Results tagged “Chopin” from PianoMorphosis

Near the beginning of T. S. Eliot's "Portrait of a Lady" there are these lines:

"We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole
Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and fingertips."

Were those the celebrated red locks of Paderewski? Like many Poles playing the piano, he specialized in Chopin. There were so many Chopinists in the early years of the twentieth century -- just as sound recording really got going -- that, although we don't know how the players of the 1840s sounded when they played Chopin's music, we do have a lot of recorded evidence of the playing of the 1920s and 1930s. This forms a (somewhat anachronistic) performance-practice reference-collection for this repertory.

It can be intimidating. Before we play the Nocturne, opus 55, number 2, we might be thinking of Ignaz Friedman's 1936 recording. (And some players imitate it.) There are pianists who avoid the Fourth Ballade because of Josef Hofmann's overwhelming 1938 account.

Several years ago, in my essay "Exorcising Volodya," I described my efforts to remove, from my performances of Chopin's Polonaise-fantaisie, details from Vladimir Horowitz's 1966 recording -- details I imitated even though I didn't like them. Recently, as I have studied the Polonaise-fantaisie again, I've been thankful there are no early twentieth-century recordings of it. We can wonder how Friedman, Hofmann, or Alfred Cortot, may have played the piece. But, either because of technology -- it would have required several recorded "sides," like a concerto -- or perhaps because of this piece's reputation as discursive, none of the old players put it onto shellac.

Our sense of music is colored by when and how it entered the recorded repertoire -- even if we are not specifically aware of the first recordings. Do we have a more "modernist" view of the Polonaise-fantaisie than we might have of Chopin's First Ballade -- because the Polonaise-fantaisie was not recorded until after World War Two?

After a concert I played in Munich in May, there was a question-and-answer session. (I performed music written by Alvin Curran, Sylvano Bussotti, and Earle Brown.) One audience member asked if a performer of newish music still needs to study Chopin's etudes?

Since the pervasive use of photography by visual artists, the question arises in art schools: "Do art students need to learn how to draw?"

To the question in Munich, my immediate answer was that pianists in music schools still do study Chopin's etudes, and Liszt's, and Beethoven's sonatas. Whether this is essential to master the instrument, I doubt. It does influence (or skew) a basic sense of what music is. And, that resultant understanding of "music" is inclined to line, goal (teleology), and development.

It used to be that almost every player of the viola started out by learning the violin. For a few decades, this has been changing. Now, there are excellent violists who start their musical lives directly with the viola. Do they sound different?

What kind of music-making would ensue if the repertory pianists studied began with Stockhausen?

In classical music, many gestures need to "resolve." A dissonance, a departure from the harmonic (or melodic, or rhythmic) norm needs to be brought back to normality, disturbances need to be calmed -- "action" needs resolution.

This dotting of the "i," this attentive management of the small phraselet, is often subsumed in an attention to, or a desire for larger shapes. But music becomes generalized very easily. Large ideas have sub-organization. "Composing" is a process of making (and writing down) detailed exceptions. Performers take note.

When I was a kid I read a lot of books about musical performers, books filled with fantastic tales, of adventures on tour, of transcendental virtuosity -- in the pre-recording era. This stuff can fire a teenager's imagination. After reading about Arthur Rubinstein learning Franck's Symphonic Variations on a long train ride (he went from the station to the first rehearsal), and Josef Hofmann performing a short piece after only hearing another pianist play it twice, I took action.

Along with several of my teacher's students, I was scheduled to perform in a Sunday afternoon concert. I'd be playing Chopin's Mazurka in B-flat Minor, opus 24, no. 4. On Saturday, the day before the performance, after finding out that my contribution to the concert could be lengthened, I learned the three other mazurkas that make up Chopin's Opus 24 -- no. 1, in G Minor, no. 2, in C Major, and no. 3, in A-flat Major. I had read through the Lydian-inflected no. 2 before. No. 1 and no. 3 were unknown to me.

I started playing through these fairly short pieces and working on the trickiest spots. Almost right away, I attempted to play passages at tempo and without looking at the score. By the end of the day, I could play all the music through from memory. And I played through all four mazurkas for my parents.

About the concert, I don't recall much. It went well. I didn't say much about what I had done until much later on. It probably did have something to do with what I told Diane Zola when she came to my door in New York many years later.

She told me that a pianist was cancelling a performance and asked if I knew Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. I told her I'd played it a few times (about 6 years earlier). The possible concert would be for an audience of several thousand, with New York's Orchestra of St. Luke's. "Can you perform the piece tomorrow night?" she asked. Perhaps with the mazurkas in the back of my mind, I told her, "Yes I can."

Some elaborate preparations to long notes in piano music are attempts to mimic the ways singers can begin a sound. The many shadings and extensions of initial consonants may get translated into piano music as multiple short notes, usually notated in small print. Though often marked with a slur, this kind of writing can still be confusing. The articulateness of the keyboard is certainly what's not wanted -- these are compound sounds.

