Bruce Brubaker on all things piano
What leads to professional success as a musician? Talent matters. The ability to hear and feel and think. Digital dexterity. Work. Perhaps luck, or chance, or random events play their parts in many careers. And there are other elements of "talent." Some artists interest us. The sounds they make compel. We want them around, we want them to be part of our life. There are so many young musicians of real ability and achievement who do not make … [Read more...]
You might drink some exceptional wine from a highly-prized and highly-priced vineyard in Burgundy. But if you're in the know or lucky, this vin might come labeled simply as "Bourgogne" and cost 10 euros instead of hundreds. The wine has been "declassified." Sold as something more generic and less valuable that what it really is. Government regulations in France and elsewhere stipulate how much can be produced and labeled from the most … [Read more...]
Walking down the sidewalk, I sometimes fasten on a phrase from a classical piece in my mind's ear. I make it into a loop. Over and over I hear it, hum it, sing it, effectively turning the bit of music by Beethoven, or Mozart, Gershwin, Schoenberg, or Radiohead into minimalism. I go through the phrase dozens of times. I'm stuck on it and in it -- an obsessive, vastly-extendable run-on sentence, an earworm. Did people used to do this? Strolling … [Read more...]
There I was in the green room, about to play at the Gilmore Festival. Included on the program was Chopin's Polonaise-fantaisie -- music I've performed, coveted, engaged with, grappled with for 30 years. Over time, I've exorcised, from my playing of the piece, the details and atmosphere of Vladimir Horowitz' 1966 recording. (The sounds that were my first contact with this music.) Lately, I've been trying to construe the Polonaise-fantaisie's … [Read more...]
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