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In Reply to: "New" Conductors: New Interpretations or New MUSIC?... posted by SE on April 10, 2007 at 04:37:13:
. . . I can't get enough different points of view of the "standard repertoire". And although there are new contemporary works that I like (Pärt, Ligeti - oops maybe Ligeti doesn't count anymore since he recently joined the "Dead White European Males" club), I also find the majority of new music pretty cheezy - and that includes wide swaths of Glass and Adams. In fact, the last living composer whose new works I was actually EAGER to hear was Joaquin Rodrigo!Maybe it's because I come from a time when the "post-Webern" aesthetic ruled the universities and concert halls, but I've seen too many audiences burned by the unwillingness of contemporary composers (especially of the "post-Webern" style - which was being pushed down our throats when I was in school) to meet them halfway. And I won't even mention the absurd hubris and self-righteousness of these composers ("the world owes me a living" - wasn't it Milton Babbitt who was demanding that kind of unquestioned support from us peones as far back as 1958 - even though his article was couched in the obsurantist language of scholasticism so as to hide the bald-faced arrogance of its meaning?).
Although I don't share Todd's enthusiasm for Charles Dutoit (below), there are plenty of other conductors around nowadays whom I would trust to conjure new insights and meanings from the standard repertoire: Skrowaczewski, Vänskä, Pletnev (on a good day), and, yes, Salonen - and lots more!
You said:
Are we -- as fans and concert-goers and collectors of recordings -- seeking, really, ANYONE to continue to perform the "old classics" which we have heard in spades. I mean, if I want animated/unique Beethoven or Bruckner or Shostakovich I know exactly where to look. OK, it is DEFINITELY arguable that we don't need more/new RECORDINGS of mainstay works (IMO)
I couldn't disagree more - partially for the reason above (i.e., that there are always new insights waiting to be discovered in great music). I mean, really, what if someone had shared your opinions in, say, the 1950's - claiming, for example, that we have all the great Chopin playing we need in the recordings of Rubinstein, Cortot, Friedman, Rosenthal, etc, etc. So I guess with an outlook like this, one needn't bother with Chopin performers who came later (Argerich, Moravec, Zimmermann, etc, etc)? (Or maybe they should play only new music? - Come to think of it, a Moravec performance of some of the Ligeti Etudes might be very interesting!) :-)
But even aside from this, I feel that the engineering on modern recordings has the potential of getting us closer and closer to the totality of the interpreters' conception. Although there are counter-progressive tendencies at work in modern recordings (the plethora of microphones for one thing!), we still have examples in recent years of recording/engineering standards which would have been unattainable in years past. For me, these engineering standards brings us listeners ever closer to the heart of the performance, as we hear the nuances and tone qualities which simply could not be captured in older recordings. For this reason too, I can't imagine confining future recording activities to new works only (not that I think this would ever happen).
Follow Ups:
Chris,Count me among the "Luddites" too for the very reasons you and psgary mentioned.
There is no prejudice on my part against modern composers, other than I can't stand what I hear. My love of melody seems to keep me out of the club that idolizes modern composers. Please don't tell me I should like dissonance or wandering tonality. Show me the modern composers who are compatible with my Bach-Mendelssohn-Tchaikovsky-Franck-Gershwin-loving ears and I'll listen to them.I have yet to hear a modern opera that I can stand to listen to for more than 16 measures. Where is the variety that classical composers of the past offer? There are a few modern pieces I like, if mid-20th century counts as modern, but my ears object to most modern works. I am tired of being criticized as an audience member and having to apologize merely for liking melodic music. Surely all possible melodies have not been created yet. Yes, SE is right. Classical music needs to continue and grow, but perhaps it is modern composers who are killing it just as much or more than classical cavemen like me.
And I agree with you about new interpretations and recordings. There is much for modern musicians to learn from past masters and build on. Should we stop looking at the Mona Lisa?
It's a tough view, however. Unlike "knowing" what the past works are and picking and choosing, there is a pre-supposition(?) that one already knows everything that's being said either now or in the future in contemporary compositions: Unlikely. Think what life would be if the concept were applied more broadly.
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It completely shuts the door on progress, and denies a future but, as you say (and I TRULY agree): One cannot and should not be forced to appreciate that which they do not.The tough part of that view is that, unlike "knowing" what the past works are and picking and choosing, there is a pre-supposition(?) that one already knows everything that's being said either now or in the future in contemporary compositions: Unlikely. This is a very severe view. Think of it in the context of almost anything else in life.
