David Hurwitz

[Karl Henning]

https://www.youtube.com/v/Ky9-eIlHzAE

I don't think Jn Simon can really both complain that it is "de-humanizing," and that it is for children.

[Florestan]

Am listening to the piano concerto right now. It is really a slavish imitation of the Brahms First Concerto

"really" --- your using this word means that either you are absolutely and utterly convinced, beyond any reasonable doubt, or you have irrefutable proof, that what you state is true. Are you? Do you?

"slavish" --- short of you having the power to read people´s minds, and dead people´s mind for that matter, how do you know that what Reger set about when composing it was imitating Brahms´ First Concerto, and slavishly for that matter?

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Interesting. I always felt that Ebert was the superior in this regard, but it isn't critical to the discussion. The thing that used to frustrate me about Siskel was that the things he didn't like about a film were often because something didn't happen in the film the way he wanted it to. Ebert, on the other hand, reviewed what happened. I'm simplifying, but that is basically the idea. You don't get that in music reviewing much though.

I remember a statement from him (I think in his autobiography) that one of the first films he reviewed was Bergman's Persona. This proved to be decisive, because the strangeness of the film forced him to develop his no-nonsense approach to criticism: state the facts of the film as clearly as possible, and then explore and analyze your own feelings about it. You can sense him using this approach as a template throughout his career.

Pauline Kael on the other hand took a much more ideological approach, deciding in a certain a priori sense what cinema should and shouldn't be.

[Brian]

"really" --- your using this word means that either you are absolutely and utterly convinced, beyond any reasonable doubt, or you have irrefutable proof, that what you state is true. Are you? Do you?

Yes. Yes.

'My Piano Concerto is going to be misunderstood for years. The musical language is too austere and too serious; it is, so to speak, a pendant to Brahms's D minor Piano Concerto. The public will need some time to get used to it.' - Max Reger

From the Hyperion CD booklet essay:

"Despite his dislike of the work, Walter Niemann's review identified the two dominant influences—Brahms and Liszt—on the sonority and layout of the piano part. The influence of Brahms is clear. What Charles Rosen called 'the inspiration of awkwardness' in Brahms's piano style is also evident in Reger's concerto. It makes huge technical demands on the soloist while avoiding the temptation to dazzle for the sake of it. As well as some daunting passages in octaves, the soloist has to negotiate some elaborate figurations in the inner parts, and some thoroughly Brahmsian leaps and cross-rhythms....

"The opening of the Allegro moderato (with a timpani roll and a rhythm that both echo the start of Brahms's D minor Concerto) shows Reger at his most advanced harmonically....Like Brahms's model, the first movement is much the longest of the three."

[(poco) Sforzando]

"really" --- your using this word means that either you are absolutely and utterly convinced, beyond any reasonable doubt, or you have irrefutable proof, that what you state is true. Are you? Do you?

"slavish" --- short of you having the power to read people´s minds, and dead people´s mind for that matter, how do you know that what Reger set about when composing it was imitating Brahms´ First Concerto, and slavishly for that matter?

In case anyone hasn't noticed, the finale of the Brahms 1st Concerto is a direct imitation of the finale to the Beethoven 3rd Concerto. (Charles Rosen has a full discussion of this somewhere.) To quote Melville from Moby Dick: "Who ain't a slave?"

[Jo498]

Reger is often indebted to Brahms but this can hardly account for the relative obscurity of his music. The Grieg piano concerto is at least as closely following mood and gestures of the Schumann pc (at least at the beginning) as Reger Brahms but it is about as popular as the Schumann.

Reger wrote often as if to "out-Brahms Brahms" (and while he was at it to out-Bach Bach as well). He is extremely skillful in the counterpoint etc. department, but not great with melodies; the more popular works are often variations on other people's tunes (Mozart, Telemann, Bach, Beethoven...)
I am not sure if I really love anything by Reger but I find his music interesting and sometimes fascinating. (There was a guy on a German language forum who listened almost only to chamber music by Beethoven, Brahms, Reger and Schönberg.)

[Florestan]

'My Piano Concerto is going to be misunderstood for years. The musical language is too austere and too serious; it is, so to speak, a pendant to Brahms's D minor Piano Concerto. The public will need some time to get used to it.' - Max Reger

Funny how selecting what part to highlight makes all teh difference in the world. 

If Reger´s PC was really a slavish imitation of Brahms´ First, why then did he state that the public would need some time to get used to it? Wouldn´t it have been obvious at the first sight hearing that this is so?

From the Hyperion CD booklet essay:

"Despite his dislike of the work, Walter Niemann's review identified the two dominant influences—Brahms and Liszt—on the sonority and layout of the piano part. The influence of Brahms is clear. What Charles Rosen called 'the inspiration of awkwardness' in Brahms's piano style is also evident in Reger's concerto. It makes huge technical demands on the soloist while avoiding the temptation to dazzle for the sake of it. As well as some daunting passages in octaves, the soloist has to negotiate some elaborate figurations in the inner parts, and some thoroughly Brahmsian leaps and cross-rhythms....

"The opening of the Allegro moderato (with a timpani roll and a rhythm that both echo the start of Brahms's D minor Concerto) shows Reger at his most advanced harmonically....Like Brahms's model, the first movement is much the longest of the three."

I read "influence", "echo" and "like". Why does they have to translate into "slavish imitation"?

Joseph Schuster´s string quartets have been attributed for a long time to Mozart. Eventually their authorship was proven beyond doubt. Now, you might as well said that Schuster´s SQs are "a slavish imitation of", ie undistinguishably from, Mozart´s ---IOW, that when it comes to SQs Schuster was at the very same level of Mozart, both stylistically and technically. Would you say that Reger´s PC might very well be attributed to Brahms without anyone noticing any difference for a long time? 

