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Monday, Oct. 22, 2001; 1 p.m. EDT

Philip Kennicott, the classical music critic for The Washington Post, has served as music critic for the Detroit News and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He is a pianist and graduate of Yale.

Classical music is both one of the most established and most imperiled art forms in America: a mainstay of the cultural world, yet fraught with economic and aesthetic problems.

Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion.

After a century of radical musical change, and two decades of increasing commercial exploitation, the art form has ceased to have the coherence, and cultural centrality, that it did in the time of Mozart and Beethoven. What sustains our appetite for a musical form which lives in the shadows of popular culture?

Philip Kennicott: Welcome to the classical music discussion, held every other Monday, and if I'm lucky, two Mondays in a row. Please send questions, comments, responses to things you've read in the Post or elsewhere. We've had two major events this weekend, the opening of a very good production of Carlisle Floyd's Mice and Men at the Washington Opera and the first of the major Silk Road events from Yo Yo Ma. Reactions?

Cleveland, Ohio: I am sending this in early because I have a concert this afternoon. Is there a statue of Hindemith at Yale? How is the new concertmaster working out with the NSO?

I think William Steck was shabbily treated.

I hope Slatkin gets the bum's rush when he gets old and feeble and has no market value for the orchestra,. What do you think?

I like you because you know your stuff.

Philip Kennicott: Geez, I got my undergraduate degree from Yale and yet I can't answer the Hindemith statue question. I remember a story told by some grizzled grad students types who had hung on to the Hindemith legend for years, lamenting the passing of the old days. They told me that there was a Hindemith blackboard, filled with his writing, that had never been cleaned since the Master died. And eventually, in the interests of historical preservation, they put shellac on it to preserve the memorial. Does this ring true to anyone out there who knows better than I?

So far the new concert master seems to be working out very well. I thought the string section sounded cleaner and better in pitch than it is has in a long time; but that's a very superficial impression based on only a couple of concerts.

As for Steck and Slatkin, who can penetrate the dim internecine workings of an orchestra and know who the real vicitms and victimizers are? Perhaps no one falls neatly into either category. Steck didn't seem to have many friends among the younger players, and his playing was not always top notch. Slatkin obviously had a mandate to remake the orchestra and that means, in many cases, moving people around, or out when possible or if necessary. That can't make you popular. If you want to see the costs and benefits of this kind of leadership, look to the Baltimore Symphony where Yuri Temirkanov has quietly been changing personnel, including the concert master (though they won't admit this).

College Park , MD: I recently went to a band concert on campus and was dissappointed in the performance. It sounded as if the conductor had no doo dad. I can't believe the university has such a good orchestra and such a poor band.
Have you ever reviewed band concerts? What do you think of military bands?

Philip Kennicott: I should probably know, but what, exactly, is "doo dad"? I assume it's related to things like fire, sparkle, pizzaz, etc., or perhaps it's a reference to a body part. No Doo Dad. I like that.

As for band concerts, I don't review that many of them and I can't give you one logical reason why not. There are scads of them in DC and often the point seems to be ceremonial, rather than purely musical; but that's a distinction that doesn't hold up if pressed too far. Like a lot of people, I played in a band when I was a kid (tuba) and enjoyed it. But I much more enjoy the orchestral literature which seems to have a greater breadth of emotional possibility. Again, that's a subjective reaction and I'm sure I'll hear from outraged band folks about the wonders of Percy Grainger and Holst and so on. Not to mention J.P. Sousa who is buried in my neighborhood, almost my backyard.

In general, in high schools, the band is usually easier to listen to than the orchestra because string playing is more difficult and more painful on the ears if not right on. By the time kids reach college, things may change: more serious musicians are in the orchestra, while the band attracts a more spirited, get out and support the team kind of player. Who knows. Just speculating.

Doo dad. Not enough doo dad. Help me out here.

HLB ~ Mt. Lebanon, PA: Arvo Part seems to have some following here in the city of 3 rivers. I have & like his Sancturary and I've just ordered his Magnificat. Who is he, what's his following/audience like? Is he actively composing? Thanks much.

Philip Kennicott: Arvo Part (if properly spelled there are two dots over the a) is an Estonian composer whose reputation is based on very spirited, often very slow moving, religious works. He might be thought of as a neo medievalist, interested in blocky sounds, deep religiosity, a sacred response to text, and not a lot of solo or instrumental flash. He's reclusive, rarely submits to interviews, and I believe he's still composing. The wonderful ECM label has recorded a lot of his stuff, and most things they do don't disappoint.