I won't use the word Luddite. I'll just say that Classical music fans such as yourself are the reason the art form is dying. Take whatever satisfaction you will from that. By no means was I advocating a complete and literal end to performances of the existing body of Classical compositions. My point is a balance needs to be struck, and a deliberate effort at sponsoring and performing new works needs to be established...at least if the music is going to survive.Regarding recordings, are you still buying new recordings of standard works? Based on the 1958 reference, I'm assuming you're at least in your 49 (years since then) plus, what 12 (age)...60 years old at least. I agree with you regarding newer recordings and engineering. However, I'm somewhat younger than you and I've got EVERYTHING I enjoy in crisp new recordings...PLUS gobs of the historic stuff: I am TOTALLY saturated. Knowing that you can't possibly have enough time to "listen to it all", I'm assuming that you've ABANDONED many of your older recordings in favor of newer ones (i.e., you just don't -- and will never, as a matter of hours in the day -- listen to them again). Here's the closer. Someone that goes out right now and buys an SACD of, say, Vanska conducting the Beethoven 9th (or whatever) has in there hands a sound recording that is about as good as human ears need. It's your call, but life's too short to continue to throw money after the same work over and over again.
On a different note, new music is about new experience. When I stop seeking new intellectual experience (and the tweaking of the texture or pace of a piece I've got 20 recordings of is hardly what I'm speaking of), I'll declare myself as no longer being interested in the very reason I enjoy this hobby. You are effectively doing that for yourself. Or, at least, you are content with what you have. That's fine, but I truly believe that extending that contentment outward into the realm of Classical music as a reason for it NOT TO GROW is just not right.
I'll just say that Classical music fans such as yourself are the reason the art form is dying. Take whatever satisfaction you will from that.Well, I'm not sure I agree that the art form is dying, but let's agree for the moment that it is, just for the sake of argument. Don't you think it's far more likely that its death would be hastened more by fragmentation of its audience than by failure to abandon the core repertoire in favor of new music? Just look at Mr. Thornhill's comments from below:
most 20th century music fails to draw an adequate crowd. I've observed a most striking incident of this two years with a Philadelphia Orchestra program that had the Dvorak Cello concerto before the intermission and Zemlinsky's Die Seejungfrau afterwards. Easily 20% of the audience did not return to hear the Zemlinsky. If people are not going to listen to it, why play it?
Now, I like Zemlinsky just fine, but I think it's clear from this post what's driving out the audience (and it's not the Dvorak Cello Concerto!). And the audience's reaction, I contend, is understandable, having been conditioned by years and years (maybe even decades and decades) of being browbeaten by contemporary composers' new works. In a way, it's funny, because I'm sure a large portion of the folks who left the concert would actually have enjoyed the Zemlinsky - since it's not really NEW music, but merely UNFAMILIAR music. I'm going off on a tangent here, but I recall a survey by the National Symphony Orchestra some years ago, where they asked their audience what music they would like to hear on the orchestra's concerts. By far the largest response was that listeners wanted to hear unfamiliar music by familiar composers!
Back to your comments:
Regarding recordings, are you still buying new recordings of standard works?
Yup - that's probably 90% of what I buy.
Based on the 1958 reference, I'm assuming you're at least in your 49 (years since then) plus, what 12 (age)...60 years old at least.
I wish - then I'd be closer to retirement! :-) No, I was just quoting Babbitt's article from an anthology I have.
I'm somewhat younger than you and I've got EVERYTHING I enjoy in crisp new recordings...PLUS gobs of the historic stuff: I am TOTALLY saturated.
Perhaps one reason you're saturated and I'm not is that there are a large number of my CD's I've listened to only once or twice. Also, one makes conscious choices of what to focus one's listening on: I'm certainly less focused on pre-stereo historical recordings that a lot of other posters on this forum are.
Knowing that you can't possibly have enough time to "listen to it all", I'm assuming that you've ABANDONED many of your older recordings in favor of newer ones (i.e., you just don't -- and will never, as a matter of hours in the day -- listen to them again).
Yes, that's true - some CD's are listened to only once, almost as if you'd be hearing the performance at a concert. It doesn't bother me to listen to some CD's just once, especially if the CD is disappointing for one reason or another - I'll just bring it down to a used CD store and get store credit for it.
Someone that goes out right now and buys an SACD of, say, Vanska conducting the Beethoven 9th (or whatever) has in there hands a sound recording that is about as good as human ears need.
I don't agree with you on this point. I like Vänskä's CD of the 4th and 5th. (I haven't heard the 9th yet.) But why do you want to cap engineering progress? I have no doubt that better engineering will come along, and when this superior engineering arrives, I'm going to need it! :-) Besides, although you and I like the sound quality on these Vänskä recordings, some listeners/posters don't like it (for various reasons).
life's too short to continue to throw money after the same work over and over again.
