Word: thomson
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Beethoven at Last. To Virgil Thomson, critic of the New York Herald Tribune, who devoted three tart Sunday columns to the subject, the biggest audience in the U.S. is getting very poor service indeed. He had a flock of letters from readers telling him, "How right you are!" Both Ward French, president of Community, and Marks Levine, board chairman of Civic, were ready to tell him how wrong...
...Critic Thomson conceded the real accomplishments of the organized-audience plan. Music has been brought to many a U.S. community that had never heard Beethoven or Mozart beyond the range of a radio or record-player. Hundreds of young virtuosi who might otherwise be pounding nails instead of pianos for a living are playing recitals and concerts, building careers. And it is all done without local deficits. Individual "members" in each city pay their "dues" of $6 ($5 plus $1 federal tax) to their own community association, the number of members determines how much can be spent for artists...
...Where's Stravinsky? Critic Thomson's biggest quarrel was over programs. Artists "at the level of fame" of Flagstad, Heifetz, Horowitz and Rubinstein could "do as they please." But, he charged, the programs of artists at a lower level are "censored in a most arbitrary fashion" by the New York concert services (who promptly denied it). "With concert business bigger than ever (by volume)," wrote Thomson, "the concert repertory gets smaller year by year. There are only five piano sonatas by Beethoven that the central offices will accept without a row. No long work by Schumann is considered...
Actually, Thomson had some of his facts wrong. Community could prove by its 1949-50 programs that its 37 touring pianists played twelve Beethoven sonatas...
...Music right and Left" is not a book to be read at one sitting. Like brandy, it is most stimulating in small quantities. Too much Thomson is stupefying...