Below: Performers in 1913 of the ballet, in original costumes designed by the amazing Nicholas Roerich
How do people know so much? Review so well? It’s only one point of view, I suppose, but anybody who has something to say about music is an expert to me.
I was looking at a new CD that had come out (Philips) of an older recording of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, directed by Haitink and played by the Berliner Phiharmonic. I know I really dig the Sacre, but I’ve already listened to three versions and I wouldn’t be able to say which one I preferred, let alone which one was “better”. With Stravinsky still around for quite a few of the many recordings, I think there probably is a just case for picking one that he might have preferred, although I might argue, just as easily, how is the artist the best judge?
The reviewer I stumbled upon, to help me out in choosing which recording to concentrate fully on, in my final round of listening to all the music I have (before I turn too deaf, or the tinnitus becomes too unbearable) might agree, for he is not positive about the three recordings the composer made himself. Why three, anyway!? Why let the two “bad ones” live a life at all? Then again, isn't it always the case, for every artist, that you suddenly realise, wait a minute, that work I did ten years ago was actually a crock of unholy muck! And still, you won't hear how bad it still is the second time round, since it isn't! It only will be ten years from now! (Stravinsky recorded between 1940-1960)? What critic lives within you for you to keep on at it? What a nightmare being an artist! But we have to deal with it as partakers of their work too!
There are always the tools we can blame it on in this case: the “dry recordings with audible tape splices” are not the conductor’s or the orchestra’s fault. However, the other technical imperfections (“textural transparency favoured over tone painting” - Hank Drake, Amazon.com, review entitled “Ten Sacres, and a bit more”) are down to an incompetent orchestra with “woodwinds [that have] whiny, nasal tones” and, quite frankly, the main man himself just doesn't get it to gel properly. Leading an orchestra is not an easy task. It's not a natural match made in heaven. It's bloody hard work, and quite a bit of luck (or karma?) that the right people are joined for a special vibe. Being a teacher of a class of twenty or thirty is challenging, or the pack leader of a team of huskies takes a special single-mindedness, but a good conductor must stand before and behind, instructing and egging on, a collection of souls that don't necessarily know what they are supposed to be doing either.
Whose to blame for poor recordings? Is it a symphonic thing? The orchestra and the conductor not melding into one mellifluous one? The recording equipment or the concert hall not right for the piece or style? The composer, perhaps, is too enigmatic to be interpreted definitively, so you will always find a critic either way?
In any case, this reminds me of an incident with an audiobook by Julian Barnes, the effervescent “Flaubert’s Parrot” (review here) - in so far Flaubert ever was exactly “effervescent”; Barnes made him so for me. Only not in his own voice. Huh? Well, there is an abridged audio version of himself reading his novel, which, of course, inititally I was delighted to purchase: what could be better than the author reading out loud his own writing?
Barnes, however, disappointed me flatly with his narration. WHAT?!? I know, it sounds banal to me, too, now, a year and a half on, especially after just having listened to him reading “Nothing To Be Frightened Of” to perfection. Then again, my varying responses compared, precisely, raises a query in itself. How is a narration brought to life, off the page? How does it travel, what can it bear, who does it carry, when does it arrive and where does it strand?
I almost gave up on the Parrot, with its too many parrots (I dislike parrots) and too many (chronological) listings and multiple choice options - which I now love as a recurring motif for Barnes; all of which turned out to be mere excuses to cover up my own sense of failing for not having read Flaubert as well as I could have (with “A Sentimental Education” and many short stories left to go).
Still, the good student got out her printed copy of the Parrot, to slowly read (out loud) the opening paragraphs for herself. I did so about seven times. Not because the going was so tough, but because it was one of the richest, ripest, timeless and time-bursting pieces of writing I had ever read.
Richard Morant, narrator/actor
What remains to be said is that when I say “read” above, I meant “listened to”, but how about reading the text for myself? It is something I most assuredly want to do, and I believe I shall with greater ease and concentration now that I have an idea of where we are headed, with my aim being not to skip a single word but savour each one. A book with an excess word or a misplaced word doesn’t deserve its place in my ultimate library, when my final attic room demands a ruthless culling. Maybe with the exception of Arthur and George (very long and rambling unless you are a Sherlock Holmes afficcionado, which I am not in the slightest) I think I might be bringing along a nice row of Barneses. Especially since he will be dead by then - if the natural order is preserved, and I want to remain in touch with him as and when he discovers there really wasn’t anything to be frightened of…
So that showed me! That the artist isn’t necessarily the best interpreter of - all - his own work. Then again, if I’d go back to Barnes’s reading of the Parrot now, would it that it were in an unabridged version - I am far from sure I’d have the same reaction. I know him now. He’s part of my audio family. Which brings me to list the reasons I started listening to audiobooks in the first place, … but I shall reserve this for the next post.
