Sounds & Fury

Wrong Target

In a 1 May piece for The New York Times titled, "'Ring' Criticism, Rescinded", music journalist Daniel J. Wakin revealed that

[New York Public Radio radio station] WQXR pulled a blog posting critical of the Metropolitan Opera’s new Ring cycle last month after the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, personally complained to the radio station’s top executive.

Since then, we've read indignant and outraged responses to that action across the classical music blogosphere and on online opera forums on the Web almost all of which responses condemned Mr. Gelb as being at fault and implying (or outright saying) he was guilty of censorship(!).

Say what? Last time we checked, Mr. Gelb was not a member of the editorial staff of New York Public Radio or WQXR. How he could have been at fault, and guilty of censorship no less, in the pulling of that blog post is beyond our capacity to understand. The only guilty parties in this craven incident would be the editorial staff of WQXR and Laura Walker, the president and chief executive of WQXR’s parent NYPR, who backed the editorial staff's decision. It's those two entities alone at which one's indignation and outrage should be aimed. All Peter Gelb could be guilty of in this matter is having a too-thin skin and an outsized sense of his own importance and influence in domains outside the Met.

NPR's "Goldberg Week": Joining The Party

This week, NPR has been celebrating the birthday of the incomparably great Johann Sebastian Bach (born, 21 March 1685) with a series of posts on its blog Deceptive Cadence devoted to commentary on Bach's so-called Goldberg Variations, an astonishing set of 30 variations for the keyboard on the ground bass of a meltingly beautiful 32-measure sarabande (Aria) which set of variations is what we've conservatively called the "without-equal crown jewel of the entire Baroque keyboard repertoire." That commentary will be capped off tomorrow, 23 March, at 12:00 PM EDT, by a live "online listening party" featuring pianist Glenn Gould's seminal 1955 recording of the Goldberg with special guests Tim page and Anne Midgette, former and present Washington Post chief classical music critics, respectively, commenting. We herewith join the party in spirit, if somewhat prematurely, by way of reprinting below our 2004 S&F entry "Gould's Goldberg: Earlier or Later?", a commentary on Gould's two historic recordings of this great work: those of 1955 and 1981. The text follows instanter and without further comment.

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Lovely Weekend Guest, a first-rate pianist and knowledgeable lover of Bach's keyboard works (she often refers to them by BWV number, for instance) spent part of her last weekend evening here in a friendly but, um, animated discussion with me of Glenn Gould's 1955 and 1981 recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variations (or BWV 988 as LWG calls it just to piss me off). On the whole, I rather prefer the earlier reading, she the later. The readings, both of them, are, of course, marvels, and display in equal measure Gould's trademark, irreproducible, and nonpareil Bach performance technique — the preternatural (horizontal) delineation of multiple contrapuntal lines while maintaining fully their interlaced (vertical) harmonic coherence; the uncanny rhythmic sense, perfectly precise but infinitely plastic; and the equally precise and plastic articulation which commentators and critics insist on referring to as détaché but which is rather a near-perfect pianistic analogue of the highly prized and near-impossible harpsichord legato — but are otherwise world's apart in spirit.

Rambunctious, LWG calls the earlier reading. Staid, I call the later, but only half mean it, using the term largely for reasons of symmetry with her rambunctious. About the only interpretive point on which we agree is that both Gould readings of this without-equal crown jewel of the entire Baroque keyboard repertoire blow away all other readings, truly excellent though some are.

I've had the recordings of both readings in my library almost since the day of their releases (both of which recordings survived the catastrophe that consumed most of the rest of my libraries several years ago), and though I listen to them often, I never really made the effort to nail down exactly why I preferred the one reading over the other. Better late than never, I decide, and so use the weekend's discussion with LWG as a spur.

Leaving aside the Aria (the ground bass of which is the unifying theme upon which the variations are built) which opens and closes the set of variations (and which I here leave aside mostly because I suspect I'm missing something important concerning it in the later reading as I simply cannot conceive a reasonable musical, aesthetic, or emotional justification for the funereal, almost structure-destroying tempo taken for it by Gould in that reading), I always vaguely imagined it was the generally slower — at times significantly slower — tempi of the later reading (i.e., slower as compared with the earlier reading) that provoked my antipathy for, even annoyance with, that reading. But I now see that's not it. Something else. And that something else is, I think, most clearly exemplified in Gould's two readings of Variation 25, dubbed "The Black Pearl" by the great harpsichordist and Bach scholar Wanda Landowska; an astonishing piece of music that enters the set of variations like some alien presence and at its departure leaves one slack-jawed with amazement and wonder.

With its frequent, expectation-subverting harmonic modulations, actual and implied, Variation 25's chromaticism is so extreme it makes the music of Tristan and Parsifal seem positively diatonic by comparison. Gould, in his liner notes for the 1955 release, refers to this variation in his typically provocative way as a "Chopinesque mood-piece," and elsewhere as a "Romantic effusion." It's neither of these, of course, but thoroughly and essentially Bachian throughout. It's simply that it seems to not belong to this set of variations, but seemingly magically still remains one with it while at the same time seeming to inhabit another world altogether.

