"What am I supposed to take away from this?"

... that you don't know much about Yo Yo Ma

"... that you don't know much about Yo Yo Ma"

Thanks Jeff. This is why we read blogs. To read the idiotic teaching the uninformed. (emoticon to show I'm joking).

You're supposed to think that Yo-Yo Ma should stick to his own bailiwick, classical music, and stop fooling around with all those other types of music. He is demeaning his talent and attention by fooling around with bluegrass and tango and that Silk Road crap. Stick to Bach and the little pigeonhole the critic prefers sticking him in.

Bottom line, Ma has too much fun with his music. That's not "serious."

I could totally kick that pansy Yo Yo Ma's ass at traditional Kyrgyz music. Where does he get off being so popular?

That this guy knows a lot about Ma, and classical music, and Kyrgyz folk music -- and you don't.

What I took away from it is (a) that the writer thinks yo yo ma isn't actually the world's best cellist; (b) that he thinks that yo yo ma is a decent *generalist* but that, in any particular genre in which cellists might play, someone else is better.

What am I supposed to take away from this

I dunno about you, but it helped me figure out just how pretentious Mark Swed is.

Well, my takeaway is that the LAT isn't employing competent line or copy editors: it should be either "more authentically than him" or "more authentically than he *does*."

One of the hallmarks of a great musician is their versatility. You're expected to play Bach and Brahms, and play that literature well. But if that's all you do, well, honey, there are about 30,000 other cellists who play these just as well as you do.

The idea is to master as much music, in as many differing eras, as possible. It's an incredibly harsh field, similar to being a professional athlete who is also on a NSF fellowship for their doctoral degree. You have to be physically strong, well-practiced in the traditional and contemporary repetoires, and smart as hell. The dumb ones and the weak ones burn out, the lazy ones flame out fast (don't practice enough).

Back to the reviewer: He's saying there are better cellists out there than Yo-Yo, who is amazing, but he's not in his 30s any more either.

Life is harsh, and music is a 30-40 year-olds' game (Experience & Maturity count, but so does strength and smarts).

Hope this helps.

I think it means that Lee Siegel is now writing under the pseudonym "Mark Swed."

quite a bit actually:

the meaning if the first remark is especially pointed -- even though Carter's Cello Concerto was written for Yo Yo Ma (and presumably written to his strengths), other people play it better.

the other references were to idioms that Yo Yo Ma has slummed in.

Can somebody knowledgable help me out here?

Be glad to, Kevin. The world's greatest cellist is Mstislav Rostropovich. The second greatest is Lynn Harrell. Yo-Yo Ma is a hotdogger compared to these two. That's all you need to know.

I think it's a music critic pointing out that the best known ("Most popular") cellist is not necessarily the greatest artist, and that in sub-genres there are specialists who are equally good. We might answer, "so what," because Ma is superb in his own right and certainly far better than the first chair of the Des Moines Symphony or lots of other cellists who do solo work on occasion. I have heard him in solo performance in a small hall and he is superb. So was Rostropovich when I heard him perform.

There is lots of good music and there are lots of good musicians, and you don't have to be the Superbowl Champion of Cello to give a good performance. Or to put it another way, Kent Nagano's interpretation of Parsifal at the Los Angeles Music Center Opera was among the best performances I have ever heard, and it does not detract from Munich or Chicago in the least to say so.

Well, Elliot Carter is a contemporary composer whose cello concerto is one of the most difficult (both for the performer and listener) pieces in the repertoire. So the statement about the Finn's ability to make it "sound like music" probably means that's he's able to penetrate the rather noisy surface of the piece, and bring out its more universal aspects. In any case, any LAT article that reference Elliot Carter is clearly catering to a hyper-musical (one might say hyper-pompous) audience -- it is not music that many casual listeners will enjoy.

Kevin,

Yo yo is a academic fellow who is interested in different types of music whether it be straight classical or a Brazilian tango. These interests are also heavily exploited by the recording profession, thus all sorts of stuff marketed. It's no different than opera singers warbling spirituals.

sm

Yo-Yo Ma is a great technical player, and a very good cellist. Others play with more "musicality" or soul. I prefer the late Jacqueline Du Pre for musicality, especially in a piece like the Dvorak cello concerto.

However, he has done a tremendous amount to popularize classical music, and I believe he is branching out into other areas because he wants to expand his music. Other can play Kyrgyz folk music better, but few coul bring it to a larger audience the way Yo-Yo Ma can. Also, he was on Mister Roger's neoghborhood.

I'm guessing Yo-Yo Ma just needs to try harder or get better composers to write music for him.

