Performance tips for the Virtuosi?

[dorfmouse]

How many times do I read on the forum the carefully crafted critique, “So-and –so (insert name of any world acclaimed, successful and - God forbid - POPULAR pianist) sucks.”?

So, I got to thinking as I was hoovering up the dog hairs this morning, what advice might be given to these renowned but obviously clueless performers to help them along in their careers?

Imagine, perhaps, the following scenario.

Uchida agrees to play Beethoven’s Opus 110 in “Hommage to Dorfmouse”, a benefit concert organised by the latter for fellow mediocre pianists.

Extract from the following morning’s review in The Times:

“…… Most disappointingly, Uchida’s playing completely lacked those surprise elements we have come to love and expect in Dorfmouse’s interpretations; the brutal masculinity of her feminine endings, the sudden, mysterious disappearances of inner melodies, the inventively sharpened flats modulating to unknown keys, The pearly evenness of Uchida’s trills and runs were in lacklustre contrast to Dorfmouse’s sparkling syncopations and inventive accents in these passages.  “Great playing is never truly even,” Dorfmouse is fond of saying.
The subtle elasticity of Uchida’s rubato pales next to the edge-of –seat experience we have all felt whilst awaiting Dorfmouse’s next note.  As for the complexities of counterpoint so delicately highlighted by Uchida, “Well, the audience never gets the point,” laughs Dorfmouse, “and they always make such rude jokes about fugues.  So I just rearrange those bits to make a more homey sound.”
After the normal clamour for encores was replaced with thunderous thumping and shouts of “Dorfmouse, Dorfmouse!” Uchida disappeared in tears. Dorfmouse afterwards explained how she tried to give the celebrated pianist a few tips.
“I suggested she needed to unleash a much freer range of interpretations from her subconscious.  Memorising a few lines out of Joyce’s ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ every night before sleep should do the trick.  Or maybe she should just learn the Opus Clavithingummybob.  Then nobody would notice the odd mistake.  And I recommended a change of teacher.  I know a nice girl down the road who’s just passed Grade 5 – with Merit! She has room for a couple of new students.  Half an hour’s lesson a week should bring her up to my standard in no time.”


So, whose playing do you think you could most improve and how?

(To my heroine Mitsuko Uchida, with affectionate apologies for the use of her name.)

[m1469]

he he, well I don't dare add anything yet to this topic.  But, I just have to say that if we are going to approach those out there playing and doing it as though they are lacking something we can percieve, this is an excellent way of going about it, imo.  I am curious what would be the suggestions for performers, from people who think they know better. 

Brilliant hoovering, dorfmouse 


m1469

[pianistimo]

ok.  at risk of being shot by some kind of pianistic mafia, i will say - mr. watts, forget what you read about chopin saying to move your wrists sideways and back between movements .  it looks ridiculous. 

btw most of your playing - i really like  !   and, the continuing nimbleness of your fingers. 

for those expert pianists who bow like a martial artist - can you slow it down a bit.  you're scaring me.  give me some time to watch you bow, move to the piano, sit down.  think like a woman.  take all the time you need.  that way, it doesn't feel like we're watching a cartoon at the beginning and end.

ps  oh, and marc-andre hamelin - don't think you can get away with that busoni concerto one more time!  it stinks, even on a bosendorfer.  personally, i wanted tchaikovsky or brahms or beethoven or shostakovich or rachmaninov - but pleeeeaaaase don't, i repeat, don't play BUSONI.  busoni is wierd.  busoni is, well, very hard to listen to.  it is like pulling hair out of your head one by one.  by the time we got to the end, i wasn't even focusing.  it was like a bad sermon.  i was looking at the ceiling.

[thierry13]

ps  oh, and marc-andre hamelin - don't think you can get away with that busoni concerto one more time!  it stinks, even on a bosendorfer.  personally, i wanted tchaikovsky or brahms or beethoven or shostakovich or rachmaninov - but pleeeeaaaase don't, i repeat, don't play BUSONI.  busoni is wierd.  busoni is, well, very hard to listen to.  it is like pulling hair out of your head one by one.  by the time we got to the end, i wasn't even focusing.  it was like a bad sermon.  i was looking at the ceiling.

I don't get it. Busoni concerto is AMAZING.

[pianistimo]

i will never like busoni just because someone else does.  but, that's your prerogative.  just don't put it on the most likely to influence a woman positively.  if someone played that for a reaction from me, i'd leave.

