isbell@marvin.DEC (Chris Isbell ) (05/01/84)
Comments by Greg Paley >In a mailed response, I was criticizing a recent recording >of Wagner's "Ring" cycle (the Dresden performances under >Janowski) which touched on what I have noticed to be an >increasingly general problem. I am hearing, both live and >on records, more and more performances whose intent seems >to be the negative one of avoiding errors and mistakes rather >than the positive one of expressiveness. >I'd be very interested in other peoples ideas about this, and >possible explanations. Is the competition of recordings with >editing to remove mistakes getting to be too much for live >performers? Have critics harped too much on details and >forgotten the overall picture to the point of making performers >paranoid about the importance of their mistakes? Are people >in general being submerged in the glossy images presented >on all sides by the media to the point where they don't let >themselves be exposed emotionally and therefore possibly make >fools of themselves? In every great performance, there are >tremendous risks involved. Why have performers lost the >courage to take them? I have also noticed the same thing. About a week ago, I was listening to the Young Musician of the Year on television. All the performers were very good on a technical level, but the vast majority were just 'playing the notes' rather than playing the music. The "classical" music field today demands very high standards of technical ability. (I feel that this is largely due to there being more people wanting to be professional musicians than there are places.) The selection is often made in very competitive music festivals. Art seems to get lost on the way a lot of the time. I have an interest in early music. In this field, a similar thing happens with the desire to achieve a historically accurate performance. There was a review in the Daily Telegraph of a concert a last year's Proms given by the Academy of Ancient Music. The reviewer made the point that the goal of historical accuracy had been pursued to the detriment of the goal of producing a musical performance. I had the same feelings when I listened to this concert on the radio. Chris Isbell. (...decvax!decwrl!rhea!marvin!isbell)