David Burton's Blog

Music of the Great Composers – Robert Schumann (1810-1856)

2011-11-30T02:27:00.007-05:00

Sofar we have traversed the time between Bach and Chopin. Literally inthe blink of an eye, from 1685 to 1810, momentous changes took placein the world and in music. By 1810, the developed world wascaptivated by the latest mechanical and chemical innovations, whichwere changing the lives of tens of millions, in some instances, notso much for the better. It was still primitive, mostly the age ofsteam and sail power, of candles and fireplaces providing the onlyreliable evening light and heat, etc.

Inthe year Chopin was born, Robert Schumann also entered the world. Hewas to be a complicated man, not as simple as Chopin or perhaps evenas Bach. Perhaps the times had something to do with it. Are we morecomplex than those who lived at these times? Consider the question,not what everyone says about being “dumbed down,” etc. We usecomputers now, we communicate with people we may never see halfwayaround the world, we do business with them as if they were next door. The world is much smaller than it was in Schumann's day, whenAmerica was a good deal farther away from Europe and in Europeitself, going to another country was still a considerable adventure. Over the course of Schumann's life, things were to change, but asaudiences for music continued to grow, further interest in his musicwas often a difficult proposition.

Asthis thing called “classical music” may be likened to a bridge,to some people fall the gifts and talents to become the towers, toothers the spans. Bach, Beethoven and even Chopin, are todayconsidered the towers. Another tower was to follow him, but it wouldnot be Robert Schumann's. For Schumann was to provide a road betweenBeethoven, whom he deeply admired and one of Schumann's last pupils,Johannes Brahms. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Schumann's birthplace still stands in Zwickau

RobertSchumann was born in the town of Zwickau, in a Germany that was stilldivided among a dozen principalities and city states. Schumann's wasthe state of Saxony, that comprised the districts of Wickau,Leipzig-Halle and Dresden. Leipzig recall had been the home of Bachand later of Mendelssohn, and Halle had been the birthplace ofHandel. The region was steeped in the legends and lore of silvermining, porcelain manufacture and the careers of a few greatcomposers, though fewer people even then paid much attention tomusic.

Robert Schumann's father

Itwas the age following the defeat of Napoleon, the age of song, of belcanto opera, and the age of literature called “romantic.” Schumann's father became a relatively successful publisher andbookseller, even compiled a kind of encyclopedia, the Lexicon ofSaxony (Staatslexikon von Sachsen). Until the advent ofdigitizing technologies, selling books was a matter of how many boundvolumes you could sell, and encyclopedias, dictionaries, lexicons,were all the rage in gaining for anyone who could read, a widerknowledge. We also note that the rate of literacy had been steadilyadvancing throughout the past 125 years, as had the leisure hoursavailable for reading, due to the general advance of labour savingtechnology.

Clara Wieke Schumann 1819-1896

    Therewas a rising affluence among the middle classes throughout Europe. This was the class from which virtually all the great composers hadand would spring. The new audience was still topped by the nobility,who had won perhaps a momentary reprieve from history through thedefeat of Napoleon, but who would face other challenges in 1848 andlater in the 1870's and well beyond. The wider audience was made upof the middle social orders who still sought the social and culturalleadership of the nobility, who were still thought to be by naturemore qualified to judge the merits of such things as music and fineart.
    One of the main reasons for this long standing prejudicein favour of the artistic opinions of nobles was that these peoplehad far more free time to engage in such things. They had also bytradition come to represent the sources of income for many aspiringartists. As we have seen, the nobles frequently sponsored music soas to give their lives more attention from others, usually theirsocial, economic or political rivals. As the economics of this “artfor show” wore down during the 18^th century, and intothe 19^th, music that had formerly been the province of thenobility or of the rich, became that of the middle social ordersgenerally; music came out of the palace and into the concert hall.
    It was during this period that the careers of three musical legendsrose to public attention throughout Europe; those of Chopin, FranzLiszt and Robert Schumann's wife, Clara Wieck Schumann. RobertSchumann had been the student of Clara's father, Friedrich Wieck,with whom he'd come to study in nearby Leipzig. It was also aboutthis time that Robert was studying law, in which he was to continueat Heidelberg. Here we have another first, and not the last, ofcomposers who would study law. He writes his mother, "My wholelife has been a struggle between Poetry and Prose, or call it Musicand Law."

But from his study with Wieck, Robert had his firstmisfortune; he permanently injured his right hand, forever dashinghis hopes of becoming an internationally famous concert pianist. Wedo not know how this happened, but some suspect it was due to someweird mechanical contraption that was supposed to exercise handmuscles. We now know that there are certain of us who seem giftedwith greater strength or dexterity at the piano than others. Somehave the long fingers of a Chopin, or hands capable of huge spans,like Brahms. Most of us fare somewhere in the middle, with averagestrength enabling us to play most of the repertoire except the worksof those who would display what Clara and Brahms would later describeas mere pianistic pyrotechnics.

RobertSchumann was fated to be the tragic hero of his own life, a largelyneglected composer during his lifetime who probably suffered fromsome congenital physical defect that led to the symptoms we associatethese days with benign brain tumours of a kind which grow withoutmetastasising until they finally bring death to the sufferer. We donot know all the details of his life, so it is impossible to draw anyfirm conclusions. Suffice it to say that Schumann worked very hardover certain years, while he was unable to work for many other years,a pattern some have thought represented a bi-polar personality. Bythe end of his struggles he didn't care much for his own music at alland due to the tinnitus he also suffered, found it unbearable to hearany music. We owe what we have of him, largely to the lifelongefforts of his wife, Clara and to Johannes Brahms and others whowould see in Schumann the bridge from themselves back to Beethovenand the rest of the “classic” composers of their own day.

Songof Love (1947)

Asa public service (not sure how long any of these things will beon-line, but for the time being they are), I have decided to presentthe links to all 13 parts of the motion picture that was made to“romanticise” the life of Robert Schumann. Of course I havedifficulties with many things in this picture. Schumann was 23 yearsolder and Clara was 14 years older than Brahms. Though many havesuggested some “romantic” connection between Clara and Johannes,we are among the doubters. Likewise the picture depicts Schumann's“madness” as a delusion, whereas it is more likely that for thefinal months of his life Schumann was quite likely literallycompletely reduced to a state devoid of effective consciousness ofany kind. There is a hint in the picture that Schumann had had asister who had suffered a similar fate. We do not know if this wastrue or not. Some things about us are mysteries to ourselves andothers even in this day and age where everything is assumed to bemerely matters of blind electro-chemical processes.
This motionpicture, MGM's Song of Love (1947), starring Katharine Hepburn, PaulHenreid, Robert Walker, and Leo G. Carroll, was directed by ClarenceBrown. You will see Schumann and his wife Clara, Brahms and Liszt all portrayed. You will also hear music by these others as well as Schumann's music.

SOL1      SOL2 SOL3
SOL4      SOL5      SOL6
SOL7 SOL8      SOL9
SOL10      SOL11    SOL12
SOL13

The bushed composers, Schumann and Berlioz

Now after all that,I'm sure more people would like to hear somethinglike a great masterpiece by Robert Schumann. I've chosen thesymphony that would go down as his third, subtitled Rhenish, his Op.97. It was his last in this genre composed in 1850, six years beforehis death and three years before he was to meet the young Brahms.

The version I have selected was arranged byGustav Mahler who re-scored all four Schumann symphonies. Note also that this work is in five movements, whichwould become normal for Mahler. Those familiar with the music willdoubtless find nothing much has been changed, that the structure hasbeen greatly lightened and liberated and that the results are great improvements. Here then is Robert Schumann's Symphony #3 in E Flat "Rhenish" Op. 97. The performance is appropriately by the LeipzigGewandhaus Orchestra under the direction of Riccardo Chailly. Enjoy!

1. Lebhaft
2. Scherzo: Sehr mäßig
3. Nicht schnell
4. Feierlich
5. Lebhaft

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Music of the Great Composers – Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)

2011-11-08T15:38:00.001-05:00

Here, here, and hereareprevious postings concerning Chopin.