In his earlier reading, Gould captures this another-world quality perfectly, largely by his circumspect and strategic use of rubato, an expressive device more identified with the Classical period and with Chopin and the Romantics than with Bach, but here used to brilliant effect. This variation is one of the few where the tempo of the earlier reading is taken slightly slower overall than the later (but only marginally so; 6'28" vs. 6'03"; a 6% difference in timings). The confluence of the marginally slower overall tempo and the strategic use of rubati in this earlier reading, however, make the progress of the melodic line and the movement of the astonishing harmonic shifts seem to play out on a scale cosmically slow the variation's internal pulse seemingly proceeding as do the slow wheeling of galaxies through the infinite eons of boundless space, the harmony's expectation-subverting modulations given point by the rubati and suggesting tonalities mystically strange and vastly remote.

As I said, music that leaves one slack-jawed with amazement and wonder — in the earlier reading, that is. In the later reading the rubati, while still present to some extent, are largely emasculated, the internal pulse and inflection of the melodic line and harmonic shifts spun out in deliberately and soberly considered fashion, the variation now seeming more at home with the set's other variations than in the earlier reading because more metrically and sensibly proportional to them. The expectation-subverting modulations are still there, of course, and still give this variation the feel of a vaguely alien presence within the set, but the another-world magic of the earlier reading has gone missing. Gould's deliberate and sober approach to the music bars such mysteries. One's amazement at the variation's harmonic inventiveness remains, of course, but the wonder has fled.

This stately, deliberate sobriety characterizes most (but not all) of Gould's later reading of the Goldberg; a sobriety achieved by various musical means, one of which is Gould's singling out of one of the contrapuntal voices (typically, the unifying element of the Aria's bass line) as if to say, "See? Here it is." In intent, the device is somewhat akin to that used in "Konzept" opera productions wherein the self-involved director insists on pushing his particular "vision" repeatedly in the audience's face lest they miss it. It's a device as annoying here as it is there.

The sheer audacity — the "rambunctious[ness]" — of Gould's earlier reading may be considered by some a mark against it, but for me it's that very audacity that gives revelatory life to that earlier reading, while the deliberately sober later reading largely (but, again, not entirely) eschews audacity as if to act as corrective of the implied youthful excesses of the earlier. While the later reading may achieve its end in that respect, it does so at a cost, and to my way of thinking (and hearing), the cost is simply too great.

The New QXR

When The New York Times Company divested itself of its long-held classical music station WQXR by selling it to NPR's WNYC this past September, we were deprived of our area's only classical music station as the puny 600 watts at which WNYC operates the station at its new location on the FM dial (105.9) is a far cry from the 6000 watts at which it was operated at its previous FM dial location which permitted us to receive the station's signal quite well albeit not in stereo as even at 6000 watts we're located just barely within the signal's fringe reach. And so now, when we want to listen to QXR, we have to listen via our computer and the Web.

Not exactly the best of all possible worlds.

The above notwithstanding, the transfer of QXR into the hands of WNYC is perhaps the best thing that could have happened for QXR. For the past five years at least, the Times has considered the station a sort of problematic stepchild, and this was reflected in its presence on the Web which in the Times's hands was a decidedly, let us say, slapdash affair.

Not so in the hands of WNYC. Now QXR's website and Web presence are veritable paragons of the type, and the station's programming just what it ought to be for a general interest classical music radio station. One could quibble with some of WNYC's decisions in bringing over staff from the old station (we've, however, more than a quibble with WNYC's decision to bypass Clayelle Dalferes in favor of Midge Woolsey whose bourgeois sensibilities are on display front and center in both her playlists and her commentary on the new QXR just as they were on the old), but, by and large, the new QXR's host lineup is more than satisfactory as is its general-interest classical music programming, and as is the host lineup and less-often-played- and new-classical-music programming on the newly created, 24/7, online-only WQXR Q2 radio stream which we lately find ourself listening to far more often than to QXR itself despite such stuff as Terry Riley's for-some-reason-famous In C, a performance of which we've been listening to determinedly for the past gazillion hours or so — or, rather, so it seems — and which is perhaps the most tedious, mindless piece of music it's ever been our displeasure to hear.

Now if we could only convince WNYC to petition the FCC to permit it to boost QXR's wattage just a teensy-weensy, piddling, ten-times bit....

Opening Night

[Note: This post has been updated (3) as of 7:59 PM Eastern on 18 Sep. See below.]

We tried listening to the season's opening New York Philharmonic concert tonight on PBS with Alan Gilbert on the podium for the first time as the orchestra's Music Director, but the audio of the PBS telecast (and that of the simulcast by radio station WQXR as well) was so bloody dreadful that we really can't be sure just what it was we heard. We were, however, able to discern that Renée Fleming is a first-rate musician (she sang near-perfectly, as far as we could tell, the nine difficult songs that constitute Olivier Messiaen's song cycle, Poèmes pour Mi), and that she has perhaps the most gorgeous soprano voice on the planet. The concert opened with EXPO (the all-caps is the composer's), a new work commissioned by the NYP for this opening concert from the NYP's Composer-in-Residence, Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg; a mercifully short (some nine minutes or so), noisy, overwrought, big-hair Romantic work that Lindberg wrote as "a tribute to [Alan Gilbert] and the Orchestra at a historic moment." Berlioz's (literally) fantastic Symphonie fantastique closed the concert in a technically competent but otherwise largely pedestrian reading of the score by Gilbert and the band, and the intermission feature — short "interviews" by concert host Alec Baldwin (yes, that Alec Baldwin) with Fleming and Gilbert — was minimally embarrassing.

