Last night I managed to catch two episodes of the (U.S.) public TV series
on composers, the Tchaikovsky and Puccini episodes.  While I can see the
New York Times reviewer's reasons for being down on these programs, and
comparing them unfavorably with Bernstein's young people's programs, I
didn't think that they were all that bad, actually.

True, they had aspects of a "classical music Sesame Street," with lots of
short cuts, but that's the way TV works these days; people in the general
audience won't concentrate for long stretches.  But one must remember
that the name of the series is "The Composers." The series' creators are
obviously trying to give the audience some personal acquaintance with
the composers, not deliver learned musiological disquisitions on the
compositions.  So presenting only bits and pieces of the music is probably
acceptable in this case.

On the other hand, if they mean to get ordinary Americans interested in CM,
hitting them with long subtitled interviews in Russian and Italian won't
help; we Yanks aren't interested in anything that isn't in English, and
subtitles just give us the impression of something arty and pretentious.

Jon Johanning // [log in to unmask]