Yesterday Dr. Pamela Stanley was awarded a distinguished prize by the faculty of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, of which she is a distinguished member. Her field, glycobiology (simply put, the study of sugars) exists because she asked simple questions to which she determinedly pursued answers.
The fact that I have enjoyed teaching Pamela for a very long time rather amuses me, as piano teachers are known to declare that after a period of time they have nothing more to teach a student. I have yet to experience this problem because I take as a given that what the student learns from me is only part of the transaction. Much more important to the working relationship is what I learn from the student.
Is this fair?
What could be more elusive than the pursuit of answers to the simple questions evoked in the works of the masters? Does an honest player ever stop asking those questions?
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Friday, April 4, 2014
Minuets are Back in Style
Quite by chance and trapped in a dentist's chair, I heard the entire Haydn Symphony No. 92, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. I was fascinated, as I always am by Haydn; and particularly by the minuet, which Bernstein got pretty much wrong.
No wonder! He was active when people did not yet know that there was more to a minuet than counting to three. I am happy to report that minuets have come back into style--which means that more and more frequently one hears them rendered as they would have been in the 18th century.
The difference is variation: What seems to be a repetitive rhythm in strict 3/4 time turns out to be successive contrasts when rendered a la minuet. For example:
Long---- short Long---short Long---short Long--- looks like a simple Strong----weak repeated
But in the minuet it would come out like this:
Strong ---Strong weak (Strong on a tie or in a rest!) weak, alternating strong and weak every two beats, whether or not a fresh attack coincides with a strong beat. (Impossible to render plausible in words....)
This incredibly interesting syncopation is difficult to do, delightful to the ear, and would certainly have inspired incredible dancing.
No wonder! He was active when people did not yet know that there was more to a minuet than counting to three. I am happy to report that minuets have come back into style--which means that more and more frequently one hears them rendered as they would have been in the 18th century.
The difference is variation: What seems to be a repetitive rhythm in strict 3/4 time turns out to be successive contrasts when rendered a la minuet. For example:
Long---- short Long---short Long---short Long--- looks like a simple Strong----weak repeated
But in the minuet it would come out like this:
Strong ---Strong weak (Strong on a tie or in a rest!) weak, alternating strong and weak every two beats, whether or not a fresh attack coincides with a strong beat. (Impossible to render plausible in words....)
This incredibly interesting syncopation is difficult to do, delightful to the ear, and would certainly have inspired incredible dancing.
Thursday, April 3, 2014
Close-up Listening Changes Everything
Instead of going on tour I am on tour in my own studio, committed to two performances per month, organized in four month cycles: I stick with one theme per cycle (currently Beethoven's rhythms) in relation to which four programs evolve, each one performed twice.
The development in the programming, in the playing, and in the listeners' involvement is truly extraordinary. It is the kind of music making I have always aspired to. The best thing about it is that the audience is truly part of the enterprise.
They do not come to be impressed but to be let in on music in depth. The location is NYC. Interested? Get in touch.
The development in the programming, in the playing, and in the listeners' involvement is truly extraordinary. It is the kind of music making I have always aspired to. The best thing about it is that the audience is truly part of the enterprise.
They do not come to be impressed but to be let in on music in depth. The location is NYC. Interested? Get in touch.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Conversing with Beethoven
It occurs to me that, though Artur Schnabel did us a great favor by introducing Beethoven piano sonatas onto the concert scene, it is time for us to outgrow the entire-evening-of-Beethoven-sonatas syndrome.
Why not entertain that great music in exchange with other compositions? For example, the combination of the Op 10 No 3 with Debussy's Suite Bergamasque and with Brahms's Op. 39 Waltzes has been revelatory in relation to all three works.
The performance is not about anything but poetry, and not in some flimsy artsy sense. Sound; touch; immediacy.
Someone listening last night told me she was in tears during the Beethoven. Whatever she was experiencing was coming straight from the medium of sound. I do not entertain any emotion whatsoever when playing even the most emotionally charged music: there simply isn't time. Too much is happening to be distracted by a nameable state of mind.
Why not entertain that great music in exchange with other compositions? For example, the combination of the Op 10 No 3 with Debussy's Suite Bergamasque and with Brahms's Op. 39 Waltzes has been revelatory in relation to all three works.
The performance is not about anything but poetry, and not in some flimsy artsy sense. Sound; touch; immediacy.
Someone listening last night told me she was in tears during the Beethoven. Whatever she was experiencing was coming straight from the medium of sound. I do not entertain any emotion whatsoever when playing even the most emotionally charged music: there simply isn't time. Too much is happening to be distracted by a nameable state of mind.
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Wrong notes and choices
I firmly believe that people play wrong notes for the right reason: namely, that their ear leads them to a better proposition than the one chosen by the composer, for reasons known to him or her alone.
