All Entries Tagged With: "criticism"
Tuesday Links
James Levine, 65, will be starting the 2008/09 season minus a kidney and the cyst that has been causing “pressure and discomfort”.. The six week recovery means Levine will have to miss the Elliot Carter 100th birthday celebrations at Tanglewood, something he was, “looking forward to more than I could say.” [AP | Boston [...]
Wry
Alex Ross writes about Tan Dun with a little more finesse that this bivalve can muster on the subject.
“Tan quickly gravitated to New York’s downtown scene, particularly to the world of John Cage. By combining Cage’s chance processes and natural noises with plush Romantic melodies, Tan concocted a kind of crowd-pleasing avant-gardism.
In March, at [...]
Bernard Holland’s Jane Chord
Itzhak violist.
What’s a Jane Chord? [Don't worry, Miss Mussel didn't know either until about a month ago]
Of course, if we want to get all technical, two notes make an interval, not a chord. When the rules are bent ever so slightly to include the first and last two words, we get a much more better [...]
‘Bile Flows More Easily Than The Milk Of Kindness’
Molly Flatt writes about books but her questions apply to reviewers of all stripes.
…why is it so difficult to “praise interestingly”? Despite our native savagery, surely there is nothing quite so pleasing as a balanced, sensitive and generous review that manages to capture the spirit of a beloved book? Maybe the problem is that the [...]
Bye Bye Bernie
Musical America brings news that will most certainly warm the cockles of Lisa Hirsch, Tim Rutherford-Johnson, The Detritus Review and The Standing Room’s respective hearts.
NY Times classical music critic Bernard Holland will write his last review on 23rd May.
Celebratory Craft Project
‘The Mind Of A Critic’
Miss Mussel has given much thought of late as to what exactly a critic’s role in the 21st century. Is it best to get out now and take up plumbing or is a brave new world awaiting just over the horizon? Does criticism even matter any more and if it doesn’t what’s [...]
Now With Handpuppets
Stephen Brookes, music critic at the Washington Post, posted a great video of Anne Sofie von Otter singing Der Erlkonig.
Miss Mussel has always thought that a revue-type version of Der Erlkönig featuring a baritione, his falsetto and a pair of handpuppets would be highly entertaining. Anyone else? No?
One of the perils of the intertubes [...]
For Instance, The Choir Need Neither Receive Or Deserve A Flogging
Sir Donald on performance practice
The conditions under which poor Bach worked were neither metropolitan nor otherwise oputlent. He furnished his church cantatas week by week, as the parson furnished his Sunday sermon; and a trustworthy tradition tells us that the performances were generally atrocious and that a subsequent flogging for the ringleaders of the [...]
Come Here, You Old Fuddy Duddy, You
From Sir Donald Tovey’s 1936 book entitled Normality and Freedom.
“Bach, to the few critics who knew of him otherwise than as a brilliant organist, was always hopelessly out of date. When he was nineteen he played figured chorales to Reinken, a man ninety years of age, who exclaimed: “My son!, I thought this [...]
