A Provocative Conductor's Provocative Book
John GibbonsAmong the many interesting points of view in Erich Leinsdorf on Music (pub. posthumously in 1997 after Leinsdorf’s death in 1993) are these:
1. The art of the daily music critic is undermined, and finally destroyed, by the “media machine”, hype and boosterism replacing authority. This leads to…
2. Poor and irrelevant music criticism because nobody likes to feel that their job is irrelevant, so the most potentially able critics find something else to do with their lives, and…
3. There is a continually shrinking repertory of symphonic and operatic works because nobody can read a score without a recording anymore, and you can’t promote what you don’t know.
An interjection and partial objection: New works are played all the time, in all sorts of places. But wait a minute! Each work is played only once, or in one sequence, because a premiere has cache, not a second performance. So we have Brahms Symphony Nr. 1 with commissioned concerto or overture x, Brahms Symphony Nr. 1 with commissioned overture y; or by way of contrast, Brahms Symphony Nr. 1 with commissioned concerto or overture z. (Caveat: a few ordained “stars” such as John Adams get the sort of exposure otherwise only enjoyed by the canonic masters.) In fact, I suspect that some of the imprimaturred stars of today have a wider appeal among the general public than, say, the Viennese masters who wrote so much of their repertory for the elite. Maybe the only person who loses is is that lonely individual who is tired of bing inundated with the core repertory, but whose taste in new works are precisely for elitist sorts of styles which seek a non-general audience. But then, there are always CDs. The sudden relative inexpensiveness of cd production coupled with the proliferation of small recording companies, and the enduring commitment of fine musicians to the really tough works is some solace to that “lonely individual”.
As for the critics: we need better daily critics, more generally cultured, who write in a literary manner, not a journalistic manner, who are primarily musicians and therefore know what they are talking about, and who don’t try to promote the hand that feeds them. Of course it is a case of “go along to get along”, and telling the truth ruffles many feathers. I’ve been to many Chicago Symphony performances that were routine or even sub-par, and which were rewarded with standing ovations. I’ve also been to magnificent performances (last year’s Shosty 4 from CSO, or the Lyric Opera’s Dialogues of the Carmelites come to mind) which were similarly rewarded. This equivalent response isn’t good manners, it’s lack of proper discrimination, and one of the roles of a critic is to help inculcate the proper discrimination, a role that can only be acquitted by a critic who knows the scores. The scores! Not just the recordings of and commentaries on the scores. There Leinsdorf has it right.
Reader Comments (6)
John, I really like what you suggest in your final paragraph, that audiences (and critics) too easily grant the "standing O" for performances that are just acceptable.
But they don't really know better, do they? They know the soloist is somebody world-famous, they know they paid a lot of money for their tickets and they know that if they stand up now, they'll have a better chance of getting to their car and beating the traffic out of the garage.
- Jacque
Thanks for the comment, Jacque. But I really do think that the all too common habit of the "standing O" and the all too common habit of getting the heck outa there to beat the traffic have different motivations. By the way, Leinsdorf addresses the phenomenon of world famous soloists being applauded for being famous rather than for the intrinsic quality of their performance in his book.
When the curtain comes down, John and I have the habit (hardly unusual) of immediately turning to each other passing a pithy, bottom-line appraisal. Whether we agree, disagree, or agree for different reasons, it's obviously a conversation-starter and rarely do we defer that till we are out of the building. I've noticed that when we start dissing a performance we often get dirty looks, and one time some lady called us "rude". I think that might have been due to our complaints about the painfully slow tempi in last year's "Romeo et Julietta" at the Chicago Lyric Opera. See, Romeo was covered that night by a local favorite Joseph Kaiser and we were being sticks-in-the-mud despite Kaiser's excellent performance. I absolutely get the feeling that folks don't want their bubble burst, and probably most of them don't have the kind of library that John, the collector, has, to compare the best performances.
In full disclosure, however, I think we usually stand with everyone else, albeit maybe reluctantly, and maybe with the motivation of getting outta there to make the Metra. But I can tell you, when I see John LEAP out of his seat at the conclusion of the Voight-Barenboim "Erwartung" for example, he MEANS it.
Very nice article John. I think one of the problems with the "standing O" is the way orchestras and "big name" soloists market/present themselves. The CSO calls it's self one of the "world's best" and many of the individual musicians in the orchestra are stars (rightly or wrongly) in their own right. To me,the way the CSO talks about it's self is as if the orchestra is above reproach. Combine that with the audiences of the "Windy City" (called the windy city for how people from Chicago talk about Chicago) and you get a blind audience or an audience who comes to the concerts with potatos in their ears. I guess in this day and age we should be happy people come to concerts at all.
Oh and more thing:
I have heard broadcasts on WFMT this year of performances by the CSO and the Lyric opera and both sounded pretty pedestrian at best. Most noteably a performance of a Mozart Wind Serenade on a subscription concert broadcast by WFMT that was very out of tune and poorly balenced. Mozart is to transparent to get away with such poor playing. Maybe this is why the CSO is famous for their Mahler and Bruckner performances, the texture is so thick in this music that a lot of dirt can be swept under the rug or in this case a overly powerful brass section.
This isn't to imply that the CSO is not a great orchestra because it is. But not everything they do is worth a "standing O"
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