Chris Bonds wrote:

>There's little to interest me on PBS anymore except for the occasional
>opera.  And even then, who is it? Usually the Met.  I like the Met, but
>give somebody else a chance.  And Perlman was big as long as he was "hot"
>in the public eye and playing well consistently.  But there are lots and
>lots of other good people who can and should be heard.  Recently Ma and
Marsalis have been the golden boys.  But their stars will fade on PBS
>eventually, which is a shame.  It's a medium that chews you up and spits
>you out.  And what happened even to the Philharmonic broadcasts? I haven't
>seen one this year!

You are right on the money about the narrow range of offerings on PBS.
I'm not sure whether it is extreme timidity on the part of the powers that
be, or whether there is some sort of more sinister connection behind the
scenes.  For a while, I had the impression that Perlman somehow had managed
to buy up the whole operation, he appeared so often.  But even his concert
fees probably don't net him that much.

There was a Philharmonic broadcast the other day -- unfortunately I missed
it, but it was a tag-team gig with the Philharmonic and the Duke Ellington
Orchestra, and apparently was quite a show.

I lost the last few days of my e-mail due to computer problems, so I don't
know what was said at the beginning of this thread, but I read the NY Times
article and I largely agree with it (except for the rather odd part about
"the canon," which I didn't understand either).  Its main point was a
contrast between Bernstein's series for young people 30 or so years ago,
which was very meaty in intellectual content, despite being billed "for
young people," and contained large amounts of actual music with no
voice-overs, as opposed to the up-coming series, which is composed of many
very short cuts, in the editing style of Sesame Street and Tele-Tubbies,
with sound bites from a large number of "experts" and small bits of musical
illustration, many with voice-overs.

Another point of superiority in the Bernstein programs that was noted in
the article was that he connected "classical" music with the Beatles, etc.,
taking the latter quite seriously and indicating the common principles
underlying various kinds of music, whereas the up-coming series seems to
set up "the great composers" as objects of worship, which fits right in
with the pseudo-intellectuality of PBS when it occasionally turns from Welk
and Yanni, but which will, I am afraid, turn off still more potential CM
fans who might be turned on if they could feel the fun in it.

Jon Johanning // [log in to unmask]