Trinity Wall Street - Greatest Messiah Ever

I was on the edge of my seat shedding tears of joy and astonishment as voice after voice, rhythm after rhythm just kept pouring every imaginable emotion.  Julian Wachner gets it and allows everyone in the orchestra and chorus to get it also. 

I went with two people who had never heard the work before.  I have heard it too many times, but never like this.  They were overwhelmed.  So was I.  It is due to be broadcast later this month on WQXR.  Don't miss it.  I heard part of last year's broadcast, that's how I knew it would be worth every cent to be in the room with that happening.

End of the Year, Folks!!

Tax deduction time is rapidly running out.  Visit the website; support this work.  You have two options: Take your gift as a tax-deduction via the Fractured Atlas link on the Funding page, or do as I do, work independent of the tax system and invest in a not-for-profit product on the Books and CDs page where there is a link to subscribe to this blog.

I invite you.

I urge you.

More about Nano-seconds

Last night I attended a performance to which I had been invited by a dear friend.  Though the seat was excellent, third row center, I sat on the edge of it during only one of the eight (count them) Baroque pieces on the program.  This was occasioned by the superb vocalism of Colin Carr's cello playing of a Boismortier cello concerto.  Wow! is all I can say.

Tones actually not equal-tempered but yearning to be higher or lower.  Surprises all the time as he went beyond virtuosity into the realm of "Wait 'til you hear this!"  I literally couldn't wait; I listened as if I were playing myself.

The others?  Business, I'm afraid, as usual.  Beats, lots of beats and the usual sorts: upbeats and downbeats.  After three sets in a row I would look for more interesting employment.   The result corresponds all too well to the prevailing standard of classical performances.  I'm sure the players were having a good time but it was, with that one outstanding exception, far removed from nano-second territory.

Why I Don't Play at Barbes

Another splendid evening at Barbes last night.  I was seated next to an older couple who had never heard Rachelle, knew nothing about her.  Out of curiosity they came to this neighborhood bar.  Afterward the woman said to me that it took a while for her to get it, but once she caught on she realized that she was hearing a one-of-a-kind musician addressing an audience of everybody (including the horrified children who watch/ed, as she had, the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer animated film that shows at this time of year) with a vast range of material, including death and grace.

The owner of the bar asked if I would like to play there sometime: a nice compliment, a touching invitation.  I explained that I really couldn't do it because the piano wouldn't do what I needed it to do.

But the real reason is that the music I play can't be even approximated on an instrument that does not resonate.

Reading at the Piano

Sight-reading at the piano must be one of the most complicated activities known to humankind.  Ask yourself which is faster, your visual response or your ear response.  Most people would say visual, simply because the ear response is so much harder to locate, to identify, to become aware of.

In fact, however, it has been measured:  the auditory response time is 200 times faster than any other sensory input in our brains.

But, since most of our training in all of education is based on cultivating rapid eye/hand or eye/brain responses, we have grown accustomed to mistaking that habitual speed for real speed.  It is, in fact, quite slow in comparison to sound and to sound response.

Today I had an experience of this with one of my prize students, with whom I have worked for a very long time trying to find what she calls "the music part."  I had her pick a brand new page (she picked the last page of In Winterszeit II in Schumann's Album for the Young), then find a measure whose sound she could anticipate with some certainty.  It turned out to be the last chord, and, in fact, not so simple in that it comprised a tied sound and a pedaled bass.

When she played the chord it did not match her anticipation.  This was fascinating.  As we backed up to approach the sound the complexity of Schumann's ear became increasingly evident and overwhelmingly stimulating,  While an experienced musician might see an extended C major passage with some deviations, there were detailed fluctuations of sympathetic vibration so rich that the sound she ended up with had a life of its own, dependent of any visual predictability.

This is what I call real reading at the piano.  There is nothing elementary about it except that children hear that way until they are discouraged, alas too soon and too often, from paying that kind of attention.

A Cappella Tuning

I crave good a cappella singing, not merely as a spectator sport but as an activity which I cherish.  I have recently had the pleasure of singing in a small group that comprises enough musical experience among its members to invite the music to soar.

The sensation is remarkable -- as vivid today (four days later) as at the moment itself.  It is specific sensation attached to particular tones in particular phrases: a tone that pushed itself in, impelling the motion forward; a raised eyebrow from a fellow singer at an exquisitely tuned major third.

All music should be vivid in precisely that way, whether instrumental or vocal.

Reading as Activity

With all the emphasis on speed reading, and now on the rapid skimming through enormous quantities of information available at the press of a button, we risk losing the pleasurable sense of reading as an activity to be enjoyed for its own sake, like a walk in the park.

Alberto Manguel's A History of Reading explores the activity in relation not only to words but also to pictures.  Tonal Refraction explores reading music as the multi-dimensioned activity it is for all musicians.

It is an action involving memory as well as comprehension in the here and now.