DG goes in for genre bending
NewsDo not think of Deutsche Grammophon as exclusively classical.
It is doing its level best to blur the boundaries.
Here’s the blurb…
Deutsche Grammophon introduces the genre-defying Fragments. What happens when some of the most groundbreaking creative talents on the electronic music scene are invited to reimagine works by a pioneer from the past? This intriguing new series holds the answers. Fragments will spotlight the music of a single composer, issuing twelve reworks as e-singles over a period of months, culminating in a full album release. At the heart of the series is a dynamic dialogue between past and present, tradition and innovation, creation and re-creation.
Fragments begins by focusing on the music of eccentric French genius Erik Satie, forefather of modern minimalism and an enduring influence almost a century after his death. The Satie series kicks off in style with a rework by Berlin-based duo TWO LANES, known for music rich in both acoustic and electronic elements. Based on the same work from the composer’s Pièces froides (“Cold Pieces”), their “Danses de travers No. 2” launches the series.
“When we set out to find artists to work on Satie’s music, the idea was met with unanimous enthusiasm,” says Marc Fritsch, Director Special Projects at Deutsche Grammophon. “This has led to an original and eclectic collection of remixes and reworks. Fragments moves between different creative worlds – classical and electronic, online and offline, old and new. It brings together different artforms and gives musicians the opportunity to engage with timeless traditions of making music in ways that are sure to be surprising, stimulating and satisfying, just as Satie’s compositions were when they were new.”
Many years ago I heard a tune by a living composer called “Six Variations on a theme by Bach”. A more accurate title should be “Six Ways to F*(K Up a Perfectly Good Tune by Bach.” That’s what at least 80% of this Fragments would be like.
DAS EEEEENDE!!!
das ende…
‘REIMAGINING’…
Orwellian newspeak.
A word, so revealing.
Revealing our decadent and systematic crisis in creativity.
Don’t we reimagine a classical composition anyway, when we hear it with our own ears?
Wouldn’t “REARRANGING” be a more truthful description of what is happening?
Reimagination is the core of EVERY interpretation.
Now when a composer has no creative thought of his own, he can still arrange, but at least be truthful about it.
Anyway, that Max Richter stuff is deadly boring and unoriginal. And forgotten in 5 years, when Bach, Mozart, and Wagner will be remembered in 500 still.
If DG wants to sell fast-food now, then good luck to them.
I don’t see the point though. The business model of fast food is that it is dirt cheap to produce. ‘Reimagined’ music costs pretty much the same to produce than original music. Pointless exercise and waste of resources.
Put differently, willful deconstruction caused by the despair of an epochal compositional drought several decades in. Despair, too, in negligible product sales. Also, watered-down muzak, aka New Age, is so very yesterday. Ain’t it?
Deutsche Grammophon was rebuilt after WW2 on a shoestring budget shaped in large part after 1952 by Elsa Schiller, a Hungarian (and a Holocaust survivor). The difference between her and today’s managers is that she understood repertory; she saw the whole picture through collectors’ eyes. She put Couperin on the yellow label alongside Kodály. She didn’t work for artists; she found artists to record things. She made deal after passionate deal bringing in musicians we don’t talk about anymore: Trio Santoliquido, the Drolc Quartet, the Zimbler Sinfonietta, conductors Fritz Lehmann, Paul van Kempen, Leopold Ludwig, Rudolf Baumgartner. But she also signed Böhm, Jochum und Fricsay, and by March of 1959 she had HvK back in a DG studio (Dahlem) for Strauss and Dvořák and Brahms. It’s odd that she’s omitted from DG’s history page. I think the problem now is not that repertory is wholly ignored (witness the new Schmidt, Price and Ives cycles!) but that there is too much scrambling in other directions to try to pay the bills and relate to a new audience that is even more at sea when it comes to rep than the label managers.
Its all nice and rosy but also remember that as a business it failed and got absorbed by universal. Not enough collectors to pay the bill.
Since, the only collection is the collection of marketing mishaps, desperate signings and a level of management that is bordeline “lemonade stand”. Absolutely and hopelessly amateurish and anachronistic.
This is the best these poor people can do. Mozart bay be good for babies and for pretending to be classy. Apparently, hearing classical music all day did not help anybody in creating sustainable business models in over 50 years….
“Fragments begins by focusing on the music of eccentric French genius Erik Satie, forefather of modern minimalism and an enduring influence almost a century after his death.” Ummmm…really now. I wonder if anyone has told that Reich, Glass, Reilly, or Lamont Young.
Increasingly mouth-watering…
Best to leave ambient to Fripp and Eno and others who specialise in producing original music rather reworking the classics, although reworking the classics has a long tradition such as JS Bach adapting Vivaldi.
Sure, why not! It makes you feel like you’re doing something, and it’s far cheaper to record than the Berlin Phil., Vienna Phil., or any big American orchestra. Just don’t expect too many people to get too exited over it.
Not my cup of tea…..
Does Norman have shares in a company that makes anti-nausea medication?
Someone please enlighten me how the Doctorates in Musicology, musicians and philosophers-turned-managers in a supposedly “creative” industry can come up with THIS as ……innovation?
Apparently a PHD or Doctorate and reading all the books/listening to all the music doesn’t unstuck your head out of your rear end.
Mozart definitely promotes creativity…..