By Sedgwick Clark<\/p>\n
Michael Steinberg, one of America’s foremost writers about classical music, died last week (7\/26) at age 80.\u00a0 For nearly12 years, he was critic of the Boston Globe<\/em>, holding the orchestra and three music directors to the highest standards.\u00a0So when the Chicago Symphony under Georg Solti, at that time the hottest orchestra team in America, performed on tour in Boston in the mid-1970s, many of Michael’s colleagues were eager to see what he would have to say.\u00a0But he boycotted the concert because the originally announced Variations for Orchestra by Elliott Carter had been changed at the last minute to run-of-the-mill fare.\u00a0(The CSO and Solti performed the Variations at Carnegie Hall, and it still resonates in my memory.\u00a0 Carter, visibly thrilled, was called out five times for bows.)<\/p>\n By 1976, Michael was tired of reviewing and the BSO cannily engaged him to write its program notes.\u00a0 Later, he wrote notes for the orchestras of San Francisco, Minneapolis, and New York\u2014the most cultured, erudite notes in my concert-going experience.\u00a0One can get a taste of them in three collections published by Oxford: The Symphony<\/em> (1995), The Concerto<\/em> (1998), and Choral Masterworks<\/em> (2005).\u00a0<\/p>\n Times have changed.\u00a0 Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the New York Philharmonic have decided that shorter, less challenging notes are better suited to today’s audiences.\u00a0 You see, knowledge is intimidating.\u00a0 “We’re not here to educate,” was a line I heard often from the station manager at WNCN in the 1980s when I was editing Keynote<\/em>, the station’s music magazine and program guide.\u00a0In my first issue Michael wrote an article about Elliott Carter, our composer of the month.\u00a0 Unfortunately, it was the only time I had the pleasure of working with him.<\/p>\n Pulcinella<\/em><\/strong> at Mostly Mozart<\/strong><\/p>\n I try to avoid concerts in the summer, but I came out of hiding last night (8\/5) for a complete Pulcinella<\/em> at Lincoln Center and was amply rewarded by Montreal-born conductor Yannick N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin’s spiffy conducting, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra’s superb playing, and better than usual singing in this piece by mezzo Karen Cargill, tenor Toby Spence, and bass Matthew Rose.\u00a0The crisp attacks, sharp rhythms, wit, and buoyancy cocked a snook at the logy Chicago\/Boulez outing at Carnegie last March.\u00a0 But then Boulez’s music-making has never really danced<\/em>, and at least the Midwestern band was far superior to the early-’70s New York Philharmonic when he last conducted it here.\u00a0A fairer comparison would be with David Robertson’s tightly sprung rendering of the Pulcinella<\/em> Suite with the Juilliard Orchestra at the reopening concert of Alice Tully Hall in late February, although even here N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin’s relative relaxation in some of the dances had its points.\u00a0The flawless brass, pungent woodwinds, and excellent string ensemble\u2014ideal for Stravinsky (or just about any other composer, for that matter)\u2014had me smiling throughout.\u00a0The highlight, for me, in this 40-minute performance was the gavotte con due variazioni<\/em>, played to thrilling perfection by orchestra principals Demarre McGill (flute), Marc Goldberg (bassoon), and Lawrence DiBello (horn).\u00a0 After that, the Mozart piano concerto and Mendelssohn “Italian” Symphony in the second half would only have been anticlimactic, and I departed happily.<\/p>\n