There is little point tome saying anything about Chopin as over the past year and more,celebrating his bicentennial, so much excellent material has beenreleased. I present one more. Enjoy!

James Rhodes' BBC: Chopin - The Women Behind The Music

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The E. C. Riegel Blog is Launched

2011-11-04T02:11:00.000-04:00

The following reads are real prerequisites for getting the most out of The E. C. Riegel Blog:

http://riegelexchange.com/downloads/NewApproachToFreedom.pdf
http://riegelexchange.com/downloads/PrivateEnterpriseMoney.pdf
http://riegelexchange.com/downloads/Flight_From_Inflation.pdf

The following video presentations also provide pertinent information:
http://themoneyfix.org/content/video-money-fix
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NrikN_09_U

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Music of the Great Composers – Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

2011-10-28T15:57:00.005-04:00

Here and here are previous postings concerning Mendelssohn.

In our survey of the great composers, we have made a sweep from J.S. Bach through Hector Berlioz, Bach born in 1685, Berlioz in 1803, a span of only 118 years. In the scheme of things, that's not very long. To give you some idea, if Berlioz had been born this year, Bach would have been born in 1893, which to some of us with a greater concept of time, just wasn't that long ago.

Anyway, we march ahead to the year 1809, the year Haydn died and Mendelssohn was born. In that year, Beethoven was 39 years old. Mendelssohn would only live 38 years. He was to become one of the pivotal people in the history of this art form euphemistically called “classical” music; besides a prolific composer, Mendelssohn made contributions as publicist, teacher, conductor, performer, and musicologist. Felix Mendelssohn and Abraham Lincoln were born the same year.

Certain features of Mendelssohn come down to us. He was the embodiment of musical talent (an agile pianist), intelligence (he is known to have spoken 4 languages fluently) and grace (unless he lost his temper and began arguing with you in English! instead of his native German.). He had a tremendous drive to succeed, exuding a kind of nervous energy. He had an emotionally symbiotic relationship with a similarly musically talented older sister: they died within months of each other. At the core of his personal life was his family and his ethnicity. Here we have another first, Mendelssohn was the first ethnically Jewish composer to attain international recognition. He wouldn't be the last. Indeed, Mendelssohn was the grandson of a famous scholar and his family was involved in banking, had an international business (until Hitler closed it down) and they knew many famous, interesting and important people all over Europe who would come to visit them in their home. Among them were many musicians and here is where young Felix and his sister Fanny would have their first opportunity to participate in making music with other talented musicians; playing music together in their home.

We can and do wonder at this cultural crucible that was the Mendelssohn family and ask ourselves whether their accomplishments merit the serious emulation of others. We will encounter many stories of such families that got behind their talented children to propel them into outstanding careers. Indeed, it was until a generation or so ago, a normal and expected natural aspiration for any family. We have observed this as a model of human relationships, the family supporting its talented members with the ardent intent of delivering their flowering to the world, remuneration or not, which luckily for Mendelssohn, wasn't ever going to be a problem.

Felix Mendelssohn and his older sister Fanny were incredibly talented, incredibly smart, incredibly (usually) happy, the flowers of a kind of “salon civilization” that blossomed and still blooms in some of the homes of the wealthy and influential to this day. In Paris and other large European cities, some of these salons were hosted by the nobility, those out of power, but not out of funds or prestige. It is curious that Mendelssohn was himself so conservative that for many years he shunned Paris and its salons, some would think for good reason. At a typical event, sometimes there would be hundreds of people, and food and drink was served, more often there would be the usual 20 to 25 guests for something lighter, while the entertainment might be going on in the background or might be featured; people were asked not to talk and actually listen to what the musicians were playing. After all, there was even back then differences in music, some being more for background or dancing while other music, especially of older styles or out of date composers, was for serious listening. The same salon tradition had a long history in London, where Haydn, when in his 60's, had his great international success as a composer. Felix Mendelssohn was later to enjoy a particularly grand success there as well. In fact to many Englishmen, their great composers include Handel, Haydn and Mandelssohn, all of whom have “societies” there to perpetuate interest in their music.


Mendelssohn's Gewandhaus

In his relatively short life, Felix Mendelssohn accomplished many firsts that had a lot to do with the public venues that promoted the music of his own time as well as the music of older composers whose music had not been heard in 79 years, particularly the music of J.S. Bach. But the truth is that we also probably owe our knowledge of Schubert to Mendelssohn as well, as it was Mendelssohn who produced the first performance of Schubert's Great C Major Symphony (called his 9th). Mendelssohn was in fact for some of this time in Leipsig, Germany, the town where Bach had lived out his life. Leipsig was also known then as a publishing centre and a few of the largest music publishers were located there. In 1835, at the age of 26, Mendelssohn became the Gewandhaus Kapellmeister, and set himself to improving and expanding the musical life of the city. Perhaps to Mendelssohn, we owe the idea of a public concert in a concert hall attended by the general public, at which music by a variety of contemporary and older composers would be featured together. These concerts were intended almost at the outset to be intellectual rather than merely social events.

Mendelssohn was keenly interested in something else however, and considering his background this would not be too surprising, he was always keen on preserving and at the same time giving greater strength to a musical tradition, or if one didn't exist, he would have to invent one. Like it or not, we may owe the entire concept of “classical music” embodying the entire tradition of music composed and written down in a universal musical notation, so that its products could be passed down to the next generation and performed by succeeding musical talents who might perceive something new in each performance of music that would become essentially eternal, to Felix Mendelssohn. There is nothing like tradition to ensure a kind of immortality. It's not that Mendelssohn had been unique in having this vision, a serious music that was taken seriously by both musicians and audiences, that would rise to a level of such universality that it would bring people from all over the world together. That had been Bach's realization about himself, it had been Mozart's belief too and Beethoven's personal crusade. But it was to Mendelssohn that fell the opportunity to organize and project it forward. During this time, Mendelssohn wore many hats and travelled too, he was always busy and in 1843, he was 34, he founded the Leipzig Conservatory of Music (which after his death a few years later was re-named after him).

Meanwhile all through this busy time, Mendelssohn had a family life of his own, a wife and five children! Four of the five would grow up to become the kind of pillars of the community that one used to expect in civilized societies; a historian, a chemist/inventor, or when women, raised to become partners of successful pillars. But in 1847, a series of strokes, a medical condition that affected other members of his family, ended his busy and productive life.

Mendelssohn's music is on one level unmistakeably the natural extension of the music of the so called First Vienna School; the corps of composers comprising the “classical” tradition of composing within certain recognizable musical forms; the sonata allegro, Symphony, string quartet and other chamber music, piano music of the same character, songs that were set to popular or famous poetry but reserved in development of musical ideas. But on the level that is particularly his, I have always been amazed and fascinated by both his cleverness and taste as a composer, all resting on a base of deep understanding of the musical ideas and idioms of the masters who went before him. If it were on the basis of mere quality of design in itself, Mendelssohn's music would be about the best there is. Incredibly, considering his busy life, he left us a lot of it. So much that there is probably many works by him that I have yet to hear. That's always a good thing as there are and will be composers who were lucky to be remembered widely for only a few pieces.

The one I'm featuring here has long been one of my favourite pieces of symphonic music, his Italian Symphony Op 90 which was finished in 1833 on commission from an orchestra in London that would become the Royal Philharmonic Society. He conducted the première in London and it was an instant success and has remained so ever since. The main reason is its energy. This music is supposed to express something about Italy, and it really does! We will have occasion to encounter more music suggestive of particular places as we proceed. I've chosen the performance that is currently available (for how long who knows?) conducted by Leonard Bernstein, here conducting the New York Philharmonic way back in 1953. Enjoy!

