Speaking of superlatives

The Orchestra and Osmo received a tremendous shout-out in the New Yorker. Read to the very end for the rather incredible payoff.

Fire Eduard Hanslick*

OMG, you guys! It's finally happened: someone has invented a Fire Joe Morgan for classical music!!!

Okay, that was probably a very confusing opening paragraph for most of you. Let me explain. A few years back, some baseball fans who make their living as Hollywood screenwriters became so disgusted with the low intelligence level and writing skill of many so-called experts on the game that they launched a blog devoted to tearing down the suppositions of these experts, line by line. The blog's namesake was arguably the greatest second baseman of all time, and is inarguably one of the most consistently nonsensical and pigheaded baseball analysts working today.

Fire Joe Morgan should have been one of the bitterest, boring-est, most unreadable blogs in the universe. Instead, it was utterly hilarious, spawned countless imitators in the sports blogosphere, and turned its creators into the conquering folk heroes of the baseball stat-geek world. Were they mean? Yes. Unfairly nit-picky? Sometimes. But they were also right in almost everything they wrote, and their devoted readership included quite a few of baseball's more forward-thinking analysts.

Sadly, the authors shut the whole enterprise down some time ago, shortly after shedding their anonymity (no surprise that the hilariously cruel Ken Tremendous turned out to be one of the writers behind The Office,) but their fight against nonsense and bad writing stands as some of the most entertaining content on the web.

From the day I discovered FJM, I wished someone would start just such a blog for classical music. So much of what gets written about our industry in respectable publications falls somewhere between speculative and idiotic that it can be downright infuriating. When you read about musicians or actors who claim not to read reviews, it's usually not because they think they're above analysis. It's because a wrongheaded and badly written review makes you want to scream, and it's almost never worth actually screaming about, and there's nothing to be accomplished by the screaming.

There are, of course, plenty of blogs out there offering strong opinions on classical music, and many of them openly disagree with professional critics on a regular basis. But they're not funny. In fact, they're usually the opposite of funny, which is to say strident and preachy, and it was the funny that made FJM such an entertaining and readable site, rather than just another shrieking partisan voice in the online void.

As it turns out, though, not only is there a classical music version of FJM, it's apparently been around for more than two years now! (How it's taken me this long to notice it is beyond me, but I suppose I should be grateful that I didn't find it while Googling myself.) It's called The Detritus Review, it's written (if the FAQ is to be believed) by a couple of grad students majoring in music who've become disgusted with the quality of music writing in the mainstream press, and you guys, it. is. funny.

Please note that I didn't say that it's nice. Or respectful. It is neither of those, and I know some of you get upset when Sarah or I seem disrespectful of some corner of the music universe, so fair warning that The Detritus Review may not be your kind of site. (Also, those of you who object to profanity are going to want to stay far, far away.)

But if the piercing of pretentious balloons and wholesale teardown of conventional wisdom is your kind of thing, you'll love it. Personally, I'll be spending the next several weeks plowing through their considerable archive...

*Eduard Hanslick, as those of you who've been attending Inside the Classics concerts since the beginning will remember, was the German critic who declared Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto to be an unholy mess that "stank to the ear."

If You Can Make It There...

One of the great things about being a musician in the internet age is the constant two-way connection you can make with your audience. Where professional critics once stood alone in assessing the quality or relevance of a performance, now anyone with a keyboard and five minutes to set up a blog can have his/her say. There are downsides to this, as everyone knows, but in a relative niche market like classical music, the benefits far outweigh the annoyances.

On a related note, our orchestra has been in New York this week, where we played our annual Carnegie Hall concert on Monday night, pairing Michael Steinberg's arrangement of Beethoven's Grosse Fuge with Sibelius's monumental Kullervo. (And of course, a rousing encore of Finlandia for good measure.) To be honest, I wasn't sure what the New Yorkers would make of this program and the way we play it. These are two works in which Osmo demands a lot of very aggressive, even brutal playing, and while many people consider that kind of edge-of-your-seat music propulsive and exciting, those raised on the deliberate, contemplative style of conductors like Karajan or Maazel might sometimes find our approach jarring.

But so far, every word I've seen written about the Carnegie Hall concert has been a rave, and it's been fun, as always, to discover what new classical music blogs have popped up in New York since I last checked in. Here are some links to the write-ups I've found so far - I'll add more to this post as they pop up. (And yes, I'll include any negative reviews as well, but so far, there don't seem to be any, which is a nice feeling...)

Late Addendum, March 15: The estimable Alex Ross of The New Yorker has checked in with one of the best reviews our orchestra has ever received. Coming from Ross, who I respect like virtually no other writer working today, this means a great deal. The link is at the bottom of the list...

The New York Times: "Mr. Vanska has led the Minnesota Orchestra to impressive heights since becoming its music director in 2003, and the ensemble sounded fantastic on Monday. From the sweeping opening melody of the Introduction, the playing was detailed and intensely expressive, carrying the listener along..."

Musical America: "The truly awesome perfection of ensemble was jaw-dropping... To hear the five string bodies converse fortissimo with such unanimity and split-second force was jaw-dropping, but the pianissimos—a Vänskä speciality—arrested the listener’s attention no less. More than once I exclaimed to myself, 'My god!'"

ConcertoNet: "The real hero, though was Osmo Vänskä, a conductor who never shirks from “becoming” the dynamics he is conducting. A player told me his baton technique is faultless. But Mr. Vänskä’s essence is that his excitement–for the painfully enigmatic Beethoven and the instinctually emotive Sibelius–was expressively infectious."

Classics Today: "There's no denying the fact that Vänskä, a superb Beethoven conductor generally, has the Minnesota strings in top form. They tore into this awkward piece like a pack of happily unanimous demons."

The Classical Source: "Vänskä led a performance of the choral version of Sibelius's “Finlandia” that was breathtaking, concluding what was easily the finest concert I've heard so far this season."

The New Yorker: "It was the saddest, loveliest thing I have heard in a long time. For the duration of the evening of March 1st, the Minnesota Orchestra sounded, to my ears, like the greatest orchestra in the world."

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Or, as we'd say on this side of the Atlantic, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Throughout my conducting career I've faced the dreaded "How is it being a woman in a male-dominated field?" question, and my customary reply is that 1) I choose not to make a big deal of it and 2) musicians are fine with anyone on the podium as long as they are prepared and competent.

My reasoning lies in my belief that we largely create our own realities; if I choose to ignore the potential minefield of the woman-as-authority-figure model, and assume that others will as well, that's the way it will be. If I act like it's no big deal, everyone else feels like it's no big deal. Classic group psychology.

On the other hand, if I ever became hyper-conscious of long-held assumptions about gender and leadership, it would probably cause me some anxiety, which would then affect both my work and relationship with the ensemble or organization in question.

In terms of the inroads women have made in the conducting field, to paraphrase - we've come a long way, baby. But as far as we've come, there are constant reminders of the underlying discomforts that still exist.

Case in point; the recent firing or conductor/Baroque specialist Emmanuelle Haïm. Slated to conduct a run of Mozart's Idomeneo at the Opéra de Paris, she was dismissed and replaced by Philippe Hui two days before opening night. What ensued was a she-said/they-said unusual in the music world in that the Orchestra made a public statement in response to Haïm's declaration. Haïm claimed that the musicians were unwilling to work with her to achieve a different (Baroque) aesthetic. The orchestra countered that they were disappointed in the lack of precision in both musical ideas and in conducting style/gestures, and that all they care for is the quality of a performance.

