Making good arguments
Posted on 12 March 2010 | Comments Off
While reading a review of a recently-released CD of music by Chopin, I came across the following:
One of the highlights is the B major Nocturne. A delicate flower, this, with middle-ground rhythms so diffuse that most pianists, fancying it as an opportunity for rubatissimo, render the whole thing practically incomprehensible.
Even after accepting that the reviewer’s judgments are to a certain extent subjective, this passage bothered me. I had to think for while before I understood why: it commits a faulty generalization and thus undermines the point the author was trying to make.
A faulty generalization occurs when the attributes of a sample are extrapolated to apply to a population as a whole. In this case, the author no doubt has heard recordings and/or performances of Chopin’s B major Nocturne that he felt were damaged by what in his view was excessive rubato. That’s all well and good, although it would be nice if he provided examples so we could listen and form our own opinions. The problem lies with the generalization that “most pianists” play the Nocturne in this way. Because some pianists play this way, does that mean most do? Absolutely not! And what is meant by “most?” 51 percent? 75 percent? 99 percent? Does every other performance of this Nocturne have too much rubato, except for the one in question?
We’ll never know the answers to these questions; they’re not important anyway. The faulty generalization hurts the reviewer’s argument, and it would have been so simple to avoid:
One of the highlights is the B major Nocturne. A delicate flower, this, but [name of pianist] clearly outlines the diffuse middle-ground rhythms and avoids the use of excessive rubato.
I’m not a very witty writer, so this sounds kind of clunky. A little sprucing up with some more vivid words would make it as enjoyable to read as the original. The end result would hopefully be both entertaining and convincing.
Technical details
Posted on 19 February 2010 | Comments Off
Few piano teachers talk about the extremely subtle mechanics of playing the instrument. Perhaps the reason we don’t often see these issues addressed is because they are very personal; every hand is different and everybody interacts with the piano in slightly different ways.
One big and, in retrospect, obvious issue is the basic physical construction of the keyboard: the white and black keys occupy very different topographies. This can be a good or a bad thing. Good in that it makes scales such as B major easier to play because the position of the black keys fits the structure of the hand very naturally. Bad in that it necessitates constant awareness of the angle of the hand to transition smoothly between white and black keys.
I can elaborate a little bit on this by using Bach’s E minor Toccata as an example. In the first four notes in the left hand three white keys and one black are played (E-D#-E-E). The potential technical issue here is that if the fingering 1-2-1-5 is used (a natural choice), then the size of the thumb and the physical position of the D# can conspire to produce some unevenness in execution. If the wrist is kept straight, as one would do when playing E-D-E, then the leverage exerted on the D# will be different than on the E, thus making it harder to control the volume of the note.
If one reflects for a moment on the physical problem at hand, it is easy to see that by turning the wrist slightly to the left one alters the angle of the thumb and brings the 2nd finger into a more advantageous position. This immediately allows for a more even execution and a greater sense of security in the passage.
The above is a very simple example, but the principles found here can be expanded to any passage in which a combination of white and black keys are used. Of course the level of complexity can increase greatly, but the underlying solution is often the same or very similar.
Good ol’ competitions… How I hate them!
Posted on 13 August 2009 | Comments Off
Reading through the most recent issue of International Piano, I came across an article describing the latest Van Cliburn competition. Naturally the focus was on the controversy generated by choosing a blind pianist, Nobuyuki Tsujii, as one of the gold medallists and also on the fact that all the winners are very young (19, 20 and 23 to be exact).
I listened to one or two of Tsujii’s performances online and thought he sounded excellent. Of course being able to play that well without seeing is incredible, and I can see why the jury might gravitate towards him otherwise. He’s got the pianistic skills required and he’s got a great story that people will find interesting and inspiring.
No major problems so far, but then I get to this little nugget of wisdom, courtesy of no less than “Cliburn president Richard Rodzinski”:
[...] the jury are instructed to look “for someone who can best fulfil the three years of tours rather than someone who will be a big name.”
Argh! The Cliburn competition is one of the biggest and most famous piano competitions in the world. Here is the president of the organization saying in effect that it’s not about the music or the artistry. Rather, it’s about finding someone who can stand being on the road for three years and won’t cancel concerts or play too many wrong notes. This is just so aggravating. The whole reason I’m a musician is because of the creativity, originality and insight one can absorb from an extraordinary performance by an extraordinary artist. I don’t want to hear somebody show up on time and hit all the notes in the right order. You might as well just put someone doing their taxes on stage and call it performance art.
The sad reality for concert promoters is that great artists tend to also be a bit unpredictable. Gould was a maverick and gave up playing in public entirely. Horowitz retired numerous times, including once for a stretch of 12 years. Michelangeli was highly unreliable. In this day and age, Martha Argerich is well-known for canceling performances. In my view you can have only one of two things: you can have great art or you can have the pianist equivalent of an accountant crunching numbers on stage. Attention managers and competition presidents! The safest route is almost never going to be the most successful one.
