Sounds & Fury

Los Angeles Opera's James Conlon

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 2:44 PM Eastern on 30 May. See below.]

In a lengthy S&F post of February 2009 titled, "The Upcoming Los Angeles Opera Ring", we asked ourself this question concerning LAO music director James Conlon:

How competent is Mr. Conlon to conduct the Ring as staged music-drama as opposed to orchestral excerpts?

and answered it by writing:

Our provisional answer ... is not a happy one. Nothing of what we know of Mr. Conlon's work leads us to believe he's up to the formidable task of conducting a staged Ring with anything more than mere technical excellence. Needless to say, that's not nearly enough, but we're willing to believe that he may rise to the challenge once confronted.

As of late this afternoon, we have a less provisional, more definitive answer to the question (or, rather, as definitive an answer as can be gotten from an MP3-quality webcast* of an LAO-approved recording of a single live performance of the LAO's new production of Das Rheingold auditioned over a typically crappy computer sound system). And that answer is that Maestro Conlon's reading displayed a thorough knowledge of the score, which score he conducted with admirable technical excellence, drawing technically flawless performances from both orchestra and singers alike (we were especially impressed by the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, and most especially by the orchestra's brass section which performed splendidly, and the horns most notably so). But as we previously remarked, that's not nearly enough where a Wagner music-drama is concerned.

So, what was amiss with this performance of Das Rheingold? To state it in short: Maestro Conlon's conspicuous lack of an intuitive sense of Wagnerian rhetoric. This performance was polished entirely too smooth throughout. One might even go so far as to say the performance was sedate (or as sedate as a technically excellent performance of this work's music is capable of being); a troubling quality most distressingly apparent in the lynchpin episode of Wotan's theft of Alberich's ring.

The question then remains, Can one really fault a conductor merely because he lacks an intuitive sense of Wagnerian rhetoric? The first answer that wants to escape our lips is, Yes, one can when the performance of a Wagner music-drama is being assessed. But when we think back on the technical excellence of this performance which was proof positive the conductor knew the score thoroughly and was able to communicate its requirements to the performers, then we're not at all sure such a conductor should be faulted merely for his lack of what is, after all, a specialized and peculiar gift; one that's essentially innate and can neither be taught nor learned in the ordinary sense of those words, which gift we long ago dubbed metaphorically the "Wagner Gene".

It's a question difficult to answer fairly and neatly, and so one must be content to spell things out in one's assessment of such a conductor as we've above done, and leave the reader of that assessment to draw his own conclusions regarding the matter.

* The webcast was by Los Angeles public radio station KUSC, "the largest and most listened-to public radio and non-profit classical music station in the country" which is webcasting recorded live performances of each of the four music dramas of the LAO Ring each Saturday at 1:00 PM (EDT), this Saturday having been the first in the webcast series which series will continue over the next three Saturdays.

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Update (2:44 PM Eastern on 30 May): Several eMail missives have admonished us for saying nothing about the individual singers in this recorded performance. We suggested to our admonishers that they again read the title of this piece. It was NOT intended as a detailed critical review of the performance, but as a commentary on how conductor James Conlon acquitted himself as a conductor of a staged Wagner music-drama, and we noted the performance of the singers generally within that context.

We trust the foregoing will forestall any further admonitory e-missives along this line.

A New Discovery

As we noted in this post, since its transfer to WNYC we've been forced to listen to WQXR via streaming transmission on the Web as we're now outside the reach of QXR's new and puny 600 watt signal, and that, interestingly, we've actually found ourself listening far more often to QXR's less-often-heard-, new-music-programmed sister Web stream, WQXR Q2, than to QXR itself. We must say it's something of a novel experience for us to have to look at a printed playlist to identify what's being performed, or even merely to identify the name of the composer, but that's how it's gone with us these past couple weeks since listening regularly to QXR Q2.

And what have we learned by this experience? Lots, actually, but we won't bore you with details except to note that we've discovered (that is, a discovery for us) a composer the works of whom if not his name were entirely unknown to us previously; discovered by the circumstance that every time we heard a piece that totally arrested our attention it turned out to be a work by this composer.

And the composer in question? Finland's Einojuhani Rautavaara, a composer who, for reasons which elude our current comprehension, didn't merit even passing mention in Alex Ross's fairly comprehensive, The Rest Is Noise.

Lordy! What consistently rich, evocative music comes from this man's pen. We can now see that this new discovery of ours will cost us mucho bucks in the near future; bucks which at present are in perilously short supply.