A vote of no confidence from an orchestra is rather extraordinary. In her defense, neither a contracted rehearsal period nor musicians unaccustomed to the very particular technical and musical needs of historically informed performance is conducive to an amicable work environment. In the orchestra's defense, Haïm is a self-taught conductor who, while generally highly regarded for her musical expertise in the Baroque repertoire, is admittedly not a technically adept conductor.

The situation is fully outlined in this article from Le Monde; for the non-Francophones, a translation of most of the article here.

What struck me about this commotion is the inclusion of an obvious fact that the author of the article decided to add at the end of a paragraph (I'm using Charles T. Downey's translation from Ionarts):

The orchestra, "called out" by Mme Haïm, broke its customary silence -- a very rare thing -- by the means of the commission elected by the musicians, which declared on January 22: "The musicians were delighted to try a Baroque approach, [but] there was great disappointment in the lack of precision as well of musical ideas in the conducting style." In other words, the orchestra, which wanted only "to guarantee the excellence of the performances," denounced a lack of competence, for this production, of one of the few woman conductors in the world. (emphasis mine)

We don't need to be reminded that there are not a whole lot of female conductors in the world. Anyone not living under a rock is aware of this. So, assuming that the goal was not simply an unnecessary statement of the obvious, I can only infer that this phrase was added as some sort of snide insinuation.

Yes, I'll admit, I'm probably more sensitive to gender slights than your average male conductor. It's simply a matter of experience; I've been on the receiving end of backhanded commentary and dealt with interactions fraught with undercurrents of chauvinism countless times. Again, as I said earlier, my response is to completely ignore it, and when one ignores it, one at least has the possibility of neutralizing an unfriendly environment.

But when publicly presented in international media, it seems gratuitously provocative (a conductor declared incompetent - and she's a WOMAN!). And let me be clear here; it's the author of the article that rankles me. I know nothing about the actual situation and can only assume a conductor would be ousted only because a production was in serious jeopardy and was artistically compromised.

I strive to dispel any notion that my gender marks my work. In fact, most of the time I pay it no heed (yes, even in the four-inch heels). And, again, when one endeavors to disregard traditional societal norms, with enough time one can establish new norms. Media insinuations like this one merely do a disservice to the very real work we've undertaken to eradicate those boundaries and assumptions.

Just when you think we've made progress, all you need to do is scratch the surface to discover the underlying bias. Plus ça change... (and do read down through all the comments; the vitriol is extraordinary.)

More $$ For Less Music? Think Again.

For the past few days, we've been performing one of the more difficult and exhausting concerts of our season: a string orchestra arrangement of Beethoven's massive Grosse Fuge, Chopin's 2nd Piano Concerto (with the amazing Garrick Ohlsson,) and Mozart's 40th Symphony. There are a lot of different things that can make a concert seem difficult, and this particular rep covers most of them.

In fact, the moment our first concert of the week (a Thursday morning matinee) was over, my stand partner turned to me and said, "Wow. This feels like a really long program." I agreed. Though, in fact, the concert was right around our usual two hours from start to finish, it felt like a marathon. My shoulder ached, and I saw a number of other musicians massaging sore limbs as well.

So you can imagine how surprised a number of us in the orchestra were to read this paragraph at the end of the Star Tribune's otherwise positive review of the concert:

"It is distressing to note that this program contained barely an hour of music. For people paying top price, that works out to more than a dollar an [sic] minute. This increasing brevity is a disturbing trend."

Now, first off, I don't know what trend he's talking about. A local trend? A national one? I haven't done any research on this, but in the ten years I've been in the orchestra, it seems like the vast majority of our subscription concerts have hovered around the two hour mark, including a 20-minute intermission. Add in the time it takes the orchestra to tune before each piece, the audience to clap before and after each, and the stage crew to reset the stage between pieces, and you're generally talking about something like 90 minutes of actual music per show, give or take.

Second, and more importantly, the reviewer (who I don't actually know personally, but he's a respected music writer of long standing in this town) is just flat wrong about the length of the music on this particular concert. I know because the paragraph above so shocked me that I timed each piece the next night. Here was the breakdown:

Beethoven - 18 minutes

Chopin - 32 minutes

Various encores by Ohlsson: 5-7 minutes

Mozart - 33 minutes

So not counting intermission, stage moves, applause time, tuning, or the entertaining five-minute speech violist Mike Adams gave at the top of each show to introduce the Grosse Fuge, that's 88 minutes of music. In fact, when all the extraneous stuff was factored in, all the concerts but Thursday morning ended north of the two-hour mark. Thursday (the concert the Strib reviewed) ended just under two hours, because Garrick didn't play an encore that day. (Our Coffee Concert crowds tend to be considerably older and less demonstrative than our evening crowds, and they rarely clap long enough to draw an encore from visiting soloists.)

So what was the critic thinking? A glance at our program book explains part of it - we print estimated performance times next to each piece, and this week, there was a typo: the Mozart was listed at 22 minutes instead of 32. (Update: our publications editor informs me that the error was not, technically, a typo, but a reprinting of an error in a source publication we use for such things.) And all three estimates were at least a minute under our actual times, so if you went by the book, it did look like we had only programmed 69 minutes of music. Still, I find it hard to believe that anyone who was actually present at the concert could have come away finding it to be a short enough program to be worthy of comment.

But that's where the nature of deadline writing likely comes into play. A critic attending our concert has only a few hours (at most) to get his review filed for publication, so most experienced writers write a few paragraphs in advance - the basic background information on the music and the performers that won't be affected by the quality of the performance. I'm guessing that Mr. Beard also pre-wrote his objection to the program's length based on the misinformation in our book, then didn't think to revise or remove it after the actual concert.

Understandable, yes, but sheesh. Way to make us seem like we're nickel-and-diming the paying public out of their rightful amount of music...

Ideals vs. Reality

It usually doesn't take long for a major recession to stop inspiring empathy for one's fellow human beings, and just start getting on everyone's nerves. If you work in an affected industry (and honestly, whose industry hasn't been affected by the last two years of economic turmoil?) you've undoubtedly got co-workers whose morale has plummeted and whose attitude at work has taken a turn for the nasty, even if they started off the downturn determined to do whatever it took to help pull everyone through. The bottom line is that we all seem to have a limited supply of good will before we start looking around for someone to blame for our situation.

Those of us in the arts are no exception to this rule, and increasingly, it seems like the journalists who cover the arts are getting decidedly antsy as well. Early on in the recession, you could sense a certain amount of sympathy from the press for arts groups trapped between a fiscal rock and hard place, which wasn't surprising, given what a precarious state newspapers themselves are in. But the new year seems to be bringing a change in the winds, and I've started to notice more writers penning screeds against the cuts to artistic product being made by many of the nation's orchestras and opera companies, crippling once-in-a-lifetime-recession be damned.

What troubles me about this shift in journalistic focus isn't that writers are calling on big-budget performing arts groups to remember their artistic mandates - that is, after all, one of the more important roles of the press. But I must admit that I resent it when writers hide behind big platitudes while failing to take an interest in the nitty-gritty of their subject. Too often, arts writers implore the largest local performing arts groups to take more and bigger chances at the riskiest possible times, without acknowledging what a suicidal leap of faith it could be.