Alexandria, VA: Hey, Philip: I enjoyed your review in today's paper of the Washington Opera's "Of Mice and Men". I attended the dress rehearsal - which seemed to be a full-out performance, and I wanted to talk about and get your reaction on one aspect of the performances that your review didn't get to. The quality of the singers' English diction. I was sitting First Tier, and I tried not to look at the surtitles unless I couldn't understand the words the singer sang. I rarely had to check the words of marvelous young tenor who sang Lennie (Michael Hendrick?), or Curley's wife (Diane Alexander). But the George - I guess he acted well, but I could hardly understand a word of what he sang. It's not that he wasn't trying, but I think it was a combination of the way he sings (sounding a little back in the head), and perhaps not knowing how to make English understood when sung with opera technique, as opposed to singing in Italian.

Like you, I was very impressed by the stage direction - I thought it was so good, I didn't even notice there was a director, which is as it should be. In other words, everything on stage was natural, right, and "with" the music.

Philip Kennicott: American singers are often lazier about diction in English than they are about Italian diction, though I thought the diction was all pretty well done on Saturday night. One obvious difference between the demands placed on the singer who sings George and the singer who sings Lennie is the complexity of their language. Lennie doesn't use big words, he doesn't sing much and there's a lot of repetition. George has some of the most poetic language in the libretto, so poetic, in fact, that he threatens to break character. So George has a bigger challenge. His music is also more adventurous and more lyrical, stretching words out over longer pulses, which naturally distorts them. Nevertheless, I was able to understand the singer, Rod Nelman, almost all of the time.

falls church: It’s an amateur question, I’m sure, but I’ve just started in with some classical music recommended by a friend and I can’t help but wonder; what is an OP number? (or for Mozart they seem to be K numbers)

thanks

Philip Kennicott: Not a bad question at all. Op stands for opus (opera is the plural). It basically means a unit of publication: a composer's first opus might be a piano sonata, or a group of piano sonatas all published together. They are, usually, in roughly chronological order, so a low opus number is an early work and high one (Johann Strauss had hundreds of opus numbers) is a later one; but this is only generally true because composers may hold works back, or not get them published right after composition. Of course, composers may write music that never gets published at all, because they didn't deem it worthy or no one wanted it. And composers before the classical era often didn't publish their works at all. In all of these cases, scholars have to come up with other ways to order their music. K numbers stands for Kochel (umlaut over the o), which is specific to Mozart's works. WoO is used for Beethoven's unpublished works, and it means without opus. There is also the opus posthumous, for works like those of Chopin published after the composers death. And then lots of ad hoc systems for individual composers. Confusing? You can pretty well keep up with the crowd if you know that K is for Mozart, BWV is for Bach, and Op. for most of the major composers between about 1800 and the present.

DC: What do you think are the best facilities in the country to hear classical music? Obviously the Kennedy Center Concert Hall is not very good. On the other hand, when the sound quality is very good all sounds (eg coughing, candy wrappers etc.) are magnified. I think the NJPAC is tremendous and wonder how it stacks up.

Philip Kennicott: I haven't heard them all, and alas, I haven't heard the new facility in New Jersey. But the usual list of exceptional halls includes Carnegie in New York, Severance in Cleveland, Orchestra Hall in Chicago, and (with some notable detractors) the old academy in which Philadelphia plays (for a little longer, until a new hall is completed). I personally am very fond of the tiny Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory which is simply a marvel for chamber music. Some little know halls, off the usual concert circuit, are considered so good that they are regularly used for recording, like the music hall in Troy, NY. And then there are the disasters, some of them local, on a certain bend of the Potomac.

Washington, D.C.: Mr. Kennicott --

There was an interesting piece on the front of the New York Times Arts and Leisure section yesterday talking about the future of classical music recordings. Things sound pretty grim for classical music lovers if the baleful prognotistications about Tower Records and other music retailers cutting back on their classical music recordings. But the writer said that the Internet might offer one solution. My question: downloading music from Napster might work if the piece is three to five minutes in length, but how can one seriously think someone will sit still to download a piece that is 45 minutes in length or longer? Your thoughts?

Philip Kennicott: Ultimately the internet will be a powerful medium for distrubting classical music, indeed, music of all kinds. Right now, it's still in the works. Radio on the internet is wonderful and I highly recommend it; but I haven't been satisfied with things I've heard downloaded from exchange sites.

