Spitball Army

I am finding all sorts of buried things lately, as I empty out boxes, delete files, organize and clean things and rooms.  Today I ran across this review – which is more of an evisceration than a critical appraisal, really – of a classical recording from several years ago.  It had once been posted on my company’s website, as a sort of “cautionary tale,” I guess, but it had to removed when the artist in question threatened legal action (her name has been changed to Mary below, as all other identifiable names have been changed and italicized).  I promise you that none of the acid of the reviewer’s prose has been diminished by the disguising of the details.  Enjoy! and happy wincing:

In sending her self-produced CD to Magazine for review, I’m sure that Mary took into account the risk associated with placing her fate in the hands of a reviewer who might judge her harshly, especially in comparison to the many keyboard giants and masters who have played these works. As bad luck of the draw would have it, her CD fell into the merciless hands of yours truly, who takes his Revered Composer very seriously.

Mary, the brief note tells us, was born in Anytown, and has performed solo recitals in Country #1, Country #2 and Country #3. Her formal resumé, however (which can be found on the Internet), is quite lengthy; and tellingly, it presents scant evidence of actual performance history. Her main interest, it seems, is in the area of Very Small Niche Academic Specialty Combining Social Sciences With Music. She has published such papers as Paper With Long Title #1 and Paper With Long Title #2. She has been on the faculties of a number of colleges and universities, and is presently an associate professor at the University‘s School of Music, which is a part of A Larger Academic Department.

Based on the evidence of this CD, I strongly urge Mary to keep her day job. This is bad, very bad. “How bad is it?” you ask. Without a doubt, the most incompetent, amateurish, crude, clumsy, and substandard playing I have heard outside of a junior high-school recital. Mary‘s playing is riddled with technical flaws – almost as many missed notes as hit ones, loss of coordination between the hands, unsteady rhythms, uncontrolled voicing of chords, and plain, outright misreadings of the printed scores. Examples are so numerous and so egregious, I could write paragraphs, but I won’t. The scherzo movement (tempo indicator) of Op. Number is enough. Mary manages to land on wrong notes at cadences, and in the reprise, the staggered rhythm between the two hands gets so out of sync that wrong notes fly out right and left (no pun intended). I held my breath just waiting for the whole thing to come unglued. Ditto, the last movement of the “Other Piece’s Nickname,” which, even at Mary‘s lumbering, elephantine tempo, is light-years beyond her grasp. Entire passages are mangled and mutilated almost beyond recognition. It’s like witnessing the scene of some grotesque highway accident; stomach-turning as it is, fascination with the horror of it is mesmerizing.

I can understand how a piano student would make such a recording for practice and playback study purposes, but there is no excuse for such a thing to have been sent out for review. It is a travesty, an insult to The Revered Composer and to anyone who respects this music. People have been arrested and fined for lesser acts of public indecency. Mary is the pianist’s equivalent of Florence Foster Jenkins; though at least in the latter’s case we can all have a good laugh. There is, however, nothing funny about this.

If you thought it couldn’t get any worse, the recording is a disaster. It sounds as if a thick blanket has been wrapped around the piano, muffling the sound. The thought of a silencer on a gun comes to mind; maybe whoever was at the controls was trying to cover up the crime.

Should some deep, dark desire for self-inflicted pain possess you to acquire this abomination, you can e-mail Mary@internetserviceprovider.