Thursday, February 24, 2005
I need a mortal enemy. I think if I had a main antagonist, it would be Christopher O'Riley. I really, really hate that guy. Reasons: listen to his dumb radio show, for starters. Better reasons: last year, when I was in the UI Symphony, we did a concert with him. The first half was just us playing Beethoven's 7th. During the tenderest, quietest part of the first movement, O'Riley suddenly starts playing loudly, audibly on the piano backstage. Everybody could hear it. I might have forgiven this, but then: the second half of the program is him playing Prokofiev's 2nd piano concerto. He TOTALLY fucks up the first movement cadenza, fakes his way through it, and then at the end gets a standing ovation and does three, THREE, encores.
These encores were all his idiot Radiohead transcriptions.
His little faux pas during the Beethoven was unforgivable enough, but, well, with the Prokofiev it got personal. Would Sviatoslav Richter have bumped and stumbled his way through a serious piece of music, only to congratulate himself afterward with endless curtain calls and encores? Would Vladimir Horowitz have pounded out a mediocre performance of an insufficiently practiced piano concerto, only to ratify it by playing popular songs, all the while smirking like a newly-elected George Bush? No. O'Riley's victory, like Bush's, was unearned.
Christopher O'Riley, this means war.
These encores were all his idiot Radiohead transcriptions.
His little faux pas during the Beethoven was unforgivable enough, but, well, with the Prokofiev it got personal. Would Sviatoslav Richter have bumped and stumbled his way through a serious piece of music, only to congratulate himself afterward with endless curtain calls and encores? Would Vladimir Horowitz have pounded out a mediocre performance of an insufficiently practiced piano concerto, only to ratify it by playing popular songs, all the while smirking like a newly-elected George Bush? No. O'Riley's victory, like Bush's, was unearned.
Christopher O'Riley, this means war.