Much as I would love to live in a world where taking unpopular but principled stands is predictably rewarded by public acclaim, we all know that isn't the world we live in. Put another way: do I like that my orchestra and many others are checking every last artistic decision we make against the bottom line right now? (And then re-checking and re-re-checking it just to see if we can squeeze a few more drops of blood out of the stone?) No. I hate it. And so does everyone else in the business.

But at the risk of coming across like an apologist for the front office of a floundering baseball team, I just don't think it's responsible to expect organizations that survive on the generosity of our donors to celebrate a crippling recession by making demonstrably risky artistic decisions and then demanding even more money to fund them. And the truth is, if we did start making a habit of that, the same journalists who are now decrying a lack of originality in our programming would be lining up to demand accountability on the fiscal side.

One of the occasionally unpleasant side effects of being an arts group that caters to hundreds of thousands of paying customers per year is that you don't have the luxury of squeezing yourself into a niche market very often. Full-size orchestras employ close to 100 musicians alone, without even counting staff, and opera companies employ far more. No nonprofit theater company or dance troupe even comes close to that kind of overhead. To stay afloat, we've got to fill a 2,500-seat concert hall on an alarmingly regular basis, and that's a lot different than an organization that needs to sell 300 tickets a night.

Furthermore, much as we might like to imagine that it's possible to completely separate artistic decisions from financial ones, I've just never seen any evidence that that's a workable reality in any but the most outrageously wealthy of arts organizations. And it strikes me as odd that, at a time when much of the news media is still asking the question of how much of our previously inflated American lifestyle is still affordable post-meltdown, so many arts writers seem to be indignantly demanding an immediate return to 2007-era thinking.

P.S. You'll notice that I didn't link to any particular offending article or commentary before beginning this little rant. It's a bit gutless, I know, but I basically didn't want to seem like I was singling out any one journalist and/or risk getting into a debate over the merits of that one piece. (Besides, if you browse the music headlines on ArtsJournal on a regular basis, you could likely make your own list of such commentaries.)

Dorothy Gale, Meet Catch-22

This past Thursday, we played the first concert in our Sounds of Cinema festival, which consists primarily of the orchestra playing complete classic film scores while the films play on a huge screen behind us and the audience (hopefully) marvels at the power of live music when applied to a prerecorded movie.

But that opening concert, which featured The Wizard of Oz, earned us a decided pan from Star Tribune critic Graydon Royce, and his review brings up a broader issue that I want to get into. Before I do, though, I want to say from the outset that I found Graydon's review to be a near-perfect model of how to criticize a performance without being a jerk about it. His assessment was specific in its critique, consistent in its focus, and notable for its lack of a single ounce of vitriol or smugness. He thought the concert was a noble experiment that partially failed, and he said so, which is his job. I've got no complaints.

So, what was it that Graydon thought didn't work about our collaboration with Judy Garland and the Munchkins? Well, here's the money 'graf...

"The film often sounded horrible -- as though the voices were forced through a tin megaphone. Also, the orchestra overwhelmed sweet moments that define the film, such as Dorothy's goodbye to her three companions; and iconic signatures were somehow lost. How, for example, can you have the witch's guards marching about without hearing them sing "oh-ee-yah; ee-OH-ah?" Was this just a problem Thursday night, or a function of the process that split instrumental from vocal? Yikes."

This is a perfect example of the challenge that symphony orchestras face when trying to present innovative concerts that blend 21st century technology with our decidedly 19th-century way of performing. Orchestras are built to perform without amplification, in concert halls designed specifically for that purpose. Stick us in the Xcel Energy Center, and you'll never hear a note we play, because those spaces are designed for amplified sound. Similarly, suddenly adding amplification to a concert hall can result in ear-splitting or unintelligible sound, even if you have extremely competent people running the sound board (and believe me, we do.)

The toughest challenge of all is blending amplified and unamplified sound in a space designed for the latter. This is a nightmare that our chief sound guy, Terry Tilley, lives on a regular basis. The sad fact is that, as good as Terry is at his job, budget constraints force him to regularly attempt seriously high-tech production tricks using sound equipment that would get laughed out of venues like First Avenue.

So, the obvious question is, why don't symphony orchestras, which are massive organizations by arts standards, invest in cutting-edge sound and video equipment that would make shows like our Wizard of Oz less of a risk? After all, the technology does exist to make amplified sound at least somewhat workable in a space like ours, so why don't we have it?

The answer is complicated, but it basically boils down to priorities and how you manage them. The primary mission of a symphony orchestra is to present unamplified performances of great concert music, and most musicians (myself included) believe that it will remain so for the foreseeable future. And since money is always extremely tight (yes, orchestras have big budgets, but we also have far and away the highest overhead of any type of arts group,) large expenditures for anything that falls outside that core mission tend to be a tough sell.

Musicians, in particular, are incredibly sensitive to any large-scale organizational plan that seems to be pushing us away from a concert music-based business model, and towards a model in which classical music is secondary to pops, or film music, or whatever. And since a first-rate amplification system (not to mention a permanent in-house digital video capability) for a venue like Orchestra Hall would cost millions to purchase, install, and calibrate, and since that system would be literally idle during the majority of our performances, it's tough to convince musicians that this would be money well spent, especially when we're seeing our benefits and pensions slashed, our contracts cut back, and our friends on the staff side laid off to save a few thousand dollars in the worst economy of our lifetimes.

This may well be a no-win situation. If we spend the money to bring Orchestra Hall up to 21st century A/V standards, we're open to legitimate criticism that we're not properly focusing on the core mission of a symphony orchestra and wasting the money of donors who prefer Beethoven to bells and whistles. If we stick with the technology we have, and make a point of never mounting any performances that push the limits of those capabilities, we're essentially condemning ourselves to being the kind of organization that willfully ignores modernity and eventually renders itself irrelevant.

And if we try to split the difference, mounting ambitious programs that may not be up to the considerable technological standard that many consumers have come to expect in the age of HDTV and digital surround sound, the Graydon Royces of the world are going to feel rightly compelled to point out that our capability doesn't always match our ambition.

Whenever I write a post about the challenges of the orchestra business, I try to at least throw out a few potential solutions. But try as I might, I haven't been able to come up with a solution to this problem that doesn't involve me winning the Powerball. So I'm punting this one to the readership: what would you do? The comments section eagerly awaits your creativity...

Schadenfreude

I know it's wrong to take pleasure from the pain of others (especially when "others" are an opera company which employs several of one's friends,) but something about the mini-firestorm that's been enveloping the Metropolitan Opera this week has been highly entertaining to me.

At the center of the controversy is a brand spanking new production of Tosca that America's premiere opera company has chosen to open its season. Opera audiences do not, on the whole, tend to be big fans of change, so it's always risky to replace a well-worn production with something new and innovative. (Opera audiences also tend to be far more willing to make their displeasure known immediately than the audiences we see at Orchestra Hall. I attended a perfectly decent production of Eugene Onegin at the Vienna State Opera last winter at which the director and set designer were roundly booed during the curtain call.)

