In my – admittedly biased – opinion, this is a titanic achievement of both composition and pianism.

I’m not sure that the composer’s age is relevant. I can’t tell you how old Schnittke was when he wrote any of his Concerto Grossos but I can tell you that they rule. Schubert and Mozart didn’t even live to be Hersch’s age and Stravinsky certainly didn’t write better music as he aged.

Thank you for giving this disc some much deserved attention tho!

Best
-SHout

I’m sorry for the factual error, and also glad to know that Arabesque is still in business. I’ve always warmly regarded Arabesque as one of the independent American labels that have done so much of the good work in the classical industry over the past 30+ years. Best wishes for continued success!

I’ve been actively reviewing classical music (and some jazz) since 1982-1994, when my column appeared weekly in Atlanta’s Creative Loafing. I also reviewed for Peter Koch’s magazine Classical DisCDigest, which I credit with broadening my view of the world of the classics. I’ve been posting reviews on the website since 2003, most recently on a montly basis for the Audio Video Club of Atlanta at http://www.a-vcoa.org. Readers can access that website to get a fuller picture of what I love and admire in music (Don’t leave off the hyphen, or you’ll get the Antelope Valley Council on Aging). A composer doesn’t have to have had a long beard or been dead a hundred years to win my admiration. He (or she) only has to be sincere and have something to say to me on some level.

As for my other interests, I love to take nature walks and am an avid collector of old Hollywood films on home video. To paraphrase Will Rogers, “I am not a Republican, nor do I have any other conspicuous bad habits.”

From reading most of his other postings, it is fairly clear to me that Mr. Muse loves to flaunt the music (and art) historical knowledge he thinks he has gleaned from program notes, but he really lacks any profound understanding of it. I do not say this simply because his opinions irritate me — although they do — but because so much of what he says here and elsewhere is so profoundly ignorant.

In this review he seems to be taking Stravinsky to task for his ‘abstraction,’ as if that were inherently a bad thing. If Mr. Muse knew anything about Stravinsky’s music and music history in general, he would hear that “Jeux de cartes” is actually one of Stravinsky’s most conventional scores, a throwback, in fact, to the spirit of late 19th century Russian ballet, and, as such, no more abstract than “Swan Lake.” Music *is* essentially abstract (when it is not texted) because it is, at heart, a nonrepresentational language.

As far as I can tell, the only purpose for a Mr. Muse review is for this preening self-important pseudonymous nonentity to show off his cleverness. But he is also very lazy, and it should be remarked what a considerable portion of each of his reviews is simply a rehashing of liner notes, though usually twisted in one way or another to his own curmudgeonly ends. His remarks on “Agon” are a case in point, showing both this trait and further, his fundamental ignorance of the music he is discussing: He states that “in the second Interlude … [Stravinsky] include[s] music of human warmth and intimacy in spite of himself.” Leaving aside for the moment the nauseating condescension at the end of this sentence — what great thing have *you* ever achieved in *your* life, Mr. Muse? — this remark is completely nonsensical in singling out the “second” of the Interludes in this way because it is, in fact, identical to the first one. And then what is this nonsense about “the weakness of the score” being in the “torturous twisting of the Bransle, Galliard, Sarabande and other antique dances out of recognition”? I would venture to say that our Mr. Muse wouldn’t recognize a genuine Bransle (Gai, Simple or de Poitou — and I bet you don’t know what I’m referring to, Mr. Muse!) if one bit him on the ass. And so what if Stravinsky’s takes on these ancient dance forms stray from the exemplars he gleaned from Mersenne? You can’t exactly dance to Bach’s Sarabandes and Gigues either.

Another trait of Mr. Muse’s reviewing style, and a rather pathetic one at that, is his hedging at the very end when he says that this recording will please those who like this sort of thing. It’s all rather like the old Borscht belt joke: one diner at a hotel says “The food here is so terrible!” “Yes,” says another, “and the portions are so small!” Alas, but nothing is smaller than Mr. Muse’s heart.