"Can somebody knowledgable help me out here? What am I supposed to take away from this?"

I would say that Mr. Swed was spending some time bopping to Paganini, got a call from his editor about the deadline, said, "oh sh*t!" Jumped on his laptop, look down at the brochure showing Ma, said, "Ah ha! Hate that cross-over sh*t." and wrote a hit piece one hour before deadline.

At least Anssi Karttunen never left his Stradivarius in a NYC taxicab.

It's just typical snobbish critical contrarianism: If it's popular, it must suck.

Sorry, but I loved Silk Road Journeys.

BTW, the Kyrgyz music reference was likely an allusion to Yo-Yo Ma's involvement in the Silk Road Project.

http://www.silkroadproject.org/
(Sorry, forgot how to do hyperlinks.)

Seems the guy conducted master classes in Kazakhstan and it's not a stretch to assume he's incorporated Kyrgyz music into some performances.

And may I say the er-hu is a beautiful instrument.

You all hit all the points.

Nothing to add here -- and you all suffer how I love to babble about music :)

Eliot Carter is indeed an extremely abstruse composer, and it's quite a thing to say another cellist plays a work written for Ma better than Ma does.

It does sort of sound like critical overreach ...

Bob

Professional musicians and competent critics hear all sorts of things that I miss. I think Brat just about has it right. Stars like Ma play an important role--in his case, partly because some of his projects attract listeners who wouldn't normally think of trying something "classic"--or some classical types who wouldn't think of going Kyrgyz.

There used to be a relatively few star concert pianists, who often were characters (and often played pretty sloppily/colorfully/whatever). These days, fewer stars, more competence, maybe less color.

And the writer sounds snotty.

By all means, avoid post-modern literary criticism; it uses even worse obfuscatory verbiage. Nathan makes the point, Ma commissioned the piece from Carter who would, supposedly, have listened to Ma perform and written to his strengths. However, Carter, one of America's finest living composers, writes extremely difficult music and relatively few can play it well.
Ma is most respected for dealing with old musical masters rather than contemporary works. Ma recorded an attempted crossover piece called Appalachian Journey, one probably better avoided by serious music listeners.

Mark this well folks as a red letter day for you will not see me say the following often...

I completely agree with Nathan on this.

This read to me as a full on body slam attack on the musical ability of Ma intended to make clear to the musical "intelligentsia" able to understand such fine distinctions as this critic is making just how much Ma sucks in the view of this reviewer. This was a very snarky pompously written (In my view anyway, you can be very pompous without it being as overt as some people perceive pomposity needing to be) hit piece, why I have no idea. Nathan though hit on what was clearly the core element of it, which is why I have to completely agree with him on this one. When you say others do better something specifically designed for that specific person under critique you are saying to that person you can't even do best something made for you to be best at within your field of expertise. That is extremely harsh, extremely pointed, and to my eyes this piece was incredibly intellectually pretentious in how it went about doing this hit piece.

I thought Yo Yo Ma was a black guy with a stutter, insulting the maternal side of your family.....

I may be dating myself, but a similar point used to be made that Jon Vickers performed Peter Grimes better than Peter Pears, for whom the part was written. I heard Vickers once in the role, and he was tremendous, and never heard Pears, but I suspect the point probably had something to it.

But it was never made in quite as catty a way as this article seems to be making its point about Yo-yo Ma. I've never heard Ma, but he certainly seems to be able to arouse audience (and student) enthusiasm, and not by cheap means.

Sorry, but anyone who thinks that Appalachian Journey should be avoided by "serious music listeners" has no taste in any genre of music, and probably doesn't understand the genre he prefers.

Music critics who listen to only classical (or jazz, or rock, etc.) have nothing worthwhile to say.

This read to me as a full on body slam attack on the musical ability of Ma intended to make clear to the musical "intelligentsia" able to understand such fine distinctions as this critic is making just how much Ma sucks in the view of this reviewer.

I think not. Reading the whole review, which was far more positive with only a few minor negative notes, I think it was more the ritual "I'm not a fan" demonstration that many reviewers feel they need to do before writing a generally positive review (strangely, few seem to feel a parallel need to write an "I'm not a hater" lead in to a generally negative review, apparently, a review must contain a minimum quota of negativity, but not positivity.)

It perhaps needs to be said here that Mark Swed is one of the two or three finest newspaper classical music critics in the country - he is much more reliable than anyone at the New York Times, for example.

His opinion here is provocative, but it's also the case that the publicity for Yo-Yo Ma means that other great cellists are often unfairly overlooked. Yo-Yo Ma will certainly survive Swed's comments and readers will probably be encouraged to broaden their knowledge of contemporary cellists.

