At The WholeNote, we spend a lot of time looking at the websites of various orchestras. So when the YouTube video below was brought to my attention (by an arts bureaucrat who shall remain nameless), I immediately understood the frustrations that inspired it. I don't know who created it, but it I suspect that its creator has looked at a lot of orchestral websites, too.
Sometimes arts organizations are so eager to broadcast what they want the public to know – how to make a donation, for example – that they lose sight of what it is that the public wants to find out. They may forget that if their website, brochure or other promotional materials are too complicated and user-unfriendly, they simply won't be used.
A little drama has been unfolding in Cleveland. To make a long story very short, Donald Rosenberg, a music critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer (the city's only daily newspaper) was "reassigned" from his beat for writing too many unfavourable reviews of the Cleveland Orchestra and its conductor, Franz Welser-Möst. Rosenberg sued both his newspaper and the orchestra, alleging that they conspired to remove him from his position.
Rosenberg lost his case. You can read about it here:
I know Rosenberg: he’s a scholar and a gentleman, with oodles of integrity. I’m sorry that he lost – although I can’t say I’m especially surprised, given the forces he was up against.
But there’s one problem at the root of this issue that I haven’t seen articulated: it’s a structural problem throughout the newspaper industry that has a direct bearing on the situation in Cleveland. However, it's a problem that we in Toronto don't have – so as a Toronto-based writer, I'm well placed to point out the error of everyone else's ways.
Now that so many North American cities have become one-paper towns, often with only one classical-music critic, de-facto monopolies of opinion have arisen. This is bad for critics, bad for newspapers and bad for music.
In my view, a healthy criticism thrives on diversity of opinion. Such diversity underscores the subjective nature of criticism: in an environment where there are many critical voices, it’s obvious to all that a review is simply one individual’s subjective position. In an environment where there is only one person writing about classical music, that one person becomes "The Critic," and may be implicitly saddled with expectations of balance, objectivity, and other bogus responsibilities.
One of the complaints expressed by an editor at the Plain Dealer about Rosenberg’s reviews of the Cleveland Orchestra was that his opinions were "predictable." Rosenberg didn’t think much of Welser-Möst’s conducting, and he said so consistently.
I can also see how a newspaper editor would find predictable coverage problematic. Why would anyone bother continuing to read reviews in The (only) Newspaper if The (only) Critic consistently doesn’t like The (only) Conductor? It's the editor's job to keep the "Lively Arts" section lively.
But expecting Rosenberg to moderate (i.e. falsify) his opinions is just plain wrong: it’s his job to be honest. And simply "re-assigning" Rosenberg was a very crude solution. How’s about bringing in a second critic, with different views, to alternate with Rosenberg, or to appear in print alongside his columns?
Toronto, as I noted above, is a happy exception to this problem. I can't think of another North American city with four daily newspapers, three of which cover classical music to some extent. When three differing reviews of a concert appear in print, it makes for interesting reading. And when three reviews appear that all offer the same verdict on a concert, that’s interesting, too.
Evidently, summer has caught me napping. Last weekend (July 24-25), I was in Stratford, where John Miller, director of Stratford Summer Music, told me that the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra had announced that their joint plans for a summer festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake had been quietly shelved.
This was news to me – and I can’t help thinking that the mid-July announcement was intended to go pretty much unnoticed. However, a little online research brought me up to date: a press release, dated July 13, coyly cited a “complex economic and political environment” for the collapse of the initiative, after five-and-a-half years of planning.
This seems to be a reference to the opposition from some local residents that has plagued the project for several years. And it’s probably also a reference to the estimated $76 million that construction of the site was going to cost – most of it in government funding, from various levels. In plainer English, it was a small but noisy NIMBY group and Nervous Nelly politicians that killed the project.
Before the plug was quietly plugged, the TSO and NACO made glowing comparisons of their vision to the Tanglewood and Salzburg festivals, and predicted that the project would pump $100 million annually into the Ontario economy. Thus, the expenses would be recouped in the first year of operation. After that, the $20 million the festival would cost to run annually would amount to only one-fifth of the revenues it would generate. And since Niagara-on-the-Lake is right on the Canada-US border, much of the festival’s income would have come from visiting Americans, spending dollars that otherwise wouldn't have found their way into the Canadian economy at all.
