Just been watching the 'Classical' Brits - while doing something more interesting (i.e. sorting out the mountains of waste paper lying around the house for recycling). While I'm all for trying to sell classical music to a wider audience and so on....it really helps if they paly some! After about half an hour things did improve a bit , with Renee Fleming (one of the best sopranos around at the moment) singing Puccini's "O mio babbino caro", and "Our Nige" playing the Vivaldi 4 seasons (yet again) - obviously he wasn't going to play it straight, but it did work fairly well (at least the faster stuff did - he wasn't so good in the slow movement). But the first half hour was truly dire.
Vanessa Mae (
) did her usual thing, cavorting around while pretending to play an electric violin - extraordinarily badly I might say. Even the lightening fast cutting between shots couldn't hide the fact that her bow arm movements bore very little resemblance to what was playing - but that may have been excused if she actually made a decent, coherent musical noise. And what she was playing - ugh - the "Sabre Dance" completely emasculated by giving it a pop beat and some Phil Spectorish arrangement. Khatchaturian must have been be spinning in his grave at such an abortion - his original has FAR more balls.
Then we had Boyo Bryn - who IS a great singer - but singing some Welsh folk-song. This was then followed by Hayley Westenra (who has a super, if rather small, voice at present - let's hope early stardom doesn't cause her to blow it like Charlotte Church) singing that Maori song of homecoming (or something like that IIRC). I have nothing against folk songs, and that Maori song (which has been sung at every Maori concert I've ever been at BTW) is really lovely - BUT THEY AIN'T CLASSICAL MUSIC! Then after Nige we had "Amici Forever" - who look better than they sing (the girls in particular) - singing "Prayer in the Night". So OK that's based on a Sarabande by Handel, but given the "Lion King" treatment - if that's classical music then Sting's "Russians" is too! At this point I couldn't take it any more.
It's interesting that some of the awards went to some fairly challenging stuff (e.g. best young musicican to Daniel Hope - for his CD of Berg and Britten), not yer average Classic FM fare, but if a 'Classical' music awards show is too scared to play 'classical' music, things are in a pretty bad way. For example, the Amici could have done (seemingly also on their CD) either Bizet's "Au Fond du Temple Saint" or Dvorak's "Song to the Moon" (although that is one of Renee's party pieces - so maybe they didn't fancy the comparison), again both Classic FM favourites, but genuine - and genuinely good - classical music (although I've not heard what they do to it). Frankly this show had far more in common with the old Radio 2 MOR stuff than anything I would recognise as "classical".
Some may think this belongs in the Classical forum - but I can only say that this has as much to do with classical music as Rolf Harris does with Led Zeppelin.
Vanessa Mae (
) did her usual thing, cavorting around while pretending to play an electric violin - extraordinarily badly I might say. Even the lightening fast cutting between shots couldn't hide the fact that her bow arm movements bore very little resemblance to what was playing - but that may have been excused if she actually made a decent, coherent musical noise. And what she was playing - ugh - the "Sabre Dance" completely emasculated by giving it a pop beat and some Phil Spectorish arrangement. Khatchaturian must have been be spinning in his grave at such an abortion - his original has FAR more balls. Then we had Boyo Bryn - who IS a great singer - but singing some Welsh folk-song. This was then followed by Hayley Westenra (who has a super, if rather small, voice at present - let's hope early stardom doesn't cause her to blow it like Charlotte Church) singing that Maori song of homecoming (or something like that IIRC). I have nothing against folk songs, and that Maori song (which has been sung at every Maori concert I've ever been at BTW) is really lovely - BUT THEY AIN'T CLASSICAL MUSIC! Then after Nige we had "Amici Forever" - who look better than they sing (the girls in particular) - singing "Prayer in the Night". So OK that's based on a Sarabande by Handel, but given the "Lion King" treatment - if that's classical music then Sting's "Russians" is too! At this point I couldn't take it any more.
It's interesting that some of the awards went to some fairly challenging stuff (e.g. best young musicican to Daniel Hope - for his CD of Berg and Britten), not yer average Classic FM fare, but if a 'Classical' music awards show is too scared to play 'classical' music, things are in a pretty bad way. For example, the Amici could have done (seemingly also on their CD) either Bizet's "Au Fond du Temple Saint" or Dvorak's "Song to the Moon" (although that is one of Renee's party pieces - so maybe they didn't fancy the comparison), again both Classic FM favourites, but genuine - and genuinely good - classical music (although I've not heard what they do to it). Frankly this show had far more in common with the old Radio 2 MOR stuff than anything I would recognise as "classical".
Some may think this belongs in the Classical forum - but I can only say that this has as much to do with classical music as Rolf Harris does with Led Zeppelin.
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LZ were just unique,they were primarily a stage band,there lps are great,but its the magic of their shows that made them,4 hr sets were not uncommon (4 hrs when they were all on song and page and Bonham did 25 min solos each)
