Classical Music Forum

Tim Page is the chief classical music critic for The Washington Post and author or editor of a dozen books, including "Dawn Powell: A Biography," "The Glenn Gould Reader," "The Unknown Sigrid Undset," "William Kapell: A Documentary Life History of the American Pianist" and "Tim Page on Music." He won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1997 for his writings about music for the Washington Post.

Page was online Wednesday, Dec. 15, at 3 p.m. ET to discuss the latest news in the world of classical concerts, performances and recordings.

He has also worked as an artistic adviser (the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra), a radio host (WNYC-FM in New York), a record producer (BMG Catalyst) and, in his younger days, a rock musician and cocktail pianist. A graduate of Columbia University, he lives in Baltimore with his wife, Julieta Stack.

A transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

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Tim Page: Good afternoon -- and it is a very beautiful afternoon indeed in Los Angeles, where I am for one single day before returning home to cover the NSO "Messiah" tomorrow night.

We're going to do something a little different today. I'm sitting with an old friend and mentor, Alan Rich, at a Kinko's in the Marina del Rey district of L.A. I thought I would invite Alan to participate today -- not only helping me answer some of the questions (for which I may not know the answers) but also to give some of own perspective about musical issues.

For those of you who don't know Alan's work, he has been a music critic for the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, New York Magazine, New West Magazine, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and is now ensconced at the L.A. Weekly. He is the author of half a dozen books, including "American Pioneers" (Phaidon). He has just turned 80 years old which, he adds, means that he has stopped lying about his age. I should add that I consider him younger than most of the critics half his chronological age.

I'll put my initials before my own answers and Alan's initials before his.

Let's see what we have in the bank today. A reminder that you can still throw in questions as the hour progresses.

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Fair Oaks, Va.: I would like to buy a CD of Bizet's "Carmen", but do not know which would be the best version to get. I am partial to Maria Callas, but there are CDs with Jessye Norman and Teresa Berganza in the title role. I have no idea which, if any, is considered the best. There is a variety in price, and although my funds are limited, I would pay the higher price to get the best version. I would appreciate your expert opinion.

By the way, I find listening to operas a painless way to practice foreign language skills. I have made great progress with my German courtesy of "Die Fledermaus": (example, minus accent marks: ". . . chacun a son gout").

Thanks for your help!;

Tim Page: TP: I am always partial to the Callas "Carmen," even though it includes the execrable music written by Guiraud (sorry, don't remember his first name -- and not sure he deserves one). Callas is extraordinarily fierce and exciting -- even though her voice was beginning to deteriorate. (This was recorded in 1964, and she only made one complete recording after it.)

An interesting curiosity -- there is a 1908 version of "Carmen," in German, with Emmy Destinn. All the parts for low stringed instruments are played by tubas!

Let me turn this over to Alan Rich, who may have some thoughts on the matter.

AR: You ask about CDs, but I'm sure you'll have a DVD player after the holidays, as will everybody in the land. If so, you'll want to consider the "authentic" Carmen with Julia Migenes. Placido Domingo that uses the original spoken dialogue instead of the fake recitative by Ernest Guiraud and is also a superb performance. And the great news, furthermore, is that another DVD is on the way, this one conducted by the great, late Carlos Kleiber, also with a very young Domingo and I forget who's the Carmen, but you surely want to leave shelf space for any and all Carlos Kleiber recordings.

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Washington, D.C. music lover: Hi Tim,
With the approaching holidays, would you share with us any memorable musical events you've attended over the years around this time and explain what they were and why they were so meaningful to you.
Thanks and happy holidays.

Tim Page: I can try to answer your question. I assume you are referring to concerts specifically addressed to the holidays -- as I'm sure I've heard lots of programs in December and early January that were excellent but not necessarily time-specific. As a matter of fact, on January 2, it will be exactly 50 years since the American debut of Glenn Gould at the Phillips Collection here in Washington, a concert that is said (south of the Canadian border, at least) to have launched his career. But that's not really a holiday concert.

So I'll mention some hoilday music that appeals to me. I (almost) always enjoy "Messiah" -- and am looking forward to the NSO production tomorrow. I'm a big fan of the Christmas music of Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman, written to be played by children, but highly satisfying to older audiences and about as far removed from "Carmina Burana" as you can imagine.

I also confess a fondness for old recordings of Christmas carols -- Caruso, McCormack, Schumann-Heink, Alma Gluck and many other important singers left some wonderful discs. And Busoni wrote a lovely "Sonatine" about Christmas morning.

I much enjoyed the Tallis Scholars Christmas concert of Renaissance music the other night.

