Gramophone

[amateur51]

amateur51,

It was a fascinating evening. I had never heard the Nielsen at a live concert, only on CD. It's an enjoyable suite, with virtually none of the composer's very individual fingerprints, except for the Market Place in Isfahan section,which is like Ives with four simultaneous and contrasting sections. The Sibelius was a strong performance. I thought the heavy orchestral outbursts were a bit too hefty, but Roman Simovic had plenty of power and commitment to match, a few patches of dodgy intonation, but it was a good performance.
After the interval we had an extended selection of the music from Peer Gynt, which included numbers not usually heard in the better known suite. It was played with no pauses between sections, some of which are quite short, and the overall effect was like an extended poem.It came across as more dramatic and even sometimes sinister in this guise.
The LSO were on top form, and I liked Jarvi, from a distance he looks not unlike the younger Previn.
I've got to cook a hot dinner tonight --bad timing!

Ferret

Cheers for that, Ferret - glad you enjoyed it.

Sorry to hear about your having to cook a hot dinner - I went over to some friends and we had a take-away curry selection - and very nice it was too

[amateur51]

I think that part of Mr Everard's unpleasant style must be a product of his schooldays, when everyone knew that Everard was dear Larry Grayson's 'friend' and subsequently when Everard was that mangy mutt on EastEnders

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2_1VfTAF5M&feature=related

[Eudaimonia]

Eudamonia - have you read the earlier correspondence about the disappearance of the cover CD?

I had a quick glance at the Gramophone forum when the thread came up, but didn't feel like wading through all the squabbling to find the content. Anyway, I stopped being a regular Gramophone reader shortly after they snazzed up the graphics and started printing in colour (Ugh! Remember that? It was like they degraded into an entirely different magazine in the space of a month...what a shame).

How many years did they offer free CDs, anyway? Even when I was a regular Gramophone reader, I was so cheap I used to read it in the library, standing up at the record shop, and in the form of "last-month's discards" with the covers torn off. In all, it's a bit of a non-issue for me... I can see why people would be upset, but didn't have enough first-hand experience to feel involved.

Here you will see that there are readers such as myself voicing not "endless amounts of abuse on the staff", but perfectly reasonable views on their disappointment about the sudden decision, only to be met with dismissive and discourteous comments by Everard. I certainly don't think we should be glad that he "cares enough to engage at all", particularly when he treats loyal readers of some 30 to 40 years as some kind of dinosaur that he no longer thinks relevant. I wasn't rude in my comments, and neither does he have any right to be so in return.

Fair enough, but there seemed to be quite a few posters relishing the opportunity to sling stupid taunts, cruel insults and wallow in all that negativity like pigs in muck. Unfortunately, reasonable people like you and EA tend to be drowned out... Perhaps it's a case of your message being delivered in the wrong medium.

If Everard likes replying to prickly, churlish [bleeps] in kind? Well, perhaps it's best to say they all deserve each other and move on. Surely people realise he's one person speaking for himself, not the whole magazine. Besides, audio editors are techies who, as a class, aren't known for their spectacular social skills under the best of circumstances, are they.

But the general question of "rudeness" of posters is not without some foundation, in that some people are free with their criticism, but don't always like the backlash. Clearly, however, when a poster, such as Eudamonia, made reasonable comments, there was no justification for rudeness, just as there was no justification for ignoring my polite letters which met with their criteria for a reply.

[...]If I can get this courteous treatment over a bar of soap, I fail to see why Gramophone readers should not be treated with consideration.

True. But at the end of the day, if nobody cares, where's the satisfaction in forcing them to go through the motions? I don't believe anyone "owes" me a reply: politeness is a social strategy, nothing more. And if you don't even matter enough to be treated with common courtesy, there's nothing to be gained complaining about it.

Personally, I find being treated with condescending fake-chumminess to be far more insulting then being honestly told to get stuffed. At least the latter takes you seriously enough to listen to what you're saying and get mad about it. Whereas to the polite person? You're less than nothing. Something to think about!

[MickyD]

You make some good points, Eudamonia. It was unfortunate that a few posters came along later on that thread to make unnecessarily silly and rude remarks and as usual, it spoiled the argument for those of us with legitimate concerns.

