Critics Can't Agree on Salonen's Hollywood Bowl Farewell

Part of the fun in discussing a concert is comparing your own reactions to those of others in the audience. Do they share your perceptions and musical sensibilities? Or did they come away with an entirely different experience? If your reaction was particularly strong–"That was the best/worst performance I've every heard"–and someone else disagrees, your inevitable reaction is surely some variation of: "What performance was he listening to?" or "I can't believe we were at the same concert?" or "Did he hear the same thing I heard?"

I didn't hear Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic perform Mahler's gargantuan Eighth Symphony on Tuesday night, but I know two people who did: Tim Mangan and Anthony Tommasini. Mangan is the music critic at the OC Register and Tommasini is chief music critic at The New York Times. Both reviewed the concert in the September 10 edition of their respective papers, and their reactions couldn't be more divergent.

Tommasini praises Salonen's "urgent, sweeping and nuanced account of the score," but his review is primarily a historical and critical analysis of the music itself. He does, however, make some complimentary observations about Salonen's reading:

Mr. Salonen's performance managed to convey the piece as a whole, as a cogent entity. While the sudden emotional shifts of the music came though, both the passages of ruminative quiet and the tumultuous outbursts, so did the compelling narrative arch. Maybe it was the informal outdoor atmosphere, but this epic symphony just swept right by, seeming almost succinct.

He closes with some kind words for the vocal soloists.

Mangan, on the other hand, is much less enthused, almost apologetic in his negative reaction:

Musicians often bite off more than they can chew. It's a problem for a critic who would like to acknowledge honorable but who much also report results. In choosing this work to perform at the Bowl, Salonen may have overestimated both his ability to get this many musicians together in limited rehearsal time as well as the venue's capabilities for doing the work justice.

Which is to say that Tuesdays performance sounded like an approximation, at least much of the time.

. . .

We don't need to get into the performance in much detail. It sounded like a second run-through, more or less, with a good deal of ensemble work left to do. In a word, it was sloppy.

Ouch. That's a stinging indictment. For an orchestra of the LA Phil's calibre, calling a performance a sloppy second run-through is about as bad as it can get. But how did Tommasini miss that? After all, a messy performance is a messy performance; there's little room for interpretation. Either the musicians played together, or they didn't. 

I suspect that Tommasini is fully aware that the orchestra played poorly, but he inexplicably chooses not to address it. Instead, he indirectly acknowledges and dismisses the substandard performance with one line: "An outdoor, amplified performance of this daunting work . . . is not an occasion for close critical scrutiny." 

In my opinion, this line is a cop out. Hearing a youth orchestra valiantly attempt Mahler's Eighth is not an occasion for close critical scrutiny. Hearing an understudy make her Met debut in the middle of the 2nd Act of Tristan is not an occasion for close critical scrutiny. Hearing a major American orchestra and its celebrated music director perform one of the epic works in the symphonic repertoire is unquestionably an occasion for close critical scrutiny. Critics have an obligation to fully report on the concerts of leading ensembles. If an orchestra like the LA Phil doesn't have its act together on stage, say so. Period. Critics like Tommasini should hold world-class artists accountable to the highest standards of performance, not make excuses when they fall short.

Wagner According to John Adams

The August 25 issue of The New Yorker features a revealing autobiographical essay by John Adams. In it, Adams recounts his formative years as a struggling, avant-garde composer in San Francisco. Near the end of the article, he describes his "Ah-ha!" moment: a mountain drive listening to Götterdämmerung.

What Wagner cared about was making the intensity of his emotions palpable to the listener. His harmonies, restless and forever migrating toward a new tonal center, moved between tension and resolution in an uncanny way that constantly propelled the listener forward. The melodic leaps, always singable, gave shape and direction to the churning harmonies beneath. This was not just music about desire. It was desire itself, and the emotional and sensual power it possessed was inescapable. Wagner's music was grounded in enormous technical and intellectual sophistication, but its overriding effect was something that, I realized, had been absent from my avant-garde experiments: a sense of ravishment.

Finale to Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro"

Here's the final scene from Le Nozze di Figaro, Mozart's comedic masterpiece. In it, the Count kneels at the Countess's feet and asks for her forgiveness ("Contessa perdono"), which she grants. Mozart's accompaniment here is sublime, one of the most heavenly moments in the history of music.

 

This excerpt also appears in one of the many powerful scenes from the film Amadeus.  As Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) recalls a performance of Figaro, he expresses his deepening bitterness, but acknowledges that the music is nothing short of genius. His description of the moment is fitting: "I heard the music of true forgiveness filling the theater, conferring on all who sat there perfect absolution." 

