WRECKED

posted by James Reel

    It's nice that the National Public Radio news department is enjoying a hiring binge, but could NPR please employ reporters who are familiar with correct English usage? This morning, one reporter told us that the East Coast snowstorms are "wrecking havoc." This would be a good thing, I suppose; havoc is being "wrecked," demolished, by the snow, and order is restored, right?
    This is a stupid error I'm seeing from a lot of writers these days. Come on, people: havoc is "wreaked," meaning "inflicted." If you don't know the difference, you don't belong in a word-oriented profession.

WHYPOD?

posted by James Reel

    The big buzz in classical music right now—until the next wet-T-shirt contest for all-woman string quartets—is that the New York Philharmonic is launching a music-download initiataive with Deutsche Grammophon. Here’s part of the New York Times report:

Deutsche Grammophon, using live recordings by the orchestra, will release four concerts a year, probably through iTunes and perhaps through other Web sites, said Zarin Mehta, the orchestra's president. The first is due in about two months and will be priced at about $8 to $10, he said. It will consist of this weekend's program at Avery Fisher Hall, Mozart's Symphonies Nos. 39, 40 and 41, conducted by Lorin Maazel. Listeners will probably have the choice of downloading a movement, a symphony or the whole concert, Mr. Mehta said.

    Pardon me while I yawn. First, there’s the matter of repertory. Lorin Maazel is an interesting conductor, despite what the zombie New York critics say, but the last thing we need is a new recording of Mozart’s last three symphonies. This music is already represented by decades and decades of previous recordings, some spectacular, some dull, some middling. Some are already available for download. This project just isn’t necessary. (The Philharmonic will be recording new music for the New World label, but that isn’t part of the download deal I’m discussing.)
    Second, and really more important, is that music downloads are inadequate for anyone who cares about audio quality. The stuff sounds OK through the little computer speakers on my desk, but if I’m going to feed limited-resolution audio through my main system, I’d rather listen to old mono Furtwaengler recordings. And as for the noise coming through earbuds attached to the ubiquitous iPod, that’s just an insult to audio engineers and music lovers alike. Besides which, I don’t want to be plugged in to music wherever I go. Music loses its importance and impact if it’s simply carpeting for one’s ear canal. Silence and ambient sounds can hold their own appeal, too.
    The blogger known as Pliable frequently posts his objections to music downloads, but his reservations mainly relate to musicians’ lost income. That doesn’t bother me, because these days making a recording is less a significant revenue stream than a marketing expense, like paying somebody to prepare and send out press kits. More important to me is the issue of quality. When I can play beautiful new high-resolution SACDs through my surround system, why would I want to stuff gooey MP3 files into my ears?

BOHEMIAN GIRL

posted by James Reel

    In the latest Tucson Weekly I interview a UA voice student who seems poised for good things:

    When college student and budding opera singer Martina Chylikova moved to Tucson in 1995, she left behind not only her native Czech Republic, but also the distinctive Slavic vocal style that had spread from Russia through Eastern Europe.
    "When I started," she says, "my range was very small, because my voice was heavy; it was back in my throat, and I couldn't sing much." But now, after several years of work with the University of Arizona's Faye Robinson, Chylikova's voice has opened up remarkably. Not long ago, she returned to Czechia to sing the mezzo-coloratura role of Rosina in The Barber of Seville. Right now, she's in rehearsal for a UA production of Mark Adamo's recent operatic version of Little Women; Chylikova sings the lead role, the teenage Jo. In a few months, she'll look several decades older on the stage of Prague's National Theater, where she'll sing the important supporting role of the Old Woman in Leonard Bernstein's Candide.

    She’s giving a solo concert on Valentine’s Day. As the Tucson Citizen used to say at every such opportunity, Czech it out here.

TWO REASONS TO DISLIKE BROADCAST NEWS

posted by James Reel

    NPR news reported this morning that those incendiary Mohammed cartoons were published in a “small Danish newspaper.” Well, I have it on good authority that “Jyllands-Posten, the Danish paper that originally published the 12 caricatures, has a circulation of about 175,000 and is Denmark's largest paper.” I suppose from NPR’s perspective, anything with less circulation than the Washington Post and New York Times is “small.”
    Also, I have to grit my teeth every time Haiti comes into the news. The place was settled by the French, and Haitians speak their own form of French today. U.S. newscasters pronounce the name of the capital city, Port-au-Prince, as if it rhymed with “prints.” But it’s French, folks, and more or less rhymes with “prance.” That’s the only way the “Port-au-” part makes any sense. If I could get newscasters to pronounce that correctly, and if I could strike the redundant “au jus with gravy” from all restaurant menus, the Francophile in me would be … less discontent.

BROADCASTING FROM "WONDERFUL WINO"

posted by James Reel

    Those nonsense subject lines that spammers generate can be amusing. I just got one that says "you beaujolais in workplace." Nice idea, but that's illegal here on state property.

LONG LIVE LIGETI!

posted by James Reel

    Gyorgy Ligeti wrote his String Quartet No. 1 just over half a century ago, but somehow I’d never heard it until last night’s Arizona Friends of Chamber Music concert by the Artemis Quartet. What spectacular music! I was predisposed to like it, because I’m enthusiastic about Bela Bartók’s quartets, and Bartók was a heavy influence on Ligeti at this early stage of the latter’s career. Even so, you can hear in this quartet hints of the composer Ligeti would become once he fled Hungary, particularly in its exploration of unusual timbres, like the spooky glissandi underlying muted solos near the end.
    It’s intense music with moments of whimsy, and it got a precise and harrowing performance by the Artemis Quartet. The few slips I noticed were trivial. The cellist, for example, during a long passage that repeated a rhythmic pattern punctuated by the so-called “Bartók pizzicato,” where the string is plucked so hard that it snaps back against the fingerboard, missed one pizz near the end. Big deal. Why do I bring it up? Simply to show how I’d have to dig deep into the performance to find something to complain about; all the really tough stuff—and there are lots of challenges here in terms of timing and ensemble—came off spectacularly well. The group even brought a rock’n’roll rawness and force to a couple of the folk-dance rhythms toward the end. Like, wow, man, it’s psychedelic: the Gyorgy Ligeti Experience.
    I have to admit that I was not as impressed by the rest of the concert as I’d hoped, after hearing the Artemis Quartet’s gripping new Beethoven recording for EMI. The tone in the opening Mozart “Prussian” Quartet was a bit thin for my current taste, but it was a perfectly acceptable performance. Similarly, the reading of the Schubert A-minor quartet had much to commend it, but for the most part I missed that sense of singing line that Earl Carlyss, formerly with the Juilliard Quartet, stressed was so essential to Schubert when I interviewed him on the subject a few weeks ago. Perhaps my expectations were unrealistic. But the Ligeti—the composition and the performance—made the evening overall a tremendous success.