In a large suitcase, I'm carrying most of the 400 prescreening CDs submitted by prospective students to New England Conservatory's piano department this year. These recordings come from applicants to the school's bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, and from applicants to the joint degree program the conservatory has with Harvard University. When I started teaching at NEC five years ago there was no "prescreening" in advance of … [Read more...]
Archives for December 2009
Change of venue
In the eighteenth century, there were no concert halls. In 1750, no one would have asked: "Who will write the next great enduring symphony?" Venues develop in response to art, or art and venues develop together in some not entirely explainable relationship (like instruments and music). Halls are instruments too. Can anyone doubt that the 2,000-plus-seat Musikverein/Carnegie/Concertgebouw model is a period piece? It's a manifestation of a … [Read more...]
Early adopters
A composer in his twenties tells me he doesn't use "technology" in his music -- no samples, no interactive computer applications. To me, it's concerning. At a recent Music with a View concert at the Flea Theater, there was new music by three composers using varying amounts and means of interaction between electronics and live performance. In the Q & A after the concert, Morton Subotnick mentioned that he had dreamed of this new world -- a … [Read more...]
Rattle
The pianist Fou Ts'ong played a solo concert in Jordan Hall including Chopin's Opus 35 Sonata. In the famous "Funeral March," he made an unbelievable racket with the left-hand trills. They were noisy, unpleasant, almost veering out of control. In a masterclass at New England Conservatory, during that same visit to Boston, Fou Ts'ong manifested such subtly refined attention to details of sound, and line, and phrase. Everything. But, those trills … [Read more...]
A Year of Pianomorphosis Posts
December 2, 2008: Tending Garden December 3, 2008: Master December 8, 2008: Chill December 15, 2008: Tale of Two Cities December 29, 2008: Pianoscape February 7, 2009: Masterclass February 16, 2009: Can we play too well? February 16, 2009: Flatline February 23, 2009: Bruce Brubaker's Guide to Alliterative Artists February 26, 2009: Across a crowded room March 3, 2009: Play Better March 9, 2009: Global Warming March 11, 2009: We're all composers … [Read more...]
Bachtrauma
Gerhard Richter: Bach (1992) In my dream, J. S. Bach arrives to play on the clavier some of the pieces he's written down, but as he plays, the strangeness of the temperament and lowness of pitch, the flexibility of beat and rhythmic declamation yields some of the things he plays unrecognized, for moments, or even a long while. This music that we own, this familiar canon, under his fingers it is so strange, so far from the received … [Read more...]