Article - Piano performance

[ramseytheii]

An interesting article from the foremost of American music critics:
https://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2008/09/08/080908crmu_music_ross?currentPage=all

He deftly summarizes a few recent books, having to do with the history of the classical concert as we know it.  There are lots of interesting points in here, and hopefully some for discussion!

Enjoy!

Walter Ramsey

[birba]

 I, too, find the current concert "formula" terribly old-fashioned.  I mean when you consider the strides technology has made in just the past 20 years, the changes in the "details" of our everyday living, the absurd new politics of terrorism, etc. walking into a concert hall is like a step into the past.  Maybe that's why people like it the way it is.  I don't know.  I find it very boring at times.  This is the "formula" that's been pretty much it, for the past 100 years.  I was looking at various programmes that Backhaus gave way-back when, and they were, yes, monumental.  But basically the same programmes we hear today.  Who cares to hear another appasionata?  or the goldberg or the diabelli?  who cares?!  Unless maybe it's one of your favorite pianists playing them.  And I don't know if the answer is contemp stuff.  I read some very interesting programmes that Jonathan Powell gives.  They're enticing, but is that the answer?  Maybe the "concert" era is dead.  At least the reactionary way we consider it.

[Petter]

I am personally totally overwhelmed by compulsive thoughts of ruining each classical recital I attend.

[ramseytheii]

I, too, find the current concert "formula" terribly old-fashioned.  I mean when you consider the strides technology has made in just the past 20 years, the changes in the "details" of our everyday living, the absurd new politics of terrorism, etc. walking into a concert hall is like a step into the past. 

Hmm... what do you mean?  How does the politics of terrorism, affect the nature of classical music concerts?  I would love for you to be more specific about this.  Also about the "details of our everyday living."

Maybe that's why people like it the way it is.  I don't know.  I find it very boring at times.  This is the "formula" that's been pretty much it, for the past 100 years.  I was looking at various programmes that Backhaus gave way-back when, and they were, yes, monumental.  But basically the same programmes we hear today.  Who cares to hear another appasionata?  or the goldberg or the diabelli?  who cares?!  Unless maybe it's one of your favorite pianists playing them.  And I don't know if the answer is contemp stuff.  I read some very interesting programmes that Jonathan Powell gives.  They're enticing, but is that the answer?  Maybe the "concert" era is dead.  At least the reactionary way we consider it.

I love to go hear live performances of the Goldberg and Diabelli variations!  I am surprised that a pianist here doesn't.  I think that concerts have always been based, by the way, on the cult of personality.  So people have always tended to go when their favorite pianists have been playing.


In the article, one comment bothered me, and I have heard this expressed by pianists elsewhere:

"Kenneth Hamilton is one of several pianists calling for a revival of Romantic mannerisms that have long been sidelined as vulgar: rolling chords, detaching melody from accompaniment, even improvising preludes to introduce major works."

Although I like the idea of improvising on the concert platform, a call to a revival of those tendencies, misses the point monumentally.  It won't make music, or pianism, fundamentally more interesting to people if pianists start detaching the notes of the melody from the bass line.  That particular effect was a consequence of the culture, not a cause of it.

Speaking generally, opera in the past, is like the movies today.  It was where people experienced major drama and action live on stage.  All performing soloists reacted to the intense love affair with opera, by wishing to create the diva aura, and by consciously imitating singers, their diction and caprices. 

The mannerism of unsynchronizing the melody and bass line, can reference a lot of things: a singer who enters a long note softly and adds a crescendo; a glottal accent; a particular consonant.  Pianists discovered effects on the instrument which heretofore had been only the province of singers. 

About rolled chords, that was done for two reasons: for pure effect, and for delineating counterpoint.  Musicians in general of yesteryear were much more obsessed with counterpoint than we are.  Today we are a culture of high frequencies, concerned primarily with the top voice, and everything else be damned.  It's only color.  Naturally I think that is unmusical, wrong, and rotten-banana-brained.  But the pianists of yesteryear, knew the secrets that arranged sonorities in different ranges.  They were able to create multiple lines using the natural tessituras of the instrument, and rolling chords was not just rolling chords, but using a different touch and weight on several notes within a chord, to give the effect of several voices, rather than just a bland chord, which is what we mostly hear today.  Glenn Gould rolled chords in this manner, but it didn't start with him.  Listen to Busoni's recordings of the Chopin preludes, for one.

My point is of course that this Kenneth Hamilton, whoever he is, has the wrong idea.  What will make the piano recital more interesting to people is not the superficial effects of melody displacement and rolled chords.  What will make it more interesting, is when the pianists themselves are more interested.  Pianists who play with genuine poetry, still fill halls.  Pletnev, Gavrilov, Brendel, Argerich, Sokolov, Pires, those pianists who play with true thought, consideration and application, draw huge amounts of interest.  It's just true.  Most pianists, play everything top voice top voice top voice, and literal literal literal.

We are in the extremes of the "Age of Reason" - we are in the "Age of Literalism."  The vast majority of composers we perform, never wrote in a literal way (not even Ravel).  Yet we insist on playing their music in a literal way.  In one sense, we can never grasp the style that surrounded them, or that they tried to create in their works.  But to acknowledge that, should not mean an automatic recourse to fundamentalism and absolute literalism.  This is the death of creativity, the death of exploration, and the death of interest.

One can see that trend in other areas as well: religious fundamentalists in the Middle East and America, having realized that certain parts of their religious texts can neither be proven nor disproven, have decided to treat it all as literal truth.  In my mind, that is an abdication of mental responsibility; an abdication of humanity; an abdication of artistry; an abdication of reason.  The same problems plague the musical world.

Walter Ramsey

[Petter]

Doesnt have to take it to the extreme to change it. Just a smile from the preformer and IŽd be satisfied. 

[allthumbs]

That was a very insightful and interesting post Walter. Thanks for sharing that.

allthumbs