I went to The Stone on Avenue C to hear a rather renowned new-music-scene musician. He's a friend of a friend of mine. Somehow we'd never met before. I'd never heard him before. In this show, he played his music. A lot of material from the laptop. Recorded sounds that were processed and manipulated. Some pieces made use of a MIDI controller/trumpet. Some interesting sounds. One piece was based, it seemed to me, on a famous recording by Vladimir … [Read more...]
Global Warming
American conservatories have been redesigned from without -- through an increasingly high level of applicants. In the United States, we have no national network of government-sanctioned schools of music. No national conservatory. Our high-level schools are schools to the world. And the students get better every year. Now, people play the piano so well, it can be hard to look for more. To some extent, almost every excellent college looks at … [Read more...]
Play Better
At Tanglewood, quite a long time ago, Louis Krasner told me a story. For many years, he was the concertmaster of the Syracuse Symphony. A benefit concert had been arranged. Leopold Stokowski was coming to conduct Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. The orchestra members speculated -- how would Stokowski conduct the iconic opening measures? Slow, with big fermatas? In tempo, à la Toscanini? What would the Maestro do? According to Krasner, Stokowski … [Read more...]
Across a crowded room
The first of seven days of piano auditions began well enough. The first half dozen prospects were accomplished players. Things to quibble with, of course -- but jobs well done. After each student finishes playing and leaves the room, the jury has brief discussion, then each of us assigns a rating for the auditioner just heard. After six auditions, something else happened. A diminutive youngster was seated at the clavier -- and I heard the … [Read more...]
Bruce Brubaker’s Guide to Alliterative Artists
Last week, I had a meeting about a new project I'm planning with Meredith Monk. I guess that got me started... Alvar Aalto Béla Bartók Caleb Carr, Colin Carr, Carl Craig, Claude Chabrol Don DeLillo Edward Elgar Federico Fellini Gérard Grisey, George Gershwin, George Grosz, Glenn Gould Harry Houdini Ippolitov-Ivanov (cheating I know, but his other names were Mikhail Mikhailovich) Judith Jameson Karl Kraus Lowell Liebermann Meredith … [Read more...]
Flatline
For about ten hours in Bob Katz's studio in Florida, I listened with him. We were adjusting the final mastering of my new CD. I like the sound on our previous discs, but I hope that this is going to be better. A piano sound not as edgy as pop, and not as distant as some classical piano recordings. Apparently, during part of one of the recording sessions, there was a taxi radio or some other kind of transmitter outside. Traces of those signals … [Read more...]
Can we play too well?
It's been suggested (by Charles Rosen) that a pianist who plays difficult passages notated in Robert Schumann's piano music, to today's standard of accuracy, is not giving an "authentic" reading. No one in the early nineteenth century could have done it, so, the argument goes, "mistakes" would be part of "authenticity." (We might speculate on the impact the sounds made or make...) In Ghent, a year and a half ago at the Orpheus Institute, we … [Read more...]
Masterclass
"Masterclass" -- the term makes me queasy. We had masters and slaves! A French boss can still be referred to as "Maître," as he is in Denis Dercourt's sadistic, delightful film centering around the life of a pianist, La tourneuse de pages. There's pervasive overuse of "Maestro" in orchestra land ("Will Maestro be joining us?"). My aunt Charlene, in best 1960s style, addressed my childhood birthday cards to "Master Bruce Brubaker." At New … [Read more...]
Pianoscape
Plants form a plantscape -- more or less continuous -- across a continent: the carefully tended jardin and the yard of "weeds" surrounding an abandoned house. Fallen dead trees in a forest, or overgrown city lots might seem like problems in need of solving... Elite classical musicians have often held themselves apart from other musicians, or even other classical players: "I'm better that that." "His playing was so stupid," or "uninvolved," or … [Read more...]
Tale of Two Cities
Taipei Yesterday, I was eating the best beef noodles in Taipei with Lun-Yun and his family -- genuinely extraordinary food, in the beef, the taste of the wood used to cook it, the unctuous broth with chopped green pickle mixed in. Before, we had small pieces of pork spareribs cooked in a steamer with rice groats and a hint of spicy pepper -- a Taiwanese reading of what I thought was a Shanghai dish, that I used to eat with Jacob Lateiner at the … [Read more...]
Chill
Today's the first really cold day that I have been in Boston this fall. At New England Conservatory this afternoon we had the preliminary round in a competition to pick a student pianist for a performance of Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. (The performance will be in April with Hugh Wolff.) These competitions are a continuing part of conservatory life. A few schools with many excellent pianists do this--specify a particular … [Read more...]
Master
From Florida, Bob Katz has sent a test CD of the mastered version of part of my new recording. This morning I'm listening. He's sent along a list of many clicks and noises he removed. There's question about the basic sound. He's chosen a dither he likes and done a bit of EQ and stereo image shifting. The underlying recording was too diffuse, he thought. He wants a bit more "edge" and a clearer sense of where the piano is on the stage. It's … [Read more...]
Tending Garden
This morning I was mowing down some of our meadow. All around our little house in the woods there's a swath of grasses and flowers that gets mowed once a year, in late fall. And after the tall stuff is gone, bright green mosses are revealed in many patches. After three hours outdoors, I practiced Chopin's Polonaise-fantaisie and some Haydn (for Taiwan in two weeks, where it will go with Bussotti and Curran). There wasn't really enough time at the … [Read more...]
BB on the web
"Glassforms" with Max Cooper at Sónar "Glass Etude" on YouTube demi-cadratin review of Brubaker solo concert at La Roque d'Anthéron "Classical music dead? Nico Muhly proves it isn't" -- The Telegraph's Lucy Jones on my Drones & Piano EP Bachtrack review of Brubaker all-Glass concert "Brubaker recital proves eclectic, hypnotic, and timeless" -- Harlow Robinson's Boston Globe review of my Jordan Hall recital "Simulcast" with … [Read more...]
Blogroll
UbuWeb Hipster Runoff the other piano blog: Stephen Hough at Telegraph.co.uk … [Read more...]