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Friday, December 14, 2001

PSO director: We can't get stuck in the past

I must take exception to Mr. Nicholas C. Mitchell's criticism ("Disenchanted with PSO," Feedback, Dec. 7) of the Pittsburgh Symphony's current programming direction, and in particular the contemporary "For 24 Winds," by American composer Lukas Foss.

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I want to provide our audience with diversity -- the tried and true works of the old masters and music of a more provocative nature, like Mr. Foss'. We must strike a balance in the music we present -- looking to our past, living the present and discovering our future.

Music is nourishment for the soul. As with food, you would not want to eat steak every night. What makes a great orchestra is its ability to perform a wide range of repertoire. The Pittsburgh Symphony is a world-class orchestra, in the same league as New York, Chicago and Boston, but we do not play nearly the new and unusual repertoire that they offer their audience. If we were to just play Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, we would run out of repertoire quickly, while at the same time not serving our art form or our audience.

To be a leader, we must be forward thinking and not get stuck just in the past. The Pittsburgh Symphony is sensitive to the varied tastes of our audience and created a very liberal exchange policy to accommodate those preferences.

MARISS JANSONS
Music Director,
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

Beethoven's great -- don't wear it out

So Mr. Mitchell is not renewing his subscription to the PSO because it had the temerity to confuse him!

As an introduction to its opening piece, Leonard Slatkin explained with insight and humor what the audience was about to experience in "For 24 Winds." The piece took approximately 12 minutes to perform. Yes, it was -- in part -- cacophonous. Yes, we were prepared for it by Mr. Slatkin. Yes, it was new and different and it wasn't Beethoven's greatest hits.

The empty seats mostly were there because many people were not willing to compete for parking with so many performances going on Downtown.

There are a legion of us, contrary to Mr. Mitchell's opinion, who look forward to hearing pieces of music we've never heard before performed live by the marvelous musicians of the PSO. We enjoy the challenge. The concerts are always well rounded with enough "standards" so that a 12-minute piece should not be too much for a music lover (like Mr. Mitchell?) to bear.

I sure hope he doesn't wear out his recording of the 5th Symphony!

LORETTA BARONE
Point Breeze

Atonality has its time and place

I was puzzled by Nicholas Mitchell's letter regarding the Nov. 30 PSO concert. To be quite fair, I didn't exactly enjoy the aural assault of "For 24 Winds," either. (OK, when the guy next to me suggested burning the sheet music, I may have muttered something about storming the stage with torches.) And I did observe an unusual number of empty seats. But why would someone stay home in order to avoid a piece that scarcely ran 10 minutes? If the early reviews scared you off, go get a drink and arrive a bit late.

At any rate, didn't the sublime Meyer violin concerto that followed more than make up for the preceding 10 minutes of riotous atonality? And what a wild and crazy ride we had with the Strauss. It was fun sorting out all the less common instruments (my first known exposure to the heckelphone), the flurry of short solos from the various sections, the sight of musicians scurrying on and off stage. Excessive, yes, but if you were looking for an evening of varied entertainment, you were in the right place!

Any concert showcasing the double reeds for all three pieces is a rare pleasure -- particularly a concert using English horn, multiple bassoons and contrabassoon for every number. And artistic appreciation leaves a lot of room for subjectivity. It's even within the (distant) realm of possibility that there's someone out there who enjoyed those 10 minutes of Foss.

SUSAN WRIGHT
South Fayette

Reinstate 'Judge Parker,' pitch these

The decision to impeach Judge Parker and to disbar his colleague, Sam Driver, Esq., was a mockery of justice.

Over the years there has been a strong tendency to eliminate comics that tell a continuing story. "Dick Tracy," "Orphan Annie," "Terry and The Pirates," "Joe Palooka" and many others have been swept aside in favor of strips that emphasize jokes. These gag-a-day efforts are drawn for the most part with less skill and are necessarily repetitious -- after all, how many original gags can a cartoonist come up with in a year?

