Sounds & Fury

The Kindle Touch: A Near-Paragon Of An eBook Reader

In November of 2009 we made a plea on S&F to Amazon's Jeff Bezos to price the Kindle eBook reader at $99 rather than the $259 which was the selling price of the Kindle at the time even if he had to sell each unit at a loss as it would hugely profit Amazon overall (and the eBook movement worldwide) for him to do so, and asked whether he was listening. Apparently he was, for we now have the Kindle Touch ("touch" for its touchscreen controls) priced at — mirabile dictu! — $99, and it's a real beauty both in appearance and function.

We've been using the new Kindle Touch with Wi-Fi connectivity (thank you!, Verizon FiOS) for but a few days now but that's more than sufficient time for us to declare that this version of the Kindle is a near-paragon of what an eBook reader should be, never mind that it lacks the ability to reproduce color (for a catalog of its many features and functions check out the page at the above link). The Kindle Touch is beautiful to look at and hold, just the right size, its E Ink display a joy to read, its minimalist button controls philosophy just the right design philosophy for an eBook reader, and its $99 price tag painless (the ads that display themselves when the Kindle Touch is not in use reading the text of an eBook are in no way disruptive). We would only suggest to Mr. Bezos that the Kindle Touch be built with a more powerful processor so that page turns and pop-up screens are instant (as opposed to merely very fast) and screen refreshes invisible. We would also suggest that the Kindle Touch be sold with a slipcase storage case and AC charger as standard equipment — without raising the price, of course — which today must be purchased separately as the Kindle Touch really needs both in regular use.

God bless technology, Amazon, and Jeff Bezos. It's a great time to be alive.

And Now For Something Completely Different...

The following gives a whole new meaning to the term "fast food".

(Our thanks to 3 Quarks Daily for the link.)

Our New Hero

[NOTE: This entry has been updated (1) as of 3:29 PM Eastern on 11 Jan. See below.]

If this report is true as related, New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert is our new hero.

Tuesday night's New York Philharmonic performance of the Mahler Ninth was stopped dead by an unusual instrument — the iPhone.

[...]

"Mr. Gilbert was visibly annoyed by the persistent ring-tone, so much that he quietly cut the orchestra," the concertgoer reports. She related how the orchestra's music director turned on the podium towards the offender. The pause lasted a good "three or four minutes. It might have been two. It seemed long."

Mr. Gilbert asked the man, sitting [in the audience] in front of the concertmaster: "Are you finished?"

RTWT here.

---

Update (3:29 PM Eastern on 11 Jan): More from The New York Times.

The Lepage Staging Of Die Walküre: A Brief Rant

We just had our first extended look at the Robert Lepage staging of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen for the Met via a YouTube video of the complete Met HD film of Die Walküre and it's even worse than we imagined it to be from the manifold verbal descriptions read and production photos viewed. This Die Walküre staging is, in short, the most wooden, most vapid, least evocative, and most utterly empty staging of a Wagner music-drama it's ever been our displeasure to witness, Le Machine accomplishing nothing but constrain the action of the singer-actors (who moved to and fro seemingly willy-nilly along the thin strip of real estate provided them downstage doing vaguely appropriate things most, but by no means all, of the time) and make itself impotently conspicuous merely by its looming, hulking, contribute-nothing presence.

What a colossal and colossally expensive blunder on Peter Gelb's part. We can only hope Mr. Gelb has the courage and nerve to accept the blunder head-on, retire this entire Ring production from the Met's stage forever after this year's complete cycle is concluded, and not attempt to amortize the cost of Le Machine by mounting revivals of the production in future.

What an appalling squandering of time, talent, and money.

Why Are We Surprised — Not!

In a double-blind test (i.e., neither testers nor testees knew which instrument was which until after completion of the test), could seventeen seasoned professional violinists, by playing the instruments effectively blindfolded, tell which of six violins — two Strads, one Guarneri, and three modern instruments (none of which three modern instruments was "the latest $50 lacquer from China" as reported by one perennially unreliable "professional music journalist") — were the old Italian instruments?

