Bob went to the wine shop and returned with a few bottles and a page of ‘tasting notes’ supplied by the shop. As usual I was charmed by the poetic way that wine producers describe their products. ‘Notes of ripe, dark fruit, tobacco, chocolate and spice’. ‘Delicate floral aromas alongside fresh cherry and red-berry flavours’. ‘This wine expresses notes of ripe berries, herbs, and a touch of minerality’. I enjoy these descriptions and find them helpful in working out what I think of the wine when I’m drinking it.
Perhaps we in the music world should use similar language to help buyers distinguish between different recordings of the same piece (for example). When the recording era began, there were very few multiple recordings of anything, but now there are so many that the casual buyer must wonder how on earth to pick their way between recordings by this, that or the other international orchestra, chamber group or soloist.
I remember once, when the Florestan Trio was working on a Brahms recording project, a family friend proudly told me that he had been to a record store to buy a recording of Brahms piano trios. ‘Who is playing?’ I asked. ‘No idea!’, he said cheerily. ‘I just looked for Brahms Trios and chose one with a nice cover. Does it really make such a big difference who’s playing them?’
People perhaps don’t always realise that the way of playing and the particular interpretation of the music can make an enormous difference to how you perceive it. It can make you fall in love with the music – or prevent you from doing so.
So perhaps we should learn a thing or two from the wine industry. ‘Trio X has a sound like the sap from a newly-snapped branch of a silver birch in Spring’. ‘Trio Y’s playing will make you feel you’re watching stonemasons build an intricate wall in a snow-covered landscape.’ ‘Listening to Trio Z is like relaxing in a warm bath where the water has been replaced by velvet’.
In these cases, of course, ‘Tasting Notes’ should pronounced in a slightly different way, with the stress on the second word.
Succinct, poetic descriptions like that might be very helpful. The pedantic technical language sometimes used by reviewers can be bewildering, and I also dislike over-complex tasting notes. I find that trying to spot all the many flavours mentioned can distract you from just enjoying the experience. On a slightly different theme, I read somewhere the fun observation that if an alien came to Earth and read a copy of ‘Decanter’ magazine they would have no idea wine was an intoxicant! It’s hard to see how a reviewer could remedy that though: “a fresh wine bursting with vibrant citrus notes that makes you feel agreeably woozy.”
An excellent point, thank you James!
I find many YouTube comments contain witty and succinct appraisals of the performance. I was watching a great marimba player Nanae Mimura and one comment said: “She’s not playing the piece, she’s dancing the piece”.
Matthew, you’re right – YouTube comments are always interesting and often entertaining. I’m often surprised at how people have responded to a recording – very differently to my own response. A reminder for me that music strikes people in many different ways, and in a sense it all depends on ‘where you’re coming from’.