Still, music critics today are a gentle lot, on the whole, and it's relatively rare that you read a truly blistering review. So I can only imagine that the Met's new Tosca must have indeed laid quite an egg last week to inspire this absolute demolition by the estimable Alex Ross at The New Yorker:

"It takes a certain effort to suck the life out of Tosca... [Director Luc Bondy] delivered an uneven, muddled, weirdly dull production that interferes fatally with the working of Puccini’s perfect contraption. Karita Mattila was miscast in the title role. No one else sang with particular distinction. By the end of opening night, [Met Opera General Manager Peter] Gelb had on his hands a full-blown fiasco, with boos resounding from the orchestra seats, the upper galleries, and even the plaza outside, where people had watched on a screen for free... While there is nobility in an ambitious failure, there is no glory in ineptitude."

Dude. That is a serious takedown. But Ross sees a bright side in the rare Met misfire, too...

"Opera being a delightfully paradoxical medium, this whole debacle left me in an upbeat mood. The Met is refusing to repeat itself and is seeking, by trial and error, a new theatrical identity... The audience was, at least, paying attention. If I’m not mistaken, someone shouted “Vergogna!”—“Shame!”—when the production team shuffled onstage to face the firing squad. I doubt that mass revulsion is part of Gelb’s marketing plan, but a scandal has its uses: the Met made the evening news."

Good point, and one that further underscores the different cultural positions occupied by orchestras and opera companies in America today. Can you imagine the New York Philharmonic being booed at Lincoln Center? And even if you can, can you imagine any media entity beyond the arts press caring about it?

Somewhere along the way, we seem to have decided that opera companies are populist and orchestras are elitist. (Which is odd, since the trappings of each experience would suggest exactly the opposite to me.) That's a problem for those of us in orchestras, of course, but I'll admit - there are times when it's nice to be ignored. I'm guessing the Met would take some of that treatment right now...

Vesti la Kellogg's

It's going to be a busy couple of weeks for me, between starting a new job, selling a house and organizing a cross-country move, so please forgive the spotty posting. While I might not have too much time for deep thoughts (I'll leave that to Sam), I do have time for occasional amusements, such as this classic Rice Krispies commercial:

A Critic Runs Smack Into The 21st Century

In what I can only describe as a distinctly English rant, Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones tried to explain this weekend what makes him qualified to pass judgment on other people's work...

"The reason so much average or absolutely awful art gets promoted is that no one seems to understand what criticism is; if nothing is properly criticised, mediocrity triumphs. A critic is basically an arrogant bastard who says 'this is good, this is bad' without necessarily being able to explain why. At least, not instantly. The truth is, we feel this stuff in our bones. And we're innately convinced we're right."

I understand that point of view, especially since Jones goes on to lay bare the role his own ego plays in doing his job. There's a distinct parallel there, too, to the egos of the artists, actors, and musicians who spend their lives having judgment passed on their work by people like Jones. If a critic is an arrogant bastard who declares things good and bad, then who are we but arrogant bastards who lay something out on the stage with the implicit declaration that it is good, and then dare you to disagree?

Still, I think there's an angle that Jones is missing here, and it's that, for most of the history of art, the only real recourse available to an artist whose work had just been trashed by a self-appointed expert was to either hunt him down and punch him in the nose, or write a whiny, self-indulgent Letter To The Editor, which would be read only by other whiny, self-indulgent types looking for their own letters.

Today, of course, the entire world has its say on every issue under the sun on a more or less continual basis, here on the series of tubes. Which is to say, there's nothing stopping an artist or performer who feels wronged by a critic from firing back in any one of a hundred ways. There's also nothing stopping anyone else in the general public from offering up their own critique, however ill-informed or brilliant. And as Jones's little screed suggests, critics have been getting a wee bit sensitive about this of late...

"Of course, by being so blunt, I run the risk of vilification. I will be seen as a vapid snob, elitist, etc. But I am no more guilty of these traits than anyone else who sets themselves up as a professional critic; I'm just trying to be honest... Unless you think you're right, you shouldn't pass verdict on art that is someone's dream, someone's life."

I guess. But one of the first things that artists (and athletes, and politicians, etc) in previous eras have always had to learn to survive is that firing back at a critic is a losing battle. If you ask me, the real lesson here is that it's about time that critics grew some thicker skin and stopped endlessly trying to justify their existence to people who disagree with their perspective.

The headline on the Guardian column reads, "Art criticism is not a democracy." It's an odd thing to write, since art criticism is, in point of fact, every bit a democracy these days, as the 129 comments appended to Jones's work attest. And the "professionals" had better figure out a way to stay on top of the pile before someone comes along and knocks them off for good.

Pardon the Interruption

The great political satirist Molly Ivins once wrote that there was nothing in the world so irritating as someone who stops in the middle of a perfectly good argument to insist that everyone define his terms.

So you have my apologies for what follows here. A few weeks back, I wrote about the wave of articles that inevitably appear during an economic downturn claiming that American orchestras can't possibly continue to exist without massive overhauls to our business plan. My point was that such articles usually don't contain a lot of data, and that they frequently miss the point of the deep cuts that orchestras are forced to make at times like these. The money line was: "The headlines trumpeting layoffs and salary givebacks aren't evidence of the failure of a business model. They're a demonstration of how the model bends without breaking."

I really was going to let that be the end of it, but then, this weekend, no less illustrious a paper than the Chicago Tribune ran a commentary that so completely missed the reality of the orchestral situation that I feel I have no choice but to stop the argument and demand a defining of terms.

The author's main point is nothing new: the business model for American orchestras is broken. (Evidence presented to support this thesis: none.) His solution: everyone, from music directors to guest conductors to CEOs to soloists to musicians in the better-paying ensembles, needs to take pay cuts. Big ones. Now. (He also implies that this isn't already happening, which it is.) That's it. That's his whole solution. And this is where I have a nit to pick, because, wait for it... salaries are not a business model.

That's really all I wanted to say. If you want to have a debate about the way American orchestras fund themselves and operate as organizations, let's do it. If you believe that the existing system, in which private donors and corporations make voluntary donations to support a huge (by non-profit standards) corporation that presents orchestra concerts, is unsustainable, let's talk about that. And if you (saints be praised!) have a new model you think will work better, by all means, we'd love to hear it!

But by saying that the whole organizational model has failed (again, without evidence of a failure,) and then saying that the solution is for everyone to make less money, you're making the embarrassing admission that you don't know what a business model is. What you're actually proposing is the same business model, only with everyone earning less. Which, as I mentioned, is pretty much what's already happening, orchestra by orchestra.

Honestly. It's enough to make you wish that business writers covered our beat instead of arts journalists. Almost...

One Man's Energy Is Another Man's Interpretive Watusi

Sarah's written recently about the subtle and not-so-subtle differences in the playing styles of various orchestras, and about how ingrained the performance culture of a single orchestra can become in each of that ensemble's musicians. Since most of us spend nearly all our time playing as part of only one group, we come to think of our way of playing music as How One Plays Music. Even when a major shift in leadership occurs, such as a new music director or concertmaster, the collective musical memory of the ensemble is always a major factor in shaping the sound.