Apparently not, mostly. When the dust cleared, the scorecard read:

⚫ Couldn't identify which were the old instruments: 7
⚫ Misidentified which were the old instruments: 7
⚫ Identified the old instruments correctly: 3

We're not the least surprised. Over the past couple decades or so, we've heard live (but not handled) some modern fiddles that, aurally, were virtual paragons and in every way the equal of fiddles produced by the old masters. Please note, we said "the equal of", NOT, "the same as". Every fiddle worth the playing has its own special character aurally and it's not a matter of best but of personal preference.

Oh, and BTW, we guessed wrong on the two audio clips. We chose the one where the fiddle sounded best to our ear (the first clip) and assumed arbitrarily that was the old instrument.

CNN News Anchor Abducted By Green Goblin, Saved By Spider-Man

In the most entertaining segment of the TV coverage of the Times Square celebration welcoming the new year, CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper, who was hosting CNN's coverage of the festivities with co-host for the evening irrepressible bad girl Kathy Griffin, was abducted by Julie Taymor's Green Goblin in an attempt to force him to be news anchor for GG's planned new TV network. GG's plan was foiled, however, by the timely arrival of Ms. Taymor's Spider-Man who rescued Mr. Cooper from a fate worse than being forced to be news anchor for the Fox Network. The whole thing was captured on video and streamed live on the Times Square Jumbotron. The video follows.

Ethically Compromised Funding

British blogger Bob Shingleton of On An Overgrown Path has been running a series of posts that addresses what he calls the "ethically compromised funding" of classical music by which he means funding provided by "ethically compromised" companies such as cigarette manufacturers and greedy mega-financial institutions whose moneymaking practices are, in part, legally and ethically questionable. Despite his claim that it's his intention "to inform rather than condemn" and bring "transparency" to the practice, which claim, we feel bound to say, has about it more than a whiff of the disingenuous, it's clear this sort of funding is something of which Mr. Shingleton deeply disapproves.

We find Mr. Shingleton's position puzzling. Why disapprove? In our view, there's nothing of which to disapprove in such funding. We would go even further and say, if somewhat rhetorically, that, apart from funding by outright criminal agencies such as, for instance, the mafia, there is no such thing as "ethically compromised funding" in the sense that Mr. Shingleton uses the label. So what that tobacco companies such as British American Tobacco and Japan Tobacco International, "manufacturer[s] of the leading cause of preventable death," as Mr. Shingleton has it, support classical music organizations such as the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the London Philharmonic? Even if one accepts Mr. Shingleton's characterization of these tobacco companies (which we do not), is their money thereby tainted and ought therefore to be refused, or is it more meet and does it make more sense to look upon the donation of that money to these classical music organizations as an effort on the part of the companies to partially compensate for the "evils" of the products they manufacture? Clearly, we favor the latter view.

Or put another way, there is no such thing as "dirty money" unless it be money earned through outright criminal activity. Any other view of the matter is the product of individual moral judgment on how the money was earned by the funder, and, by and large, moral judgments of this sort are notoriously and infamously arbitrary, not to mention tendentious.

Or put yet another way: stop whinging and take the money and run!

Featured Past Post #111 (Administrative Note)

The beginning of a new year is almost upon us and what better way for us to start off our Featured Past Post feature for the new year than with a link to a past S&F entry in our ongoing war against that scourge of the opera world, Eurotrash. To that end, our new Featured Past Post is an entry from July 2010 titled, "It's The Music, Stupid!", the link to which is now up on our sidebar.

To our readers, our wish for a happy and prosperous new year for you all.

The Conductor's Prime Directive

New York magazine's classical music critic Justin Davidson tries his hand(s) out on the podium as a conductor and writes about it in an article for New York titled, What Does a Conductor Do?. In that article Mr. Davidson quotes trenchant advice to conductors from world-renowned Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink; advice that, laconic as it is, should be taken by every conductor as his(her) Prime Directive when standing in front of an orchestra in either rehearsal or performance. It says that conductors should always remember when waving their arms and hands about on the podium that "the musicians are very busy with playing. You should not distract them."

Sage advice indeed.

Featured Past Post #110 (Administrative Note)

It's that season again, and so we offer as our new Featured Past Post the 2005 S&F entry, Handel's Messiah As Drama, the link to which can be found on our sidebar.

A Merry Christmas to all who celebrate.

