In Reply to: Improv scares me posted by jdaniel@jps.net on March 16, 2017 at 09:34:55:
I'll have to look that one up. Harold Schonberg was a longtime friend of my father's and I got to meet and talk music with him. My copy of The Great Composers has a nice inscription from him to me: "from a thumper to a tootler" (he was an amateur pianist). He had an encyclopedic knowledge and near-photographic memory when it came to music history, and he was a great writer and all-around brilliant guy to boot.
But he was not a great or even a very good musician. He was a great journalist. He became famous for his coverage of the Bobby Fischer - Boris Spassky world championship chess match, though he was no chess champion either. The comment about Debussy seems odd, as Debussy was supposedly a fanatic about players following his score as closely as possible, once famously shouting during a rehearsal he was conducting of his own music: "No improvisation! I don't need it."
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Follow Ups
- RE: Improv scares me - rbolaw 10:16:58 03/16/17 (11)
- RE: Improv scares me - PAR 10:53:58 03/16/17 (10)
- Applause - Newey 20:08:15 03/16/17 (8)
- Mingus used to admonish the audience not to applaud until the end of the piece. - Rick W 16:53:03 03/17/17 (1)
- Jazz Applause - Newey 19:18:26 03/17/17 (0)
- Jumping up and screaming Bravissimo after the 4th movt of Tchaikovsky's 6th may follow protocol but to me such - jdaniel@jps.net 14:03:47 03/17/17 (0)
- You blame the millenials, but there's also enough blame to go around to the geezers too - Chris from Lafayette 12:54:31 03/17/17 (4)
- Indeed - And ---- Indeed??? Mitropoulos - Newey 23:28:08 03/17/17 (1)
- RE: Indeed - And ---- Indeed??? Mitropoulos - rbolaw 06:19:15 03/18/17 (0)
- Really Old But Experienced Listeners - Newey 19:31:37 03/17/17 (0)
- Yes, way too much glorification of the past - jdaniel@jps.net 19:15:59 03/17/17 (0)
- OK, that makes more sense. - rbolaw 11:31:07 03/16/17 (0)