I had a whole angry screed about classical music afficianados taking themselves much too seriously, but this guy said it it all:

"Bottom line, Ma has too much fun with his music. That's not "serious."
Posted by: gmoke on October 30, 2006 at 7:15 PM |

Seems to me like someone who knows a helluva lot about classical taking a swipe at the (possibly) most popular classical musician in the world.

All I know is that my mother told me Pablo Casals was the greatest cellist EVER!

My experience with Mark Swed is that the actual quality of a given performance is more or less inversely proportional to the level of enthusiasm evident in his review of it. So, without having heard the performance, I would say that Yo-Yo really is the greatest cellist since, well, ever - but if it's true that the review was mostly positive he must have been having an off night.

"Others play bluegrass, tangos and Kyrgyz traditional music more authentically than he."

Apparently there are also some who are better at hip-hop and Taiko drumming. This is just silly.

I have a whole screed about people who misspell "aficionados."

"It perhaps needs to be said here that Mark Swed is one of the two or three finest newspaper classical music critics in the country - he is much more reliable than anyone at the New York Times, for example."

I think Mark Swed's mother has shown up.

Swed is pompous, and particularly vicious towards musicians or composers that stray out of the little boxes he thinks they should stay in.

cmdicely:

Fair point, I should have kept my remarks confined to the quoted excerpt and not referred to the whole article as such until I had read it first, that was sloppy of me and not something I usually do, hence my acknowledgement of the point. That said, within those constraints I stand by the essence of my original post. This had an exceptionally nasty and pretentious flavour to it that really left me sour. I have enjoyed classical music since early childhood, learned to play (varying degrees from one to six years depending on which instrument) about a half dozen instruments by the time I came of legal age, and have a passing familiarity with Ma and his career and have a reasonable understanding of his strengths and weaknesses as a performer. As others already have noted this has been pointed out about his ability on a pure/technical level versus his ability to perform in such a way as to capture the wider public before by others but this was a particularly offensive way to have put it, at least it came off that way to me.

I make no pretensions about my own ability to judge at an extremely fine level within music, just enough to be able to understand what is under discussion and be able to tell whether the points are fair/valid or not. What this quote was saying was a direct shot to the heart about this and appears to be very mean spirited and a bit on the intellectually pretentious side as well to me. That is of course only my opinion, and I certainly do not think my opinions are all that special, it is just for me this read and felt very toxic and gratuitous in making a point others have already noted with Ma. He is quite proficient if not the absolute best in any form (granting this is true, I am not qualified in my view to speak to that degree) and able to make cross over work more accessible to a wider audience, which in my mind is no small gift/talent as a musician and should not be seen as a basis to take a fairly straight to the heart kind of hit like this. It seemed to me unkind at best and poisonous at worst, and laced with contempt to varying degrees based on which end of the spectrum the author meant it from.

Still though, most times when we discuss topics here that reference another source I go to them, this was simply a topic I felt I could be a bit less direct on. Still though I let my tendency to read whole articles cloud the way I wrote my first comment instead of explicitly confining them to the excerpted quote Drum gave and that was quite wrong of me and I both apologize for it and thank you for pointing it out in a civil and fair manner. I hope I have provided an acceptable revision and apology for my sloppy work and unfairly expanding the excerpt onto the whole article without having read it first. I only hope you will accept that this is not something I generally make a habit of but in this case I freely admit to it. Where I said piece in the first post if you read it as bit and instead of the thrust of the article being as I characterized it simply that this element of the article was as I originally said. That is what I should have said and not gone beyond the confines of those boundaries.

Have you ever listened to gorgeously-voiced opera sopranos trying their hand at popular or Broadway music? It's generally quite forgettable.

Bob

Ma v. Karttunen: Critical cat-fight at the OK corrall. Bad critical writing is just like bad reporting, and just as loaded (can you say, "Democrat Party")

Ma v. Karttunen: Critical cat-fight at the OK corrall. Bad critical writing is just like bad reporting, and just as loaded (can you say, "Democrat Party")

Ma v. Karttunen: Critical cat-fight at the OK corrall. Bad critical writing is just like bad reporting, and just as loaded (can you say, "Democrat Party")

SED - Rostropovich certainly was considered the world's greatest cellist for a long time. He was born in 1927, so he must be 79 years old or so. I wonder whether he's too old to still be the world's greatest.

It's just some know-it-all music critic mouthing off and needing something to write for a column. It means nothing at all, it's just his opinion. Who really cares? If you like to listen to Ma then go ahead; otherwise don't.

