Let it go

On a short flight from Dallas to Austin yesterday, I came across a review in the Morning News that caught my eye. Scott Cantrell, the paper's classical music critic, had taken in a Thursday performance by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra - and he was not very impressed. Specifically, a series of what he saw as questionable decisions and interpretations by the pianist left him feeling underwhelmed. Or, as he put it, "Anna Fedorova may be an eloquent interpreter of Mozart or plenty of other composers, but her account of the Rachmaninoff was the most clueless I can remember."

Ouch. But then I turned the page, and noticed a brief story on a Dallas-area college student who had recently posted a video in which he sang the Disney anthem (and Oscar winner) 'Let it Go' in the voices of twenty Disney and Pixar characters. A skilled imitator and effective singer, Brian Hull had been initially thrilled to see his video generate, in its first morning, 30 views - only to watch it then garner, within a week, more than 7 million views.

Two accounts of pieces of music, then, and two very different sorts of reactions. The acidic critic, and the warm hug of the crowd-sourced embrace. Or, to phrase it in terms that Cleo would understand: Anton Ego and the jubilant peasants dancing across the castle court at the end of Tangled. And while such different reactions to art might feel almost irreconcilable, it's hard to deny that they nonetheless work together to shape our impressions, and our actions.

This morning, then, Cleo and I sat down this morning to watch Hull's effort, instead of seeking out work by Federova. And suffice it to say that three minutes later, we both had smiles on our faces.