Our overall impression? Mr. Gilbert (whose work we've here had experience of for the first time) will have to do much better in future if he wants to maintain the NYP's well-earned reputation as one of the world's most accomplished symphony orchestras, and provide some meaningful on-podium evidence that he's truly worthy of his new position.

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Update (5:33 PM Eastern on 17 Sep): Here are three MSM reviews of this concert, each written by a classical music critic who was actually there: Anne Midgette (The Washington Post), Mark Swed (Los Angeles Times), and Anthony Tommasini (The New York Times).

Update 2 (10:29 PM Eastern on 17 Sep): In response to our remark above that Alan Gilbert and the NYP gave a "technically competent but otherwise largely pedestrian reading of the score" of the Berlioz Symphonie fantastique at last night's season-opening concert, a musically knowledgeable member of the Classical Music & Opera Forums (of which online forum we're also a member) wrote: "In the Berlioz, his [Gilbert's] tempi were acceptable, but that's not a hard piece to get right," to which we responded, "If the Symphonie fantastique is 'not a hard piece to get right,' how come no one has been able to get it right since [Charles] Munch's superb '50s RCA recording with the BSO [Boston Symphony Orchestra]?"

That response by us raised the eyebrows of another musically knowledgeable forum member (and perhaps raised yours as well) who, after confessing he'd never heard the Munch recording, put forward recordings of the work by Solti, Abbado, and Barbirolli which readings of the work he felt were among the best he'd ever encountered, and so we felt constrained to explain just a wee bit further, and will repeat here what we said for those of you whose eyebrows may also have been raised by our immediately above response.

After declaring that those three first-rate conductors didn't get it right either, we went on to explain that there's a certain subtle, fluid, pervasive rhythmic tipsiness or off-balance-ness that goes beyond the notated tipsy, off-balance rhythms indicated in the score that's central to getting this piece right, and that the only reading of this work in our experience, both live and recorded, that captured that subtle, fluid, pervasive rhythmic tipsiness or off-balance-ness, and captured it to perfection throughout the work, is the Munch/BSO recording noted above.

That classic Munch/BSO RCA recording has never been out of print since its initial release in 1954, and for those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's this one:

We simply cannot praise this reading of the Symphonie fantastique too highly, and heartily recommend it to your attention.

Update 3 (7:59 PM Eastern on 18 Sep): Martin Bernheimer (The Financial Times), another MSM classical music critic who was actually at the concert, weighs in with his verdict.

Saturday Ring Reminder

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 1:44 PM Eastern on 25 Apr. See below.]

This afternoon, beginning 12:00 PM EDT, the Met closes its current Ring cycle with a performance of Götterdämmerung which performance will be aired via the Met's regular Saturday afternoon opera broadcast, and also via the Met's own webcast which can be accessed here. For some of you, this 2005 commentary on Götterdämmerung titled, "The Trouble With Götterdämmerung", might be of some small interest, and so we accordingly recommend it to your attention.

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Update (1:44 PM Eastern on 25 Apr): After hearing the Norns episode, we thought there might be a chance for this performance. No such luck. The thing is a veritable train wreck — from Levine on down. We're off. We've had it. We're no masochist.

A Remarkable Matter

There's no way to discuss this matter without its seeming to come off appearing a thoroughly petty complaint when measured against the larger achievement, but it's so remarkable a matter that we simply can't let it pass absent remark.

We're talking about the absolutely wrong and wrongheaded realization, musically and dramatically, of the critically important opening two-measure phrase of the opening ten-measure paragraph of the Vorspiel to Act III of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and the two-measure phrase's following second statement (as well as the second statement of the entire paragraph some six measures after the first) as they were realized by Daniel Barenboim in his debut on the Met's podium on 28 November; a realization repeated this past Saturday for the broadcast matinée.

That opening ten-measure paragraph is one of the small wonders in an opera filled with manifold wonders of magnitudes large and small, and which paragraph is perhaps the most concise, deeply affecting, and profound evocation of utter desolation and despair, external and internal, to be found in all of opera, perhaps even in all of music. And much of that paragraph's effect (and affect) can be attributed directly to its opening four measures — i.e., its repeated opening two-measure phrase — ergo, the critical importance of those measures, and the reason for this article which by its very nature cannot help but be somewhat technical, for which, our apologies.

Wagner notates the tempo for the Vorspiel, Mäßig langsam (moderately slow; the German, langsam, is roughly equivalent to the Italian, largo), and the meter, common time (4/4). The Vorspiel's opening ten-measure paragraph is played by the orchestra's string choir (violins, violas, cellos, and contrabasses) alone, and its opening four measures are hugely and hollowly dissonant the hollowness of that dissonance due largely (but not entirely) the violins sounding its prolonged, dissonant major-second G against the F tonic sounded in the rest of the string choir using the G of the violin's lowest open (i.e., unstopped) string. That open-string G is so important to the sound and sense of the Vorspiel's opening paragraph and of the Vorspiel itself that we'd almost be willing to declare that Wagner chose the nominal minor key of the Vorspiel (f-minor) precisely in order that the strongest dissonance of its opening paragraph would be produced using that hollow-sounding open-string G.

