Results tagged “Beethoven” from PianoMorphosis

My introduction of Alfred Brendel last night in Boston:

In classical music, there are those who believe that thinking about music can compromise feeling -- compromise our emotional response to music. Alfred Brendel's example vividly shows us that such notions are foolish. Mr. Brendel scrutinizes the canonic texts of the piano repertory. He examines the behaviors of piano playing and musical life, and he's shown that deep reflection can yield (not impede) a heightened emotional and even spiritual connection to the muses.

To a young pianist, it was a powerful example. From the high balcony at Carnegie Hall, I overheard Mr. Brendel grapple with Beethoven's music. I recall the thrill of anticipation I felt just buying the tickets for one of his Beethoven cycles. And then:

I had been, let us say, to hear
(From highest Carnegie incline)
The latest Fōld of the great garment of Beethoven's sonatas
Transmitted by Mr. Brendel through his hair and fingertips ...

(And for that, apologies to Mr. Brendel and to T. S. Eliot.)

From that high place -- from those cheap seats -- I witnessed probing and unforgettable performances: of Schubert's and Beethoven's music, of Liszt's Sonata, of the Two Saint Francis Legends, of Robert Schuman's C-Major Fantasy. On those occasions, control was "in league with chance," as Mr. Brendel has described an ideal.

Through Mr. Brendel's words, as well, provocative guidance has been offered. There are many well-worn copies of Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts, and Music Sounded Out. Alfred Brendel has led generations of musicians "away from the piano, and to themselves."

Mr. Brendel has written of "the unseen hand" that can grip an audience and a player. I will paraphrase a passage from his essay, "On Recitals and Programmes":

There has been a spiritual link between Alfred Brendel and his public -- an intense physical experience, unique and unrepeatable, tied to a specific time in history, tied to the sounds of particular halls and instruments, to the sudden bursts of the athlete, and the peregrinations of the poet. All has been well, and Mr. Brendel's mastery has only been surpassed by the grip of an unseen hand, that has kept its hold over a player and his listeners alike for decades -- a few timeless moments... Through a long and magnificent career, he has brought us to an understanding, and a love, that we didn't know ourselves to be capable of.

Mr. Brendel, thank you.

The "reception" of a piece of music becomes part of its identity. Our performances, recordings, reviews, reactions, lawsuits, teaching, reflection, arrangements, remixes, appropriation -- all of that is the piece, along with the text we started from. Famous music acquires a larger and larger, and more multiply-determined identity. Eventually, there are so many components that none of us can affect the whole very much.

When I give the first performance of new music (I'm playing a new piano piece by Nico Muhly in May), my performance functions to begin staking out an identity for that music in public. Actors are said to "create" new roles. Immediately things begin to shift as my playing is heard, as I play again, or record. Nothing ever gets taken back.

With canonic music, no matter how significant we believe our insights or approach to be, we don't make much of a difference. The music is large -- like a person who has lived a long time and for whom a few minutes represent only a small, small fraction of a life. In contrast, a few more minutes in a child's life significantly increase the whole.

Scripted music does continue to change, as it's played. Its identity is recentered, at an increasingly slow rate. How radically we depart from what has been done before in performing may be part of how far this recentering goes.

Does this explain Mannerism? As a style, or a particular piece of art becomes more and more familiar, an artist's assertion of personal voice (an attempt to recenter the piece, or school) may result in extremes. It is not exactly a wish to shock that drives Beethoven or Parmigianino -- but the desire to be heard.

Classical music culture is permeated with judgment making. Maybe it's necessary? Maybe it suits us? We audition musicians to discover who will play better in an orchestra, or to find out which students can develop best in a school. We're always grading and sorting. Critics and conductors announce what pieces are better than other pieces. (Recently, I read about Jean Sibelius's "best" symphony.)

It's dangerous. And not because we don't want superlative music. Artistic experience isn't one-size-fits-all. What plays well in Los Angeles reads differently in Paris, or Dubai. We know music is changing. Well, music itself is change!

Celebrity can sell. Orchestras bank on it -- Beethoven: The Complete Symphonies. But we know every single performance by Mr. Pollini is not better than every performance by Mr. Ponthus. And we should know that every scrap of paper touched by Beethoven's hand does not encode music that is "superior" to every note penned by Muzio Clementi.

The greatest risk is in the making of music itself. If, as we play, we judge everything we do, and respond harshly to "mistakes," or momentary lapses of taste, technique, or style, we may be so disappointed that we cannot be our "best." In order to be really present in the moment, a certain suspension of judgment serves better. Not about the facts particularly. "Is it quiet, or quick, or connected in sound?" Fine. But when it comes to drawing conclusions, it's better to wait, just to keep going where the lines and harmonies take us. Just to surrender at least some of our control, to the sound we perceive, to the breathing of the audience, to what Mr. Brendel called the "unseen hand."

