Topic: An Evening with Charles Rosen (Read 3236 times)

nomis · on: February 02, 2007, 02:28:05 PM

I went to a pre-concert talk by Charles Rosen yesterday and it was extremely informative. He's performing the Diabelli Variations tonight, so his talk was based around that work. He didn't say one word about the Appassionata for the whole evening though.

I entered the Queen Elizabeth Riverside Room and I immediately saw the venerable old gentleman. His voice was quite hoarse, which masked his American accent a little. I dared not to talk to him - I was too nervous.

I found a seat and patiently waited. I looked around and found that there were mainly older people present (by older, I mean above 55), though there were a few music students. Then...

Mitsuko Uchida appeared. I was absolutely flabbergasted! She sat no more than 2 metres away from me. Another pianophile made eye contact with me and he couldn't believe it either! He was extremely close.

Her presence in London does make sense though - she's performing a cycle of Mozart Piano Concerti.

*CLAP CLAP CLAP*

The elderly gentleman walks to the front. He greets everyone and then asks, "Can anyone hear me properly at the back?"

"NO!!!"

"Well, there are some spare seats at the front if anyone wants to take them." (they were reserved for press., but they didn't appear. I couldn't move because I was completely sandwiched.)

Finally, after a couple of minutes of strained hearing, a lady walks up and kindly informs him: "There's a microphone, would you like to use it?"

"There's a microphone?!"

After some initial trouble with adjusting the height of the microphone, the talk began. Unfortunately, due to where the mic and the piano were positioned, he had to walk back and forth. He doesn't appear to be particularly mobile, so I guessed he would've demonstrated more if the piano was closer.

I don't remember the whole talk word for word, or much of it in fact, so statements from here will be quite jumbled, but hopefully interesting.

The first half was mainly about the issue of public performance and how the English, "being the commercially-minded people they are," (they aren't really) "invented the public concert. Vienna was slow to catch on, but when they did, they did it better than anyone else. In fact, the [Austro-]Germans did everything better than everyone else. Bach's Italian concerto was better than others' Italian concerti, Mozart did Opera Seria and Comic Opera better than anyone else [Rosen said Beethoven did something better, but I can't remember what it is]."

Rosen also mentioned how much of the music before the 19th century was not meant to be publicly performed. "Bach's worked was never performed in public during his lifetime; the only music that was performed was the music for the church. Though Mozart's Opera's were staged for the public, much of his work was not performed publicly; only semi-publicly or privately. Beethoven's Piano Sonatas were never performed, and of course the Diabelli wasn't performed either. The public wouldn't stand for it!"

Relating to this is his idea that the "Coronation" Piano Concerto by Mozart was to be performed privately, or rather could be. He states that the strings play what the rest of the orchestra plays, so it's possible to play the whole concerto with piano and strings, only. "There is one line played by the oboes that isn't played by the strings, but at that point, the pianist is only playing with his left hand." A smile appears.

"The Antiqua Ricecare by Bach was only intended for two hands, not for fabulous orchestrations with six different instruments." He proceeds to play the six-part counterpoint, though I doubt few really knew, because nobody could see the pianist's hands except the press people at the front. "Yes, so it is only for two hands or for choir, nothing else." He then talked about the history of this piece - some king (I've forgotten his name) only liked fortepianos, so when Bach came round, he asked him to improvise on the king's theme with "3 voices. Now do it with 4 voices." When it came to six voices, Bach said, "Your majesty, I cannot improvise on your theme with six voices, but I will compose a piece with six voices and I will send it to you." Bach did just that, and the manuscript was initially on two staves, but he separated it to show that there were really six voices in the piece.

Rosen said that he'd never play The Art of Fugue in public, because it was sixteen fugues all in D minor on the same theme - he would get bored of it and the audience would. "There is only one fugue that cannot be played with two hands - the mirror fugue. It was written for two harpsichords, and apparently Bach found it too difficult to keep it for one harpsichord."

A harpsichordist once said to him that "Harpsichordists have to sweat blood and tears trying to bring things out, whereas for you pianists, it's much easier." Rosen said, "Modern harpsichordists have to bring things out, but the harpsichordists of Bach's time didn't care at all! They could see the voices and feel the voices in their fingers!"

Rosen stated that there wasn't a Bach revival when Mendelssohn redid the St. Matthew - there was nothing to revive! Bach had never been publicly performed and all the professional musicians had studied him. He said that Mendelssohn introduced the public to the religious music of Bach, rather than a revival.

In the first half, Rosen was also talking about being posterity-minded. "Unlike the other arts in the 18th century, Music did not have any classic figures, and people like Monteverdi, Du Prez and others were completely forgotten. I've recently been having debates with Mozart scholars about whether Mozart wrote his music for posterity. They claimed that Mozart wrote music only for his time and to the best of his ability." He then says that there is a letter from his father urging him to compose great music otherwise his name would be forgotten. Mozart was also hanging around with some Abbe he was researching on figures like Du Prez, and Rosen concluded that: "Mozart was surrounded by posterity-mindedness!"

