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More on Competitions - competitors had better babe-up!

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Posted on July 2, 2015 at 09:38:03
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I guess I missed this article (link below) when it first came out in 2013. The methodology seems a bit dubious to me, but. . . whatever. . .

BTW, the first picture in the article is of Alexandra Conunova, the babe violinist from Moldova, whom I referred to in my post below about the Tchaikovsky Competition. (She tied for the Bronze.)

 

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RE: More on Competitions - competitors had better babe-up!, posted on July 2, 2015 at 12:07:33
One of several objections I had to the conclusion claimed from this study when it was mentioned in an earlier thread here, is that it might really be indicating not that what judges see is more important than what they hear, but that what they see is a crucial tiebreaker when what they hear is about equal in quality.

Rather than comparing three finalists, let's compare the ultimate winner to players eliminated in the first round, or to applicants rejected from the competition altogether.

And imo visual cues are a perfectly reasonable tiebreaker. If the performer's face turns purple and sweat starts pouring from his face, the audience might enjoy the performance less. It seemed to work for Buddy Rich, though. ;)

 

I wonder how Beethoven would have fared today..., posted on July 2, 2015 at 14:28:50
It was said that they laughed at Beethoven's funky dress and demeanor as he ascended the stage, but "... nobody laughed when he sat down at the piano." Priorities!

I would hope that we are still capable of being as generous today.

 

No babes in the finals of the Tchaikovsky (piano section) either, posted on July 2, 2015 at 15:32:16
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In fact, I'd say that the women who got through to the second round out of the first (Mazo, Kociuban) weren't really babes either. So maybe we should give kudos to the judges for their "integrity" in not allowing a pretty face to sway their decisions. ;-)

And despite the best efforts of the marketers and publicists, I think we (as listeners) are still doing OK in assessing musical skill and insight these days. Sure, someone whom we might consider a pretty marginal musician will occasionally get through with a big career, but, by and large, the folks making classical recordings these days seem pretty competent - at least to me. The only thing I regret is that the size of the classical audience is not large enough to support a lot of other deserving musicians who IMHO could also have careers.

 

Well said. nt, posted on July 2, 2015 at 15:50:33

 

plenty of marginalia, posted on July 2, 2015 at 16:59:40
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Despite the financial struggles encountered by orchestras in the past decade, here in the U.S. there are still many more orchestras performing than in any previous era in our country's history. In addition to the great city orchestras, there are mid-sized city orchestras, regional orchestras, community orchestras, university orchestras, summer festivals, and many occasions featuring smaller ensembles.

Yes, there are many "other deserving musicians" but they are greatly outnumbered by those of average talent making their way through the many opportunities available today. And in fact, although I do agree that there are many top tier musicians performing and recording today, the unceasing river of recordings that are of marginal quality is unabated.

Yes, I do believe there are supremely talented individuals who never quite make it to the top professionally. But is that really any different from any other undertaking? I think it is also true of arts and crafts, other performing arts, fiction and literature, teaching, whatever. But that does not mean these musicians have no avenue for performing. They just don't achieve stardom -- and other, less talented musicians receive accolades they don't deserve.

We can say it isn't fair, but I'm not sure there's much we can do about it. I sit through many hours of good but not notable performance, but occasionally am impressed by a real talent who deserves more than s/he has received. If I were really wealthy, would I find a way to promote their talent? Of course I would.

But that doesn't change the facts. The "average" ability of musicians today is very high. We can enjoy good music, well performed, often. It is all around us. It takes something more than that to get to the top, and the "something more" is often not talent.

"Life without music is a mistake" (Nietzsche)

 

RE: " News: Study suggests that judgement of music competitions is led more by sight than sound"..., posted on July 2, 2015 at 17:19:30
Ivan303
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Who would have guessed THAT?




First they came for the dumb-asses
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a dumb-ass

 

Totally Agree With the Article.........., posted on July 2, 2015 at 17:58:01
Todd Krieger
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I knew someone who was enamored with a certain performer (won't name names), he often watched videos of the performer on YouTube. At a later time, I played a couple "audio only" clips of the performer, taken straight from the videos. He thought the performances were nothing special.

Whenever I do a video recommendation, I almost always run the "audio only" test, just to be sure what I thought I was hearing wasn't being influenced by what I was seeing. I've occasionally refrained from recommending a performance after realizing what I heard was influenced too much by what I saw.

 

RE: Totally Agree With the Article.........., posted on July 2, 2015 at 19:16:50
That's funny. I never use YouTube for music listening (yuck), in fact I pretty much never watch and only listen to music unless I'm at a live performance. So I'll take the fat and ugly great performers any day.

I guess there are many who are as interested in what they see as what they hear, especially with today's technology. That would also help explain the declining interest in classical music, jazz, and anything else that benefits from careful, intelligent listening.

 

Yes - that's a very good methodology, posted on July 2, 2015 at 22:12:38
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And if I may get off topic a bit here (but related to your specific post), I think we've all had the experience of driving in our cars and tuning to a station midway through a performance (i.e., not having heard the announcement of the performers), and being so impressed by what we hear that we have to pull off the road to hear the rest of the performance as well as the post-performance identification of the participants.