Felix Mendelssohn - Symphony No. 4, "Italian" Op. 90 (1833)

Part 1: Allegro vivace
Part 2: Andante con moto
Part 3: Con moto moderato
Part 4: Saltarello: Presto

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Researching the True Nature of Money

2011-10-27T16:50:00.003-04:00

An Open Message to the 99% (Occupy Wall Street)

It was bound to happen, an exception to the rule. I will be brief, perhaps only here, perhaps only once. There have been many people you've never heard of, but that doesn't mean they didn't have something important to pass along to you. We can and should contemplate what we have lost through neglect of ideas (because they were not those backed by influence). In this case, were it not by some almost impossible odds, similar to those involving the discovery of Bach's Brandenburg Concerti, we simply wouldn't have anything, and in this case our reasons for hope would be perhaps diminished, based on history. In the case at issue, money and who issues it, which is perhaps the greatest question in the history of mankind, of civilization itself, a clear answer is found in this man's researches and they offer to date the best alternative solution, especially to end war and poverty worldwide.

E. C. Riegel

The works of Edwin Clarence Riegel (1879-1953) came to my attention through research which goes back in some depth over 25 years, to determine the facts concerning the workings of banking and finance, the economy and money. My researches led me to survey monetary history going back into ancient times. I was able to find considerable evidence of a fatal flaw in the system which doomed it to failure, involving historically repeated credit cycles and the inability of populations to withstand long term debt without prospect of material improvements. But until I read Riegel, I had not encountered another such singularly simple alternative model for money. The ideas are so significant that were they to be taken up everywhere by all, it would mark the end of one era in human history and the beginning of another, an era of peace and prosperity for all.

I offer the following links for further reading:

The New Approach to Freedom. together with Essays on the Separation of Money and State
Private Enterprise Money
Flight from Inflation

I am looking for people who understand right away the ideas presented and are willing to discuss them. If the interest is strong enough, I will open a forum where I will accept articles from others and offer them for the moderated comment of other readers.

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Music of the Great Composers – Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

2011-10-20T10:51:00.000-04:00

Berlioz in Rome, 1832

With Hector Berlioz, we have come to a person in whom many “firsts” are embodied; really the first Frenchman to gain international reputation as a composer, and largely outside of France in fact, the first of the great composers in this series to be born in the 19th century and really the first, since a particular Frenchman in J.S. Bach's day, to make a name for himself as an orchestra conductor, despite never achieving the permanence of a paid official post. Berlioz was widely travelled in Europe, from Britain to Russia, spent much time in Italy, even turned down an offer to tour America.

EK-tor BEAR-lee-ohze, ... is close to how the French would pronounce it: they often have to stumble over our own names in France … He emerged from some obscurity and became a kind of musical ambassador for things that were filling the cultural void in Europe after the defeat of Napoleon. These were at the time and are still today called “romantic,” implying not associations with love necessarily, as with themes from literature, fictional of course, which became more readily available and sold to a burgeoning literate middle class. Women were becoming a higher percentage of the audience for music than ever before. Berlioz was to be influenced by literature all his life, from the Roman classics, some he translated from Latin into French, through Shakespeare and Byron (due to his interests, he apparently learned to speak some English). He probably thought he was taking his tip from Beethoven, whom Berlioz always admired, who had also had literary interests.

Berlioz was also among the first to get the idea of a modern orchestra (or large band, as he worked with them also), to perform in concerts, which were deliberately directed at the general public, rather than for a select aristocracy. In this new, post royal commission world, obviously the way one made one's money was through ticket sales, often sold as subscriptions months in advance. But not all concerts were sold this way and if the weather were bad, as occasionally happened, one didn't make money.

Harriet Smithson 1800-1854

Another movement that was gaining ground all over Europe was the establishment of conservatories of music which were started in various cities. These provided the student orchestras, like the one in Vienna that Schubert had tried to use to première his works, and selected and kept alive the musical talent of Europe during this period. This is not to say that these schools produced very many great composers, and Berlioz was no exception, for he was entirely self-taught, though he did accept criticism and doggedly pursued a certain prize, Le Prix de Rome, which entitled the winner to five years' free stipend, plus the recognition of being among the finest artists in France, just for staying and studying in Rome for a couple of years. After three unsuccessful tries, he finally won it. But as it turned out Berlioz hated Rome and spent as much time as he could travelling out into the Italian countryside. This was to be one of many great hollow triumphs in Berlioz' life. Another was his marriage to the English actress Harriet Smithson (1800-1854). Notice she was older than he, following the pattern we saw in Rossini's life. In the period after Napoleon, everyone who could afford it, turned to the theatre and opera for entertainment and that's where Berlioz strove to be, mostly unsuccessfully. What they all wanted to see him do, and paid him handsomely for during his lifetime, was conduct an orchestra.

Famous satirical cartoon of the time
showing Berlioz conducting a choir

As I was growing up, one heard many curious things about Berlioz that were not true and could have been easily refuted. The biggest whopper was that he came from wealth, after all his dad was a doctor and had put his son into Med school and his mom had been a lawyer's daughter, and that accounted for his not having to work so hard to be a real composer like Schubert. What rubbish! He came from straight French middle class professional ranks, not in Paris, but out near Grenoble, in the country. His parents wanted their young and impressionable Hector to grow up to be a doctor like his father and forget about music. He never learned to play the piano and hence never wrote any piano music to speak of. Another thing one heard was that, well compared to those of for instance the “1st Vienna School,” Berlioz wasn't much of a composer, or that since he wrote very much in words, including even his text on instrumentation among his opus numbers, I mean how professional is that? He wasn't very serious. Even during his own time, people like Chopin made fun of him. Much of the fun they made of him had to do with his eccentric personality, for he was sort of, well … avant garde the Avant Garde.

There is something about Berlioz' character that stamps him, despite everything else, as indelibly French; his earliest ideas are filled with child-like wonder, he is innocent at heart, he longs for true love, he loves music, becomes enraptured with its recent heroes. In the 1822 of those meetings Rossini and Schubert might have had with Beethoven, Berlioz was 19 in Paris, still ostensibly in Medical school, but already thinking of Beethoven and spending time at the library of the Conservatoire de Paris, though he was never a student there. I suppose that he was learning something medical in spite of his apparent squeamishness. But what Berlioz had also figured out by this time was how to score orchestral music, and his mind and I'm sure his dreams of worldly success, drove him to seek it in the theatre, where he planned to stage great works involving huge choruses, soloists and orchestras larger than had yet been assembled. Everyone would be thrilled and throw him money, which would later become a more definite concern as he always supported his family.

What? Yes, Berlioz would survive two wives and a son before it was all over with, a good man? Yes, by all appearances. Religious? No, an atheist, another first, though he wasn't very above-board about it and for many years after he died, the Catholic Church proclaimed him a Catholic, though he really wasn't anything. He did write Masses though, so what was that all about? Oh yeah, it was a state commission to write a Requiem to commemorate those who had died in the French Revolution. The earlier Messe solennelle? It was a piece he wrote when he was 20. It got performed a couple of times. He didn't like it and claimed to have destroyed the score, but it turned up in 1992 in Belgium and has since been revived and performed. Life is full of ironies.

Yes, we all like to entertain, but we all need to eat. Berlioz was always pretty keenly aware of this aspect of life, as it is a refrain in his Letters and Memoirs. He had many sufferings to go through before he was tired of life, and expressed himself frankly of the folly, baseness and cruelty of his fellow men, but as many composers who came after him would later declare, they owed much of their own craft and technique to Berlioz.

Berlioz late in life

So his music is orchestral or even in small ensembles is going to have a larger atmospheric or operatic sense to it. Berlioz always had the intention to write large and write himself large too. Why not? But as with many innovators, he would learn to regret the works of many who he'd befriended, especially among the Germans. As for Opera, he was always keenly interested in it, and made contributions to that form, few ever being successful.

Of his time, the music of Rossini and Verdi would have influenced him, but his life overlays the entirety of Chopin's, Mendelssohn's and Schumann's, much of Liszt's and even much of Brahms'. Berlioz was an overshadowing figure of the Romantic movement of the first half of the 19th century. His ideas would be picked up by those who would orchestrate great symphonies after him.

