Critic who enjoys his music

Press, 18 August 1979, Page 15

Critic who enjoys his music

Music of Three Seasons: 1974-1977. By Andrew Porter. Chatto and Windus, 1979. 668 pp. $35.10. (Reviewed by John Ritchie)

There was a time when the Doctrine of the Infallibility of the Overseas Expert prevailed. In those days, this country’s Arts Council mounted an operation to bring the author of this splendid, if expensive, book to New Zealand in order that he might teach our critics a thing or two about their craft. Happily, this absurd notion passed into the limbo of the council’s less costly mistakes. The appearance of “Music of Three Seasons” renders the earlier plan unnecessary. The Arts Council is now in the position of being able to offer a more effective service, even more cheaply, by buying a copy for each of our music critics. They can be guaranteed to enjoy reading it even while they become restive in the knowledge of how truly congenial their job can be in more developed countries. From 1974 to 1977, Andrew Porter, following the British fashion of amalgamating the principles of lendlease and brain-drain, went on loan, so to speak, to the United States. As a latter-day Charles Burney he wrote pieces for the American journal, the “New Yorker.” The resulting collection becomes an informative and acutely perceptive account of professional music in New York and other places, mostly American, although Australia’s remarkable arts centre in Adelaide warrants a mention and a warmly generous encomium. Porter, like Burney, is a scholar; ex Oxford. He possess editorial experience; from the “Musical Times.” He knows the life of journalism thanks to 20 years with the “Financial Times,” It is no wonder that he is so

successful with the pen. His knowledge is wide and based on rich experience; his style of writing is clear and lucid; his manner of deploying facts, humble but convincing. Impelling all this is a mind which is fertile and stimulating. Further, his stated resolution never to become (or to have anything to do with) a music critic who seems to have stopped enjoying music has obviously met with editorial sympathy to the extent that his wielding of the freedom to select what is to be covered and what Ignored has been careful and intransigent. Porter’s long-standing preoccupation with opera is amply demonstrated. Much of the most penetrating writing in this large book has to do with the author’s assessment of music in the dramatic context. His practice of hearing rehearsals before first performances, of studying the musical score and libretto in depth, and of discussing the composer’s artistic intentions with the composer, contributes to the solidity and permanent value of much of his critical writing. On opera he seldom sounds ephemeral or gives the impression of a “morning-after” critique. Rather his is a considered opinion and many living American composers must be grateful for that. Participants in the local organ controversy will obtain succour (or otherwise) from Porter’s trenchant view of the Carnegie Hall organ. Of a series of Karajan-Berlin Philharmonic concerts he wrote: “One instrument in these performances made a horrid noise; it did not come from Berlin, but was the hall’s own electronic organ, disagreeable to hear in the Brahms and the Mozart (Requiems) and disastrous to the timbre of the climax

of the Te Deum (Bruckner)”. On another occasion describing the Fisher Hall machine as “a horror” he advises the American Guild of Organists that “in me they have an ally” in the “Battle against the acceptance of electric imitations.” It is not all New York. Apart from the enthusiastic account of the Adelaide Festival and its home the description of the new auditorium in Minneapolis is as efficient a combination of acoustical information and literary eloquence as one could imagine. Porter’s mastery of words must surely delight the casual, even the non-musical, reader. Known to us as a superb translator (witness his Wagner Ring Cycle) he also has the knack of tossing off significances with a deceptively light touch. On Bernstein his aversion to dancing and prancing all over the podium is put in a nutshell: “If one averts one’s eyes, one hears something less extraordinary than the performance he mimes.” Of a contralto soloist he describes her as being “arrestingly unpredictable’’ while her tenor colleague was “so evidently on his best behaviour.” These two were involved in a Messiah performance of which the critic also wrote (vis-a-vis the chorus sopranos) “they touched an easy high C”. That in itself gives a measure of his calibre and his attitude. In addition to boasting rich content this book is superbly indexed for the purposes of the browser. The last 35 pages comprise a fine conventional index; but also, as part of the introduction, an important “thematic index” draws to the reader’s attention the rrieans by which he can find all the articles on ambience, orchestra placing, nineteenth century opera, and so on. It is most helpful.