Is Wagner just a toy for the boys?

Spotted in the audience for Götterdämmerung at the end of the Mariinsky Ring cycle in Cardiff this week was Prince Charles. But interestingly his wife Camilla was not with him. Is Wagner just a toy for the boy's? Or had Camilla read the distinctly lukewarm reviews of a staging even Valery Gergiev's conducting couldn't transcend?

Now read about a boy with some really frightening toys in Wagner - I don't get to hear anything else
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Comments

Konrad von Swalwagner said…
I agree with Geoff Brown that the "only" things to remember about Gergiev's Ring are Gergiev's conducting, the Mariinsky orchestra and the soloists. I saw "Die Walküre" and "Götterdämmerung" in Petersburg (two years ago) and the staging was terrible; then the same production was shown at the Met in NY, for not very enthusiastic reviews, I suppose. I can't understand how come nobody has told Gergiev that he should trash the entire scenic part of the production.

By the way, Gergiev is partly responsible for the staging as well, not just for the music, so he bears some of the blame that the reviewer puts on the credited director and designer.
5:57 pm
LaDonnaMobile said…
It's a rather silly article written by somebody who was going to Wagner for the first time. I have to admit that when I was at Gotterdammerung on Easter Monday it was slightly bizarre to walk straight into the Ladies past a queue for the Gents. I couldn't resist a chheky smile and "Afternoon chaps." I don't think that proves anything at all.

But I know lots of women who are Wagner fans, including one friend who did her Ph.D on him. And when I go I leave my fiancé at home.

I am not sure how he can possibly justify such a conclusion from Camilla Windsor, his wife and "I was told". This isn't serious researched journalism. This is just impressionistic feelings. Which is what I do on my blog, for my own amusement, but I'm amateur. I assume he's getting paid for that piece of fluff.

I think the guardian has decided that their target readership is a sneering superficial 25 year old with a pretend degree and working in meejah, and they gear most of their non hard news articles to that person, ignoring people who have been reading The Guardian for 25 years - or longer.

Gert
12:23 am
Konrad von Swalwagner said…
Alexander Chancellor writes that "Wagner's idea of love... doesn't seem to extend much beyond sexual passion. It is always love at first sight, and the music explodes on cue accordingly." This flat analysis may work perhaps for the Ring cycle (what about Siegmund and Sieglinde in "Die Walkure") but did he ever hear perhaps of a certain opera called "Tristan und Isolde"? Regardless of Freudian interpretations, that doesn't seem to be pure interest on sex between the two characters.

Other than that, I agree with the commentator above, the review on "The Guardian" is a rather silly article. And Chancellor manages also to insult the Welsh in a strange display of English supremacist belief, something that might have worked in Queen Victoria's times.

(Not being English, Welsh, nor British in general, I may be missing something in my criticism.)
10:16 pm
proulx michel said…
Not any great fan of Wagner's but I remembre Scott Ross playing the Tristan und Isolde Liebestod on his harpsichord, which was great fun.

Beethoven (not any great fan either) was one of the lamest persons of renown of his age. Misogynist, mean, a perfect scrooge, tyrannic with his nephew (he sued his own sister to wrestle the kid from her), that does'nt make his music less interesting.
And if GW Bush has some liking for some music, whatever it is, should we deem it automatically despicable?
1:22 pm
Post a Comment

Recent popular posts

Watch Michel Petrucciani video online

Image
Back in January 2005 I wrote about legendary jazz pianist Michel Petrucciani (right), and that article remains high in my 'popular pages' listing after fifteen months. Since writing that piece Overgrown Path reader Andrew Nathan and I have been tracking down Petrucciani video footage, and just this week Andrew came up with an absolute gem that is available free on Google video. In my original article I wrote that Michel Petrucciani was a 'pianistic genius' , and it is no coincidence that he is buried in the Pierre Lachaise cemetery in Paris alongside Chopin. This 38 minute video with excellent sound (and a bonus guest appearance from the gorgeous Charlotte Rampling ) is not just essential viewing for jazz fans, it should be watched by all students of the piano - whatever their discipline. Just click here to view this important document. (The video is not hosted by On An Overgrown Path , this is a link to an external site). And to set the video into context here is m
Read more

The great free MP3 download fallacy yet again

Image
"Orchestras must embrace new technology following a BBC experiment that highlighted the huge demand for classical downloads. More than 1.3 million people downloaded Beethoven's symphonies for free during a two-month period last year. That proved there is a large untapped market for classical music, according to US critic, composer and consultant Greg Sandow. " From BBC News report on last week's Association of British Orchestras Conference. Pliable says if I offer free Beluga Caspian caviar from my web site and there are 1.3 million takers does that prove "there is a large untapped market" for Beluga Caviar? And elsewhere some rather more rigorous research comes up with thought provoking results which I would have thought would have been of interest to critics, composers and consultants at a major orchestra management conference: "Music downloading creates listener apathy - internet downloading and MP3 players are creating a generation of people who
Read more

Glenn Gould - the ultimate download

Image
My personal overgrown path is leading back to the radio studio, and that has set me thinking recently about how to create programmes that are distinctive, inclusive and personal. Over in Holland the creator of Big Brother , Endemol , has its own formula for distinctive broadcasting, and this week launches De Grote Donorshow ( The Big Donor Show ) which gives three dialysis patients the chance to win a dying woman's kidney - or not. Back in 1969 Glenn Gould took a different approach to producing great broadcasting when he created his 'contrapuntal radio documentary' The Latecomers . The main subject was the new Canadian province of Newfoundland , but there was a second subject of solitude, isolation and non-conformity seen from a cultural perspective. The Latecomers , with its basso continuo of the ocean, is both a land-mark in twentieth-century broadcasting and a seriously neglected aspect of Gould's work. Now, thanks to reader Walt Santner, you can hear the whole
Read more

