• Home
  • About
    • PianoMorphosis
    • Bruce Brubaker
    • Contact
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

PianoMorphosis

Bruce Brubaker on all things piano

You are here: Home / Archives for Chopin

Filtered

April 12, 2021 by Bruce Brubaker

As I hear my student playing the piano through Zoom, just for a moment, I think I am hearing Paderewski in 1912. The sound is imperfect. At moments it drops out. There are distortions of speed and rhythm. Yet, my ear, my mind is hearing music: completing and linking together the aural information that is there.   As an adolescent, and thanks to the public library, I listened to a lot of recordings made by pianists of the early 20th … [Read more...]

Dispatched

March 5, 2018 by Bruce Brubaker

Dispatched from the Audition Room (mit Bolzano auch dabei) After the third day of piano auditions at New England Conservatory, I attended an evening recital given at the school by one of my piano faculty colleagues. Backstage, he said that while he was playing he imagined my stern voice from the audition room. Making a fairly unpleasant face, he told me, "You know when you say, 'Mmmmm, not really good...'" The cold fact is that from about … [Read more...]

Misprision

February 22, 2016 by Bruce Brubaker

In performing Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life," some singers deliver the subtle, and possibly difficult to pronounce word combination "distingué traces" as "distant gay traces." A British lawyer or Harold Bloom might call this a "misprision." We may willfully twist a text to achieve a particular meaning. Or perhaps we are always getting it wrong. Bloom writes definitively: "Every poem is the misreading of a parent poem... There are no … [Read more...]

Ugly Beauty

December 16, 2013 by Bruce Brubaker

"The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason." -- attributed to John Cage The sound coming from pianos (the physical, real sound) may displease the pianist. In trying out a concert piano, there are often several notes on the instrument that just can't be made to produce what is wanted. Those notes may need "voicing" -- a … [Read more...]

All beats are not created equal

November 18, 2013 by Bruce Brubaker

All beats are not created equal. They are endowed by their makers with differing length... Well, not quite. But if we're describing rhythm as rendered live by human musicians then yes, beats vary, even in regularly-beated music played "in tempo." Computer produced beats do not have to vary, as some post-1980 pop music displays. In human-played rhythm, how much do beats vary? Or how much can beats vary and still be perceived as "equal"? … [Read more...]

Labor Management

August 26, 2013 by Bruce Brubaker

Sound recordings from the first decades of the 20th century form a performance-practice treatise, documenting practices that may offer insight into music-making of earlier times. In the case of piano music, very many of these recordings are recordings of Chopin’s music. There are a lot of recordings of short pieces. (The length of one cylinder and later one “side” of a disc was around 3 minutes.) Chopin: Waltz in A Minor, op. 34, no. 2, Robert … [Read more...]

Word

November 12, 2012 by Bruce Brubaker

The story told by Robert Levin involved snickering Italian waiters. Bob asked quite a few Italian speakers, "What does sfogato mean?" (An Italian-English dictionary will say something like “letting loose.”) The motivation for Levin's particular curiosity was the use of the term in the score of Chopin's Barcarolle (m. 78). It's a word that doesn't appear in (earlier) piano music. Frédéric Chopin: Barcarolle In this written music, "sfogato" … [Read more...]

Can’t get a word in

May 14, 2012 by Bruce Brubaker

There is music that suffers in performance from conventionally good music-making. Mainstream classical playing seems to rely on clichés of "musicality" -- arching every phrase, breathing between groups, tracing all those lines up and then down again. Some pieces need different treatment. The first movement of Beethoven's Opus 101 is an extended, wordless run-on sentence. Theoretically, we may understand that no satisfying cadence in A major … [Read more...]

Why (not) demonstrate?

March 12, 2012 by Bruce Brubaker

It's the routine of many piano lessons: Teacher sitting next to student sitting at the piano. One copy of the written music. Student and teacher examine it together. From time to time, teacher reaches over, or deseats student, in order to demonstrate details, or even phrases of the music. (In an unkind moment, I have called it "piano-teacher-position.") In an alternate version, the teacher occupies a second piano, demonstrating sound, techniques, … [Read more...]

Piano ear

October 10, 2011 by Bruce Brubaker

Pianists may need different kinds of hearing than what's needed to play the violin. Because the tuning of pitch doesn't require constant attentiveness -- I'm convinced there are rather good piano players who actually hear very little of what's happening as they play. More than other musicians, pianists are likely to intone or moan audibly while playing. It's pretty conclusive evidence that whatever those players hear is not objective. The … [Read more...]

Simultaneous transmission

January 24, 2011 by Bruce Brubaker

Next week, I'm playing an overlapped, simultaneous concert with Francesco Tristano, this time at Le Poisson Rouge in New York. It's billed as "[ Simultaneo ]." In the advertising it says: "Two concerts at the same time!" A manifestation of remix culture for sure -- it's Girl Talk Classical! In Echternach in 2009, we did an overlapped performance, a continuous 70 minutes of sound made with two pianos. Glass's music was overlaid with Carl Craig. … [Read more...]

