Alan Rich

[calimac]

A prized part of my collection of books on music is collections of essays by working music journalists. Among others, I have Harold Schonberg and Virgil Thomson and Samuel Lipman and Michael Steinberg, and a fellow named Robert Schumann.

I also have So I've Heard: Notes of a Migratory Music Critic by Alan Rich, who just died.

Like most of the best critics, Rich was not much of a one-liner man (though I did smile at his suggestion that the fashionable Three Tenors should undertake the fashionable Gregorian chant repertoire and put out a disk called Fat Chants). What he was was an enthusiast. "The best thing about this job - one of the best things, anyhow - is the chance it affords me to write about Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro as often as I like." He enjoyed many musics, and was merely hurt and puzzled at those few he didn't enjoy, like Stravinsky's L'histoire du soldat, which I don't like, either. His true blind spots, like Sibelius, he struggled mightily to repair. Unlike other music critics from L.A., he did not choose to spend the last year Dudamel-bashing.

Despite being well into his 80s, he became in his last years a web critic. You can see his recent writings, which is also where I swiped my Haydn user icon.

Comments

[catcrocker.livejournal.com]

You wouldn't call Brahms a true blind spot? I need to read more of Rich's stuff.

BTW, you missed a good (I thought) concert at Stanford: the Philharmonia (smaller, ad hoc group of musicians) playing Schumann with Jon Nakamatsu and then Beethoven's complete incidental music to Egmont.

I'm always intrigued by your thoughts on local community orchestras because we've sampled most of them (as musicians) and have been frustrated by most of the local conductors. Ergo, as 35 year-olds, we still play from time to time with Stanford, even though the winds often leave something to be desired.

Your most recent Redwood Symphony review makes me think we should give Eric K. another try, but at last take, he didn't actually rehearse music.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Like other critics who have claimed to scoff at Brahms, Rich keeps finding exceptions.

That concert was on my possibles list, but was one of three such I skipped last weekend. Just too occupied with other tasks.

The view of conductors is of course very different from behind than it is from in front, playing for them. All I can say about community orchestra conductors is that, while they can't make the musicians play in tune if that's beyond them, they can shape ensemble and the general form and flow of the music, and the ones around here seem to me to be pretty good at what they do, if only because they're not trying to do too much. You need to go to the professional level to find really bad conductors, or more accurately conductors who cannot accomplish what they're attempting.

The Redwood Symphony does what a community orchestra should do, which is to play more interesting programs than the big boys offer, not too ear-wincingly badly, in your own neighborhood for cheap bux. I'm satisfied.

[catcrocker.livejournal.com]

Fair enough!

I've enjoyed playing with Jindong, although I miss Karla Lemon.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Lemon was, to my tastes, a fabulous programmer as well as a very good conductor. (The Eroica and Shostakovich's Fifth in one concert *yum* and so very fervently played, too.) Cai is a decent conductor, but I don't care for his programming very much. Sigh, but that's just personal taste.

[catcrocker.livejournal.com]

I can't remember if I played that program with Karla, but I definitely played exactly that concert many times with the Princeton Orchestra, on tour in Eastern Europe no less. Probably one of my favorite musical experiences.