The freebie CD started way back in the 1990s and it had become part and parcel of the mag for lots of readers. One of the main complaints was that Gramophone was not honouring its contract to subscribers in discontinuing the CD with just a months' notice - if I remember rightly, one or two overseas customers were livid that they had signed up for a mag with a CD for two years, only to find that was not what they were going to get.

But you are right, if it is obvious that nobody cares then the only way to protest is to cancel and move on. Which is what I did by switching to IRR. It's a huge improvement as a magazine, but I still miss that CD!

[Ferretfancy]

MickyD
I was interested to hear that you miss the Gramophone CD. I always thought that it was an idea that didn't really work. I know that at first it seemed sensible to have clips from new releases, but they were usually too short to allow you to judge properly, and I thought the competition was fatuous ( probably because I always failed to guess one or two!)
I much prefer the cover disc with the BBC Music Magazine. Some performances disappoint, but the generally quality is pretty high, and some issues have been really excellent.

[Eudaimonia]

I think that part of Mr Everard's unpleasant style must be a product of his schooldays, when everyone knew that Everard was dear Larry Grayson's 'friend' and subsequently when Everard was that mangy mutt on EastEnders

You know, there's probably a lot of truth in this: being picked on as a child warps your character in ways that last a lifetime. It's all in how you choose deal with it, isn't it? In my case, I muddled through by pretending to have a good humour about being mocked for my speech impediment or being poor or whatever, but it secretly hardened me against everyone. Which I suppose is how I ended up having my classmates vote me "Most Polite and Well-Mannered Girl" when in reality I was dripping with contempt and disdain for every last one of them.

Yep, politeness is definitely a social strategy.

[Nick Armstrong]

...

Personally, I find being treated with condescending fake-chumminess to be far more insulting then being honestly told to get stuffed.

Spot on, Euda !

Couldn't agree more.

[MickyD]

MickyD
I was interested to hear that you miss the Gramophone CD. I always thought that it was an idea that didn't really work. I know that at first it seemed sensible to have clips from new releases, but they were usually too short to allow you to judge properly, and I thought the competition was fatuous ( probably because I always failed to guess one or two!)
I much prefer the cover disc with the BBC Music Magazine. Some performances disappoint, but the generally quality is pretty high, and some issues have been really excellent.

Hi Ferretfancy! Yes, I still do miss the CD - I didn't really mind the clips being too short because it was the overall sound of the recordings which I wanted to sample. Very often I have been disappointed with discs from top-notch ensembles that have been given dry, close acoustics which I can't really get on with at all. The Gramophone CD gave me the chance to sample before buying. As for the competition, well, to my surprise, I actually won it a few years ago! I didn't think the contest was that hard in that particular month, but as luck would have it, I knew all the pieces and obviously came first out of the hat. First time I've ever won anything!

[MickyD]

A couple of interesting recent posts from Mark Valencia on the Covermount CD Discontinuance debate on the Gramophone Forum.

http://www.gramophone.co.uk/forum/general-discussion/covermount-cd-discontinuance?page=26

I wonder if anyone from the magazine is going to reply?

[Panjandrum]

Frankly, given that each CD extract literally lasts for no more than 3-4 minutes; is the choice of the editor, whose taste is, at best, suspect, and there are at least a couple of hundred other new releases which never featured on the CD, I think the loss of the covermount has been overstated. Time to move on probably!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Time to move on probably!

...possibly to International Record Review.

[MickyD]

...possibly to International Record Review.

Yes, and I'd love to know just how many have done so after all this...

[mikealdren]

Well I have, I stopped Gramophone a while ago (after about 40 years) for all the well documented reasons and I now buy IRR. In many ways it's probably better than G ever was, it's certainly written for adults with sensible length reviews and the pages of text uninterrupted by graphics etc.

Mike

[VodkaDilc]

Yes, and I'd love to know just how many have done so after all this...

I did it (started buying IRR) in March 2000 (Issue No 1).

[Don Petter]

Same here. I have subscribed since the first issue (didn't realise it was so long ago).