‘The Music Critic’ Finds Nothing Sacred

By Megan Westberg

As the audience files in (suits and sparkles, T-shirts, jeans, slender heels of ambitious elevation) to watch the San Francisco Symphony’s performance of Aleksey Igudesman’s The Music Critic on March 6, its members glance at the stage, where ruby boas adorn the harps. A man across the aisle settles into his seat, adjusts his short-sleeved button-up shirt. Its pattern catches the eye. Sumo wrestlers. 

It would be a crowd with a sense of humor, for this is to be an evening scored with laughter. Igudesman, who wrote and conceived The Music Critic, is (among a number of other things, including composer, conductor, and filmmaker) a classically trained violinist who attended the Yehudi Menuhin School. An education that no doubt drew his attention to the heavy mantle of greatness that has long since crushed any sense of merriment in connection with a number of composers and their work. Beethoven is serious business. So is Debussy. Bach? Don’t even think about raising the corners of your lips. We are now tiptoeing into the realms of the sacred.

But not tonight. Because actor John Malkovich has been recruited to intone, with crisp diction and virtuoso timing, another point of view. That of the critic. And that critic is not impressed. Nothing, and no one, is sacred tonight. 

Other dashes of red enter with the orchestra—ties, shoes, ribbons, scarves wink at the audience from a stage otherwise full of concert black. The conductor, Igudesman—who also plays a few solos on violin throughout—strides in. Malkovich takes his place stage right. A pertinent piece of information is relayed—every piece of criticism leveled at these great musical works and their composers this evening via Malkovich is actual critical commentary. Someone thought it, wrote it, printed it. Delivered it with such stinging panache that the composers’ intervening success still doesn’t entirely dispel its shock value. 

The first victim? One of Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances, and the format is revealed. The orchestra, led by Igudesman, plays a bit of the piece in question; Malkovich talks over them. He wrangles the language, at times rather dense, with skill and reliably lands some morsel of especial acidity on just the right beat. The audience laughs out loud. 

Together, they cycle through some major repertoire: Beethoven’s Fifth, then Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, wherein Debussy himself weathers a particularly personal attack from the critic (who was “struck by the unique ugliness of the man,” and then goes on to pursue that subject in some detail) as the orchestra shimmers along behind him. Clearly drawn from a number of sources, the monologue is relentlessly scathing: Someone hated the flutes, someone hated the oboe, everyone seems to have pitied the faun.  

Igudesman is a lively conductor throughout—he moves with a sprightly energy and theatrical flavor that serve both the music and the audience. It’s fun to watch. The orchestra seems to appreciate his spirit and matches it, musicians smiling as they navigate familiar pieces with assurance and a sense of shared mischief. 

Brahms, Rachmaninov, Ravel (Malkovich seems almost overwhelmed by the enthusiasm with which critics excoriated this gentleman’s piece). But it is not only historical figures who have to face the critic’s near-lethal sneer. When Igudesman picks up his 1717 Santo Seraphin to play Georgian composer Giya Kancheli’s quiet, mercurial Broken Chant—a 2007 BBC commission—Malkovich proceeds, with glee and malice in equal parts, to malign this contemporary piece rather thoroughly as well. 

But then the critic expands the field. Conductors, critics, actors (and one actor in particular)—all find themselves on the receiving end of a snarky diatribe before the audience is treated to a lesson in why it is for the best that composers and their critics do not collaborate. 

Altogether, the evening proves a thoroughly enjoyable sendup of many things now considered musically sacred. The SF Symphony supports this endeavor with skillful, energetic playing, led by Igudesman, a magnetic presence even with his back to the audience. Malkovich throughout is delightfully devastating.