Comments on: DEVASTATION

By: Times Quotidian

Times Quotidian — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 23:13:46 +0000

[...] is a sampling of some current material: Devastation, March 22, [...]

By: MarK

MarK — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:57:30 +0000

The two critics were listening to the same concert, i am sure, but they heard it slightly differently which is only natural, music being such a subjective thing. This was actually one of those occasions when Richard Ginell got it quite right. The young Spanish maestro – Pablo Heras-Casado – is a very pleasant man but his conducting was far from being effective, especially in the Mahler. We shouldn’t judge him too harshly because it was not really his program, but the drop in the quality of the orchestra’s playing, compared to the previous week, was quite significant. The week before last, the nearly equally young man on the podium – a French-Canadian named Yannick Nezet-Seguin – got the orchestra to play on a very high level and was especially impressive in Shostakovich’s Fifth. If his interpretation was not quite as deeply felt as Kurt Sanderling’s who lived with this symphony almost from the day it was premiered, it is not surprising – but it sure was better than with most other conductors.

By: Paul Norwood

Paul Norwood — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:56:33 +0000

My dear Mr. Rich:

Love the new look of the website and I will gladly try to throw my Amazon business your way!
We sat nearby overlooking the Denali down below at the Janaranda party…I loved the “Amazing Grace” quartet (Mr. Johnston is new to me) but was unconvinced by the guitar/baritone cycle…
I applaud your assessment of Mr. Heras-Casado…did Ginell here the same concert????

By: Richard Mitnick

Richard Mitnick — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:22:03 +0000

Thanks for your response. Searching on Mr. hentoff, I find him now at the Cato Institute, not too shabby; and at the jazz.com blog, where I do not see an RSS feed, such as you, sir, have provided and thank you very much. It does make life easier.

I do follow Alex Ross’ blog, and I follow Greg Sandow. You are still the King of the Walk.

>>RSM

By: Alan Rich

Alan Rich — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 03:23:05 +0000

Deans are sometimes a bit rusty on the edges, sometimes not. I’ll try to live up to Alex’s kind words, but only selectively. To my shame, I don’t know Nat Hentoff as well as my admiration of his writing would vouchsafe (love that word!), but if any of our other Boston Latin classmates sees this and passes this on (Irv Berkowitz, for example, who lives nearby) tell Nat that running a blog is a terrific restorative to the soul and the bloodstream.

By: Richard Mitnick

Richard Mitnick — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 01:00:36 +0000

Alan Rich, thank you, now we can tell you how wonderful your writing really is. Alex Ross (http://www.therestisnoise.com)called you the Dean of American Classical music critics. Your readers have never had any doubt about this.

Now, it would be great if you could persuade your Village Voice Jazz peer, Nat Hentoff, recently canned after over 50 years by what I believe is the very same pack of idiots who ended your assignment, to also continue his writing with a weblog.

Think of it as paying back.

>>RSM

By: MarK

MarK — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:47:43 +0000

Now this looks like a real blog and i am delighted to offer the very first comment on it. Congratulations!
The reason Kate Royal looked taller than Pablo Heras-Casado is that he is actually of average male height (about 5’10″) and she is in fact a little bit taller than that.
Looks like you liked that concert more than i did, but thank you anyway for continuing your fine writing!