And what does Wagner write for the opening four measures of that opening ten-measure paragraph to produce its magic? It's utterly simple. The violas, cellos and contrabasses sound a chordal pedal using the tonic, sixth, fourth, and fifth degrees of the f-minor scale, while above, after a quarter rest, the first violins join them by first sounding a hollowly and hugely dissonant tied half-note and eighth open-string G, with the second violins joining at the same time sounding a dotted half-note open-string G which is tied to another dotted half-note open-string G in the following second measure of the two-measure phrase the entire string choir resolving at phrase's close in an f-minor triad, the triad's uneasy fifth degree sounding prominently on top.

When taken at Wagner's indicated tempo, the prolonged, major-second dissonance of that hollow-sounding open-string G produces a sense of desolation that's all but unbearable which is precisely the effect it was intended to produce. In fact, experienced Wagner conductors typically prolong that hollow open-string dissonance slightly beyond the notated time value of the notes by introducing a slight rubato or quasi-fermata on the open-string G in the first measure of the two-measure phrase.

Which brings us to Mr. Barenboim's realization of those critical four measures.

First, he ignores Wagner's tempo marking entirely, and takes that opening ten-measure paragraph almost Alla breve. As if that weren't wrongheaded enough, he treats the tied half-note plus eighth open-string G in the first violins in the first measure of that repeated opening two-measure phrase almost as if it were a tied eighth plus sixteenth, thereby destroying utterly the effect intended by Wagner as indicated in the score.

Now, nothing could make those opening four measures and the remaining six of that ten-measure paragraph sound anything but doleful. That's a function of the notes themselves no matter what the tempo taken. But Wagner didn't intend to express the merely doleful. He intended to express an external and internal landscape of utter desolation and despair as we've noted above. A sympathetic reading of the score tells us that, and all one need do to realize in performance what Wagner intended is to follow his notation as written. Mr. Barenboim, however, and for reasons which elude us entirely, chose not to do so, and instead of evoking a landscape of utter desolation and despair, ended up evoking a landscape merely doleful which robs the Vorspiel of its special genius, and this closing act of the opera a fair measure of its opening gravitas which is a matter not to be taken lightly (NPI); ergo, this complaint. And if the complaint appears petty measured against the larger achievement, well, then, so be it. We lodge it that notwithstanding.

A Brief Note On Adams's Dr. Atomic

[Note: This post has been updated (2) as of 1:20 PM Eastern on 18 May. See below.]

We've just finished listening to today's Chicago Lyric Opera broadcast of its production of John Adams's opera, Dr. Atomic, the first time we've heard this work which had its premiere in San Francisco in 2005. The music is gorgeous, powerful, and Wagnerian-symphonic-rich throughout cum synthesizer-created soundscapes when dramatically called for; not at all what we expected. But as opera — as dramma per musica — the work fails utterly, its failure due entirely its largely prosaic, undramatic, clunky, and inept libretto by Peter Sellars (yes, that Peter Sellars) with largely prosaic, undramatic, clunky, and inept vocal lines by Adams to match (what else could they have been given what Adams had to work with?), all of which when taken together have all the drama, power, poetry, and evocative resonance of a hockey puck. With certain exceptions such as the beautifully lyrical Act I Muriel Rukeyser-, Baudelaire-laced colloquy between J. Robert Oppenheimer and his wife, Kitty, and the potent Act I close wherein Oppenheimer sings the terrible plea of the John Donne sonnet, "Batter my heart, three-person’d God", the libretto is, for the most part, little more than an artlessly strung together collection of artless quotes from contemporary documents and letters that, taken together, work to pimp Mr. Sellars's leftist ideologue view of this mythic, world-shattering event — in short, a libretto that's mostly unmitigated, pedestrian-grade, postmodern-style agitprop (surprise!). And as if to clinch the opera's postmodern provenance, there's its tacky, pop-culture-inspired title; a title more appropriate to a 1950s sci-fi B movie which, we're certain, is precisely why it was chosen.

And that's all a damn shame. Given the dramatic potential of the opera's mythically charged subject — a dramatic potential Adams's score mines musically and to powerful effect in spite of the leaden libretto and ineluctably inept vocal lines that blunt and work against it in almost every measure — and the richness of Adams's lush, polytonal, polyrhythmic score, its inept vocal lines notwithstanding, the work might have been made into an opera that could have stood comfortably alongside the very best. As it now stands, Adams has sold his score short — way short.

We'd very much like to see Adams do one of three things with this work (apart from losing its ridiculous, wannabe-cool title): 1) hire a real librettist to rewrite the text from top to bottom as an opera; 2) hire a real librettist to rewrite the text from top to bottom as an oratorio; or 3) chuck the present libretto altogether into the rubbish bin where it more properly belongs, and rework that glorious music into either an extended tone poem or three-movement dramatic symphony. It would be an aesthetic crime of the first magnitude to permit that music to remain hostage to the dead-weight libretto to which it's now shackled.

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Update (12:24 PM Eastern on 18 May): We've been admonished for passing judgment on Dr. Atomic without actually having seen the opera. The staging, we're told, makes all the difference.

Our answer to that criticism is that mounting a perceptibly flawed and badly cut diamond in the most exquisite of settings will neither mask nor mitigate its inherent flaws and make of it a stone of the first water.