Though Berlioz' operas may be having some kind of come back (who knows?), his overtures have always held an enduring place in concert literature. An overture is what one offers the public before an opera, They became independent of opera, often to the extent that the overtures were widely performed, while one never heard the operas that went with them. I'm going to present a few here:

Benvenuto Cellini, This overture was written in 1838, for an opera of the same name. It was Berlioz' first opera, based on the autobiography of one of the most colourful artist rogues in history. A swashbuckling theme, then the progress of a longer more lyrical theme, then back to the original theme with more adventures leading to a climactic finish. The orchestration, the shapes of themes, the instrumentation used, the kinds of running, chasing, fluttering, teasing textures are all trademarks of this impetuous composer.

I had to hear a lot of contenders before selecting the performance I did. Mostly, because you can hear everything, and the interpretation is really about as good as it gets. Jonathan Girard conducting the Eastman Philharmonia, Eastman School of Music in a concert earlier this year.

Le Carnaval Romain, (Roman Carnival) his Op. 9, was written in 1843, when the composer was 40 years old from material from his opera Benvenuto Cellini. This is probably this composer's most recognizable trademark composition. If you'd never encountered Berlioz strange musical world before, the chances were good that you'd heard this one. It's full of the composer's usual pyrotechnical extravaganzas.

For this one, I had to go with Michael Tilson Thomas (one of my favourite conductors) conducting the You Tube Symphony in Sydney, Australia, also earlier this year. This overture is known for its famous, difficult, English horn solo. There's much wonderful acoustic effects, all written right there in the score. Many would think this about the best thing Berlioz ever wrote, had they not heard some of his other highly ingenious and original creations. Of particular notice in just about any good Berlioz piece is how the harmonic centre is allowed to go just about where it will. You don't always know where you are or where it will end, but you are certainly moving. The nearest approximations his audiences could probably have imagined were cavalry charges, the hunt, or perhaps mass animal stampedes. There is so much energy released. The experience was often frightening to those who had never heard such orchestral sounds before. Think how many places this music has been used since.

Le Corsaire, his Op. 21, written in 1844 in Nice, the following year.

Here's the Detroit Symphonic Orchestra under the direction of French conductor, Paul Paray (1886-1979) who was one of the better interpreters of Berlioz. Why? Listen to the way he forms a phrase. Berlioz almost spoken musical prose often requires a special understanding. This is a super-energetic piece for the entire orchestra, especially the strings and brass. But it requires finesse as well, for one is always aware that Berlioz may mean it, while meaning nothing. He is quirky and funny to play, to hear, to listen to. You occasionally wonder whether he is putting you on. The bare bones of it might sound like he took bits out of Beethoven, Rossini and others, and just smashed them together, and maybe he did just that. Maybe that's what he was busy studying at the library of the Conservatoire when he should have been dissecting cadavers with his Medical school colleagues. How ever it was, here it is and M. Paray definitely got it.

Béatrice et Bénédict, written in 1862, to an opera of the same name. He was almost 60.

Sometimes, when you want to get something right, you often have to go with people you know who have turned out splendid work for a long time, despite some problems with the recording (it's live at Carnegie Hall in New York). Here's the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Sir Neville Marriner conducting in Carnegie Hall back in 1994. Fearless, relentless, taking the music entirely as it is, nothing more or less.

Here's to hoping more will come to appreciate Berlioz unique contributions to music and that we may hear more and better performances of them far into the future!

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Music of the Great Composers – Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

2011-10-17T17:07:00.005-04:00

FranzPeter Schubert probably was among the most prolific composers thatever lived, writing nearly 1,000 works in his short 31 year lifespan,becoming among the poorest and most short lived of the greatcomposers. We can propose any number of reasons for this, such asthat the rather tubby looking little fellow might have been seekinglove in all the wrong places and it eventually caught up with him.

Duringhis short life he was barely acknowledged for his many songs, only afew were ever published during his lifetime. Here he was, aschoolmaster's son, obviously quite musically gifted, but he wasperhaps not very attractive, perhaps he knew this too. He tried tofind musical work, tried to further his musical education, right up until the very end, but nothingworked out. Instead his father set him to work teaching youngerstudents, which didn't work out either. What did he do? Schubertmust have just gone into his music, specifically the world hemanaged to create out of his mind and imagination.

In orderto have written what he did, Schubert would have been writing music agood deal of every day many years, we'd guess from shortly after theage of 15. It was with him something like a manic obsession. LikeMozart. he wrote a lot, made few mistakes. He was fond of using someforms, like the sonata allegro he inherited from Haydn, Mozart andBeethoven, because he could get away with writing the first andsecond sections (Exposition and Development) and leaving instructionswhere the third section (Recapitulation) would begin, just as areprise of the first section in the right keys and modulations tobring the piece back to its correct finishing cadence. Schubert wasin a big hurry, as if he knew he didn't have long to live and neededto get out everything he could before his end came.

The resultis a music based on the “classical” idioms and techniques of theViennese composers; Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, that flows withmelody or melodic transitions, combined with some occasionallyunexpected suave changes in harmony, texture or tempo, interspersingthe almost acrobatic with the languid, but always as if seen from adistance, from outside experience, as if what Schubert is reallydoing is taking photographs with his music. That may account for whyhis last years seem like he was in haste to write sketches, many ofwhich he would spin into elaborate compositions, no doubt to thefascination and awe of his friends. We would not have most ofSchubert's music, if it hadn't been for his friends, who kept it andtreasured it, as few were published during his lifetime. One wondersjust how much more from as yet undiscovered composers have likewiselain neglected.

We have reason to wonder what of an incidentthat occurred when Schubert was a young man. He and a few friendsgot into some trouble with the authorities, we know not over what,but it seems like it may have been political. One of his friends wasbanished from Vienna for life and Schubert never saw him again. Onecould ask whether this fellow from a struggling middle classbackground, could have found himself among the political and socialunderworld of Vienna, and hence was tainted by this, so that norespectable publisher would touch him. He may have also been a veryshy and self-effacing man who really never expended much energypromoting himself. After all, in order to have turned out what hedid, he was always busy writing with very little time to do anythingelse. We know so little about him.

What we have been leftwith since, has been his music, including 600 songs, 10 symphoniesand assorted other orchestral works, 2 operas, lots of piano andchamber music. Most have suggested that his Unfinished Symphony intwo movements (these days called his 8^thsymphony, D 759) is so extraordinary that all who cross Schubert'spath should encounter it. The work was written and left unfinishedby Schubert in 1822, the same year he and Rossini got to meetBeethoven and where also nothing really came of it. Rossini was inhis late 30's and already successful, Schubert was 25 and living withfriends who probably wished he'd write less music and get a job. They never met, but Schubert is known to have admired the Italianopera composer. Again, with the Unfinished Symphony, we have a workthat was written without any commission and without performanceduring the composer's lifetime. The last symphony Schubertcompleted, his likewise famous 9^thSymphony, called since “The Great” (C Major, D 944) was submittedand rejected as too long and complicated to be played by aconservatory orchestra. He never heard these works played during hislifetime.

Eitherof those two symphonies would give you the idea of the matureSchubert style. But instead, why not introduce everyone to anotherwork that Schubert never heard live and didn't live to finish, hisTenth Symphony (D Major, D.936a)in which he strives to strike out on some new territory whiledrastically cutting back on the length of the work and the size ofthe ensemble required. There are only three movements and there isreason to suppose Schubert intended it this way. Here we see wherehe was heading, and it may be for us perhaps today rather mundaneterritory. We shouldn't be too disappointed, though. Schubert wasalways an observer of current scenes rather than a projector intofuture realms. It's one thing that gives his music both place andtime and passes down to us it's unique charm. This last symphony wassketched as a piano piece which got many notes indicating theinstrumentation to be used. The second movement was the mostcompletely orchestrated at his death (how much a foretaste of Mahleris this?). The work was completed by the English composer, BrianNewbould and is performed here by Sir Neville Marriner and theAcademy of St, Martin in the Fields, an extraordinary Englishensemble that has recorded wonderful performances of much of thisgreat music.

