<<  -- 5 --  Bill Newman    TOTAL DEDICATION AND ACCORD

BN: Schoenberg and Webern were performed in Vienna, but rarely elsewhere.
HD: Not necessarily so.
BN: But did audiences understand their music?
HD: Do they really understand Schubert? Who knows what you understand when you listen to music?
BN: This is always an interesting topic. Do audiences conjure up their own pictorial impression of what the performance conveys to them?
HD: Hm ... for this reason I would prefer performing to audiences of non-musicians.
BN: Do you agree with that?
IB: Not necessarily. I would prefer having someone in the audience who knows what they are talking about. I certainly play better realizing that.

BN: From a critical listener's viewpoint, I need to be sympathetic to the artists' overall view of the music, preferably beforehand.
HD: Whenever we come onto the platform, I can immediately detect the attitude of the audience towards us.
IB: I can always feel it.
HD: Especially those who are non-musical. They listen to it in a different way to the musicians who are playing it.
IB: We, the musicians, analyse the music, and criticise each other's playing.
HD: It is the same with painting. The non-painter's viewpoint, as opposed to the professional painter with his ideas of composition and perspective.
IB: It's the same with concertgoing. I dislike piano recitals, and prefer orchestral and choral music.

BN: In my years in the record business -- with the emphasis on the product, not the music itself -- the aim to sell thousands of discs tended to distort my musical attitude. Likewise, so-called expert opinions in magazines, on broadcasts and television. Too much chitchat going on.
HD: It's all too available, and I can't see a way out.
IB: The Last Night of the Proms with all those closeups of silly promenaders wearing such stupid clothes. On television they all look so old. They used to have young audiences; where are they?
HD: It's all very sad. And they wait for a really quiet place to come along, before someone will suddenly shout out 'Bravo!' It ruins the concentration.
BN: Not to mention applauding between every movement. We were all young once but were we quite so badly behaved?
HD: I wouldn't dare to be.

HD: When we first started making long play records, we had a little commitee of four. The man was quite a good artist, and his wife was good commercially. He would paint the pictures for the front cover, but I had to get rid of him as he never produced the work on time. Then I was told by a Canadian company that they would like to sell our records, but that our covers were simply not commercial. We never considered this, but just thought about making records. Something glowing, silly -- to draw the eye. You put all your life, all your dedication into making the recording, and all it ends up as is an object of no intrinsic value; just an artifact stacked high in quantity on the factory floor. All the original feeling that went into it, is lost.

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