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Off with the Pixels

This month I’ve been unusually digital, engrossed in editing audio, staring at my laptop screen moving music and speech around, before checking my emails, reading the day’s news and then relaxing with a movie online. I realised I had become fixated on my screen, completely off with the pixels. Then I took more notice of those around me, everywhere on trains and planes and street corners and restaurants, people are off with their own pixels, head down staring at a screen like battery hens waiting for the next pellet, obsessively checking messages and Facebook and Twitter, desperate for contact from anyone else who is trapped in their own bubble of digitised information. There is something empty about digital data. There is no weight to it, nothing tangible, it is all empty calories like eating potato chips all day. After a day of digital activity, I feel faintly queasy, unsatisfied, as if I haven’t actually achieved anything at all. The music I have been editing has been made by humans, but it has no energy, no sense of being real. It is so easy now to find any music or entertainment online, it begs the question why go to all the…

October 17, 2013
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CD and Other Review

Review: Goldmark: Symphones No 1 & 2 (Singapore Symphony)

Karl Goldmark creeps into the more expansive music reference works for two reasons: his brief teaching – in Vienna – of Sibelius; and his 1877 Rustic Wedding Symphony, a five-section, 45-minute divertissement which Sir Thomas Beecham enjoyed reviving. Other than that, he seems almost entirely forgotten (though a handful of violinists, including Joshua Bell and the late Nathan Milstein, have recorded his concerto). Most people will have been totally unaware that Goldmark even attempted a Second (i.e. non-Rustic-Wedding) Symphony, but he did, and this is actually its second CD version. The first – a Marco Polo release two decades old – was unavailable for comparative purposes, which is perhaps as well, since the golden-toned new disc surely surpasses it. Singapore can now boast a really effective local orchestra, better than some Australian bands and worthy to rank with all save the topmost American ensembles. Touches of string portamento give a pleasantly old-fashioned atmosphere to various passages. Latter-day Beckmessers might dock points for some slightly crude trombone sounds and for the cornet-like first trumpet that dominates the symphony’s third movement; the rest of… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

October 17, 2013