When I stop seeking new intellectual experience (and the tweaking of the texture or pace of a piece I've got 20 recordings of is hardly what I'm speaking of), I'll declare myself as no longer being interested in the very reason I enjoy this hobby.
I guess it comes down to this: I find that the differences in sound quality and interpretation in a known work can be quite substantial (I wouldn't describe these differences as the mere tweaking of texture or pace) and that listening for these differences is not only enjoyable in its own right but also contributes to an understanding the work itself. Think of the simplest work you can imagine - say, Chopin's A-major Prelude. Sure it's simple, but the possibilities for interpretation are infinite! Add to that the variety of sound quality you encounter on various recordings, and there are even more facets to the work (beyond infinite! - I'm joking here, but you get my drift). We had friends over some years ago, and played them two recordings of one of the Chopin Preludes (I forget which one). It turned out these performances were by the same pianist (Moravec), but they produced such different effects that our friends could not even believe that it was the same pianist in the two recordings!
you are content with what you have.
Never! :-)
I truly believe that extending that contentment outward into the realm of Classical music as a reason for it NOT TO GROW is just not right.
You know, I don't think we're as far apart as it may have seemed originally. Your point is that a balance needs to be struck and that new music needs to be encouraged. I don't disagree. I perhaps misunderstood your original post, where, it seemed to me, you were advocating that a new conductor ought to jettison the standard repertoire in favor of new music. Since you wrote about balancing the needs of extending the repertoire with new works and generating new insights into existing works (not in so many words, but I think that was your gist), our disagreement probably concerns only the point where the balance lies. :-)
I'm still catching up with the old recordings!The only reason I see to bless CD is that it has allowed (?) further issuance of recordings from radio archives. These would be live performances, and live is best. With one exception: In the good old days of 78s, the pressure to play it right was the same as if an audience were there, so most of those older recordings work musically.
And they have greater "tone". The fault with most recent digital recordings is that they *are* "crisp", which is a cognate of "edgy", besides being over-miked and played in the faceless "international style". Feh!
I have to tell you, though, that the work I hear at the BSO these last three years so far surpasses what passes for good performance on new CDs, makes me hope and pray that some day these will find legal circulation. Nor does James Levine neglect modern music! And why do the audiences not disappear? Because he somehow is able to interpret it to make sense.
Still, when he does Mahler, Schumann etc. the results are so frequently luminiscent I wouldn't yield a moment of my time with them. Just as whenever I listen to the '20s and '30s recordings of the Capet, Calvet, Pro Arte and Lener Quartets -- now available for cheap at Berkshire Record Outlet. Almost nothing one hears these days on recordings, except from the Borromeo (live, as well), is comparable.
I tip my hat to you both for your knowledge of and enthusiasm for older recordings. BTW, have you heard the new process available from Pristine Audio Direct for recovering high frequencies buried in the surface noise of pre-LP recordings. The samples on their web site sound promising from what I can tell. (They include the Weingartner/VPO Erioca, Faure played by Kathleen Long, the Schnabel/Sargent Emperor, etc.)As for me, I'll never forget my first encounter with the Pro Arte Quartet - it was the Schnabel recording of the Trout Quintet. Within the first ten seconds of that performance, when the violinist slides up to that high note, I thought he'd been goosed! :-)
(BTW, I thought cognates, as they apply to language, were supposed to contain the same root word?)
(Although not *as* big...)1) No I have not heard Pristine Audio Direct -- I'll visit them this afternoon, thanks for the lead.
2) So: Unacquainted with portamento huh? The Calvet and Capet do it too, although perhaps less conspicuously. (The book to read is Music in the Age of Recording.)
3) Wondered if anyone would call me on that; I had meant to write "sonic cognate".
He wrote an article in The New Criterion called "Who's Good?" where he did a run-through currently active of musicians whom he considers worthy. amongst conductors he wrote, "there is one indisputably great conductor in the world today: James Levine. He has no weaknesses, no gaps; he can conduct anything, with supreme understanding and musicality."But I can't let you off that easily. In the same article he said, "The music world is inordinately affected by nostalgia. The past was always golden, and the present is more like tin...Sometimes the present is, indeed, tin (and tin will be preponderant in any age). But there is much gold about, and part of musical awareness is to be...well, aware of that."
"But I can't let you off that easily. In the same article he said, "The music world is inordinately affected by nostalgia. The past was always golden, and the present is more like tin...Sometimes the present is, indeed, tin (and tin will be preponderant in any age). But there is much gold about, and part of musical awareness is to be...well, aware of that."How true...I just wish more orchestras will be bold enough to go in search of some present-day gold, rather than a constant regurgitation of past gold, it will certainly keep them from going stale and boring.