Used Up — or Barely Begun?

January 18, 2011 by Bruce Brubaker

Is the most famous classical music so familiar, so often performed, that it's worn out? I've listened to Beethoven's "Appassionata" so frequently that it's rather difficult for me to hear the music, to accurately sense the real sound patterns being made on a particular occasion. (The mind slips into a "this-is-how-it-goes" mode that dulls perception.) Are icons like the Fifth Symphony or the opening of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana being used up as … [Read more...]

Lost Temper

January 5, 2011 by Bruce Brubaker

In a good recent demonstration, Jonathan Bellman suggested that sequential passages in Chopin's piano music have greater content with less equally tempered tuning. The specific pitch proportions within intervals would have subtly changed as key-area changed, with the less equalized tuning of 19th-century pianos. Equal temperament remains a theory but is not a practical piano reality even today. Just listen... Technicians in my school … [Read more...]

Scoreless

September 21, 2010 by Bruce Brubaker

Just before playing a program that began with Chopin's Opus 45 Prelude, I started to think through the beginning of the music. Backstage in the green room, I had no piano and no copy of the written score -- and I couldn't recall the spacing, the exact arrangement of the notes, of the first chords in the piece. Solo pianists who play a lot of music by memory tend to be concerned about forgetting. For many pianists, it's the main focus of … [Read more...]

Quick and Dead

June 1, 2010 by Bruce Brubaker

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...]

Next Page »

Bruce Brubaker

Recordings like the new American piano music albums I make for ECM, InFiné, Bedroom Community, and Arabesque reach millions of listeners, and break through some old divisions of high culture/pop, or art/entertainment. My fans are listening to Billie Eilish, The Weeknd — even the occasional Mozart track! Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube are allowing music lovers to discover music they could not have found so easily before. Live performances begin to reflect what’s happening online. My performances occur in classical venues like the Philharmonie in Paris, the Barbican in London, at La Roque d’Anthéron, at festivals such as Barcelona’s Sónar and Nuits Sonores in Brussels, and such nightclubs as New York’s (le) Poisson Rouge. Read More…

View My Blog Posts

PianoMorphosis

Music is changing. Society's changing. Pianists, and piano music, and piano playing are changing too. That's PianoMorphosis. But we're not only reacting... From the piano -- at the piano, around the piano -- we are agents of change. We affect … [Read More...]

Archives

More Me

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 Francesco Tristano on Arte

Bruce Brubaker hosts 4 weeks of “Hammered!” on WQXR — “Something Borrowed,” “Drone,” “Portal,” “The Raw and the Cooked”

“Onstage, a grand piano and an iPod” — David Weininger’s story with video by Dina Rudick

“Bruce Brubaker on Breaking Down Boundaries” — extensive audio interview at PittsburghNewMusicNet.com

“Heavy on the Ivories” — Andrea Shea’s story for WBUR about Bruce Brubaker’s performances and recording of “The Time Curve Preludes” by William Duckworth

“Feeding Those Young and Curious Listeners” — Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times on the first anniversary of the Poisson Rouge

“The Jewel in the Fish” — Harry Rolnick on Bruce Brubaker at the Poisson Rouge

“The Post-Postmodern Pianist” — Damian Da Costa profiles Bruce Brubaker in The New York Observer

Bruce Brubaker questioned at NewYorkPianist.net

“Finding the keys to the heart of Jordan Hall” — Joan Anderman in the Boston Globe on the search for a new concert grand piano

“Hearing and Seeing” — Philip Glass speaks with Bruce Brubaker and Jon Magnussen, Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study

Bruce Brubaker about Messiaen’s bird music, NPR, “Here and Now”

“I Hear America: Gunther Schuller at 80” — notes and programs for concert series, New England Conservatory, Harvard University, Boston Symphony Orchestra

“A Conversation That Never Occurred About the Irene Diamond Concert,” Juilliard Journal

Bruce Brubaker plays music by Alvin Curran at (le) Poisson Rouge

Bruce Brubaker

Recordings such the new American piano music albums I make for ECM, InFiné, and Arabesque reach many listeners, and seem to break through some old divisions of high culture/pop, or art/entertainment. My fans are listening to Cardi B, Childish Gambino, Ariana Grande — even the occasional Mozart track! Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube are allowing music lovers to discover music they could not have encountered so easily in the past. Live performances begin to reflect what’s happening online: this year I play at the International Piano Festival at La Roque d’Anthéron, traditional concert venues in Los Angeles, and Boston — as well as nightclubs in Berlin, Hamburg, Paris, Lyon, Geneva, and New York’s (le) Poisson Rouge.

Return to top of page

an ArtsJournal blog

This blog published under a Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in