Symphony#10 in D Major, D 936a (1828)

Part 1: Allegro maestoso (no tempo given in theoriginal)

Part 2: Andante

Part 3: Scherzo (Allegro moderato)

FINIS

Music of the Great Composers – Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868)

2011-10-12T02:48:00.001-04:00

Rossini from his 20's through his 70's

Some outthere may find it difficult to class Rossini among the very greatcomposers. I think by the time I'm finished, many might change theirminds. Part of the difficulty lies with this composer's primaryconcentration being opera, regarded as aspecialization that has always been more directly tied toentertainment and commercialism than other more academic or purelymusical forms. Rossini becomes the first, but certainly not thelast, of the vast arsenal of talented Italian composers, to attaininternational fame and considerable worldly fortune. He wrote 39operas and a half dozen of the best are still regularly performed.

Isabella Colbran

With Rossini, we are also dealing with a many faceted personality,one that was generally happy, and a completely competent andthoroughly accomplished musician on many levels, who rose out of theobscurity of Bologna to become by his twenties, an internationalicon, whose operas were so widely known that people sang from them inthe streets.
Rossini was widely travelled, enjoyed a greatfinancial success and lived to the ripe old age of 76. Look at hisdates. He was 22 years younger than Beethoven, whom Rossini wouldmeet in Vienna, one of the cities he would become familiar with onhis travels, in 1822, when Rossini was 30 years old and in his primeas a composer. Beethoven advised him to stick to writing comicopera, since he was so good at it and it apparently paid well. Rossini would continue doing what he was good at until, by the timehe was four years in Paris at age 37, he decided to retire.

Olympe Pélissier

Rossini'smother had died a couple of years back, the same year Beethoven haddied. His father was back home in Bologna and he longed to spend thelast years of his father's life with him and after all, he had madeenough money by then. So he lived in Bologna for nearly twenty yearsin relative obscurity and didn't compose very much. Rossini had beenmarried for 23 years to the apparently quite stunning Spanish operasinger, Isabella Colbran (1785-1845) -note she was olderthan him, though the two had separated when Rossini was 45 in 1837. We may safely assume there was some theatricality to theirrelationship. A year after his wife's death, they had been separatedfor a few years, Rossini married Olympe Pélissier (1799-1878) ,a famous French artists' model (which means she frequently sat orheld poses in the nude for them). They'd met shorty after theseparation from his first wife and we can probably safely assume thatshe was for him all that a wife would be. Nevertheless, times beingwhat they were, they observed conventions as facts of life; theycould only marry after the death of the first wife, a year later infact. They married in 1846. Rossini was by that time 54 yearsold.

In order to understand Rossini's contribution to music,it is necessary to place his life as a transparency over the livesof many other composers. Rossini, as did Haydn, benefited from along life, so it is not true that all great composers die young,indeed relatively few have. Nor is it necessarily true that they die poor. This one didn't. Anyway, during his lifetime, Rossini wasto become eclectic in both musical and cultural terms. He spent manyyears working as an opera composer in Italy, Vienna, Paris and evenafter almost 20 years away in Bologna, finally returning tospend the rest of his life in what was then, can one imagine?, acountryside within the 16^th Arrondissement of Paris, known, ofcourse, as Passy.

In his 20's, Rossini had been drawn toVienna, because his operas were enormously popular there andeventually he met Beethoven. That the Vienna scene left its stamp on someof his music demonstrates Rossini's familiarity with Mozart'soperas and Haydn's symphonies, even more familiar with Beethoven'ssymphonies, from which Rossini routinely steals, not melodies orrhythms, but instrumental combinations and orchestral effects forwhich Rossini became well known. You also notice that at somepoints, there wouldn't be much that is stylistically different betweenRossini and early works by Verdi, who was in many ways his successor.

Firstand foremost, the difference between Rossini and those composersacademics lump together artificially as the 1^st ViennaSchool, derives from an Italian notion when it comes to music education; "Senon puoi cantare, non puoi suonare" : "If you can't singit, you can't play it." (Notice too the origins of the musicalforms Sonata and Cantata). The result is going to be an emphasis onmusical line, on melody, and all of it will derive one way or anotherfrom a human voice with a natural range. There are traditions thatare built up over time, and in the case of Italy during the 18^thcentury, an idea took form that would spread from there veryconsiderably over the next century, the conservatory of music,the idea that schools of musical education, involving training in instrument specific musical skills, could produce more widespread professional musical competence. Much of this effort in Italy devolved toproviding musicians for two natural and competing institutions; theOpera and the Church.

The subjects of opera frequentlyoperate on several social levels, as they do in many of the comedies ofShakespeare. Opera became where those from any class or station in lifemight find amusement. Opera houses were often also places where foodand drink were offered and where gambling establishments occasionallyoperated at the fringes of the often elaborate lobbies of the operahouses which began to spring up from the early 17th century onward, often becoming the biggest buildings in town, except of course for thechurch. Operas were sung dramatic productions with orchestralaccompaniment, made out of many sources, including Shakespeare. Thesubjects were usually royals with their subservient layers ofservants, tradesmen, soldiers, peasants and priests. Operaticsubjects occasionally turned to fantasy and myth for inspiration.

The subjects of the Church were also traditional and everyonein society was able to come together and participate in the Mass. There are of course many instances of great opera and great churchmusic from Italy and elsewhere during this period. Some of it isstill performed today. Rossini, as Mozart did before him, contributed to boththese genres, the opera and the mass.

But another thinghappens sometimes when one has done something long enough, has becomegood at it, has done it well, even in a routine kind of way, has seenmuch of the world, has become even rather well off, even a bit overindulgent in a few vices, like cooking and eating, and has met manygoodly famous people and acquired the habits of society, includingseeing through its vanities. One might very well become a cynic, orwith any talent, a satirist. Here's where we come to Rossini's greatfinal treasure troves, for while on retirement in Paris with hisample artist model wife, he was still writing music. He called them hispéchés de vieillesse or sins of old age. Rossini composedthem during the last nine years of his life. They are a collectionof 150 pieces in 14 volumes, unpublished during his lifetime andcoming out into critical editions, which we hope preserve his originaltitles. They are variously vocal and solo piano music designedspecifically to be performed in a salon, a concert in a private homerather than an opera house; private music, the nature of which mightor might not be private. Many of these are in a frankly cynical vainand the best part is that the laughter is often made with music alonerather than aided with words. Just how Rossini accomplishes being able to singbefore playing much of this remains part of his greatness as acomposer.

So, I could have told those who've never heard ofGioachino Rossini, to go have a listen to some of his operaovertures, particularly those to The Barber of Seville orWilliam Tell. These would recall to memory just the kind of“spaghetti music” this composer is best known for. And ofcourse, since history is as full of jokes as ever modern life is, asRossini gathered and stole his props from others to create hisoperas, others have taken his music to represent to the public anything from pastato camp TV Westerns. Rather, I would prefer and suggest that Rossiniwill eventually be best known for these late works of his, whichshould be both better known and more widely performed. Yes, it'stime to make Rossini's private music more public.

The lastof these compositions, which really is the last of Rossini's majorworks, lies just outside the 14 aforementioned volumes, and is nottoo surprisingly, a religious work, a Mass. But in it we hearreligious music as it will be written, particularly by Verdi manyyears to come. Rossini calls it in his adopted French, Le Petite Messe Solennelle, alittle solemn mass indeed. It is neither small nor particularlysolemn. Originally he'd written it in 1863 for chorus and singersbacked up by a couple harmoniums. But then considering someonewould orchestrate it eventually and might get it wrong, Rossini decided todo that too in 1866-1867. Both versions were publishedsimultaneously and both are often performed, the harmoniums beingreplaced by pianos or a piano and an organ. This is Rossini's lastorchestration and it is a storehouse of technique that draws from theViennese composers who were a generation or more his elders, now longgone, from obscure Italian opera composers too, also you hearsnippets of Mendelssohn, Schumann, Wagner, and of course Rossini widelyanticipates Verdi. The orchestration is brilliant throughout andoften thrilling and by turns, even breathtaking.

Theparts of this Mass (and the videos) are as follows:

GioachinoRossini - Petite Messe Solennelle (1863-1867)

PART 1:

Kyrie.

