Sunday, December 30, 2007

Editors -- Hands off Don Rosenberg!

I was very pleased when I saw that Donald Rosenberg, the Cleveland Plain Dealer's excellent classical music critic, had a roundup in the Sunday PD on the year in classical music. I knew he'd have something trenchant to say about the Cleveland Chamber Symphony's dramatic year -- the Grammy Award it shared with local pianist Angelin Chang, its survival of the departure of board president Mark George, the exciting new season it has begun. (It's performing work by a bunch of local composers next year, including Michael Leese, Eric Gould, Chris Auerbach-Brown, Dennis Eberhard, Loris Chobanian and Monica Houghton.)

But the Rosenberg article doesn't say a word about any of this. It does mention CityMusic Cleveland, including its premiere of Margaret Brouwer's excellent violin concerto, which Rosenberg says "deserves to enter the standard repertoire."

No doubt Rosenberg mentioned the Cleveland Chamber Symphony in his original article, and and his editor chopped it out. Yeah, that's what happened!

5 comments:

JMW said...

In Cleveland, short memories abound. When was the last time the Cleveland orchestra got a Grammy? I don't know, but then I'm not from Cleveland!

Anonymous said...

jw, It has been years since the Cleveland Orchestra won a Grammy. I know that because it went without a record contract for many years and finally issued a new CD in 2007 (another recording of Beethoven's 9th -- it hasn't garnered great reviews.)

Anonymous said...

Maybe it's because CityMusic (or as it could be put "not from this city music") is filled with lovely young musicians filled with energy from far away lands and will hopefully be leaving for bigger careers elsewhere when their student loans finally come due. People can say "hey I knew him/her when they played here." The Cleveland Chamber Symphony's members have mortgages in and committments to Cuyahoga County and also play with the "excellent freelance orchestras" that Rosenberg barely comments on in his reviews of other local events. Local people are more often than not overlooked in favor of merely similarly talented people who come from out of town to bring us local yokels art n cultur'. But, as I understand it, the exact same thing happens in local industry where outsiders are brought in and lauded for their brilliance and the people with local birth certificates can only reach a certain level of recognition...until they leave town and succeed spectacularly elsewhere.

Anonymous said...

Maybe the CCS is the Ron Paul of local ensembles...if it gets to where it can't be ignored, it'll be attacked.

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