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"the School of the Big Tone"

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This Post Has Been Edited by the Author

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 tonal 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 flattery for the type of listener/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 (EDIT: I of course mean Åstrand, not Ligeti!), but you get the idea! ;-)

Edits: 08/24/12 08/24/12

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