A week ago, some friends and I engaged in an email debate on the pros and cons of writers who aren’t classical-music experts writing about classical music in the New York Review of Books and elsewhere. Who said what about whom isn’t really important, but I would like to point out Printers Row Poet, the blog of Holly Wehmeyer, who attended last week’s Chicago Symphony concert with Gustavo Dudamel and pianist Stephen Hough.
Wehmeyer’s post about that concert and reflections on the poems that came to her mind as she listened strikes me as just about the ideal way for someone who’s smart and passionate can write about a field she loves while admitting hers isn’t the final word. It’s that smart audience classical music needs, composed of people who read and go to museums, and who may not get to the concert hall as often as we’d like them to. And lord knows she can write more gooder about music than I can about poetry.
—
The title of this post refers to the conductor of last week’s concert, a joke I found hilarious and one that no one else even broke a grin at. Whatever. This dude abides.
—
Also, it was overheard walking out of Saturday night’s concert that if Dudamel, 28, returns in 50 years to conduct the CSO, he will still be younger than Bernard Haitink is now. Come 2058 2059, Dudamel will therefore be approaching Haitink’s level of experience. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around that. I will be 81 82 in 2058 2059, and I really don’t want to wrap my mind around that.
[As the strikethroughs above indicate, the ravages of old age have already begun to make their presences felt, so making it to 82 may not be an issue I'll have to deal with.]