ECLAIR SUR L'AU-DELA
posted by James Reel
From a review in the local morning daily of a concert at the deaf-and-blind school in which Dmitri Kabalevsky’s The Comedians was accompanied by computer-generated abstract images:
Russian composer Dmitry Kabalevsky would likely have chuckled at the sight Sunday afternoon. …I am so jealous. Never in my career as a music critic have I ever been able to ask a dead composer his opinion of a performance. Clairvoyance is a skill seldom mastered by professional critics, who waste too much time studying music rather than extra-sensory perception.
Yes, Kabalevsky would have delighted in seeing the dynamic epilogue of his suite transcribed into a pulsing octagon shape that fused into a series of lines and swirls as the music grew more frenetic.
The composer also would have been pleased to hear how fine the orchestra performed the work …
Kabalevsky would have been pleased that his music touched so many people who likely did not hear a note of it.
As edifying as it is to be informed of Kabalevsky’s posthumous opinions, I wonder what the critic thought of the performance?
