PERFORMERS AND CRITICISM

posted by James Reel

Blogger and critic Lisa Hirsch wonders why on earth performers would care to read reviews:

What if you get a bad or equivocal review? I'm convinced that performers don't benefit from reading these. I've been on stage enough times myself, as a chorister or flutist, to know perfectly well that most performers have a very good idea of how well they did on a given night. I am always more aware than anyone in the audience of the errors I've made or that the chorus or orchestra has made or where somebody really missed a cue badly (including conductors who forget to throw a cue the chorus is expecting). Is a performer going to learn much from reading a critic who says the tenor blew the high note or the bass has a wobble or something else like that? I think not. A couple of people have said things to me along the lines of, well, a performer might learn something and change from reading reviews. I don't buy that. Reviews are not pedagogical. A review is one person's perception of what happened in a particular theater or concert hall at one performance. It's a snapshot, and that's it. It has real value as a bit of history.

She's largely right, but I do know of a couple of instances when a performer has taken my reviews to heart. It helps that I try not to be mean-spirited, which lessens the entertainment value but is more constructive in the long run. An actor once told me, "Most of us respect you, except for the people who hate your guts." I'm satisfied with that balance.

I'm reminded of the famous English actor--I can't remember which actor--who said that it's perfectly acceptable never to read negative reviews ... as long as you don't read positive reviews, either.

JUNETEENTH

posted by James Reel

This Saturday, June 19, is an annual holiday that doesn't get a whole lot of press: Juneteenth, African American Emancipation Day, first celebrated in Galveston, Texas in 1865 and now a worldwide event. In celebration, KUAT-FM will have works by black composers scattered through the day's schedule--such American figures as William Grant Still and Duke Ellington (a suite from The River, starting at 10 a.m.), and, because it's now an international event, the Englishman Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who was once so prominent that he was called the "African Mahler." His music sounds nothing like Mahler's, though, as you'll discover if you tune in for his Clarinet Quintet about 9:30 and then stick around for Mahler's Symphony No. 9 beginning a bit more than an hour later.

MORE COMPLETE LISTINGS

posted by James Reel

This just in from our Web experts: "The Classical Music Archive now lists all available metadata as long as the song has already aired." That means you can now find the composer, title, label and catalog number of every CD we've played in the recent past. Go here, which seems to give you only a list of our syndicated concert programs (Chicago Symphony and such), but if you click on an individual date, you will be taken to complete music listings for that day.

ROBERT MUCZYNSKI

posted by James Reel

While I was vacationing in Romania (about which more later, once I catch up with everything that didn't get done while I was away), retired University of Arizona composition professor Robert Muczynski passed away. He wrote music that I not only admired, but enjoyed, and it circulated easily around this country and across the Atlantic. Bob was always miffed that he didn't get the local attention he thought he deserved, but at least his works have become increasingly easy to hear via CD. My Fanfare colleague Walter Simmons, a longtime Muczynski advocate, wrote this fine tribute.

I DIDN'T DO IT

posted by James Reel

NPR is having a rather rocky newscast right now (7:01 a.m.), with a tiny, unauthorized blast of music in the first minute and an awkward pause between news items that somehow sounded a lot longer than the one second or so it really lasted. It's hard for listeners to tell whose fault it is when something like that goes wrong, but I insist those two incidents weren't my fault! But perhaps a more important issue is, do listeners even notice little things like that, or care? Somehow, I think not.

MORE ON THE LISTINGS

posted by James Reel

The classical music listings have been restored (actually, they were a few days ago), but I thought I'd call your attention to a couple of comments on the subject that came in from blog readers.

One, which was posted in the comments section, requests that we restore the performer and label information we used to include years ago. Those fell by the wayside, I think, when we changed our music scheduling software. I don't know what it would take to get that info back online, but I'll bring it to the attention of the Web guys.

Here's a note that came to me directly from an online listener in New Jersey, and it echoes another message I received recently:

I am not one of those three people you mention in your blog. I am on the East Coast and check your listening to see if you are playing some syndicated broadcast not found elsewhere on the web. Material from CD Syndications, for example, is getting hard to find these days. Of course finding a site that is providing the program is not enough. The sound must also sound good. Only a few classical stations stream above 128Kbits/sec in MP3 although the quality of the web stream depends on more than just the bit rate. I would also add that not many stations provide the detailed listening that KUAT did. I am sure many more than three people, who can hear the station over the air, use the schedule to plan when to listen to the station given how well it was prepared.