I had one of those experiences just a week ago with the Beethoven First Symphony, which I tuned to midway through the first movement. I kept thinking to myself, "Wow! This is totally outstanding! The balance, the verve, the accentuation, the phrasing - everything!". And I did pull off the road to hear the last movement and the announcement. It turned out to be Rene Leibowitz and the RPO - a great recording from the 60's. I actually had that CD already in my collection (in its Chesky CD incarnation), but for whatever reason, hearing it as an unidentified performance in my car made me appreciate it even more! These experiences are also useful sometimes in getting past one's musical preconceptions and prejudices.

EDIT: I just checked the price on Amazon for that Chesky CD. Used copies are starting at $113.07! But I'm sure I've seen those performances available on Spotify. And some folks contend we're not going to be streaming most of our music in a few years? ;-)

 

Yup - YouTube can only reveal so much [nt], posted on July 2, 2015 at 22:20:32
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Car tunes, posted on July 3, 2015 at 05:12:08
Amphissa
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Ah, but then, music often sounds different in a car than it does in any other environment. Many stations compress the audio. Those that don't, the dynamic range of the audio is often not ideal in the auto environment, and the surround sound is not like other listening environments.


"Life without music is a mistake" (Nietzsche)

 

RE: Yes - that's a very good methodology, posted on July 3, 2015 at 05:18:47
I've seen the complete Leibowitz Beethoven symphony set on LP for not too much money. On CD too, I think.

I had the same experience with my car radio listening to a great Schubert Arpeggione sonata. I thought I was hearing a new young cello sensation. Maybe even a babe, who knows?

But it turned out to be a new reissue of Rostropovich and Britten.

 

Performing art divorced from performance, posted on July 3, 2015 at 05:58:10
Amphissa
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It's interesting that music is a performing art, and yet, in our modern times, we often divorce it from actual performance. Studio recordings are far from "live" performance, and recordings of actual performances are listened to without the visual aspects of attending the performance.

Does this ability to divorce the audio from the visual enhance, undermine, or distort the *performance* aspect of music as a performing art? I suppose it is rather the same as watching dance without the "distraction" of the accompanying audio, dance as just pure "body in motion" in silence. Anyone who has done this (and I do with modern dance sometimes) has a very different experience of the art. Is it more "pure" divorced from sound? Some dance is intentionally performed without music, other dance is performed with accompanying sound effects that doesn't really qualify (at least to me) as music.

I find that, with opera, I must have the visual. I cannot stand opera as an audio-only experience. I enjoy attending live performances of music, because I enjoy the visual aspect of music as a performing art as well. But I agree that the visual makes for a different experience of the music. We can often overlook or forgive weaknesses in the music-specific aspects because we are engaged in the visual as part of the larger experience. We make allowances for the deficiencies of audio in a less than perfect venue and we are more forgiving of errant notes and odd noises.

But I agree with your point, Todd. With the abundance of options available for music, separating the audio from the visual makes sense when trying to make judgments of the music alone. Since I rarely actually *watch* videos on YouTube, mostly just having the music playing while I do other things online, I don't get caught up in that very often.

In fact, it's only when the music I'm hearing is something special that I will then actually choose to view the performance, pulled in to see the musicians playing.

"Life without music is a mistake" (Nietzsche)

 

Well, I doubt we'll ever know..., posted on July 3, 2015 at 06:59:58
... exactly what the music meant to people back in the day. Your post reminds me of this. Performances can be re-created but social events cannot.

"Why divorce performing art from performance?" Good question that begs another question: Why is so much of the most popular classical music of the 18th and 19th centuries so rarely listened to today?

 

All good points - that's one reason why you have to pull over and turn the motor off [nt] ;-), posted on July 3, 2015 at 08:37:47
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RE: Totally Agree With the Article.........., posted on July 3, 2015 at 10:37:22
Analog Scott
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Over at the Steve Hoffman forums I used to set up blind comparisons between various pianists playing the same composition. The results were often quite surprising for the participants.

 

RE: Totally Agree With the Article.........., posted on July 3, 2015 at 11:56:08
"I guess there are many who are as interested in what they see as what they hear, especially with today's technology. That would also help explain the declining interest in classical music, jazz, and anything else that benefits from careful, intelligent listening."

Well-said.

Dave

 

RE: Totally Agree With the Article.........., posted on July 4, 2015 at 07:43:18
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Maybe if more people had easy access to *seeing* classical and jazz music performed by attending live concerts that would help curb the declining interest in classical and jazz recordings.

And perhaps if there wasn't such an attitude of exclusivity and pompousness towards classical and jazz music among so many of the "connoisseurs" then maybe those genres would not have fallen into decline to begin with. Hard to say. But I am sure that didn't help the cause of either genre.

Visual spectacle has always been a major aspect of any musical performance. It was recording technology that created this artificial dichotomy between what we see and what we hear. I honestly don't see any value in it. IMO you actually really do hear more of a performance when you see the artist perform it in person.

