parterre box

69 comments

• kashania says:

  RE: Bernheimer
  The (inevitable, I think) crumudgenly tone that comes after doing the job for decades is a small price to pay for his deft and succint reviews. He probably has space for one sentence for every two or three sentences that Tommasini does. Yet he can get to the heart of a singer’s performance in that one sentence while TT will provide mostly filler.

  on August 15, 2010 at 9:10 PM
  • Henry Holland says:

    Here’s a perfect example of a “deft and succint” Martin Bernheimer review (he’s reviewing the ASO Der Ferne Klang at Avery Fisher Hall in 2007):

    *****
    Say this for Leon Botstein. He thinks big.

    On Sunday afternoon, the academic maestro led his American Symphony Orchestra through the massive, sometimes masterly sprawl of Franz Schreker’s Der ferne Klang. Though drenched in swollen rhetoric, over-ripe romanticism and quasi- Wagnerian bombast, the music offered a fair share of creative revelations.

    Schreker wrote the circuitous libretto in 1903 and finished the progressive score in 1909. The Frankfurt premiere in 1912 was a success, but Der ferne Klang disappeared from the repertory with the rise of national socialism.

    The plot, a quaint fusion of 19th-century fantasy and petty-bourgeois morality, concerns a composer, Fritz, who abandons his beloved Grete in obsessive quest of an elusive ideal – the “distant sound” of the title. In his absence Grete endures gross degradation. Fritz returns and realises too late that the spiritual tones he sought emanated from the woman he left behind.

    The mystical motive emerges from the celesta. Schreker wrapped his idealistic narrative in a score that throbs with passion one moment, floats in reverie the next, and occasionally succumbs to trite formulas.

    His language is predicated on bold harmonic and thematic juxtapositions punctuated with percussive pomp. Vast orchestral outpourings envelope extended Sprechgesang exchanges and arioso indulgences. The inspirations are staggering, and even the lapses are fascinating.

    Botstein, perhaps more scholar than conductor, stirred the thick symphonic broth with gusto if with little apparent concern for dynamic restraint or vocal frailty. The large cast was dominated by Yamina Maamar, a lovely German soprano who sounded radiant in Grete’s tortuous flights, sustained strength under pressure and remained expressive even when standing still.

    Robert Künzli coped valiantly with the big, brutal challenge of Fritz, another Teutonic hero whose lines soar unreasonably high and stay unreasonably high. The others coped unevenly with fleeting cameos. Proper enunciation of the German text proved haphazard.

    Europe has seen sporadic revivals of Der ferne Klang in recent decades, but Botstein’s sketchy concert was billed as a “western hemisphere premiere”. One hopes it will not be a dernière.

    *****

    God how I miss his writing in the Los Angeles Times.

    on August 17, 2010 at 1:48 AM
    • richard says:

      Personally, I’d rather read a review like this than a cheerleader’s report back to the team that once again, as usual, everything was “GREAT” , and that everyone who had bought a ticket was a smart and savvy consumer.

      on August 17, 2010 at 9:47 AM
• Arianna a Nasso says:

  Sorry, don’t buy the excuses. While of course a Bernheimer will have vastly more performance experience to access when evaluating a performance than someone who is 30 years old, I do think that after a couple decades of hardcore opera-going and recording listening, one’s critical abilities are not significantly different from someone with 50 years experience. For example, I find David Shengold’s criticism as exacting as Bernheimer’s, yet he’s still able to write with, as I said before, a sense of joy about the art.

  If a critic gets to the point that he loses that joy and a certain generosity of spirit towards his fellow human beings who generally are doing their best to create some art on the stage, then perhaps it’s time to retire and pass the torch to a new generation of writers. I’m not saying that one should stop being critical or lie in his reviews. However, if your standards have reached the point that almost everything you see is mediocre or worse, and almost nothing is superb, then do the moral thing and move on. One hears of countless Wall Street employees drop their jobs in favor of becoming, say, a pastry chef, when they have reached the point that their work is no longer providing satisfaction. What’s wrong with asking a critic to do the same?

  on August 15, 2010 at 10:46 PM
  • Henry Holland says:

    However, if your standards have reached the point that almost everything you see is mediocre or worse, and almost nothing is superb, then do the moral thing and move on

    I think that’s exactly what Martin Bernheimer did when he left Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Times. He’d been there for 31 years and I think he knew it was time to move on, which he did. Now we’re stuck with the awful Mark Swed. Thanks MB!

    on August 17, 2010 at 1:58 AM
• Famous Quickly says:

  I could be Claudia Cassidy *tomorrow*. It’s a question of ectoplasm and tessitura.

  on August 16, 2010 at 12:02 AM
• Belfagor says:

  When all is said and done one has to incline to the celebrated commentator Hans Keller’s view that criticism is ‘a phoney profession’. However articulate and informed a musical commentator can be, and however long they have done it, writing a newspaper/magazine account or article is not the same as performing or composing. It really is not real work and the skills necessary are not in the least comparable to realizing/creating a musical experience. Having met several prominent critics in various circumstances, I’m always amazed by their ability to speak ex-cathedra, as if the habitual appearance of their thoughts in print give them some sort of importance or immortality. It’s really not so: as Sibelius said ‘No one ever put up a statue to a critic’ (is this true?) or Noel Coward’s quip about them being necessary, like ants at a picnic.

  Unfortunately with an art form that requires explaining and context, like opera, it seems that translators are required for the general public, hence commentators and critics loom large. Though, honestly, some of the discourse by such critics is so rarefied, I wonder if the general public bothers with them: they seem to write for their peers…..

  on August 16, 2010 at 8:52 AM
• keine gute naechte says:

  I live in Cleveland and go to the orchestra almost weekly. Everyone involved in this story came out of it looking provincial and mean, AND that certainly includes Don Rosenberg.

