EVEN THOUGH I HAVE LITTLE BUT DISDAIN for the record reviewing racket, I wouldn't have thought that someone could get through a "career" in it apparently knowing less than nothing about music. The ever stupid Simps claims that probably the second if not first most respected composer-classical guitarist who is alive and composing, Dusan Bogdanovic, a man who is widely played and recorded by the best guitar players who don't play jazz, the blues and the various cousins in country music (not to mention the huge world of Latin American music), is "boring" and that his widely played pieces called "Polymetric Studies" are music no one would listen to BECAUSE OF THE TITLE! He really is that superficial. And that stupid.
Oh, yeah, no one would listen to all of those dry as dust piano pieces by Chopin because they were entitled "Etudes" (that's "Studies" in French, Simps). Nor, by the same "reasoning" such other tediously named pieces as all of those tedious "Inventions, Preludes, Fugues, by Bach, Sonatas, Symphonies, etc. by Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Brahms, etc. " which were given titles which were technical descriptions of the music by their composers (in almost every case the stupid popular names for those were given by peddlers of music, publishers or "critics").
Even someone Simps reveres even as he is actually pig ignorant about his music, did that. "Concerto" is such a technical description such as Gershwin's Concerto in F (Here's the, according to Simps, must be dry as dust first recording of it from 1928) not to mention his, must be academic bores, Three Preludes for Piano (here's the young bore playing them, himself, get a load of those tedious first and last ones.
Then there's that tedious piece that Simps got into a tangle with me over him being stupid enough to, once again, try to taunt me with using that record reviewer's stupid sales pitch, that he'd identified "the definitive recording" of it, in this case that the great friend (and tease) of George Gershwin, the fine (though not really great) pianist and brilliant wit (whose tragedy shows the limits and dangers of even real wit, not the kind The Simple One, attempts) Oscar Levant's recording of Anton Rubinstein's 4th Concerto. I was able to point out that Rubinstein was considered a great pianist in his day who, no doubt, played the piece, though there is none to possibly little actual audio evidence of that legendary playing left but that the man who is believed to have been about the only one he deigned to teach, the tragic and brilliant Joseph Hofmann had recorded a performance with the orchestra conducted by the really great Fritz Reiner. You can get links to relevant recordings to make my point at the link. However, the pianist was long dead and unable to do what only the composer could do, call it "the definitive performance" of his work.
I swear, he's stupider every time he tries to get into it over music with me. I spent my life doing it, not scribbling ad copy about it. I don't believe I have ever gotten into it with him over music except when he instigated it. Research is interesting (though not as interesting as playing and composing), answering Simps is child's play, if the child didn't spend all of his waking life sucking in TV, movies and pop music.
Update: Molto Stupo goes for the win with the definitive response THAT HE OWNS A RECORDING OF THE HOFMANN RECORDING of the concerto. And the idiot thinks that settles the question of his judgement that Levant's is "the definitive" recording of it. I wonder if Levant, when presented with the argument I made against some idiot like Simps saying what a long dead composer's piece is "the definitive" one but I'll bet he have had something witty to say about it. I mean, he made fun of George Gershwin, imagine what he'd do with Simps Douchekin.
He also put on his little meter maid of orthography uniform to try to humiliate me by attempting to correct my spelling of Hofmann by claiming it had two Fs. Apparently that would be news to the pianist. Here is only one of several photographs of autograph signatures by him I found in about ten seconds of searching online. Stupy is stupid.
Okay, you dumb schmuck.
ReplyDelete1) I have a copy of the live Josef Hoffman (he spelled it with two f's, you illiterate putz) version of the Rubinstein 4th with Fritz Reiner and love it. I prefer the Levant. No big whoop.
2) If you genuinely thought I was dismissing your favorite guitar composer because of the title of the utterly uninteresting piece of his you posted then you're even a stupider and more humorless sack of shit than I have previously thought you are. Good fucking grief.
Temporarily posted so I could make fun of his orthographic erudition that like all of his erudition is wrong.
ReplyDeleteI would suspect that if he knew anything about you, Stupy, Levant would wonder if he should have made the recording or if he should have given up playing altogether. Though he'd probably just have a witty put down.
Dusan Bogdanovic has the respect of real musicians in the hundreds of thousands if not millions, a rapidly more and more demented pop scribbler wouldn't bother him one bit, I'd guess. Though, thinking about it, I should have amended what I said, there are a n umber of jazz players of the highest level who have played with him and commissioned pieces from him. I wouldn't be surprised if some blues or Nashville guitarists had studied or played his music, too. Certainly many Latin American guitarists have.