 

In general, I agree with what you say, but. . . , posted on July 4, 2015 at 11:00:29
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. . . my feeling is that beyond a certain level of competence, we start talking about mere "differences", not "improvements". I believe this is true in the performing arts, and it also applies to audio equipment: beyond a certain price point, all we're talking about is differences, rather than improvements. In fact, this principle applies to all sorts of things. Do we really need PCM resolution beyond 24/96? My gut and my experience are telling me it's not likely.

Of course, on a very SUBJECTIVE level, we might prefer this or that "difference" and claim it represents a SUPERIORITY of the quality in question (performance, audio reproduction, etc.), but I've grown skeptical about such claims over the years.

 

RE: The Visual Spectacle, posted on July 4, 2015 at 11:17:41
Watching a classical music performance on screen (with or without sound) will only put most people to sleep. If I'm going to watch a classical music performance, even if it's an opera, I need to watch it "live". I need to be able to sense the ambience and energy within a venue, voices and instrumental textures need to be felt as well as heard. If it's not live sound, the use of cinematic magic doesn't help me much. If I can't have it "live" I'd almost rather just close my eyes and listen.

 

And yet ..., posted on July 4, 2015 at 12:10:36
A dumpy bald guy in a tux who could really play the violin could once be the hottest ticket in town. Now we have music videos featuring the buck naked Miley Cyrus.

 

RE: The Visual Spectacle, posted on July 4, 2015 at 12:14:10
Analog Scott
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I don't think that's true. There's a lot of youtube videos of classical music. I don't think they are there as a cure for insomnia. Heck, Valentina Lisitsa built her career on her youtube success. There's plenty of classical music out there on DVD these days.

 

To each his own, I guess... (nt, posted on July 4, 2015 at 12:24:28
.

 

RE: And yet ..., posted on July 4, 2015 at 13:03:21
Analog Scott
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A dumpy bald guy in a tux still can be the hottest *classical* ticket in town.

I don't think celebrity porn has changed anything at the classical box office.

 

RE: In general, I agree with what you say, but. . . , posted on July 4, 2015 at 13:08:47
Analog Scott
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Interesting. I see substantial differences in levels of technical excellence among various top flight classical musicians. Now I think one could argue that past a certain point of technical excellence the differences in artistic interpretation become as important or more important. But I don't think that changes objective differences in skill levels to subjective differences in skill level.

 

I suppose my post seemed ironic, considering. . . , posted on July 4, 2015 at 13:37:17
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. . . what I had to say about the competitors at the Tchaikovsky Competition (below) - with the missed notes and clotted textures that a number of them exhibited. Still, I think quite a few musicians these days operate at a very high technical level - high enough for me anyway, and high enough so that subjective considerations become primary. I'm not necessarily going to insist on this point however - I'm just kind of moving in this direction right now.

 

RE: And yet ..., posted on July 4, 2015 at 14:26:21
But when David Oistrakh made his American debut in Carnegie Hall in 1955, an intelligent, well read, knowledgeable classical music fan named Marilyn Monroe was there. Times have changed, alas. Edit: iow, classical music has only a fraction of the pop culture buzz it had in those days.

 

RE: And yet ..., posted on July 4, 2015 at 15:55:33
Analog Scott
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yeah but that change happened overnight the following year. We can pretty much divide popular music in two categories. BE and AE. before Elvis and after Elvis. The decline of the classical music superstar celebrity predates Youtube. It even predates MTV. Rock and Roll stole the celebrity show in the world of music years and years ago. And despite this fact there still have been the occasional break out classical star since 1955 and thus far none of them have been hot chicks. Go figure....

 

All true, posted on July 5, 2015 at 06:41:12
Classical music began to fade in the late 50s early 60s. Part of that was TV bringing too many other things to the table.

 

RE: Well, I doubt we'll ever know..., posted on July 5, 2015 at 07:21:38
Todd Krieger
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"Why is so much of the most popular classical music of the 18th and 19th centuries so rarely listened to today?"

Because I think the American pop media culture from the late 1960s to today has marginalized it and, in more recent time, flat out starved airtime of this music to the masses.

This is why I think American (but not European or Asian) classical audiences have been predominantly elderly. The American media at one time didn't deter the masses from listening to classical music. Prior to 1965.

This is also why a lot of Americans recognize Leonard Bernstein as an orchestral conductor, but never even heard of his NYPO successors. While the last concerts were being aired to national audiences, Bernstein happened to be the music director of the New York Philharmonic.

 

RE: Totally Agree With the Article.........., posted on July 5, 2015 at 07:29:44
Todd Krieger
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I once got a Martha Argerich fan mad at me.... I was driving a car, a piano work was playing on the radio.... A passenger asked me who the pianist was.... I said "Lang Lang". (I didn't know who was performing, I took a guess.) After the piece ended, the listener commented how awful it was. The radio broadcast then said Argerich was the pianist. I swear, there was steam coming out the guy's ears.

 

RE: Totally Agree With the Article.........., posted on July 5, 2015 at 07:57:37
Analog Scott
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Lang Lang was one of the pianists who surprised a lot of people in one of the blind comparisons.

 

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