{"id":1158,"date":"2009-01-30T10:39:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-30T18:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/01\/classical-piano-and-the-importance-of-good-grooming.html"},"modified":"2009-01-30T10:39:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-30T18:39:00","slug":"classical-piano-and-the-importance-of-good-grooming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/01\/classical-piano-and-the-importance-of-good-grooming.html","title":{"rendered":"Classical Piano and the Importance of Good Grooming"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_yrL6yfubw8g\/SYNJxMsqZKI\/AAAAAAAAAEg\/8zuqgA9rm-8\/s1600-h\/leif+ove.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_yrL6yfubw8g\/SYNJxMsqZKI\/AAAAAAAAAEg\/8zuqgA9rm-8\/s320\/leif+ove.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"><\/a>Last night i caught Leif Ove Andsnes, the norwegian pianist, at disney hall. (here he is, right, after, presumably, chopping an entire nordic forest.) he played a set of janacek, brahms, mozart and schubert, with violinist christian tetzlaff. (a fine story on the celebrated duo\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/latimesblogs.latimes.com\/culturemonster\/2009\/01\/andsnes-tetzlaf.html\">here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>great concert, by the way.\u00a0while the ballade in the janacek was nearly heart-stopping, my favorite was the brahms sonata no. 3. (a wonderful unfashionable composer, a true genius of melody and delicate small scale pieces, on whom more another time.)<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>but the appearance reminded me (chin-stroking music please) of classical music&#8217;s image problem. as someone who grew up with rock n roll and later the very photogenic era of mid-century jazz, i was amazed as i started to get into chamber music in the mid-90s just how dowdy a bunch classical players tended to be.\u00a0\u00a0and then things started to change a bit: leif ove spoke to me for <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/2003\/jan\/26\/entertainment\/ca-timberg26\">this<\/a> piece in the LATimes from a few years back. every time i see a picture of that hedgehog james levine i think of it.\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>could it be that classical music is more &#8220;deep&#8221; than pop music, which has become enslaved to youth and \u00a0image? dont forget, these days, even philosophers have style.\u00a0what do my esteemed readers think?<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Photo credit: Flickr user <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/lefrisson\/293477940\/\">13<\/a>\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night i caught Leif Ove Andsnes, the norwegian pianist, at disney hall. (here he is, right, after, presumably, chopping an entire nordic forest.) he played a set of janacek, brahms, mozart and schubert, with violinist christian tetzlaff. (a fine story on the celebrated duo\u00a0here.) great concert, by the way.\u00a0while the ballade in the janacek [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[558,54,140,59],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-andsnes","7":"category-classical-music","8":"category-disney-hall","9":"category-piano","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}