Posted on 08/12/2015 9:41:16 AM PDT by Borges
Most professional musicians and many teachers are very skeptical. The adulation mostly comes from amateurs and non musicians.
bkmk
It demonstrates complete mastery of orchestration, counterpoint, handling of musical form, and every other aspect of musical composition.
In fact, it is so good that the only comeback sourpusses have to spit at genius Mendelssohn is
"Well, he never got any better."
but he was a mediocre violinist with lots of technical problems as an adult.
He is an especially bad example to pick in the context the author uses him.
Mendelssohn is an example of a child prodigy who never lived up to his early promise - with the exception of the Violin Concerto. The Octet and the MSND Overture are the best things he ever wrote.
Oh and btw very little of the music that Mozart wrote as a child is all that highly regarded - apart from the curiosity of it having come from a child. He was actually a late bloomer as a composer and only started writing consistently great music in his mid 20s.
His scales are a broken up series of spasmodic jerks.
You’re letting your distaste for his antics color your view of his talent. His problem is a certain lack of taste. He indulges in garish exaggeration.
Your knowledge of musical composition is on a level with your knowledge of piano playing.
It is possibly the single greatest song in song literature.
That’s the critical consensus. Do you disagree? With what? Mozart wrote his best music after coming to Vienna in 1781. The stuff before then is not at that level with a few exceptions (9th piano concerto, the Symphonia Concertante). His early operas are not performed outside of scholarly festivals. Mendelssohn never surpassed the music of his teens. Sad but true.
The thing I hate about kids like this in any area is that they quickly become just novelty acts for adults. The kids are really just good at parroting what they see someone else say or do, and adults think that that is the sign of “genius”. They don’t bother to help the child that shows talent in a field to fully immerse them in serious study so that they will be thoroughly educated and be able to prosper once they are older if they choose to go on in that area.
Instead they shop them around to TV shows or put them on the internet, hoping that people will toss money at them (the parents)just because their “pet” learned a trick.
There was once some little boy in the early 90s whose only “genius” talent was being 5 and being able to say the Greek alphabet. He was on multiple TV shows displaying this unheard of ability that virtually any 5 year old IN GREECE could do, not to mention the millions of kids around the world that can speak 3 languages because they live in places where you have to. That kid later went on to do nothing special, because his parents didn’t think past the gimmick and his cuteness.
Lang Lang is at best, So So. Barely So. If I want a “technician” I will hire a computer analyst. I’ll take Mozart for 800, Alex.
MS, you won this thread : )
What a cranky crock of crap.
What do you disagree with?
Mozart said that about Clementi, that he was a technician without feeling or taste.
There may be the need to make a distinction between being a child performing prodigy, and being a compositional prodigy.
Agreed that his earliest stuff is merely ‘good’ to ‘very good’, but we don’t know how good of a performer he was at that age, relative to the standards of the time.
She never sang with an opera company—which an “opera singer” does.
She sang (not so well) single arias from operas.
That is not an opera singer.
May I suggest then, that you get a copy of the music that he is playing and read along as he plays. I think you will change your mind.
A lot of the ‘tricks’ his father had him perform could be done by any musically gifted child. Mozart is remembered for the great music he wrote as an adult.
Are you talking about a lack of fidelity to dynamic and expressive indications or plain old wrong notes?
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