1.Kyrie (the whole section is scored for chorus).

2.Christe.

3.Kyrie.

PART 2:

Gloria.

4.Gloria in excelsis Deo (chorus & quartettino for all soloists).

5.Gratias (terzettino for the same).
6. Domine Deus (aria fortenor).

PART 3.

7.Qui tollis (duet for soprano and contralto).
8. Quoniam (aria forbass; in all three posted masses this movement is given to a basssoloist).

PART 4.

9.Cum sancto spiritu (chorus).

"Aftera repeat of the very first chords of the "Gloria", thepiece, acting almost like an act finale, settles into an extendedfugue. This is a real tour de force of musical craftsmanship,reflecting the thorough classical training in harmony andcounterpoint that Rossini received all those years ago at the BolognaAcademy.” [Agreed! This Gloria can stand alone as a concert piecequite easily.]

PART 5.

Credo.

10.Credo (chorus & quartettino for all soloists).
11. Crucifixus(aria for soprano).

PART 6.
12.Et resurrexit (chorus & quartettino for all soloists).

PART 7.
13.Il preludio religioso.

14.Sanctus - Benedictus (chorus with soloists' interjections).

PART 8.

15.O salutatis (aria for soprano).

PART 9.

16.Agnus Dei (aria for contralto with extensive choral interjections).

Themusicians in this outstanding performance are:

AlexandrinaPendatchanska, soprano

ManuelaCuster, mezzo soprano

StefanoSecco, tenor

MircoPalazzi, bass

Choirof the Leipsig Opera

Gewandhausorchester,Leipsig, Germany

Conductor:Riccardo Chailly

Itwas recorded live on Nov 16, 2010.

FINIS

Music of the Great Composers – Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

2011-10-06T17:47:00.002-04:00

Here isa previous posting concerning Beethoven.

Everyonewho encounters “classical” music sooner or later is going toencounter Beethoven. This abused child, whose father routinely beathim around the head with a variety of makeshift clubs, who grew upin the shadow of the fame of Mozart, who struggled against manyadversities, a few of which he made for himself, rose to become ifnot the greatest composer of all time, at least one of the mostcelebrated. The greatest mystery is how one who became profoundlydeaf at least 16 years prior to his death achieved so much in music. It was and is a kind of miracle, the kind that used to appeal totraditional Americans who still believed in self-reliance, ruggedindividualism, and the idealism to believe that anyone despite theirhandicaps could succeed.

Matters that were easy for Haydn,he had a steady job most of his life, or Mozart, who was just takingdictation from the beyond and rarely made corrections of any kind,were hard for Beethoven. His manuscripts show many corrections, heworked hard on many passages in order to get just the effects hewanted, he wrote far less than either of his older contemporaries. But it is clear from contemporary reactions, that Beethoven wasregarded as the leader among those who were interested in extendingthe capabilities of the then relatively new keyboard instrument, thepianoforte, which was what they were called before we shortened thename to just piano. It's the Italian for soft, the forte, orloud, was eventually dropped from popular use.

Beethovenwas also considered a leader in expressing the new direction musicwas taking at the time toward emotional realism, which was then and still is wrongly called “romanticism” (thereby directly implying something fancifulor fictional, rather than realistic). Although there was much more ofthat too; fantasy, as people then as now have to find ways to come to grips with theiroften excruciating existence, by seeking whatever salve through musical entertainment, the emotions behind the art often were considered from a far different perspective by the composers themselves. For Beethoven, composition was about making something to last forever, as impossible as that is . Some ofthese realistic emotions were considered revolutionary in thepolitical as well as the artistic sense, and Beethoven was certainly in accord with those sentiments; a democratic rather than aristocratic outlook, despite the fact that many of his close friends and supporters were among the aristocracy.

In termsof output, Mozart had written up to 68 pieces which could have beentermed symphonies. The accepted 41 symphonies for him is still almost anunbeaten record, except for Haydn's 106 symphonies, the record. Beethoven, setting the standard for all that would follow, wrote only9 Symphonies. Some historians have remarked that when politicalrevolution appeared during the last quarter of the 18^thcentury, orchestras and large noble households were of economic necessity broken up and theopportunities for performing symphonic music became limited. Beethoven's symphonies became the mainstays they are in part becausethere wasn't any significant competition during Beethoven's lifetime. I'd also like to point out an obvious fact, that by Beethoven's time and certainly afterword, most of the symphonies that would ever be written had already been written. It has been said by some that Beethoven's new standard for symphonies really made all future symphonies mere extensions or heirs by comparison; in future symphonies would be longer, might be programmatic including choirs, pipe organs and singing, would be far fewer in number, would swell the ranks of the orchestras required by far more than Beethoven required.

Likewise Beethoven's output of piano concertos was only 5 toMozart's 27, his string quartets 16 vs. 23 for Mozart and 68 for Haydn,his piano sonatas 32 vs. 52 by Haydn but only 18 for Mozart, only oneopera whereas the other two wrote many, Working harder at compositionthan the other two gives us a different kind of music built upon thestructures developed by the other two, particularlyHaydn but with unique features and an inventiveness of timeless musical effects.

Beethoven's music is also full of much humour andjesting as well as more serious and sombre moods some of unique depth. He extended theplayfulness exhibited by Haydn in particular that in turn would bepicked up by future musicians. We have in Beethoven a transitionalcharacter between two worlds, the old world of princely patronage wasgiving way to the changes brought about by political, technical andeconomic revolutions. It was and is never easy to make one's life asa musician. But even if one had talent, what would have happened ifone became deaf? How could one have succeeded? It is clearBeethoven had promotional help during and after his lifetime. He notably had help copying music, but they all had access to that back then. Beethoven waswidely regarded as a great and daring artist who had many admirers and a few whoconsidered the great man so temperamental and impossible that theywould scarcely have any dealings with him. His increasing deafnesstended to enforce his isolation, encouraged eccentricities anddespite help from his nephew Carl, led to his last eventualexhaustion of health and perhaps premature death. Beethoven's personal story is certainly heroic and tragic, but it wasall too often used as an excuse in later years to attempt toencourage the notion that great art always requires struggle andhardship, and perhaps also as an excuse to treat musicians as badlyas they have ever been, especially as regards remuneration.

Thereare many great masterpieces that all share the unmistakableBeethoven touches, “a fist in every phrase” as one of my now longdeceased mentors often described it. The symphonies are routinely reviewedby everyone. You simply cannot escape them, so much so that manyhave grown bored listening to them, which is truly unfortunate. Afew more people get to know Beethoven's piano concertos, and mostknow of his 5^th piano concerto subtitled “the Emperor”which it was never called during his lifetime.

But Ihave decided for many reasons, such as that this is my favourite Beethoven concerto, to feature his Piano Concerto#4 in G Major Op 58 as a work far more people should know better. Itis being played here by the 15 year old George Li who is, let's face it, a child prodigy somewhat after the familiarMozart pattern. His younger brother Andrew is coming along as apianist too. This seems to be an organized family intention; toproduce concert pianists out of their outstandingly talented sons. The rest of us should take encouragement from this, whether we candevote as much time and energy to our music making as these braveyoung men can or not. Though I have not met the Li brothers inperson yet (somehow I think I eventually will), I am already awarethat what their family and teachers have created for them and arebringing them up into is the “classical” definition of the bestof all possible worlds for encouraging musical talent and its development. What'sstartling about the performance I am sharing with you, is how matureit is. Regarding the technique required, it should be quite obvious.

But that is only the beginning. Music is a living breathingthing while it is being played live by living breathing musicians. That's why attending live performances is so important. We have ofcourse relied upon recordings for much of our musical appreciation,regardless of genre or form. That in turn leads to a more staticview of musical performance, after all no recording will sound anydifferent no matter how often it is played. If the music appeals tous differently each time we hear a recording we are long familiar with, that is a reflection of other things in ourlives or in ourselves at the time we are hearing it again.

