Hope things are better now...
> I once read that the great pianist Maurizio Pollini was a lifelong
>member and funder of the Italian Communist Party. Anyone know anything
>about this? ...
Hmmm ... news to me. But his recordings of the Etudes and Preludes are, to my ear, superb.
> One of the least attractive features of the book is the Kitty
>Kelley style of biography uncovering the seamy side of the personal
>lives of the stars. Who Herbert Von Karajan (a favorite punching bag of
>Lebrecht's) slept with is of little interest of little relevance to the
>serious reader and to the music. ...
But might it be of interest to the serious student of human relations under capitalism? Doug, you back from your jaunt? What do you think of this?
> .... In the end, Lebrecht's intense personal
>attacks on Karajan, Abbado, The Three Tenors, Zubin Mehta, Kathleen
>Battle and Jessye Norman amongst others is enough to turn one off of
>their music or at least make one stop buying their records( perhaps this
>is the authors intention.).(2) `
I guess it depends on whether or not you agree that the people he skewers deserve it. If Karajan had Nazi sympathies (or worse) and was a jackass to boot, I think it'd be fine reading.
> ... liberal complaining of
>the if-only-the-capitalists-were-nicer-the
>- -world-would-be-so-much-better variety found in the writings of William
>Greider and Richard Rorty. ...
I don't know about Rorty, but I do think Greider goes a bit deeper than this.
> .... The solution then is not for
>individual i.e. the agents and their clients to somehow become "nicer"
>but to alter the structural nature of the system from the standpoint of
>the whole where production and performance are not for profit but for
>need and enjoyment.
As you could say about any aspect of the system, for sure. However, hasn't the classical music universe always revolved about money? Isn't it something that was developed through the good graces of churches, lofty courts of kings, and other criminalia?
Edward Herman did write an admiring bit about Mozart a while back in Z Magazine... and reading some of his letters to his father, he seemed to want to just get by so he could concentrate on his music.
> .... The classical labels
>are barely surviving especially with the upstart budget label Naxos.
>Naxos has, in effect, taken over the market through its excellent prices
>and decent recordings of unknown performers from the former Eastern bloc
>countries. Lebrecht goes into the fascinating story behind the rise of
>this label.
It'd be nice to have some solid support for this "in effect" bit.
> Corporate involvement
>has transformed classical music into the public relations department of
>large corporations. ...
This goes too far. You lose too much of the richness of the system by saying this.
> Lebrecht gives us no hint as to why the audience for classical
>music is shrinking and why that diminishing audience is composed
>primarily of petty-bourgeous and bourgeois types trying to show that
>they are sophisticated and ":cultured" and in the process distancing
>themselves from the hated unwashed masses.
What exactly do you mean by "petty-bourgeo[i]s and bourgeois types"? Do you have support for how the audience composition is changed?
I had season tickets to the Boston Symphony a few years ago when I lived in the Boston area. It was rare to see a black person at a show, and rare to see one on stage as well.
Funny, don't have too many female conductors either... that'd probably be a good thing to mention.
> .... The truth is that most people
>who attend concerts do so for the social prestige and to be "seen". The
>musical experience is secondary. Still, there is no reason why classical
>music and popular music cannot be one and the same.
1) If you are really throwing something out here for which you have no support, you should be forthright and say so. 2) I do think that there are some reasons your last sentence may be false. Classical music (now we enter the realm of composers) can also be tedious, complex, arcane, etc. Rock and roll is accessible. But, then, Mozart did enjoy popularity among the lower orders, if I remember correctly. Anyway, I think it'd be better to expand a bit on how it could be popular (ever take a look at Renaissance Madrigals?) and the various factors blocking that --- I don't think it's quite so simple as you imply.
> Lebrecht does not criticize today's music from a musical point of
>view. He could have pointed out that today's music is often played cold
>and clinically with most of the performer's attention and effort spent
>on technical details rather than the emotional and psychological aspects
>of the music. Lost is the 19th century style of playing where a
>particular performance depended as much on the performer as on the
>composer. These performers practiced a kind of hermeneutics where they
>placed themselves in the shoes of the composer trying to understand and
>recreate the feeling and meaning of the work as it was understood by the
>composer. To revitalize itself, classical music must regain this
>romantic notion of the individual's interpretation as paramount, perhaps
>at the expense of technical detail. The great interpreters, say
>Schnabel's Beethoven or Rubinstein's Chopin, gave a sense that they were
>engaged in a titanic struggle to understand and to come to terms with
>the piece they were playing, viewing the composition as an organic
>totality and not simply exercises in finger dexterity and sight reading.
>This type of playing and feeling towards the art must be regained if the
>music is to attract new listeners and regain old ones. The contemporary
>state of musical education is deplorable. 99% of the population cannot
>read music. Even musical appreciation classes in the public school
>system would be a boon.
I think you're being a bit dismissive here of a great number of who are still engaged the way you claim has been lost. Also, this yearning for better times past isn't altogether convincing without further evidence ... as I mentioned, classical music, in my mind, has always been aloof and has forever served as finger food for the well-to-do.
Bill