I believe the practice of variously arpeggiating chords, and delineating multiple lines through hesitations and anticipations was pervasive in old music. Let's welcome back a nuanced "style briseé." An unbending insistence on "simultaneity" robs us of subtleties of timbre, inflection, and even just of hearing fully all the pitches being played -- particularly in dense textures, or in really large rooms.

Sometimes, J. S. Bach marks a specific arpeggiation in a keyboard piece:

In American English, we might refer to such a sound as a "rolled chord." And for me, this is closely related to an opera singer reaching up, through a long rolled Italian "r," to achieve a sustained high note, and continue the word with an extended vowel...

Sometimes a piece of music is "withdrawn" from a composer's catalog. Music that was composed, published, and available is taken back -- rescinded. You can't get it anymore. Usually, the composer has thought better of it: the music doesn't hold up now, the composer's style has changed a lot, it's an early piece that just doesn't seem good enough for public display...

All of Philip Glass's early non-tonal music is unavailable now. I play(ed) a gospel-hued piano piece by Marc-Anthony Turnage (that I believe is excellent), a piece that was recast, and then withdrawn. Sometimes, pieces are revised, the new version meant to replace the old. Luciano Berio significantly reworked his piano sonata, as my student Francesco Tristano Schlimé learned shortly before going into the studio to record it! I still play original versions of études by Glass that he gave me, although, in his own performances, he's changed the music (and re-numbered some of the pieces).

On programs, we see that some pianists offer the 1913 version of Rachmaninoff's Second Sonata, or that a conductor chooses Stravinsky's 1945 version of music from the "Firebird." (Some music was revised to recapture lost royalties in the New World.)

Generally, record labels have "deleted" sound recordings from their catalogs as a matter of commerce -- items that don't sell, or that run out and are not worth the additional investment necessary to "repress" (make more of) them.

The changing technologies of recorded sound have effectively withdrawn a lot of recorded material, as new formats eliminate older ones. But then come reissues. A lot of old recordings reappeared with the advent of CDs -- as they did with the birth of LPs decades earlier. Huge boxed compilations of the recorded playing of Jascha Heifetz or Vladimir Horowitz. I questioned the reluctance of Jacob Lateiner to approve the re-issue on CD of his RCA recordings of music by Beethoven. "I use those as examples of how not to play," he said. He opted to let the material remain unavailable -- except to collectors who might seek out the old LPs.

Though we might grant today's composers authority to withdraw or revise, with old music it seems to be different. Some composers had a clear sense of what was public and private. Brahms burned sketches and drafts. Beethoven's designated "Opus 1" comes after several earlier (less worthy?) published pieces. Chopin left it to the untrustworthiness of others. Unable to destroy some manuscripts himself, he left them to be burned after he died. Of course, they were never put into the fire, Julian Fontana made an edition, and we have the Fantasy-Impromptu...

Some pianists prefer early versions of later-revised piano pieces by Robert Schumann. ("He went crazy you know...") In contemporary performances of Schumann's Symphonic Etudes, we frequently get a conflation of elements from different versions, including material certainly deleted by Schumann.

Online downloads and the digital sharing of recorded music seem to be mooting the issue of "deletions" in recorded music. Will everything be available in perpetuity? Maybe not, but I did find one of Lateiner's Beethoven recordings on YouTube.

My flight to Los Angeles took over six hours. Coming back to the east coast with a strong tail wind making the flight easier and faster, the flight lasted only four hours and twelve minutes.

Rudolf Serkin is sometimes credited with having said: "Playing the piano is easy, if everything goes well." Raising the question, "What about when it doesn't go well?" Then it's harder, then it takes more fuel. Then, you need to be an "expert," a "master," a "virtuoso." It's true of being a surgeon, or a president, or a pilot -- you need to be at your best, most insightful, most steady, most adroit, when things are worst, when things are not going well. (That's why in practicing music we might not stop when "mistakes" occur, but actually use "misfortune" as an opportunity to continue from a mistake, without stopping.)

And momentary adversity can lead to expression or beauty in art.

In a pre-concert recital at Mostly Mozart at Lincoln Center, I was playing a piece I know well, Scarlatti's Sonata in C Major, K. 513. (This was at a time when I didn't embellish or elaborate much on the script). In the opening pastorale, I played a strongly dissonant melody note -- a mistake. I was shocked, and angry, and instantly hot with fear. Without knowing consciously what I was doing, I then made up a little ornament and continued on with Scarlatti's text. I didn't like what I had done. But, listening to a recording of the performance much later, it seemed this moment was not only musically plausible, but one of the most vibrant and interesting parts of the playing.

As Edward Said has written, performance is an "extreme" occasion.

Elsewhere, Mr. Said has written about hearing Maurizio Pollini play Chopin's First Etude, opus 10, number 1. Having entirely mastered or even nullified the technical challenges of the piece -- there's no more "resistance." And perhaps Pollini renders the music as something other than itself...