Mozart's Power According to Schubert

I just ran across this description of listening to Mozart. It's from a June 13, 1816 diary entry of the great Franz Schubert:

As from afar the magic notes of Mozart's music still gently haunt me. . . . They show us in the darkness of this life a bright, clear, lovely distance, for which we hope with confidence. O Mozart, immortal Mozart, how many, oh how endlessly many such comforting perceptions of a brighter and better life hast though brought to our souls!

That's high and eloquent praise from the composer of Winterreisse and Der Doppelgänger, a man intimately familiar with what he calls "the darkness of this life."

Lebrecht Blames Orchestras for Disappearing Music Critics

In recent months the steady decline in classical music coverage has typically been blamed on the misguided newspaper editors and executives who just don't recognize the value of the arts in our modern Internet society. Not surprisingly, Norman Lebrecht has a radically different opinion, savaging the current state of American symphony orchestras and their culpability on this issue:

As editor, try explaining to your chief executive why you are holding a full staff job to report on an art that never makes news, an art that plays the same old music, year after year, with the same parade of expressionless faces on the platform. An art whose audience is greying and unattractive to advertisers. An art whose music director is an absentee European and whose few glamor soloists will only agree to talk about their new record or hair makeover.

. . .

It's not the newspapers that are to blame but the orchestras that over two decades failed to make enough news of any wider relevance to enable editors, many with the best intentions, to retain their music critics. Symphonic stasis is not the sole reason that music criticism is being extinguished across America, but if anyone is point fingers the first cause must surely be the stultifying complacency of American orchestras in recent years.

Lebrecht's diatribe seems to be in response to a recent blog post from Henry Fogel, former head of the League of American Orchestras, in which he berates newspaper leaders for failing in their civic responsibility to cover the arts. Indeed, Lebrecht calls out Fogel (though without explicitly naming him) and completely rejects his views: "As usual, the ASOL got it wrong," Lebrecht writes.

Unfortunately, there's probably a lot of truth in what Lebrecht says. Classical music coverage is a two-way street. No institution should simple expect unmerited media attention. Would the New York Times send a reporter to the court house if the hall were empty? Probably not. That's not to suggest that I believe orchestra concerts are comparable to deserted buildings. On the contrary, I think there's practically limitless value in classical music. But I'm very biased, and in today's media climate, editors are undeniably faced with difficult choices.

I am, however, certain of one thing: The media coverage of Gustavo Dudamel's first concert as director of the LA Philharmonic will surely be intense. While it will be gratifying to see classical music elevated to a position of greater social relevance, in a strange way, it could simultaneously validate Lebrecht's position.

Beethoven's Power According to Solomon

I just finished reading Maynard Solomon's meticulous, fascinating, and revealing biography of Beethoven, and I was struck by a discussion from the final chapter. In it, Solomon mentions how modern generations–particularly those following the Second World War–have turned away from works such as the Ninth Symphony, which in its unsurpassed beauty and idealism, supposedly "anaesthetizes the anguish and the terror of modern life, thereby standing in the way of a realistic perception of society." This view was immortalized in the works of serialist composers such as Pierre Boulez and in the famous plea of Adrian Leverkühn, a fictional composer in Thomas Mann's novel Doctor Faustus: "I want to to revoke the Ninth Symphony."

Solomon, however, completely rejects this position in a remarkable passage about the optimistic, life-affirming possibilities inherent in Beethoven's music:

"The fatal (and destructive) misconception underlying such attitudes is this: if we lose our awareness of the transcendent realms of play, beauty, and kinship that are portrayed in the great affirmative works of our culture, if we lose the reconciling dream of the Ninth Symphony, there may remain no counterpoise against the engulfing terrors of civilization, nothing to set against Auschwitz and Vietnam as a paradigm of humanity's potentialities. Masterpieces of art are instilled with a surplus of constantly renewable energy–an energy that provides a motive force for changes in the relations between human beings–because they contain projections of human desires and goals that have not yet been achieved (which indeed may be unrealizable). . . . The symbols of perfection (which Schiller called "the effigies of [the] ideal")–the Ninth Symphony and the late quartets, the trumpet call of Fidelio, the "heiliger Dankgesang," the festal paradise of the Seventh Symphony, the Bacchic resurrection of the Eroica finale–these keep alive humanity's hopes and sustain faith in the possibilities of renewal." 

Beethoven may have been a deeply flawed person, but his music sets an impossibly high moral standard–a challenge for future generations to continually strive for the beauty and perfection that he realized through art.

The State of Classical Music Criticism: Bloggers' Views

Since my previous post, several of the most respected classical music bloggers have expressed their views on the continuing decline of arts criticism at major newspapers. Here are some relevant posts, all written with much more elegance and originality than I could ever hope to convey:

Marc Geelhoed, on the Internet's impact on newspaper criticism–here.

Norman Lebrecht, one of the most caustic and opinionated people on the Web–here, here, and here.

Tim Mangan–here.

Justin Davidson, discussing the slow death of newspapers–here.