Ah well. We'll just have to abandon our daily $25/lb Norwegian smoked salmon breakfast for a few months (a practice we have no business indulging in in the first place given our parlous financial condition) to free up the required cash. Shouldn't be that difficult to manage. It's merely an unnecessary extravagance, after all. (Why does that have the ring of Famous Last Words?)

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....

The Future Of The Symphony Concert?

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 7:45 PM Eastern on 25 Nov. See below.]

We're somewhat embarrassed admitting this, longtime concertgoer that we are, but after clicking-over fifteen minutes before concert start to the free Brahms concert by the Berlin Philharmoniker last night (Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4), webcast via their Digital Concert Hall, we felt the same sense of heightened anticipation and exhilarating social interaction we feel when attending an actual live concert, that sense of being there persisting throughout the entire concert. And that feeling was due almost entirely the superbly photographed, miked, choreographed, and flawlessly reproduced high-def presentation, both visual and audio, which we watched and listened to in full-screen-display mode from beginning to end using a high-bandwidth transmission (low- and medium-bandwidth transmission were also available). Even though the program was a bit too much Brahms for us at one sitting (OK, a lot too much Brahms), we watched and listened through the entire webcast precisely for the purpose of assessing the totality of the experience of a digital presentation of a symphony concert, and found it remarkably (and unexpectedly) satisfying even though our 17" CRT display is ancient technology, and our computer's speakers nothing but three-inch-paper-cone wonders.

Is this the future of the symphony concert? We have to say we're afraid it is notwithstanding that in our estimation no reproduction, no matter how superbly presented, reproduced, and received, can equal or replace the in-hall experience of a live performance.

But, then, perhaps that's just us. You know, a diehard, old fogey reactionary, as we've been called, right down to the bone.

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Update (7:45 PM Eastern on 25 Nov): If you balked at our use of the phrase, Berlin Philharmoniker, read this before firing off an eMail of objection.

Free Concert By The Berlin Philharmoniker

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 7:45 PM Eastern on 25 Nov. See below.]

We've just received from the Berlin Philharmoniker on behalf of the Philharmoniker and its longtime sponsor, the Deutsche Bank, the following press release. And, yes, we've signed up. We recommend you do so as well. Sounds like a splendid way to spend a November Monday evening.

Deutsche Bank will present a free webcast of the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle performing Brahms’ Third and Fourth Symphonies on Monday, 9 November 2009 at 8 PM EST (GMT-5) on its website. To register for the free webcast, follow the link to the webcast on the Deutsche Bank homepage.

Click here for the Deutsche Bank website (www.db.com).

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Update (7:45 PM Eastern on 25 Nov): If you balked at our use of the phrase, Berlin Philharmoniker, read this before firing off an eMail of objection.

The Berlin Philharmoniker's Digital Concert Hall

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 7:45 PM Eastern on 25 Nov. See below.]

For those of you not already acquainted with it, we'd like to direct your attention to what is almost certainly the Web's most beautiful and beautifully conceived, designed, and organized classical music website: the Berlin Philharmoniker's Digital Concert Hall. It's a largely pay-to-view operation that presents the Berlin Philharmoniker in live concert in high definition video and audio, and, considering what's on offer, ticket prices are cheap, cheap, cheap (about $15 USD per concert). Monthly passes and season subscriptions are available as well, also cheap, cheap, cheap. Registration is for free. Our U.S. symphony orchestras should all take their cue from this website, and put up websites of their own of the same type and quality. In our estimation, no single marketing tactic can equal it in promoting both the orchestra and classical music.

Do click over and take a look/listen.

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Update (7:45 PM Eastern on 25 Nov): If you balked at our use of the phrase, Berlin Philharmoniker, read this before firing off an eMail of objection.

Fireworks And Beethoven

We've just finished watching a video of Duddy's (that's Gustavo Dudamel to you) much and widely ballyhooed inaugural concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic as its new Music Director, the video courtesy of the LAP's website (and with thanks to classical music critic and blogger Robert D. Thomas of Class Act for the heads-up and the link). The single work given (or at least the single work on the video) was Beethoven's No. 9, and it was not, how shall we put it, a performance for the ages — a performance twice jarringly interrupted by inappropriate applause (don't get us started!) — notwithstanding the fireworks show accompanying an encore of the choral section of the last movement. (The concert, we hasten to add for those who've been living under a rock for the past couple months, was given free at the Hollywood Bowl, and, no, we're not going to give you all the gory details of the performance. Watch and listen to the video for yourselves if you're interested.)

