Hmmm, I think that most people do put Neidich in the same category as Heifitz, Kreisler, Agerich. Neidich won Munich, Naumburg, Geneva, and a few other INTERNATIONAL COMPETITIONS. No clarinetist in the history of the instrument has won so many INTERNATIONAL competitions. MUSIC FIRST, DMITRI. Have you won any international competitions, Dmitri?

The clarinet was invented for the purpose of expression through sound. The way you think. You put the clarinet first and your dogmatic, nonsensical ideas about it first, and you put the composers intentions and ideas second. You are not a musician. I just played under Sejii Ozawa last week, and you wouldn`t have lasted 5 seconds. You push buttons and blow air when you play. That has no value. I can create that with a computer sequencer. You will never touch anyone with the clarinet. Have fun ruining classical music.

While I don`t want to embarass all of you by telling you my credentials, I will tell you this. I have studied with Yehuda Gilad, and many of his students (including myself) play in orchestras all through the world. Yehuda refered to Charlie Neidich as a one of a kind first rate musician. So even your "orchestral" school of playing hears what is going with Neidich. Ricardo Morales who doesn`t care for Neidich`s playing much, still can hear that what Neidich is after is music--even though he disagrees with aspects of his interpretation. If you give me your address, Dmitri, I`ll send you a solution so that you can clean out YOUR EARS. Normally, I wouldn`t be so angry, but Dmitri is the reason why people hate classical music and find it extremely boring, and someone has to let him know that he is going to ruin it for the rest of us.

First off, I must commend you for studying with Gilad. I know he is a good teacher, as I know many of his students. Perhaps we have even met.

First off, to say that one is a classical player, you must look at the first syllable of the word. Class. Neidich, plain and simply put, does not have class in his playing. Does he value the tradition that has been set? From Bach to Beethoven to Wagner to whoever you please, Neidich is simply not conforming to tradition. Is that bad? Well, if you do not value tradition in playing, then no, that is not bad. Neidich is one hell of a technician. I do not know anyone who would not put him as one of the best in the world if ever when it comes to technique on clarinet. But to say that he is a "class"ical player, that just doesn`t sit right with me. Heifitz, etc. valued tradition, and it was evident in their playing. Some of the basic principles of musicianship are heard in their playing: four bar phrases, every note is important(dont you think composers would at least want that?), and all of the other simple rules of basic musicianship. I do not hear these principles being adheared to in Neidich`s playing.

On a side note, I have never entered into an international competition. At the same time, I have never sat on the board of one either, only to raise the age requirement, and then enter myself and consequently win the competition.

dmitrigribanov@hotmail.com

I have seen with my own eyes letters that Donald Martino, Joan Tower, Jean Francaix, John Corigliano, Milton Babbit and other living composers have written personally to Charles Neidich, thanking him for his exceptional musicianship. A few above mentioned names compared him to Heifitz and Kreisler. They had no reason to do this, save they were unbelievably touched by his playing. After hearing Charlie play his concerto, Francaix wrote Charlie a letter, "Thank God! Someone finally understands my music and plays it with the spirit I envisioned." Donald Martino told Neidich personally that the way he plays his set his how he heard it in his head--and that no one had ever done this before. Elliot Carter asked Charlie to give the New York premiere of his concerto, and recently wrote a duet for him and his wife as a gift. Considering how much manuscript study Neidich does and how many treatise he has read and how many photocopies of correspondance between composers and clarinetists he has, you might want to rethink your opinion of his interpretations.

You`re wrong, dude. The Composers disagree with you. The panel of every single international competition disagrees with you. Deutsche Grammaphon disagrees with you. Yehuda Gilad disagrees with you. And the concert going public disagrees with you. I disagree with you. Maybe the high school kids with no ears agree with you and Leister but that`s about it.

He may not have the most beautiful sound, but sound is a means to an end, not an end. Food for thought.

So fine let`s agree to disagree.

Perhaps those composers were so happy to have someone promoting his/her music that they were forced to write rave reviews concerning his playing? Have you not seen many reviews in very established magazines(ie. NY Times) rave about a performance simply because it would sell? Look at the "premire" orchestra in NYC. How many times have you heard a performance by them(in any medium) and thought, man that was a terrible performance? However, the reviewers simply loved the performance and wrote wonderful things. Now, insert Charles Neidich`s name in the last statement and there you go. How many people actually understand musicality enough to make a fair and unbiased statement regarding a concert? Not too many.

It saddens me that there are so many idiots in this world that would rather sacrifice artistic integrity for something that sells. In the last post, you told me to stick with the German style of playing with the comment regarding Leister. PLEASE! I do not wish to be grouped in the same category as those who bastardize the concept of musicality. Any listener with half a brain would much prefer the elegance and beauty of the German school of playing to that crassness of most American clarinetists.

