The work of the performer may seem repetitious. We are measuring out time with our playing and practicing. We are measuring out life, one Beethoven sonata at a time. In a sense, am I measuring my way toward death with my performances? I might speculate: "Will I play Beethoven's "Pathétique" Sonata a hundred times more before I die?" Or five times? Or never? Arnold Schoenberg: Gustav Mahler's Burial, 1911 Of course, all kinds of people … [Read more...]
Withdrawn
Sometimes a piece of music is "withdrawn" from a composer's catalog. Music that was composed, published, and available is taken back -- rescinded.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 … [Read more...]
I don’t see red
At last, I approved the master for my new CD. After the final round of sound renovations on the trickiest track -- a slow, mostly quiet piece in which some mysterious high frequency sounds were recorded along with the music -- Bob Katz sent me some before and after pictures: BEFORE ___________________________________________________________________ AFTER Using editing software that visualizes the recorded music across the … [Read more...]
Life and Death
In a seminar, I ask each of a group of young pianists to talk very briefly about a piece they know -- as they might speak to an audience before performing. I urge them to be pithy, personal, compelling. I don't like the "Beethoven-was-born-in-1770 approach," I tell them. Music is important. It engages with the big questions, I say. One seminar participant asks me to give an example of the sort of commentary I want. So, I say: "Imagine I'm … [Read more...]
Congratulations Marty!
After preliminary rounds of Juilliard piano concerto competitions -- judged by the faculty, final rounds were judged by outside musicians -- one ritual always surprised me. After the voting, and after the announcement of the names of three or four pianists who would advance to the final round, hands were shaken, backs slapped. "Congratulations Herbert!" "Congratulations Marty!" The teachers of the winning students were congratulated, almost as if … [Read more...]
Soundtrack
As the iPod becomes ever more pervasive, once again the relationship between music (or recorded music) and life is changed. Some people are wired. They have one earbud in, as they talk, walk, and do everything: Life with a soundtrack. With the shuffle function activated, randomly recurring tracks make thematic links, interpreting the repetitive tasks, and events of existence. In new television shows, there can be long passages with no … [Read more...]
Humble pie
In Cleveland, at the Ohio Theatre, they told me Philip Glass just recently played there on the piano I was using. The next pianist coming soon is Krystian Zimerman. This sort of thing makes you feel humble. And it occurred to me -- that might even be about where my playing is artistically (?), pianistically (!), or aesthetically, somewhere in between Glass and Zimerman... … [Read more...]
Tail wind
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 … [Read more...]
Piano Country
Keyboard music has always been linked with transcribing: making sung, or strummed pieces (or gestures), into something fingers can play on keys. The earliest extant keyboard pieces are transcriptions (more properly "intabulations," because they are written using the little diagrams called tablature): Robertsbridge Codex, circa 1350 One of my former students is making solo piano versions of Detroit techno. I've made piano transcriptions of … [Read more...]
Great teachers produce…
Great teachers produce great students. Don't they? Young musicians seek out teachers -- celebrated ones whose former students have succeeded in winning competitions, playing concerts, getting management, making recordings. Of course elite teachers pick their students, and the picking is important. The ability to recognize exceptional potential is rather rare. A teacher's celebrity (as a performer or as a teacher) can itself be a tool. And … [Read more...]
Simple is difficult
The simplest things can be the most telling. A very small, simple bit of music reveals everything about a player's technique, sound -- dare I say, soul? Consider the two-note slur: a group of two notes, frequently a descending step, connected, bound, by a legato phrasing tie (slur). A very basic building block, frequently realized very poorly, even by celebrated, professional executants. Classical musicians often strongly desire to perform … [Read more...]
Concert Accident
New York The Stone, last summer After the performance, I notice one of the screws that holds my glasses together is missing. Glasses still hanging together. During the hour-long set, somehow, tiny screw worked loose, jumped, disappeared. Metropolitan Museum Leaving to go across town, I lock myself out of apartment. No time. Must proceed to Grace Rainey Rogers and play recital. Miller Theatre Coming home after playing, I leave my … [Read more...]
Lights up
So there we are in the theater. The lights coming up just a few seconds too soon and making clearly visible two black-clad dressers meant to be offstage before the light arrives. A little glitch in seamless perfection. And then what? Pretend it didn't happen? Hope no one saw them? Or, on the fly, damage the seamlessness even more and send the dressers out again later on in the show? Most big theater productions have trouble with that kind of … [Read more...]
Dress like a banker — Dress like a rockstar
At Juilliard, the Old Guard piano teachers came to school dressed like bankers -- ties, jackets, well-polished shoes. (Musicians -- those Bohemians! -- needed to show they were respectable.) For the last fifteen years or so, classical musicians, at least some, try to dress like rockstars. Jeans, shoes you can't polish. (To show that musicians are not necessarily part of a stuffy "Establishment"?) … [Read more...]
I don’t do Rachmaninoff
In preparation for one of our spring masterclasses, I received a memo from one masterclass-giver's management. Along with requests about using a smallish theater and making two pianos available on stage, there were stipulations about the music to be played in the masterclass by potential student performers: no music by Rachmaninoff, no music by Liszt. Certain pieces by J. S. Bach might be ok, with approval. Certain works by Schubert, Beethoven of … [Read more...]