He said Mozart was more ambitious than Beethoven, and Beethoven emulated him, trying to be more ambitious. He mentioned a few musical examples, but I can only remember one. In one Mozart's operas (The Magic Flute, I believe, or possibly Cosi Fan Tutte) there is a soprano solo with two horn accompaniment. Beethoven in his Fidelio does the same, but has four horns and a bassoon solo! Rosen then goes on with other examples of Beethoven trying to outclass Mozart.

Rosen stated that lyricism didn't come naturally to Beethoven, whereas it did to Mozart and Beethoven was always struggling with it. He said that's probably why Beethoven only wrote one opera [I think he said that].

The second half was about the Diabelli and it's history and relation to Bach and stuff. It is obviously the most banal theme in the world, so Beethoven threw in the trash the first time. But he had a second look at it and thought he could do something with it. Rosen talks a little about how the theme is varied and stuff and also talked alot about the Goldberg variations, with its huge variety of styles. "The variations are grouped in three, the first being virtuosic, the third, a canon and the one in between a free variation. Bach didn't do a canon at the tenth because he thought it wold be too similar to the one on the third, so he took some obscene themes and put it together over the same bass. [he plays them at the piano] But he does strive to make the canon at the ninth as different as possible from the canon at the second. Bach's canon's here are model canons." He then went on about how if you do a canon at the second, you had to make it come on this beat and that, and if you wanted to learn how to write canons, "then have a look at the Goldbergs!"

Rosen said that before Diabelli, there were a number of ways to end a set of variations. [my memory is particularly hazy here, you have been warned] You can end it with a minor variation; and adagio to allegro; a fugue (as in one of Bach's Passacaglia's); you can repeat the theme and some others I don't remember. Beethoven does all of them! He has three minor variations, and a fugue (a parody of Haendel's expertise at creating fugues with repeated notes) and repeats the theme in a form of a minuet. He also said how Beethoven got his chromaticism from Bach, though when Beethoven imitated Bach, he sounded like Chopin! Of course, Chopin studied Bach as well.

There were a couple of questions, and the one that got him particularly agitated was one about how the performers of the past played more freely. Rosen cited Beethoven, who played very freely, but reprimanded Czerny for inserting trills into one of his works. He also cited the case of Josef Hofmann, who he had listened to from the ages of 4-15 and he said he played very strictly and he Brunswick recordings were the best example of this. He said Hofmann played Hungarian Rhapsody 2 very nobly, but where Liszt asks to be free, he continues in strict time!

After the talk...

Charles Rosen and Mitsuko Uchida were discussing tempi, and of course the "Hammerklavier" came up.

"I play it at 138," remarked Charles. "You know, many things have been played at the wrong tempo but sound wonderful!" [His remark in his book Piano Notes about Hofmann and the Chopin Nocturne comes to mind]

They also talked briefly about the length of the sonata.

"Yes, it should be about 35 minutes long..." said Charles
Mitsuko looked horrified.
"No, it should be about 44, 45 minutes..." she replied.
"Ok, more like 28 minutes then..."
Hearty laughter all around.
"I like the opening to have energy, you know. Not like the lumpy 19th century tempi," Charles stated.
He then proceeded to play an excerpt from the sonata, at 138. As Mitsuko listened, it appeared to be too fast for her and she shook her head.

About the slow movement...

"I play the first page completely strictly until con grand'espressione, then I play it very freely," said Charles. "It heightens the impact because it is initially quite strict."
Mitsuko seemed to agree, and got very worked up when "con grand'espressione" was mentioned, and almost said it simultaneously with him.

I got my booked signed! https://www.imagehosting.com/out.php/i174621_DSC00032.JPG He said, "Let's do this properly," and he crossed out his name and signed it. He also did this with another fan. I was trembling with fear so I forgot any questions I was going to ask, even though I had a million of them, including whether he had ever been taught Rosenthal's Etude in Thirds. However, another person did ask a question pertaining to Chopin's last published Mazurka with the canon in the RH (it was mentioned in the talk about feeling the counterpoint, and also said how all current editions have a fingering for both hands, but insisted that Chopin wanted to arpeggiate when it exceed the span of the hand) and the person asked whether there were other pieces like this, but Rosen talked about Mazurka rhythm instead, which was far more interesting. He said there were six mazurka rhythms, demonstrating how dotted 8th followed by 16th or 8th followed by a 16th rest and a 16th meant a delay on the third (or was it second?) beat. He also said that rests on the first beat mean a delay on the first beat, resulting in a feeling like 4/4. His teacher Rosenthal did that, but when asked whether he was playing in 4/4, "Of course I'm not!". He demonstrated these rhythms with a Mazurka in F major (an early one), first delaying the first beat and delaying the second beat. "Of course, I don't play it as vulgarly as that."

That's about it! I'm going to see him play tonight, hopefully it'll be great.

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Topic: An Evening with Charles Rosen (Read 3236 times)