Keep wallowing in the mud. Thats where all pigs go to play.

Well the mud at Juillard and Tanglewood feels some good, loser.

PS-none of those composers make any money or PR gain from complementing Neidich. Check out their tax refunds through the freedom of information act.

BYE!

keypad sticks... excuse me, Juilliard

Dmitri, you hit the nail on the head! I don`t necessarily agree with everything you say all the time but at least, you give some semblance of a basis to your argument and in this case, you`re completely on the right track.

Wild, you`re so obsessed with yourself. Who cares who you studied with or what orchestras you`ve played in? Besides, orchestras are an entirely different story. If you played like Neidich in an orchestra, you`d be collecting a dole payment in about 2 hours. If you studied with Jack Brymer or Gervase de Peyer or Neidich himself, the opinions on what is acceptable musicality and what is not are going to vary, regardless and every teacher, in some way or another, impresses their opinion on their students. It doesn`t make it correct, necessarily. It doesn`t make any of those clarinetists less of musicians because they don`t have the same idea about clarinet playing. It doesn`t matter how fabulous the teacher you have is - they could still have a different idea as to what is good and what is not. You can`t say that Jack Brymer (vale), Charles Neidich and Sabine Meyer come from the same schools, yet they have as much merit as performers as each other. REGARDLESS OF YOUR OPINION ON WHAT IS GOOD FOR YOUR PLAYING AND HOW YOU WOULD LIKE TO PLAY.
As for reviews, they are written PRIMARILY to guide people in the buying and selling of recordings and ticket sales to concerts as well as feedback to a performer. For no other reasons. I often read reviews of across-the-board bad performances and listen to the reviewer glow. It doesn`t mean that they know ANY MORE than the average music lover - you can tell by the local paper in my city that you don`t necessarily have to know ANYTHING to write a review for a paper.
And reviewers love awesome technique - its a immediately recognisable element in a performance. And nobody was denying that Neidich has an unparallelled technique. But then, if you created a robot that could play a clarinet, it would have perfect technique too. But that`s not all music is about. Its about being able to phrase, ebb and flow exquisitely in order to create a mood, an ambience, a feeling that the composer was trying to evoke. And Neidich does hardly any of this. It`s affectation that he does, not musicality. He`s obsessed with playing something so fast that an audience takes notice. It doesn`t make it good music. It just makes it showy. That`s not the same thing. Whilst an audience will go away reeling from the technical wizardry, I doubt anyone would go away after the Rossini feeling like they`d been overwhelmed by that joyful feeling that Rossini had wanted. Yes, its a virtuoso piece but that`s not ALL IT IS. That Rossini recording of Neidich`s is so ridiculously fast that it completely overrides the piece`s joyous, happy, fun feel - Rossini was the king of evoking extreme emotion and Neidich does nothing of this. I would rather hear a piece a little less showy but moves me than a piece of self-indulgence. And besides, there are some parts of it (ie. variation 2 and the maggiore) that are just plain stupid - you can`t even hear some of the notes that give the piece that life because he OVERDOES the tempos.

Wild, you`re so obsessed with your own opinions that you won`t listen to anyone else. I shudder to think what the world of clarinet playing will be like if the future is people like you who just put others down to get your unfounded opinions across. I would rather hear beauty in playing than conceited self indulgence and I fear that that is all we would get from you.

I`m not wasting another keystroke on this board. What I saw wasn`t reviews. What I saw was personal hand-written notes that the best living composers today wrote to Neidich.

I don`t think that you can have a better backing then that. When the likes of Elliott Carter, Jean Francaix, and Donald Martino all tell you, "They way I hear music in my head is how you play."

So if winning every international competition that exists, plus having the best living composers in the world write you piles of personal glowing notes, plus having recorded with Deutsche Grammaphon, Sony Classical, EMI, etc., plus bring tons of audiences to their feet and to tears doesn`t make you an amazing performer, I don`t know what does. Oh! Actually, it`s what Dmitri and Alyssa thinks.. That`s the gold standard.

And by the way, Alyssa, you`re the one who wanted to know what my credentials were, so I offered A FEW. The next time an orchestra goes under, blame yourselves, kiddos.

My playing had never made people come up to me weeping in hordes. But, on the other hand, none of my interpretations of anything have ever made anyone gag.

I played the second movement of the Mozart in a concert on the weekend. After the concert, members of both the audience and the orchestra said that I`d played it beautifully. This seems to indicate that my playing DOES touch people.
AND I didn`t get carried away by every little nuance. In my opinion, the Mozart demands expression, but it should be RESTRAINED expression, not a fit of histrionics.
Of course, Wild will disagree strongly. It`s so sad when people can`t accept that other people sometimes do hold different opinions.