It means Mr. Ma is OVERRATED. But since the world (and especially the Pentagon) is full of such people, it just means he is human and occasionally likes to trifle with audiences. More power to him. May his critics get trapped in the Transporter machine on their way back from the 18thC forever.

What you're supposed to take away from this is that Mark Swed is a terribly clever fellow. That's pretty much what you're supposed to take away from most of the LA Times reviews these days. I stopped reading their movie reviews because all I got from most of them was that the reviewer regards Touch of Evil as a masterpiece.

Not the most helpful piece of information when trying to decide if by shelling out ten bucks I'll be entertained for two hours.

I don't know why we need to make an issue of who is or who isn't the world's greatest cellist (or world's greatest anything else, for that matter). If I had to vote, I'd vote for Rostropovich, but that doesn't mean I want to listen only to Rostropovich. Rostropovich is one thing, Ma is another. I like them both. They're both wonderful at what they do. The world is plenty big enough for both of them and their recordings. Never heard of this Finnish character, but if he can make Carter sound like real music, might be worth a listen.

Now, you want a fight, let's talk Pavarotti and whether he should have been taking up as much air space as he did for the last few decades.

Those of us who like the music derived from Bill Monroe but not the cattiness you see in the community like to say "Bluegrass music, we eat our own." There's also a theory that the first use of the term "bluegrass" was in the sentence "That ain't bluegrass."

Mr. Swed seems to have brought the same spirit to classical music. Past a certain level of accomplishment, attempting to rank musicians seems quite pointless.

I would add that if the point of art is to communicate, then Mr. Ma's remarkable ability to engage an audience is undervalued in some quarters.

As Duke Ellington used to say, "If it sounds good it IS good."

Yo Yo Ma is highly polished, yet inventive and playful. He's open to experimenting in a wide range of genres that have musical merit.

I get a lot of pleasure listening to him. I will not let the LAT take that away.

Anssi Karttunen, for one, can more effectively make Elliott Carter's Cello Concerto sound like music than can Ma, although it was written for him.

Isn't this remark rather bizarre in its own right? I mean, what does it say about someone that they can make something "sound like music", which, one gathers, isn't naturally inclined to do so? Why might that be a key differentiator?

Shouldn't we be more attentive to how well people play things that start out sounding like music?

And when is music that doesn't sound like music finally going to die its appointed and long sought for death? Schoenberg kicked it over 50 years ago for Christ's sake! Take your "music" and your whole stinking movement with you!

Uh-oh. Yo-Yo Ma is starting to suffer from Artist Universality Syndrome.

For years no one could say a bad word about him. But he became too popular. Now, if you want to show off how knowledgeable you are, you had better explain in detail exactly why someone obscure is better at playing something obscure.

Classical music is almost as slippery as pop. Terminology, frames of reference, and opinions all differ wildly and criticism at any subjective level is only occasionally useful.

With all that in mind, I have to say that Ma is and always has been one of my very favorite musicians on earth. His technique was unmatched and is now, after a couple more decades, only astonishing. He has a unique, effortless, open, and very beautiful sound (interestingly, it's one I think of as more "American" than that of most cellists. And his phrasing is very effective and shows 1) a lot of heart and 2) the ability to sustain which, almost by itself, distinguishes great musicians from proficient ones.

It doesn't hurt, either, that he is one of the nicest people in classical music. (My best friend used to be a supervisor at the Starbucks in Cambridge, Mass. where he buys his coffee when he's not on the road. I've also heard plenty of anecdotes from others, although I've never had the good fortune to meet him personally.)

SED: Rostrapovich is half dead; Lynn Harrell should be. Think again. And try actually listening to some modern cellists.

Tom, SED: I think Isserls at least shows "promising upside," if not more.

Yo Yo Ma is an immigrant and hates America?

Hmmm, and a blonde asked him to "call me."

Mike points out well that Ma commissioned the piece FROM Carter rather than Carter writing it FOR MA of Carter's own accord.

It should be no big deal then, that Ma, who doesn't do that much 20th C music, or do it well, can't play Carter better than at least one, if not several, other cellists of today.

It's classical music criticism at its best. The critic found somebody -- in this case, Karttunen -- who most of his readership has never heard perform and most of his newspaper's readership doesn't know existed, and used him to punch out a performer who has a lot of talent, a lot of personality, and a history of really good career moves. As "just sayin" said above, bluegrass fans can be like that. The punk rockers in the 1980s were like that. Classicists are the same way but with a different, usually more passive-aggressive, type of vocabulary. I quit hanging out on classical music Internet forums because the people who want to grow up to be just like Mark Swed reached critical mass.