But there's time for stellar performances by Duddy and the LAP of No. 9 and of other great music. What was extraordinary about this concert was not the performance or the fireworks in the sky, but the fireworks in the audience. One would have thought Duddy a rock star of the very first magnitude so charged-up and unrestrainedly enthusiastic were they. And this for a mere conductor of a symphony orchestra!

Go figure.

Things seem to be looking up thanks to a gifted, charismatic, 28-year-old, afro-coiffed Latino.

Who woulda thought.

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.

Has It Always Been Thus?

After hearing the rousing audience reception of Die Walküre tonight, we're forced to the sad conclusion that the Met's audience has got to be among the most undiscerning opera audiences in the world.

Has it always been thus?

Our memory is not what it used to be, but we don't think so.

Carter, Barenboim, Levine, and Rose

Here's a video of an extraordinary conversation which yesterday aired on an extraordinary segment of (and for) PBS's Charlie Rose Show in celebration of the 100th birthday of composer Elliott Carter: A Conversation With Elliott Carter, Daniel Barenboim, and James Levine. Carter showed himself to be still sharp as a tack mentally, and, if you ask us, doesn't look a day over 80.

For us, one of the most telling moments of that conversation was Barenboim's explanation of why Carter's notoriously complex atonal music is perceived by audiences as genuine music. His explanation — which runs from 13:25-15:10 on the video — although expressed more eloquently, sounded remarkably like what we had to say in our 24 April 2008 post, "On Music And Gibberish"; viz.,

It's not atonality per se — i.e., the music's lack of a triadic tonal center(s); a "home base," so to speak — [that makes so much of atonal music sound so unmusical; even non-music], nor is it the almost unrelenting, unresolved harmonic dissonance that's the hallmark of the atonal. It's something much more fundamental: the lack of a perceptible and coherent musical narrative from work's beginning to end, which is to say the lack of the work's saying comprehensibly something beyond and exclusive of commentary on its own processes and methods which are — or ought to have been and be — but mere tools used in its making.

[...]

To put the matter more bluntly and much less eloquently, a composition absent a perceptible and coherent musical narrative from beginning to end is gibberish and not music.

[...]

And that's the test — the touchstone — that determines whether a work as a whole is genuine music or gibberish. Flashes of musical brilliance — even a sustained series of such flashes from work's start to finish — simply won't do to make that work a work of genuine music unless those flashes conspire to produce a perceptible and coherent musical narrative [from work's beginning to end].

[...]

That's genuine music's sine qua non — even its very definition.

This exceptional 32-minute video is well worth your time viewing in toto.

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 the 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.

Podcast: Beaux Arts Trio's Final American Concert

This PR release just received from American Public Media:

(St. Paul, Minn.) August 27, 2008—Capping a 53-year career, one of the world’s best-loved chamber ensembles, the renowned Beaux Arts Trio, played its final American concert on Thursday, August 21. American Public Media’s Performance Today is offering an exclusive podcast of this historic concert. Beginning on Wednesday, August 27, the concert at Massachusetts’ Tanglewood Music Festival will be available in its entirety, in two segments, by visiting www.performancetoday.org.

Led for more than half a century by pianist Menahem Pressler, the legendary Beaux Arts Trio will disband after a series of European concerts in September. With the concert at Tanglewood, the ensemble returned to its place of origin — it played its first concerts there in 1955. The occasion also marked a return to repertoire it made American audiences familiar with over the decades: Franz Schubert’s magisterial Opus 99 and Opus 100 piano trios. The group’s three encores will also be included in the podcast.

Fred Child, host of Performance Today, served as host for an exclusive live Webcast of the August 21 concert, and he’ll provide commentary, features and interviews with the members of the trio: pianist Menahem Pressler, violinist Daniel Hope and cellist Antonio Meneses.

Worldwide Compendium

We've just been made aware of what turns out to be a valuable online classical music resource. It's a new website called Classical DJ, and the name is most apt. Classical DJ is a worldwide compendium of online commercial (broadcast) classical music radio stations neatly organized and hyperlinked for your convenience. We've added Classical DJ to our exclusive listing of Culture Sites on our left-hand sidebar.

(Note to those contemplating eMailing us to announce the existence of a new website or blog and requesting a link on Sounds & Fury in exchange for a link to S&F on the new website or blog.

