My handy-dandy dashboard on this blog tells me what search terms people use to find this little slice of the web and articles here.
Today, according to the dashboard, eight readers came here by searching “gospel according to the other mary adams” … which is nice.
Four readers, on the other hand, visited by searching “stupid looking confederate reenactor.”
Arg.
Carl St.Clair and the Pacific Symphony open their season this week with the Overture to Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss II. (Have they been listening to me? Rest assured, no.)
The video above is of a rehearsal of the overture, with Herr Carlos Kleiber and the Sudfunk-Sinfonieorchester. It was made in 1970. (Interestingly enough, this is the same orchestra, later known as the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, that St.Clair conducted for many years and recorded all of the Villa-Lobos symphonies with.)
People often ask what, exactly, a conductor does. Well, most of what a conductor does is accomplished in rehearsal, and this video gives a fair idea of how such things go. Note that musicians aren’t always happy when the conductor stops to talk; you can sense it here. Kleiber’s German is translated into English in the subtitles.
You don’t necessarily have to watch the whole thing, but it’s all pretty interesting. A performance of the overture starts at the c. 35 minute mark.
I’ve completed my annual exercise of choosing 10 notable classical music events in the upcoming season here in the Southland. My emphasis is on Orange County — since I write for the Orange County Register — but there are a couple of picks in L.A. and Long Beach as well.
Click here to read my overview and see my Top Ten picks
Photo: Phil McCarten/Mathew Imaging
Carl St.Clair, who recently turned 60, begins his 23rd season as music director of the Pacific Symphony this month. I sat down with him for the first time in a while and caught up. I hope you enjoy it.
Click here to read my interview with Carl St.Clair
Photo: Courtesy of the Pacific Symphony
I’ve been too busy writing celebrity columns to weigh on this sooner, but it seems that another music critic, this one in a high place, has been demoted.
Longtime New York Times classical music critic and Beatles scholar Allan Kozinn has been re-assigned by his newspaper to the “sidewalk-pounding post” of general cultural reporter.
And, as Parterre Box puts it, “the blogosphere is in a high state of dither.”
Norman Lebrecht has the low down on it all; seems that office politics were involved. Be sure to check out at least a few of the comments (there were 104 last time I checked). Some heavy hitters are at bat, including a Pulitzer Prize winner. There’s also a fair bit of sniping at music critics, if you like that form of sport.
Also see the comments at Parterre Box. Yours truly is mentioned in passing.
I, of course, know just a little bit about what Kozinn must be going through. I have a bit of insight, too.
But I’ll say no more.
Classical music organizations spend an inordinate amount of time and money these days trying to attract new audiences when there is a great untapped pool of listeners already out there for the taking. I speak of those who would like to go to a concert or concerts but can’t afford to, listeners who are already interested in the art form, who don’t have to be sold on it, but who just don’t have the dough to spend on tickets, cheap, expensive or otherwise. These listeners aren’t necessarily poor or unemployed; I myself — ostensibly in the middle class — couldn’t afford to go to the concerts I attend were it not for the free passes I receive as a reviewer.
When I was a music student at USC, I signed up for this class called “Performance Today” or some such. The way it worked was like this. At USC if you were enrolled in 14 units of classes, you got an extra three units free. Performance Today was a three-unit class that never met. It was a box office window, actually, and if you were signed up for this class you went to the window and got “free” tickets to classical music events. I was able to see concerts in this way that I never would have been able to manage otherwise, including many performances by the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by none other than Carlo Maria Giulini.
Irresistible.
News flash: I enjoyed myself at the Tchaikovsky spectacular last night.
I’m not yet back on the classical beat full-time, but I reviewed the concert in anticipation of that event (sort of). My review is necessarily brief, because of the tiny “news hole” in Monday’s paper. That, too, is supposed to change soon.
Click here to read my review of the Pacific Symphony’s Tchaikovsky spectacular
The pianist is Gerald Moore. Enough said.
Nearly two years to the day since my last re-assignment, I have received word — sotto voce — that I will return to my former duties at the Orange County Register as the fearless voice for classical music in the suburban hinterlands. I will, in short, no longer be my newspaper’s celebrated celebrity columnist on Page Two, skewering the famous with my relentless wit and mischievous prose, but instead, once again, dabble in the ultra-elitist art of music criticism full time somewhere in the back pages of the newspaper, past Dear Abby, past the pet stories, past the bridge column — just keep going, OK? — where, no doubt, the young and innocent will be protected from my words and where, what’s more, snobs such as the likes of me truly belong.
The timing of said shift (why do I sound like Sounds and Fury?) has yet to be exactly determined, thus the sotto voce announcement, though I assure you it was official. “That’s going to happen,” were, I believe, the exact words of the announcement, uttered in reply to a query, not mine, concerning the future of one Tim Mangan and whether he might become, given the shocking changes currently rocking the Register these days, the fearless voice for classical music etc. that he previously was.
With a new, young and ambitious owner now ensconced, the Orange County Register, I’m convinced, will soon be the talk of the newspaper industry. How to put it in a nutshell? Let me put it this way: We’re hiring. In the newsroom alone, we will be hiring 23 persons, including copy editors, a restaurant critic, a car writer, a Dodgers writer and — gasp — a movie critic. We will be beefing up the print product with more pages — including a daily business section of 8 pages — and install a pay wall on the website. A weekly Sunday magazine (glossy) is forecast. Writers will no longer be valued (or scorned) for the number of page views they rack up. In such a climate, naturally, you return Tim Mangan to his old beat.
Needless to say, I’m cheered by the news. Maybe more relieved than cheered though. Writing the celebrity column these last two years has been an experience that I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy, if I had one. No, wait. I would. That would be perfect.
