Tuesday, January 22, 2008

I Suppose That's One Way to Read the Review...

...but it's still wrong. ACD thinks that Bernard Holland is somehow being subtle rather than lazy in his Bostridge/Quasthoff/Roeschmann review. I might believe ACD if almost every Holland review didn't read the same way. If you don't believe me, check out Holland's review of the Emerson Quartet in today's Times. It's 85% musings about Brahms and 15% a review of the concert supposedly under review.

2 comments:

Charles T. Downey said...

Interesting that a similar program -- the Emerson Quartet playing the two Brahms op. 51 quartets -- set Anne Midgette off on a similar trajectory in today's Washington Post.

Lisa Hirsch said...

Thanks for the pointer, Charles.

Midgette's article is very interesting and I think very worthwhile; it's an essay about her personal reaction to Brahms's music with reference to a couple of concerts, rather than a review that winds up buried in random musings.

I detected a faint whiff of Greg Sandow in the Midgette article - not a big surprise - in the comment about Brahms representing the "cult of classical music." I find that comment mildly gratuitous, considering how much Beethoven worked over his own works.