posted by James Reel
As much as I love the guy, Gustav Mahler isn't my idea of a summer-vacation companion. But two smart music lovers have spent some time at his place in the past few weeks, and are writing back with details.
Alex Ross, in his August 14 blog post, recounts (with photos) his recent expedition to the no-longer idyllic hut where Gustav Mahler did much of his summertime composing, while over at Salon, Kevin Berger offers an essay on Mahler, his hut, and his late works, culminating in praise of the new Michael Tilson Thomas/San Francisco Symphony recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9. I like the MTT SACD very much, although I’m partial to Benjamin Zander and the Philharmonia Orchestra on Telarc and Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic on Sony. Both Zander and Bernstein bring out the maximun angst, weltschmerz, and other things that sound like German words for cooking fat.
Meanwhile, if you’re looking for truly summery Mahler music, I’ll point you in the direction of his Symphony No. 3, preferably in recordings by Bernstein, Zander, MTT, or Semyon Bychkov.
Classical Music,
August 16th 2005 at 9:02 —
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posted by James Reel
I’ve been snorting fine powder during the past few days. No, it’s not what you think; I don’t work for a rock’n’roll station. I’m talking about dust (I do, after all, work for a classical station).
My wife and I spent the weekend moving things out of the front rooms of our house in preparation for the arrival of painters. That means getting cozy with draperies that have been collecting dust and dog dander for nearly three years, and moving books and bookcases that have stood unmoved for about a decade. I won’t go into detail about what lay behind the bookcases, except to say that if I hauled in some salt water I could open a beach.
Yesterday, the workers started scraping off the Sensational ’70s popcorn ceiling (which had been applied after the asbestos era, thank goodness), and that means even more particulate matter is floating through my home. I’m vulnerable to allergies anyway, and none of this is doing my voice any good. It’s sounding scratchy, coming out at a higher basic pitch, and fading out on some end-of-sentence syllables, and my inhalations are even wheezier than usual. I’m not making excuses for poor performance, something about which Ikka Talvi has some amusing things to say in his August 14 blog post, merely taking an opportunity to observe that the voice is the most important tool at a radio announcer’s disposal, and the slightest change in the voice makes a huge difference in our performance.
You can’t see my face or gestures; you can’t see me sit up straight in anticipation of some favorite piece of music or slouch in dismay when I’m confronting some piffle I can’t stand. The only way I can convey information, attitude and personality is through my voice. And because that’s all you as a listener have to go on, it’s probably easy for you to tell when something’s off—I’m tired, or distracted, or unprepared.
Announcers have certain ways of faking it. Smiling helps; you can’t see it, but the smile does brighten our vocal delivery. Placement of voice in the mouth and throat helps control pitch and tone; at all costs, we’re supposed to keep our noses out of it, if we want to avoid that baby-girl voice so common among young women now (is this the downside of spurning cigarettes?), yet we can’t afford to sound stuffed-up and adenoidal, either.
So I can understand why more than one announcer has confessed to me, “I can’t stand the sound of my own voice.” We’re hyper-aware of things that would otherwise pass unnoticed. But it does make me wonder why people who loathe their voices work in radio. Perhaps it’s because most of us are too ugly for TV.
radio-life,
August 16th 2005 at 8:22 —
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