I meant to write "Isserlis" above, sorry.

Kevin, I have heard Ma do both classical music and Central Asian traditional music with his Silk Road Project. Plus, I have several Elliott Carter albums.

I believe the critic was suggesting two things:

1. In the classical world, Ma is a bit too "pop" -- stuff like Beethoven, Brahms, etc., but not that good at modern classical. I would agree.

2. That Ma, while he brings an interest, fervor, and certainly a name to Central Asian music, more often he is performing Tan Dun stuff rather than authentic Central Asian classics from 500 years ago; in other words, again, he's a bit too "pop."

Somebody else called it Artist Universality Syndrome; in acting, it might be called "playing against type."

The problem, though, is, if you play too much against type, and can't do it well, you expose yourself. And, in the rarified air of top cellists, that's what Ma does when he tries to do Elliott Carter.

Only thing I come away with is a wanker of a critic:"look how snobbish I am, yammering about some dreadful piece of "modern classical music" only 5 people in the world want to listen to by some composer no one has heard of and pretending that that is the defining piece of cello music."

Feh. Whatever happened to composers coming up with music that sounds like something? Give me Bach or Monteverdi any day.

Let me explain it another way: USC may be America's most popular college football team. That is not to say that USC is America's finest football team.

The cello only has true musical merit in the background. Who wouldnt rather listen to an evening of good player on virtually any instrument as opposed to the best cello player? The instrument has extrememly limited capabilities.

Wow! This is way beyond my depth.

And waiting for the elections is nerve wracking.

Kevin, how about another post on Roger Federer???

Bela Bartok insightfully commented that musical performance "is not a horse race." Mr. Swed apparently doesn't recognize that wisdom.

Yo Yo Ma would probably scoff at the idea that he is the "World's greatest cellist." The whole thing is a red herring in my opinion.

For what it's worth, I -am- a classical music critic.

And one who carries no torch for Yo-Yo Ma. I've always disliked his playing, even before he was famous. (You want a great current cellist, try Gary Hoffman.)

But I have to agree with the posters above. What you are supposed to take away from this is that Swed is a pretentious git. Even the snide remark about did the difficulty of making Elliott Carter "sound like music," which is the kind of thing I'd say, is out of place here.

Swed is laying down boilerplate to establish his credentials as a snob before admitting, as he does in the rest of his review, that he actually enjoyed the concert.

I hope that I never write my reviews that way.

m.croche: "It perhaps needs to be said here that Mark Swed is one of the two or three finest newspaper classical music critics in the country - he is much more reliable than anyone at the New York Times, for example."

chuck: I think Mark Swed's mother has shown up.

Grow up, Chuck. I don't even know the guy. Music criticism is a difficult profession: getting paid to spout off your opinions with comparatively little push-back can be quite intellectually corrosive. The only decent ones writing regularly are Tim Page and Mark Swed. David Schiff is also reliable when he publishes. As far as personality is concerned, Swed always struck me as mild-mannered and respectful - folks who think Swed is pompous and arrogant should get a load of Anthony Tommasini.

For what it's worth, Karttunen's a wonderful performer and can be seen performing Tan Dun's interesting "The Map" on DVD.

Ma's a fantastic player, his musical curiosity is terrific and his performances are laudible. I'm not sure whether he's quite as nice as people here make him out to be - but artistic excellence isn't a popularity contest.

Swed's attempt at complex back-handed disdain couched as a qualified, sniffing compliment failed, catching him in the face on the return, just as a badly-handled bullwhip wraps itself around the unfortunate novice's own head.

Some classical critics bore themselves into a written voice suited to whiny Victorian drawing-room inhabitant whose major life complaint is that his tea is a shade too warm or a shade too cold.

Swed is an awful critic. There are critics who critique Kyrgyz and bluegrass better, for the simply reason that Swed critiques nothing well.

Personally, I'm all for Hanslick.

Another classical music critic here. Everyone's more or less nailed it above. Ma is a virtuoso with an omnivorous ear who likes to dabble in all sorts of things. The positive spin is that he revels in all sorts of music (and can pick up all manner of styles incredibly well -- the guy has a remarkable ear). The downside is that an awful lot of what Ma does is done as well or better by other people who don't have enormous long-term contracts with Sony.