Audiences and critics, too, get used to the local style that they hear week in and week out, and they tend to filter everything they hear through that familiar prism. This is why a conductor like Christoph Eschenbach, who everyone seems to agree is a brilliant man and fine musician, can be hailed as an orchestral savior in Houston, and then be greeted with what amounted to a community-wide shrug when he become music director in Philadelphia. It's not necessarily that there's anything wrong with Eschenbach, or with the Philadelphia Orchestra. It's just that the communal playing style of the orchestra didn't turn out to be a great match with the personal style of the conductor.

Another case in point that will hit a little closer to home: Osmo's down in Chicago this week, conducting the Chicago Symphony in a program of (what else?) Beethoven and Sibelius. I have it on good authority that he's been having a fine time in his debut with the Chicagoans, and the critics have said some nice things as well. But one passage from Andrew Patner's otherwise positive review in the Chicago Sun-Times struck me odd:

"[Vänskä] is clearly an individual with his own ideas. It must be difficult even for seasoned players to know what those ideas are, since he communicates in a bizarre fashion, offering a sort of interpretive Watusi with a beat that seems wrong when it is discernible."

Now, along with being pretty unnecessarily snippy, that sounds nothing like the Osmo I know (and I'm also a bit taken aback to think that there's a music critic in a major American city who doesn't seem to realize that a conductor's ideas are largely communicated in rehearsal, not through some magic twirling of the baton during the concert.) While there's no denying his physicality as a conductor (using his body to channel and direct the energy of the orchestra is one of Osmo's signatures, and he's hardly alone in this style,) I've never found it to be difficult to discern what he wants us to do, even in his first appearance with us back in 2000.

So what would seem so different to an observer in Chicago? Presumably, Patner has no prior axe to grind with Osmo, and was only passing along what he thought he saw during a performance about which he actually said many nice things. The first thing that occurs to me is that the CSO is an orchestra steeped in the highest European classical traditions, and their music directors and principal guest conductors over the decades have generally reflected that legacy. From Daniel Barenboim to Pierre Boulez to the incoming Riccardo Muti, the orchestra has usually played under conductors who, while not without flair, prefer to maintain a relatively refined podium demeanor. The music should speak for itself, says this philosophy, and the musicians (conductor included) are doing the composer a disservice if they call attention to themselves in any visual way.

So it's only natural that Osmo, who throws himself as physically into every performance as he asks his musicians to, would cut an unusual figure on Chicago's podium, and to a jaded critic who's not used to such visual stimulus, I can see how it could even seem off-putting. But I'd be very curious to know what the CSO players thought of their week with our boss (not least because they so recently let out a public cry of disappointment when the LA Philharmonic snapped up the young Venezuelan wunderkind Gustavo Dudamel, an over-the-top physical stick-waver if ever there was one, as their next music director before Chicago could offer him the job.) It's always possible that what seemed jarring to a regular concertgoer could have felt like a refreshing change to those on stage.

Or not. It's a mysterious thing, chemistry, and the audience's willingness to come along for an unfamiliar ride is probably an element of the equation that we don't consider often or carefully enough.

The Donors We Forget About

For eight of the nine years I've spent in Minnesota, I had a part-time side job as a news editor at ArtsJournal.com, the arts news clearinghouse that, not coincidentally, provides our blog's news feed. Basically, my job involved getting up unreasonably early several days each week and surfing the web sites of several dozen newspapers and magazines looking for interesting stories about orchestras, theatre companies, and dance troupes, and then writing short blurbs about said stories to appear on our site's front page.

It was a fun job, partly because I wound up on a first-name basis with a number of important writers and critics across the English-speaking world, but mostly because it forced me to take in a lot of different viewpoints about the industry I work in on a daily basis, and to summarize those viewpoints without filtering them through my own biases. I came away from the experience with a deep respect for professional journalists, and, I hope, a better-than-average understanding of the way arts organizations interact with the people we serve and the media that cover us.

By far the best part of working for ArtsJournal, though, was the regular conversations I would have with my boss, AJ's managing editor, Doug McLennan. For much of the time I worked for the site, I was Doug's only employee, and we spent a lot of time bouncing ideas off each other, discussing what the rise of the Internet Age would mean for arts groups of all kinds, and exchanging e-mails that usually began, "Did you see that piece of **** that Newspaper X ran this morning? What is wrong with that guy?"

The thing that I liked most about Doug, a Juilliard-trained pianist who's spent most of his professional life in journalistic circles, was the way he seemed always able to take the long view of things when others were focused on minutiae. If orchestras were debating whether or not to consider amending a national agreement governing the way we record (and pay for) CDs, Doug would be the first to point out that, unless the debate included a serious discussion of downloadable media and online distribution, it wouldn't make a lick of difference what conclusion we arrived at. (That seems obvious now, of course, but Doug made this comment in 2002, long before the advent of YouTube, iTunes, or any of the other online services we now take for granted. And just for the record, most orchestras still haven't really begun to face up to these changed realities.)

Doug also has a talent for defining the terms of an argument in a way that most of us wouldn't have thought of, and lately, he's been putting that ability to great use on his newly launched and long-overdue blog, Diacritical. Just for instance, here's his opening salvo from today's entry on the way arts groups approach the two groups of individuals who support our existence...

"Give an arts organization $1000 and they'll put your name in the program. Buy $1000 worth of tickets and they'll tell you that the cost of your ticket only covered 55 percent (or 40 percent or 30 percent) of the cost of you being there. Then a few months later, long after the performance, they try to hit you up for more money. Gee thanks.

"Maybe this is backwards. Who's the more valuable member of your community? The person who gives you money but otherwise doesn't have much to do with you, or the person who buys tickets and shows up for every performance?"

Now there are, of course, donors to every arts group who also buy lots of tickets, but Doug's made a very important point here. All arts groups have Development departments staffed by large numbers of very skilled people who are expert at the care and feeding of donors. But when it comes to lowly ticket buyers, we entrust them mainly to the comparatively inexperienced box office staff, which tends to turn over frequently, and be far less specifically trained than the folks in development. (This is not in any way a shot at the dedicated people who work in ticket sales, just an acknowledgment that, on the whole, low-paying hourly wage jobs are going to attract a different level of professional expertise than salaried and specifically defined office positions.)

So what's the solution? As usual, Doug has an answer that wouldn't have occurred to me, but that makes instant sense:

"In online social networks, participation is rewarded for the frequency and quality of that participation, and even small recognitions encourage people to participate at higher levels.

"If you have an audience member who brings five friends, find a way to reward them. If they bring 10 friends, give them something more. Every arts organization has a page in their program listing the names of people who contributed money and at what level. How about a page that lists the names of people who brought in more people?"

Better yet, how about having a web site that functions not just as a static advertisement for your organization, but as a social network (or a conduit to an existing network like Facebook) that makes it easy for ticketbuyers to aspire to such perks? Or special pre- and post-performance events for those who do? Why not reward the donation of time and effort just as much as we reward the donation of cash?

I'll give Doug the last word, because as usual, he says it better than I could...

"Most organizations don't give people enough ways to support them... All it takes sometimes is empowering them to do it."

Critical Thinking In A Critical Time

Continuing with my attempts to find silver linings in this dark period for the arts (and, let's face it, for most every other industry as well,) I'm feeling the need to talk a bit more about the way the media covers downturns and their effect on non-profits. Specifically, I'd like to encourage a healthy dose of skepticism when it comes to a lot of what gets written about symphony orchestras, whether online or in print, by people who claim to be experts on the subject.

