Donald Satz, who apparently doesn't subscribe to "Fanfare for the Common
Man" rote:

>Even if it was "useless", and I don't agree with that premise, it's
>still lots of fun.  Bashing classical recordings and artists is not
>within my mind-set, but bashing the common folk is quite exhilarating.

Ah!  but Nietzsche warned against choosing easy targets.  We are
strengthened only by opponents who are at least our equals.  Ask any tennis
player.  Besides, compared to the vulgarities of common folk, which is
usually only flatulence and harmless, the crudeness and rudeness of our
"great" artists is like the Hun invasion.  Besides, it is as insidious as
a fifth column.

It is never the common horde that brings a civilization down.  It is the
"pillars" of the civilization.  That is why Bernanos entitled his great
work "Le Traison Des Clerics," "The Treason of the Intellectuals." Karajan,
Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras, Perlman, Mehta, Maazel, Ozawa (I'd bribe
him for whatever he gets--which is secret--just to stay off the podium),
Barenboim, Jessye Norman, Ashkenazy, Battle (who has the distinction of
having insulted everyone) and Mutter to name ONLY A FEW, composers who make
millions chasing the chameleons of the multitude and misleading them and
last by not least, the great intellectual newspapers and journals who
practice incest (example Peter Gelb, the SONY diskwasher, and his dad
Arthur, managing editor and culture maven for the NY Times) and, now of
course, the concert management mastodons, that soak the multitude behind
their platitudes.  They have done more damage to classical music than a
hundred rock stars.  But Newberry has already done a Sterling job on the
NY Times, with all the noose that fit to gag.

Since there are so many "greats" who suck up all the limited resources of
classical music that none is left for the commoners, orchestra players and
supporting singers, we would do little inconvenience to our enjoyment of
great music by boycotting this venal crowd as many boycotted Furtwangler
and Flagstad for other "noble" reasons--which I agreed with--after the war.
There are still enough big egos who display some integrity that it drives
concert managers crazy.  You know who they are.  Naxos has proven we can
live without conductors and soloists making all the money and raising
prices so high, its no wonder the public associates classical music with
privilege, not meritocracy.

Hey, I am as free market as anyone.  I was the Reagan supporter knocked all
over this board and previous ones.  But rock stars don't beg for taxpayer
funds to save a sacred art form while they are screwing it behind closed
doors.  These crude "artistes" actually come on channel 13 and beg money
from mature widows and widowers on fixed incomes.  That's more obscene than
any advertising I've viewed.  No one needs $4 million.  They could take it
for the power and then return some real money on a regular basis in the
form of estate-planning donations to help their so-called sacred art that
paved their paths with gold.  I'll cut my legal fees to help them if their
high-powered attorneys can't or won't.

Some of them are not only venal but dumb.  They are still young enough
that if they go on milking the cow, they will be retiring early!

And our boycott could do much to revive a very ill classical music
business.  Orchestra members might begin to get decent salaries.
Orchestras that were deliberately strangled to death by the star system
might reestablish themselves.  Again, look at who scorns Naxos, who at
least gives life to regional orchestras and unknown chamber groups and
soloists who don't come off the Julliard assembly line.  Ironically, it is
the very small towners Satz seem to enjoy pillorying who are more likely to
be drafted into the new army of classical music lovers than sophisticates
like New Yorkers who blow with every wind and fashion, and God knows I like
to see a female figure in a knockout outfit.  They, too, don't have to cost
$100.000 if the figure is right.

>Although much of a recorded performance is relatively "artificial", the
>interpretation/inspiration is for real, and that's what counts most.

Everybody cuts and pastes.  But not to the same degree or for the same
reason.  Karajan cut so much he was rumored to own a huge portfolio in
Scotch tape and other businesses that killed horses to make glue.  He was
truly the Devil's Advocate, flitting from flower to flower like a bee, but
instead of producing honey, sucking it up so no one else had sustenance.
Thank God his lousy, homogenized recordings fortunately appear to have
died with him.

In fact, you are plain wrong.  The CD has offered those who want it the
very opposite opportunity, to record LIVE performances.  Notice how much
of Kleiber's brief discography is live, uncopywritten, stuff he didn't get
a penny for.  Maybe that part of it is unfair in the opposite direction.
But Kleiber has contributed more to this generation's archive than all of
Karajan, Solti, Sinipoli and lets not forget the arch Anti-Christ, Sergio
Blini, who made San Marino totter on the brink of bankruptcy from his
profligate but hollow operas such as Deflate A Mouse and The Flying
Hunchback.  (-:).  What the hell.  Given the human race, you gotta smile
in the end.

"Andrew Carlan" <[log in to unmask]>