Video illed the radio star.

A wearying day climaxed in a loud, lights-cameras-action! media party in the office space to launch the newest TONY affair, an on-demand NYC cable TV channel devoted to translating our staff editors' picks and pans to sound and vision on your tube -- if you're in NYC or NJ, anyway. Some predicted results: Theater critic Adam Feldman is headed for stardom, while yours truly -- whose tubular debut is still at least a few weeks away -- should be headed to the gym for some serious treadmill time. Uggh.

The most unexpected thing I learned tonight, I have to admit, is that Ereka Vetrini, the host with whom I taped my yet-to-be-aired initial segments, was a contestant on the first season of the NBC-TV series The Apprentice. I hadn't known this -- and feel like a dork for not knowing, even if I genuinely dislike reality TV. For the record, Ereka's intensely sweet and a real pleasure to work with -- not to mention much more beautiful in person than in any photo I could find through trawling the net. (Including those FHM shots, so don't bother sending them to me.)

Once the shindig was over, I labored for a few more hours, with Harnoncourt's new Messiah blazing in my ears for the first time. Not entirely sure what I think of this intrepretation on the whole, and one of the soloists truly pained me, another less so. But Gerald Finley, who so rocked my boat in Doctor Atomic and a new CD of Ives songs on Hyperion, proves once again that his is a voice to be reckoned with. "The trumpet will sound" is something to be savored.

Later, I spent more time with pianist Simone Dinnerstein's newly recorded, as-yet-unreleased take on Bach's Goldberg Variations, which I'm increasingly thinking will be a major story when it finds its public. (While there's more to say, you'll find my initial thoughts in the comments field of the post that appears below this one, in reponse to JSU's query. Google also turned up an interesting article on Dinnerstein and the Goldbergs by David Patrick Stearns, which you can find here.) She'll be playing this piece on November 28 at Weill Recital Hall, and I'm thinking I might should be there.

Since I've little else to add, I'll point your direction elsewhere: While it may be breaking some unwritten pact of writer/editor decorum to say so, it's things like this that makes me state without reservation that The Artist Known As Vilaine Fille is unquestionably one of the finest, most lucid scribes currently wrapping prose around the art of singing. This kind of writing begs to be read, and re-read. And while she might well smack me for so confessing, the ability my job affords me to occasionally facilitate some of this writing is among the prime joys of the gig.

Comments

[Bogyo Canterbury]

Wonderful blog!

I've been nuts about Finley's singing for years--his recordings with Gardiner and his contribution to the Hyperion Schubert series especially.

But the last two recordings (Messiah and Ives songs), the ones that are making such a big splash for him these days, I don't like at all.

For me, the Ives is often too croony and sung with weirdly distracting 'character voices'--the music is already wonderfully strange and sounds best to me when sung simply and directly (a la DeGaetani for example).

And, having listened to a few of NH's live oratorio recordings lately, I wonder if Harnoncourt forces singers to make bizarre choices in the way they shape recits. Often they don't sound to me like they're informed by any understanding of the English language. And Finley, normally so warm and supple in his singing, sounds hard and pushed and struggles to stay in tune. Maybe he was just under the weather that day.

I'm forever amazed/baffled/frustrated that reasonable and experienced listeners can have such varied opinions. Is there such thing as a work of art or performance that's just irrefutably good or bad?

[Steve Smith]

Thanks very much for this comment, Bogyo. I'll respectfully agree to disagree with you regarding the Ives; I don't think your characterization of Finley's performances are incorrect or inappropriate in any way, but I also didn't feel distracted by Finley's mannerisms (and that they are, definitely). One of the miracles of Ives, for me, is that his work holds steadfast in so many different interpretations -- I've been equally moved by Levine's Bergian plushness, Sinclair's skeletal choreography and the avant-garde impressionism of vibraphonist Matt Moran, whose group Sideshow is one of my favorite Ives ensembles.

As for Harnoncourt's Messiah, I think your description is exactly right -- much of what I didn't enjoy about the reading had to do with how very little of the language seemed natural, let alone idiomatic. So if I enjoyed "The trumpet shall sound" more than you did, take that as a sign of the relief I finally felt at hearing anything in this performance that truly moved me. And I'm willing to admit that my admiration may be overly colored by hearing once again the timbre that so messed me up at the end of the first act of Doctor Atomic.