I'm a big fan of the international affairs columnist and author Fareed Zakaria, partly because he regularly gives me new ways of looking at the world which wouldn't have occurred to me, but also because he's very good at seeing the forest for the trees in big, complicated situations. In his book, The Post-American World, Zakaria spends several early pages laying out all of the horrible, violent things that have occurred in our world since 2000, only to turn around and point out that, compared with most other historical eras, ours is a comparatively peaceful one, with the likelihood of a given person dying from political or terroristic violence at an all-time low. What makes the present seem so much more violent is the way that the 24-hour news channels portray comparatively minor bloodshed as an Armageddon-like event, and the simple fact that, today, we get pictures and descriptions of violent acts almost in real time, and it's nearly impossible to turn away.

A similar effect can be seen in press coverage of the arts whenever the economy dives. The steady stream of budget cuts, layoffs, and salary reductions at American orchestras has some within our industry alarmed, and the journalists who cover us can smell that fear. So articles like this one start to appear, suggesting that orchestras are doomed unless we completely overhaul the business model we've relied on for decades, and dump the idea that musicians should be able to expect year-round employment and/or comfortable salaries. (Of course, the vast majority of musicians enjoy neither year-round employment nor a comfortable salary, but that's a discussion for another day.)

Such articles usually contain a lot of scary but isolated numbers (an orchestra CEO who makes $1 million a year!! a stagehand who makes north of $400K!!! a newly minted orchestra musician right out of school making $130K!!!!) designed to drive home the idea that orchestral finance is completely out of control, thus relieving the author of actually having to prove his thesis with real economic data that applies across the broader industry. (My favorite example of this technique came from notorious doomsayer Norman Lebrecht, who in 1997 penned a terrifying book called Who Killed Classical Music? It was a genius title: before you even opened the book, the author had dispensed entirely with the necessity of proving that classical music was actually dead, and had moved the discussion straight on to the autopsy. The fact that, in the real world, the subject of the autopsy was, in fact, very much alive, went unaddressed.)

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The headlines trumpeting layoffs and salary givebacks aren't evidence of the failure of a business model. They're a demonstration of how the model bends without breaking.
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Again, forest for the trees: orchestras, when they're being run correctly, function according to the broader economies they are a part of. Since we're dependent on donations from individuals, foundations, and corporations, we function as a tiny subset of the larger "charitable giving" economy, so what we can spend in a given year (on salaries, benefits, day-to-day expenses, whatever) is directly tied to how much our supporters can afford to give us.

We also function as part of the distinct American orchestral economy, in which a small number of "major" orchestras compete (through the salary and benefits offered) for the services of the most elite musicians emerging each year from music schools, in the same way that elite law firms compete for the best law school grads. 99% or more of the students who emerge from college with a music degree will never earn anywhere near the amount of money that the alarmists cite - most won't even wind up with careers as performers at all.

So taken in a broader context, pronouncements of the unsustainability of our business model (and if history is any guide, there will be many more of these in the coming months) are more or less entirely contradicted by the self-evident ability of most orchestras to adapt to changes in our specific economies. The headlines trumpeting layoffs and salary givebacks aren't evidence of the failure of a business model. They're a demonstration of how the model bends without breaking.

Earlier today, I was riding Minneapolis's light rail line, and I overheard a conversation between two businessmen in town for a conference. Neither was from Minnesota, but one of the two had apparently been here a number of times before, and he was attempting to give his friend a general orientation of where things in the Cities can be found. Over the course of five minutes or so, the "expert" managed to impart that Dinkytown is an area of St. Paul, south of Minneapolis, situated fairly close to a well-known neighborhood called Woodbury. He also responded to his friend's question as to what the "Hiawatha Line" might be by stating confidently that it was "some sort of highway."

Now, if you live in California or New York, and your closest connection to Minnesota is that you enjoy listening to A Prairie Home Companion of a Saturday evening, that all sounds perfectly reasonable, and if you'd overheard this conversation, you might even repeat the information to a friend if you were asked about the subject. (After all, who would ever have reason to lie about geography?) But your confidence in what you'd heard from someone who clearly considered himself knowledgeable on the subject wouldn't change the inarguable facts that a) Dinkytown is in Minneapolis; b) St. Paul is east of Minneapolis, not south, c)Dinkytown is a 20-25 minute highway drive (in good traffic) from Woodbury, which is a suburb, not a neighborhood; and d) the Hiawatha Line is the train we were all riding on when I overheard the conversation.

My point? There are a lot of self-styled experts out there. Make them prove to you that they actually know what they're talking about before you assume that they do.

No One's Fault, But Everyone's Problem

Sorry for the light blogging this week - it's been a very busy time at work, both on and off stage, and I haven't had much of a chance to sit down and collect my thoughts. But as I was browsing through various gloom-and-doom reports from the limited corner of the press that still bothers to cover orchestras, I was struck by how different the perspective of an observer can be from the perspective of those of us who work in the music business, and how the observer's perspective is frequently the only one that gets reported and therefore sets the public tone for the organization that's being reported on. (I suspect that the people who work for AIG could tell you a thing or two about this.)

Just for instance, I keep pretty close track of press coverage of the Philadelphia Orchestra, partly because it's the orchestra I grew up listening to and I studied with three of its musicians as a teenager, partly because I have a number of friends who play in it currently, and partly because the Philadelphia Inquirer is one of the few US papers left to still employ full-time arts writers assigned to a specific beat like the orchestra. Now, at the moment, the PhilOrch is in a tough spot - they're between music directors, between CEOs, only just appointed a new board president, and they're being walloped with the same fiscal two-by-four that everyone else in the industry is feeling.

The music director issue is a tricky one, because Philly's search for a new chief conductor has now dragged on for long enough that everyone is getting somewhat antsy about it, and even though the orchestra has placed famed Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit in a temporary leadership position, the lack of a permanent leader is becoming distracting. And in recent months, the music critic at the Inquirer has begun openly campaigning for one specific conductor to be given the job, even going so far as to say that "the search is over," and that it's only a matter of time before the orchestra realizes it.

But here's the thing: the orchestra, while it had high hopes for the critic's anointed winner, wasn't actually terribly impressed with his work on the podium as a guest conductor. (No, I'm not guessing about this, just in case you're wondering.) But the newspaper keeps putting his name on the top of the search list, so there he stays, the frontrunner. And it's not the first time this has happened in Philly, either - another of the critic's favorite guest conductors was said (by the critic) to be a strong candidate for the top job, and again, it was a conductor who the orchestra found eminently forgettable. And while a music director is hired by the board of directors, not by a vote of the musicians, no savvy board would ever consider the self-defeating proposition of hiring an artistic leader the musicians had no interest in following.

So what is the critic's role in this situation? I don't mean to imply that the Inquirer critic (whose writing I quite like) is behaving badly here, although I know that many members of the orchestra believe he is. He's in an impossible situation: major orchestras treat music director searches the way the federal government treats missile launch codes, and the press is given zero indication of what anyone inside the organization thinks about any given candidate. For that matter, most orchestras won't even acknowledge that a given conductor is a candidate when asked directly. So what can the poor beat writer do other than speculate?

