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RE: Seriously?

Scott, you're an aggressive arguer who has now smeared me twice. That will not recur, or rather, if it does, you will have to find someone else with which to continue this discussion.

As it happens, I posted that URL because, as I said, it was the first one I am across and I was far too lazy to go looking for different arrangements on You Tube. It seemed to me sufficient to demonstrate Tatum's overwhelming superiority in jazz interpretation and technique.

I disagree about rhythmic aberrations. Tatum did sometimes play slightly out of control on fast passages, when, I think, he was drunker than usual. But he here displays a firmer command of rhythm than Wang. I hear little that isn't stylistic and intentional.

You are right of course that a serious artist wouldn't attempt to duplicate another performer's interpretation. What Wang does here that I object to is attempt to imitate some of Tatum's sophisticated syncopations and off rhythms. What she does isn't as sophisticated and to my ears it falls short. This is not something I think that most pianists could do, no matter how proficient their technique. It requires musical genius.

I never suggested that all valid interpretations had to be identical, that's a ridiculous notion. As to genre crossing as it applies to style, I find that it doesn't often work. For example, if you look at the Bud on Bach thread, you'll see that I found his Bach playing no better (worse actually) than Wang's Tatum playing. This has nothing to do with the genre crossing in and of itself: I find Tatum's take on Massenet delightful.

This is of course my opinion on the matter. But opinion doesn't imply the absence of objective reality. It merely reflects the fact that our personal judgments are imperfect. I take it as a given that when someone judges a performance that they are expressing their own opinion, and also that they may be right or wrong. When was the last time you read "in my opinion" in a movie review? That isn't how we express ourselves. We say "that movie was great" or "that movie sucked," not "I thought that movie was great (or sucked)." In this case, however, I feel quite confident in my opinion. She just gets the spirit of the piece all wrong -- something that Tatum notably doesn't do with the classical portions of the Massenet, I'm left with the feeling that I'd be delighted to hear him play it straight.

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