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In Reply to: The Bostoners last night under Jimmy gave us Berlioz' Damnation of Faust. posted by clarkjohnsen on February 11, 2007 at 12:56:56:
Players devote their lives to nailing center sound/pitch, developing their own conceptions of sound on their axes, ensemble blend, subtle nuance and inflection on solos, adjustments for stage/hall acoustics....and you rank orchestras through a radio.Listening to the radio and records I grew up thinking Joe Henderson had a huge and powerful sound. The first time I heard him live I was amazed at how small and soft his sound was. Beautiful, rounded, full of nuance, but when he veered from the mic I could hardly hear him from ten feet away. By contrast, Dexter Gordon filled the whole club (long gone Storyville) with his huge sound sans mic. How such things could be considered unimportant is beyond me. You sure as hell can't hear musicians' true sounds through a radio no matter how good your system is. Judging an orchestra without hearing them live and feeling the solo and ensemble sounds in your gut is half-assed, to say the least.
Follow Ups:
for no reason apparent to me.BSO will not be able to be the best for at least a generation, as Ozawa seemed to hire on the basis of "who can't possibly blend with what I have already? THAT'S who I want." (If that was his intention he couldn't have done better.) It will take a while for Levine to sort it all out, if he stays long enough.
(Besides the French diction of one of the soloists.)clark
PS Boston's most musical music critic, Lloyd Schwartz, had this to say a few days ago:
James Levine was back in front of the BSO after his Christmas break, and as good as at least one of the guest conductors was (Sir Colin Davis), Levine’s conducting was more exciting, and so was his program: the last of his revelatory Beethoven/Schoenberg pairings... Symphony Hall reverberated with the powerful outbursts, and Levine captured Beethoven’s unsettling rhythmic juxtaposition of string section against string section.
Symphony No. 8 was genial, witty (a startling Haydnesque whisper ends the first movement), alternating delicate scampering and raucous vigor. Despite a few rough edges, it was one of the most engaging renditions I’ve heard of this least-performed of Beethoven’s nine symphonies.
Mr Schwartz may be a good critic but has penned a real whopper in the review Clark cites.The least performed Beethoven symphony, by a wide margin, is #4, followed by #1. In forty years of concertgoing I have yet to hear a live performance of either.
In this report from Philadelphis, it's #2. That gives us a wide range of choice, huh? Maybe it *is* #8.clark
The American Symphony Orchestra League Repertoire Report shows between 16 to 18 performances of Beethoven symphonies nos 1, 2, 4, and 8 in the most recent season for which statistics have been gathered. By contrast, the most frequently performed work was Beethoven symphony #7, with 92 performances!
I was playing Midsummer Night's Dream down at the ballet. It's not a piece I would go out of my way to hear in any event.But your general and repeated enthusiasm for Levine is not something I can relate to; I find him utterly ordinary.
Meanwhile there are issues with the band I can't not hear. At least the most musicallly destructive force in the brass has retired. A good first step, but it will be a long while.
Eichler, The Globe:Thursday night, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus proved itself up to the task, singing with both strength and tonal flexibility. The orchestra seemed to take a few extra moments to settle into its standard level of transparency and precision, but it just grew stronger and stronger as the night wore on, with many distinguished solo contributions. The sensitive English horn solos that accompany Marguerite's second song were a particular pleasure.
[Pity you leave yourself out of this loop.]
based on the company I keep, particularly critics, some of whom on that list I find myself disagreeing with on a regular basis. (The horror!) I'd wager that if you looked back at the press clippings back when Ozawa began his tenure you might find similar unanimity. Folks thought differently later on. Or some of them did, at any rate--those who didn't need to keep the door open for feature interviews."Pity you leave yourself out of this loop."
----That's just silly.
"The orchestra seemed to take a few extra moments to settle into its standard level of transparency and precision, but it just grew stronger and stronger as the night wore on, with many distinguished solo contributions. The sensitive English horn solos that accompany Marguerite's second song were a particular pleasure."
