My Audience: My New Teachers

In my current run of in-house recitals there is lively conversation before and after (sometimes during!) performance, all of which has been extremely instructive.

Now I am programming works requested by former students.  Last night was the Prelude to Bach's G Major Partita, one of those works I had heard so badly played as a student that I had no interest in playing it.  Lo and behold!  a marvelous undertaking. I am so grateful for the request.

The listener/requestor's response:  It was Nancified (or words to that effect).  What does that mean?

I know all too well.  The request came from an extraordinary Japanese woman, gifted, insightful, serious about playing the piano.  This woman, in tears following a session on a Schubert Sonatina for Piano and Violin, once confided to me how upset she was to realize that the more she learned about Western music the less she understood it.  And there it is.

I have stayed away from Bach on the piano because I find it difficult to bring out the essence of his music on an instrument tuned so differently from his tuning, and whose tradition is based on an entirely different tone model than his--namely, harmonic rather than linear.

Also, little in my training prepared me to discern when Bach switches from the lyrical to the dance, from metered to ornamental rhythm, from improvisatory to measured motion, especially in single-line music, like the Prelude to the G major, all made even more complicated by the hints of hemiola that permeate everything in three.

Marlon Feld Composes for his Time

Check it out: The Last Survivors by Marlon Feld.  Written with wit and feeling for his generation, I am extremely touched by it, though I have the feeling he didn't expect me to like it and so left it to his friends to call it to my attention.

Think about it: what a compliment to be invited to respond without obligation. 

Bravo, Marlon!

Schumann Piano Concerto:Marta Argerich's Piece

This afternoon quite by chance I heard the broadcast of a live performance recording of Marta Argerich playing the Schumann: By far and hands down the best performance of the work I have ever heard.  What made it so outstanding was her total freedom to follow ear logic as opposed to notated meters and phrasings.  It was constantly stepping outside of the bounds of standard meter, with threes interrupting fours and with impulsive outbursts of energy.

I have never heard anyone approach this utter freedom.  The result was that it evoked the magic of Schumann telling one of the fairy tales at which he excelled.  And when it flew it really flew.  I completely recommend this recording with the Warsaw Philharmonic.

What Price Perfection?

Is it unthinkable that a musician can learn more about how music works from listening to errors than from listening to right notes all the time?

If so, then I certainly have wasted a lot of time learning how to listen to errors!

But in the process I have learned how great a pull musical tone exerts upon the subconscious, so great that it re-routes right notes turning them into insightful wrong notes, insightful because they reveal the difference between pro forma logic and the non sequitur that distinguishes genius from same-old.

Recently a young composer bemoaned to me the fact that, though many professionals could just sit down and sight-read his compositions perfectly, they had nothing to say about them.  No comment.  So why write?

Liking Everything

A young composer put it to me quite succinctly:  We are supposed to like everything; there is no trace of anxiety or fear.  I would go even further and say that malaise is entirely without meaning in the Facebook culture.

Does it matter?

Without malaise we have no discretion, no taste.  I am uncomfortable with what I hear.  That implies the question, why.  That requires some in-depth listening.  That, in turn, requires an extension of myself into realms of the unknown, whether having to do with personal space or with sonic event.

Are we losing this?

Live Listening: Does It Matter?

I recently put out a topic for discussion to an on-line group to which I subscribe:  Have recordings taken the place of live performance in determining our musical standards?  After more than a week no replies. 

Either that means that I am completely out-of-sync with my times, or that one of the two concepts has no relevancy.  Which?

Consider "live."  This is admittedly difficult as it assumes presence, mutual presence in the case of actually being in the same room together with another person who is making music.  But it doesn't need to be in an auditorium and the person making music does not need to be a professional.  It might be your child or your mother; your neighbor or your friend.

As for "listening," that is really the hard part as we have all probably lost the ability to listen free of the boundaries already set by the pre-heard, i.e., the recorded version.

What would happen to our music if the standard were set by seriousness of intent rather than by perfection of the surface?

I have heard far too much perfect playing that leaves me cold and have learned to be deeply moved by the imperfect playing of striving, yearning children.

Schumann's "Melody"

The first piece in The Album for the Young, it is a perfect piece.  In very few notes it arouses the deepest sense of what constitutes melody and how the piano is admirably suited to sing.  Any set of three notes rising or falling has the power to tear your heart out.  How? By arousing the deepest sense of conflicting modality between each successive note.  How does it happen?  By listening, of course.