Bruce Brubaker on all things piano
I'm printing slightly enlarged versions of the pages of a score by Philip Glass that I will play at the LPR Glass-birthday event later this month. The physical resizing, repaginating, and relineating of written music sometimes makes practicing and performing easier. For a long time, this work was accomplished with photocopying, scissors, or paper cutter, and adhesive tape. The pianist Judith Gordon called it "arts and crafts." Some outsized … [Read more...]
A recording I made of Philip Glass's Metamorphosis One became the basis for a YouTube video. I never met the YouTuber who posted it, though he emailed me and asked permission. I could only tell him the rights belong to the record label, not me. It's a spare video. (There's a single image of a lake.) This music is featured in the cult-fav TV show Battlestar Galactica. And a lot of BSG fans find the video. The music's also used in NPR's This … [Read more...]
I'm sipping a single-barrel bourbon. Rather strong. I add some drops of water, and then a few more. And the extraordinary, intense dark taste comes into sharp focus. It's like adding adrenaline to my playing of Brahms's music in Jordan Hall. Or adding salt to soup (more if it's cold). Or adding momentary touches of pedal to an already carefully played legato phrase of piano music. … [Read more...]
In earlier museum practice, shards of ancient decorated pottery were pieced back together with missing sections reconstructed and plausible designs painted in. Missing parts of an image were supplied by restorers. As exhibited, those restored vessels had complete surface decoration. Some fragments were antique; the rest, the painted-in parts, made a whole pot look as it might have before it was broken. Today, it's more likely that the … [Read more...]
Martha eats in the restaurant across Broadway. Rachmaninoff lived around the corner. I live here. … [Read more...]
C. P. E. Bach writes in his treatise: "A musician cannot move others unless he too is moved. He must of necessity feel all of the affects that he hopes to arouse in his audience, for the revealing of his own humor will stimulate a like humor in the listener. In languishing, sad passages, the performer must languish and grow sad. Thus will the expression of the piece be more clearly perceived by the listeners...." It's an old and ongoing … [Read more...]
There didn't used to be any. Schoenberg was an early numberer of every bar. But, in some manuscripts, no number 13 (12, 12a, 14...)! New notated music became so particular that it needed to be possible easily to scrutinize it beginning at any measure, in rehearsal. Old music that was part of the canon got measure numbers as it was republished, after 1900. (Nineteenth-century collected works editions didn't yet include this modernism … [Read more...]
Do we covet music that signifies, encodes, or provokes sadness? As a child, when told to play with feeling Jacob Lateiner asked, "Which one?" In classical music, it does seem that emotion has come to mean sadness, or anger. When we see the marking "espressivo" we pour on the sentiment. The no-nonsense American clarinetist Charlie Russo told an over-emoting student: "Put a Band-Aid on it!" Not too many classical players explore emotion in … [Read more...]
When I was learning William Duckworth's The Time Curve Preludes, and even preparing to record the first dozen, I did not contact the composer. I didn't play for him, get advice, or even ask him questions about 2 or 3 notes that puzzled me in the printed music, a reproduction of Duckworth's handwriting. After the recording was released, I got an email from Bill, "I understand you've been playing my music..." Classical players usually seek out … [Read more...]
I return to Rotterdam, and it's as if no time has passed. Four years ago, I left very early in the morning, down a street with wood planks instead of a sidewalk. The construction is long finished, but I return to the thrill of that morning. It was October then too. I did a 2-day seminar in Rotterdam, at Codarts. Following that, something slightly crazy was on my schedule. I'd agreed to play, with several other pianists (Robert Levin, … [Read more...]
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Ian Stewart on Arts & Crafts
This is a really interesting post and raises many points. Copying out music is really a good way of learning,...Eliza on Klained
I'm reading the comments on the YouTube video. What a remarkable early-21st-century crossover-under, intertextual cultural re-appropriattion!CrossEyedPianist on Amphora
Another fascinating post, thank you. I have heard Levin speak on Mozart and the piano several times, most recently about the...Ian Stewart on Amphora
Leon Fleisher's attitude I can understand. Despite the fact that most of my work has involved improvising, and for many...Jay Golan on Amphora
This is a great post. I would only add that in historic preservation circles -both for conservation of objects and...