DIVISI

posted by James Reel

    In his Orange County Register review of a Philadelphia Orchestra tour concert, Timothy Mangan identifies trouble that Philly shares with the Tucson Symphony:

    The way that [conductor Christoph] Eschenbach has the orchestra seated may be a problem. The first and second violins are split right and left, and the cellos and basses are massed behind the first violins. In Brahms' Symphony No. 1, which concluded the concert, this left the first violins high and dry, playing against a dark sonic background of cellos and basses rather than with the close harmonic support of the second violins. The first violins sounded wiry.
    Nor could you hear the seconds properly much of the time. Seated on the right, their sound is sent away from the audience, toward the back of the stage.

    This is precisely what has been going on with the Tucson Symphony’s sound since music director George Hanson moved the second violins over to the right. True, there are excellent historical and musical justifications for this arrangement. Splitting the violins across the stage was common 200 years ago, and composers often took advantage of this set-up by writing quasi-antiphonal material for the first and second violins—they fully intended the musical strands to sound separately. This was probably accomplished with little fuss when orchestras were smaller, playing in smaller halls.
    But now, even though we have a lot more violins to produce sound, when the second violins are moved to the right their sound is projected toward the back of the stage and up into the cavern that is the modern orchestra shell, and it isn’t properly bouncing back into the hall. (At least that’s what happens in the perpetually acoustically troubled Tucson Music Hall.) Thus, instead of bringing greater clarity to the second-violin line, the setup causes 10 to 12 professional violinists to saw away to little audible purpose.
    Here’s an arrangement I think would delineate the lines adequately while allowing all the sections to be heard: from left to right, first violins, violas, second violins, cellos and basses. This way, all the instruments are more or less facing the audience, but the violin parts are separated, and the violas don’t turn to mush, which they usually do when they’re pressed up against the cellos. Does anybody have any experience with this layout?

JUMP THE SHARK

posted by James Reel

    My latest review in the Tucson Weekly:

A play titled Swimming in the Shallows invites easy jokes about its lack of substance. And, indeed, Adam Bock's work of that name, currently running at Invisible Theatre, does emphasize cleverness over content. Nevertheless, while Swimming in the Shallows isn't very deep, the writing is splashy, the production is confident, and it all makes for a pleasant way to spend 75 minutes in the theater.

    Read the rest here.

DISTINCTIVE?

posted by James Reel

    Simon Heffer’s defense of Elgar in the Telegraph is typical English boosterism. The basic argument: Elgar was great because he was English! Heffer tosses out a few superlatives for Elgar’s weakest works (the Violin Concerto, the Second Symphony, The Coma of Gerontius) without ever identifying anything that gives them musical value. This is typical of the Elgarians: Declare the old man to be superior and it must be so, even in the absence of supporting evidence. Of what value is criticism by assertion?
    Of course, not every Englishman is an idiot when it comes to music. I don’t recall the position on Elgar taken by Pliable, the proprietor of On an Overgrown Path, and for some reason Pliable’s opinions do not always coincide with mine, but he is certainly an intelligent observer and listener. I particularly like his definition of excellence in broadcasting, from a recent post about the dismal state of British classical radio: “To do great radio you need to be distinctive, inclusive and personal.”

SCORE!

posted by James Reel

    Thanks to a link provided by Patricia Mitchell, I’ve been downloading lots of public-domain scores from the International Music Score Library Project. It’s not entirely easy to fish out specific things, like pieces for cello and piano, because of inconsistent titling and organizing (which is what happens when you have more than one enthusiastic person involved in an uploading project). Not all the scans are as readable as one might wish, and some of the ensemble works are available only in full score, not parts. And, of course, we’re talking about old editions of a lot of things, which may lack corrections and useful fingerings. But still, this could turn into a tremendous resource.