I got some grief for saying so about his forays into Baroque cello (in an article for the Sunday NYT a few years ago). Basically, rather than play existing Baroque music for the cello (like the Bach Suites, which of course he's recorded, or the Vivaldi concertos and sonatas, which he hasn't), he had Ton Koopman make a bunch of arrangements of chorale settings from the Bach cantatas. Think your basic "Relaxing Baroque" arrangement collection, with period instruments and a picture of Yo-Yo Ma on the cover. (Actually, that was half the album, the other half being two Boccherini concertos that actually were for the instrument.) The title was "Simply Baroque" (urgh!). To be followed by "Simply Baroque 2," exactly the same format.

The trouble with this is that there are actually people who live with Baroque cello, take seriously what makes the instrument different and what makes the music different when played on it, &c. The same people are generally interested also in what Bach was doing when he set chorales (hint: They weren't just pretty tunes; they had words). And so forth. Ma was just checking out this whole scene, fiddling around with a spare cello and a Baroque bow, dabbling. No harm in that, but it was also kind of flippant: "Oh, yeah, Baroque cello, I've done that." Now if he'd tried the Bach Suites on it, that would've been something else . . .

Kevin: "What am I supposed to take away from this?"

A deep sense of cultural inferiority, or a headache -- your choice.

Kevin: "What am I supposed to take away from this?"
A deep sense of cultural inferiority, or a headache -- your choice.
Posted by: Donald from Hawaii on October 31, 2006 at 1:03 AM | PERMALINK

As a sports and pop hater, I feel your pain.

Swed has been with the LA Times for well over a decade. He's always been this way. I'm not sure I ever read a completely positive review from him during the entire time I lived in LA. That said, I've been to a number of performances he's reviewed, and I think I have a pretty good idea of his approach. Yes, he's from the insufferable snob school of music criticism. I guess every paper with big pretensions has to have such a critic. But if you filter out a bit of the snobbery, he's knowledgeable with an experienced, good and predictable ear. That's all I can ask for, really, in a critic.

And in this case, I happen to agree with him. Ma is a force of nature, and in my opinion is the worlds most important cellist. But the best? Certainly not with any uniformity. For example, I've heard Janos Starker do the Bach Cello Suites in concert, and don't think Ma holds a candle to him (at least not compared to Starker twenty years ago, when I heard him). And I can believe the comment about Carter -- that's just not where Ma's strengths are. Carter is a cantankerous SOB genius of the first order who writes nearly impenetrable music, and no doubt paid little attention to Ma's particular talents.

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In a land and time far, far away, I was a professional musician. I didn't play cello. I played trumpet. While I primarily played jazz, I also played in quite a number of classical ensembles. Playing multiple styles is incredibly difficult. Playing any style at the level Yo Yo Ma does is almost impossible. Playing multiple styles at that level is astonishing.

Music critiques of this sort annoy me to the point that my teeth hurt. Suggesting that a brilliant musician performs a particular piece better than another brilliant musician is utterly stupid.

These critics just don't get it. What Ma and a few others do is impossible to almost everyone in the world. They perform extraordinary physical feats while making them sound beautiful and easy. Ma played what he played beautifully, I'm sure. And that's all that counts.

It shows that Mark Swed is a complete amateur compared to the critics of the past. I refer to one of my favorite little books about music, Nicolas Slonimsky's "Lexicon of Musical Invective". The index lists "chamber of horrors symphony", "polycacophony" "demons struggling in a torrent of brandy", and "sticky frog-like sexuality" among it's many critical terms. Swed's "makes [it] sound like music" is decidedly tame and uninventive.

jjb2

I don't think Swed is about the vitriol. But I agree, the Slonimsky book is a real hoot.

Anyone here remember Martin Bernheimer? Believe me, Swed is a step up for the LA Times. They're both snobs, but Swed is neither as stuffy nor as limited in his tastes.

The reviewer does not like Yo Yo Ma.

Who cares? Reviewers live in a rarified world, and their tastes are elevated.

Did that Finnish guy get a Chuck Berry-style rave-up written about him by the sweetest, smartest, funniest guys in Nashville?

No?

Hate that for him.

jjb2:

"sticky frog-like sexuality" ... Help! I'm going to be haunted by that image for the next month ...

After reading this wonderful thread (and drinking a first cuppa joe), I have a tad bit more to say here.

