Weekend at Bernie's 2
Bernard Holland of The New York Times attended(?) Saturday night's all-Schubert program at Carnegie Hall, featuring Ian Bostridge, Thomas Quasthoff and Dorothea Röschmann accompanied by Julius Drake. Holland's review ran 468 words, of which barely 100 addressed the performance. Here's La Cieca's analysis.
POSTED at
12:42 PM
33 Comments:
Does he really think that writing this sentence gets him out of critiquing the singing?
"Anyone familiar with the reputations of these three singers can imagine the quality of the performances."
He must be thinking he's found gold with that sentence and is planning on using it in every article so he can write about what he actually wants to write - the glamorous curtains in the lobby, or the need for more restrooms at the orchestra level.
What an idiot.
I must say, La Cieca makes the most wonderful pies!
Being from the other side of the pond, I am not intimately acquainted with Mr Holland's work.
The article does give the impression that has little interest in singing in general and the art of lieder-singing in particular. Doesn't he have an editor?
Quasthoff is one of the best lieder recitalists I've ever experienced, though I have serious reservations about both his colleagues.
I wonder why he is working as a reviewer if he isn't really interested in talking about the performances.
There are certainly performances where the remarkable becomes unremarkable because the performer in question is always wonderful, and every glowing thing about them that could be said has been said.
But even so, a great writer should be able to find something about the night that informs the wonderful performance in a different way - maybe there was a woman crying at a lovely song, maybe a teenager was gabbing about how AWESOME classical music is during an intermission, maybe the general atmosphere was just warm and lovely and wonderful because of the very high quality of the performance. There is ALWAYS something about humanity to observe and comment on at an event like that, IF one is paying attention to people other than oneself.
Saengerknabe- I agree with you about Quasthoff, but I'd be interested to hear your reservations about Bostridge. I wouldn't travel far to hear him in an opera house, but I think his lieder are extraordinary- the Schubert recital with Julius Drake and his Schoene Mullerin are great examples on record, and the Winterreise film he made with Deborah Warner is a devastating experience. I've seen him do Les Illuminations live as well, and is the only tenor I ever want to hear in that music (and yes, that includes Britten's hubby)
Holland really doesn't think the voice is a musical instrument worthy of his notice.
I was there, in the balcony, and all three voices effortlessly filled the huge space with lovely sound. And the duets and trios were music one never gets to hear -- what a comic opera composer Schubert would have been if he'd only found the right libretto! And three such game interpreters -- Quasthoff really loves playing nasty villains; he and Roschmann are great comedians too.
Quasthoff sang some of the more philosophic Schubert songs that never get sung, and he sang them as if the ideas were coming to him just at that moment. It was quite a lovely evening and the hall wasn't too big for them (as it often is for solo voices)
Well, I'm afraid that Britten's hubby is the last tenor I'd want to hear in just about anything. Hang on, he is OK as Turandot's aged father on the Decca recording with Sutherland.
Bostridge is highly intelligent and sensitive, but it is all too pained and self-conscious for me, I'm afraid. That's what I like about Quasthoff - there is vigour and Lebenslust in his intensity. One is listening to a human being rather than an artistic construct.
Well, I really feel like my college education is nearly complete. First, there was the debate about regie stuff and bad libretti. And now Mr. Holland has chosen to educate me on the relationship between Goethe and Schubert. But even there, he contradicts himself. He starts off commenting on Shubert's near-obsession with Goethe and then he talks aqbout how Schubert "cooled" on Goethe and turned to other texts. La Cieca, I think your pies are wonderful, too, but I think you were being awfully generous with Mr. Holland; I think the pieces dealing with the singers and pianist should be much smaller.
Ok, I dont go off on singers much but...I'll never quite shake the memory of Bostridge's pained expression, singing in the (yes, very ugly) hall at the Univerity of Chicago, and how quickly he got the hell out of there after a largely passionless program of Schubert. If he didn't have such a tinny little voice, I might have left with less of a bad taste in my mouth.