More On The Regietheater vs. "Traditional" Front

It might be thought we devote an inordinate amount of space on S&F to the matter of Regietheater stagings in opera the subject being almost an idée fixe on this blog since its inception. In our estimation, however, the subject can never be addressed too often as, save only the financial concerns of opera production, it's today the single most pressing and fundamental production problem in the world of opera; one that it seems will be with us well into the foreseeable future.

Recently, on a venerable online opera forum, the battle between advocates of Regietheater opera stagings and what, for want of a better term, is called "traditional" stagings broke out anew. Wrote one forum member, an inveterate champion of Regietheater opera stagings of even the most extreme sort:

I have nothing against the "romantically pictorial" [style of opera staging; i.e., "traditional" staging] or whatever you want to call it assuming that a) it's done in an interesting manner and b) it's not the only choice at the buffet. Taking a) first. My issue with a lot of example of this style of production is that it makes for very handsome still photographs but a very dull theater experience.

To which we responded:

More sophistry from the champion of Eurotrash.

So, the "Romantic-pictorial" style of opera production tends to "mak[e] for very handsome still photographs but a very dull theater experience," does it? You mean as opposed to the Regietheater style of opera production that so often tends to make for Eurotrash — grotesque, wholly irrelevant distortions of the sense and spirit of the composer's concept of whatever opera it corrupts?

What you savage in the "Romantic-pictorial" style of opera production is IN NO WAY an inherent characteristic of that style any more than the Regietheater style of opera production is inherently Eurotrash. In the right hands, either style of production can make for vital, dramatically exciting and illuminating theater the only constraint on both being that the sense and spirit of the composer's concept — the *composer's* concept, NOT the director's — be kept inviolable throughout. That's relatively easy to accomplish with the "Romantic-pictorial" style of opera production; hugely more difficult with Regietheater which style of opera production requires a director possessing enormous insight and gift both musically and dramatically in order to carry off successfully. Is it any wonder, then, that Regietheater opera productions so often and so overwhelmingly end up degenerating into unmitigated Eurotrash?

Not a bit of it.

And so the beat goes on.

The Best TV Ad Of 2011

During the Sixties, the TV ads for Volkswagen (mostly for the Beetle) (rightfully) garnered award after award for their innovative approach and execution. This 2011 ad for the new 2012 Volkswagen Passat continues in that tradition. According to Stuart Elliott, the advertising columnist of The New York Times, it's "been widely deemed the best [TV ad] of 2011." We agree. It's thoroughly delightful and perfectly charming.

Ave Atque Vale, Christopher

It had been daily expected for the past couple weeks or so, and yesterday, 15 December 2011, consummate writer, iconoclastic political and cultural commentator in print, on air, and on the speaker's platform, and maverick polymath public intellectual and wit Christopher Hitchens died at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston of pneumonia, a complication of esophageal cancer, said the magazine Vanity Fair where Mr. Hitchens was a contributing editor and which periodical announced his death. He was 62. The New York Times obituary can be read here.

We have no words (any from us would be an impertinence), are for the moment inconsolable, and, as before, will let this speak for us:

Atque in perpetuum, Christopher, ave atque vale.

Betrayal

[NOTE: This entry has been updated (1) as of 11:43 PM Eastern on 15 Dec. See below.]

Norman Lebrecht of the blog Slipped Disc points to an article in the Neue Musikzeitung wherein Matthias Jena, the Bavarian trades union (DGB) chairman which union represents the workers at the Bayreuther Festspiele, accuses the current Festspiele management and board of directors of forgetting the history of the Festspiele and the ideals of its founder Richard Wagner by limiting the availability of tickets and pricing them out of the reach of the ordinary German working man. "Today's festival management and board of directors have buried the legacy of Richard Wagner on the Green Hill," said Herr Jena.

Indeed they have, and not just in the matter of tickets. They've betrayed the Festspiele's very raison d'être: to present model performances of its founder's stageworks as he conceived them.

