Klarinet Archive - Posting 000316.txt from 1999/07

From: Ken Wolman <kwolman@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Nickname for Seiji Ozawa?
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 15:08:15 -0400

>> Probably it means the guy reading the news was an
>> illiterate, or at the
>> very least had not been coached in Japanese names.
>>
>
>It's all over. Today, I heard an announcer on the
>local Public Radio station say that we would be
>hearing excerpts from "SKeherazade." To make it
>worse, afterwards he told us we had been listening to
>excerpts from "SKeherazade."

Well, first the correction that it was a woman who read the news on CNN.
How come I thought it was a man? Because men are prone to these kinds of
errors? Don't know. I keep thinking of Ted Knight's newsman character on
the Mary Tyler Moore show: a chain of flubs, malapropisms, mispronunciations.

Classical DJs seem prone either to screwing up totally on pronunciations
(as in Skeherezade:-) or overenunciating. The New York people on the list
surely are familiar with Nimet Habashy, who does a Sunday night opera show
on WQXR, and also moderates panel discussions for Metropolitan Opera
broadcast intermission features. She has an accent that seems composed of
everywhere in Europe as well as parts of Asia, Africa, and Antarctica. She
over-rolls her R's, does things to umlauts that even Germans never
imagined. I'd like to hear her quoting portions of Bartok's "Bluebeard's
Castle": it would be interesting to see how she handles Magyar (is that
MAG-yar or MADJ-yar??). I'm also familiar with Chris Purdy, who does
classical broadcasting for WOSU in Columbus, Ohio: he overpronounces too,
but the accent makes it a good deal less attention-getting.

I'm waiting to hear someone come out with:

Reeeechhhhaaard Strauss's "Don Quicksote" (sounds like a wood treatment)
Reeeechhhhaaard Wagner's (like the actor Robert Wagner) "Die
Meisterbaeter" (ahem)
Gya-como Pussini's "La Boheem"

PDQ Bach, where art thou now that we need thee!?

Ken

Kenneth Wolman kwolman@-----.net
"From the Meadowlands": http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Gallery/1649
"For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, neat, and
wrong."
--H. L. Mencken

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org

   
     Copyright © Woodwind.Org, Inc. All Rights Reserved    Privacy Policy    Contact charette@woodwind.org