An opera's libretto is the (music-)drama's dramatic armature (and we're here talking about opera that aspires to genuine dramma per musica, not opera as a pretext and platform for showcasing songbirds); that about which the (music-)drama is constructed. If that dramatic armature is fatally flawed, then the (music-)drama must ultimately collapse, and not even the most brilliant staging will serve to save it as dramma per musica.

From our first-time hearing, such is our impression of Dr. Atomic.

Update 2 (1:20 PM Eastern on 18 May): In a post titled, "Forgotten Symphony", composer and blogger Marcus Maroney of Sounds Like New writes:

I'm confused, though, about ACD's third "suggestion" at the end of his review, the one about how he wishes Adams would: "chuck the present libretto altogether into the rubbish bin where it more properly belongs, and rework that glorious music into either an extended tone poem or three-movement dramatic symphony." I'm confused mostly because ACD commented on Stephen Hicken's post about the premiere of the Dr. Atomic Symphony, premiered nearly a year ago.

Sonofagun. Forgotten symphony indeed. A clear case of cryptomnesia on our part. Even after following Marcus's link to Steve's post and reading our two-word comment there, it still didn't ring a bell.

Well, in any case, we're most pleased that John Adams saw fit to work this music into symphonic form, and we look forward to hearing the result when the work becomes available on CD.

Our thanks to Marcus for calling this to our attention.

Met Saturday Broadcast: Die Entführung aus dem Serail

We listened to the Met's Die Entführung this afternoon, and while we don't do reviews here of live opera broadcasts except in the special case of performances from the Bayreuther Festspiele, we do want to go on record, brief as it will be, as saying that this performance of Die Entführung — with its newly written or rewritten speaking parts nicely paced — was first-rate from beginning to end for the most part. On balance, the performance was just what a performance of this delicious Mozart bonbon should be. The singers were dramatically convincing and in fine Mozartian voice, also for the most part; the band — which surely has to be the best pit band in the business bar none — beyond mere praise; and conductor David Robertson a Mozartian marvel. His reading of this score today — which reading was our first experience of his Mozart — was sensitively and expressively nuanced and colored, his handling of ensemble at once precise and fluid, and his choice of tempi perfect throughout. In short, a reading fully worthy of Mozart and of this music.

We would have liked to have been in the house for this one.

Conspiracy Theory

I don’t care what the Met program listing says, or what the broadcast announcer announced. The Met substituted a ringer on the podium for the second act of this afternoon’s broadcast of Die Walküre. I’ve not a shadow of a doubt that Lorin Maazel was on the podium for Acts I and III. His infuriating and willfully quirky fingerprints were all over both acts with predictably deleterious effect. But Act II, if not altogether perfect (much of the Todesverkündigung flirted perilously with the ponderous in attempting the required grave and solemn, and Wotan’s final exit lacked the fury the drama and the music demand), was conducted by a Wagner conductor who knows his business even if not quite a possessor of that rarest of rarities, the “Wagner Gene”. By contrast, Maazel screwed up Act I royally by sentimentalizing almost all of it, and by fracturing this most perfect single act in all the Ring, and among the most perfect in all of opera, into a series of mini-episodes with no sense whatever of the sweep of the musico-dramatic arc of the whole. And he did violence to Act III by taking liberties of tempi that were simply egregious, and by altering Wagner’s score to the extent of interjecting his own full-measure-rests for the entire orchestra into that seamless, heart- and gut-wrenchingly sublime 24-measure orchestral sequence — perhaps the most heart- and gut-wrenching passage in all of opera — that follows Wotan’s, “Denn einer nur freie die Braut, der freier als ich, der Gott!” (For only one shall win the bride, one freer than I, the god!), and by so doing destroyed utterly the sequence's overwhelming emotional impact.

What’s that? You think my claiming the substitution of a podium ringer for Act II makes me out to be a nut case conspiracy theorist?

Oh yeah? Well, then, you come up with a more plausible explanation. I can’t.

Gioia Tells It Straight And In Your Face

Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Gioia, may not be a celebrity or otherwise famous, nor any great shakes as a poet, but as a university commencement speaker and pitchman for high culture and the arts he rocks.

[Today,] almost everything in our national culture, even the news, has been reduced to entertainment or altogether eliminated. The loss of recognition for artists, thinkers, and scientists has impoverished our culture in innumerable ways, but let me mention one. When virtually all of a culture's celebrated figures are in sports or entertainment, how few possible role models we offer the young. There are so many other ways to lead a successful and meaningful life that are not denominated by money or fame. Adult life begins in a child's imagination, and we've relinquished that imagination to the marketplace.

[...]

Everything now is entertainment. And the purpose of this omnipresent commercial entertainment is to sell us something. American culture has mostly become one vast infomercial.

I have a recurring nightmare. I am in Rome visiting the Sistine Chapel. I look up at Michelangelo's incomparable fresco of the "Creation of Man." I see God stretching out his arm to touch the reclining Adam's finger. And then I notice in the other hand Adam is holding a Diet Pepsi.

[...]

Don't get me wrong. I love entertainment, and I love the free market. I have a Stanford MBA and spent fifteen years in the food industry. I adore my big-screen TV. The productivity and efficiency of the free market is beyond dispute. It has created a society of unprecedented prosperity.

But we must remember that the marketplace does only one thing — it puts a price on everything.

