"The sounds of a dying tradition are painful, particularly if the tradition’s value is still so apparent..." So begins the latest eulogy for classical music, this one written by Edward Rothstein in the NYT. I'll spare you a detailed rebuttal but I will offer a counterpoint for consideration:
A story was published in the Washington Post recently about a well-know violinist who played his Strad for 45min in a DC subway and no one noticed or cared. (The story was entitled "Pearls Before Breakfast" as in those things you "cast" before those "you-know-who" in the subway an analysis of which attitude itself might shed some light on the current situation, but some other time.)
For a performer who, as the writer says, has "been accepting over-the-top accolades since puberty," being ignored must surely seem apocalyptic - and this despite his "Donny Osmond-like dose of the cutes."
Frankly, I agree but I think it may speak more about the state of the art than the state of audience.
Is it possible that this sort of playing has become all too familiar? Maybe we've reached the point where these mechanical marvels are a dime-a-dozen. Maybe they are ignored because, if you take away the hype and the marketing glitz and allow the playing to speak for itself, there is not much there. We've heard it all before - over and over again.
To me, this is the real crisis of classical music. Not that the world has become more philistine and we no longer gather around the piano after supper and sing Schubert, but that, when all is said and done, airbrushing glam photos of a middle-aged Frau in an evening gown for a CD cover is not going to entice a music lover to pay money for it if she's got nothing more to say than she did twenty years ago when she recorded the very same pieces.
1 comment:
Famous violinist playing in the subway? I'd have walked on by too. If I'm in the subway, I've got someplace to go. Maybe if it had been Heifetz playing scales... That would have been something to stop one in his tracks!
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