Theater an der Wien

Thisconcerto was written around 1806 and first performed as part of that mammothconcert on December 22, 1808 when Beethoven would likewise premièreto the world his 5^th and 6^th Symphonies as wellas the Choral Fantasy at the Theater an der Wien. This marked thelast time Beethoven was featured as a pianist in public, playing thisconcerto. It's in the traditional 3 movements, fast, slow, fast:

I.Allegro moderato (G major)

II.Andante con moto (E minor)

III.Rondo (Vivace) (G major)

Thisperformance by George Li and the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra of theNew England Conservatory under the baton of Maestro Zander took placeat Jordan Hall in Boston on December 15, 2010, note just a day beforeBeethoven's birthday, which many people actually celebrate as othersmight Christmas.

Part 1:Most of the first movement

Part 2:The first movement continues with the cadenza and continues with the2^nd movement

Part 3: The breezy 3^rd movementFinale

Wecertainly look forward to more from George Li and his brother overthe next few years. In case it wasn't stated more emphatically, withall that's going on in the rest of the world, the motives, characterand value created by those like the Li's, is really what civilizationis all about and without it just where would we be? Thisinspiration, to create a civilization based on brotherly love andart, was in fact much closer to the heart of this great composer thanmost these days would care to admit. Beethoven was in all respectssomewhat of a revolutionary.

Afterthe concerto, we are treated to one of George's encore pieces, not byBeethoven, no, this is one of the most famous pieces by ChristophWillibald Gluck (1714-1787) who was the opera composer in favour atthe Imperial court in Vienna, a spot Mozart aspired to. But worldlysuccess isn't everything, for few there be who have ever heard of acomposer called Gluck, despite many knowing of this one piece, TheDance of the Blessed Spirits from his most famous opera, Orfeo ed Euridice.

FINIS

Music of the Great Composers – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

2011-09-22T15:32:00.001-04:00

Here is a previous posting concerning Mozart.

He wasnot unique for being a child prodigy, though probably more thananyone else in history, Mozart established a kind of tradition amongmusicians which has its merits and its dangers. In Mozart's case, hewas paraded around Europe as a child basically for the fruits ofwhatever gold ducats might be proffered and no doubt these tours werefinancially successful, so much so that the Mozarts, Wolfie, hissister and their father, were a kind of business model that quite afew musicians tried to emulate.

But could they? This is achild who picked up the violin after watching others play it for awhile and instantly played it, likewise the keyboard. This was achild who from before the age of five understood music notationperfectly well and was able to write it down, in most cases that havecome down to us without any mistakes, as if he was just takingdictation.

In hisearly twenties Mozart was witnessed doing such amazing things aswriting a letter to his dad with his right hand while working on ascore for an opera with his left, pausing once in a while for a gulpof white wine, working both arms independently, stunning andfrightening many onlookers. He is known to have known Italian andFrench as well as his native German. He was very fond of traditionalbilliards and had a table in his house.

But inspite of his obvious talents, Mozart could not manage practicalmatters; in particular his living expenses during his brief life,which he lived lavishly enough for a few years, certainly got out ofhand. And Mozart was not alone in living above his means, as around1789 and 1790 events in Europe were beginning to topple the oldorder, Then of course there was a worldwide economic downturn, somefailed harvests, inflation, a pandemic, an economic collapse, thedeath of the Emperor and of Mozart himself at the age of 35. Hemight even deservedly be considered a prototypical case of a rapidrise and fall of a great musician, many cases of which are strewnthrough modern history. But atypically, we usually don't ascribe any negative influences affecting Mozart's early death, mostlybecause during those days the average life expectancy was less than35.

Howeverthere are persistent rumours that someone had it in for him, becauselet's face it folks, this Mozart fellow was very good at what he did. He made lots of aspiring musicians very jealous. Mozart knew thatmuch of what he was writing would be immortal because as far as hewas concerned it came directly from an immortal place. That's theunmistakeable message one gets from seeing any of his scores too,beautifully laid out right from the start, everything written quicklybut accurately as if he was just taking it down from the beyond. Inorder to do what he did he would have had to have seen theconstruction of the score as a totality in his mind's eye before evensetting a stroke to paper. There will really never be anotherMozart.

Just asthe Symphony was the predominant occupation of Haydn, so the PianoConcerto might be said to have been Mozart's concentration. Therewere piano concertos, a few, written before Mozart, but all thatfollowed surely owe much to the 27 of them Mozart wrote, a record. And of course, as an outstanding Opera composer, Mozart was for farlonger than most others engaged in it, and his greatest operas areall in the repertoire.

Butbesides all this, and Mozart was certainly prolific, he was writingmusic constantly, every day of the last ten years of his life, hewrote at least 41 symphonies (second only to Haydn) and one of hislast is featured, the Symphony #40 in G minor, K. 550 writtenin July of 1788 when he was 32 years old. Together with theSymphonies #39 and #41, these are Mozart's last words on what aSymphony would be. Evidence exists that this particular symphony wasperformed during Mozart's lifetime, greatly substantiated by theexistence of a second authentic manuscript including the clarinetparts which Mozart would never have bothered adding unless the workwas being performed and he sought reasons to improve it. Theproportions aren't much different from a Haydn Symphony. But listenparticularly for the uses of chromaticism and a greater range ofemotions, in places writing as if for an Opera with the variousinstruments as singers, and all accomplished with surprisinglylimited resources; 1 flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2horns, and strings, no more than 35 people in all. The movements areas follows:

1. Molto allegro

2.Andante

3.Menuetto. Allegretto – Trio

4. Finale. Allegro assai

I haveknown this symphony a long time, and have many associations with allthese movements. The finale is what one of my teachers described as,“the influences of too many bad Hungarian violinists.” Oh well. The first was always my favourite because it represented a very tightsonata allegro form with an impassioned development section. Thesecond movement has some odd discontinuous pulsed phrases in itunlike anything anywhere else that I know of. The third movement isa minuet all right but in a minor key taking full advantage of allthe possible harmonies. The florid canonical writing near the end ofthe first theme is contrasted with the restrained more open flavourof the trio.

As for the performance standards for thissymphony, they have varied over the years from the over-massedperformances of the big symphony orchestras of the 30's, 40's and50's through the reversion to “original instruments” andpractices and thence to an accepted light texture for all this periodmusic. For one thing, the fewer players on string parts, the moreone hears the internal voices. So here we have a “traditional”performance of this “classic” piece, by the ViennaPhilharmonic under the late great Karl Böhm (1894-1981), The scale of the orchestra is still small, Böhm concentrates ongetting all the notes out as it were rather than phrase succeeding aphrase. You will encounter many more youthful versions of this musicas it is a widely performed work.

FINIS

Music of the Great Composers – Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

2011-09-19T02:14:00.002-04:00

Haydn by the English portrait painter Thomas Hardy, not to be confused with the English author of the same name

A few years back, for a time I took almost exclusive refuge in the musical world of Joseph Haydn. Here was music that even when it was troubled was never irrational. The composer was a humble, simple, generally good humoured, thoroughly sane individual with a sense of proportion learned the hard way over an extensive musical career. He was adaptable and eclectic and as well contributed some basic architectural ideas which influenced the music of those who followed him. As a practical matter he certainly seems to have known how to manage people, often difficult people, amazingly well.

It's difficult for most to grasp the enormity of the contributions Haydn made to music, to that which we understand and call “classical” music was given much of its form and proportion due to the almost scientific rationale underlying Haydn's compositional forms, in particular the Symphony, a form he did not invent, but one he perfected in writing a record 106 of them. Some have actually achieved being able to own a copy of a recording of every single one, as they are all known and widely circulated. It is also widely taught that Haydn was “papa Haydn” to the younger generations of composers who flocked to Vienna at the end of the 18th century, including Mozart and Beethoven. Well, Haydn was just getting off the ground at the age in his life when it was fated that Mozart should leave this world. Mozart was the real genius and Haydn knew it. As for Beethoven, the two got along better than most believe and Haydn might even have been put upon by the younger composer and pianist to take him along with him on another trip to London. But Haydn supposedly thought, probably correctly, that Beethoven would steal away all the attention of the admiring women they would encounter there, many who may have been on more than familiar terms with the amiable old man. Ben Franklin wasn't the only one: It is a complicated world enough, but especially among musicians, who likely as not would have become rivals on such a shared tour. The world was big enough for a Mozart and a Haydn to co-exist in because Haydn had his secure position out of town and those in town were trying to ignore Mozart, despite his quite exceptional international reputation, and then of course there was an economic collapse and Mozart died. Haydn was in London at the time and was shocked. It is said by some that Haydn expected there was more to it than just natural causes too. Haydn wished he had been able to be there to help, being actually a very learned man having had a lot of opportunity to spend time among his master's books despite his hectic work schedule.

