{"id":389,"date":"2003-09-11T04:51:01","date_gmt":"2003-09-11T11:51:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2003\/09\/zankel_halls_debut\/"},"modified":"2003-09-11T04:51:01","modified_gmt":"2003-09-11T11:51:01","slug":"zankel_halls_debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2003\/09\/zankel_halls_debut.html","title":{"rendered":"ZANKEL HALL’S DEBUT"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bit of groundling music criticism seems in order. Even if it’s not a view from the Ivory
\nTower, it might be worth two-and-a-half cents. Frankly, Carnegie Hall’s spanking new venue, the
\n650-seat Zankel Hall<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>, seems like a knockout to me. Maybe I
\nshould equivocate, as the Ivory Tower boys do, by pointing out that Wednesday night’s
\npre-opening concert was only my first time in the hall and that my judgment may be clarified by a
\nsecond, third, fourth and fifth, etc. hearing. <\/P>
\n

Anyway, I’m not entirely sure what the music critic Terry Teachout<\/EM><\/FONT><\/B><\/A>, fellow Arts
\nJournal blogger, and New York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini<\/FONT><\/EM><\/STRONG><\/A> are being so
\nacoustically picky about in their commentaries. I agree with Tommasini that soft came across
\nbetter than loud. But I didn’t hear any of the subway rumbling that so disturbed Teachout.<\/P>
\n

I thought Ren\u00e9<\/FONT>e Fleming was
\nmarvelous in the opening song, “Shatter Me, Music,” an unaccompanied performance of a John
\nCorigliano composition with words from Rilke, and especially in Richard Strauss’s “Morgen,”
\naccompanied on piano by Emanuel Ax. “Morgen” was plain gorgeous, maybe the best single
\nperformance on the program. Lucky for us, too, because it was an added attraction not listed in
\nthe program notes. Fleming introduced it wryly, referring to herself in the third person, to show
\n“what she can do.” <\/P>
\n

I have to disagree with Teachout when he says the drum kit in Kenny Barron’s quintet
\nsounded boomy — the young, female drummer Kim Thompson was a smash in my book — though
\nI agree the vibraphone sounded muddy, despite Stefon Harris’s flashes of virtuosic playing. I
\nwonder, too, why Teachout calls the hall “distinctly bass-shy.” From where I sat, sixth row center,
\nit didn’t seem that way at all. In fact, the plucked cellos in Villa-Lobos’s “Bachiana brasileria”
\nsounded as catchy as a guilty pleasure. <\/P>
\n

I take Teachout’s point about the lack of a center aisle. Having one would be a relief. But
\nwith all due respect, when he describes the hall as “attractive enough but somewhat
\nsterile-looking, a typical exercise in safe concert-hall modernism,” I prefer to call it a
\ngood-looking hall without froufrou. It’s an intimate, honest venue intended for all sorts of music
\nrather than a dandified palazzo. <\/P>
\n

My reaction is doubtless colored by having spent too much time in Southern California’s
\nSegerstrom Hall at what used to be called the Orange County Performing Arts Center. When
\nthat cavernous pink pile opened in the mid-1980s, its arch-conservative benefactors thought
\nit was the last word in gaga all-purpose design. If Teachout or Tommasini had ever spent any time
\nthere, they’d know how lousy acoustics can be.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bit of groundling music criticism seems in order. Even if it’s not a view from the Ivory Tower, it might be worth two-and-a-half cents. Frankly, Carnegie Hall’s spanking new venue, the 650-seat Zankel Hall, seems like a knockout to me. Maybe I should equivocate, as the Ivory Tower boys do, by pointing out that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-389","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-6h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}