In any case, as for the Sacre, I leave the option open that some works may need additional interpretation (roll in the critics). Do artists always know best regarding their own work? Do some of them know anything about it at all? Sometimes the suggestion is they don’t: for example, when they leave an abstract painting annoyingly untitled. Isn’t it far more satisfying to know that the above brown square with a thick black line in a violet border is called “Palatial”? One of the few works by Albers with an original name, mind (most are from extensive series called “Hommage to The Square” or “Mitred Square” or “Ten Variants”). Of course, what's in a name, on the other hand....
Point in case being, however, that I might be a poor (impatient) reader who needs fancy drama (the right voice for the character) before I can appreciate the storytelling. More dilligent practice, then, would correct this flaw, and criticism should be reserved for the time being. That's precisely my approach at the minute.
When can we criticise legitimately or usefully? Should art ever be reduced to anything useful anyway!? Flaubert’s Parrot is as much about the critic as the research writer for a main protagonist, if not Barnes’s own anticipation of the inevitable reviews he will be subjected to. What a life. Not one I envy. Where he stands now (in his seventies) there, surely, is no point in “judging” his work anymore? I mean what can he do with it? So it’s just for us readers then that the literary critic writes? Or will these also become defunct now that the readers (members of audiobook sites or Amazon e,g,) are invited to submit their own ratings and reviews to promote sales. A horrible system, really, to what avail? Homogenisation of a common standard or taste?
Still, I must decide whether to bother with this particular recording of Haitink at all. Hank Drake doesn't help me out on that one. We have a middle ground (Tilson Thomas) and a languid spring, that is dazzlingly precise by Salonen and the Philly, three Bernsteins and a piano roll by Stravinsky in a Zander recording with the Boston Philharmonic. This reviewer favours Boulez (in this box set he is reviewing) as a balance between savagery and clarity, with a perfect pace to boot (which would be quite a prominent feature to note).
I shall have to plough on through more reviews, and certainly there have to be the professional ones around, too. (Send any my way, by all means!) but for today, I got distracted on how we hear and what a good recording adds or detracts from the Klang Ether (Sound Etheric) any good composition is meant to set in motion within your three-fold system, most intimitaly serving the Middle Man - working through the respiratory/circulatory system; reaching that inner musicality which connects (hears) the cosmic harmonies encoded in music as we compose it.
As I grow steadily deafer I notice already how other senses are taking over on that hearing front; the external vibrations are finding other ways in, and blank spaces are being fillled in from that other etheric source, memory. It seems to matter less how great the recording was, sound-quality wise, unless it hampered in the true hearing of the music that lies beneath the audible music. This observation in turn makes audiobooks a very intricate network of inter-relationships, extending fiction into a new dimension of story telling. More on this some other time.
As for the Sacre, I might love the gutsiness of Stravinsky most, the rad project of the ballet with its shocking tribal rhythms and Slavic shamanic references. I might love the collaboration between Dhagilev and Roerich and Stravinsky and love to smirk at how, of course, few people at the time "got it", were ready for the demands this music and dance placed on the inner musicality of the stiff Victorian, barely thawed out by 1913 - seeming to need a war or two to move that along....
And now we are overheated.
And symphonic orchestras are complicated business ventures.
And conductors are often ambitious, highly driven, somewhat egocentric - albeit they no longer can get away with being megalomaniacal characters (just like chefs have to be cool-headed, reasonable managers now a days too, if they want to keep a cooperative kitchen, which is unlikely to kowtow to abusive Masters any more).
By the way, I am no great fan of symphonies (I may relate one day how I had to learn to listen to any music at all), with almost too much (emotion) going on for me in the pit, while this may not necessarily correspond to anything spiritual outside it. I spent years trying to find an opera I liked (I did, the Traviata) but again, there is too much drama and not enough music for that musicality I am after . Talking of musicals - was I? Not likely!: there are NO musicals I can sit through and come out of still loving life. But le Sacre du Printemps is a ballet! And a modern one at that. I love modern dance performances.
My mother's first wish for me (whenI was born) was that I might dance through the world on one toe. It was her way of wishing me to feel free; maybe she was afraid of holding me too fast. In any case, I think I took this to heart, eventhough I don't have the toes for actual ballet (crooked 3rd and 4th toes) or a rhythmic bone in my body; but upon my toe somehow I got and this may have formed the core of my problem with much of life; but still, I like the thought.