Today I had a perfect example of how this is true. My computer-animator student with the extraordinary ear kept playing a certain wrong note in the opening of the second movement of the "Moonlight." Anyone with a background in music theory would be incapable of playing that note wrong. I know that I could not do so. I look at the score and know in advance what it will sound like.
Not so this young man. By the time his lesson was over I had learned about the choices Beethoven made much more than I would ever dreamed possible, all because of this young man's unbiased and accurate ear. It is not accurate in any theoretical or conceptual sense; it is simply accurate. There is a huge difference between the two.
Odd, because just this morning I was asking myself why that seemingly "normal" movement sits between two such giant challenges, one slow, the other agitated. Now, thanks to him, I get it.
Today I had a perfect example of how this is true. My computer-animator student with the extraordinary ear kept playing a certain wrong note in the opening of the second movement of the "Moonlight." Anyone with a background in music theory would be incapable of playing that note wrong. I know that I could not do so. I look at the score and know in advance what it will sound like.
Not so this young man. By the time his lesson was over I had learned about the choices Beethoven made much more than I would ever dreamed possible, all because of this young man's unbiased and accurate ear. It is not accurate in any theoretical or conceptual sense; it is simply accurate. There is a huge difference between the two.
Odd, because just this morning I was asking myself why that seemingly "normal" movement sits between two such giant challenges, one slow, the other agitated. Now, thanks to him, I get it.
Monday, March 31, 2014
What We Pay for Progress
The economics of music is a funny subject, worthy of serious study on the part of all music students.
These days it tends to take the form of survival tactics: what you have to do to "make" it in today's world. Good luck.
It might be more meaningful to consider the subject historically, as did Frank Loesser in his wonderful book Men, Women, and Pianos. Loesser makes a point of describing the scene onto which the piano emerged and in the context of which it morphed into the piece of household furniture we all know and love so well.
Yesterday I had an eye-opening experience that did not directly involve a piano, but a violin bow. Working with an intelligent and enterprising violinist, with whom I have not previously collaborated, we are studying the "Spring" Sonata of Beethoven--one of those over-played, under-examined required works from which violin teachers should be given a twenty-year recovery period in which to pose some essential questions....
Gregor Kitzis, who also plays Baroque violin, made the brilliant observation that the modern bow did not exist in 1801, when this sonata was written. Yesterday he brought his Baroque bow and the work was completely transformed by the subtle, light, flexible attack and release values of this instrument--for the bow is as much an instrument as the violin itself.
I laughed aloud at some points, so amused was I, and so dazzled.
Progress in the form of projection into larger and larger performance venues has made it almost impossible for us to hear the "pre-progress" elements of so much music that we know only in over-projection mode.
These days it tends to take the form of survival tactics: what you have to do to "make" it in today's world. Good luck.
It might be more meaningful to consider the subject historically, as did Frank Loesser in his wonderful book Men, Women, and Pianos. Loesser makes a point of describing the scene onto which the piano emerged and in the context of which it morphed into the piece of household furniture we all know and love so well.
Yesterday I had an eye-opening experience that did not directly involve a piano, but a violin bow. Working with an intelligent and enterprising violinist, with whom I have not previously collaborated, we are studying the "Spring" Sonata of Beethoven--one of those over-played, under-examined required works from which violin teachers should be given a twenty-year recovery period in which to pose some essential questions....
Gregor Kitzis, who also plays Baroque violin, made the brilliant observation that the modern bow did not exist in 1801, when this sonata was written. Yesterday he brought his Baroque bow and the work was completely transformed by the subtle, light, flexible attack and release values of this instrument--for the bow is as much an instrument as the violin itself.
I laughed aloud at some points, so amused was I, and so dazzled.
Progress in the form of projection into larger and larger performance venues has made it almost impossible for us to hear the "pre-progress" elements of so much music that we know only in over-projection mode.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Improvisation and Classical Style
Two people asked me this morning how Classical style music is related to improvisation.
My question to one (a non-musician) was when was the last time he had recited a poem. Answer: Last week. And was it the same as the time before that? Couldn't be, was the answer. What was different? Intonation, meaning ... And that would affect timing, no?
And thus it is with Classical style music, or any music for that matter.
When it is mechanical repetition it lacks life, it lacks meaning. All it takes to enliven it is presence in the nano-instant in which one vibration merges with the next to produce musical context as opposed to pre-heard canned goods.
My question to one (a non-musician) was when was the last time he had recited a poem. Answer: Last week. And was it the same as the time before that? Couldn't be, was the answer. What was different? Intonation, meaning ... And that would affect timing, no?
And thus it is with Classical style music, or any music for that matter.
When it is mechanical repetition it lacks life, it lacks meaning. All it takes to enliven it is presence in the nano-instant in which one vibration merges with the next to produce musical context as opposed to pre-heard canned goods.
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