Klarinet Archive - Posting 000406.txt from 1998/12
From: Ken Wolman <Ken.Wolman@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Of ad hominem arguments and subjectivity....
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 12:56:42 -0500
I would and perhaps should let this topic alone, but I've been
thinking on and off about David Hattner's ad hominem comments in
response to my critical statements about James Levine. They bring me
to the whole question of subjectivity in artistic judgments. How are
we to judge a performance or performer, whether that person is an
instrumentalist or conductor? Not everyone on this list is a
professional or even a pro wanna-be. So maybe this point of view is a
corrective...or maybe, to be perfectly frank, it's just me indulging
in a Net Sport I've been practicing since 1984: of not letting some
tactless attacker get the last word (Opera-L is full of that type of
person). Either way, I hope what I say is useful.
Given Mr. Hattner's strident defense of Maestro Levine, I wonder where
he was sitting at the Met on the night of 10/1/98, the night I was in
the Family Circle when Levine conducted the season's second
performance of Saint-Saens' Samson et Dalila. He must've had a magic
seat because he appeared to have been spared the blatting horns,
ragged attacks, dragging tempi, and excessive volume...the last two
being increasingly representative of Levine's work with late Verdi
such as Otello, and which have carried over to his French conducting
as well, I fear. Did Levine do as well with the piece as Slatkin did
last season? Not even close. Of course that is a subjective judgment
based on hearing alone, on taste formed or deformed by listening to
and attending opera performances since 1958 and having heard
conductors who ranged from Solti and Stokowski down to guys like Kurt
Adler, who couldn't lead my son's high school marching band. I am not
of course prepared to scan in a copy of the conductor's score as a file
attachment, marked with all the places where Levine overpowered his
singers. You have only my SUBJECTIVE experience to go by. I am
neither performer nor musicologist: I just love the stuff and I hate
to hear it mangled.
As far as I can discern, Mr. Hattner's has two defenses of Levine as
conductor: one is on the level of "Yo' mama," i.e., "You don't know
what you're talking about." This is hardly calculated to function as
an adequate rejoinder: it is not even witty, just boorishly nasty and
high-schoolish, except the high school kids on this list tend to be
better-mannered. The second defense of Mr. Levine is hopelessly worn,
and would get Mr. Hattner tossed out of a Rhetoric class, i.e., the
Appeal to Authority combined with some skillful name dropping that
archly (rather than tactfully) avoids names. It appears that
Mr. Hattner personally knows members of the Met orchestra (not to
mention the Columbus Symphony), and they respect Levine as a musician.
So do I, as a matter of fact: he is one of the finest chamber music
pianists and accompanists I've ever heard, and in some operatic
repertoire--Mozart and Wagner--he's as good if not better than anyone
alive (his work with Figaro this past weekend was glorious). And his
recent recording of Strauss' Don Quixote is truly great and
demonstrates the kind of orchestra he's built at the Met when both he
and the orchestra are at their best. And yes, if I can find tickets
to that concert in May, even side view seats, I'll take 'em.
Now: may I, as a nonprofessional and member of the audience who pays
for my ticket, suggest something perhaps revolutionary to Mr. Hattner
and to the professional performers on this list (sorry, but if the
shoe fits, etc.)? An audience's regard for a conductor goes in a
somewhat different direction from a musician's: a conductor's players
may love and respect him, but the people out front don't really give a
damn about how esteemed he is by the help. What we HEAR is what care
about. We assess on a case-by-case basis. For all I know, Simone
Young may be a bundle of yuks and a very sensitive musician, but when
I heard her conduct Les Contes d'Hoffman last year, all I could think
of was that in 1988 the same opera was conducted by Charles Dutoit,
and that Young got the Met Orchestra to play like it was being
mis-led by Kurt Adler. As for Levine in the French repertoire, he
simply assaults the material as though it were Wagner, and it does not
work. If you want a musicological explanation for that, go ask a
musicologist. Or go listen to Georges Pretre's recording of Samson.
To raise this (perhaps) beyond the level of high-level counterattack,
I have a simple question: Is objectivity possible? Even the great
conductors did not read the same score the same way: what is a
"fortissimo" except a judgment call based on a subjective
quasi-understanding of what the composer may have wanted? Why does
Weingartner's Beethoven not sound like Klemperer's or Bernstein's or
Toscanini's? Why have we had vigorous defenders of various
clarinetists on this list while others were attacking them. Was
everyone waving their score pages around to prove points? Is one
interpretation more or less valid than the other, or is this another
case of "de gustibus"? And does someone who prefers Klemperer's
version to Toscanini's therefore not know what he is talking about?
Ken
--
Ken Wolman dbtrader Deutsche Bank, N.A.
1251 Sixth Avenue New York, NY 10019 212-469-6494
Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
--Jane Kenyon
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