After several master classes at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, given by several of us pianists, a student asked me: "Isn't it all just a matter of opinion?"

And after so many diverging ideas and approaches, strongly expressed, who could blame anyone for asking that question? With so many differences, perhaps opinions just seem like ... random thoughts?

I told him what I believe. "In music -- or politics, or anything -- the 'best' opinions are based on information," I say.

Example 1:

After Herbert Blomstedt conducted Mozart's C-Major Symphony, K. 388, I asked him why there's no minuet in the piece. Mozart scratched it out in his manuscript, Blomstedt says. "Why did he do that," I persist. "No minuet is necessary or possible," Blomstedt opines, "it's Italian opera overture music..."

Example 2:

A prominent pianist is talking about his own changing way of playing Beethoven's Fourth Concerto -- different at each performance, he says. I ask him if Beethoven's many elaborate annotations in a copy of the piece, documented by Barry Cooper, have any bearing on what he does, in these varying performances of his. My colleague falls silent. I speculate on what such early recordings of the concerto as Wilhelm Furtwängler's with Conrad Hansen, with its considerable tempo modifications within movements, may show us about the flexibility of earlier performance practice in this music? Silence.

We would be terrified of a surgeon who made incisions according to his whims. "Let's try here..." Should we tolerate that in music?

After preliminary rounds of Juilliard piano concerto competitions -- judged by the faculty, final rounds were judged by outside musicians -- one ritual always surprised me. After the voting, and after the announcement of the names of three or four pianists who would advance to the final round, hands were shaken, backs slapped. "Congratulations Herbert!" "Congratulations Marty!" The teachers of the winning students were congratulated, almost as if they had played in the competition themselves.

Last Saturday night, I was the itinerant piano teacher, not traveling to teach, but traveling to listen to two of my students slated to perform at almost exactly the same time. After hearing the first half of a graduation recital played by a student at New England Conservatory (Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin), I bolted from the hall, got into the car (8:31 p.m.), and expeditiously drove to Harvard. I parked in an approximately legal space, and rushed into Paine Hall where intermission was ending (8:51 p.m.). Then my student appeared to perform Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, with one of the Harvard orchestras.

We can't really take credit for our students' playing, anymore than we can disavow it when it's not good. Perhaps it was the frenzy of driving, or the high quality of the playing last Saturday, I was riveted by the doing of these performances, my palms moist (perhaps "entraining" cognitive psychologists might say) -- almost is if I was giving the concerts myself.

At Tanglewood, quite a long time ago, Louis Krasner told me a story. For many years, he was the concertmaster of the Syracuse Symphony. A benefit concert had been arranged. Leopold Stokowski was coming to conduct Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. The orchestra members speculated -- how would Stokowski conduct the iconic opening measures? Slow, with big fermatas? In tempo, à la Toscanini? What would the Maestro do?

According to Krasner, Stokowski arrived, and said...nothing. (A conductor will often give some verbal instructions before beginning such a piece.) Stokowski raised his hand, gave the downbeat and...well...most of the musicians did what they expected. Some of them played "in time." Some of them played each note separately and waited. It was very much not together -- a mess. Now what would Stokowski do? He might stop and explain himself, explain Beethoven, explain what to do next. Instead, Stokowski said only, "Play better." Again his hand went up, again he started, again cacophony. He kept doing it. Never explaining. Never saying anything more than, "Play better." But a consensus was reached. Eventually, after many, many starts, the orchestra reached an agreement about what to do -- their performance.

Often, in playing music, pragmatism can be very useful. Just do it!

In a recent master class, I heard a student play the first movement of Beethoven's "Waldstein" Sonata. It was not very good. I wrote some notes on paper as I listened. One aspect of the student's performance was confusion regarding exactly how many notes to play -- to make up the repeated figurations that form four-beat-long measures. Sometimes she played too many, sometimes too few. Of course, I might have said, "Play the right number of notes!" Instead, I told Louis Krasner's Stokowski story.

And then, I asked the student to play through the whole opening of the piece at an extremely slow tempo -- four times too slow. I asked her to listen intently to every note and not to stop. In front of the audience, she practiced the passage in this way without looking at the printed music. I never mentioned the anomalies in her earlier performance. Our spectators, I believe, found the whole thing interminable. I asked her to do it again. And the whole time I was sweating it, wondering if this experiment might work? Eventually, just as time was running out, I asked the student to play the music again at tempo. She began. I was worried. She played exactly the right number of notes in every bar. (A few listeners in the audience applauded.) I almost couldn't believe what I heard!