The arts invoke countless emotions in the audiences and an art review’s “raison d’être” is to elicit those emotions from the readers even when they were not presented at the performance. A concert’s review does exactly the same purpose, except that experiencing music is something so abstract as the music itself and that the music reviewer’s mission becomes a thousand times harder. Trinity Church Calls; Composersrespond by Steve Smith and A Tighter, Lighter, Smaller Mahler by Allan Kozinn offer different styles of reviewing along with their pros and cons.
In his article, Steve Smith talks about the arduous task of contemporary composers competing with their ancient predecessors Bach, Brahms, Mahler in commemorating the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attack. Although giving certain applause to the ancient composers in the opening paragraph, Steve Smith signifies the many performances by contemporary artists given to the Trinity Church for their commemorating concert, one of which was ultimately chosen by it, Moran’s “Trinity requiem.” Asides from the occasional drops of musical jargon into the review, Steve goes right into the details of the performance and the emotion each reveals with unswerving manner. “Crashing” organ chords resonates the sounds of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers; gentle “dissonances” and “nervous” repetition of the chorus reanimate the scene in which the whole world was watching the event with unanimous prayers and hopes for the victims; the organ dropped out after offertory based on Pachelbel’s Canon, leaving only the cello playing elicits from the readers grief, redemption, diminishment, and loss as if we were there again, shocked at the debris that is left after the attack. In short, Steve Smith’s expert musical perception and compelling vocabulary express the grief that was the purpose of the performance.
Allan Kozinn’s review tackles a different event that is more professionally involved, the centenary commemoration of the premier of Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde.” The Orchestra of St.Luke celebrated this occasion by performing the reduced version of “Das Lied” by Schoenberg and Riehn. Allan elaborates the immediate effect of moving from Mahler’s full score to Schoenberg and Reihn’s trimmed version, lauding its “benefits as obvious as the compromise.” Furthermore, he compliments the orchestra for having managed the best of their ability to handle the transition. Allan seldom brings out out small setbacks of the performance objectively and helps underscore the success of the performance, like in this critic: “Granted, certain strands are eliminated, or slipped into one of the two keyboard parts. But the essence is here, and it works.” He uses strong, opinionated language and adjectives such as “understandably,””obvious,””freshly,””hefty,””strong,” throughout the review to convey the voice of a true music critic. “Street” terms like “under the hood” and “tight” are used twice to induce a comic relief in the overall heavy and professional review.
As the arts can bring out countless interpretations, so do the style of reviews varies accordingly. Steve Smith and Alan Kozinn handle different topics in their reviews yet their opinions as art critics both strive to excite in the readers the emotions that they had felt while attending those performances and to help them participate in such events in the future in order to truly experience them by themselves.