I think the NYT should introduce all future BH writings with:
"Anyone familiar with Mr. Holland's reputation can imagine the quality of the following 'review'"
Bostridge? Ugh! I'm a Brit and I DON'T GET IT!
cf:
http://pacificaisle.blogspot.com/
I used to really respect Quasthoff and then I heard that "jazz" concert he gave at Wigmore Hall last fall. He seemed be doing an impersonation of Dick Haymes as channeled through Georgie Jessel. It was simply the most atrocious singing I have ever heard, ever. It made Fleming's forays into jazz look respectable and that's saying something.
As for Holland, I'd like to imagine him out of a job.
But the editor is really to blame. He should not have allowed that sentence in the review.
Needless to say, the Metroplitan Opera presented Wagner's Ring Cycle this past week. Needless to say James Levine conducted and needless to say, the cast sang and performed. And of course, it goes without saying that the audience applauded after each act and milled about the lobby during the intermissions.
Bernard Holland's review of the Met's Simon Boccanegra was one of the worst opera reviews I've ever read, and his comments about the issue of women and the Vienna Philharmonic, folded into the end of a review of a concert given by the orchestra, attempted to be funny (I think), but were profoundly incomprehensible.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/arts/music/21simo.html for the former;
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/arts/music/06bare.html for the latter.
He's obviously an expert in acoustics:
"Well, I think they do execute together, but with a resonance so active that it blurs by the time it reaches the audience."
Huh?
Ah, Mr. Holland defers to my imaginings. Why don't I just review them? I imagined that Quasthoff would chastise his audience for coughing: he did. I imagined that Bostridge would be oh-so mannered: he actually seemed less so than a year or two ago. I didn't imagine that Roeschmann would be wearing a dress that I'm fairly certain she wore at Carnegie Hall two years ago: she seemed to be.
Such silliness aside, I'm appalled at a critic who seems so willing to be guided by his imaginings. In the best of possible worlds (where neither Candide nor I--nor, definitely, Mr. Holland--dwell), each performance would be judged by its own merits. The halo-effect (or whatever the heck one calls its opposite)--even if well deserved--wouldn't color our judgment. We'd judge each time using our own brains and our own ears. A review like this suggests that here is a critic who is using neither.
While I realize that I could save a heck of a lot in opera and recital tickets if I just depended on my imaginings, I think I'll stick with actually attending and thinking about what I heard.
Anyone familiar with the reputations of these three singers can imagine the quality of the performances. At least I hope so, because I didn't actually stay to listen to them. I ducked out while they were dimming the lights. I heard later from a friend it was pretty good if you're into that sort of thing.
It is gratifying to read that so many here are seeing through the usual Bernard Holland BS. The man has been peddling this sort of trash for years and years. I especially adore tannengrin's suggestion - if only the NYT would listen...
Armerjacquino - I agree that several of Bostridge's CDs are treasurable. I collected them greedily until the first time I saw him live in recital. Somehow, seeing the artifice live: the pained facial extrusions, the googly-eyed distracted gaze affixed on some distant crack in the ceiling, the beta-blocked personality miserly squeezed out as if from an old, cracked tube of unflavored toothpaste - made me feel like either 1.) rolling around the floor laughing or 2.) running out to the box office and demanding my money back or 3.) getting a step-ladder, climing up and punching him square in the face.
I couldn't shake the feeling (COULD NOT NO MATTER HOW I TRIED) that he was having a nice big joke at the audience's expense. It was one of the most bizzare, dis-embodied, ultra fake performances I have ever seen. Some years later, I went back to see him again (figuring the first time was a fluke) and no, more of the same - just worse the second time around. I don't buy it. And to think some people pay actual money to hear him sing things like Idomeneo (what!!!???).
