Like most of you, I spent a few hours in the sun this long weekend, but still couldn’t forget about the passing of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau… His Winterreise has accompanied me part of the way (and a recent essay about the cycle by Georges Leroux, Wanderer), but also his rendition of Schumann’s Dichterliebe. I was especially moved to read a portrait written by Martin Kettle of The Guardian from 2005, in honour of his 80th anniversary.
“He had only to sing one phrase,” his frequent accompanist Gerald Moore wrote in his memoirs, “before I knew I was in the presence of a master.” Sviatoslav Richter, who accompanied him too, was in no doubt either: Fischer-Dieskau was “the greatest of 20th-century singers”, the Russian pianist wrote in his notebooks. John Steane, most probing and unsentimental of all critics, threw up his hands after listening to Fischer-Dieskau and, quoting Dryden on Chaucer, simply concluded: “Here is God’s plenty.” The writer John Amis concluded that Fischer-Dieskau is “a miracle and that is just about all there is to be said about it”.
“I am hard to please,” Fischer-Dieskau admits. He thinks “much is being lost about the good ways of making music”, and regrets the decline of “true legato singing” – a charge that critics occasionally made against his own performances. “When you have something to say in music the phrases must be clear – the beginning, the climax, and the ending.”
The air of the jewels, the soldiers’s chorus, Gounod’s Faust is packed with hits dear to the art of many opera lovers. The new production presented by the Opéra de Montréal is also of particular interest because, for the first time, a father and son team will perform the dual role of Faust (young and old), an added touch that surely will have some impact on the production (and was at the center of numerous kitchen table discussions, I bet!). You can discover Antoine and Guy Bélanger’s rendition of this mythical story starting tonight and on May 22, 24 and 26.
I was very saddened to learn of the passing of German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, a master of German lied today, 10 days short of his 87th birthday.The late soprano Elizabeth Schwarzkopf called him “a born god who has it all.”
“The death of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is a great loss for the entire music world. Through his interpretations of vocals he decisively influenced the art of opera singing. Today’s vocals would be unthinkable without the influence of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau,” the Bavarian State Opera administrator Nikolaus Bachler, said in a statement.
He was especially known for his mastery of works of Schubert, in particular the cycles Winterreise and Die schöne Müllerin. He also took part in the premiere of Britten’s War Requiem in 1962 at England’s newly built Coventry Cathedral. The part was specially written for him by the composer.
He had retired in 1992. He also taught and wrote several reference books.
Are classical music and jazz suffering because we’re not educating our children properly? Isn’t it just a bit easy to blame everyting on the education system? Isn’t the governement part of a conspiration against Mozart, Mahler, Miles or Monk? An article published recently in the Huffington Post begs to differ.
“It’s hard to then claim that the government and the education system (and private donors who have helped to fund university and other programs) haven’t done enough,” explains jazz pianist and composer Kurt Ellenberger. “Hundreds of millions (possibly billions) have been spent on jazz education since 1970, but those untold sums did not deliver a sustainable jazz audience. The education theory as it pertains to jazz is a failure in terms of its ability to generate an audience base for the music.”
He goes further: “The education system can certainly expose students to classical music and jazz (hopefully enriching their lives by doing so), but it cannot make them love the music.”
Symphony orchestras have trouble regenerating their aging audience, it’s been said so many times. Is it even possible to reach out to young audiences, get them in the concert hall… and keep them asking for more? What could work for the iPod generation? In Miami, the New World Symphony Orchestra seems to believe that the solution is in mixing the genres together, literally, as in sampling some classical music (played live) and then spinning it into something entirely different, definitely 21st century.
For a few weeks now, the orchestra has featured some “Pulse” evenings (but, in fact, isn’t music, whatever its genre, nothing more than a pulse?), in the New World Center, Frank Gehry’s brain child, which sound more like raves than classical concerts. It’s like hitting the “refresh” button on your browser, but with music of giants like Mozart and Stravinsky. What does it sound like? Listen to this mp3 to find out… Purists are probably getting very upset right about now, but I believe a lot of “serious” composers would not have minded the idea so much.
You can read this article in theWall Streeet Journal to know a little more about the project.
