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Personally, I’ve never been a fan of any awards shows, so writing a post about the GRAMMY Awards was really not my first choice of things to write about this week. However, strange as it may seem, there has been a fair amount of buzz on the internet about yesterday’s GRAMMY Awards (the classical winners, that is).
Critic Anne Midgette wrote a fine piece, which appeared in Saturday’s Washington Post, in which she posed the question whether these awards serve any purpose for the classical music business. In her article she comments “…Some say that a Grammy is a sign of respect from one’s peers in the business. This is pure spin. For classical music, it is not clear what the award means at all. ” But she also says, “…But on the other hand, the Grammys are starting to reward smaller labels, offbeat repertory, recordings nobody has heard of. Consider last year’s “Padilla: Music of the Mexican Baroque” on the label Rubedo Canis, or William Bolcom’s “Songs of Innocence and Experience,” which won three Grammys for Naxos in 2005…” In short, there are kind of two sides to this story.
In truth, from the number of GOOGLE alerts which appeared in my Inbox right after the awards, it was clear to me that some people “were” paying attention to the classical winners. Whether I read negative or positive feedback or just a mention, it seems that the word is getting out there.
There is no doubt that vast amounts of superb and worthy recordings are not nominated (or ever win awards of any kind for that matter). But this has always been the case with awards. I think we can all find examples of awards we feel should have gone to someone else. But, worthiness, is also to some degree subjective. I am not making a judgment here, but recently the Pulitzer Prize in Music (yes, another award everyone loves to hate), went to my former teacher Yehudi Wyner for his piano concerto Chiavi in Mano over Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs. As a person who has always written for voice and has set Spanish for years, I personally felt that Lieberson’s Neruda Songs were one of the finest and most powerful works written in years. I also really loved Yehudi’s concerto when I finally heard a recording of it. But back then the question did arise as to why the Neruda Songs didn’t win.
Naxos’ big win for Joan Tower’s Made in America recording has been congratulated and criticized in almost equal measure. I read my colleague Jerry Bowles’ posting on this site this morning, in which he said about the Tower: “I think it sounds like something written in 1939, which shows you what I know.” If I understand Jerry’s correctly he has missed some of the point of the piece: Made in America was written so that a work by a living composer could be shared among orchestras big and small. It was written so that more people would have the experience of working on a piece written by a living composer and, in many cases, have the experience of working with the composer directly. And, most important, it brought this music to audiences who might never have heard a work less than 100 years old on a classical concert program. Perfect? Of course not.
With any luck, these kind of initiatives will continue beyond the Ford Made in America and extend to other groups and performers who will pool resources in order to commission a work by a composer whose music they want to champion. In fact, this already is happening. In 2001 pianist Bruce Levingston (a fellow Chelsea resident) founded Premiere Commission, a non-profit organization that promotes and premieres commissions of new works. And there are other organizations where artists can go and “share” in the premiere of a new work (there is one organization in particularly whose name escapes me—maybe a fellow blogger will remember).
In any case, we can argue the relative merits of awards till the cows come home. I, for one, wouldn’t mind winning one. But that’s another post, for another day.
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