This is wonderful, Hal. Once upon a time I knew Carter slightly, and I'm
close to many ofc his students. He's a nice guy, and he's old and gray, but
by no stretch is he "just plain folks." It's a hoot to think he could carry
it off.
Mark
At 04:51 PM 11/30/2003 -0500, Halvard Johnson wrote:
>But it also has a lot to do with education and PR, Alison (oops . . . almost
>said Scarlet, there). There's Cincinnati, Ohio, is not exactly on the cutting
>edge of the music world, but several years ago Elliott Carter's piano
>concerto (I think it was) turned up on the annual top-40 list of a local
>PBS station, largely because Carter came to town and stood up front
>and talked to the folks about his music, and they saw he was an old
>gray-head just like they were. At least, that's how I heard the phenomenon
>once explained. A few years before, Michael Gielen had caused many
>to flee the halls by programming the Variations.
>
>Once the words "accessible" and "inaccessible" go out of fashion, there'll
>be a new wave of contempo music in all our darling old concert halls.
>
>Hal
>
>
>{ Fascinating discussion, guys. And absolutely true, Kenneth, unless
>{ the patrons discern some status in being up with the cutting edge,
>{ which can be the case (I think it is much more the case in Europe,
>{ where there is still that bourgeois idea of a cultured person).
>{ Contemporary music is a bit like contemporary poetry, in that only a
>{ small percentage of people bother to attune their ears to it. Only
>{ it's more expensive to produce: the musicians with the skills to play
>{ this stuff don't come cheap.
>{
>{ Wozzek is one of my favourite operas too. There was a brilliant
>{ production here in Melbourne a couple of years back, directed by
>{ Barrie Kosky, who has since fled to Vienna to run a theatre there.
>{ It's one of my favourite plays too, and Berg's genius is in not
>{ adapting the play, apart from a few cuts, but just setting it.
>{
>{ We are moving to a less and less subsdised situation here as far as
>{ arts funding goes, and consequently all our performing arts are more
>{ and more conservative. And our culture is currently being sold out
>{ thoroughly to the US in so-called "trade discussions". It's a grave
>{ artists here dug for themselves 15 years ago when they so
>{ enthusiastically embraced the model of an "arts industry". But
>{ that's such a grim situation from almost any point of view that on
>{ the whole I'd rather not think about it today...
>{
>{ Best
>{
>{ A
>{ --
>{
>{
>{ Alison Croggon
>{
>{ Blog
>{ http://alisoncroggon.blogspot.com
>{
>{ Editor, Masthead
>{ http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
>{
>{ Home page
>{ http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
>{
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