Gratuitous Musickal Posting (TM)

Just a quick follow up on last night's concert that evidently put INDCent Bill to sleep.

First of all, the orchestra was much better than I had feared. Past experience of community groups had made me apprehensive about what kind of quality to expect, but really, they played quite competently.

As for the music, the Glinka was a success, the Prokofiev at least had interesting things to say and the Berlioz was pure mush. As I mentioned, the theme of this concert was Romeo and Juliet, so a couple of passages of Tchaikovsky's ballet were tossed in as well. I must say that as I get older, I grow less and less fond of Tchaikovsky's music. I noticed this when I took the Llama-ettes to see The Nutcracker at Christmas. The man had some good ideas now and again, but by God! his presentation gets awfully overblown and hokey.

I recently came across a critique by Tchaikovsky of the music of Brahms (which I greatly admire) that reyther reenforced my opinion of both composers:

For the Russian heart there is something dry, cold, nebulous and repelling about the music of this German Master. For us Russians, Brahms lacks every sense of melodic fantasy. The musical thought in Brahms is never completely pronounced. Barely has a melodic phrase been as much as hinted at, it is so overgrown with all kinds of harmonic modulations as if the composer had set himself the task of being incomprehensible and deep whatever the cost [.....] His style is always so lofty [....] but in everything the most important element of all is missing: beauty!"

Eh. To me this means nothing more than that Tchaikovsky simply didn't get it. He sounds like a drinker of Seagram's and Seven-Up complaining about the icky taste of single malt Scotch.

Anyhoo.

It turned out that this wasn't just a concert of Romeo & Juliet - inspired music. Instead, the director hit upon the idea of interspersing spoken passages from the play among the musical selections. This, to me, was a mistake. First of all, there were only three actors, who had to handle fifteen parts between them, which got rather confusing. Second, only one of the actors was really any good at all. The others were of the type who believe that AAAALLL SHAAAAKESPEEEEARE MUUUUST BEEEEE REEEAD DEEEEEEPLY!

Finally, the overall effect of this idea was to distract the audience from the music, but at the same time not to give enough dramatic ooomph and continuity to the drama to make it really worth watching or listening to.

So there you have it. I may very well be getting involved with this organization - the people I talked to at the part after the concert seemed both surprised and pleased that I was so interested in the music itself - so perhaps I can exert some small influence on future programming decisions.