Swed Reviews: Music to Their Ears--or Not

What a relief! Just as I was beginning to worry about our local affinity for mediocrity in the domain of art, along comes another self-anointed taste-monger from New York (where else?) to give us the word from on high (Saturday Letters, March 11). And as though his credentials are not meager enough, Marshall Izen asks how we can have “remained silent” about Mark Swed’s “inept, inadequate, poorly written, musically questionable music criticism.”

I have worked in music for more than seven decades, and to me anyone who displays the ignorance and arrogance to characterize the critical writing of one of the best in his profession in such terms reveals himself as unworthy of our attention. Real artists appreciate a critic who is so fair-minded, so well-informed and able to offer the general context of musical performances with such clarity, yet without the intrusion of personal bias so common these days.

While I may not always agree with Mark Swed, I admire his work and believe we are very lucky to have him.

DAVID RAKSIN

Van Nuys

*

Swed’s articles are, for this reader, a joy. Intelligent, brilliantly written, insightful and filled with a love of classical music that is beyond compare. This is a critic who dares to challenge the hidebound mentality of those who think Mahler was the last composer worth programming at the L.A. Philharmonic.

If the Izens of this world want the Philharmonic to stick to the three Bs and their acolytes, not only will we lose Esa-Pekka Salonen (as we lost Michael Tilson Thomas), we will lose the sense of adventure and the chance to discover great new and not-so-new works.

LARRY ALEXANDER

Sherman Oaks

*

As a San Francisco resident, I was proud to read about the enthusiastic reception accorded our symphony orchestra at its recent concert in Los Angeles. I know from my own concertgoing experience that music director Michael Tilson Thomas’ talents and charismatic personality deservedly attract attention and praise.

But in his review (“Tilson Thomas Makes Return to L.A. a Masterful Occasion,” March 10), Mark Swed barely acknowledges the presence of the San Francisco Symphony. Not a word about how the orchestra played, not a word about its skills or its sound, or how and what--or whether--its 100 members contributed at all to the conductor’s success and the ovations of the evening.

It’s possible (if not necessarily advisable) for an orchestra to play without a conductor. But a conductor without an orchestra?

ESZTER BALLA

San Francisco

*

Hagiography may have its place, but that place is not in the arts reviews of a major national newspaper. Whenever Mark Swed reviews a performance by Michael Tilson Thomas, the reader can count on him to run out of superlatives as he drools over Thomas’ work. It is painfully clear that Swed is unable to remain objective when reviewing MTT.

As one who was in attendance, I will vouch that the performance of John Adams’ “Harmonielehre” was a delight. But to say that the “audience . . . simply wouldn’t let the conductor off the stage without an encore” is untrue and absurd. The audience was enthusiastic, but no more so than any of half a dozen Los Angeles Philharmonic concerts conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen I attended during the past year.

Swed’s idolization of Thomas is doubly irksome in that the orchestra and conductor in his newspaper’s hometown are, at worst, as good as and, to most ears, superior to Thomas and the S.F. Symphony.

ARTHUR RIEMAN

Sherman Oaks

*

In his review of Los Angeles Opera’s “Rigoletto” (“Verdi’s in Movie Turnaround,” March 3), Mark Swed expressed his analysis and opinion of the production. Unfortunately, his analysis included inaccuracies and his opinions included the hint of a racial slur.

The inaccuracies? They include the characterization of soprano lead Inva Mula as Romanian. (She’s Albanian, as reading the program biographies would have disclosed.) The large blowup photo in Act 2 is not of the star of the invented movie, “Vendetta.” It is of Duke, the studio chief. And the mirror image of the movie’s end credits in Act 1 seemed to me a device for orienting the audience in terms of its perspective on the unfolding drama. I don’t see how “sloppiness” enters into it.

The truly shocking part of the review is the statement that “the racial implications of the evil hired assassin as a black thug are troubling.” Did we see the same production? The one I saw characterized Sparafucile as a sinister and threatening stuntman/wise guy, on the make for whatever action might come along. That the part was taken by a distinguished African American bass did not change the character into a “black thug.”

WILLIAM H. KEISER

Long Beach