MY OTHER CAR IS A CELLO

posted by James Reel

    Harry, my cello teacher, sent me a link to an interview with his old teacher, George Neikrug, who spent some time talking about one of his old teachers, Demetrius Dounis. Most of Neikrug’s comments fall in line with what Harry has been telling me for two years, including this:

Dounis believed that technique is essentially based on "evenness," the goal being to give the impression that everything is on the same string. One should be able to get the same vibrato with every finger in any position on any string, the same tone with the bow on every string, and to make unnoticed string changes. Any deviation from this evenness would then be for musical reasons, not due to technical deficiencies.

    That’s all well and good, except that I still have trouble getting the same sound from the same finger at the same position on the same string every time. Sometimes I feel that I shouldn’t be wasting my time working when I really need to be practicing the cello. At least I’ve gotten to the point at which I can have some pretty decent moments during some of my practice sessions (note the liberal use of qualifiers). All I have to do is figure out how to do that consistently. Harry is great at getting me in shape during the course of a lesson; it’s a matter of remembering to apply all the techniques and advice simultaneously when I’m not under professional supervision.
    Why is it that we can get a license to drive after just a few months of supervised practice, yet it takes us so much longer to be turned loose with a musical instrument? Yeah, driving makes fewer simultaneous demands on our attention, and doesn’t require such refined motor skills. Still, a car is much more dangerous than a cello (but watch out for that endpin!). If there were cosmic balance, we’d achieve instrumental facility within half a year, but we wouldn’t be on our own behind the wheel without a decade of hard preparation.

WINNERS

posted by James Reel

    Jimmy Boegle, esteemed editor of the Tucson Weekly, offers this response to my rant against journalism competitions:

    I agree with most of the points you make in your anti-journalism-contest blog screed. I also agreed with most of it when it was in Media Watch long ago.
    You’re right that most readers don’t care about them. You’re right that in some categories, there are very few entries. (Look at the award I personally picked up in the Arizona Press Club contest: a third place for education writing! In the medium-newspaper category! Out of nine entries! Whoo-hoo—I barely made the top third!) You’re right that some publications enter a lot of stuff just to see what catches a judge's eye, which confirms yet another of your points, that the judging can often times be, well, insane or ignorant (my exact words, not yours).
    Despite my agreements with these points, however, I still have the Weekly submitting healthy amounts of entries for the contests that make sense for us. I’ve even been known to publicly chastise rogue arts editors for not helping me decide what to enter.
    Here are three reasons why:
    1. It’s part of the game you have to play in the journalism world. When I was in Las Vegas, I worked for a newspaper that employed one of the best photographers in the state. He felt much like you do about contests, and didn’t enter any of his pics one year for the Nevada Press Association contest. Well, our biggest competitor’s photogs did—and they ended up winning a bunch of awards, largely because only, like, four newspapers were in our circulation category. Then they made a major public deal about their awards haul. This pissed off our photographer. He entered the next year, and he got the awards he deserved—meaning, just as importantly, our competitor did not.
    2. Interesting trends can emerge that expose a sliver of truth. You illustrated this well by pointing out how few writing awards the Star won in the AP contest. Not to toot the Weekly’s horn … OK, I lie, to PRECISELY toot our horn, I think it says something that every year, our small-staffed, under-budgeted newspaper wins awards against the big boys in the state in the Arizona Press Club. Of the 18 awards we won this year, 10 of them—including five first-place honors—were in all-publications categories. By winning all-publications first-place awards in film criticism, music criticism and arts criticism, it shows the strength of the back of our book. Margaret Regan’s four first-place awards (two in all-publications categories), in the context of her always winning awards like this, offer proof of her talent. (The same can be said for Danehy, Banks, Nintzel, etc.)
    3. These awards give our writers much-appreciated and well-deserved kudos. This reason is, by far, the biggest reason why I take the time to enter our writers in these awards. Journalists tend to be an overworked and underpaid lot, and I KNOW that, for example, these Arizona Press Club awards truly meant something to most of the winners. That means a lot to me.
    So, that’s my two (maybe even three) cents. And that’s why I’ll keep entering these contests on behalf of the Weekly.