The problem is that the speculation almost always turns out to be wrong. Back in 2002, the Star Tribune published more than a few articles in which it was strongly implied that conductors Yakov Kreizberg and Roberto Abbado were the frontrunners to succeed Eiji Oue as our music director. This, I'm guessing, was based on the fact that at the time, both gentlemen were guest conducting us fairly regularly, which is not generally an indication of anything. Meanwhile, Osmo Vänskä's first appearance with us, while it garnered good reviews, passed without any real notice in the press regarding whether he might or might not be a candidate, which is stunning to me. My mother happened to be in town for that first Osmo concert, and I distinctly remember saying to her as soon as it was over, "No one's saying anything outright, but I think you might have just seen our next music director." I have it on good authority that members of our board who were in attendance that night also felt an immediate spark between conductor and orchestra, so clearly, you didn't have to be on stage to know that something was up.

I don't really have a larger point to make here, and I don't mean to imply that music critics are lacking perspective or integrity. Most of them are knowledgeable people and good writers trying very hard to cover an industry that resists serious journalism the way oil resists water. But as I read story after story detailing the various troubles that arts groups are finding themselves in at the moment, I find myself constantly wondering which of the details presented as fact are actually correct, and which are the ones that are lacking a key bit of context, framing an issue incorrectly, or are just flatly inaccurate. And then I wonder what the consequences of those inaccuracies will turn out to be. Scary thought...

Oh Kaplan, My Kaplan

There's a good chance that you've never heard of Gilbert Kaplan, even if you follow the music world pretty closely. On the other hand, if you're a devoted Mahler fan, the type who has more than one complete set of his symphonies and strong opinions on the issue of Claudio Abbado vs. George Szell in the matter of Mahler's 6th, you likely know exactly who Gilbert Kaplan is. (Yes, Spartacus, I see you waving.)

Kaplan is an extremely rare bird in the orchestra world - an amateur musician and Mahler devotee who, some years ago, decided to devote himself to learning how to conduct Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, and to do so more accurately and convincingly than anyone else. Never mind that Kaplan isn't and never has been a professional conductor - he has passion, and intellect, and drive, and isn't that supposed to be all it takes to achieve our dreams in America?

So, for some time now, Kaplan has been traveling the world, conducting Mahler's 2nd (and only Mahler's 2nd) with orchestras large and small. By and large, he's been received with great enthusiasm by critics, who have latched onto his fascinating narrative and penned profile after profile of the eccentric and obsessive Mahlerian.

There's just one problem: Kaplan is apparently a terrible conductor, at least according to the New York Philharmonic, which just performed the Resurrection under his baton. According to a story running on the front page of the New York Times' arts section today, the Phil was so horrified by Kaplan's lack of stick-waving ability that the musicians called an emergency meeting with their CEO the day of the concert to vent their frustrations. The next week, one of the orchestra's trombonists took to his personal blog to lay out a devastatingly specific takedown of Kaplan, and by extension, of anyone who actually thinks the job of a conductor is so unimportant that a complete novice should be allowed to stand in front of one of the world's great orchestras.

So, before I wade any deeper into this obviously prickly story, 3 statements:

1) I have never worked under Kaplan, nor have I ever heard a performance he has led, so I won't be making any attempt to assess his abilities here.

2) I'm actually stunned that the NY Phil, which (like so many orchestras) is normally fastidious about controlling all information in and out of its organization, has been as forthcoming about the whole thing as they have, with a spokesman actually acknowledging to the Times that Kaplan won't be asked back, and (so far as I can tell,) no internal attempt to muzzle David Finlayson's blog writings. Good on the Phil!

3) Not that Finlayson (who I've never met) needs my help in defending his writing, but I noticed that one angry commenter on his blog accused the Phil musicians of whining after they'd already agreed to be conducted by Kaplan. This needs clarification, because it's probably a common belief that musicians pick their guest conductors. We don't - while we can always provide individual feedback on specific conductors who appear in front of us, and that feedback may hold some sway on occasion, decisions on who leads our concerts are made well above our pay grade.

Now, since I've already said I'm not going to talk about Kaplan specifically, let's talk about the larger issue here, which is the all-too-frequent gulf between what critics and audiences think of a conductor, and what musicians think of the same conductor. Without getting specific, I can confidently say that there are conductors of some considerable reputation, who have appeared to critical acclaim in front of the Minnesota Orchestra, who we in the orchestra consider to be utter frauds. I can't count the number of times that I've sweated my way through a concert that is just barely staying on the rails because of the incompetence emanating from the podium, only to open the paper the next morning and see the conductor lavished with praise for his "elegant turns of phrase" or some such nonsense.

Now, part of the problem is simply that, for a critic writing about a single concert, for which s/he has not been allowed or had the time to attend any of the rehearsals, it's almost impossible to truly judge what elements of a performance are happening because the conductor ordered them, and what elements the orchestra is simply playing on it's own initiative. So most critics stick to the time-honored tradition of holding the conductor responsible for more or less everything, good or bad. It's not a great tradition, but it's better than guessing at who was responsible for what.

The larger problem, I think, is that audiences, critics, and musicians all have different expectations of what a conductor should be. Most audience members, beyond simply wanting to hear an engaging concert, want a conductor who gives them some visual sense of what they're hearing, a sort of physical guide to the music. Critics often seem to want a conductor who reminds them of their favorite conductors from yesteryear, and they also prize those who manage to look interesting without showboating. (Critics also love conductors who physically reach out to the orchestra, and get the players to react physically as well. Exhibit A at the moment would be all the cooing over Gustavo Dudamel getting his Venezuelan youth orchestra to dance in their chairs, which admittedly is pretty cool.)

Musicians basically want two things from a conductor: a) a clear, precise beat, and b) clear, precise rehearsal instructions backed up by an obvious knowledge of the score. Beyond that, we don't really care how physical our leader is, or whether s/he scowls or grins on the podium, or whether s/he has a nifty life story.

So who's right? Well, I'm obviously biased, and I'll preface this by saying that I don't think any of the above viewpoints are wrong, exactly. But it seems to me that unless you have the two elements that the musicians are looking for, you will not have a truly great concert. You could have a good concert, or an exciting but obviously flawed concert, but it won't be one of those mind-blowing experiences that you tell your friends about. And at the prices we charge, I feel like we ought to be striving to provide those experiences as often as humanly possible.

The problem with the critical viewpoint is that critics, like all journalists, are tasked with setting the world around them to an engaging storyline, and conductors and the concerts they lead don't always come with a neat or salacious narrative. So critics naturally gravitate to the ones that do, the same way that sportswriters gravitate to Sean Avery every time he opens his stupid mouth, while ignoring quiet production machines like Mikko Koivu. I don't think music critics deliberately snub quietly efficient conductors in favor of demonstrative ego factories, but I also know that the latter do tend to attract a lot more press than the former. And that's how you end up with the NY Phil's dirty laundry splashed all over the pages of America's leading daily...

Late addendum: I only just noticed that this post is our 300th entry here at the ItC blog. During the relatively brief period that we've been blogging, Sarah and I have filled this little wad of bandwidth with just over 157,000 words, which works out to something close to 300 pages in your typical Word doc. I don't actually know whether that has any significance at all in the greater blog world, but considering that we've been open for business for a mere 14 months, I'm calling it a milestone. Happy tricentennial (or whatever) to us, and let's hope there's a lot more silliness and pot-stirring to come!

Who Killed Cleveland's Critic?