[Brian]

Would you say that Reger´s PC might very well be attributed to Brahms without anyone noticing any difference for a long time? 

No! Brahms is great.

[Florestan]

No! Brahms is great.

Voilà! 

I remember having listened to Reger´s PC on Youtube last year and finding it too long. Or was it the VC? I will repeat the experience with both and report back.

[Super Blood Moon]

Oh, sorry, I thought this thread was about Hurwitz's ass.

[Karl Henning]

Hurwitz's ass is mine.

[kishnevi]

Voilà! 

I remember having listened to Reger´s PC on Youtube last year and finding it too long. Or was it the VC? I will repeat the experience with both and report back.

Did a quick check of the timings in the Berlin Classics Reger set. The PC is 41 minutes, the VC 58 minutes.

I liked both, and think both of you gentlemen are undervaluing Reger.

[Monsieur Croche]

Oh, sorry, I thought this thread was about Hurwitz's ass.

It seems you saw the original OP before it was deleted. From that hot-pink prose with its tone of a first-world level of importance hissy-fit, I could see where one might think that part of Hurwitz was the thing of greatest focus and interest.

The OP had all the quality of your having entered a room while hearing the balance of a sentence already begun and half-way done, after the subject had already been stated.

Just about anywhere you care to look, there is often a narrow nationalist take on 'home-boy' composers, even if that nation has but two well-known 'local boy makes good' composers to rub together.

I think the complaint was about a type of comment on such a group of collected composers, all British, with [the complained-about critic being an American] of course an American-style stamp on that. Another contributor pointed out this national/regional preoccupation to lionize the "local boys who done good" dynamic and called it "provincial." I think the more apposite word is "parochial."

Anyway, the post, imo, was a tempest in not a teacup, but more a tempest in the ancillary and even shallower saucer, and a very minor first world bit of business.

I mean, who is this 'Hurwitz,' person, and is he of any real significance whatsoever?

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Oh, sorry, I thought this thread was about Hurwitz's ass.

I thought it was a mule!

[knight66]

Now, let's see: mules can be bad tempered, they kick and are generally sterile.....does it fit?   

Mike

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Whoops, 'mule' seems to be worse than 'ass' then, right?

[Karl Henning]

Here it is:

http://www.classicstoday.com/review/review-12140/?search=1

Quote:

"This description may sound like damning with faint praise, but it isn't meant to be. If I were a British critic and this were a Chandos production of some second-tier English composer (say, Dyson, or Finzi, or Moeran), I could carry on about "yet another triumphant example of the extraordinary musical resurgence of the early 20th century, etc., etc.," ad nauseam."

Incidentally, what few of us would probably have expected (given Hurwitz's lumping all these US symphonists together), he actually gives a laudatory review to this CD of Mennin:

[(poco) Sforzando]

I don't think Jn Simon can really both complain that it is "de-humanizing," and that it is for children.

Well, he means it in the sense that the movie is a live-action cartoon, with no human complexity. And while I admit I enjoyed the first Star Wars movie (episode IV) as the one that takes itself less seriously than all the heavy-handed others, I find myself closer to Simon than to S+E on this argument. While the occasional Star Wars-type movie is fine in small doses, I have a number of friends who gravitate almost exclusively to movies of this type: simplistic conflicts between Absolute Good and Absolute Evil always on a save-the-earth scale of monumental grandiosity, a total lack of introspection or growth in the characters, predictable plot development where the Good Guys are temporarily routed but always defeat the Bad Guys in the end, heavy reliance on CGI effects, excessive violence, and an ear-splitting bombastically derivative musical score.

These same people are always looking for escapism in the films they watch and reject virtually anything else as either boring or depressing (whether they have seen it or not). I wonder if the young kids or teenagers brought up on Star Wars and Hunger Games can still appreciate something as subtle or delicate as Albert Lamorisse's The Red Balloon, sometimes spoken of as the best little film for and about small children ever made, or Claude Berri's The Two of Us, about a little Jewish boy taken in by an anti-Semitic farmer during WW2 France, and more. I don't mean to point exclusively to films with subtitles as counter-examples, but the worst offenders of the Star Wars mentality seem always to be American films, and if that kind of cinematic junk food is one's sole movie-going diet, how is one to appreciate the achievements of an Ozu, a Mike Leigh, a Cassavetes, a Bresson?

[Jo498]

The gender does not fit, curls are long gone and I'd modify the penultimate verse to "pretty decent" instead of "very good" but the last verse still fits DH unfortunately well.

There was a little girl,
            Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
            When she was good,
            She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.

He should stick to the (mostly late romantic orchestral) stuff he loves and has some knowledge about and keep silent otherwise (i.e about almost everything else, especially vocal music or almost everything pre-Haydn). He posted a rant about his dislike of Lieder. I got into a discussion with him when he wrote similarly inane stuff 15 or so years ago in the (now google) rec.music.classical.recordings newsgroup but I am not repeating such windmill fights at youtube.

[Herman]

Ha! funny, I checked the shelves and there are four Reger CDs, including the Böcklin Tone Poems and some chamber music, but not the PF concerto (which I think Serkin played). So I have a new project which both Brian and I can write about, and then you can all print our reviews and retire to the smallest room in your house.

Indeed, Rudolf Serkin was a champion of the Reger Piano Cto.
Marc Hamelin has recorded the Reger PC recently and it was  -  coincidence!  -  subject to a slashing review by Hurwitz, who I suspect used this record, and a record of a Pfitzner's Piano Cto to boost his viewership by being as scathing as he could be.