IN LIEU OF REVIEW

posted by James Reel

    I’d planned to write a review of the Joyce Yang/Tucson Symphony concert this morning, but that would be unwise because I wound up not attending the concert. (Not that attendance necessarily affects the content of some reviews elsewhere.) I won’t be able to make it to the further performances in the cycle; tonight we’re joining friends for our monthly theme dinner (this time: mushrooms), and Sunday afternoon I’ll be reviewing a play whose Saturday-night opening I’ll have to miss because I’ll be the emcee at a benefit for the Arizona Blind and Deaf Children's Foundation at Skyline Country Club. So you’ll just have to go to the TSO concert and form your own opinion.
    I skipped the concert last night because my wife came back from a conference in Egypt a few days ago feeling crummy; last night, after we attended a PRO Neighborhoods dinner meeting involving our neighborhood group and four others, she felt like packing it in for the evening. I handed the concert tickets to the mastermind of our group without the slightest regret, went home, flipped through a nine-month-old magazine (that’s how far behind I am), listened to half of a new SACD reissue of the old Antal Dorati/London Symphony recording of The Nutcracker, and got to bed on time for once. I’ve had way too much to do recently; last weekend alone I had to review three plays and an opera, and help plan a tribute to a deceased colleague. (The latter came off quite well Wednesday night; I even contrived to work a canister containing the ashes of my recently cremated dog into my portion of the procedings.) I’ve let some writing assignments slip to the bottom of the to-do list, even as more assignments come in. With luck, I’ll catch up (though not with the magazines) by the end of Thanksgiving weekend.
    Meanwhile, since I’m not providing any valuable blog content of my own, allow me to call your attention to an exciting project by Greg Sandow, who covers classical music for the Wall Street Journal. He’s working on a book about the future, such as it is, of classical music, and he’s posting chapters online as he goes, soliciting input from readers. Greg is smart and perceptive, although his contention that classical presenters should not hold themselves above popular culture, and indeed could learn something from it, rubs some people the wrong way. Here’s how Greg’s first chapter begins:

Classical music is in trouble, and the trouble can be measured, by (among other things) the decline in ticket sales, the aging of the audience, and the increasing trouble classical music organizations have when they try to raise money. But I’ll save the full details for later, since it’s dull to start a book with dry statistics. And in any case, classical music has deeper troubles—artistic troubles (because it’s locked in repetition of the past) and cultural troubles (because it’s lost its meaning outside its little ghetto).