parterre box

27 comments

• Pelleas says:

  I was at The Nose last night, and while I don’t know about the place looking incredibly Williamsburg, I’d say it looked fairly East Village circa 1991. Meaning: “hipsters” if we must, but mostly middle-aged.

  I was the one in what this week’s Observer says is the suddenly fashionable floppy hair.

  on March 19, 2010 at 8:52 AM
• richard says:

  Moffo sounds under the influence of something in that Hamlet aria . She slides and slurs like a drunk

  on March 19, 2010 at 10:36 AM
• judycadanna says:

  apropos of nothing:

  on March 19, 2010 at 10:57 AM
• m. croche says:

  LMM@18: I’m glad Repons had a nice reception in Carnegie. I wonder whether interest in the works will be quite so sustained when cher Maitre is no longer around to sell them – I guess we shall see.

  Certainly as the years went on Boulez learned to gussy up his music attractively. But the question lingers whether the mass of agreeable detail found in many of his scores actually signifies anything. Boulez renounced most conventional means of expression in the name of a certain kind of originality. Fine and good – the approach has benefits and disadvantages. But it’s a distinctive viewpoint and its disadvantages should be kept in mind before wholeheartedly endorsing his opinion of Shostakovich.

  on March 19, 2010 at 3:08 PM
• Loge says:

  I went to The Nose with great trepidation, having heard it on Sirius. But the experience of seeing it as the same time as hearing it was different. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I went with someone who had tried to get a house seat but couldn’t as it was sold out. The audience was enthusiastic and appreciative.

  on March 20, 2010 at 11:28 AM
• Henry Holland says:

  Henry@14: I wouldn’t want to hear (much less pass judgement on) any opera heard on a cassette in an aeroplane

  To each his own, I’m not an audiophile in the least. I had a kick-ass pair of Sennheiser headphones in those days and I could hear every note of Shostakovich’s ghastly score perfectly fine.

  But it’s a distinctive viewpoint and its disadvantages should be kept in mind before wholeheartedly endorsing his opinion of Shostakovich

  I’m not sure what the connection between Boulez’ compositional style and his disdain for Shostakovitch’s music is. He says he listens to Tchaikovsky and Sibelius at home, he just doesn’t want to conduct their music and I don’t think you could get any more polar opposite with Boulez’ music than Tchaikovsky.

  I was driving around doing errands this afternoon and KUSC played the Shostakovich 10th. It *is* 3rd rate Mahler, Boulez’ observation was hardly the first time someone said something like that, just that, as usual, Boulez said it better.

  I remember an interview with Daniel Barenboim in Gramophone and the interviewer asked him why he didn’t conduct Shostakovich. Barenboim was blunt: it doesn’t matter if page after page of quarter notes depicts an army marching, it still is really awful music; on KUSC, the announcer said “The second movement is said to be a portrait of Stalin” and oh how I laughed.

  Years ago, Esa-Pekka Salonen started a Shostakovich cycle. 3 symphonies a season, with the numerically corresponding string quartet played in the lobby of The Dot before hand. He said he knew next to nothing about the Russian’s symphonies and wanted to explore them (he had recorded the two piano concertos with Bronfman a few years before). He lasted two seasons before bailing out; his damning comment was “Well….I think the music is…..interesting“. Ouch. I think it was conducting the appallingly bad 2nd & 3rd symphonies on one program that did him in.

  on March 20, 2010 at 11:53 PM
• Camille says:

  @ HENRY HOLLAND — how many years ago were those Shostakovich symphonies??

  I had the experience of attending one — cannot recall which number it was now, but it was LOUD — and people just starting getting up and leaving their seats before it was over. Never had I seen that at good old Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

  on March 21, 2010 at 12:22 AM