To mostly ignore CD covers and notes shows a level of objectivity in reviewing to be commended.
As for some of the more bonkers CD covers to be found, they go so far the other way as to be almost desirable again.
Note, I said almost.
Well, I don't know if you'd corral me with that dubious band of "intellectuals and aesthetes", Barry, but I do indeed agree with you regarding modern marketing reliance upon the "cult of personality", including wistful pictures of conductors staring out at you menacingly, celebrity lady-pianists draped in flesh-revealing/clinging garments consisting of barely enough material to make a decent pair of knickers, or tenors glaring moodily into the middle distance, clad in shirts unbuttoned to the navel. I pretty much ignore covers when reviewing - and sometimes even the notes, if they are pretentious or tendentious - and do so also to try to avoid any accusation that my review is a cunning amalgam of those and Wikipedia. Mind you; this goes back a long, well beyond Karajan - famously depicted on the cover of the EMI "Ein Heldenleben" recording in a leather jacket with a strategically placed beam of light emanating from his crotch - and we must remember that many people are now conditioned to respond to that style of marketing- baffling though it is, to me.
I still think that some punters might prefer the different approach and the superior digital sound on Mäkelä's and Rouvali's Sibelius recordings, but increasingly some selling methods strike me as crass and desperate - but sometimes we reviewers remark on that.
There are are also some famously awful and amusing classical CD covers you can look up here on YouTube:
The current thread re Mäkelä's and Rouvali's Sibelius has got me thinking about CD covers. I know I'm taking a chance here, possibly outing myself as the only philistine in a den of intellectuals and aesthetes, but here goes anyway...
I will readily admit that I do judge a CD by its cover, and I'd love to know if anyone else does, or is brave enough to admit it!
Re the Mäkelä and Rouvali Sibelius, I would not, in a million years, buy either of those two recordings, and I'd be pretty miffed if I was even gifted them. Now this is not just because of the pouting and posturing poses on the CD covers, which irritate me immensely - hence this post.
I have lots of (in my opinion) great Sibelius symphony recordings already (Barbirolli, Berglund, Karajan, Jarvi, Tuxen, the white Warner historical box), so no matter how good the new kids on the block are, are they really offering me significantly more than the ones I've already got? We all know this critiquing of classical recordings is great fun, but we also all know that it's subjective. The perfect recording of anything is a chimera, though Schneiderhan in Beethoven's Violin Concerto comes close.
Likewise, space, time and money are at a premium - I can't infinitely keep adding new recordings, even if I could afford to, because you reach the point where the old stuff never gets a look in, and how do you know you're not missing things in your old favourites, because you are too busy looking for the next big thing? And it's partly the space being at a premium, perhaps, as to why I try to avoid recordings with covers like the above two mentioned. Put simply, I like to be surrounded by nice things - William Morris's 'beautiful and useful' dictum, if you like. The above two (I'm picking on those but there are many others - Simon Rattle, step forward) are neither useful, in my opinion - certainly no more so than the ones I've already got - and are most definitely not beautiful, though I admit friends and families of the gentlemen may disagree.
I know this all sounds superficial, but having given this a little thought, I find recordings with covers like this not just off-putting but actively intrusive - they get between me and the music, the composer. If I had the two Sibelius sets in question, and wanted to listen to a Sibelius symphony, my first thought wouldn't be which symphony shall I listen to, but which between Mäkelä and Rouvali, shall it be, and when their faces are staring out at you - EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU TAKE THEM OFF THE SHELF - they loom larger, it seems to me, than they need to. I'm sure they are both excellent musicians, but in the end I don't care to have it thrust permanently at me. I don't care what they are doing with the music - I care about what the music is doing to me.
Of course, I'm a hypocrite, and I have a plenty of recordings in my collection that contradict my argument. I would happily replace George Szell's laser-like sternness on the cover of the Beethoven symphonies - and on the cover of the five sleeves inside! - for some pastoral or romantic scene, but it's not enough for me to not want that set in my collection. Rudolf Kempe is doing his thing on the cover of the box of Strauss orchestral works, but that's not going anywhere, and so on.
And it works the other way. I did have the Maazel Sibelius symphony cycle, with the splendid portrait of the young composer, but not liking what I heard of my two favourite symphonies (3 & 6, thanks for asking), to the charity shop it went.
Anyway, already too long a post. I'm ready for the barrage of brickbats - what can I say? I decided to play Neeme Jarvi's BIS 'Kullervo' while writing this, with its photograph on the cover of a cool Nordic lake. There's a photograph of the avuncular conductor on the back of the booklet, should I wish to look at it.
Mostly, if I look at anything, I look at that photo of the lake.
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