Klarinet Archive - Posting 001124.txt from 2000/10

From: "Rien Stein" <rstein@-----.nl>
Subj: Re: [kl] Ouch! (OT)B
Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2000 18:21:23 -0400

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I think this discussion is going on to general and oversimplified. IMHO =
the point is not, whether you like or like not the music-as-performed, =
but whether it can be considered good. And of course there is very much =
in the popscene that only serves the purely commercial interests of =
managers, advertising agencies and, yes, even the performers, for =
instance like in the case of ther spice girls, where some commercially =
clever people decided to make =A3100,00,00 within a year - and =
succeeded, due to a good marketing strategy and a lot of extra-musical =
actions like selling T-shirts, but mainly by clever advertising, so all =
youths (or nearly so: my kids were not impressed) felt obliged to be =
fans. It sems only a very small amount of the money they made has =
returned to the girls.

But there are also some very good artists, at least in my opinion, in =
the popscene. i do not know much of it, but for instance Queen (Freddy =
Mercury) and Eric Clapton have great abilities, from the few works I =
know of them (and only in "translation, rearrangements), I feel obliged =
to consider them as great musicians, whereas IMHO, some so-considered =
great classical musicians just are what we call in Dutch "ego-ruiters", =
ego-riders. I think of, for instance, Maazel(!), but also of Carreras in =
his version of the Misa Criolla, or, for that sake, Stoltzman, who I =
consider to mainly show off his technical abilities. Alas the same must =
be said of such a really great musician like Giora Feidman, who 20, and =
even ten years ago was one of the very best Klezmer clarinettists I =
knew, but now, getting older, drowns himselves in effects and technical =
tour de forces I do not have the talent to make, but also think are used =
by him at the most irrelevant occasions.

Hope this is a small contribution to a thread that I think lies at the =
heart of what we all are concerned about as musicians.

Rien

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