[practicingnow]

i will never like busoni just because someone else does.  but, that's your prerogative.  just don't put it on the most likely to influence a woman positively.  if someone played that for a reaction from me, i'd leave.

You must understand - there are those people for whom Marc-Andre Hamelin can do no wrong, and you will NEVER get your point across to them - these are the crew that give him a standing ovation at the BEGINNING of the concert, instead of at the end, and are unable to form any true qualitative judgement about his performances - trust me, you are better trying to convince a religious cult member to leave his group than having a MAH fan find any fault in his playing.  Don't even begin to criticize anything he does, or even the pieces he plays, in forums like these...

 

[xvimbi]

You must understand - there are those people for whom Marc-Andre Hamelin can do no wrong, and you will NEVER get your point across to them - these are the crew that give him a standing ovation at the BEGINNING of the concert, instead of at the end, and are unable to form any true qualitative judgement about his performances - trust me, you are better trying to convince a religious cult member to leave his group than having a MAH fan find any fault in his playing.  Don't even begin to criticize anything he does, or even the pieces he plays, in forums like these...

His Schubert sucks!

There you go, I just criticized him, on this forum!

His Fantasy and Fugue on B.A.C.H. on the other hand rocks!

There, I've praised him. 

[dorfmouse]

His Schubert sucks!

There you go, I just criticized him, on this forum!

His Fantasy and Fugue on B.A.C.H. on the other hand rocks!

There, I've praised him. 

Standards of lucid criticism reach an all-time forum high! 

[bernhard]

How many times do I read on the forum the carefully crafted critique, “So-and –so (insert name of any world acclaimed, successful and - God forbid - POPULAR pianist) sucks.”?

So, I got to thinking as I was hoovering up the dog hairs this morning, what advice might be given to these renowned but obviously clueless performers to help them along in their careers?

Imagine, perhaps, the following scenario.

Uchida agrees to play Beethoven’s Opus 110 in “Hommage to Dorfmouse”, a benefit concert organised by the latter for fellow mediocre pianists.

Extract from the following morning’s review in The Times:

“…… Most disappointingly, Uchida’s playing completely lacked those surprise elements we have come to love and expect in Dorfmouse’s interpretations; the brutal masculinity of her feminine endings, the sudden, mysterious disappearances of inner melodies, the inventively sharpened flats modulating to unknown keys, The pearly evenness of Uchida’s trills and runs were in lacklustre contrast to Dorfmouse’s sparkling syncopations and inventive accents in these passages.  “Great playing is never truly even,” Dorfmouse is fond of saying.
The subtle elasticity of Uchida’s rubato pales next to the edge-of –seat experience we have all felt whilst awaiting Dorfmouse’s next note.  As for the complexities of counterpoint so delicately highlighted by Uchida, “Well, the audience never gets the point,” laughs Dorfmouse, “and they always make such rude jokes about fugues.  So I just rearrange those bits to make a more homey sound.”
After the normal clamour for encores was replaced with thunderous thumping and shouts of “Dorfmouse, Dorfmouse!” Uchida disappeared in tears. Dorfmouse afterwards explained how she tried to give the celebrated pianist a few tips.
“I suggested she needed to unleash a much freer range of interpretations from her subconscious.  Memorising a few lines out of Joyce’s ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ every night before sleep should do the trick.  Or maybe she should just learn the Opus Clavithingummybob.  Then nobody would notice the odd mistake.  And I recommended a change of teacher.  I know a nice girl down the road who’s just passed Grade 5 – with Merit! She has room for a couple of new students.  Half an hour’s lesson a week should bring her up to my standard in no time.”


So, whose playing do you think you could most improve and how?

(To my heroine Mitsuko Uchida, with affectionate apologies for the use of her name.)

You may be interested in this (true) piece of criticism of Uchida (or is she Argerich? )

by Jay Nordlinger

Ours is hardly a golden age for pianists. In fact, it is more like tin. Murray Perahia is a great pianist—with all the tools, and all the wit—but he is practically alone. The situation is better for conductors, but only slightly. Violinists, happy to say, are in decent supply. And for singers, we are in a positively glorious age—one that will be recognized as such after it has safely, and lamentably, passed.

Impoverished as we are in pianists, there are some interesting and creditable ones on the scene. At Carnegie Hall recently, three of them appeared within two weeks: Mitsuko Uchida, a Japanese pianist, long resident in Europe, who is known particularly for her Mozart; Emanuel Ax, an American, born in Poland, who is admired for his Chopin and chamber playing; and Evgeny Kissin, a former child prodigy, now twenty-nine, from Russia, who is the object of rapture and delirium everywhere. Many people see him as the successor to Rachmaninoff, Horowitz, Richter, Gilels—all of the giants who built the hair-raising Russian tradition.

