Keyboard Stroke?

Edward Ortiz is at it again, this time reviewing a new disc by pianist Simone Dinnerstein. And, as usual, a couple of things caught my eye as, well, awkward, to say the least.

First, there’s the unsubstantiated adverb and adjective.

On Beethoven's piano sonata Op. 110, Dinnerstein powerfully connects with some of Beethoven's forward-looking ideas.

What exactly are those “forward-looking ideas?” How does one powerfully connect with said ideas? Who knows? Not me. “When typing, I powerfully connect with Henry Mill’s forward-looking ideas.” I bet you don’t know who Henry Mill is. Anyway, moving on.

Second, there’s the vagueness.

To do so, she honors the telling pauses in the first and second movements, and fronts the hyperkinetic moments throughout.

WTF, my friends? WTF? You all know me by now, so I don’t have to go into it. Let’s just agree that it’s humorously terrible, shall we? Good.

Okay, we have some vacuous language. What of it? Is it post-worthy? Meh. Not sure. I debated it’s merits for a spell, while listening to, guess what, Beethoven’s Opus 110. And wouldn’t you believe it, something sounded awkward, too! It’s just that I couldn’t pinpoint the problem.

Later on in my eventful day, I hopped on over to the Wall Street Journal, where there was, fortuitously enough, another review of the same disc, this time by Barbara Jepson.

The final movement of Beethoven's transcendent Sonata No. 32 in C Minor (Opus 111) is a series of variations on a 16-bar theme presented in its stately opening.

Are you fucking kidding me? Our Eddie-boy got the piece mixed up; it’s opus 111, not opus 110!

What gets me is that, unless he was using the number pad on his keyboard--it's possible, but very key stroke inefficient--1 and 0 are nowhere near each other, meaning three things. Either he thought the piece was, indeed, opus 110—which doesn’t have any pauses in order to be telling—or he didn’t bother to check which piece he actually heard—which could be considered terribly unprofessional (I’m not suggesting this is what actually happened)—or he doesn’t know his Beethoven (How is that even possible?). Which one is the real answer?

All I know is that even the editor didn’t catch the fuck up. So, I guess the editor fucked up, too.
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Correction, Kosman!

In your lovely review of Simone Dinnerstein’s inventive interpretation of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations, one thing needs to be corrected. (By the way, I don’t really like to correct columns on papers’ websites—it just feels dirtier than if we did it here, in a more niche environment.) Anyway, you said that:

[Her rendering] was most memorable in the opening Aria, the spare, richly ornamented melody that forms the basis of the entire 90-minute work.

...when everyone knows that the melody isn’t the basis, but rather its bass line, harmonic progression and rhythmic structure.

Though there are numerous similar and more in-depth analyses, the earliest account of this (that I could find, anyway) was made by Wanda Landowska, Landowska on Music (New York: Stein & Day, 1964), p. 215.

Just saying.
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