RTWT here.

(Our thanks to ArtsJournal for the link.)

WFMT Press Release

Along with, we imagine, every other classical music blog in the blogosphere, we just received the following press release from Chicago's WFMT which we pass along for your information:

98.7WFMT Pays Tribute to Cellist, Conductor Mstislav Rostropovich

Listener Memories, Recordings and Rare Interviews Pre-empt Regular Music Schedule

Chicago, IL -- 98.7WFMT, Chicago's Classical Experience, is paying tribute to Russian musician and human rights activist Mstislav Rostropovich who died this morning in Moscow. Today, Friday April 27, and tomorrow morning, Saturday April 28, the station is airing recordings from its archives of Rostropovich cello performances and conducting various orchestras around the world. In addition, the station is airing voicemails and reading emails from listeners recounting memories of the world-renowned musician, who visited Chicago many times during his lifetime. Rare interviews have also been posted on wfmt.com.

The special tribute pre-empts previously scheduled musical programming.

Streaming is available at http://www.wfmt.com/

Imus And Nappy-Headed Ho’s

[Note: This post has been updated (4) as of 9:48 PM Eastern on 12 Apr. See below.]

I had my first taste of broadcaster Don Imus some eight years ago via the simulcast of his syndicated three-and-one-half-hour WFAN-AM (New York City) early-morning radio show (5:30-9:00 AM Eastern), "Imus In The Morning", on cable's MSNBC. It took me almost a year to grasp what the show was about because it seemed to me a puzzling, incongruous, even bizarre mix of vulgar, offensive, macho locker-room chatter and humor, all of it richly larded with nondiscriminatory, equal-opportunity insults, side by side with some of the sharpest, most penetrating political and pop cultural commentary to be found anywhere on network TV which regularly included interviews and discussions with some of this country's most respected journalists, politicians, writers, TV news personalities, and other newsmakers.

When I managed finally to grasp the peculiar genius of this brilliantly choreographed show, at the center of which is the curiously charming, even endearing character and personality of the often caustic Don Imus himself, I understood why for the past 30 years the man and the show have been one of the biggest draws and most successful shows in all of radio broadcasting. And the hallmark characteristic and cornerstone of Imus's curiously charming and endearing character and personality is without question his always blunt, straightforward, and unflinching honesty and integrity in everything in his public life, which is in large measure responsible for the absolute, and I think justifiable, belief of his vast audience, myself included, that Don Imus's public persona is virtually identical to what the man is in private. In short, WYSIWYG. What you see is what you get.

The above is prelude to my asserting my certain conviction that Imus's thoughtless (literally, thought-less), vulgar, offhandedly joking locker-room remark concerning the players on the all-black Rutgers University woman's basketball team that's raised such a furor and storm of protest over the last few days was, in fact, just that: merely a thoughtless, vulgar, offhandedly joking locker-room remark, and nothing more; least of all a purposeful racist or sexist slur, or an insult meant to wound.

Below is a video clip of Imus's apology for the remark, which apology is preceded by the offensive remark itself ("nappy-headed ho’s") in its original context wherein Imus is speaking on the phone with sportscaster and erstwhile "Imus In The Morning" regular, the often mindless Sid "Sidiot" Rosenberg). In the light of my above comments, see what you think. And when you're watching and listening, note, please, that the players on both teams are all black (if there are any white girls on either team, they don't seem to be in evidence in the video clip).

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Update (6:59 PM Eastern on 11 Apr): The appalling crucifixion this man is having inflicted upon him for his admittedly crude, vulgar, and repugnant but ultimately harmless remark is positively terrifying, and whole orders of magnitude more repugnant than the utterance itself (and if you're tempted or mindless enough to insist the remark was not ultimately harmless, then you're part of the problem — the very real and terrifying problem). I all but retched on witnessing on MSNBC that self-aggrandizing, grandstanding hypocrite, the Reverend Jessie "Hymietown" Jackson, assail Imus for his "racist" slur, and call for his firing declaring it's the only proper punishment for his "crime". Ditto that other paragon of virtue, the Reverend Al "Diamond Merchants" Sharpton, as well as dozens of others of the publicly visible leftist persuasion. The advertisers on Imus's morning show are jumping ship in droves in the wake of the vicious onslaught, and not on moral grounds either, but economic ones. That something like this could happen in this country in the 21st century after all we've learned from other countries and from previous centuries is not only egregiously shameful, but a red-light, alarm-bell warning of worse — much worse — to come.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Update 2 (2:56 AM Eastern on 12 Apr): Effective immediately, MSNBC drops from its schedule its 10-years-running simulcast of the "Imus In The Morning" show.

Craven little weasels — most particularly Chief Weasel Steve Capus, head of NBC News who made the final decision (watch the interview on the video linked in the above linked article).

Update 3 (6:07 PM Eastern on 12 Apr): CBS fires Imus. And the appalling beat goes on ... and on ... and on.

Craven little weasels.

