Prerequisite Lacking

Classical music critic Martin Bernheimer, in his brief review for The Financial Times of the recent Carnegie Hall concert by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under its new music director, Marin Alsop, wrote:

Otherwise the [program] offered the comfort of greatest hits. Alsop began with a fussy and speedy performance of Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel. She ended with Debussy’s L’après-midi d’un faune, suitably languid, and Stravinsky’s Firebird, suitably flighty.

Essentially, the prima maestra assoluta of Baltimore and Bournemouth was tested more as a technician than as an interpreter. One does not need a profound personal vision, after all, to make a mark in this repertory.

And a good thing for Ms. Alsop, too, as our experience of her work gives more than ample evidence she’s singularly lacking that prerequisite of first-rate-ness.