Film Director Ken Russell Rants On Classical Classical Music
Yesterday I read a very interesting rant at the English classical music website Theclassicalsource.com. This is an excellent website featuring news about classical music in general along with reviews of the latest concerts and opera performances in London , and sometimes New York and elsewhere, as well as reviews of CDs.
The famous(or notorious) English film director Ken Russell is also a great classical music fan, and has made highly fictionalized fictionalized films about Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Liszt and Mahler , as well as ones on other controversial topics.
The website regularly features commentary by famous musicians , but this time, director Russell gets a chance to do a rant about the alleged state of orchestral concerts in London. He complains about the standardized programming, and the timidity of conductors appearing there in their choice of repertoire.
He's right to some extent here; the London orchestras , such as the London Symphony, the Philharmonia (not Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic and the London Philharmonic do tend to offer the same old established masterpieces by Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Dvorak, Schubert, Mendelssohn etc. Living or recently deceased composers are given short shrift, unlike American orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, and those of Chicago, L.A., San Francisco, Cleveland, etc. The B.B.C. Symphony Orchestra , run by that famous English institution, is somewhat more adventurous.
But there are exceptions, such as the brilliant and imaginative young Russian conductor Vladimir Jurowski, currently music director of the London Philharmonic. And the acclaimed modernist Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen , after his long stin in Los Angeles, is going to shake up the Philharmonia when he takes over.
But he starts overstating his case when he talks about the supposed lack of great conductors , or "real conductors", as he cals them. Those of today, according to Russell, are not the forceful authority figures of the past who ruled orchestras with an iron hand, such as Arturo Toscanini, Otto Klemperer, Fritz Reiner, and other legendary figures of the podium.
Those of today are just a bunch of superficial glamor boys whose careers have been more the product of slick publicity and glamorous image than real musical ability. Russell sneers at the brilliant young Venuzuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel, soon to succeed Salonen in Los Angeles, saying that his meteoric career is based purely on good looks.
But he's dead wrong. Dudamel is a genuine and phenomenal talent, and would never have been appointed to lead a world-class and prestigious orchestra like the Los Angeles Philharmonic on the basis of slick promotion alone, without enormous talent. Orchestral musicians can tell whether a conductor is an outstanding talent, or a mediocrity or fake instantly. You can't fool them.
In addition, Dudamel has been conducting leading orchestras all over Eurpe, America and elsewhere as a guest, to considerable acclaim. Russel makes the ridiculous claim that none of the harsh discipliarian conductors of the past would be tolerated today in orchestral music because of "political correctness". Therefore, the conductors of today are a bunch of wimps who lack the authority to make orchestras play well, and playing standards in the London orchestras have declined badly.
Excuse me, Ken, but you're dead wrong again here. London has five world-class symphony orchestras, and all of them maintain very high standards of playing. The world's greatest conductors and instrumental soloists appear with them regularly.
And no conductor, violinist, pianist, cellist etc, or opera singer has ever made an internationally acclainmed career on the basis of slick publicity alone, without genuine and exceptional talent. Audiences aren't stupid. They can recognize talent, or the lack of it. Yes, slick publicity does exist in the classical music world, and today the good looks of certain classical musicians, particularly young and promising ones, are used for publicity. But if you don't have what it takes, you'll never make it.
Remember the old joke about how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice. Yes, but if the talent isn't there, you won't even make it in Podunk. I wish Russell would stick to directing movies.