Lowell Liebermann’s Symphony No. 2

It’s been a quiet week so far. The weather has improved enough that I can wear my DVD CCA T-Shirt now. I’ve actually had a few people stop me and ask what it means.

This past weekend, Susan and I got to attend the world premier of Lowell Liebermann‘s Symphony No. 2. Neither of us had any complaints about his new composition (we actually quite enjoyed the performance) but Scott Cantrell, a music critic at the Dallas Morning News, gave it a pretty bad review. Oddly, the review makes no mention at all of the DSO performance of the piece, only assorted complaints about what Mr. Leibermann did wrong in composing it. Mr. Cantrell called the composition “excruciatingly conventional”, “foolhardy”, “uninteresting”, and reminiscent of “third-rate high school choruses”. And he didn’t seem to like the choice of Walt Whitman’s work for the choral text either. Oh well, those who attended the performance liked the piece enough to give it a standing ovation. But I suppose if music critics really knew anything about music, they’d compose some instead of complaining about those who do.