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In Reply to: RE: Ah, the real Chris, the mean little insulter. I'll forego posted by tinear on July 11, 2014 at 16:19:50
So you're insulted by my reply to your post? Well, in the words of that same post, "Boo Hoo!"
However, I'll admit that some of my rhetoric was over the top. And in fact, I spent the earlier part of today re-listening to some of Stern's recordings on Spotify. (Like you, I own no recordings of Stern myself, although the first recording I ever owned of the Beethoven Concerto was in fact Stern/Bernstein.) What I heard surprised me - along with the Schlamperei I remembered in the last movement of the Dvorak Concerto with Ormandy (a quality I noticed when I first heard this recording as a kid), there was also an in-concert Lucerne Festival recording from 1958 of the Tchaikovsky Concerto with Maazel on the Audite label, a performance that was full of energy and fire (and technically good too!), at least in the last movement (with the cuts). Very impressive indeed! So, I was wrong to say that Szeryng was a thousand times better than Stern. Maybe he was only ten times better!
Or let's talk about someone today like James Ehnes. He has nowhere near the reputation or power that Stern had. And yet, I dare anyone to compare Ehnes with Stern in the Dvorak concerto and tell me that Ehnes is not the superior player, both artistically and technically. And now, with the democratization and training levels which have infused the players of even the third-tier orchestras of today, Ehnes doesn't lose much of anything by being accompanied by the BBC Orchestra rather than the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the engineering support he receives from Chandos leaves those old Columbia recordings from the 60's in the dust. (J-Fi also has a recent recording of this piece too - I haven't heard it, but I'd bet the situation is similar with her Decca recording.)
Really, I'm not arguing that Stern was a midget - as I suggest above, he had his moments. Overall, his career was, with its long, slow descent into mediocrity, still one of modest accomplishment, by which I mean that no how, no way could he be picked out for any special quality from a large number of other violinists of his time or our time. He was fortunate however that his reputation became established when the number of outlets from a musician to his/her public (aside from concerts themselves) was very constrained. One recorded for RCA, Columbia, EMI, Decca, Philips, or DG and that was that. Otherwise, with a couple of exceptions (Mercury, Command Classics, Everest), you received markedly inferior engineering, marketing and orchestral support, and you became pegged as a second-tier performer, whether or not that reputation was at all deserved. (I remember one of the singers, either Suzanne Summerville or Grace de la Cruz, on the old Vox recording of Dvorak's Stabat Mater recalling that that recording was made in mid-winter, with the temperature inside the unheated church barely over freezing! Those are the conditions some of these artists had to contend with on the non-major labels!) Eventually, the situation takes on its own inertia and you can't escape it - in fact, the only musician I know of who did escape this inertial force was Alfred Brendel (the exception which proves the rule!). On the other side, once you attained a contract with major management and recording company, it was hard to do wrong. I remember being struck at how unctuous many critics were towards Piatigorsky in his last few years, praising him to the skies, while his intonation had become atrocious. Inertia can carry you far in either direction. So it's not at all a question of the public being "cowed" into admiring someone's playing - it's the association with first class marketing, engineering, and support.
BTW, you accuse those who commented at the end of Rosand's article of "envy". I call it corroboration, as I think most other rational folks would.
Your anecdote about hearing performances on the radio and not being "grabbed" may speak more to your powers of concentration than to the innate quality of the performances themselves, I wouldn't pretend to know.
Regarding the Grammy awards, you ARE aware of the fact that the vast majority of voters at the time when Stern won his awards didn't have anything to do with classical music, aren't you? (The voters can vote in up to 20 genres, whether they know anything about those genres or not!). So, sure, your views are not singular, but what's the knowledge level of those who agree with you?
And, Tin, don't worry: despite our little tiff in the here and now, I'm still one of your most devoted fans! ;-)
Follow Ups:
^%^O.
I'm skipping it, Chris. Be concise or ignored.
It's so obvious from your posting history: you're just starstruck by THE BIG NAMES - they can do no wrong. The actual situation is quite a bit more complex than that.
But you can prove me wrong! Just post some of your fave NON-BIG-NAME musicians.
But wait! The floodgates have opened and all envy mongers are coming out of the woodwork! (See my new thread about to appear in another few minutes.)
I'm thinking just anyone who is alive and kicking aside from Perlman. Now what constitutes a big name? I have to admit my favs are what I would consider big names. Shaham, Kavakos, Nadja....Aren't they big names? I now realize that they are all robots. Thank you for that Tin...
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