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Radford, Va.: Why, in the face of the lack of melody in popular music today, that classical composers seem to becoming more radical? Most composers in the past always seemed to have an ear for local tastes in music. Today, composers seem to echo Adm. Farragut:
"Damn the torpedoes!; Full speed ahead!;"

Tim Page: I'm not sure that melody is disappearing from popular music -- listen to discs by the High Llamas or the Magnetic Fields if you want proof. And I'm also not at all sure that classical composers are becoming more radical -- I would think quite the opposite.

I heard a performance by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra a week or two back with music by Charles Ives ("Central Park in the Dark" written about 1908), Dmitri Shostakovich (the Symphony No. 6, written in the late 1930s) and the Strauss "Four Last Songs" (1948) -- and it was interesting to note that the three pieces were more "modern" the earlier they were. If you put works by Elliott Carter or Iannis Xenakis from the early 1960s, they will seem much more radical than a lot of the "neo-Romantic" music that takes up space on a lot of concert programs today.

Alan, do you have any thoughts on this?

AR: Maybe I've suddenly gone deaf, but I find a curious lack of torpedoes in John Adams' Vioin Concerto, most recent Terry Riley, Tan Dun's Water Passion, a large fistful of Osvaldo Golijov and -- need I go on? -- that could easily bring soft, calming lights to the skies over Radford, Va.

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Beautiful Silver Spring, Md.: For both you and Alan: What's your favorite piece of Christmas music that always manages to make it through the season relatively unplayed?

I'll toss out two: the plainchant that's sometimes translated as "Of the Father's Love Begotten" and the suite from Rimsky-Korsakov's "Christmas Eve."

Tim Page: Perhaps the Orff music -- the only thing he wrote that ever gets played is "Carmina" and it's not fair.

Alan adds that he hasn't heard the Corelli Opus 8 (the "Christmas Concerto") in a long time.

I wish I heard "L'Enfance du Christ" more often -- Berlioz at his most magical and mysterious.

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Columbus, Ohio: The Nascar mentality seems to be gaining influence in many areas of this society, effectively numbing sensitivity to the importance of such cultural resources as serious music ensembles,among other things. In light of this, what is the prognosis for such local groups as the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, which has become capable of producing really enjoyable listening experiences?

Tim Page: I don't think NASCAR has much to do with classical music. The sport mystifies me -- but I don't think that if you took Nacre away it would necessarily benefit the Columbus Symphony. Different strokes....

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Arlington, Va.: Happy holidays, Tim. Do you know of any local orchestras having holiday music programs? My local Arlington Symphony is having the great-grandson of Charles Dickens do a show, but I'm looking for a more typical symphony performance. I greatly enjoy supporting the locals---Prince William Cty, Fairfax, etc.---and am willing to travel to Maryland, DC or in Virginia for some holiday music.

Tim Page: Almost all local orchestras do a holiday show of one sort or another. My best advice would be to call around and find a program that interests you. But you might want to hurry -- this year, very few musical performances are taking place after about December 19.

Good luck.

Alan adds that the Los Angeles Philharmonic is doing "Messiah" tomorrow night and that the temperature here is 77 today. There are benefits to living in a warmer climate!

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Tim Page: Now, come on folks -- I know it's cold, and I know it's only a week or two before Christmas, but we can do better than this. We don't have a single question in the basket right now!

I usually have to leave a lot of questions unanswered after these chats. If you write in now, there's a very good chance I'll be able to get to you. So dust off that question you've always wanted to ask -- and get the thoughts of two critics for the "price" of one.

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Beautiful Silver Spring, Md.: With the knowledge that the end of the year is the time people tote up stuff like this, what was the single coolest concert each of you saw this year, and why was it so awesome?

Tim Page: Thanks very much for breaking the collective silence! I hope I can come up with an answer.

Some highlights -- the new Leon Fleisher recording; Maazel conducting Wagner with the National Symphony Orchestra; a recital by Matthias Goerne, courtesy of the Vocal Arts Society; the Early Music Festival presented on Capitol Hill early this summer; the new organ dedication up at the church in Rock Creek Park. In Boston, James Levine conducted a magnificent Mahler Eighth Symphony to begin what promises to be a most interesting tenure there. A lot of beautiful moments...

Alan?