As far as I'm concerned, Bostridge came to earth from planet Maria Ewing. No thanks.
ROTFL at Kashania; LOL at Michael Farris; raspberries to BH.
I've always said "I don't get it" about Bostridge, but his voice sounded large and lovely and sufficiently sensuous, juicy, for Schubert (high praise by me!) on Saturday. He did NOT fill us with jollity at humorous moments, as DR and TQ did.
TQ did that unfortunate jazz thing at Carnegie (about four times the size of Wigmore, isn't it?) a year or two ago, and it WAS unfortunate by me, but he doesn't sing Schubert the way he sings scat, so he's not a follower of Reneigh -- thank god.
The Ian Bostridge described here is definitely not the one who I heard sing the tenor solos in last fall's Haydn Creation with the London Symphony under Colin Davis at Avery Fisher Hall. It was absolutely magnificent.
Cf. "Concertgoers, Please Clap, Talk or Shout at Any Time," NY Times, January 8, 2008, where Mr. Holland describes a village band competition in a bullring in Valencia as "the most profound concert experience of my life." Imagine that.
The only thing more misguided than his article is probably Jackie Mason's rant on opera that I found this morning on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNLPJ1U8_3k
I was in the side balcony, and while I could hear Bostridge I thought everything felt very far away and small-scale relative to the space. This didn't seem to be a problem for Quasthoff or Röschmann. Both the quality of the repertoire and the quality of the singing went up and down (that cantata did not deserve to be unearthed), but I thought that overall it was enjoyable.
To be a little sympathetic, I think it can be very easy to slide into this sort of program notes reviewing when the repertoire is unusual and has interesting contexts, and I'm slightly terrified of making a similar pie chart for the review I wrote of this concert. But I'm a minor blogger, not the chief (?) music critic of the New York Times.
evenhanded: Re Planet Maria Ewing. I loath the expression, but LOL.
Joshua Kosman, the classical music critic at the San Francisco Chronicle also commented on BH's inanity on his blog:
http://pacificaisle.blogspot.com/2008/01/virtual-reviewer.html
Tannengrin - You. Made. Me. Spit. Out. My. Drink. With. Laughter.
Ditto on the resonance comment, Marcus. The more I think about it, the less sense it makes. More choice excerpts:
"When frivolity did arrive, in the form of three trios, seriousness went completely out the window."
No kidding.
"Ian Bostridge was the tenor, sharing the stage with Ms. Röschmann, a soprano, and Mr. Quasthoff, a bass-baritone."
He gets paid to write this stuff? By the New York Times?!! Man, I should send them a writing sample!!
Actually, I think I might have figured it out: He writes so obnoxiously to get the readers to attend the show just to figure out what the Hell he's talking about.
Speaking of Britten's husband (see above) did he actually sing any operatic repetorie that wasn't written by his loving hubby? Apart from Emperor Altuom, of corse.
Pears used to bleat his way through Scubert and Bach, I believe.
Mrs B.Britten sang David and Vasek at the ROH in the 50s. Walton wrote the role of Pandarus in Troilus in Cressida for him, seen by many as a parody of his mannerisms and character.
Holland's review of the Emerson Quartet in today's Times is 85% filler from the program notes followed by a paragraph about the performances. Sheesh.
Peter Pears ( whose undulcet voice is perhaps best captured here:)
http://tinyurl.com/2quxg9
sang many operatic roles with Sadler's Wells in the 1940s, including Tamino, Ferrando, Count Alnmaviva and, improbably enough, Hoffman, the Duke of Mantua and Puccini's Rodolfo (an idiom he was pleased to call in letters "dirty music").
He also recorded Handel's Acis opposite Sutherland, newly reissued, and , as has been mentioned, Altoum opposite her years later.
Re: Bostridge performance mentioned in this piece, he flew in from London on Thursday, caught a cold, cancelled all interviews on Friday to rest. So that might explain the smaller voice on Saturday.
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