I wonder how many of you are familiar with this South African composer, whose much-delayed 2nd String Quartet - a BBC commission - was recently premiered on Radio 3? It didn't strike me as a particularly memorable work but what is interesting is the long, festering feud between the composer and Roger Wright, the R3 controller. For some reason Mr Rosenzweig believes he has been fobbed off and his career sabotaged elsewhere as well, resulting in a MySpace page filled with some very colourful accusations and assertions.
I can readily sympathise with any composer of contemporary music, as most struggle to be heard. But there is more than a whiff of paranoia here that puts Mr Rosenzweig in a category all of his own. He has even taken to remonstrating with his detractors on the R3 message board, using a number of clumsy aliases. Frankly his attitude is so abrasive I'm not surprised he finds it difficult to make headway in his chosen profession.
Now for the elephant in the room. It seems that Mr Rosenzweig believes anti-Semitism is the reason for his stalled career. I suppose that's always possible but I'm not convinced. Listening to the clips of his music I'm also not persuaded that he is a major talent, although several testimonials on his MySpace page - including one from Sir Charles Mackerras - would suggest otherwise. In any event the most disputatious piece, the 2nd String Quartet, hardly seems worth all the offence and aggravation, not to mention the blizzard of actionable material on his blog.
I hold no brief for Wright or the BBC and maybe, just maybe, Mr Rosenzweig has a legitimate grievance. But this curious affair made me wonder just how hard it is for composers to get a hearing these days and how far they might need to go to get one. Does anyone know of any comparable cases or is this a genuine one-off, a case of too little talent and too large an ego?
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This is an interesting paradox - a composer who seems to have plenty of objective recognition (awards etc.), commissions, favourable comment etc., but also seems to be dogged by apparent prejudice. Maybe Rued Langgaard is a comparable case - railing (clad in his underwear) against Nielsen's favouritism from his porch.
ReplyDeleteFrom a standpoint of complete ignorance of Rosenzweig I can only imagine that, deep down, this is a conflict of expectations. I too won a number of prizes and have had commissions and broadcasts, but without the usual major struggle (or good luck) on my part the composition career never really took off, so I have only myself to blame.
My only little experiment with regard to subjective 'discrimination' was, after numerous rejections from a publisher, the deliberate composition of an 'ugly' work full of special effects and serialism. This was of course immediately accepted. I left plenty of clues, such as technical information about how the melodic structure was based on the position of the currants in the slice of a bun, but to this day the 'Sonata Gastronomica' (1994) for solo bass flute is still a part of the Donemus catalogue.
If I still felt let down by the world for not queing up for my 'real' work, then I too would be a bitter and paranoid specimen.
I knew Rosenzweig for much of the 80s and most of the 90s when he was tilting against windmills with every breath. I well remember him telling me Colin Matthews was, in his opinion, the typical British music sausage!! The Almeida Festival (how we still miss the excitement and verve in concert planning) put on a concert of his works and all he did was verbally abuse everybody involved. His attitude really was unbelieveable. Some of the performers wanted to call the show off due to his intervention.
ReplyDeleteHe was awarded the West Berlin DAAD award and he moved to Berlin, bought a very expensive Porsche with a sizeable chunk of the money and often telephoned me complaining about the number of immigrants in his local supermarket!
And I don't believe that the number of supposed performances that came with the award actually happened. The reason? Prejudice. But knowing him one can well believe the real reason.
He was always telling me just what a fine conductor he was. Just before I refused to have anything further to do with him he got some money to give a concert and he formed a small string group to give one show which included his own Elegy for 13 solo strings. I refused to go to the event and was later told by one of the players that it wasn't particularly good and he even got lost in his own piece. Naturally, the players, he said, weren't up to the job!
I notice that there are many films of him conducting the Vidin State Philharmonic (north west Bulgaria), of which he is listed as the Principal Guest Conductor. The performance of Tchaikovsky 5, or at least the bits I've watched, is good but one suspects that, watching him in action, this is as much the fact that the orchestra can play the piece as in his direction of it.
Reading his MySpace rant - it truly is embarrassing - he doesn't appear to have written any new works in the 15 or so years since I last saw him, so the complaints don't really ring true. If he was a composer he'd keep writing no matter what. Look at Havergal Brian. But that said, I do think that he has a talent, maybe not a major talent, but a talent which should have brought him more exposure - had it not been for his attitude.
The String Quartet which was broadcast recently was given in 1995 (I doubt the Ardittis or, indeed, anyone else has even touched it since then) and the BBC sat on it, for whatever reason. But then I remember the BBC sitting on a Boulez Maida Vale concert I attended for over 10 years! It felt like a good performance but as I've not heard the work nor seen the score since 1995 I cannot really say. It's a strong piece but Rosenzweig's insistence on being "ganz in form", as Professor Domgrafassbender has it, is bloody infuriating. If only he'd let go once in a while and smile. But smiling isn't in Rosenzweig's nature.
Certainly the Elegy for 13 solo strings is a major achievement. As is the Symphony in one movement. The testimonials are real and valid, but are almost certainly based not on any hearing of the works but on reading them and, as all musicians know, the best performance of any music is always inside your head for the balance is always right and the music goes the way you want it to.
George Nicolson, another fine composer we hear too little of, once told me that whenever one of Rosenzweig's scores would arrive for a reading before some panel it was always accompanied by copies of the testimonials. It was as if he thought that the work couldn't stand up by itself and needed the encomiums (or is it encomia?) to make it more palatable. This attitude put many off.
It saddens me that this fine musician - and make no mistake about it, he is a fine musician - has totally blown just about any credibility he may ever have had. And he isn't writing music any longer. If only he'd kept his mouth shut - and pigs might fly - then he might just have got somewhere.
Learning to play the game is half the battle these days and some people never learn.