----You might note that I have never, ever, questioned the abilities or musicianship of any member of the BSO. A finer bunch of musicians you will not find. Some of them are my friends. But there are certain intrinsic issues there, unrelated to individual virtuosity, that prevent them from sounding as good together as they might, or have. Levine has his work cut out for him.
You seem to want everyone to be on "Jimmy's" bandwagon. I don't see any particular reason why everyone should, and I haven't noticed that you place much stock in group-think, either, apart from this. Chill.
I guess there are always problems for new conductors/musical directors who take over after a less than stellar predecessor has had sway over an orchestra for a while.The whole concept of ranking orchestras seems really tough to me. Who -- other than possibly touring soloists and conductors -- gets to hear a variety of music played by even 10 orchestras in a variety of halls over, say, a three year span? How else could informed judgements be made?
"Who -- other than possibly touring soloists and conductors -- gets to hear a variety of music played by even 10 orchestras in a variety of halls over, say, a three year span? How else could informed judgements be made?"The great ones in history, Stokowski's Philadelphia, Koussevitzky's Boston, Reiner's Chicago, Szell's Cleveland, Karajan's Berlin, and Dutoit's Montreal had distinctive tonal character that could make one pick these bands out when listening to something for the first time. Even over the radio. (I personally think Charles Dutoit has been the best conductor I've experienced during my lifetime.) For example, the Koussevitzky Boston had a clarity of melodic line that IMO was never equalled. (This was still notable early in Charles Munch's tenure.) No orchestra had better chops and tonal nuance than Szell's Cleveland. (Which may have actually peaked under Lorin Maazel.) Chicago's brass was overpowering and easily recognized. Berlin had a unique articulation for composers like Wagner that was unmistakable. I thought Montreal combined the sonorities of Cleveland and the melodic integrity of Boston. Even Vienna, with its superb string tone and raw in the brass.
But for the past decade, in my opinion, no orchestra had such uniqueness in character to pick it out like at one time. (Although I have not heard Montreal or Cleveland in recent time.) I will also say that the digitization of music has stunted our ability to discern such character.
nt
...to enjoy music, or even convey its power. But let's face it, most people accept CD's shrill, edgy sound -- especially "musicians", who as I've often noted make terrible audio critics.The advantage we have in Boston with the BSO broadcasts ( pace those who spout off without ever having listened, an altogether too typical circumstance here at AA), is that the Symphony Hall link is not PCM digital, rather "delta-mod", which eliminates many or most of PCM's enharmonic artifacts.
About radio: Radio has brought us the Metropolitan Opera since the Thirties. In the decades I've been listening, never did I find that the broadcast sound, never really very good, intruded on the music; I can give myself over wholly to the performance (if it's gripping, like last week's Cav/Pag). Radio has brought us Toscanini, Koussevitzky, Ormandy, Mitropoulos and other greats, all *live* and in performances far better than the chilly studio stuff they turn out on discs for the hi-fi addicts.
Radio (at least in Boston) brings more new music into our lives than going to a concert every day would. And for whatever it's worth, I do still go.
Back to the Boston Symphony, I would argue that its peak sonicwise over the FM was back in the Sixties, when all was analog and all was tubes . That may not sit well with some sorts, but I have a couple tapes to demonstrate my allegation. I mention this because it shows that the FM medium is capable of great things. One of those tapes -- a Mahler 6th, 2-track 15ips -- sounds quite better than Leinsdorf's RCA outing. Not to mention the superior, live performance!
Finally, regarding live concerts over the radio, what should involve one is the music, not the sound. MUSIC IS NOT ABOUT SOUND.
The quality of the players in most major professional orchestras these days is sky high, and the competition is fierce for every chair. Alas, the days of unlimited rehearsals stretching hours beyond when they were scheduled to end (with no complaints from the musicians) are basically over. The economic situation in classical music today doesn't permit that approach.There are second and even third tier orchestras that I believe would come very close to the Vienna Philharmonic or Amsterdam Concertgebouw in quality if they had unlimited rehearsal time. It is no coincidence that those two great orchestras have long enjoyed heavy government funding.
It often comes down not to which orchestra is better, but which is better prepared (and that can be variable), or maybe even more importantly, which is better recorded.
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