I respond here to Mr. Phil Muse in part because I think that he has crossed a line of civility in his final paragraph by saying that I don’t “play with a full deck of cards.” We all recognize this sort of language as insulting and I take it as nothing less. But beyond his calumny, his review contains lapses of logic (and, as I see it, judgment) that make me wonder what possible good he thinks he is serving the world at large with his blathering.

To begin with paragraph one:

Let’s leave aside his inability to transcribe correctly the title to my “Post-Modern Homages” and move on to the spot where Mr. “Muse” calls me a “modern day Dadaist.” For my part I don’t have a problem with the existence or the work of the Dadaist movement, but I know that my music and my aesthetic are so far removed from that nearly 100-year old anti-artistic movement, I wonder how anyone professing any sort of music historical awareness could associate what he heard on this CD as being in any way akin to it. Mr. Muse’s clever little aside about dissonance, the Agincourt Hymn and the Clavecinistes does little to mitigate the fatuousness of his observations — and what the hell does the Coventry Carol of all things have to do with the notion of irregular rhythm or dissonance? Where are Mr. Muse’s ears?

In the second paragraph, Mr. Muse shows himself to be just too in love with his conceit that I am a Dadaist, and so he summons up a reference to “Le chien andalou,” but to what purpose? To frighten us or to show off that he is so clever as to read some Cliff Notes about 20th century arts history, although failing to note that “Le chien andalou” belongs to the Surrealist movement not to the Dada? I nitpick on this because Mr. Muse is merely nitpicking himself — he doesn’t like my music (which is fine by me) but he seems to need an overarching pseudo-logical reason not to and cannot find one but by resorting to unartfully concealed ad hominem attacks.

The third paragraph plods on with the same sort of “I am the cleverest boy in the class” sort of nonsense, even though he still can’t get the title of my “Post-Modern Homages” quite right. He shows his true aesthetic stripes by finding virtue in the most tonal of the pieces on offer (and I like this piece, too, I must say), but then takes me to task for not living up to a remark made in the CD notes by the exemplary pianist, Xak Bjerken. I have no problem that Xak heard something “light and birdlike” in the finale of my sonata, but the fact that Mr. Muse found “Hartke’s birds … to have leaden wings” has absolutely nothing to do with me, my musical intentions or my music — I’m sorry, Mr. Muse, but you can’t take me to task for not fulfilling an expectation that I myself as the composer of the work never granted you. (And what on earth did you mean by that long aside about Buster Keaton? Are you just showing off the fact that you like to watch silent movies?)

Most of the words in the fourth paragraph derive from the CD notes but have been recast in a way to suggest that Mr. Muse actually understands what he is talking about. But when he says that “it is probably unwise to take Hartke’s clever subtitles too seriously,” he reveals a number of failings including (1) he didn’t read the part of the program notes that acknowledged quite clearly that these titles were taken directly from paintings by Joan Miro, and (2) that I do not make any claim in the same notes that they need to be taken seriously — indeed I talk about my celebration of their whimsy. But, sadly, I have a sense that Mr. Muse has no appreciation for whimsy, despite his inexplicable aside about the “dirty trick nature has played” on snails, which is nothing short of bizarre in its pointlessness.

As for the final paragraph, I’ll give credit to the undoubtedly pseudonymous Mr. Muse for admitting that this constituted his “personal impression” of my work. But what value is his opinion if we know nothing about him? My music and other information about me are all out there, available freely and openly, so who is this person hiding behind a pseudonym who presumes to call me a “composer who doesn’t always play with a full deck of card”? What are his qualifications? The famous pseudonymous critics of the past, Debussy as Monsieur Croche, G.B.Shaw as Cornetto di Bassetto, were actually fairly well known to be writing under noms-de-guerre, because the artistic world they knew was actually quite hermetic. But in the broader world of Internet anonymity I believe that there is reason to call into question the role of pseudonymity within moderated forums such as this one.

There I ask Mr. Muse to reveal his actual identity and to set forth the particulars that make him a qualified music critic.

It pains me to see at this late date Glazunov remains one of the more misunderstood composers of the Romantic era. We certainly all appreciate the review, but this does show the necessity of taking into account an entire life of composition lest a misleading snapshot of a composer becomes received knowledge.