Music Lane

"the School of the Big Tone"

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In Reply to: RE: New Yorker profile of "anti-babe" Christian Tetzlaff posted by rbolaw on August 23, 2012 at 08:36:13

A bit unfair to Perlman, perhaps? Sure, he's not my favorite, but he's certainly more of a musician than he seems to be given credit for in the article. Not to mention the variety we get in babe violinists such as Ibragimova or Batiashvili. I just don't agree with that characterization of other violinists.

I do approve of Tetzlaff's use of a modern violin - I haven't noticed it's given him a greater range of tone (as Eichler seems to imply), but OTOH, I haven't noticed that he suffers in comparison to other violinists in his tonal range either.

The whole article strikes me as just a bit of an attempt to pigeonhole and generalize in not always warranted ways. It seems to have an underlay of flattering the type of reader who likes to thinks of himself/herself as more discerning than average (i.e., who can hear beyond the Big Tone). I don't buy it.

One last thing: it's not as if babe violinists don't play the three concertos discussed in the article. Let's see, I have (or had) Hilary's recording of the Schoenberg, Steinbacher has a recording of the Berg (and I've also got an off-the-air performance of this with J-Fi), and Christina Åstrand has a recording of the Ligeti. OK, I admit maybe it's stretching things just a bit to call the latter a babe, but you get the idea! ;-)

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