I agree with Wild.

Neidich is an amazing musician. You can argue that you don`t like his interpretations, but you cannot say he is a bad musician.

Also, listen to more than just one recording before you judge. If you think he plays everything too fast and with a lack of phrasing then check out some of his other recordings. Try his Brahms Quintet or Mozart Concerto.

I`ve heard other recordings of the Rossini that go just as fast as Neidich`s (Martin Frost and Sabine Meyer are two). Furthermore, I seriously doubt that artists such as Sabine Meyer and Neidich play fast just because they can. Neidich has probably played the Rossini a billion times, and I`m sure there was some artistic reasoning to playing it fast. Perhaps because ITS A SHOWPEICE.

Neidich is an incredible musician whether you like his interpretations or don`t.

And furthermore, I`m certain that a musician could not have won as many contests or had such a good career as Neidich has if they were a hack.

Bryan, as a paying consumer, I have the right to determine the goodness or badness of anything I purchasw. Seeing as I did not receive my Neidich recordings for free, yes, I can say if I want that he is a bad musician.

I have several recordings of Neidich, including the Mozart Concerto, the Rossini Variations, and the Naumburg CD with the Mozart Quintet and Weber. So I have listened to many recordings of him. As I also expressed in a previous post, I too have seen him perform live. I walked away with awe of course. He is phenomenally gifted as a technician. But I was not stuck by his artistry. Regardless if the Rossini is a showpiece or whatever else, you still cannot sacrifice artisty.

You guys are getting way too upset over BS. If you like the guy, then go listen to him til you are deaf. Just don`t expect me to join the party.

PS: Bryan, Wild told me he had room in the mud for you if you want.

Cheers gentlemen.

I also have that recording of Sabine Meyer`s version of Rossini. Its not even close to the same tempo. At least you can hear each note come out. And she doesn`t sacrifice the musicality. She`s an example of someone who plays a showpiece with a little bit of class.

Just so you all know... He can play the Rossini faster... MUCH, MUCH FASTER then he does on his recording. Much, much, much, much faster. But he doesn`t. He plays the Rossini at about the tempo Heifitz would have played it, if it was a violin piece. (Go buy a recording of Heifitz playing Paganini Caprices).

At the level you are at, you are probably content to have people say "beautiful" "good" "very good." Musicians at higher levels don`t even think about that. They`ve mastered their instruments to the point that they only think about expression and to what degree and in what way their performances EFFECT people--i.e. goosebumps or tears. Many of your teachers probably don`t talk about this or hint at this because they never reached that level.

You should study history a bit more too before you become so complacent with your own interpretations. There are places in the Mozart Concerto that you could never really understand why he wrote what he wrote unless you know a bit about the acoustics of the instrument Stadler played on. Mozart actually wrote certain passages in certain ways because a new note with a misty kind of quality had just been added to the instrument. Mozart got excited about the possibility of new sound colors the same way modern composers do. (Neidich knows ALL about this because he owns several of those old instruments). I can`t play a C major scale on those things, and he plays Donnezetti etudes on them. and if you ask him to transpose everything up a half step and play it again--he can and freakishly well.

You and your proper "four bar" phrases.... It`s kind of a laugh. Do you know that Berlioz used herion and opium? (Read a book if you don`t) Why do you think Symphony Fantastique sounds so fantasy--like it comes from another world? Brahms` clarinetist Muhfeld used TONS of vibrato when he played and this is well documented in correspondence... Get off the page and into a book, and use your ear...

Question: who is going to take the time to research all of this? Who is going to go to the library of congress to recontruct Copland`s original version? Who is going to travel throughout Europe and the US studying manuscripts of the whole repetiore? Who is going to do this? The many or the few? (answer: the few).... You`ve got your answer, then, for why Neidich sounds so different. He is the few. He bases his interpretations on his research and his work with the old instruments. (Hello, magna cum Laude Yale?) Do you think Leister or even Sabine Meyer ever bothered to study any of this in the same detail? Well, I can tell you that I am close friend with a long time student of Sabine Meyer. He loves Sabine`s sound (as does everyone), but always complained that her approach to music was completely unintellectual... Isn`t it interesting half of you worship her and her musicianship.

Bryan, you are welcome to join the mud any time. A few weeks ago I played in the mud with Seji Ozawa, and a few weeks before that with Kurt Masur. They both complemented me profusely on mud slinging skills. We had a splendid time rolling around in it! Next week we will journey through the mud with Christoph von Dohnanyi. I have to say, Dmitri, the mud is a fabulous place to be. Cheers! Have fun staying plugged into the matrix