Mitsuko Uchida, decidedly, is not of this tradition; she is a clean, careful, and modest pianist. Uchida offered an unusual program in New York, or rather, she presented it in an unusual order: a Chopin sonata, Webern, Mozart, and, to conclude, a late Schubert sonata.

Her Chopin was the B-flat minor, the sonata that includes the famous funeral march. She did well enough with the piece, but it illustrated a curious fact about her: she does not have much technique. The reason this is curious is that pianists today, whatever their musical limitations, are supposed to have loads of technique. In the old days, we often hear, technique might have been faulty, but musicianship—in particular, musical individuality—abounded. Today, continues this line, everyone has ample technique—that is taken for granted—but musicianship is wanting.

Uchida, however, has a severely limited technique, meaning that she can barely handle much of the mainstream repertory. The Chopin sonata was all but beyond her. She is exceptionally tight in the arms, which restricts her movement and deprives her of fluidity. She appears to sit too close to the keyboard, and her shoulders are hunched. Her entire piano-playing apparatus seems cramped. To be sure, she usually manages to get through difficult passages, but not without awkwardness and strain.

Her main problem in the first movement of the Chopin lay in the octaves: she could not coax a singing line out of them. It is easier, of course, to produce such a line with single notes, but Chopin demands that it be done with octaves as well. Uchida did not play those octaves into the keys, but rather on top of them, resulting in a harsh and brittle tone.
The Scherzo of the sonata, she really lacked the technique to play. She took it rather slowly, as she was wise to do, but she nonetheless missed too many notes and failed to convey those lively qualities that make the movement, after all, a scherzo.

Her approach to the funeral march was awfully strange: she pounced on every high B-flat, creating far too jarring a contrast with the rest of the melodic line. Uchida meant the movement to be stark and mar- tial—nothing wrong with that—but it came off instead as confused. In the lyrical D-flat-major section, however, she demonstrated a superb—really a superb—pianissimo. She was astonishingly quiet, but every note was distinct. The concluding Presto movement —a ghost-like toccata—was a bit overpedaled, mushier than in the most impressive performances, but acceptable.

Anton Webern published only one mature work for piano: the Variations, Op. 27. Uchida has a fondness for the Austrian serial school—she often programs Schoenberg, too—and she makes for it a worthy champion. In the Variations, she was spare and haunting, managing the crosshand work with particular finesse. This was wonderfully delicate playing—one is tempted to say, “like Japanese porcelain,” but that would seem ethnically pointed. The effectiveness of this work is heavily dependent on rhythm, and here Uchida was in steady control.

After the Webern, an odd thing occurred: Uchida did not leave the bench, nor did she rise to acknowledge applause. Rather, she remained seated and continued with the Mozart Adagio in B minor, K. 540. If she was trying to make a musical point—and she probably was—it was clear only to her.

Uchida obviously loves the Adagio, and she played it with touching devotion. Her reputation as a Mozartean is well earned. If she had a fault, though, it was her unwillingness to let the music speak for itself. This is, after all, a fairly simple (pianistic) song, not the Requiem. She made too much of a show of it, as if to say, “See what a profound little work this adagio is?” Nevertheless, there was that appealing cleanness about her playing, and the B major at the end was radiant.

In the closing Schubert sonata, the D major, D. 850, one of Uchida’s principal defects was glaring: an absence of true dynamic range. She seems to specialize in two things: sublime pianissimos and banging. She is apparently incapable of generating a big sound without banging, and this is an ugliness that undermines the other musical effects she has achieved. One wonders, at times, whether she can hear herself. Still, this performance had its strengths. Uchida lavished tenderness on the Con moto movement, and she captured nicely the gemütlich nature of the rondo. When Uchida has the luxury of relatively undemanding music, her listeners can relax —and she is a joy.

You can read more of Nodlinger's (always interesting) criticism here:

https://www.newcriterion.com/archive/18/jan00/nordling.htm

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[dorfmouse]

A quick thank you. (Am supposed to be working, not reading forum!)

Wish I could play a hundredth as well as she does .... sigh ...

