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In Reply to: RE: I see where you're coming from, but still. . . posted by Tony Lauck on September 16, 2014 at 10:37:21
Really? So I should believe what Dave says instead of what the actual classical musicians, conductors and producers say?
And how is it obvious? Some examples please. Tell us what concerts you have been to lately where it was so obvious that the performers were placing an emphasis of note perfection over artistry? How can you even pretend to know that? Unless they are saying it you can't know that.
Follow Ups:
You were give a specific statement by one musician. You chose to dismiss it. I suggest you go to a concervatory and talk to the teachers and the music students. You will get a good idea of the situation. Or you can go to concerts and see the audience reaction to concerts that are technically perfect vs. those that have extreme musical depth and get the general sense of the audience. But unfortunately to do this requires you to be able to distinguish musical depth when it happens. And I suspect that perhaps you find this difficult, otherwise you wouldn't be taking the position that you have.
This goes across other musical genres, but I used classical music and classical musicians, because that's what I am most familiar with, among other reasons being that I was married to a classical pianist for 43 years and had quite a few discussions on this subject. These came up frequently because we lived for many years under the dark era of Seiji Ozawa at the Boston Symphony Orchestra where we had technical mastery to be sure, but little musical depth throughout most of the repertoire.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Rest assured I have a lot more actual information on the subject than David's statement. His statement runs contrary to that of many folks I personally know and talk to who have positions of much greater authority when it comes to the artistic goals and motives of classical musicians. That being actual classical musicians, conductors and recording producers. But what do they know about their own motives? Really? You think I should go to a conservatory and talk to students? I've already talked to and observed the one in house producer for DG, Sid McLauchlan while he was recording major classical artists who were also personal friends of mine. I have sat in on numerous closed rehearsals of major classical artists and closely observed the discussions about the music being played. And I have actually talked music with a few students at USC and The Thorton school of music. Now should I dismiss all that I took in from all of that because David made a specific statement that runs completely contrary?
I'm not really interested in this being a pissing match but the fact is what you say and what David says runs contrary to what I have observed and heard from classical musicians that have considerably more credibility with me than either of the two of you.
Sorry....
. . . but some of the recordings he made during this era are very fine indeed:
I also feel that there's a contradiction in your assertions that, on the one hand, you can judge whether there's extreme musical depth in a performance by the audience reaction (that's a particularly dangerous one!), and on the other hand, you have to be able to discern musical depth when in happens (presumably, regardless of how the rest of the audience reacts). Really, don't we all feel that we're able to discern extreme musical depth? ;-)
I believe you misunderstood me in regard to audience reaction. What disgusted me the most was how the audience tolerated the performances that O. gave that were note perfect but failed to demonstrate musical depth. By their reaction the audiance demonstrated that they were more interested in the show and the raw notes, rather than the music. If the audiences had been discerning there wouldn't have been standing ovations, there wouldn't have been donations, and the musical dark age in Boston would have ended much sooner. My wife and I used to listen to BSO broadcasts with our windows open. Our lot was heavily forested and the birds often sang when we were playing classical music. We joked that the birds didn't sing when Ozawa was conducting.
Some of Ozawa's performances of 20th century music were OK, but I would have doubly passed on the Prokofiev. DG orchestral recordings were on my "don't buy" list because of the use of multiple microphones and the resulting flat sound stage. Their solo and chamber recordings had decent sound. For some reason the related Archiv label didn't have this problem. Unless on sale at a very cheap price, I have made it a practice not to buy recordings of music that I already have recordings of unless they are by first rate performers and issued on record labels with first rate sound.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
What you don't seem to understand is that different listeners come from different backgrounds, have different experience, education and training, different natural levels of musical ability, and different tastes and values, and hear things differently for those and any number of other reasons. If someone else hears something you don't (or can't), it doesn't necessarily make you wrong, but it sure as heck doesn't make them wrong either.