Music making the painting, recording it the photograph
Can't be many of us. You would also like Chronicles.Where you located (just curious)?
...if I remember correctly. At times it rises to real greatness. It's cultural criticism is consistently good, and at times inspiring. My only beef with it is its blindness to the faults of the political right, but it's easy enough to ignore the ideological rants when they show up. I'll take a look at Chronicles. I really would be interested in some more good writing.I'm from New York. I've been told that we're unconscionably rude.
(How was that?)Here's the lead on Chronicles, to whose print edition I've subscribed for ten years:
http://chroniclesmagazine.org/
And from an article just found, currently at the top of the page:
To be fair to Imus, he did not say anything about blacks that blacks do not say about each other, constantly, in comedy routines and in their so-called music. It is amusing to hear the smug denunciations of NPR newsreaders who routinely laud the artistic genius of rap artists and movie directors. Imus’s offensive little rap about the Rutgers women was in fact lifted from Spike Lee. Why isn’t Spike Lee drummed out of Hollywood? For the same reason that pious liberals have shown no reluctance to appear as guests on Imus’s show. None of them were deterred by his years of vilifying women, Christians, homosexuals, and Jews.
But when a white guy repeats Spike Lee on the air, he becomes a sacrificial victim.
the recordings myself, either from local FM stations that broadcast live concerts, or from classical internet stations that transmit at 128 or higher kbps. Internet stations can be recorded on your computer in lossless WAV or WMA files and burned on to CDsLocal FM stations, like WQXR and WNYC here in NYC, are generally the best source of high quality live broadcasts with little or no compression. The ambient soundstage, the clarity and definition of instruments and the the lack of fatiguing "edginess" or shrillness so prevalent in some CDs are some of the benefits of recording live broadcasts. I use a very sensitive and selective FM tuner with a good quality CD recorder that assures me an excellent recording of the original broadcasts. I am sure that WGBH in Boston also features live concerts of the BSO and other symphony orchestras.
For several years, I worked in a recording studio restoring and remastering old 78rpm records and transcribing them on to 16ips tape for radio stations, and I know first hand how painstaking a process that can be. Due to fluctuations in current and other variations in the motors of the old transcription lathes, the recording speed was not always 78rpm, and minute corrections had to be constantly made. Records had to be scrupulously cleaned, noise and static filtered, and the sound eaualized to compensate for microphones that emphasized/de-emphasized the bass and other frequencies.
There are some sound engineers like the legendary John R.T. Davies who excelled in restoring and remastering old 78rpm jazz recordings from the 1920's and 30's, but many of the restorations of classical 78rpm recordings I have heard do not impress me.
I've been greatly pleased with the remastered CDs of many of the audiophile classical LPs from 40 or 50 years ago, those from the Mercury "Living Presence" and RCA "Living Stereo" labels especially. Listening to Charles Munch with the BSO, Antal Dorati with the Minneapolis and London Symphony orchestras, to name but a few, have been a pleasant surprise.
Most transfer engineers and "restorationists" have no idea how good the critters can sound, so it never comes out. This problem has been ongoing since the Fifties.My own audio specialty is applying high-end techniques to those great old spinners.
"the point where the balance lies". If the big orchestras (not to mention Chamber Music performer -- we CAN'T EVEN GO THERE) continue to "stick to the core works" watch the concert halls empty out during the next decade as the number of old folks attending starts to decrease. The idea is to draw in NEW fans and audiences, not simply satisfy the needs of the existing ones. To do that, they have to be "attracted" to what's being presented. It is sad to think that the perspective being taken by the major orchestras and ensembles is that they believe the solution lies with the tried-and-true exclusively.It sounds to me like you have been "put off" by new compositions not unlike the the tenor of someone who lived through the Serial killings of the 1960's. There is a universe of Neo-Classical and Neo-Romantic music that is highly appealing and readily available for presentation to the public. It is not being performed. If you are younger than the age I identified, more's the pity, as you would fall into MY age bracket, I'm asking these artists for MORE...before it's too late.
No art form can survive that stagnates. It MAY "re-invent itself" in the future if it withers for awhile, but the TRADITION is lost. Hell, maybe that's a good thing. It's exactly this tradition that is holding it back.
BTW, all of your commentary regarding "it's all that I buy" etc. says that you are still in the "collecting phase". I am at the tail end of it, having gathered as much as I could possibly ever need (trust me on this). As such, my policy going forward is effectively (for purchasing new recordings): If the work wasn't composed in the last 20 years or so, don't bother. Sure, I'll make the occassional exception!:-)...
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