Update 4 (9:48 PM Eastern on 12 Apr): New Jersey Governor John Corzine in critical but stable condition after being involved in a multi-car accident on the Garden State Parkway en route to a meeting with Imus and the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

Prodigy

The following mordant commentary is from a retrospective piece appearing in the January 1940 number of the Saturday Evening Post:

After being a celebrity ... in Dublin and London, he had returned home [the following year] expecting to be a Broadway celebrity. But he got to the Algonquin without being mobbed. He discovered people in the lobby not talking about him. In Times Square he found large groups of people not mentioning him. A celebrity has a negative or an inverted sense of hearing: he can hear his name not being mentioned at forty paces. Everywhere he went, nonmention of his name drummed on his ear. He was bewildered. [...] By rights, [theater moguls] the Shuberts should have met him at the docks.

The celebrity in question was Orson Welles the first volume of whose wonderfully written and meticulously researched biography, Orson Welles: The Road To Xanadu, by Simon Callow I've just begun to read. I've gotten through only the first one-hundred-and-fifty pages, but already the life of the young Orson Welles has left me all but breathless so varied and broad in experience, and so rich in accomplishment it was.

The trip abroad referred to in the above quoted retrospective had taken Welles to Ireland where, traveling alone, and after myriad adventures in Galway and the country's West Coast, he'd set off for Dublin, and on arrival immediately presented himself to the directors of Dublin's famous Gate Theater to whom he announced he was available. His offer of services was duly accepted, and he was given the role of the middle-aged Duke Karl Alexander, the crucial second leading role in the play, Jew Süss, which had had a hit run in London's storied West End some four years previous.

Welles's performance was a triumph — a genuine phenomenon — eliciting delirious applause and cheering cum standing ovations from audiences, and unanimous raves in the theater critical press. "Interesting at every moment," said The Herald. "The young American actor received nothing short of a personal triumph," declared Dublin Opinion. "A touch of humanity and simplicity in [the Duke's] swinishness which in less expert hands might have been lost ... Orson Welles captured it magnificently," trumpeted The Independent. And this from J.J. Hayes, the New York Times's man in Dublin:

The Duke is played by a young American actor [Orson Welles] whose performance is astonishingly fine. [...] Dublin is eager to see him in other roles.... His coming will probably lead to the production of Coriolanus which was shelved ... because a suitable man could not be found for the title part ... 35 years since it was done in Ireland by Sir Frank Benson.

The last bit about Coriolanus was fed to Hayes by The Gate Theater Press Office, the presiding officer of which was ... Orson Welles.

All this took place in 1931. Orson Welles had just turned sixteen.

Be There Or Be Square!

For those of you who don't know of its existence, this is one great idea, and too long coming.

Be there or be square!

An Open Letter To Peter Gelb

Dear Mr. Gelb:

My name will be totally unfamiliar to you, and so by way of introduction let me tell you I'm the writer of a blog called Sounds & Fury which is concerned exclusively with the arts generally, and with opera and classical music in particular. Within the so-called blogosphere I'm fairly notorious for being, shall we say, blunt in my opinions, and have been labeled, among other charming epithets, a po-faced reactionary for my seemingly conservative and elitist views, and as well for my intransigent opposition to the pop-cultural thinking that today has so alarmingly insinuated itself into and contaminated all the domains of art.

Given that brief background, it should come as no surprise to you when I tell you that I was initially suspicious of, even hostile to, your appointment as the Met's new general manager. After you assumed your new post, however, and I saw more clearly what you had in mind for the Met, I've been consistently supportive of the new direction in which you're taking the company in order to attract a new and younger audience for opera, even when in the implementation of that new direction the result has been an unmitigated train wreck (the Letterman Show debacle).

I'm addressing you today concerning your revamping of the format of the weekly Metropolitan Opera Saturday-afternoon radio broadcast intermission features, including a revamping of the format of the role of the "Voice Of The Met", so to put it, which role was, to my knowledge, first, and for a considerable time, filled by the incomparable Milton Cross, and which today, up until very recently, has been filled by the getting-lots-better Margaret Juntwait. And what I have to say is quite simply: you really have to put a stop to it. The new format, I mean. You really do, as it's an egregious and even damaging embarrassment no matter how well intentioned.

While I understand fully the attract-a-new-and-younger-audience-to-opera thinking behind the new format, its all too palpable unintended consequences far outweigh any gain that might be realized from its employment, if gain there is to be had. Generally speaking, that format comes across as a lame aping — even parody — of the multi-announcer live coverage of a network TV sporting event, complete with the requisite inane, intrusive chatter, and vapid, prole-pandering, locker-room star "interviews." As I say, I understand fully the thinking behind all this, but opera — not to even speak of the Met as an institution — will gain nothing by being made to appear no more important than a mere sporting event, and no more dignified or elevated, either — in short, will gain nothing by being made to appear no more significant than a lowest-common-denominator entertainment.

This, I suggest, is, by any measure, a manifestly false and at-cross-purposes message to be sending, and you ought therefore to cease and desist before this well-intentioned revamping of an honored, honorable, and longstanding Met tradition inflicts damage that, if not irreversible, will require a Herculean — not to say expensive — effort to repair.

I therefore beg you to reconsider your ill-considered going forward with this new format.

Sincerely,

A.C. Douglas

Way T'Go, Guys!

You all know Philadelphia, right? Staid, conservative, provincial Philadelphia. The Philadelphia of "I once went to Philadelphia, but it was closed" fame.

No more.

The Philadelphia Orchestra, my hometown band, is now, it would appear, on the cutting edge of the digital future of the recorded classical music concert.

