American Symphony Recordings
Sun, Mar 17 2013, 1:02AM
#2
RE: American Symphony Recordings
Bernstein wasn't a charlatan. Unless charlatans habitually write works like Candide or West Side Story. The tragedy was that he preferred to conduct Mahler symphonies, which many people can do, rather than write more works like the aforementioned, which practically nobody can do. A great shame.
Sun, Mar 17 2013, 1:06AM
#3
RE: American Symphony Recordings
He recorded the Incredible Flautist for CBS (this was on a Bernstein Century CD) and I think I have an air-check I obtained from somewhere of him conducting Piston's Concerto for Orchestra and a violin concerto from the 1960s. I also appear to have the Concerto for Orchestra on an old lp with the Polish National Radio Orchestra(!) under William Strickland.
Ted
You could easily be right about all of this, and I thank you for the information. Indeed, I now recall that I don't own the Bernstein Century CD you refer to because the principal work on the disc, Blitzstein's Airborne Symphony, revolts me so much (decades ago I heard it performed live, sans Orson Welles, and feared it would never end).
I recall, too, the time when The Incredible Flutist was virtually the only work by Piston that got played, recorded, and broadcast. I wonder whether Piston came to feel about it as Stravinsky felt about The Firebird—viz., almost wishing he'd never composed it were it not for the steady flow of cash its performances brought in to him.
Sun, Mar 17 2013, 1:20AM
#4
RE: American Symphony Recordings
Bernstein wasn't a charlatan. Unless charlatans habitually write works like Candide or West Side Story.
Style over substance charlatans quite often write such fashionable but forgetable works. The history of music, especially bland popular music is littered with such derivative trifles.
Sun, Mar 17 2013, 10:11AM
#5
RE: American Symphony Recordings
Blitzstein's Airborne Symphony, revolts me so much (decades ago I heard it performed live, sans Orson Welles, and feared it would never end).
Is there any particular reason it revolts you? (other than it is a populist work for the general wartime public)
Ted
Sun, Mar 17 2013, 10:24AM
#6
RE: American Symphony Recordings
he was certainly also pretty darn calculating.
or could it just be be (to quote his own song lyric) that he got carried away?
(Sidney please no jokes about men in white coats)
Ted
Thu, Mar 21 2013, 11:16PM
#7
RE: American Symphony Recordings
Is there any particular reason it revolts you? (other than it is a populist work for the general wartime public)
Ted
I replied to your comment, sir, but the site's overseers banned my reply for some reason I can't fathom. I'll try again.
I must say I politely dispute your major premise. Surely a "populist" work, if populist is to be anything other than an empty political slogan, ought to be something that appeals to more than a handful of, well, people, whether they are what fanciers of the term think of (rather dismissively) as "common" people or are those with a few more more higher-order brain functions active and engaged. But this is a classic instance of music which has never won an audience! (Neither has the Latin verse of Milton, but no one has ever reckoned that populist!) Seeing why it hasn't is something I find not in the least difficult to grasp.
Above and beyond this consideration, I believe that the explicit bloodthirstiness of the music's "topic" ought to embarrass anyone with an adult's knowledge of the history of the epoch it plainly mischaracterizes.
Fri, Mar 22 2013, 10:33AM
#8
RE: American Symphony Recordings
You were probably banned for refering to "uneducated people" as being "uneducated people". This magazine is based in London, we are free thinking middle class liberals here and will not tolerate such factual observations unless they promote our cause.
Fri, Mar 22 2013, 7:27PM
#9
RE: American Symphony Recordings
You were probably banned for refering to "uneducated people" as being "uneducated people". This magazine is based in London, we are free thinking middle class liberals here and will not tolerate such factual observations unless they promote our cause.
As it happens, Mr. Nuff, you're not far off, though the offending word may have been something even more anodyne than "uneducated".
Sun, Mar 24 2013, 12:41AM
#10
RE: American Symphony Recordings
I must say I politely dispute your major premise.
I have no premise. I was merely using the word "populist" as an adjective to indicate the general style of the piece.
Above and beyond this consideration, I believe that the explicit bloodthirstiness of the music's "topic" ought to embarrass anyone with an adult's knowledge of the history of the epoch it plainly mischaracterizes.
What specifically does it "mischaracterise"? Without having the text to hand, doesn't it just follow much the same descriptive ground as say any WWII movie produced during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. For example airmen waiting for a raid and writing letters home, the terrors of the Nazis,the suffering in bombed cities, etc. Do you mean that it doesn't show a balanced picture from both sides of the war, or do you mean something else?
Ted
Sun, Mar 24 2013, 7:16PM
#11
RE: American Symphony Recordings
Without having the text to hand, doesn't it just follow much the same descriptive ground as say any WWII movie produced during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. For example airmen waiting for a raid and writing letters home, the terrors of the Nazis,the suffering in bombed cities, etc. Do you mean that it doesn't show a balanced picture from both sides of the war, or do you mean something else?
But does it include a tube station platform knees-up, Ted?
Mon, Mar 25 2013, 6:47PM
#12
RE: American Symphony Recordings
… doesn't it just follow much the same descriptive ground as say any WWII movie produced during the 1940s, 50s and 60s? For example airmen waiting for a raid and writing letters home, the terrors of the Nazis,the suffering in bombed cities, etc.
Ted
Just so, Ted. This stuff was threadbare when I was twenty (i.e., getting on to five decades ago). If it had genuine musical substance, much could be forgiven it.
For example, I find the youthful admiration that Wordsworth had for the French Revolution anything but appealing, but "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive" is still a verse that reads quite wonderfully. Similarly, does anyone (anyone not a French socialist, that is) still regard Napoleon as aught but a monster of depravity? I think, nonetheless, that we all forgive Beethoven his admiration for him at the time of the Eroica.
Put otherwise, all that I'm saying is that the Airborne Symphony is no Prelude and no Eroica.
All best,
Tom
- « first
- ‹ previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
All this phoney jumping up and down in a 'hep' roll neck sweater may have had it's place in the late sixties and early seventies when rock'n'roll was the new classical music maaaan but charlatans like Bernstein really need to be forgotten about now. There are some real musicians out there.