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...]
Drone
Last summer, I went to Iceland to record Nico Muhly's Drones & Piano. I planned to spend two days in the studio, walk around Rejkavik, go to the Blue Lagoon, and fly back to New York. When I arrived at Greenhouse Studios, the door was opened by Nadia Sirota. I had no idea she was going to be there. According to Nadia, she "kind of Jedi Mind Tricked" me into recording another of Nico's drone pieces with her, Drones & Viola -- after I … [Read more...]
Overheard
During some days in late summer, I practiced Beethoven's Fourth Concerto. I'm sure the windows were open. My Juilliard piano teacher, Jacob Lateiner lived on 84th Street, just around the block. I mentioned I was learning Beethoven's Fourth Concerto. "I know," he said. Pianists are prone to be overheard. The piano can be a loud instrument. Living in close proximity to others, in a New York City apartment, or a suburban house -- practicing is not … [Read more...]
Mesto
Do we covet music that signifies, encodes, or provokes sadness? As a child, when told to play with feeling Jacob Lateiner asked, "Which one?" In classical music, it does seem that emotion has come to mean sadness, or anger. When we see the marking "espressivo" we pour on the sentiment. The no-nonsense American clarinetist Charlie Russo told an over-emoting student: "Put a Band-Aid on it!" Not too many classical players explore emotion in … [Read more...]
Jacob Lateiner (1928-2010)
Jacob Lateiner died this morning in New York. He was 82. The following passages are from my 1998 essay about his teaching: "In a sense, Jacob Lateiner does not give piano lessons. The piano is a tool for him. It's a means or an obstacle to singing, speaking, and (fuga!) flying. In lessons, Jacob aims to be neutral. Part Socratic (or Talmudic?) questioner, part Freudian analyst (to the exactly punctual end of each session), Jacob allows his … [Read more...]
Marshall Plan
William Kapell, Van Cliburn, Glenn Gould, Leon Fleisher, Gary Graffman, Jacob Lateiner, Eugene Istomin. These were among post-World-War-II American piano ambassadors. In the 1930s and '40s, so many artists, scientists, and intellectuals came to America. Then, in the '50s, these American-trained, fresh faces went into the world to reread the Classical music canon, part of the accidental urban-renewal of European culture. What happened next? To … [Read more...]
First Note
To conjure the first sound from the piano, at the beginning of a piece, at the beginning of a concert... In a live performance, this first sound can be made only once. In my mind, I do it over and over again. More than other instruments, the piano is an instrument of imagination. Most of us don't travel with our own pianos. Although we may have an ideal piano sound in our mind, we never hear it. So we're always adjusting, adapting -- … [Read more...]
One Hand
From the school's library I checked out again the copy of Messiaen's Le merle noir (The Blackbird) that I used last fall when I played the piece with Paula Robison. Since then, many markings were made in the piano part. I don't mark anything in the scores I use, but when I opened the music again there were all the things pianists write: dark circles drawn around printed dynamic markings, fingering, penciled-in lines showing correspondences … [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...]