AR: I would also list a Goerne event, as my second-best: Goerne and pianist Alfred Brendel performing Schubert's "Die Winterreise" at Walt Disney Concert Hall; but that would also collide with another "Winterreise" that I heard in New York: Ian Bostridge and Leif Ove Andsnes at Carnegie Hall,that left me weak in the knees for hours. Towering above these, however, was the Berlioz Requiem, with Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Master Chorale and practically the entire brass-playing population of the Western world, brilliantly demonstrating the magic of Berlioz and the similar magic of Disney Hall's acoustic designers.

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Burke, Va.: Tim and Alan,

If each one of you would have to choose one figure from the past, one performer that you think should be better known today, which one would that be? How about composer?

Thanks!;

Tim Page: Great question -- and a rather tough one to answer. There are some well-known composers and performers that I think should be even better-known than they are -- Berlioz, for example, or Jacques Offenbach (marvelously witty theater music -- and a lot of it). Rossini is always undervalued, even now. But I'm guessing that you'd like some real esoterica here, so I'll do my best to provide it.

What about the English Renaissance composer Orlando Gibbons? I've never heard a work by him that didn't move me. Alan will scream when I mention that I think Hans Pfitzner's "Palestrina" is a vastly underrated opera -- although I seem to be one of only about ten people who feels that way. (Actually he's groaning, instead of screaming...) I want to put in a plug for a brilliant young composer named Daniel Kellogg who has his first record out with the chamber ensemble Eighth Blackbird. Walter Piston seems to me the most undervalued of the American quasi-Romantics -- I think his Symphony No. 2 is one of the best such works by an American. Also -- and I know he's hardly neglected -- I think the most radical music by Copland (the three big piano pieces, mainly) vastly undervalued.

Performer? Alice Raveau, whose 1936 recording of Gluck's "Orphee" is achingly beautiful. The late actress Irene Worth once told me she had never heard tragedy so eloquently expressed by a singing voice.

AR:
Karl Amadeus Hartman, German composer during WWII, famous for heroic stands against governmental oppression, but not nearly enough for his music. Now that we're rediscovering some of Germany's wartime musical culture through the exhumation of the "Entartete" repertory (and the yeoman work of James Conlon in concert and on discs, it's time to include Hartman in these explorations.

Performers -- the other side: Why does Gerard Schwarz keep going?

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Washington, D.C.: Do you think that James Conlon would be a good choice
for Music Director of the NSO?

Tim Page: If we can get him! Everybody in the United States wants Conlon. We would be very lucky to have him in D.C.

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Washington, D.C.: I'm considering purchasing a complete Ring Cycle. I know the Solti is the best known. I'm somewhat familiar with the Levine and have heard good things about Janowski. What do you two think?

Tim Page: I'm always anxious when I suggest the first recording I ever knew of a piece -- are my reasons purely sentimental? But the Solti was my first "Ring" and I still love it -- yes, even producer John Culshaw's bits of business (the collapse of Valhalla sounds like somebody falling downstairs, captured in the aural equivalent of Cinerama). I'm also very fond of the Karajan set, for the translucent beauty of the orchestral playing, and the contribution of artists like Thomas Stewart and Jon Vickers. The Janowski is available right now in a budget set -- a great bargain. Boulez is interesting, but clinical.

AR: Hmmm: Solti? Karajan? Levine? Not an easy one. I think of Solti's vitality and the gorgeous playing of the orchestra; then I think of Vickers' singing of "Waelse!!!" on the Karajan and I go limp, and then the Rainbow Bridge as flung forth by Levine. you gotta have all three; measured against the cost of a trip to Bayreuth, and the cost of hotel & tickets once you're there, it's a bargain. Solti by a hair.

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Washington, D.C.: What's your opinion of Toscanini's recordings in general? I know his brisk, "streamlined" interpretations were out of favor for some time. Are they making a comeback?

Tim Page: We're just about out of time, alas -- and this question deserves a long answer. Having no time to give you one, I'll just say that I think Toscanini was a greatly gifted conductor, that he was better at some things than others (maybe the best Rossini conductor ever -- and I do not mean that as a put down), that he is forever an important figure in the history of performance practice. Comeback? But he never went away!

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Rockville, Md.: Tim,

I want your job!; What does one have to do in order to become a music critic?

Thanks!;

Tim Page: This seems a good question to close with. I think most music critics are music critics because we couldn't be anything else. I knew that I loved music and that I had to write about it -- and slowly but surely the jobs got better and I began to earn a living at it. But it is one tough profession, believe it or not. You hear so much that is mediocre -- and it is deucedly hard to find something to say about "Madama Butterfly" the 30th time you hear it.

That's one of the reasons I admire Alan so much. He's been at this for 60 years -- and continues to be interesting. I'd like to thank him for joining us today.

We'll speak again in the new year.

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