second week@Menlo
Aug. 1st, 2007 07:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI'm done with the chamber music festival for this week, because Mythcon is coming up, and I didn't review either of this week's main concerts - other people did that, and one of them pointed out, more severely than the vague implication in my review of an earlier concert, that the concert program "themes" don't make much sense. But I did get to two more of the free "prelude" concerts by the advanced students of the International Program. At each concert, the same group of nine string players gave us a lusty, bouncing rendition of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, my favorite of the set. We also heard Schumann's Piano Quintet, always a treat, and Mendelssohn's flashy Andante and Allegro brilliant, Op. 92, for piano four-hands, two of the hands being those of festival director Wu Han, substituting for a student who'd had to go home for a family emergency.
But the highlight of the programs was an utterly charming performance of Beethoven's String Trio in G, Op. 9, No. 1. The turns of phrase, especially in the opening movement, were exquisitely graceful. The scherzo is strikingly a precursor of the Danza tedesca in the Op. 130 quartet. Marks to Katie Hyun (violin), Wei-Yang Andy Lin (viola), and Yotam Baruch (cello), all of whom had played equally charmingly in some other early Beethoven works last week.
I would probably never have previously gotten around to knowing this work had it not turned up some years ago on one of the CDs that come with BBC Music Magazine. I happened to be visiting England when the first issue (Sept. 1992) was on the stands; I bought it and immediately started trying to figure out how I could get an overseas subscription. (Soon they began catering to Americans, and half their subscribers are here now.) The articles, though good and informative, are somewhat lower-brow than those in the Gramophone; what really sold me was the CDs of complete works, instead of the Gramophone's excerpts of new releases. The latter would only cause me to spend too much money on CDs (this is also the reason I gave up my subscription to Fanfare years ago); the former is an easy way to enlarge my collection and let them surprise me. (And last month's Brahms-Dvorak disc was actually a Music@Menlo performance, I think the first American recording they've offered.)
Why am I mentioning this? Because yesterday I got back to Menlo to attend a public interview with the editor of BBC Music, Oliver Condy, who talked about the magazine's role and his perception of its audience. One big question he was asked was about the CDs: are they going to move to downloads? Condy thought no, not anytime soon. And that relieved me.
First, classical listeners tend to be slow adopters. Even as late as 1992, when the magazine started, they had to offer cassettes as an option because so many potential subscribers didn't have CD players. Recently they put out an issue with their first DVD (a concert from the summer Proms), and did they ever get complaints: incredulous reactions at the idea of watching concert music on TV (although this is hardly a new idea), and plaints that the disc didn't work in the CD player. (I know people who aren't aware that DVDs look superficially identical to CDs, so that didn't surprise me.)
Second, the generally abysmal sound quality of downloaded music. It is of course possible to offer CD-quality sound files online, but the much larger size of the files argues against the market feasibility for these. Pop music can get away with cruddy MP3s, but classical sounds terrible that way, and Condy isn't going to do it. Good for him. (This is why I haven't bought an ipod: I'd have no use for it except to load up my existing CDs, which would be a pain, and at full sound quality it wouldn't fit more than a fraction of my collection anyway. Besides, I already have a portable CD player, so why should I bother?)
Some people do listen to cheap classical downloads, though. These are often sold by individual movements, and Condy spoke of the strange effect this is having on concert audience behavior. The slick UK commercial radio station Classic FM also plays single movements from works (as does our abysmal local station), and it recently sponsored a "Classic FM Live" concert, featuring Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. At the rousing end of the first movement, the audience applauded - not unusual between movements at an especially good performance - and the soloist made a small acknowledgment, but they kept clapping, and it became apparent they were expecting her to take a full bow and leave the stage, because they thought the piece was over. "The slow movement made a very peculiar-sounding encore," Condy said.
But the highlight of the programs was an utterly charming performance of Beethoven's String Trio in G, Op. 9, No. 1. The turns of phrase, especially in the opening movement, were exquisitely graceful. The scherzo is strikingly a precursor of the Danza tedesca in the Op. 130 quartet. Marks to Katie Hyun (violin), Wei-Yang Andy Lin (viola), and Yotam Baruch (cello), all of whom had played equally charmingly in some other early Beethoven works last week.
I would probably never have previously gotten around to knowing this work had it not turned up some years ago on one of the CDs that come with BBC Music Magazine. I happened to be visiting England when the first issue (Sept. 1992) was on the stands; I bought it and immediately started trying to figure out how I could get an overseas subscription. (Soon they began catering to Americans, and half their subscribers are here now.) The articles, though good and informative, are somewhat lower-brow than those in the Gramophone; what really sold me was the CDs of complete works, instead of the Gramophone's excerpts of new releases. The latter would only cause me to spend too much money on CDs (this is also the reason I gave up my subscription to Fanfare years ago); the former is an easy way to enlarge my collection and let them surprise me. (And last month's Brahms-Dvorak disc was actually a Music@Menlo performance, I think the first American recording they've offered.)
Why am I mentioning this? Because yesterday I got back to Menlo to attend a public interview with the editor of BBC Music, Oliver Condy, who talked about the magazine's role and his perception of its audience. One big question he was asked was about the CDs: are they going to move to downloads? Condy thought no, not anytime soon. And that relieved me.
First, classical listeners tend to be slow adopters. Even as late as 1992, when the magazine started, they had to offer cassettes as an option because so many potential subscribers didn't have CD players. Recently they put out an issue with their first DVD (a concert from the summer Proms), and did they ever get complaints: incredulous reactions at the idea of watching concert music on TV (although this is hardly a new idea), and plaints that the disc didn't work in the CD player. (I know people who aren't aware that DVDs look superficially identical to CDs, so that didn't surprise me.)
Second, the generally abysmal sound quality of downloaded music. It is of course possible to offer CD-quality sound files online, but the much larger size of the files argues against the market feasibility for these. Pop music can get away with cruddy MP3s, but classical sounds terrible that way, and Condy isn't going to do it. Good for him. (This is why I haven't bought an ipod: I'd have no use for it except to load up my existing CDs, which would be a pain, and at full sound quality it wouldn't fit more than a fraction of my collection anyway. Besides, I already have a portable CD player, so why should I bother?)
Some people do listen to cheap classical downloads, though. These are often sold by individual movements, and Condy spoke of the strange effect this is having on concert audience behavior. The slick UK commercial radio station Classic FM also plays single movements from works (as does our abysmal local station), and it recently sponsored a "Classic FM Live" concert, featuring Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. At the rousing end of the first movement, the audience applauded - not unusual between movements at an especially good performance - and the soloist made a small acknowledgment, but they kept clapping, and it became apparent they were expecting her to take a full bow and leave the stage, because they thought the piece was over. "The slow movement made a very peculiar-sounding encore," Condy said.
