Talk:Gerard Schwarz
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You guys, this is pathetic. Don't you have anything better to do than argue musical opinion on a wikipedia talk page? these articles are supposed to provide information for everyone that is accurate and can be used to aid one's understanding of this person. Don't use these talk pages as means to express your opinions which (for the most part) are completely bias- the key word here, "former" sso player. Whether you love or hate Schwarz, you can't deny that he is one of the most famous conductors around (or you guys wouldn't care, right?) and as such deserves a proper article. I find it hard to believe that nobody writers, musicians, politicians, etc. have elaborate wikipedia articles, and one of the foremost conductors (regardless of commendation) has a small article that nobody has taken the time to put forth. Get a life you people, and instead of making a mockery of yourselves on this page, you should write the damn article. Sheesh
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Bruckneristhegreatest (talk • contribs) 06:51, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] This article still sucks
It's really incomplete and a little misleading - in short, a complete misrepresentation of who Gerard Schwarz is. Anyone fix it? --
Please do not delete talk pages.
This content is not slander, but music criticism. Music criticism goes with the territory of being a performer.
What I have against Schwarz is his conducting and his taste. See what is written below:
"Schwarz's musical tastes are conservative, his approach stodgy, and his conducting tired, as if his mind was elsewhere."
This has nothing to do with him having multiple jobs, which indeed is common practice among conductors (and is a good thing for orchestras, conductors, and audiences).
I live in oregon so I only get to see Gerard Schwarz once in a while but I just heard him conduct a concert of American music and it was passionate and much better played than anything I would hear in Liverpool (I'd like to visit sometime). What do you have against Gerard Schwarz? Is it anger that he had Liverpool as his second orchestra?
- Having heard the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (RLPO) myself, I can perhaps understand your comment that music you heard performed elsewhere was better played than you would hear in Liverpool. (Although I find it hard to see how you could make this comment without ACTUALLY having heard the RLPO.) However, if this is true, the reason is because the RLPO is so little tested with contemporary music. Performers do not get better playing the same 18th and 19th century repertoire over and over until they grow bored with it. They get better by being stretched, asked to play outside their comfort zone, required to play new music, music for which they have to master new techniques and to practice. The RLPO under Schwarz has been singularly unambitious in its repertoire. What new music they have played has mostly been neo-romantic in style, which barely stretches them beyond their existing skills. The boredom of the players is evident to those of us in the audience. To the extent that the RLPO performs at a level lower than that which it is capable, this is primarily the fault of its principal conducter -- for the last 5 years, one G. Schwarz. The RLPO could be so much better than it is. 2007-07-19.
And tonight (2006-05-11), under guest conductor Gustavo Dudamel, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (RLPO) played with a passion and enthusiasm unlike anything ever heard from them under G. Schwarz. The difference in energy was palpable -- as if the orchestra were tonight led by Hugo Chavez, when normally it were led by Dick Cheney!
I seem to have offended a Schwarz supporter by criticizing him! I am pleased you find something to your taste in his tired and lifeless conducting.
However, whatever our different views of his performances, it is inappropriate for Wikipedia's entry on the man to read like it was written by his PR agent.
How can you be comparing Gerard Schwarz to Matthew Coorey? Obviously you know nothing about musical style or anything about phrasing. Have you ever sat down with a record of Maestro Schwarz's and a score and analyzed what he does? Let me tell you it is unbelievable. I thought that Leonard Bernstein's recordings of the Mahler symphonies were great but now having bought the Schwarz Mahler 1 and 4 I can tell you that they are unmatched by any musician, especially Matthew Coorey! Not to say that he isn't a good conductor but please. I only wish that I could make it out to Seattle more to hear his performances. And just so you know putting a critic's review in an argument also shows your lack of knowledge, at one time critics said that Brahms 2 had no melodies. A couple years ago a chicago reviewer confused a Prokofiev quartet with a Haydn one!
PR agent?
"Viewed by many as one of the greatest American conductors . . ."
This entry reads like it was written by Schwarz's PR agent. As someone who has seen him conduct the RLPO many times, I certainly do not share this rosy view of his musical abilities. Schwarz's musical tastes are conservative, his approach stodgy, and his conducting tired, as if his mind was elsewhere. Compared to the other great international conductors we can hear regularly in the NorthWest of England -- Gianandrea Noseda, Mark Elder, even Matthew Coorey -- Schwarz is a poor relation.
I am not alone in this view. Alex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker, wrote last year:
"A decade ago, the Mostly Mozart Festival, Lincoln Center’s venerable summertime series, was offering some of the dullest concerts in the Western Hemisphere. I remember a performance of Mozart’s Flute Concerto in D, with Jean-Pierre Rampal as the soloist and Gerard Schwarz conducting the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, which was positively bureaucratic in its self-satisfied mediocrity, as if it were being piped in from a department of motor vehicles in Leonid Brezhnev’s Russia. I briefly considered abandoning music criticism for cat-sitting."
Alex Ross: A Little Late-Night Music, The New Yorker, 2005-08-29.
While with the RLPO, Schwarz has championed American composers, but all of them conservative, unadventurous, mid-century people, the sort who won't be remembered in 10 years, let alone 100. Where are the pieces by Cage, by Feldman, by Adams, et al? That a city of such great musical innovation as Liverpool, a city which can fill the 1000-seat Philharmonic Hall for a concert of Varese and electronica, should be subjected to conservative tosh is indeed a shame.
"...his marvelous interpretations of great masterpieces have still to be matched." Where is the evidence of this? --Wikismile 16:02, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
it is fairly evident... to anyone who lives in Seattle and has ever attended a performance tainted by Gerry Schwarz that his conducting ability is balls. As an avid fan of the good music and a Schwarz/SSO veteran, I feel qualified to say that his interpretations range from the simply mediocre to the utterly disastrous and embarrassing. Most people who have attended a Schwarz concert and know anything about music would agree, I think, as witnessed by his (quasi-forced) departure from his British orchestra. But anyways, I think it is rather important that this article get fixed up by, if not a neutral source, then a biased source who writes neutrally. Any fellow Seattleites up to it?
P.S. Gerry: if that's you on the talk page, you suck! Get over yourself.
In support of the "quasi-forced" comment in the note from Seattle above: the leading British newspaper, the Guardian, reported on 2004-07-31 that Gerard Schwarz's contract with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra was not renewed after two-thirds of the RLPO's players voted against it. Having lost the confidence of so many orchestra members -- an orchestra led in the past by people like Max Bruch and Malcolm Sargent -- seems unfortunate for someone who is "particularly noted for his orchestra building abilities." The text definitely needs revision in the light of the facts.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gerard_Schwarz"
[edit] Wikipedia is not a soapbox
Would the editors of the previus messages please read Wikipedia is not a soapbox. Also please sign your messages. Thank you. S.dedalus 22:12, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
