A Critic’s Conversion
But then, Marsh and von Rhein disagree about nearly everything. The classical music critics of the Sun-Times and Tribune, respectively, they have the amazing ability to attend the same concert and hear entirely different music. Consider their reviews last week when the CSO introduced George Lloyd’s Seventh Symphony. “Surprisingly appealing,” wrote von Rhein. “Synthetic Sibelius . . . derivative, diffuse and dull,” ruled Marsh. Or the week before, when Italian conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli came to town. Marsh: “a musician of the stature and skill to deserve an instrument of the quality of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.” Von Rhein: “a serious, well-intentioned mediocrity.”
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Last month Barenboim arrived in Chicago to spend two weekends directing the CSO. Von Rhein and Marsh assessed the first week’s program in the usual way. “Barenboim has clearly learned much about showmanship,” wrote Marsh. “What he now needs to master is the art of conducting.” Von Rhein was incendiary. The Symphonie fantastique, he wrote, “was awash in pseudo-Furtwanglerisms, ‘interpreted’ to the nines. The conductor obviously felt that to hammer home Berlioz’s expressive points he had to exaggerate almost everything, and so we got swooning ritards and accelerandos, mannered phrasing, garish climaxes and messy playing to boot.”
That must have gone down nicely with Fogel. But a week later, von Rhein recanted.
“It augurs well,” wrote von Rhein.
“I perhaps overreacted, I think, to a performance I found grossly distorted and badly played,” von Rhein explained. He was speaking of the first Barenboim concert. “It was a strong reaction inspired by pretty strong feelings, but it came out as a blanket condemnation of the man generally as a musician. I didn’t intend it to be that.”
Is it really such a foregone conclusion? we wondered. “All the indications I’ve been able to gather say it’s a done deal,” von Rhein said. “We’re not going on flimsy information.”
