young performers and Michael Steinberg
Jul. 26th, 2009 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacAmong the several Music@Menlo events I've gotten to so far, today's was a Young Performers Concert. Mostly the first movements from various chamber works for strings and piano, played by students as old as high school and as young as about 8.
The high school students you can believe, but the 8-year-olds are uncanny. Among the string players, their intonation is usually better than adult nonprofessionals, and their phrasing and expression adequate given their extreme youth. (This is something that improves with age no matter how old you are.) Their main flaw from the viewpoint of adult judgment is hideous tone quality, dry and screechy. But my ghod, they're eight years old. And the high schoolers are better enough that one supposes this problem will eradicate itself with time.
Each set of performers gave little pre-performance talks, shared out among their members, telling us when the composer was born, what sonata form is, etc., and occasionally indulging in a little light humor. Imagine a childish voice announcing to an audience of adults, "The next piece is by a composer none of you have probably heard of. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart."
The purpose of the talks is not to inform the audience so much as to give the performers a little practice in public speaking, a purpose suggested by one of the festival's consultants, the music critic Michael Steinberg (one of many notables by that name). But alas, this Michael Steinberg will be giving no more advice, for we learned at this afternoon's concert that he died this morning, at the age of 80. Here's a good memoir.
This is sad news. His three "Listener's Guide" volumes, on The Symphony, The Concerto, and Choral Masterworks are the best - clearest, most readable, most interesting - classical program notes since Tovey. (If you don't know who Tovey is, then Steinberg's are the best ever.) If you wonder what's going on in a long orchestral work, he'll tell you, briefly and clearly. He was working on a new volume, on symphonic poems and other orchestral repertoire, but I don't know if that will now appear. Another volume, For the Love of Music, co-authored with Larry Rothe, is a very small selection of the fine background articles on music that he and Rothe have been writing for the San Francisco Symphony program books for decades. I'd like to see another collection of those, but I'm glad I have a lot of the original program books. Steinberg leaves behind what every author dreams of: a glorious written legacy. Some day I may be good enough that I may begin to strive to emulate him.
The high school students you can believe, but the 8-year-olds are uncanny. Among the string players, their intonation is usually better than adult nonprofessionals, and their phrasing and expression adequate given their extreme youth. (This is something that improves with age no matter how old you are.) Their main flaw from the viewpoint of adult judgment is hideous tone quality, dry and screechy. But my ghod, they're eight years old. And the high schoolers are better enough that one supposes this problem will eradicate itself with time.
Each set of performers gave little pre-performance talks, shared out among their members, telling us when the composer was born, what sonata form is, etc., and occasionally indulging in a little light humor. Imagine a childish voice announcing to an audience of adults, "The next piece is by a composer none of you have probably heard of. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart."
The purpose of the talks is not to inform the audience so much as to give the performers a little practice in public speaking, a purpose suggested by one of the festival's consultants, the music critic Michael Steinberg (one of many notables by that name). But alas, this Michael Steinberg will be giving no more advice, for we learned at this afternoon's concert that he died this morning, at the age of 80. Here's a good memoir.
This is sad news. His three "Listener's Guide" volumes, on The Symphony, The Concerto, and Choral Masterworks are the best - clearest, most readable, most interesting - classical program notes since Tovey. (If you don't know who Tovey is, then Steinberg's are the best ever.) If you wonder what's going on in a long orchestral work, he'll tell you, briefly and clearly. He was working on a new volume, on symphonic poems and other orchestral repertoire, but I don't know if that will now appear. Another volume, For the Love of Music, co-authored with Larry Rothe, is a very small selection of the fine background articles on music that he and Rothe have been writing for the San Francisco Symphony program books for decades. I'd like to see another collection of those, but I'm glad I have a lot of the original program books. Steinberg leaves behind what every author dreams of: a glorious written legacy. Some day I may be good enough that I may begin to strive to emulate him.
