Veblen goods
I came across an interesting term in “All
That Glitters,” an insider’s look at the
jewelry trade in the June, 2010 issue of
Harper’s Magazine. Thorstein Veblen
(1857-1929), the author of The Theory of
the Leisure Class, coined the expression
“conspicuous consumption,” which in turn
gave rise to “Veblen goods” as a descriptor,
for hypothetical example, of a bauble a
dealer is unable to sell for $25k but
succeeds when he jacks the price up to
$125k. Get it? It’s all the more desirable
if it’s crazy-expensive. The article’s
author, Clancey Martin, cites the
hyper-prestigious Stainless Steel Daytona
Chronograph, an $11.5k Rolex he estimates
costing about $300 to manufacture. You pay
for the SSDC months in advance of delivery.
It’s that exclusive.
Audio cables, anyone?
Foul! you say. Below the belt! Well, yes. A
hand-made, diamond-encrusted tourbillon
tells time no better than a battery-powered
plastico. Noon is noon. As all proper
audiophiles know, audio cables convey
impressions the differ from slight to
obvious. That said, if you came to me with
$50 speaker cables claiming they’re the best
you’ve ever tried, and you’ve tried dozens,
I’d be skeptical. Perhaps even reluctant to
put them in my system. They’re too cheap.
You’d need to quadruple the price at least.
In an environment where $5k phono pickups
reside in perfect harmony with similarly
priced tone arms, this is not an untoward
expectation.
In search of the perfect audiophile
What might a shrink say about us
audiophiles? –– a shrink, that is, who is
not himself an audiophile. Might he say we
are more obsessive than most? Perhaps even
driven? Normally these are attributes to
which no one lays claim or aspires. “A
better-sounding fuse haunts my dreams.” So
what is it about this avocation that might
justify, or less loftily, excuse our
fixations, drives and desires? I refer to
two-channel zealots, your reporter included,
in our butt-wide sweet spots. The
surround-sound, home-theater geek is
another, probably better socialized
creature.
To remain with stereophony, what defines the
perfect audiophile? As I see it, he or the
less frequent she is a broad-spectrum
aesthete – a lover of disparate aural arts.
And kind to children and small, helpless
animals.
First love and foremost, music. Genre is
irrelevant. The issue is intensity. We
identify the philistine for whom recordings
operate as fuel for hardware by his answer
to “What kind of music do you like?” “Oh,
all kinds.” This is code for “Whatever makes
my system sound great.” O, shallow, callow
philistine!
We must also love the art of recording.
Without mediocrity against which to compare,
how else would we recognize superb
engineering? In my experience, some
recordings are simply unplayable. Many sound
good enough. Remarkably few sound great. And
yet –– the fly in the ointment –– a heavenly
recording of dirt-dull music in short order
proves a bore. Except, perhaps, to our
shallow, callow philistine.
And for our third and final love object, a
revelatory audio system. Componentry that
sings to one’s soul is as much the fruit of
art as science.
***
“…music is a dream from which the veils
have been lifted.
It’s not the expression of a feeling, it’s
the feeling itself.”
–– Claude Debussy
 Andreas
Spreer’s TACET is a German label devoted to
in the main to beautifully recorded chamber
music. Two photographs on a TACET tray card
tell a story. On the left, a 1740 Guarneri
viola; on the right, a Neumann U47
microphone, the first iteration of which
appeared in 1948. For duly reverent
recordists, the U47 is worth its weight in
saints’ jawbones. Though nowhere stated,
presumably the pictured U47, identified as
No. 5599, is the mic Spreer is using for
some of the most luminously performed and
produced string quartets it’s been my
pleasure and privilege to hear. For example:
TACET has been recording the splendid Auryn
Quartet (Matthias Lingenfelder, Jens
Oppermann, violins; Stewart Eaton, viola;
Andreas Arndt, cello) in a survey of Franz
Joseph Haydn’s string quartets, the first
twelve which (Opp. 1 and 2), date from
1755-60, the last, Op. 103, No. 83, from
1802-3. A long and productive career, that.
Indeed, Haydn stands as the Classical
period’s Colossus despite his having been
tucked away in leafy Hungary as a
music-loving family’s in-house composer for
the better part of his working life. Even
so, his published music achieved such
interest and respect among the cognoscenti
that, now a free agent, he arrived in London
a ready-made celebrity.
Haydn observed that had he worked in Vienna
rather than Eisenstadt and, later, Esterháza,
he’d not have had the opportunity to develop
his ideas independent of fashion. Composing
in total comfort within the Classical
Period’s aesthetic constraints, Haydn’s fame
rests on his music’s good humor, dignified
sentiment, faultless architecture and most
all, its bottomless fund of surprises –– in
short, a sense of freshness that transmits
itself, unwilted, to this day. And that, of
course, is the difference. While a
journeyman composer may generally please, he
rarely takes the sophisticated listener by
surprise. Haydn’s inventiveness was another
matter entirely. It helped that, in his
service to the Esterházy family, he had at
his disposal an orchestra’s worth of
instrumentalists for working out ideas.