Your endless cries for "proof" are tiresome. When I gave specific examples in another thread, you said it was all a matter of subjective taste. So it is, so no point going down that tortured path again. At this point I can only join David and say "yawn" to this discussion. Why don't you go back to enjoying the great music we all love and skip the childish name calling?
What you don't seem to understand is that David's assertion has nothing to do with what you hear or what I hear or what he hears. Let's actually revisit the assertion in question. David's own words...
"These days absolute note perfection is expected and is one of the highest priorities in most cases. It doesn't matter whether there's the option of taking another take of something, the perfection is the priority. A younger player is far likelier to be a precision machine, at the expense of musical choices/risks, than in earlier eras. Counterintuitive but true."
You can't know an artist's "priority" by listening to their recordings or attending their concerts. You can't know that without them telling you that. It's even worse though when one makes such a specific and damning assertion and can't cite one single example of it.
I'm going to tell you a little story. I am an artist of sorts myself. My work is out there for the public and for my piers to see and judge. I am at peace with that. One time when I was working a couple coworkers were discussing my work. One of them did not know I was the artist who did the work he was critiquing. His critique was pretty vicious but I was fine with it. I was until he made the comment that I was clearly being lazy when I did the work he was critiquing. At this point I jumped all over him and called him out. I told him in no uncertain terms that he is free to have any opinion about my work that he wishes but that if he ever questioned my work ethic again we would have some real problems. The bottom line and the moral of the story is my work is fair game. My motives are not.
The quality of any artist's performance is fair game to critique and opine about. But when it comes to an artist's motives you can't draw meaningful conclusions by your subjective opinions about the quality of the work.
Yes David is a jazz musician. But he is not a classical musician. Unless he has first hand accounts of these young musicians expressing that the priority is note perfection he simply doesn't know. I personally know many classical musicians. I have sat in on many closed rehearsals for both concerts and recordings. The discussions were pretty much completely focused on the interpretation of the music. Never, never have I seen anyone ever express an emphasis on note perfection during any of those rehearsals. I have many discussions with these artists about music and again I have never had any of them express a priority for note perfection. Quite the opposite actually. So yeah, I'd like to see some reasonable proof that David actually knows the "priorities" of these artists. Clearly he doesn't know any of them personally nor has had any meaningful discussions with any of them about their musical priorities. If he had it would quite easy to cite examples.
can you imagine for a moment what David's reaction would be if I dismissed his entire generation of jazz musicians as lazy or musically ignorant or something else along those lines based on having listened to some modern jazz recordings and/or having been to several gigs over the last few years? I bet he would take issue with me doing that.
The work is fair game. It's quality is subjective at the end of the day. The artists and their motives are not fair game. Their motives and artistic goals are not subject to the opinions of their audience.
I would also guess that the earliest exposure of kids to music might be through today's note-perfect recordings, and that a kind of technical perfection just occurs more naturally in the course of their studies these days (compared to times when recordings exposed technique that wasn't quite as ship-shape!). Again, just a guess, but my experience accompanying Jon Nakamatsu since he was nine years old is certainly in keeping with this supposition - even at that age, he just did not know how to make a mistake! ;-)
Nevertheless, actual examples might help us to understand exactly what you, Dave and Tony are getting at. To speak in broad generalities like this isn't the most helpful in getting the validity these assertions figured out. Also, I forgot what your own specific examples in the other thread were, so if you don't mind repeating. . .
OK, Chris, I'm not going to continue our debate, but here is an interesting article Jeremy Denk recently wrote for The New Yorker about his experiences recording Ives' Concord Sonata. It proves nothing, but is an excellent illustration of the profound impact modern recording technology has had on the thinking and work of a very good classical pianist.
Exactly what the overall implications are for Mr. Denk in particular or musicians generally, well, we'll just have to leave that question for another day.
Recording is very hard, there's a very good reason they're called "great" recordings.
Dave
Great article. Thanks for posting that
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