A Blog by Sedgwick Clark
Guilt allayed. I’m relieved—as I endure the sadistic proddings of my otherwise charming and demure publisher and editor to produce a new entry—to read Steve Smith’s expression of guilt at neglecting his blog (Night After Night, presumably a takeoff on the Mae West film title):
[A]t home alone, my mind is racing. Should I be working on overdue freelance projects? Might I get ahead on my day-job work, so that perhaps I’ll have a few nights that don’t linger into the wee hours?
Instead, I’m taking the opportunity to update this poor, neglected blog of mine, which so seldom sees any attention apart from links to my Times writing. (Those links have frequently been tardy in recent months, something I should really work on if this blog is to serve any use at all.) . . . . I miss the days when there was time for larger reflections here.
John Rockwell confessed to me his skimping of blogular duty (Rockwell Matters) a few weeks ago at Carnegie Hall. And then I note that Emanuel Ax, another regular blogger on MusicalAmerica.com, has not added to his blog since the same day of my last posting: April 8, when, coincidentally, I wrote about him. (How’s that for chutzpah, comparing my blogerie with that of a major international performing artist?)
Actually, during this heaviest month of concertgoing in years, I’ve been working on an entry about several orchestras I’ve heard lately. The graf on Gergiev’s Prokofiev symphony series was written weeks ago, so if anyone cares, it’s on the way! But first . . .
Trenchant commentary on my fellow bloggers. I confess I’ve not been a regular blog reader (bloggist?), but I scanned those of my colleagues last week [all MusicalAmerica.com “Editor’s Blog Picks” and listed on the home page], and I must say that they contain plenty of worthwhile and insightful observations when one has time to log on to them.
- Anne Midgette (The Classical Beat) of the Washington Post writes of how she used to evaluate prospective boyfriends by their appreciation of Heifetz recordings, but that didn’t stop her from eventually marrying an anti-Heifetzian, the ever-iconoclastic Greg Sandow. I was pleased to see that she was also watching the 1947 film Carnegie Hall a few weeks ago on TCM, enduring the trite screenplay and wooden acting to revel in vintage performances by Heifetz, Rubinstein, Walter and the New York Philharmonic, Pinza, Pons, Rise Stevens, Peerce, Piatigorsky, Reiner, and the greatest magician of them all, Stokowski. This was the best copy of the film I’ve seen (typical of TCM, my favorite TV station by far)—crisp, excellent contrasts, few speckles.
- Alex Ross began his blog (therestisnoise) five years ago this week. He named it after his book in process, which became a big seller even for a book about classical music and has won many awards. If you haven’t read it yet, get it. Almost at once it became the blog of choice among classical literati. He does such things as run the score of Terry Riley’s “In C” to promo the Carnegie concert that week. He ranges widely in his topics and never wastes words, which allows him time to keep the blog up to date. I must study his technique.
- Tim Smith (Clef Notes) of the Baltimore Sun mixes local reviews with well-chosen YouTube clips. One day he included the slow movement of the Concerto for Two Pianos by Poulenc, one of his “all-time faves.” Now there’s a piece that would spruce up any concert, as would practically anything by Poulenc. Problem is, these days there aren’t enough of the sisters Lebècque and Pekinel to go around. In the interim, look for the Gold and Fizdale/Bernstein recording with the NYPhil on Sony’s Prince Charles Edition (undoubtedly deleted) at your nearest second-hand record store.
- Peter Dobrin (ArtsWatch) of the Philadelphia Enquirer takes care to range far wider than simply his town’s famous orchestra. He also includes loads of photos. In one posting he runs a p.r. shot of a gorgeous Austrian mezzo-soprano that’s so photo shopped as to be virtually unrecognizable . . . or did she go the Meg Ryan-Joan Rivers route? Last week at the Met I checked out a balding conductor’s bio in Playbill and was taken aback to see that he once had a full head of hair too. Tempus fugit. Hair today, gone tomorrow.
- Lawrence A. Johnson’s South Florida Classical Review has the handsomest blog design of this group. He writes that Vladimir Feltsman’s Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto in Miami was “note perfect” but “cool, technocratic and disengaged, with a shiny surface brilliance and little to say about the music’s heart.” That’s a perfect description of every performance of this piece I’ve heard in at least 30 years, except for one by Ivo Pogorelich with the Boston Symphony and Ozawa at Carnegie that was so defiantly distended that I haven’t gone to a concert or listened to a recording of his since. My favorite recording is the pirated live performance by Horowitz, Szell, and New York Philharmonic from 1953. It may not say much about the music’s heart, but if the soloist’s astonishing virtuosity doesn’t cause your jaw to drop—especially his double-octave fusillade in the finale—it’s time to pack it in. When asked why he played those double octaves so fast, Horowitz replied, “Because I can.” Legend has it that Szell said to the orchestra during rehearsal that the concerto was “a piece of shit” and that they should just let Horowitz do what he wanted. I don’t believe it: Even if Szell did say that, “perfunctory” was not in his musical lexicon. His life-or-death accompaniment is pugnacious and knife-edged, matching Horowitz’s challenge in every bar. My favorite modern recording features pianist Gary Graffman, a Horowitz pupil, accompanied by—guess who?—Szell in a similarly contoured but much less combative (i.e., more supportive) mood, this time with Cleveland. It’s on a two-CD set (Sony 827969473726) that contains Graffman’s excellent Second and Third Tchaik concertos with Ormandy and Philadelphia and the pianist’s versions of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures” and Balakirev’s “Islamey.” And while I’m on Graffman/Szell/Cleveland, the team’s bracing recording of Prokofiev’s First and Third Concertos is a must, in its best sound on Sony 828767874326, with the pianist’s recordings of the composer’s Second and Third Sonatas filling out the CD.
- Alan Rich (soiveheard) is as cantankerous as ever at age 84, but no one writes with such loving insight about music—especially Mozart’s.