You may have a hard time spotting them from your seat in Verizon Hall [new home of the Philadelphia Orchestra], but the recent installation of seven high-definition video cameras — a visionary gift from the Joseph and Marie Field Foundation — has put The Philadelphia Orchestra on the cutting edge of video technology and digital media distribution.

These cameras transmit video to a control room at the back of Verizon Hall, where the cameras are controlled by two technicians using a sophisticated system of robotics. With this system in place, the Orchestra can produce high-quality video for a wide range of applications, including the use of live video in the concert hall, traditional or high-definition television broadcasts, the creation of DVDs, Internet streaming and digital video downloads, and pioneering Internet2 applications.

Who woulda thunk it.

Way t'go, guys!

RTWT here.

Promise Of The Right Kind Of Future

What most promises that the domain of classical music can look forward to a bright future entirely on its own terms despite repeated squawking by legions of Chicken Littles to the contrary, and not to the corrupt, pop-culture-denatured future envisioned for it by the perverse, pop-culture-contaminated imaginings of some music pundits?

Peter Gelb's innovations at the Met? Glowing anecdotal accounts of success by well-intentioned, warm 'n fuzzy but ineluctably effete Take A Friend To A Concert type campaigns? The widespread downloading of classical music from the Web?

None of the above. It's this. If you've never heard it, or heard of it, it's time you did. It can be heard on WQXR at 7 o'clock EST every Saturday evening at wqxr.com, or on your local NPR outlet in many areas of the country. It's easily one of the most encouraging and most delightful hours in the world of classical music today.

I promise you.

Pass It On

(Tip of the hat to Musical Perceptions)

It May Not Be NPR, But...

Sirius Satellite Radio may not be NPR, but it ain't chopped liver either.

Sirius Satellite Radio and the Metropolitan Opera plan to announce Wednesday that they will launch a new channel to broadcast four performances a week during the company's 32-week season, part of the company's vast media expansion under new general manager Peter Gelb.

Metropolitan Opera Radio will debut with Monday's opening-night gala of a new production of Puccini's "Madama Butterfly." When not broadcasting live performances, the channel will air operas from the Met's archive of 1,500 radio broadcasts that date to 1931.

[...]

"The Met right now is the talk of the opera world, I would say, because of all these new initiatives," Gelb said. "All of these initiatives have one common purpose, which is to improve the Met's position by educating audiences and increasing the box office."

RTWT here.

The Canadian Way

All last week I read and listened to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's coverage and live streaming audio webcast (on CBC Radio Two) of Canada's first complete cycle of Wagner's epic, Der Ring des Nibelungen, which inaugurated Canada's first opera house, Toronto's spanking new Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. Both events were clearly and justifiably a source of enormous pride for Canadians, and it would be nothing less than surly of me to serve up any critical comment here concerning the performances themselves and so I won't except to say that all involved in the Canadian Opera Company production acquitted themselves admirably if not notably (although some few things were in fact decidedly notable, but I'm speaking here generally only), and produced nothing to be ashamed of in any way, musically and dramatically speaking.

(The staging is another matter, and from the production photos I've seen, the Konzepts of the four directors, one for each of the music-dramas, are all just about what one might expect from the Konzept approach to the staging of the Ring, and regular readers of this blog know exactly and in gruesome detail just how I feel about that pernicious breed of Ring staging. Here are some photos from the Götterdämmerung production that will give you a taste of what went on in that department for this Ring cycle.)

What I do want to comment on, however, is the extraordinary coverage and the extraordinary special programming* given this week-long double event by the CBC. And my calling them extraordinary doesn't even begin to do them justice.

To get a sense of it all (all of it commercial-free, by the way), first take a look at this special section set up by the CBC on its website to promote the week-long double event. Then take a look at this special-for-the-occasion CBC programming schedule for the entire week. Can you imagine national coverage and special programming of that sort and scale dealing with something having to do with the arts, much less something having to do with so esoteric and "elitist" an event as the opening of a new opera house and the presentation of a new production of Wagner's epic tetralogy, produced by any national broadcaster in this country? I certainly can't. In this country, the Second Coming has a greater probability of coming to pass before Americans would ever experience such coverage and programming via our national broadcast media.

One might argue that Canada's state-funded way of doing such things is inimical to our market-driven, private-capital model which controls how we Americans go about handling such matters, and so the comparison is unfair.

Bullshit. We're overwhelmingly the richest country in the world, and all that's lacking here is the will, not the cash — petty cash at that as expenditures of tax dollars go.

We Americans are in the habit of poking good-natured fun at our Canadian neighbors generally, but we've much to learn from them, and rather than casting good-natured gibes their way we would do better — lots better — in this domain at least, to pay them close and earnest attention. In this domain they make us, collectively, appear to be not much more enlightened and cosmopolitan than a just-off-the-turnip-truck yokel.

PBS, NPR, and their Congressional federal funds allocators take serious note.

* A sidebar personal plea concerning programming to the Met's new general manager, Peter Gelb: I hear tell that you can be a ruthless son of a bitch when the occasion calls for it. Well, engage that son-of-a-bitch mode if you must, but by any and all means necessary steal from the CBC one Stuart Hamilton to be quizmaster for the Met's weekly broadcast Opera Quiz. The man's the natural and perfect successor to the late and sorely-missed Edward Downes, and we need him. Badly.