Virtually every night during New York City's nine-month music season, Winthrop Sargeant takes his aisle seat at the opera or a concert hall. On Saturday he writes the music column for The New Yorker—a column with considerable bite if he finds the performers indifferent, the conductor lackluster or the composers too avant-garde for his conservative taste.
Few critics ever earned their bite as honestly as Sargeant. A child prodigy, he conducted a symphony orchestra at age ten, later spent six years as a violinist and horn player with several orchestras under a succession of conductors: Walter Damrosch, Willem Mengelberg, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Arturo Toscanini, Otto Klemperer, Bruno Walter and Clemens Krauss. Sargeant also composed music for modern dance groups and orchestrated Broadway shows, turned to critical writing at the Brooklyn Eagle, TIME, LIFE, and, in 1949, The New Yorker. Last week, at 68, Sargeant announced that at this season's end he will give up his aisle seat and write more generally from other vantage points. In an interview with TIME'S Robert T. Jones, Sargeant reminisced about the past 50 years of music as he has played, heard and assessed it. Some of his observations:
ON PERFORMANCE The New York Philharmonic is a much better orchestra today than it was 50 years ago. Playing techniques have changed for the better. I remember as far back as Eugène Ysaÿe [the fabled Belgian violinist, 1858-1931]. I don't think many of the violinists of those days would be considered good musicians today. They took too many liberties. Today they have more respect for the music they play. On the other hand, pianists have become too literal. As a result, if you are going to hear Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto, unless you are listening to a really great artist like Artur Rubinstein, all the "Emperors" sound alike. This shibboleth about playing notes exactly as written is bunk. Notes are blueprints. They express nothing.
ON CONDUCTORS Toscanini had a strong temper, and he slashed through rehearsals. But he was the kind of conductor who could forestall trouble. By just looking at his tuba player, he could tell how much wind the man had taken in and forecast how long that tuba note was going to be. He would then make a sign warning to the guy not to play that long. He was the most expert conductor there was.
Furtwängler was totally different —a very Germanic, mystic type who managed to impose his almost religious view of music on the players. This resulted in absolutely superb performances too. During the '20s and '30s, Furtwängler and Toscanini were the greatest conductors. Now Georg Solti and Herbert von Karajan are the greatest, and in somewhat the same way, with Solti comparable to Toscanini and Karajan to Furtwangler.
ON COMPOSERS I think music is dead, because I don't think any important music is being written today. It was in Schoenberg's and Stravinsky's generation that the decline set in. Béla Bartók is a musical personality of some stature, but Stravinsky is the Rimsky-Korsakov of this generation. I am willing to bet that in the 21st century Stravinsky won't be played very much.