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Dan Rottenberg’s arts-and-culture online magazine, Broad Street Review, is quickly becoming a daily read for anyone interested in the Telenova-like plotlines of classical music aficionados, i.e. “Please tell Mr. Zaller, that Christoph Eschenbach has been sacked for crimes too egregious to enumerate.”
But, recently, I keep seeming to see references to Nazis in what one might assume was relatively a Nazi-free zone (the Philadelphia arts and culture scene).
Editor Rottenberg:
The power of critics to make or break performers is vastly overrated. Eschenbach is a big boy who’s been through a lot worse than bad reviews. He was left a speechless orphan at age five after witnessing the death of his grandmother and great-grandmother, for goodness’ sake. If after surviving the Nazis he can’t handle hostile critics wielding pens, he has no business conducting a major-league orchestra.
And the articles, too:
There was, however, at least one dissenting voice. David Patrick Stearns of the Inquirer was having none of it. Although he did find some moments of beauty in Riley’s music, his verdict is that Sun Rings is “best forgotten.”
David, David, David … surely by now you regret that very unfortunate choice of words. Best forgotten? Why? By who? Do you really mean that it is in the interest of a few hundred people who seemed to have had a really good time to delete the experience from their memories? If you despised Sun Rings, that’s fine with me. But you’re a journalist. Didn’t you notice anyone else at the event you were reviewing? “lthough after the concert a member of Kronos said they might release it as a DVD.)… having reached the age where I say things like, “Oh, what’s her name? You know…the actress who was in Sophie’s Choice,” I submit that no part of human experience— be it that horrible blind date when you were 15, the music of Frederic Delius, or even the Holocaust– is “best forgotten.” And, I assure you, this performance of Sun Rings and the idealism that inspired it is much better savored and remembered.
Last week Rottenberg compared Jewish ghettos to the Gayborhood:
And so it was. Within the safe confines of their “Jewborhood,” as hip locals dubbed it, my people felt free to let down their hair and do their own thing. They could crack pope jokes, count their gold coins out in the sunlight, eat meat on Fridays and play pinochle on Easter without feeling self-conscious. They could opt out of the mainstream society’s colorful traditions— Christmas carols, chamber music concerts, jousting tournaments, crusades, inquisitions, witch trials— without guilt. Meanwhile, the mainstream folks who lived beyond the Jewborhood were similarly liberated to celebrate their resurrections, holy ghosts and suffering saints without any skeptics rolling their eyes in the cheap seats.
Shielded from the disapproval of aliens, our people reinforced our culture and self-esteem, and the mainstream people across the wall reinforced theirs. It was a win-win situation! Or, as a wise king of those good old days (I forget which wise king— there were so many!) put it, “Good ghettoes make good neighbors.”
To be sure, all good things must come to an end, and the Jewborhood was no exception. The place no longer exists— I think there was a fire or something— and its virtues have faded from memory with the passage of time. (When I ask my older relatives if they’ve ever gone back for a visit, they look at me strangely.)
Seriously, guys, cool it on the Nazi references, unless they’re building a wall around the Gayborhood and I hasn’t noticed it yet.
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