An eye-popping story happened across my computer screen earlier today - longtime Cleveland music critic Don Rosenberg has apparently been told by his bosses at the Plain Dealer that he will no longer be assigned to review Cleveland Orchestra concerts, a duty he has had for 16 years. Rosenberg isn't being fired, though - just "reassigned" and banned from covering arguably the best orchestra in the US, and Cleveland's most prominent cultural group.

So what's really going on here? Well, Rosenberg, though widely respected as a writer and critic, has had something of a bee in his bonnet ever since the Cleveland Orchestra's current music director, Franz Welser-Möst, took up his post in 2002. As Tim Smith, another respected critic, put it on his blog, "Don has judged that Welser-Möst is lacking in certain abilities in certain repertoire, that he doesn't necessarily get the best out of music or the eminent ensemble." As a result of this conclusion, Rosenberg has been handing out more unfavorable notices than one would normally expect to read about an orchestra as august as Cleveland's.

But so what, right? Critics have their opinions, orchestras feel wronged, this happens all the time and no one loses their job over it. (Relations do get frosty at times: at one of America's most prominent orchestras, which I won't name for obvious reasons, newly arriving musicians are told specifically by their management to never, ever speak with or return calls from the local paper's lead critic.) And as Smith points out, correctly, Rosenberg was hardly on a crusade against Welser-Möst, and gave him good reviews nearly as often as bad ones. So why exactly would the Plain Dealer have so nakedly allowed itself to be manipulated into pulling the writer off the beat?

The answer is almost certainly that someone in the chain of command at the paper has an involvement with the orchestra, either as a fan, a donor, or even a board member, and s/he got tired of reading Rosenberg's swipes at the man on the podium, especially with Welser-Möst having recently signed an extension which will keep him in Cleveland through 2018. (A glance at the orchestra's annual report shows that retired Plain Dealer publisher Alex Machaskee is part of the board's executive leadership. Did he make a phone call or two over the Rosenberg issue, perhaps?)

However it happened, it strikes me that orchestras do not serve themselves well when they demand (and are granted) a wholly compliant press. Yes, critics who are scared of losing whatever "access" we deign to give them (which, frankly, isn't much under the best of circumstances) are more likely to write the latest puff piece the way we want them to, and run it on the date we think will maximize ticket sales. But looking at the long term picture, this type of servile critic quickly loses credibility with his/her readership, which is what leads to people not really caring whether there are people writing about orchestras.

Today's public is more media-savvy than at any time in history, and they can tell the difference between promotion and analysis. And while the relationship between those who perform and those who write about performers will probably never be anything but uneasy, it crosses a dangerous line for those on the performance side to exercise backroom power to remove a writer they find inconvenient.

Late addendum, 09/23/08: I don't really know whether a traditional journalistic "full disclosure" is necessary on a blog, but since the CEO of the Cleveland Orchestra has seen fit to respond to this post in the comments, I might as well add one. For what it's worth, I spent several years in college studying orchestral viola with Lynne Ramsey, the First Assistant Principal Violist of the Cleveland Orchestra. I did not contact her, or any other member of the orchestra, before writing this post.

Girl you know it's true

I've been wrapped up in all matter of political goings-on, as well as trying to learn a pile of music (yep, I'm conducting a Ben Folds show at the Mann) for the next few weeks.

But I came across some more scandalous Olympic news that has been making its rounds. (Of course the Olympic "miming" scandal began with the adorable girl who "sang" in the opening ceremonies - she was lip synching for a child who was deemed less telegenic.)

It's not so uncommon to have "canned" music - in fact, one comes to expect a certain amount of lip synching in any highly-produced TV broadcast (this from last year's MTV Video Music Awards, the disastrous comeback attempt of a pre-rehab Britney Spears). The pop world has certainly had its share of lip synching scandals. But it's far more unusual for an orchestra to be caught in this position.

It's an embarrassment for the Sydney Symphony, no doubt, and prerecorded music can be a sensitive sensitive topic. I am a strong advocate of live music - because, really, there's nothing like the excitement that it can generate - but I'm not so troubled by pre-recorded tracks for extraordinary circumstances (like an audience of billions, telecast in real time). That is, I wouldn't be so troubled if it were simply a matter of an orchestra pre-recording itself and then presenting that recording as part of a televised "performance". What distresses me is the fact that the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra recorded parts of the "performance" - and that the MSO's work was passed of as Sydney's, which just seems awfully shady. Any thoughts?

The surest form of flattery

All right, folks, I'm back, somewhat refreshed from vacation. (Although I always end up a bit stressed when I'm ostensibly relaxing, because I'm acutely aware of the work that's accumulating while I'm away - which was magnified a bit by extra concerts and guest conducting weeks that were added to my fall schedule very late in the summer...)

So, an interesting bit of news, as the Olympics were winding down in Beijing. I remember Breiner's arrangements from the Athens Games as well as the controversy surrounding his setting of the national anthem of the USA. I didn't mind the lack of bombast so much, although I confess I was a little confused by the serenity of the "rocket's red glare/bombs bursting in air" bit - I don't know if I exactly buy the notion of introspection at this point, although the harmonic progressions are a nice diversion. Here's a link to the "Breiner original" (press "play" to download the audio file - sorry for the awkward presentation...)

And for comparison, here's a link to the women's 4x400 medal ceremony from Beijing (it begins around 5:17 in the video - again, sorry for the inelegant linking, I could only find this on the NBC website). The crux of the controversy are the remarkable similarities in the Breiner (Athens) version and the arrangements played in Beijing, purportedly arranged by a Chinese composer specifically for the Beijing Games.

Breiner's version is not a conventional setting. In fact, I would say it's striking. I cannot fathom how a version so similar, both in unusual orchestration and altered harmonies, could have been written without prior knowledge of the original Breiner arrangements. The only question in my mind is, was this unconscious imitation or something a bit more nefarious?

And a final bit of music new from China.

Playing telephone

Yesterday the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, a local community orchestra led by Minnesota Orchestra acting associate principal bassist Bill Schrickel premiered a piece by Minnesota Orchestra music director Osmo Vanska entitlted "The Bridge".

A nice story, and one discussed in this MPR online article. Simple enough, right?

Remember that childhood game, "Telephone"? Where you pass a message, person to person, until you (usually) end up with a garbled message that bears some semblance to the original but has morphed over the course of the passing?

So, here's what the Associated Press gleaned from the original information, which was then picked up by news sources nationwide.

Wait, the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra??? A colleague at the Orchestra later told me that the original header for the MPR article itself was incorrect ( which could still be seen this afternoon when I Googled "Minnesota Symphony Orchestra):

MPR: Osmo Vanska composes a musical 'bridge'
The Minnesota Symphony Orchestra is premiering a new work by Minnesota Orchestra conductor Osmo Vanska, called "The Bridge." It's inspired in part by the ...
feeds.publicradio.org/~r/MPR_NewsFeatures/~3/291905521/ - 48k - Cached - Similar pages

Well, mistakes happen. Although it's a little embarrassing that our local news media got it wrong to begin with. But here's the kicker, a brief mention of the premiere in Alex Ross's influential and widely-read blog, "The Rest is Noise". Please note paragraph number 2, in which he describes the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra (correctly identified!) as "the Twin Cities' other orchestra".

I'm wondering how the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra feels about this...