Free Mozart MP3 downloads from Danish Radio

Image
After the outcry over the Beethoven Symphony files the BBC saw sense and didn't offer any free audio downloads in their Bach Christmas. But now Danish Radio are at it. As part of their Mozart celebrations Danish Broadcasting Corporation are offering free downloads of nine of Mozart’s symphonies played by the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. The first downloads are available on January 27 with Symphony No. 15 in G-flat. This is followed by symphonies Nos. 41, 36, 40, 23, 15, 34, 39, 17 and 35. If you must, here is the link for the downloads . But be warned it is in Danish, and AltaVista's Babel Fish translator doesn't handle Danish! Presumably after the outcry in Denmark there will be no Mendelssohn downloads from Danish Radio for the 160th anniversary of his death in 2007. Then it is over to you New Zealand Radio ... With thanks to fellow blogger Jon Lund for this story Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co d
Read more

That which colors the mind

Image
This recording by Owsley Stanley of sarod master Ali Akbar Khan featured in a recent post here . My further reading came across the following unpublished epitaph to Owsley Stanley - popularly known as 'Bear' - by his daughter Rhoney Gissin Stanley . It provides a refreshing contrast to today's social media influenzas : Bear was a man who walked his talk, who challenged the cult of personality and wanted the attention of others to focus on his work with sound, his art, and his philosophy, not on him.
Read more

The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

Image
Wilhelm Furtwängler was born on 25th January 1886. He was Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1923 to his death in 1954, and held this position for the twelve years that Hitler was in power. In January 1945 he was conducting in Vienna, and fled from there to Switzerland where he remained until the Battle of Berlin ended in the defeat of the Nazis. The musicians of his orchestra remained in Berlin during its darkest hour. Here is their story: On 28th March 1945 the Russian forces commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov were just twenty miles to the east of Berlin. A month previously Albert Speer had been replaced as Nazi armaments minister after trying to persuade Hitler that defeat was inevitable. Speer now turned his energies to preventing the musicians of his adored Berlin Philharmonic from perishing in the inevitable final battle. Reich Commisioner Dr Joseph Goebells, who was in charge of the defence of Berlin, had ordered the entire orchestra to be drafted into the Vol
Read more

A treasure trove of Stokowski downloads

Image
A Japanese site has a treasure trove of recordings by the legendary conductor Leopold Stokowski ranging from 1917 acoustic recordings to 1953 electric recordings. All were 78rpm shellac releases, and the site claims they are copyright free. There are a lot of very fine things to listen to including two complete Tchaikovsky symphonies, a complete 1941 No 4 recorded with the NBC Symphony in 1941, and a 1940 Symphony No.6 'Pathetique' with the All American Youth Orchestra . Thanks go to US reader and internet sleuth Walt Santner whose research uncovered these, and the Norwegian historic MP3s , for us, and to the unknown Japanese webmaster for making them available. Stokowski was the role model for today's jet set maestros. Born in North London in 1882, a short distance from what was to become EMI's famous Abbey Road Studios , he started his musical career as organist in St James' Church, Piccadily . He moved to the US in 1905, and ten years later became a naturali
Read more

Berlin Philharmonic's first woman conductor

Image
In 2005 the appointment of a woman music director by a major American orchestra caused a storm of controversy . So, it is surprising to find that it was back in 1930 that the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra was first conducted by a woman, and even more surprising to find she was an American. But the story doesn't have a happy ending. Despite receiving critical acclaim, Antonia Brico found doors closed to her when she returned to the US, and was forced to form her own orchestras to continue her conducting career. She is seen above conducting in New York in 1945. (Image credit Dr. Ralph Weizsäcker ). Antonia Brico was born Wilhelmina Wolthus in Rotterdam in the Netherlands in 1902, and emigrated to California with her foster parents in 1908. She attended high school in Oakland where she gained experience as a pianist and conductor. She went on to study liberal arts at the University of California, Berkeley , and also worked at the San Francisco Opera as an assistant to the director,
Read more

Classical critics need to talk sound sense

Image
Many more people listen to classical music on streaming services than attend live concerts. Streaming is forcing important changes on recorded classical music, and these changes are little understood, or, in some notable cases, not understood at all. As an example, on the music industry-endorsed Slipped Disc  classical influencer Norman Lebrecht gives an enthusiastic welcome to Apple Classical , saying:  'In a Shostakovich tenth symphony from Berlin, the internal definition seemed to me clearer than the orchestra’s own-label recording and, weirdly, than my aural memory of hearing it in the hall. If this is to be the future quality of sound, bring it on'.  In his  linked article for  The Critic headlined Apple of My Ear Lebrecht explains that he auditioned Apple Classical using the Dolby Atmos/Apple Spatial Audio format. So we need to dig down into the use of PR-speak such as "the sound on Apple is as good as it gets, actually better" by a prominent music critic
Read more

The truth about those French orchestras

Image
My article reporting Claudio Abbado’s negative views on French orchestras certainly generated a lot of attention, including a response from Parisian Antoine Leboyer which corrected the myth that Abbado hadn’t actually conducted a French orchestra. Too much attention is given to British and American orchestras here On An Overgrown Path and elsewhere, and I was delighted when Antoine offered to give an inside view on the musical health of the French capital. So here is a guest blog from Paris with the truth about those French orchestras that Claudio Abbado and Daniel Harding love to hate: Let us put things in perspective with a few words on French orchestras. Abbado may not have had the best of experiences, and he may still not find it perfect today but things are improving. Paris has many orchestras (I do not know those outside Paris well, and cannot comment on them; I do have regards for the Lyon Orchestra which played some great concerts when David Robertson was their music direct
Read more