I think waterfowl made some key points. There is a conflict between the high, pure-art ideals of classical music and the imperatives of music labels. Classical-only labels generally don't need to produce superstars (because they don't pay superstar royalties), but major labels run their classical divisions as loss leaders. Since the majors can attract the most sought-after classical musicians (with both lucrative contracts and wide distribution), they need a rafter of superstars to essentially pay the bills for the rest of the label. Sort of like the way Michael Jackson in his heyday used to subsidize the rest of the catalogue (while driving out bin space for it in music stores). So there's intense pressure to find and promote the next Yo Yo Ma (who really is a tremendously nice guy with a wide ear and a huge love of all kinds of music), Paravotti, Cecile Bartoli, Anne-Sophie Mutter, (Russian pianist, I forget his first name) Kissin -- and market them like the classical equivalent of pop superstars.

Since when you get to that rarefied level of performance where only passive-aggressively snobbish music critics try to draw distinctions (Bartok's right), the labels know you need more than a resume of bravaura. It helpes if you're, you know, physically attractive (and Sophie-Mutter is quite the babe). Or have some interesting things about your personality for the writeups. And then there's all kinds of pressure on you from the label to do crossover albums (to justify, you know, last year's big contract).

The problem is that there are more dillettantes out there in radioland who listen to classical music as a kind of aural tranquilizer than there are serious classical fans. And catching the ear of these folks is what makes or breaks "blockbuster" classical releases. So you get ... wall-to-wall Pachelbel's Canon for an unmemorable season in the 80s. The Greatest Hits of 1720. Or dragging the affable Ma into a studio, handing him a period instrument and sweet-talking him into doing some *arrangements* of Bach choral music. Arrangements? When there are the unmatched Bach solo cello sonatas (which every progrock bass guitarist worth their weight in odd time signatures used to practice with in the 70s)?

This is *inevitably* going to offend purists, for both good and bad reasons. Bad, because snobbery resists the "impure" by reflex. But good because it 1) drives away attention from the early-music specialists and 2) produces an album of "light Baroque" as satisfying to true Bach fans as Toscanini's symphonic arrangement of the Fugue in D Minor. It boosts Ma's broader reputation (and superstar status) while creating a degree of lingering resentment.

It's important to understand this isn't Ma's fault. He has a genuine feel for the music in which he "dabbles." I've heard him play Appalachian traditional music and was moved nearly to tears. If his superstardom and attention to music other than classical can serve to inspire young cellists, then it's all to the good. But it's also fair to say that Ma, like all musicians no matter how great, has his strengths and weaknesses. The modern repetoire isn't one of them.

This puts the reviewer in an unenviable position. I think his intent was to give a shout-out to that Finnish guy who has a stronger affinity for Carter's piece. And also to the players who do more than dabble in Central Asian music. But this is inevitably going to come across as a "dis" to a legendary and beloved figure. I'm not so sure that all the snark directed at this critic for this is entirely well-placed. I see it as part of what happens when you turn classical players -- even though it ain't baseball, they do submit to their own form of objective standards -- when the music industry does all it can to reify them into "legendary figures" beyond the reach of all criticism.

Bob

I'm sure later in the piece, Swed admits that he likes Yo Yo, "but only the early stuff." Typical dilletante critic's disdain for "pop" music. Cash his chips.

The person who said that the cello should be relegated to the background has no soul.

The cello is one of the warmest, most humanly expressive instruments there is ...

Well-played solo cello is drop-dead gorgeous in a way that makes the violin seem obnoxious by comparison.

Bob

FYI, the WAPO reports today that LAT subscriptions are down 8 percent, largest of the major American dailies.

Bill Kalish:

I think you meant to accuse Swed of being a snob, not a dilletante.

Dilletantes have little trouble with "dabbling" in pop or anything else.

Snobs are the purists who insist on nothing less than perfection as the composer would see it.

Bob

DUH...oh, maybe that a week before such a critical election there are more important issues to discuss than WHO is the world's finest cellist! MY GOD...

mark swed is a tool who for some reason dislikes Mr Ma. At least that's what I get from that graf.

As I'm sure we all know by now, Ma is a fine cellist, and that there are other fine cellists as well. The problem is that the media only has time for/interest in ONE cellist and Yo-yo is the one who has gotten the nod.

This is partly because he is a superbly accomplished musician, but more because he's better looking than the superbly accomplished Lynn Harrell and younger than the superbly accomplished Rostropovich, and above all, because he has a superlatively accomplished marketing team.

It's no different with jazz. Who's the greatest living jazz trumpet player? Anyone who is knowledgeable about jazz and has a genuinine love for the music will have an opinion, and in most cases it will NOT be Wynton Marsalis.

Yet to everyone else, to those who don't follow the music, there is only one jazz trumpet player and it's always you know who. Why? Because one is all we have time for. But why precisely Wynton? Because he's the most marketable.

