THE CLASSICAL CD LIVES!

posted by James Reel

    Alex Ross has posted some intriguing and sensible thoughts on the non-death of classical CDs. I trust his analysis, despite ambiguous evidence and conflicting opinions elsewhere. (See Alex’s post for some good links.)
    Coincidentally, yesterday I interviewed the head of arkivmusic.com, and our chat produced evidence to support the notion that classical CDs are alive and well. Last month, the online classical retailer polled 50,000 customers about how they prefer to store and hear recorded classical music. Overwhelmingly, the customers prefer CDs to downloads: The audio quality is better, you get liner notes, and you have a physical object whose survival is more assured than data on a hard drive or an iPod. (Arkivmusic has no vested interest in pimping the old CD format; the company exists to make money by selling classical recordings, no matter what form those recordings may take.)
    Furthermore, the retailer’s successful new “on-demand” program of licensing the back catalogs of major record labels and selling custom pressings of out-of-print discs demonstrates the importance of the Long Tail concept in classical music. That is, record companies can make money on classical recordings by maintaining a deep back catalog from which individual items may sell modestly in any given month, but those sales prove to be substantial over a longer period of time. (Mozart and Beethoven made little money from performances of their piano concertos in their lifetimes, but if they were still collecting royalties today, they’d be far richer than Bill Gates. But way too old to enjoy the money.)
    Let's sing no Requiem for the classical CD just yet.

FRUITY GOODNESS

posted by James Reel

    With apologies for my recent lapse in blogging (busy, tired from fighting pertussis for the past month), I now take the easy way out and point you to my reviews in the latest Tucson Weekly. I’m covering two of the three offerings in Arizona Theatre Company’s RepFest.
    First, the comedy:

    Playwright Craig Wright offers a tremendous gift to nasty critics, but then snatches it away.
    Halfway through his play Molly's Delicious, a character explains the development of the apple with that name. Among its attributes, Molly's Delicious has the highest sugar content of all American apples. "Oh, boy," thinks the evil critic, squirming with malicious glee. "Now I can lead off my review with a wisecrack about the play's own ridiculously high sugar content."
    Trouble is, Wright defies the expectations he raises early in the play and backs away from excessive sweetness and sentimentality. Not that Molly's Delicious offers much to chew over. Nor is it exceptionally juicy, nor does it leave much of an aftertaste, pleasant or otherwise. It's just a nice little gentle comedy whose greatest success is in not going wrong.

    From behind a door, a man appears, attired in a simple black dress, dark headscarf, clunky shoes and a string of pearls. He faces us silently, hands at his sides, palms outturned. Without a word, he withdraws behind the door.
    Soon, the man will reappear with a number of antique objects to show us, but in this first moment, it's the man himself who has been placed on display. And a remarkable item he is: Born Lothar Berfelde in 1928 in a suburb of Berlin, he thought of himself as a woman and lived openly as a crossdresser for decades, surviving the Nazis, then the East German secret police, all the while developing a private museum of furniture from the 1890s.
    We'll call this person Charlotte von Mahlsdorf and apply the feminine pronoun, both of which she did for most of her life. What else Charlotte did in her life is a matter of some debate, as detailed in the play I Am My Own Wife, in a quietly brilliant production by Arizona Theatre Company.
    The play ran Off and on Broadway about four years ago, and picked up every award short of the Heisman Trophy. Playwright Doug Wright gave it the subtitle Studies for a Play About the Life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, and with good reason: This is not a straightforward biographical work, but an account of Wright's effort to grapple with a unique life story told by an unreliable narrator.