Am I being oversensitive, or to I smell a whiff of disdain for something as “elitist” and “superfluous” as classical music – mixed, perhaps, with a little Toronto/Ottawa bashing? That would be ironic, since the plan was to establish the festival in a part of the province that already makes big bucks from its wineries, tourism, and of course the Shaw Festival. You’d think that politicians and local residents would have come to understand the benefits – in economic terms, at least – that the arts and culture can bring to a community.
But perhaps the NACO and the TSO presumed too much, and in this there may be a lesson to be learned. Ontario is a big place, and I hope that attempts to establish a major orchestral festival will be renewed. Only next time, the orchestras would do well to first determine that they’re going into an area where they’re entirely wanted, and that they have the political support they need.
Below, you’ll find a group of links that offer information and opinions on this sad story.
Written by David Perlman for The WholeNote photos by Bryson Winchester
Well the die-hards, self included, were lining up for the Geiger Torel Room at nine twenty this morning for Matthias Goerne’s public masterclass – there were thirty to forty of us I’d say by by ten when it started. Two hours; three singers in turn, forty minutes each, Liz Upchurch on piano. The three singers each brought a mini-set of lieder (by three different composers) from their upcoming Aug 4 joint concert. Leslie Ann Bradley, soprano, started things off with Richard Strauss, to be followed by Colin Ainsworth, tenor, (Hugo Wolf), and then Peter McGillivray, baritone (Robert Schumann). Reverse chronology.
Herman Geiger Torel presiding …
Herman Geiger Torel presiding …
Goerne gets things going, bright and early after a spellbinding recital at Koerner the night before. Fresh as a daisy. Must have been his characters suffering on stage the night before, not him.
Goerne gets things going, bright and early after a spellbinding recital at Koerner the night before. Fresh as a daisy. Must have been his characters suffering on stage the night before, not him.
Engaging with pianist Liz Upchurch for the first time. “Collaborative pianist” describes much more accurately than “accompanist” the role that Upchurch will play over the next two hours. In his teaching as in his singing Goerne worries through every detail of tempo, line, attack, breath – impacted viscerally and visibly by vocal and instrumental line alike, sailing back and forth between Upchurch at the piano and each of the singers as the music-making moves him.
Engaging with pianist Liz Upchurch for the first time. “Collaborative pianist” describes much more accurately than “accompanist” the role that Upchurch will play over the next two hours. In his teaching as in his singing Goerne worries through every detail of tempo, line, attack, breath – impacted viscerally and visibly by vocal and instrumental line alike, sailing back and forth between Upchurch at the piano and each of the singers as the music-making moves him.
Leslie Ann Bradley, takes the plunge – in at the technical deep end with Strauss’s Die nacht, Op. 10 No 3.
Leslie Ann Bradley, takes the plunge – in at the technical deep end with Strauss’s Die nacht, Op. 10 No 3.
Sounding-like-you-know-what-you’re-talking-about terminology lesson: in a masterclass you don’t call the master the master, you call him or her the coach; and you don’t call the two waiting their turn (l. McGillivray, r. Ainsworth) the victims.
Sounding-like-you-know-what-you’re-talking-about terminology lesson: in a masterclass you don’t call the master the master, you call him or her the coach; and you don’t call the two waiting their turn (l. McGillivray, r. Ainsworth) the victims.
Ainsworth with Wolf’s der Tambour and Auf dem grunen Balkon, is next.
Ainsworth with Wolf’s der Tambour and Auf dem grunen Balkon, is next.
And then McGillivray with Schumann’s Dichterliebe, Goerne’s own repertoire
And then McGillivray with Schumann’s Dichterliebe, Goerne’s own repertoire
A few minutes after this photo I sat for a quick chat with the singers. See below for the interview.
A few minutes after this photo I sat for a quick chat with the singers. See below for the interview.
Next up for us masterclass die-hards will be a Sunday double header: Menahem Pressler coaching at 10:00am, and the Pacifica Quartet, at 2:30. As with Goerne, we will be watching a masterclass the night following the coaches’own concert.
Leslie Ann Bradley, takes the plunge – in at the technical deep end with Strauss’s Die nacht, Op. 10 No 3.
