YOU GOT SERVED

posted by James Reel

    Terry Teachout, Wall Street Journal theater critic and arts-blogger role model, discovers he’s been dissed by a previously unfamiliar blogger, investigates, and comes back with a magnificently withering put-down in the guise of a recommendation:

Interested in knowing exactly what sort of writing the blogger in question thought was worth reading, I spent a few minutes looking over the self-written "serialized blog novels" he'd posted elsewhere on his site, an experience I commend to all connoisseurs of unpublished fiction.

    Oh, the cruel, cruel gibe. The only term more insulting than “unpublished fiction” is “self-published fiction,” of which I have had the misfortune to proofread much. But at least I get paid for that, which is more than can be said for the self-publishing authors.

ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE

posted by James Reel

    The editors of the glossy quarterly Tucson Guide (content not available online) asked me to write a preview of fall theater productions, and I was happy to comply; the magazine is run by good, smart people for whom I do a lot of freelance proofreading and write occasional articles on request. The only little problem this time was that Tucson Guide, intended as it is for tourists, new residents and upscale foothills denizens, is a relentlessly positive publication, and I am by no means a relentlessly positive reporter or critic. Even a sentence suggesting that the local theater scene isn’t as vibrant and diverse as it was 10 to 15 years ago was deemed too negative for inclusion. I’m not complaining; writers have to adapt to the editorial stance of the publication to which they contribute, and I certainly didn’t have to lie about anything. But I must confess that I find the upcoming season excessively light, and not quite as exciting as the article in the current issue makes it seem. To find out what I really think as the season develops, you’ll just have to follow my cranky outbursts in the Tucson Weekly.

THE WEAK IN REVIEW

posted by James Reel

    Norman Lebrecht, one of those writers who is great fun to read even though much of what he writes is wrong-headed, has, rather late in the day, produced this tribute to Anton Webern. It was Webern’s dire influence that killed public appreciation of classical music in the third quarter of the 20th century, when hack imitators with no musical talent insinuated themselves into American universities, declared that Webern was god, and cranked out arid little scores that were all formula, no inspiration. They presented it as music from the head rather than the heart, but the body part they actually employed was the colon. What Webern did was fascinating, but once he’d done it, what was the point of generating more of the same—“system” music to which individuality was alien? Composers who wanted to move forward with Arnold Schoenberg’s 12-tone system would have found much more success had they emulated Schoenberg’s other pupil, Alban Berg, who used 12-tone techniques to create vital, expressive, communicative music, unlike the junk produced by Webern’s academy-ensconced impersonators.
    At any rate, my argument with Lebrecht isn’t about Webern, whose influence is now nil (he still has a few imitators, but nobody pretends to care anymore). My complaint is about this foolish claim:

Scan the entire canon, Passacaglia to posthumously published piano pieces, and you will not find one weak work of Webern's, or one that fails immediately to proclaim its authorship. In the history of western music, that statement is true only of Beethoven and Wagner.

    That statement is most assuredly not true of Beethoven or Wagner. Has Stormin’ Norman ever heard Beethoven’s Musik zu einem Ritterballett, or Wagner’s Die Feen or Das Liebesverbot, or any number of other early or half-hearted scores by these composers? Face it: Beethoven and Wagner and Mozart and every other composer wrote a fair amount of derivative student trivia and uninspired junk. (Mendelssohn wrote his junk late in his career; Brahms wrote his early, but destroyed it all.) Why pretend they were all instant geniuses who sprang pristine from the virginal loins of Euterpe? Even the greatest music and the greatest musicians are real, fallible and human, and that’s what makes the flashes of brilliance so much more remarkable.
    On a topic related to my rant, David Hurwitz, America’s answer to England’s Norman Lebrecht (a description that Hurwitz would probaly find galling, considering his general dislike of Lebrecht’s work), has something important to say on the subject of musical cultists:

Excellence is the sworn enemy of the cult mentality in its musical manifestation, because one of the prime characteristics of this mindset is self-righteous anger on behalf of the object of worship. If everything that [conductor Jascha] Horenstein did had been exceptional and generally recognized as such, then he would not need a cult to support his claim to immortality. The music doesn’t matter. The quality of his conducting doesn’t matter. What matters is the satisfaction that cult members derive from belonging to the group, and the recordings are merely triggers that activate and reinforce the herd instinct.