This reminds me of hearing Perleman on NPR a few years back. He and Marc O'Connor were playing some bluegrass. He even talked about how much he wanted Yo Yo Ma to join them for an album, but he spoke about how difficult it was to arrange this with their various agents, recording contracts and schedules.

At some point, an e-mail was read blasting Perleman for daring to call himself a fiddler.

His response was "Do you know, sir, the difference between a fiddler and a violinist? About fifty dollars".

Michael Ryle:

Bingo.

TheThirdPaul:

Droll :)

Bob

On, Dancer.....Oh sorry, should 'a typed:

No, Dancer! I am a political junky like few others, but I swear I have had enough.

Enough polls
Enough adds
Enough stories about adds
(Enough stories about polls)

Makes me long for a missing white girl or a media star who murders.

Keep these posts coming, Kevin. Puleese!!

Yikes...

adds = ads

Bob, have any coffee left?

*pouring Keith a cup of Cafe Oquendo.*

You take half-and-half?

Bob

love it

I think the asshole author is calling him out. You know: Yo Yo Ma... 'Yo MaMa.

Ma has used his popularity and relative celebrity to bring all kinds of cello & other string music, including various folk traditions as well as european classical, to audiences that would never listen to them otherwise. Wouldn't want that.

Now an interesting topic in classical music might be the rise of sexed up cover pictures of female performers to sell classical.

Pedantic critics of the "purist" sort.

How often was Miles Davis criticized for experimenting with different styles?

Oh, and Dylan, ooooooh the sky is falling, went acoustical.

How often has the "He or she sold out" been heard?

Kevin,
What you _should_ take away from this lede paragraph and the rest of the review is that the reviewer likes to strike an amiable but ultimately condescending pose. The essay reminds me of something I heard years ago:
"Those who can, do.
Those who can, but maybe not so well, teach. Those who who would like to think that they could, if they didn't have so many other important things to accomplish, write reviews of those who can."

Well, my takeaway is that the LAT isn't employing competent line or copy editors: it should be either "more authentically than him" or "more authentically than he *does*."

Posted by: The Confidence Man on October 30, 2006 at 7:23 PM | PERM

"more authentically than he" is the correct form. The "does" is understood. Using "him" would require that the word "him" be an object of something, which it is not; it is only the subject of the (understood) clause "he does." Thus, the sujbective form is correct, and the objective form "him" is not.

Gahh ... all this dumping on music critics. As I said (in many more words) above, I think Swed is getting brickbats for having the temerity to over even the faintest criticism of a superstar. If you'll read the whole review, it was quite positive.

And the reason for this is mainly because superstars -- super as indeed they are -- tend to drive away attention from other artists working in those fields. Though I never heard the Ma piece he commissioned from the exceedingly challenging Elliott Carter -- I can well imagine that his sort of cello playing wouldn't do it the justice it deserved, from what else I've heard of Ma's playing. I think it's not only a fair criticism of Ma -- but more importantly it serves to boost the name recognition of that Finnish guy (heh, good job, too, as you can tell :) who's more proficient at that kind of extremely specialized music.

TheThirdPaul:

Well, I'll have to quibble with you about Miles. Up until around In A Silent Way, when when he began getting his band into electric instruments, Miles was known as somewhat of a Wynton Marsalis-like reactionary. In the early-mid 60s he not only had an open contempt for Ornette Coleman (which, granted, was fairly easy to do as Coleman's "harmolodics" seemed like anarchy to all but a tiny handful of fans and critics) -- but he was also known for crapping all over the classically-trained and harmonically sophisticated Eric Dolphy.

To dis Eric Dolphy is an unforgivable sin in my book, no matter who's doing the dissing.

By the time Miles hit his jazz-rock phase and married that funk singer (forget her name), he was pretty heavily into drugs, and was specifically looking to cop the fan mojo of the exploding rock scene. So, even though it led to an incredibly fertile and influential period for Miles (and launched more careers than it's easy to name) -- you do have to wonder a little bit about where the motivation came from ... Miles was so whacked-out throughout the 70s that he succeeded to a large extent in spite of himself.

Bob

The reviewer's comment isn't especially brilliant, but it's also not as devoid of meaning as you seem to believe. There are two parts:

1) Re: Elliot Carter. Complicated new music is seen as an acid test for one kind of musical intelligence. Carter's music is especially in with a certain sort of academic new-music crowd in this regard. So the fact that someone outplays Ma in the Carter concerto is seen as relevant -- especially since this concerto was written for Ma. (Counterarguments: (a) Even classical musicians in the know don't necessarily give a darn about Carter's music; and (b) as you said, the music of one relatively mi