I was chatting with Vladimir Feltsman last Spring about PostClassical Ensemble\u2019s 2017-18 immersion experience, \u201cThe Russian Experiment,\u201d when the conversation took an unexpected turn.<\/p>\n
I had broached the topic of \u201ccultural community,\u201d and invited Feltsman to compare musical life in the US with the policed Soviet musical milieu he fled in 1987.<\/p>\n
We agreed that Western musical life, whatever its virtues, embraced no musical community of culture comparable to what Soviet Russians enjoyed in adversity.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m trying to do what I can to help my younger colleagues,\u201d Feltsman said, referring to the \u201cPiano Summer at New Paltz\u201d festival he founded more than twenty years ago. \u201cIn order to be successful, they try to \u00a0copy the most successful people at the moment in the music business\u201d \u2013 people who were not \u201cinspirational characters. . . . We all know their names.\u201d<\/p>\n
I recalled a conversation I once had with another pianist who is of the same generation as Feltsman and myself. We agreed that there was a time when pianists of international consequence were famous for a reason \u2013 but that today it\u2019s become a \u201ccrapshoot.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is,\u201d Feltsman agreed. \u201cAbsolutely. It\u2019s a different artform. It\u2019s a different market, and we know that the market dictates whatever it needs.\u201d<\/p>\n
I requested that our conversation end on a more optimistic note.<\/p>\n
So Feltsman added that he hoped \u201cthat people, after being satiated with youtube snippets of \u2018The Bumblebee\u2019 [5,300,000 hits and counting], would eventually come to understand the difference between quality art and crap.\u201d<\/p>\n
This exchange was filmed by Beyrouz Jamali, who expertly documents many PostClassical Ensemble events. Beyrouz produced a film, \u201cThe Russian Experiment.\u201d \u201cThe Difference Between Quality Art and Crap\u201d is an excerpt; you can watch it here.<\/a><\/p>\n