Although we're most gratified when linked to by others, we don't engage in link trading on S&F. We almost dumped the eMail that came to us announcing the above website as it suggested such a link exchange. If you have a new website or blog that you think would be of interest or use to S&F's readers, by all means let us know about it. If we think the website or blog worthy of a listing on S&F, we'll list it. If not, not, regardless of whether you post a link to S&F on your website or blog or not. We trust we make ourselves clear.)

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.

Brief Note On The BBC Proms Götterdämmerung

We listened to the BBC Radio 3 live webcast of the BBC Proms concert performance of Wagner's Götterdämmerung today, and the conductor, Donald Runnicles, acquitted himself most splendidly for the most part as did the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers, and BBC Symphony Chorus. While we're not ready to declare Mr. Runnicles a card-carrying member of that rarest of conductor breeds, a possessor of the "Wagner Gene" (we'd need to hear his readings of the rest of the Ring and of Tristan before we could even consider doing that), his showing today was most encouraging in that direction.

As for today's solo singers (see above link for the cast list), they were all, also for the most part, just competent — when they weren't being thoroughly dreadful, that is. Their best showing was seemingly reserved for Act III in which all the solo singers did their very best work of the day.

As we've here several times before noted, in those cases where the opera is a genuine example of opera as dramma per musica and therefore more than merely a showcase for songbirds, we just know there has to be a way to do opera without any solo singers whatsoever.

We're still working on it.

Opening Day

[Note: This post has been updated (3) as of 4:50 PM Eastern on 25 Jul. See below.]

Today is the opening day of the 2007 Bayreuther Festspiele with a new production of Die Meistersinger directed by Wagner great-granddaughter and potential heir to the directorship of the Festival, Katharina Wagner, kicking off the festivities. The audio of the performance will be streamed live on a number of outlets beginning at 9:55 AM EST. Click on the appropriate entry in our schedule on the right sidebar for full details.

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Update (12:46 PM Eastern on 25 Jul): Leave it to a pro like Alex Ross to find a really chock full of information and pics site relating to this.

Update 2 (3:07 PM Eastern on 25 Jul): Here's a revealing video of a rehearsal for this new production of Meistersinger; revealing even if one can't understand German. On the evidence of the video, the Konzept, from the little I can grasp of it from this brief fragment, appears not altogether ridiculous to me. Here are some stills.

Update 3 (4:50 PM Eastern on 25 Jul): And now for the obligatory critique of the performance musically.

«yawn»

Chorus wasn't bad, though, and Vogt as Walther, although his German tenor is too light and Italianate-sounding for the role, was pretty good. I trust Herr Weigle, however, has employment on the podium in other than Wagnerian venues. (Late Note (26 July, 3:41 AM Eastern): Alex Ross also has some postmortem thoughts on the performance musically in an update to this post.)

For press reports and reaction to the production, see here.

2007 Bayreuther Festspiele Live Webcasts (Administrative Note)

The schedule for the live webcasts of the opening week of the 2007 Bayreuther Festspiele is now up at the top of our right sidebar. Follow the links to see the available webcasts as well as the cast list for each opera.

Yeah, Right

We suspect the following somehow got its data packets reshuffled or rerouted somewhere in cyberspace, and what was supposed to show up online in the pages of The Onion instead got routed to The New York Times:

In an unusually blunt session [at the headquarters of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers] today, several of Hollywood’s highest-ranking executives called for the end of the entertainment industry’s decades-old system of paying what are called residuals to writers, actors and directors for the re-use of movie and television programs after their initial showings.

The executives stopped short of saying they would demand an immediate end to residual payments in the upcoming, probably difficult negotiations with writers, actors and directors. But they were emphatic in calling for the dismantling of a system under which specific payments are made when movies and shows are released on DVD, shown abroad or otherwise resold. Instead, they want to pool such revenue and recover their costs before sharing any of the profit with the talent.

Yeah, right. When pigs fly maybe.

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.

An Embarrassment Of Riches

Not only is she the most phenomenally gifted fiddler to appear on the solo concert scene since Heifetz and Milstein, she's intelligent, charming, beautiful, and a first-rate and knowledgeable musician. We're speaking, of course, of Anne-Sophie Mutter whose fiddle playing is a whole order of magnitude beyond her formidably gifted fellow concert fiddlers of which there's perhaps more in number today than at any time in the past century, and most of them female (What's up with that?).

The above remarks are occasioned by our stumbling upon a recording of an excellent half-hour interview with Ms. Mutter by WQXR's Jeff Spurgeon this past March which can be heard here (Windows Media Player or RealPlayer required).

Well worth your time.