At age 76 I have followed "Judge Parker" for more years than I can precisely remember. Continuing story strips, one after another, have been cast aside over the decades, and the loss of the well-drawn and well-narrated examples of this disappearing art are felt almost as personal losses. What has become of the good people in "Gasoline Alley"? The old friends who populated that strip were generally superior to the trash who often fill today's trendy, crudely drawn, sometimes puzzling efforts at comedy.

Candidates for removal include:

1. "Mother Goose & Grimm": Won't someone sooner or later get tired of toilet bowl "humor"? The extreme vulgarity of this approach, and its success in retaining a place on the comic page, lead me to wonder if "Judge Parker" might have saved itself from banishment if it had a character who drank from toilet bowls and ate garbage.

2. "Dilbert" is unrelieved negativism, same thing over and over again, drawn seemingly by an 11-year-old.

3. What is "Liberty Meadows" all about? No suspense, no narrative talent. The art work is first class, but what a waste of talent.

4. "The Boondocks" is an endless, relentless whine of self-pity, extreme political opinions and undiluted hatred.

5. "Peanuts": Same old stuff on football ineptitude, baseball ineptitude, Snoopy's literary ineptitude, scholastic ineptitude, on and on, over and over. How many, many more years of this?

HERMAN L. FELDMAN
Ellwood City

Here's to new works

We are writing to agree wholeheartedly with David Caldwell's letter commending our colleagues at the Pittsburgh Public Theater for their new play programming and emphasizing the importance of new works to the life of the arts ("Premieres are precious at least on 'Paper,' " Feedback, Nov. 30).

As a company whose mission is to produce contemporary theater, City Theatre is our region's leader in new play commissioning, development and production. The value of presenting first-rate new plays by both emerging and established talented playwrights is evident by the ongoing life of the world premieres we have commissioned and produced even in the past couple of seasons. Jeffrey Hatcher's "Compleat Female Stage Beauty" (American Theatre Critics/Steinberg New Play Award winner), Craig Wright's "The Pavilion" (Pulitzer nominee) and Chaim Potok and Aaron Posner's "The Chosen" have received no fewer than 15 productions among them since they opened at City Theatre and are optioned for New York productions. Mr. Hatcher's play has been adapted as a screenplay and the film version is slated for a 2002 release by Artisan Entertainment and Tribeca Films.

Currently, the world premiere of "Squonk Opera -- BURN" is playing at City Theatre before it begins a national tour, and several more commissions and world premiere productions are in development for later this season and beyond. New works infuse the theater with fresh creative energy and give our artists and arts organizations, as well as our audiences, the rare and exciting opportunity to contribute to, and hopefully transform, the art of the American theater. Bravo to all theater companies courageous enough to invite the risk.

IRA H. GORDON
THOMAS HOLLANDER
Co-chairs, City Theatre's New Works
On Stage Committee

Harrison didn't heed word of Jesus

I would like to give my thoughts on the passing of George Harrison. Not all of the world mourns the loss of a great humanitarian, as Steve Zmigrosky wants us to believe ("George Harrison and all things that passed," Feedback, Dec. 7).

George Harrison was a musician and songwriter, undeniably. But as George got deeper into Hinduism and Hare Krishna and played the sitar, millions of people were still starving in India. It was like Nero playing the violin as Rome burned. George was getting reflective on his inner self and talking about selfish people but not really looking at himself.

Poetic George has passed as all things do, but had he done as a Christian is called to do, look in the poor and see Christ, then he would have responded to the needs of the poor. Dying with an estate of $300 million shows the true measure of a man.

Let those who want to believe in George Harrison believe in him, but as a Christian we have better ways to make the world a better place.

Love as Jesus did and serve others. As Jesus said, "It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter heaven." It's a shame George Harrison never followed this principle to truly make this a better world.

CRAIG GALIK
Duquesne