The three quartets each of Op. 71 and Op.
74, together called Apponyi, take their
handle from the count who commissioned them.
To listen attentively to the music of
Haydn’s maturity, you understand why Mozart
and Beethoven so admired the older man.
Having studied Haydn’s Op. 33 quartets,
Mozart dedicated six of his own to the
master. The two men actually played quartets
in Mozart’s apartment, the lease-holder on
viola, Haydn on violin. (If the impulse so
drives you, by all means seek out the names
of the two other players. The first reader
to email the information gets to pay off my
mortgage.)
Little I’ve listened to these past few weeks
has equaled the pleasure these performances
deliver. The Auryn’s precision and soul ––
attacks, intonation, interpretive depth and
coherence –– spring to life in recordist
Spreer’s able hands. The strings’ textures
are as good as it gets. You are there, in
the music. TACET 170 (Op. 71, Nos. 1-3) and
TACET 169 (Op. 74, Nos. 1-3), distributed in
the US by
SpinningDogRecords.com.
 Everyone’s
heard of Haydn. It’s the rare music lover
who’s familiar with the Swiss composer
Othmar Schoeck (1886-1957). Schoeck’s
instrumental music elicits scant interest
these days. His reputation, such as it is,
rests on vocal settings of poetry, in the
present instance with a chamber ensemble.
Notturno / Five movements for string quartet
and voice on poems by Nikolaus Lenau and a
fragment by Gottfried Keller, op. 47 (ECM
New Series 2061) reminds me in the most
persuasive terms why Schoeck meant so much
at an earlier period in my life. In the main
the music is rather melancholy and pensive –
moods that shine with an inner amber glow.
Among the work’s great strengths is the
masterful interleaving of strings and vocal
line, its late-Romantic sonorities shading
at long moments into Expressionistic angst
and élan. Baritone Christian Gerhaher calls
to mind the great Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau,
one of Schoeck’s strongest proponents. The
Rosamunde Quartet’s feeling for the music’s
atmospherics is similarly impressive
(Andreas Reiner, Diane Pascal, violins;
Helmut Nikolai, viola; Anja Lechner, cello).
The sound, otherwise first-rate, is ever so
slightly upwardly tipped: an edge to the
strings and voice when the going gets
forceful. But don’t let that put you off.
A recipient of numerous awards, grants and
commissions, Chaya Czernowin (b. 1957), a
native of Israel who since age 25 has lived
and worked in Germany, Austria, Japan and
the United States, is a steadfast modernist
with particular respect to her music’s
uncompromising demeanor. Notwithstanding her
many Hebrew titles, nowhere will the
listener detect a hint of ethnicity,
nationality, or indeed, any manner of
musical discourse fashioned to please the
tune-happy gallery. Hers is a
take-it-or-leave posture that, in these
aesthetically squishy times, goes against
art music’s accessibility grain. Czernowin
draws her inspiration and ammunition from a
decidedly European avant-garde that has
already made its historical place. In view
of a fixed tradition and as something of an
anomaly, her music sounds utterly fresh and,
perhaps for some of you reading these words,
challenging. I propose taking the plunge.
 MAIM
[Water] (mode 219) is the third and, in
this reporter’s opinion, most impressive CD
mode has devoted to this remarkable
composer. (There are two other mode CDs,
both recommended, and a DVD of an opera,
which I have not seen. For information,
www.moderecords.com.) MAIM calls
for five soloists, live electronics and
orchestra: Rico Gubler, saxophone and tubax
(a tuba-like sax); John Mark Harris, piano
and harpsichord; Seth Josel, electric and
steel guitars; Mary Oliver, viola; Peter
Veale, musette (a small oboe), oboe, and
English horn; electronics realized by the
Experimental Studio of South-West Radio
(Germany) – Michael Acker, Reinhold Braig
and Thomas Hummel, sound direction;
Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Johannes
Kalitze conducting.
Because this is one of the most impressive
large-scale recordings I’ve heard in quite a
long time, I should mention and commend
Producer Rainer Pöllman, Recording
Supervisor Jens Schünemann, who also did the
mastering, Recording Engineer Hajo Seiler,
and Sound Technician Tobias Hoff.
Thanks to a recording that succeeds
splendidly in telling us so, the listener
will recognize, almost immediately, that
MAIM is huge in conception yet
exactingly precise –uninhibited, yes, but
exquisitely well crafted. The insert’s info
page advises PLAY LOUD in big, bold letters,
and you should. The music’s engaging turns
run from mice-scamper to rock-slide, and the
recording gets it all, every spacious squeak
and roar. For the music lover who despairs
for an art form’s present-day timidity,
MAIM should serve as the most bracing of
tonics (no pun intended). Recommended with
no less enthusiasm to the chronically
curious.
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