Premieres: you've got to cut a lot of slack

The recent experience with "Kramer" has caused me to decide that I should move away from promoting living composers other than myself. Theoretically, living composers should support each other. Btu in practice, there are some very annoying reactions that just don't make it worthwhile.

One of those reactions: "The performers just butchered my music." Given that so many other performers are beating down your door begging to play your music—wait, what's that? You mean there aren't any performers beating down your door begging to play your music? These performers could have made easier money these last few nights giving lessons, but instead they chose to rehearse your music and play it in public. Not that you made any effort to make your piece playable, carefully deciding on page turns, enharmonic spellings, cues, rehearsal letters and other niceties of that sort.

Look at the first recording of Górecki's Second Symphony, the one conducted by Tamas Pal on some label you never heard of before. It just simply doesn't have the same polish and impact as the newer recording conducted by Antoni Wit on Naxos. And newsflash: Dawn Upshaw with David Zinman was not the first to record Górecki's now popular Third Symphony (though admittedly the Third presents the performers with fewer challenges than the Second).

Another thing that gets me: composers worried about someone stealing their music. Relax. In fact, chillax. You can safely leave the score to your avant-garde opus magnum on the table in some public place and no one will steal it. They might even find some way to return it to you. To get someone to steal an avant-garde composition, you'd probably have to pay the thief to do it.

Compared to complaints about how awful the performers were, just plain silent ingratitude would be very good. I'm not saying that no concert of mine will never again have living composer other than myself on the programme. It's just that I will be way more selective, considering not only the quality of their work, but also their personalities.