    Read the rest here.

ME, IN FISHWRAP NEAR YOU

posted by James Reel

    This being Thursday, I’m splattered across the arts section of the Tucson Weekly. Elsewhere, too. Loose-canon columnist Tom Danehy recounts being lured to a Fourth Avenue restaurant for lunch with Emil Franzi, Chris Limberis, Renée Downing and me:

When James Reel invited me to lunch, I figured I had to go. Among many other things, James does the morning drive-time gig on KUAT radio, playing classical music and talking in a voice that sounds erudite and pimpish at the same time.

    You can find the whole sorry tale here. I must point out, though, that he misattributes one remark to me that was actually made by either Renée or Limbo. I frankly don’t know the difference between the Allman Brothers Band and B.B. King.
    Meanwhile, back in the arts section, I find myself actually enjoying Live Theatre Workshop’s production of Neil Simon’s Last of the Red Hot Lovers. This will surely demolish whatever little credibility I have as a intellectual. Also, I have good things to say about the new show at Top Hat:

What we've got here is Tom Dulack's Breaking Legs, a very funny playwright-meets-mobster production that opened last weekend at Top Hat Theatre Club. True, the show's success rides on how willing you are to buy into the standard comic mob tropes. But Dulack, director Tony Eckstat and the Top Hat cast manage to fold the Mafia clichés into well-paced entertainment as colorful and garlicky as the antipasto plates Angie keeps hauling in.

    The whole review awaits you here.

SLIPPED DISC

posted by James Reel

    Three new Marantz “Professional” CD players were installed in the control room last year, and one of them is now on the fritz. Somehow I feel handicapped having to work with only two players, even though I got along fine with two turntables back in the 1970s and early ’80s. And that was when recordings—specifically, LPs—were a lot more difficult to cue up, as we bounced and dragged the stylus across the delicate surface looking for just the right groove. There’s no reason I can’t get by with only two players, but I like to plan ahead. I have six hours worth of announcements in proper order on my computer screen shortly after my shift begins; I cue up two discs ahead, just in case something goes wrong with the next one up, or I get distracted by a phone call or a search for a fill piece. Take away one of the CD players, and I feel just a little less secure.
    And if you think I’m fussy about these things, let me introduce you to Bill Pitts.

DON'T CALL HIM MELLOW CELLO

posted by James Reel

    Harry, my cello teacher, called early yesterday afternoon to cancel this week’s lesson; he was frantically preparing to leave town for a week and a half. Fine, I told him; I’d fill the open cello slot on my schedule by reviewing Pieter Wispelwey’s new set of the Beethoven cello sonatas and variations on Channel Classics. Harry merely grunted. When pressed to elaborate, he groused about Wispelwey’s capricious interpretive choices, not to mention his tone. “He doesn’t even make it sound like a cello!” he complained. Then, with a laugh, “Our instrument has gone downhill since Jacqueline Du Pré bit the dust.”
    So I listened to Wispelwey’s two-disc set, a beautifully recorded SACD release, immediately heard what Harry was talking about, but failed to share his exasperation. Here’s the gist of the review I’ll be sending Strings magazine today:

    Pieter Wispelway’s new Beethoven survey won’t change anybody’s mind about this high-profile Dutch cellist. Indeed, the very same passages can illustrate the arguments of his detractors as well as his supporters. Do you believe Wispelwey belongs to the new “mannerist” group of players, tugging at phrasing and dynamics on whim rather than according to musical logic? Or do you believe he illuminates too-familiar scores with unexpected detail, surprising articulation and hairpin dynamic swells and fades? Whichever, here’s your evidence.
    Me, after years of preferring the refinement of the likes of Pierre Fournier, I find Wispelwey refreshing. Make no mistake: These aren’t “the” Beethoven sonatas, they’re Wispelwey’s Beethoven sonatas (although I don’t mean this to slight pianist Dejan Lazi’s expert partnership). Unless you just can’t stand Wispelwey’s rather wiry period-instrument tone (even though he’s playing a “modern” 1760 Guadagnini for this, his second Beethoven cycle), you should listen to this recording if only to reinforce your prejudices.