  From the moment FWM was awarded the music directorship, Rosenberg began concocting a narrative based on the old critical saw of the “true maestro” vs. the “Kapellmeister.” In this story, Welser-Moest was always efficient but uninspired and lacking in interpretive ideas. (He made an exception for vocal works in which presumably Kapellmeister-ish conducting is fine. Think of critics’ views of Boehm vs. Karajan in the 50s and 60s.) Rosenberg’s bottom line was that FWM simply lacked the musical imagination to conduct great symphonic music with a great orchestra. He seldom let the actual performances get in the way of that conclusion.

  The odd thing about this story is how little sense it made in terms of the Cleveland Orchestra’s history. George Szell and Rosenberg’s beloved Dohnanyi were (are) both considered relatively impersonal conductors during most of their career, though Dohnanyi did insist on being addressed as “maestro” in Cleveland. In fact, the Cleveland Orchestra has never been inclined to play memorably for conductors who have interpretive axes to grind. After two or three seasons, it became clear to me that Rosenberg had simply found the most obvious critical formula to serve his ego-driven quest to replace the music director.

  During that time, Welser-Moest’s work in Cleveland was mixed. Early in his tenure, he conducted perhaps the most bloodless performance of the Beethoven sixth I’ve ever heard. (Well, nearly as bad as one Dohnanyi gave a few years earlier.) I’ve still never heard him do Mahler compellingly. He also did some great things. Sometimes Rosenberg acknowledged the good performances, but he never let them get in the way of his pet narrative.

  There was no reason to take any of this too seriously. Rosenberg’s reviews were published on Saturday morning, and I doubt they had much effect on ticket sales or audience perceptions. For those of us who know the repertoire, his cliche-ridden writing wasn’t anything to look forward to. As the saga of his re-assignment and lawsuit has unfolded, there are two things that continue to surprise and worry me:

  What does it say about the state of music criticism that Don Rosenberg is an award-winning critic? Is there a lot of log-rolling in that profession, or what? And wasn’t the internet supposed to help ventilate that little world?
  This whole story reflects worst of all on the myopic and brain-dead management of the Cleveland Orchestra. Welser-Moest was famously quoted referring to Cleveland as a “farm town,” and it is. It’s a shrinking city that can barely support a world class orchestra, if at all. But the orchestra management’s reaction to is to yell portentously about the greatness of the institution, rather than giving audiences reasons to get excited about the music. That’s why they were so obsessed with the controversy surrounding Rosenberg, whose successor has reported well on the degree to which the musicians get that the management is a much bigger threat to the orchestra’s survival than any critic.
  Steve Rugare – Cleveland

  on August 16, 2010 at 11:11 AM
  • keine gute naechte says:

    Sorry, there should be a break before the third line of the last paragraph.

    on August 16, 2010 at 11:14 AM
    • Baltsamic Vinaigrette says:

      No need to apologise KGN – your post is an excellent read and it is good to have the input of someone who actually attends the performances and has lived through the saga.

      Is the court ruling available to read on-line? It would be useful to know what went into Rosenberg’s suit and what the defendants had to say, too.

      on August 16, 2010 at 11:22 AM
      • dallasuapace says:

        It was a jury trial, and the jurors found for the defendants, but the jurors would not have written a decision. If the judge dismissed some counts without sending them to the jury, then conceivably the judge might have written a decision as to that dismissal.

        on August 16, 2010 at 11:49 AM
      • keine gute naechte says:

        I can only imagine what the jurors must have been thinking as they sate through two weeks of this. The case really should have been tried before Judge Judy.

        on August 16, 2010 at 12:22 PM
• jordanbrown says:

  Keine Gute Naechte –

  Thank you very much for your informed account. I can’t claim to have read all of Mr. Rosenberg’s reviews, but I find your Kappelmeister vs. Musician theory to be pretty convincing.

  The Cleveland Orchestra’s visit to Carnegie Hall is a highlight of my New York concert going year – and certainly not in spite of FWM,) Dohnanyi is a fine conductor, but he’s no George Szell. And though his tastes are perhaps a little more catholic in terms of repertoire, he’s certainly not much warmer a personality than FWM (whom I’ve met). Any comparison between them is futile and irrelevant.

  There are a number of great conductors working at their level whom I’ve witnessed foul up concerts, get lost in the middle of well-loved masterpieces, or for one reason or another make asses of themselves. A conductor’s value, like a critic’s, is borne out over a long period of time through a body of work — not in one evening. I can say that I saw Ashkenazy derail the Czech Philharmonic halfway through Till Eulenspiegel, but I’m not about to denounce his considerable musicianship and talent. It would be silly and unfair.

  Rumors are 50 percent of this fraught and fragile profession that we take so seriously. Once it becomes fashionable to think this or that conductor is a “fake,” the small minded will come running to join in. For years it was fashionable to take Stokowski as a complete fake. It was rumored in some circles that he couldn’t read music. How completely silly is that? More importantly, where have those rumors gone? Just out of fashion. His reputation is now sterling.

  Following a link posted somewhere in the above thread, I saw some of the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s letters from concertgoers who sided with Rosenberg on the FWM issue. One was irate, claiming to have cancelled his subscription over FWM’s incompetence — but referred to the “Cleveland Symphony Orchestra” and “CSO” which was only one of many clues that the author was more committed to self-righteous posturing than his hometown orchestra. Unfortunately for some, music is not an inspiring art form but rather an excuse for know-it-all taste cultivation. They need someone to call a fraud.

  JB

  on August 16, 2010 at 8:18 PM