible to get a good piece of well-marbled beef in any form anywhere. Even fast-food giant, McDonald's, caved and submitted to the Health Nazis' will by banning smoking in all its locations, and by introducing many low-fat (a synonym for tasteless) items to their menu, going so far as to present for consumption such disgusting and loathsome entries as veggie-burgers as well as a number of so-called "healthy" foods such as salads and fruit.

But the real-food-starved American public, it seems, is finally beginning to fight back. They're more and more buying less and less of such fare. Spurred by McDonald's Dollar Menu, they're again consuming tons and tons of good ol' stick-to-your-ribs-non-low-fat fast foods such as Double Cheeseburgers, Big Macs, Quarter Pounders With Cheese, and French fries.

McDonald's has attracted considerable attention in the last few years for introducing to its menu healthy food items like salads and fruit. Yet its turnaround has come not from greater sales of healthy foods but from selling more fast-food basics, like double cheeseburgers and fried chicken sandwiches, from the Dollar Menu.

[...]

In 2005, salad sales totaled 173 million units, about even with salad sales in 2004. Per month, however, sales have slipped from 14.7 million salads in 2003 to 9.6 million in 2006.

And every day, McDonald's moves a lot more double cheeseburgers than either salads or the new Premium Chicken Sandwich — most versions of the sandwich have more calories and more sodium than a double cheeseburger. Richard Adams, a former McDonald's executive who now works as a consultant for franchisees, says the average store sells roughly 50 salads a day and 50 to 60 Premium Chicken Sandwiches, compared with 300 to 400 double cheeseburgers from the Dollar Menu.

[...]

Since McDonald's started advertising the Dollar Menu nationally, the double cheeseburger has become the chain's most ordered item. Even priced at $1, double cheeseburgers bring in more revenue than salads or the chicken sandwiches, which cost $3.19 to $4.29.

Yes! Fight on, America!

RTWT here (and pay no attention whatsoever to the mostly obligatory reporting of comments on the trend from the Health Nazis' camp).

Perfect!

Constant readers of this blog will understand immediately what is meant by the coined-by-us pejorative, TOF (for those of you who do not, see this post). From a link just gleaned from music critic Steve Smith's blog, Night After Night (Thanks, Mr. Smith!), we've come across as perfect a limning of the TOF as could be wished for. It's from the eloquent pen of music critic Bernard Holland who wrote in a deliciously snarky 1998 piece for The New York Times on the audience response to the then new Robert Wilson production for the Met of Wagner's Lohengrin:

Opera attracts a lot of levelheaded aficionados, but it also inspires a coterie of listeners for whom the term ''fanatic'' is literally apt. They are a weird lot, to be seen almost exclusively in opera houses and at voice recitals by opera singers. In short, many opera lovers are not music lovers at all.

I'm not even sure they are opera lovers. Opera is merely the excuse that puts their beloved singers on stage; opera provides the trappings that surround the human voice, and voices are what this excitable band of loyalists is all about. The cheers for fading divas making their latest farewell tours can rock Carnegie Hall for minutes. Public responses to arias in the opera house often edge toward hysteria. Opera singing seems to drive men mad. I say men because women opera fans seem to be a little calmer....

These people are not all amateur listeners. My most vicious mail comes from operagoers who feel that the objects of their adoration have been slighted. But once, a few years ago, when I ventured a mild comment on the vagaries of Tiziana Fabbricini's soprano technique, an eminent critic from Texas turned on me with such red-faced fury that I prepared to be assaulted in the aisles of the Met. Given the genocide, starvation and general injustice in our world, a certain imbalance of values seems to be at work.

RTW yummy T here.

The Peril Of Snap Judgments

This past December, in answer to a number of requests for a recommendation for a recording — CD or DVD — of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen that would be best for a Ring "virgin" (i.e., a first-timer), I had this to say:

Of the other stereo CD sets [of the Ring] of which I've knowledge, there are the Karajan, Böhm, Levine, Barenboim, Sawallisch, and Janowski sets. Of these, the latter three simply should never have been released on CD (or recorded in the first place) as none of these conductors are gifted Wagner conductors, and as I've elsewhere asserted on this blog, without a gifted Wagner conductor on the podium nothing can save a performance of a Wagner music-drama from being second-rate at best, and these performances provide abundant testimony for that caveat.

As you can see, the Barenboim Ring (from the 1991 Bayreuth Festival) was one of those "latter three." I based my assessment on a hearing of the Rheingold and Walküre from that CD set, both of which I judged as foursquare musically, and flat dramatically. After hearing those first two, I thought it pointless to audition the remaining two music-dramas as if Barenboim got it wrong in those first two, there was no chance he would — or could — get it right for the remaining two.

Or so one would think.

Accordingly, in tuning into today's BBC Radio 3 webcast of the entire tetralogy which used the Barenboim CD set, I skipped the webcast of the Rheingold and the Walküre as I saw no point in again being upset, but just out of curiosity tuned into the next music-drama, Siegfried, and after that the last music-drama of the tetralogy, Götterdämmerung.

What a glorious surprise! I at first thought the Beeb had switched CD sets in mid-tetralogy. But, no, it was the Barenboim Bayreuth set, all right. And absolutely first-rate readings on Barenboim's part of both those last two music-dramas they were, too (and, for the most part, more than competent acting-singing, most particularly John Tomlinson's Wotan, Philip Kang's Hagen, and — surprise! — working at the very top of his form, Siegfried Jerusalem as the Siegfried), and I'm thinking along about now that I perhaps ought to revisit those first two music-dramas of the set for a rehearing.

I still wouldn't recommend this CD set over the Solti set as the set to get for a Ring virgin (or even non-virgin, for that matter; the Solti CD set is — overall and all things considered — nonpareil), but this Barenboim CD set is without question a set that should be in the library of every serious Ring aficionado. I'll be ordering mine as soon as finances permit.

I guess that'll teach me not to make snap judgments based on only a six-hour audition.

Mud Oboe

There's a savage oboe joke lurking somewhere beneath the surface of this notice and, I suspect, the article linked to,* but I wouldn't even begin to attempt to give it voice. I may not be a coward, but I'm no fool either.

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* That link has an extension — .ir — not recognized by my ISP, nor by InterNIC, so I can't get through to the linked page. Your mileage may vary.

The Right Stuff

If any of you reading Alex Ross's imperative in this post that, "The need now [in the struggle to gain new audience for classical music] is to recapture the attention of young adults ... by stressing [classical music's] passion, its intelligence, [and] its relevance," were foolish (or naïve) enough to imagine Alex was merely mouthing lofty-sounding platitudes, then you need to read this review by Alex of composer Kaija Saariaho's new opera, Adriana Mater in this week's New Yorker. If writings on classical music (in this case, opera rather than concert music) are to any degree capable of contributing to the "recaptur[ing of] the attention of young adults" to the art form, it's writing like this that will surely do the trick.

Updated Post (Administrative Note)

There's more on the audience for classical music brouhaha here (see, Update #2).