[pianistimo]

you can tell he's a singer because he says 'we.'  i think there are many many great pianists out there, but it's hard to be able to afford to practice full time.  when a performance artist has to divide themselves in so many ways - it's impossible to be 'up' 100% of the time.  you can tell nordlinger likes criticizing (though i agree about perahia being a 'great') because he starts out praising Uchida and then goes into a rant about her not having technique.  that guy is a loon.  he just doesn't like piano music.  he's way too critical of her - and he thinks he knows a lot about piano when he's in realitity a wannabe critique (who probably doesn't like women artists).  do you ever notice how gentle really good pianists and conductors critiques are.  they are direct and to the point and NEVEr mention a person's ethnicity or male/femaleness or even dare to talk about musicality unless the person is really messing something up artistically.  it is the innermost being that performer's share.  this is so personal - and every artist knows that to critique someone's inner being is like telling them how to have a personal relationship.   we should truly appreciate what others have to offer without criticizing too much - so i agree with the point of this thread - which is not to offer criticism unless you know about as much as the performer (and then you are more modest about it, because you knwo the difficulties that go into a good performance).

i would turn this around and say there are very few artists in every field who are able to devote themselves 100% to their craft.  i'm more likely to criticize singers and conductors than pianists.  pianists, to me, should be appreciated for being able to sing AND conduct.  of course, when you hear a really great singer or conductor it just makes your mouth drop open and your mind turn off (the criticism).  same witha  good pianist.  you don't even think critically because there's nothing to criticize (or very little that you know about at that stratosphere).

my personal preference in listening to any of the three (pianist, vocalist, symphony) is for tone (hearing it on the upper side unless descending a scale and using the lower side of the note), consistency of interpretation (does the repeat sound anything like what was first played - or has the tempo gained a lot of speed and the dynamics too different), does the person often have memory slips or is it a rare occurance, do they perform something that they just worked on (the last three months?) and think it's wonderful, did the conductor and pianists share any feelings whatsoever about the piece before performing together?, does the performer make distracting physical movements, do they give adequate notes in the recital programme making the performance more understandable and enjoyable, do they rely too much on past accomplishments, what is the performer actively doing today? 

perhaps if there were a music critiques class (i would take it) we would learn to make more in-depth criticism anonymously.   we would probably keep the first review for ourselves, send the second review to friends, and publish the third.  that way we do not say something we are forever sorry for.  unless, of course, you plan on reviewing for new yorker magazine or something like that. 

[mrchops10]

Interesting piece, Bernhard. I think there is probably nothing most critics like more than dissecting a world-class professionals (and I times I wish I could publish my biting criticism of a few I've seen!). I am always interested in Nordlinger's reviews, but in defense of Dorfmouse's "hero"--Ms. Uchida today is a far cry from the pianist she was even five years ago.  This is typical of a performer who bursts onto the scene with one speciality (in this case, Mozart). Often, then they go through a very public growth process when they try to branch out, if they are intelligent. Uchida is certainly intelligent, and I think her "growth" has been one of the more interesting stories in piano of the last years. For the record, when I heard her last season, she played one of the best Schubert G major sonatas I have ever heard. In 2000, though, I may have written a criticism much like Nordlinger's.

[pianistimo]

just so you don't think i'm too nicey nice - i think it's always interesting to read reviews of every kind (even the first review with everything you always wanted to say but were afraid to).  it gives you another person's perspective.  but, don't you think pianists should be reviewed by pianists?

[mrchops10]

No, I completely disagree. Any person of high musical sensibility and a good knowledge of the reportoire is capable of reviewing. They may even be better able to view things holistically. I find if I have played a piece, it's difficult to judge a performance which is different than mine. Also, I find many pianists get too bogged down in the specifics when they listen to concerts. For me, the ideal audience member is not a professional pianist, but any highly open-minded, musical person...this is who ought to be writing reviews.

I like going to operas with singers, but I find I often have a completely different perspective as a pianist. They tend to be very focused on analyzing exactly how the singers voice worked, whereas I look at the production, acting, musicality of the singer, the conducting. That said, if I were reviewing an opera I would not go beyond the most general technical information, and I don't think Nordlinger crosses that line. BTW read Glenn Gould's wonderful review of a Barbra Streisand to get what I'm talking about. https://www.barbra-archives.com/MagazineArchives/streisand_highfidelity76.html

[bernhard]

Here is a very interesting article by Nordlinger ("Who cares about what critcs say").

https://www.newcriterion.com/archive/22/feb04/Nov6.htm

(And good Gould review! mrchops )

Best wishes,
Bernhard.