Now I know how Salieri felt
I just heard about Jay Greenberg, who has been signed to a contract by Sony, who is releasing his 5th symphony. He's 14. He for damn sure has more facility than I do. I don't know what his music sounds like yet..."Brahmsian" was suggested by one of the articles on his webpage. I'm getting little snippets (streaming audio doesn't work from this dialup), and as far as I can tell by the 3-second bursts of sound, it may indeed be Brahmsian, in a root sense, but it doesn't sound like Brahms...or like the zitfaced kid that stares from that page.
Grrr!
Comments
Posted by: jeffrey smith
Posted on: August 26, 2006 11:00 PM
Salieri isn't a fair comparison. IIRC, even at fourteen Wolfie was getting, shall we say, editorial input, from Leopold. And no doubt the web page is providing the best of his output, not the average.
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: August 27, 2006 07:10 AM
Damn little editorial input.. Do you know Leopold's work? He simply wasn't qualified to critique his son, and pretty much gave up composing. What he was somewhat qualified for was being a stage dad and manager.
I assume I was hearing the symphony. I'll listen at work, where I can actually listen (28.8 kbs doesn't cut it). The probalem with making a splash with your Symphony #5 is that you can't hide Nos. 1-4. But as Virgil Thomson said to Ned Rorem, "Don't worry,baby; some works just sort of withdraw themselves." People don't listen to Mozart #1 a lot either.
Oliver Knussen and Lowell Liebermann were making waves at 16, so this isn't totally unprecedented.