My publisher made me do this.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always been leery of blogs, from the disgusting sound of the word to the colossal self-importance of the act. Still, I admit to a good read and insight courtesy of bloggers <\/a>Alex Ross and <\/a>Alan Rich, and I\u2019m sure I\u2019d find others out there if I took the time. I am told I needed a title. Among friends\u2019 suggestions are \u201cMusical Rants and Raves,\u201d \u201cBloviation on a Theme by Sedgwick,\u201d \u201cSymphony in E Flatulence,\u201d “Why I Left Muncie,” \u201cHigh Forehead, Low Brow.\u201d No\u2014too many notes, Mozart. The publisher wants my name in the title, but I can\u2019t hack that. (I\u2019m still working on it.) My only diary experience lasted a few months after I arrived in New York City. Come my first real job, as a press department gofer at The Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, I no longer had time for such things. Samuel Pepys I am not.<\/p>\n I knew since at least the eighth grade that I would make my life in New York. I wanted to be a movie critic. My father was born in New York, but after the war my mother wanted to raise her family in her home town in Indiana. We vacationed in the Mohawk Valley each summer, so the move after college was as normal as blueberry pie\u2014or Carnegie Deli strawberry cheesecake. I can\u2019t imagine living anywhere else. For 40 years I have had the inestimable opportunity to savor all the arts in what I consider the center of the world. Perhaps my enthusiasm for my adopted city\u2019s offerings will ring some others\u2019 chimes.<\/p>\n Two young conductors.<\/strong> I got here in time for Leonard Bernstein\u2019s final season as Philharmonic music director, 1968-69. His concerts and recordings have colored my tastes more than that of any other musician\u2014no surprise, my being a child of his Young People\u2019s Concerts. Nearly 20 years after his death, I walk out after many concerts wondering what Bernstein would have done. Obviously, I\u2019m not alone. The night before going on vacation three weeks ago (1\/14), I heard young Venezuelan hotshot (and Bernstein aficionado) Gustavo Dudamel conduct the Mahler Fifth at the Philharmonic. It was a young man\u2019s performance, all drama and climaxes and exciting as all get out, and not even St. Martin\u2019s balmy rays could expunge the memory of that Fifth. He may well be Bernstein reincarnated: all over the podium, barely containing his excitement, and sharing an instinctive sense of rubato that seems to have escaped most conductors and soloists of the last half-century. The orchestra played as if possessed, and then the damnedest thing happened: He comes out for bows, the audience goes wild, and the players sit there stone-faced like Eurydice. Eventually some of them can\u2019t help breaking rank, smiling and tapping their bows. Why? I didn\u2019t see him, but I\u2019ll bet my blog that the New Yorkers\u2019 new music director, Alan Gilbert, was in the house, and the New York Philharmonic wasn\u2019t about to display any favoritism for the Los Angeles Philharmonic\u2019s new music director. (Both conductors take over their new orchestras in September.) Gilbert had just introduced his new season programming three days before on the Fisher Hall stage. He\u2019s a child of the Philharmonic. His parents were violinists in the orchestra (his father is retired), and young Alan heard Bernstein lead the Phil often. He\u2019s a much different animal than Dudamel\u2014earnest, laid back, perhaps even a little embarrassed at being in the limelight\u2014and the contrast will provide press fodder on both coasts. He\u2019ll be a breath of fresh air after Lorin Maazel\u2019s unadventurous programming . . . if he\u2019s allowed. He wants to encourage young contemporary composers at the Phil, and there are two concerts of world premieres scheduled\u2014safely performed at small venues so that the usual audience suspects won\u2019t look so lonely in Fisher. The other season treat is a three-week Stravinsky festival conducted by Valery Gergiev. I can\u2019t wait! But, and it\u2019s a big but, most of the subscription programs are awfully careful.