I don’t want to come across as being too harsh here, but I’m very passionate about this. To hear that the head of such an “important” cultural event as the Cliburn competition is more concerned with contracts and dependability than music and art really makes my blood boil.
Liszt and religion
Posted on 19 June 2009 | Comments Off
My next recording project is most likely going to be the third volume of Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage, written in the last decade or so of the master’s life. An oft-overlooked but incredibly important aspect of Liszt’s personality and art was his deep religious devotion. He had a strong connection with Catholicism even in his youth, which found its most obvious musical expression at that time in the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, a set of pieces that evolved between 1834 and 1851.
Années de pèlerinage, Book III was published much later, in 1883, with Nos. 5 and 7 dating from 1867 and 1872, respectively. By then Liszt was writing in a very harmonically advanced style that was unprecedented for the time. We find final cadences on single notes, chords based on 4ths, tritones, and stacked 3rds, whole-tone scales, and a surprising reliance on the very lowest register of the piano, creating effects that sound experimental even today.
Each of the seven pieces that make up the set are more or less overtly spiritual in nature. The first, Angélus! Prière aux anges gardiens, is inspired by the Latin text of the Angelus, a devotion in memory of the incarnation of Christ. The second and third pieces, Aux cyprès de la Villa d’Este I: Thrénodie and Aux cyprès de la Villa d’Este II: Thrénodie, are not based on any specific religious themes, but the underlying currents of philosophical meditation are clear. Despite the reference to cypresses, neither work depicts nature; rather, the prevailing tone is highly introspective and expressionistic.
Probably the most famous piece here is No. 4, Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este, a stunning work of Impressionist beauty. While there is again no superficial reference to Catholicism in the music, the composer himself referred to the Gospel of John when writing about Les jeux d’eaux: “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”
Closing out the set is a trio of some of the most modernist works that Liszt ever wrote: Sunt lacrymae rerum/En mode hongrois, Marche funèbre (in memory of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico) and Sursum corda. The title Sunt lacrymae rerum is taken from Virgil’s Aenid, where the hero Aeneas laments the Trojan War with the words, “Here, too, there are tears for misfortune and mortal sorrows touch the heart.” Liszt’s musical interpretation of these feelings is written around the so-called Hungarian Mode, which features two exotic-sounding augmented seconds.
The following Marche funèbre contains some of the darkest and thickest sonorities found in the entire piano literature. It ends with a stark apotheosis that one could imagine being played by an orchestral brass ensemble. Finally, Sursum corda brings us full circle back to texts from the Mass, similar to those that inspired Angelus! This time Liszt took his inspiration from the opening of the Eucharistic Prayer: “The Lord be with you/And also with you/Lift up your hearts/We lift them up to the Lord.”
What is most striking to me about the strong spiritual and religious threads that run throughout these pieces is that Liszt presents a highly unsentimental view of faith. Sursum corda is not a particularly uplifting piece: it contains some extraordinarily dissonant harmonies and unusual chord progressions. The same can be said of even something as lovely as Les jeux d’eaux. Looking below the surface, one finds a somewhat discomfiting message and a reminder of earthly suffering, something that Liszt was acutely aware of late in his life.
This is not music with easy answers to life’s most profound questions. Rather, Liszt explores an expressionistic style that is ultimately inconclusive. One has a sense of the composer’s deep faith, but at the same time there hovers an atmosphere of Universal indifference to human struggles. The ending of Sursum corda sounds triumphant, in a way, but there is also something open-ended about its final crashing chords as they fall almost outside any traditional rhythmic frame of reference.
I don’t think Années de pèlerinage, Book III is necessarily to everyone’s tastes. It is very personal music and it requires some study and insight to really get a feeling for what Liszt was expressing. For me though, the process of exploration is fascinating and very rewarding!
A few updates…
Posted on 29 May 2009 | Comments Off
I’ve finally gotten around to shuttering my online store and migrating all my recordings and sheet music to external vendors. From now on all my albums will be available digitally from iTunes and Amazon and my compositions and transcriptions can be found on Scribd.
This should make things easier for everybody. I won’t have to maintain what was becoming a very large and complicated online store, with all the associated payment and delivery difficulties, and people interested in my music will be able to find my work much more easily. After all, everyone has either an iTunes or Amazon account (or both) and I’m pretty sure Scribd will become extremely popular soon (although right now their service is relatively new).
Thanks to the ubiquity and global reach of services like iTunes, I’ve been able to find an audience for my music without having to do any advertising. My recording of Satie’s Gnossienne No. 5 (track number nine on Interconnections) is proving to be popular already, with purchases in the US, Europe and the UK!