Via the Face of the Future photo transformer, here’s what I’d look like as painted by Modigliani:
And this is me in the style of El Greco:
And now I have to write some radio scripts, unless Spider Solitaire proves more interesting.
A very short review I wrote for Strings magazine:
Handel: Concerti Grossi, Op. 6 Nos. 7-12. Martin Pearlman conducting Boston Baroque (Telarc 80688)
Handel dashed off his dozen concerti grossi published as Op. 6 in barely a month, but it’s been a full 15 years since Martin Pearlman and Boston Baroque recorded the first half of the set. Now, at last, here’s the rest of the group, and it was well worth the wait.
In 1739, Handel’s publisher, John Walsh, was eager to cash in on the popularity of the concerti grossi of Corelli and Geminiani, so he asked Handel for something in the same manner. Handel quickly complied, and made his work a bit easier by dropping in quotes from his just-completed Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day, not to mention pieces by Scarlatti and Muffat. Despite the borrowings, the whole set sounds like vintage Handel, and Pearlman and his little band of string players know exactly what to do with it.
As in their recording of the first half of the collection, and their more recent treatment of the Water Music and Royal Fireworks Music, the playing is quite suave. The period-instrument group easily meets Handel’s greatest challenge: conveying stateliness without stiffening up. Beyond that, the musicians can also sound light, playful, even Italianate, as in the final concerto. Throughout, there’s a suppleness that stops well short of affectation, even while Pearlman devotes great attention to such details as attacking musical paragraphs differently from the way of attacking individual phrases within them. The only complaint: Telarc shouldn’t have taken a decade and a half to complete this fine cycle.
Greg Sandow is re-opening a conversation about why pop-music criticism can seem more engaging, and more engaged, than classical criticism:
Imagine a pop show and a classical concert, both equally serious. Suppose they're reviewed by pop and classical critics of equal ability. The pop review, as a rule, will be more compelling for general readers, because the music will be connected to the world outside, and the review will show that.
In the course of this, he brings in and then dismisses some possible objections, including:
_Classical reviews aren't likely to talk about connections to the outside world, because many classical pieces are instrumental, and thus don't have lyrics that can make these connections. Or because pop musicians mostly write their own songs, while classical musicians play music written by others. Or because so much of the music played at classical concerts comes from the past._ This excuses the problem I'm defining here, but doesn't solve it. That is, we can say, if we like, that classical music reviews shouldn't be expected to do what pop reviews do. But still pop reviews will (if I'm right about this) be more interesting to general readers. And at a time when we want more attention for classical music, this doesn't seem helpful. This objection to my point, then, actually raises a challenge for people writing about classical music. If we can't expect classical music to connect readily to the outside world, what exactly does it do? What, exactly, is valuable about it? I'm not—repeat not—saying it relating to the outside world is the most important value classical music might have, but what is classical music doing for us when we listen to it? Of course it's doing something very powerful. But how would we define that—and, most important for the point I'm making in these posts, do reviews convey what the power and meaning of classical music might be?
Well, here’s an idea that I think is central to what makes classical music (or, for that matter, pop standards) “classic”: The music survives its own time and place by making a strong connection with individual performers and listeners for generations to come. Beyond the time of their origin, classics aren’t about connecting to the outside world so much as connecting to inner worlds, and it’s the personal response of generations of individuals that keeps certain songs and symphonies alive. The music that is too bound up with its zeitgeist holds little interest even a quarter-century later, except academically. And oddly enough, I think a lot of pop-music criticism, although on the surface it may document a visceral response, is really zeitgeist criticism, pondering the nature of contemporary society and how well a performer reflects its issues.
To do what Greg thinks classical criticism ought to do, if I understand him correctly, a review should reveal the critic’s personal response to the music and its performance. And yet, paradoxically, I think that’s a poor approach. Some of the worst criticism ever written is by amateurs who rhapsodize over the transcendent concert they’ve just attended, without really conveying anything meaningful to readers. So the reviewer was blown away; so what? It’s still necessary to dig into a piece and figure out exactly what in the music and its performance makes those personal connections with other listeners. Greg, if I’m interpreting some of his past posts accurately, is afraid that this leads to dry, excessively technical reviews that alienate lay readers. That’s certainly possible, but not necessary. I’d advocate more colorful nuts-and-bolts criticism, an artful blend of the objective and subjective, exploring the intersection of technique and expression, of the universal and the personal, at the heart of any classic.
My colleague Robert Rappaport blogs about his latest assignment, writing his own bio for our Web site. Says Robert:
One of the tricky areas in a bio is making your hobbies sound interesting. Sure it's fun sitting at home watching pro wrestling and reruns of Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond, but do you really want to say that? It sounds a bit classier to say you enjoy reading Shakespeare, attending the symphony and listening to classical music.
Hey, wait a minute—I’m the one who enjoys doing those things. Well, maybe not going to the Tucson Symphony anymore.
Violist-blogger Charles Noble provides some interesting statistics linking newspaper and orchestral demographics, and critic Justin Davidson, one of the few who does still have a job in the mainstream media, offers a solution to the decline in professional arts criticism in American communities: online arts bulletins funded by consortia of local arts organizations. I’m not sure how a critic’s editorial independence would figure into this—the critic would be paid, indirectly, by the very institutions being reviewed—but it’s worth some thought.
My contribution to the Tucson Weekly this weekend is a look at the Da Vinci Players:
In a recent lunchtime chat about his work, the only word Robert Encila used more than "community" was some variant of "connection." It's even in the name of his arts-education organization: Studio Connections. Consider his choice of namesake for Studio Connections' acting troupe, the Da Vinci Players: "Leonardo was the inspiration, because he worked in almost every artistic and scientific discipline in the Renaissance," he said. "The Da Vinci Players and Studio Connections are about integrating disciplines. We're making connections with artists in a lot of different fields."
You can read more and find out about the group’s production of Barefoot in the Park, opening this weekend, here.
James Reel's cranky consideration of the fine arts and public radio in Tucson and beyond.