<\/p>\n Artists of the Year. <\/strong>Last week (2\/5) I took Charles Rosen (MA\u2019s 2008 Instrumentalist of the Year<\/a>) to Zankel Hall to hear Pierre-Laurent Aimard (MA\u2019s 2007 Instrumentalist<\/a>) juxtapose excerpts of Bach\u2019s \u201cArt of Fugue\u201d with piano works by Elliott Carter (MA\u2019s 1993 Composer). It\u2019s hard to avoid \u201cour\u201d artists these days! February is quite the month for this. Like Aimard, Charles recorded the \u201cArt of Fugue\u201d and most of Carter\u2019s piano music\u2014in fact, he was one of the pianists who commissioned Carter\u2019s \u201cNight Fantasies\u201d\u2014and it was a treat to hear his comments on the works and watch his fingers mime certain passages. On Monday (2\/2) at Carnegie I heard an extraordinary recital by Christian Tetzlaff (MA\u2019s 2005 Instrumentalist<\/a>) and Leif Ove Andsnes\u2014edge-of-seat performances of Brahms\u2019s Third Violin\/Piano Sonata and Schubert\u2019s \u201cRondo brilliant\u201d and hardly less impressive ones of Jan\u00e1cek and Mozart sonatas. Although I already had planned to attend, I was cued by Alan Rich\u2019s blog (soi\u2019veheard.com) in his review of their LA performance of the same program the previous week: \u201cThis was a great evening: violin and piano without flash or schmaltz. . . .\u201d<\/p>\n The Cleveland Orchestra<\/strong> <\/strong>played three concerts at Carnegie last week under Franz Welser-M\u00f6st (MA\u2019s Conductor, 2003<\/a>). I have never heard this most European of American orchestras sound so sumptuous! For months I had looked forward to hearing Ligeti\u2019s \u201cAtmosph\u00e8res\u201d live (2\/4) at last\u2014remember its use in Kubrick\u2019s \u201c2001\u201d?\u2014and it didn\u2019t disappoint. The Carnegie Hall audience was absolutely quiet as W-M beat several \u201csilent\u201d bars at the end, as Ligeti requests; thank goodness he didn\u2019t try that with a Philharmonic audience. Wagner\u2019s \u201cWesendonck\u201d Lieder featured ravishing pianissimos from soprano Measha Brueggergosman and a perfectly judged accompaniment. And what Strauss\u2019s Technicolor \u201cAlpine Symphony\u201d lacked in drama, it thrilled in sheer tonal beauty. I see that Peter Davis (MA.com, 2\/6)<\/a> found the Ligeti a \u201cquaint period piece,\u201d and the soloist in the Wagner \u201cunderpowered and lacking firm support\u201d as well as \u201coverly fussy\u201d interpretively. The Strauss \u201clacked panache and seemed excessively rushed,\u201d he felt. I skipped the second concert, with Shostakovich\u2019s \u201cLeningrad\u201d Symphony. I don\u2019t understand why conductors prefer this melodically barren tub-thumper to the far superior Fourth, Sixth, or Eighth. I had greatly anticipated Jan\u00e1cek\u2019s glorious Glagolithic Mass on the third concert (2\/7), but after a rather unsettled Mozart 25th and beautifully performed Debussy Nocturnes, W-M chose to play a recent version by Jan\u00e1cek scholar Paul Wingfield \u201cthat seeks to restore the composer\u2019s original vision.\u201d Seems that \u201cnumerous compromises . . . had been made to accommodate practical needs in the first performance. . . .\u201d Well, maybe so, but on first hearing I found the changes highly disconcerting and deeply disappointing, despite fine playing, solo singing, and superbly solid work from the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus. I was astonished to see no mention whatsoever of the different version in Jim Oestreich’s otherwise perspicacious review in the Times.<\/p>\n Political hypocrisy.<\/strong> Once again the Loyal Opposition is contesting money to the National Endowment for the Arts. Why can\u2019t they accept that the arts generate billions annually, employ millions of Americans, and most importantly, teach kids that everyone has unique talents to offer the world? But no, they\u2019re still equating all the arts with Andres Serrano\u2019s supposedly blasphemous \u201cPiss Christ\u201d and the homoerotic Mapplethorpe photos that were so controversial two decades ago. And now, believe it or not, after eight years of kneejerk voting of billions for a questionable war that may eventually bankrupt the American economy, they\u2019re feigning concern about the monetary legacy we\u2019re leaving our grandchildren. They say the arts aren\u2019t an immediate concern. Like education? The mind boggles.<\/p>\n