tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post5567072239676530520..comments2024-03-26T15:57:13.443+00:00Comments on On An Overgrown Path: Preconceptions and prejudice have no place in music criticismUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-20479940211384284712020-07-04T14:57:42.193+01:002020-07-04T14:57:42.193+01:00I commented on your Levine post to the effect of w...I commented on your Levine post to the effect of when will Leonard Bernstein come under woke scrutiny? It's a bit of a cliché, but perhaps artistry and character flaws go together? Did the concentration on technique leave people like Horowitz and Heifetz stunted as humans? Graemehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11007306140530173428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-25349298537005174892020-07-04T09:55:54.755+01:002020-07-04T09:55:54.755+01:00Thanks Graeme, that's why I made the case for ...Thanks Graeme, that's why I made the case for Karajan - https://www.overgrownpath.com/2016/11/making-case-for-karajan.html<br /><br />and why your James Levine recordings should not be junked - https://www.overgrownpath.com/2018/03/why-your-james-levine-recordings-should.htmlPliablehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10616598845886342325noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-60813825743044084982020-07-03T21:54:10.894+01:002020-07-03T21:54:10.894+01:00The previous comment reminds me of the role played...The previous comment reminds me of the role played by Bernard Berenson - by any evaluation a great art historian - in the rather shady dealings of Lord Duveen and the art market. Is it possible to de link the scholarship from the participation in something akin to systematic fraud? I think it is. Not everyone is perfect. We have to live, after all. And a remarkable amount of Berenson's intuitions have survived our more scientific approach. <br /><br />On a CD of songs by the Finnish composer Yrvo Kikpinen (sorry for missing diacritics) sung by her husband, the musicologist Natasha Loges threw in a comment about Kilpinen's support for Nazism, without any attempt to put it into the context of Finland's complex struggle for independence and statehood against Sweden, Russia and Germany. It seemed a gratuitous swipe at someone whose motives she had done nothing to understand. This is one of the modern tendencies that most annoys me. Context matters. And, worse, she did not demonstrate how his "abhorrent" political views impacted his music. Gratuitous virtue signalling of the worst kind Graemehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11007306140530173428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-22585535529057370162020-07-01T15:23:25.164+01:002020-07-01T15:23:25.164+01:00This reminds me of having read through Jacques Ell...This reminds me of having read through Jacques Ellul's The Empire of Non-Sense a few years back and coming across a withering remark Ellul had about the role of art criticism in what he called the technological society:<br /><br />https://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2019/03/ellul-on-supremacy-of-critics-and.html<br />page 152<br />...just as businessmen needed their brokers, so, in matters of art, the bourgeois needed their critics in order to discern what kind of art to buy. And for the Bourgeois buying art is an act of status. He must not make a mistake. First and foremost, the critic guarantees the durability and lasting value of the work in question. The critic is just another business agent whose job is to guarantee status.<br /><br />page 153<br />... The art critic is a publicity agent for modern art. <br /><br />page 155<br />... The work no longer speaks for itself; the critic speaks in its place and situates the work in the great current that carries art to this point. He becomes the irreplaceable companion on whom the artist relies. ... <br /><br />Wenatchee the Hatchethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13208892745502555715noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-30887952186455287882020-06-30T19:52:15.829+01:002020-06-30T19:52:15.829+01:00Philip, thanks for that. My opinion of Richard Bra...Philip, thanks for that. My opinion of Richard Bratby differs slightly from yours. My view is that Richard, like so many upcoming music writers, has skill and some useful experience. But without the restraints of a good old-fashioned sub-editor, the internet's voracious appetite for click bait allows him, too often, to make a fool of himself. Which is what happened with that <i>Spectator</i> Bach piece. Which ranks as one of the silliest examples of music writing I have ever come across. <br /><br />A thread of more amiable trivia links your comment with the tweets from @MoodPavilion. Surpisingly, Karajan never recorded the Orff warhorse <i>Carmina Burana</i>. (Although Jochum did record it for DG - I became acquainted with that strange work many, many years ago via his DG LP, which I still have.)<br /><br />When Karajan signed his five-year exclusive contract with DG in 1963 <i>Carmina</i> was on the yellow label's wishlist, as was Orff's companion piece <i>Catulli carmina</i>; but HvK turned both proposed pieces down.<br /><br />Then right at the end of his life when Karajan was recording for both EMI and DG, EMI's HvK point-person Peter Alward proposed <i>Carmina</i>. But apparently it had been promised to DG as part of his parallel contract with them. However it was not be, because Karajan died before the recording could be made.<br /><br />Thanks for prompting me to remember that there was music before Mirga. We must never forget some of that music was very fine, despite preconceptions and prejudice.Pliablehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10616598845886342325noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-43455446062637773732020-06-30T17:19:33.306+01:002020-06-30T17:19:33.306+01:00When I saw that the Bach link took me to the Spect...When I saw that the Bach link took me to the Spectator, I thought "Richard Bratby", and there came his name. Bratby is now freelance, and his articles signal a man desperate for publication. He's certainly ignorant, but also specialises in opinion pieces intended to be click bait of a sort. The spectator also publishes Norman Lebrecht, who is much the same, though far worse. NL publishes in the Spectator, Standpoint, newspapers that mostly tend to the Right, so I thought it kettle and pot when he recently said that another writer on music publishes in "right-wing rags".<br /><br />That said, I must confess to prejudices in my reactions to certain musicians. This is a personal 'quirk', if you like, but I won't listen to Elly Ney. Why? She was a fanatical anti-semite and Nazi, "Hitler's pianist", and remained to the end of her life. In my mind, this raises a question. I see her lauded in comments today, especially her Beethoven and Brahms. But my view is that one cannot understand the music of those two and many others unless you give much thought to the minds that produced them. Brahms and Beethoven, as also Liszt, etc., I must think would have been aghast re Nazism, and so I think that Ney could not possibly have understood the music. And so, taking a curious dip in the Ney waters, I heard playing with no proper grasp on the music. On record, just as in life. On the Nazi theme, I also have no Bohm in my collection. I do have all the Furtwangler I can get, although the strange campaign against him continues, from Ira Hirschman and Co. after the War to Lebrecht today, the latter having found in the issue clickbait ultra.Philip Amoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11739418522974972567noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-77027208149778773702020-06-30T12:12:24.849+01:002020-06-30T12:12:24.849+01:00Two useful comments on Twitter from @MoonPavillion...Two useful comments on Twitter from @MoonPavillion:<br /><br />'I am a big fan of Carl Orff and I’ve often wondered what drew Karajan this unusual late work, which I only know in parts.'<br /><br />'“Or critics are no longer in the business of criticism, but instead see their role as simply extending the narrative du jour.” I felt much the same when I read a performance of Otello with a particular singer in London was “The event of the operatic year”.'<br />Pliablehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10616598845886342325noreply@blogger.com