---

Update (11:43 PM Eastern on 15 Dec): We've had an interesting — and curious — response to our above entry from a member of one of the opera forums to which we posted a link to the entry. Wrote this member:

Not only has the Festival Management remembered its own history, to judge from the recent 'Parsifal' they are trying to come to terms with it. Whatever you might say about the current crop of productions, they are -- with the exception of the dreadfully dull and dreary 'Tristan' -- boldly innovative. If that is not in accordance with the ideals of the founder of the Festival, then I do not know what is.

To which our response was:

"Boldly innovative"(!)? Is that what you call the current _Parsifal_, _Tannhäuser_, and _Lohengrin_?

Well, I'll allow they may indeed be innovative, but they're not, by any stretch, *Wagner's* operas and music-dramas. What they are are Herheim's _Parsifal_, Baumgarten's _Tannhäuser_, and Neuenfels's _Lohengrin_, all using Wagner's hijacked music and text. From what we know of Wagner, do you imagine he would have sanctioned *any* of these using his name, never mind his music and text, were he able today to voice his feelings, not to even speak of considering them in accordance with his ideals?

Well, the question is, of course, moot. But from everything we know of Wagner and his ideals (which is considerable), far from sanctioning these grotesque Eurotrash outrages he'd be more than likely to reach for the most damaging weapon at his disposal, his pen, and give these self-involved, self-serving, self-indulgent vandals and hijackers the thrashing of their lives.

Rizzoli & Isles: Free At Last!

In July of this year, after dumping Cablevision («spit») where we subscribed to what is called their "antenna service" — a (very) limited-channel, non-HD service at $14.00/per month (which by happy error on Cablevision's part nevertheless gave us access for the longest time to many channels not paid for, but, alas, no HD channels) — we subscribed to Verizon's FiOS TV cable service (full HD service but no premium channels; we can't afford it) to go with our new 32" LCD flat-screen HDTV.

The FiOS subscription came complete with a Set Top Box that contains a hefty-capacity DVR free of charge which can be programmed not only via the Set Top Box but online directly via our computer. After living with this new setup for five months now, our TV time has increased some 300% and we're beginning to wonder how on earth it was possible for us to live without it. We're fast becoming, we're chagrined to admit, a bona fide couch potato, but we're not terribly worried — yet. Instead, we'll perhaps now start writing regular commentary here on S&F on select TV fare (but not reviews; we don't do reviews) for whatever that may prove to be worth. So, let us begin.

Around May 2010 or so when TNT started airing promos about a new original cops-'n-robber series titled Rizzoli & Isles starring in the title roles Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander, respectively, we licked our chops (figuratively, of course). These two girls were perfect for the roles as described and, to boot, we were in love with them both having had prior experience of their work on Law & Order and NCIS, again, respectively. We made written note of the date of the premiere show, and jotted down the following comment: "The only thing that could sink this series is lousy writers."

Well, we weren't quite right about that. It took not only lousy writers but lousy directors as well. We've watched every episode from Day One (a total of 22 episodes over two seasons) and every one of them was as lame and lackluster as lame and lackluster can be. The writing was uninspired cop-show dreadful, and the directing, amateurish — so amateurish that it couldn't even get the foundation relationship between Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles right. "What a wanton waste of money and talent," we thought to ourself. "The behind-the-camera morons responsible for this train wreck should be run out of town on a rail!"

But drawn by our faith in its two stars, we continued watching the series hoping with each new episode that the behind-the-camera people had at last wised up. And with Episode 23 in the series which aired last night titled, "Seventeen Ain't So Sweet", written by Darin Goldberg and Shelly Meals and directed by Rod Holcomb, none of whose work we've prior experience of, it seemed they had.

Immediately we sensed something was different. Harmon was at last freed to behave like Rizzoli should behave — street-kid smart and, at the surface, street-kid tough, but just beneath, genuinely soft and sexy and, at bottom, sensitive and vulnerable, and believably so with no character-inappropriate smiles or laughter. Alexander as well was at last freed to behave believably like Isles should behave — a Harvard (or one assumes)-educated, old-money, super-bright, dedicated and passionate science geek cum forensic pathologist with a flair for feminine elegance in extrascientific matters, but not so flagrantly super-bright, dedicated and passionate that she comes off as a terminally annoying, unappealing, socially clueless freak à la Dr. Temperance Brennan of the Fox series, Bones, on which TV character we suspect Isles was modeled and priorly was made to behave like (the Isles of the TV series, that is; we're unfamiliar with the novels by Tess Gerritsen on which Rizzoli & Isles is based and so have no idea how either character is treated there).