The recording industry is in a shambles right now, but there are a few bright spots. Naxos, a scrappy budget label that pays its people peanuts, but outsells the majors, is doing just fine and has produced many recordings well worth having in one's collection. Independents like harmonia mundi or Hyperion continue to produce recordings far superior to the major labels, and of repertory that is far more interesting. The issue with Tower will probably be traced to bad business decisions and greed; but Tower is in the retail end of things and so long as recordings continue to get made, who cares who we buy them? A recording bought from Amazon or a recording browsed and bought at Tower still sounds the same. The big worry, of course, is that a broad down turn in retail sales will bite the labels, and Tower is obviously trying to pass the bite on back to the makers. At the same time, there have been down turns before and sudden revivals, usually when somebody figured out a new way using technology (the CD) or a new business plan (like Naxos' budget idea). So there's always hope. Meanwhile, get to know your no-name Eastern European orchestras because that's pretty much the ball game for now.

Arlington, VA: Why are the recordings of (insert name here)Eastern European orchestra so poor in quality? Both WETA and WGMS play those often, and they are just not very good in sound quality. I assumed they were freebies given to the stations, but from what you are saying, they just may be what's out there these days.

Philip Kennicott: Rather than deal with the blanket statement that all of them are poor, which isn't true, I'll give some reasons why individual recordings are often poor. First, the reason cheapie labels use no name orchestras is to save money; a small city orchestra in Poland doesn't pay what the Cleveland Orchestra pays, and that makes every part of the recording process cheaper: the rehearsals (sometimes kept to a minimum) and the sessions. Second, they're often playing the repertoire chosen by a producer rather than the repertoire that comes naturally to them. So, for instance, the American series on Naxos is made with orchestras that don't exactly have Copland, Bernstein, Hanson, etc. in the blood. If you can find a copy of the BBC music magazine from March, there's a revealing article about the early days of Naxos, when they cobbled together recordings at inadequate venues, sometimes without rehearsal. Things have improved, but those early recordings have also sold in the millions (in some cases). So there's a lot of bad stuff circulating.

That said, there's no reason why eastern European orchestra can't do a far superior job of American music than an American orchestra. Often what an outsider has to say is fresh and revelatory.

DC: Will the Opera House Orchestra ever get the respect they deserve? For my money, they sound better than the NSO in many performances.

Philip Kennicott: They can play very well, and they usually do under Fricke, the music director for the opera. They can very not so well, unfortuntely; and they've been unpredictable. I wish things were a bit livelier in the pit at the new Mice and Men production. But the Parsifal from last year was exquisite.

DC: Have you listened to the new Billy Joel CD, Fantasies and Delusions? I'd be interested to hear your opinion. It's ten new classical piano compositions by Billy Joel, performed by Richard Joo. It's really just wonderful - his pieces are original and passionately interpreted by Joo. Shades of Chopin and Debussy, but this is really all Joel. I'm pleasantly surprised. I think he's done very well in the classical medium with his debut album. I just hope the classical world will take him seriously, though I find it hard to imagine they could actually ignore these works.

Can you recommend some "must-have" piano recordings or good performers I should look into?

Thank you!

Philip Kennicott: I'm glad you enjoyed the Billy Joel. I think the crux, for me, is in your statement: "but his is really all just Joel." Although the pieces are accomplished and appealing, this is where I part company with you. I hear Joel's precedents, influences, and borrowings more than I hear Joel himself. But don't let that diminish your pleasure; "great artists steal," as the saying goes. If you like this music, I'd suggest looking at more of the salon music of the 19th century and early 20th century: one disk I like a lot recently was of Catoire's works, a minor piano composer but an interesting one. Also check out Gottschalk, a lot of great stuff in a fluffy vein.

Bethesda: In a follow up from your last on line session, is there any word yet from Kennedy Center as to whether they are rethinking their heretofore casual attitude towards security?

Philip Kennicott: I spoke with the Post reporter who covers the KC as an institution, and she said that they assure her security is on their mind, but they won't talk about it. Unfortunately, arts organizations are so lacking in credibility when they make public statements that it's very hard to say, okay, I'll just trust you to take care of it. The credibility gap is so big that now, when we would like very much to trust them, how can we? I went to the KC on Saturday with a friend who brought a picnic for intermission, a big bag that happened to be filled with tofu sandwiches and salad. But it could have been filled with anything. The trunk of my car, ditto. And what's in the belly of those tour buses that park outside and idle their engines?

Arlington, VA: Do you think the younger musicians, such as Joshua Bell, Sophie-Anne Mutter, etc., will draw an increasing number of younger patrons to classical music? I don't recall classical music having such sex appeal in recent years (unless you count the quartet Bond, which may or may not classify as classical, depending on whom you ask).

Philip Kennicott: For sex appeal I like the perfume counter at Macy's, beach volley ball games (or on the grass at the Mall), and that little plot of grass at the end of the National Airport runway on a sunny day when the roller bladers are out. When it comes to music, I don't need so much sex appeal. So who knows if young players attract young audiences; I think they are often inspirational to really young kids, who need someone on which to model their own aspirations. But this isn't phermones.

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