"Seventeen Ain't So Sweet", although nothing to write home about as cop-show stories go, is a nicely directed, nicely plotted, nice little murder mystery (for a synopsis of which, see here), albeit with a too-neat Perry Mason dénouement, and the writing by Goldberg and Meals has what all previous writing for this series lacked: lively and believable character-appropriate dialogue, especially between Rizzoli and Isles. What a pleasure to at last witness in this series. The question now is, Will this episode prove merely an anomaly or does it mark a true wising-up by the behind-the-camera people? Will they now move forward from this episode, or will they backslide to the lame, lackluster writing and direction that preceded it?

Only The Shadow knows.

Stay tuned.

A Dishonorable End

We suspect that by now you've all (or at very least most of you) read the announcement by the Metropolitan Opera that Music Director James Levine will be absent from the podium through the entire 2012-13 season and its accompanying statement from Levine himself explaining his reasons. We can hardly bring ourself to comment on that statement so dismayed and disappointed are we that Levine did not do the only right and proper thing to do given the circumstances: resign his post as Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera. Levine's statement was not an honorable way to end a 40-year, epoch-making career (and that it is at an end is now all but certain) and we can only mourn the fact that it ended so dishonorably.

And so it goes.

La Scala's Giovanni — The Webcast

Well, that was an unexpected and crushing disappointment. We listened to the live RAI streaming audio webcast but missed half of Act I (after Giovanni's duettino) as we had an appointment that couldn't be rescheduled, but got back in time to catch the whole of Act II. What we heard of Act I was rough going (rough in both senses of the term) both onstage and in the pit, and the principal culprit was conductor Daniel Barenboim. We'd never heard Barenboim conduct Mozart before but assumed from his piano playing that it would be set properly deeply in the man's very bones. Apparently not. Even though his tempi were pretty much on target most of the time, the orchestral playing was flaccid and ragged and lacked that crucial Mozartian spiritedness born of precision. That of course had its effect on the singers who were also having a rough time of it on their own, and the whole thing was largely a mess — not a train-wreck-type mess; merely a mess of the garden variety sort. Things got better in Act II for both orchestra and singers but the performance was nowhere near the kind of performance this stellar cast seemed to almost guarantee (see this S&F entry). To be fair about it, Mozart's music is arguably the most treacherous ever written as it offers absolutely zero wiggle room in performance. If one doesn't get it bang-spot-on-right on all fronts the music simply fails to "sing". Get it bang-spot-on-right and it "sings" transcendently. We don't know of any other music where that's the case.

Ah well. And so it goes. Perhaps things will straighten themselves out at some point in the production's run but we wouldn't bet the farm on it — unless, that is, James Levine miraculously gets well and feels he just has to head down to Milan to show them how it's done.

Sand Dancer (An S&F Divertissement)

(Our thanks to 3 Quarks Daily for the link.)

Well Worth Your Time

Here is a marvelous — and considering the venue (a major mainstream newspaper: The Philadelphia Inquirer), astonishing — multimedia feature on Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music, among the most demanding and exclusive music conservatories in the world and easily the most demanding and exclusive in the nation. The feature is entitled, "The Curtis Factor", and it can be read and viewed here.

Well worth your time.

Almost Certain To Be A Giovanni For The Ages

[NOTE: This entry has been updated (1) as of 6:14 PM Eastern on 7 Dec. See below.]

[NOTE: This entry has been edited as of 5:48 PM Eastern on 30 Nov to make more clear and pointed our closing comment.]

Let's see...

Conductor: Daniel Barenboim
Orchestra of La Scala

Don Giovanni: Peter Mattei
Leporello: Bryn Terfel
Donna Anna: Anna Netrebko
Donna Elvira: Barbara Frittoli
Zerlina: Anna Prohaska

Yes indeed. An almost sure bet — provided, that is, the Regie doesn't fuck things up; sadly, an all-too-common outcome these days.

For more info, see here.

---

Update (6:14 PM Eastern on 7 Dec): For our comments on the performance as heard via the Web, see this S&F entry.