As for his master, Haydn's Prince was a Hungarian plutocrat / ruler of his day and what this imperious fellow wanted morning, noon and night, was original music. He hired Haydn and as time passed he succeeded the former musical director and spent nearly thirty years in the service of this Prince and then of his brother when he in turn became Prince. It gave Haydn a lot of time to develop himself and his art. He was tremendously prolific and because he stayed in one place most of the time, most of it is still with us.

In 1790 his Prince died and Haydn was offered the opportunity to go to England and there he wrote some of his crowning musical achievements, the London symphonies. Oh yes, before he'd been offered the London gig, he'd dashed off six symphonies for Paris too, to be presented there by a fashionable orchestra. But London picked him up instead and he flourished there, went back a second time and in the process cemented a position among the English who perhaps to this day regard Haydn as very much one of their own composers. Think of that when you hear this Symphony #94 in G Major (The Surprise, a name it acquired later). Yes, that's right, this was Haydn's ninety-fourth Symphony. Beethoven only wrote nine, Mozart, who comes in second, wrote 43 or so.

The Haydn symphony, even in mature form, is a light thing, and notice especially how much is achieved with so little. Haydn greatly admired Mozart for this as well. Beethoven would build upon Haydn's sturdy foundation and many others would follow in a procession leading right into the present time. The version I found had some elements of both old and new performance practice, but this performance strikes a nice balance. They are Camerata Romana conducted by Alberto Lizzio. I know nothing about them. The Symphony is in four movements:

1. Adagio - Vivace assai
2. Andante
3. Menuetto: Allegro molto
4. Finale: Allegro molto

There is music for every kind of occasion, imagine this as music for an occasion to entertain people who took to attending a daytime concert in a large room rather than a concert hall where outside drinks and sandwiches might be served and there might have been less than silence even during the performance itself. This symphony has a gag in it, the surprise in the second movement, and perhaps it is in there to signify the composer's wit to his audience for having better things to do than to be nice enough to listen quietly to his music. Haydn was very fond of jokes and there are plenty of them throughout his music, so why not?

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Forgotten Masterpieces - S. Prokofiev: Concerto for piano no. 2 op. 16 in G minor

2011-09-17T13:08:00.000-04:00

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Every composition has a context, and this one is no different. It belongs in the category of extremely late Czarist Russian empire music and shares with Scriabin's late works and the early compositions of the followers of Rimsky-Korsikov, a certain transcendent / descendent duality in expression and feeling. The specific context for this work relates to the suicide of a friend of the composer.

This music was written in 1912 when the composer was 21. The Great War had yet to begin and the Czar was still on his throne. The orchestration was later revised in the early 1920's. We can easily mistake what we are hearing for half a dozen film scores which pilfered material from this and other works. I'd rather ask you to look at this music in another way, as brand new a hundred years ago, with all that implies concerning what the music presented to the world for the first time; the logical end of Romanticism in realism, nihilism and dissolution. and ask yourself what in its energy is this music trying to depict? What about this world as depicted drives the young composer's friend to take his own life?

No, this music is not pretty. It can scarcely be considered beautiful in any of the usual senses. I ask, is this music not In fact rather about crushed aspirations, deprived conditions, misery and want, coldness and cruelty, realistically depicted human emotions, complete with the tremendous searing pain and harsh rebukes of natural and human causalities depicted in at times frightful cynicism and stark certitude?

The concerto is scored in four movements, has classical proportions too. The first movement is elegiac, majestic and capped by perhaps the longest (and one of the best written) cadenzas in piano concerto literature. The pianistic techniques required to do everything the movement demands are daunting but never presented as “in your face” technical wizardry, but rather as part of the atmosphere and scenery of the story being told which is surely quite personal. Where the personal in a piece of music can become shared by its listeners, it becomes universal. The second movement, kind of a perpetual motion piece, is intended to tire the pianist (and perhaps the audience) with in this case the perfect depiction of the modern rat race.

1. Andantino-Allegretto (10–14 minutes)
2. Scherzo: Vivace (2–3 minutes)
Part 1

What better to follow the foregoing than a pompous procession of comical apparitions, bristling with sarcasm. He calls it an intermezzo. The stomp is broken by melancholy, weird and haunted sequences that could have scarcely made any sense to anyone who first heard them. The pianistic technique required is still formidable. In the land of dreams never to awaken, his deceased friend might be, most likely, if not in hell, at least in a pageant of disjointed causality.

The complex finale defies easy description, except that it summarizes all that went before.

3. Intermezzo: Allegro moderato (5–9 minutes)
4. Allegro tempestoso (10–13 minutes)
Part 2
Part 3

The pianist, Anna Vinnitskaya, appeared on the world stage at the age of 13 and is 28 years old this year. We wish her all the best for her tremendous sacrifices to become a concert pianist, a great life of many fine fist rate performances. This performance concludes with a brief discussion of this music (in German).

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Music of the Great Composers – Georg Friedrich Händel (1685-1759)

2011-09-16T16:41:00.000-04:00

Wellcertainly Handel is best known for composing the oratorio Messiah in1741. As some might say, this one piece might have been enough toguarantee him a measure of immortality, … except that there's somuch more that's just as good if not a whole lot better. Handel is Isuppose somewhat underrated these days, after all his harmonies aresquare, his mannerisms antique, his style totally dated. Nevertheless there are in Handel tremendous contributions formulatedin orchestral music, if not for the first time, at least by acompetent enough master composer, out of which the formation oforchestras that in decades to come would trace their traditions backto him, especially in England where he made his notablesuccess.

Here then is the first of the three suites Handelcomposed in 1717 for King George I, the so called Water Music. Theywere performed by a band of 50 musicians on the king's bargestationed out in the middle of the Thames and those who wished couldobserve and hear the music might do so from the shores. Similarsuites were written by Handel for the king's fireworks. Each suiteconsists of dance movements, beginning with the pompous Overtureintended to announce that the king was present, getting seated,paying attention, etc. The rest of the movements could featuredances, presentations, exchanges of gifts of various kinds. Handelwas the composer in the mode of service to patronage and heaccomplished his tasks well enough for his masters that by the usualstandards, he did materially rather better than most.

Themusic itself though stylized to a higher degree than the music thatfollowed it, baroque after all, reveals some striking instances oflooking forward to the power of the extension of even the most quaintand strict harmonies in orchestral writing, the balances andexchanges between groups of instruments foreshadow futuredevelopment.

I'vechosen this version because I trust Pierre Boulez tastes here and theHague Philharmonic plays it well.

Boulez conducts Handel - Water Music, Suite No. 1 in F major [Part 1/2]

Boulez conducts Handel - Water Music, Suite No. 1 in F major [Part 2/2]

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Music of the Great Composers – J. S. Bach (1685-1750)

2011-09-14T23:56:00.001-04:00

Anotherseries attempting to depict a survey of highlights from the Canon ofWestern Music, we begin with Bach. There are people who are devotedto particular composers, and among them Bach usually enjoys quite afollowing. Among the earliest orchestral works by Bach, of which Iwas to get to know, turned out to be the First Brandendurg Concerto[F Major BWV 1046] written sometime before 1721 by the fairly wellsituated 36 year old composer.

Thereare six of these concerti, among them the fifth which is a greatkeyboard concerto. They were never performed during Bach's lifetimeand he never got paid a dime for them as far as anyone knows. Infact they might have faded into history or perhaps been irretrievablylost had they not been re-discovered in a dusty library in 1849 andcirculated and performed widely thereafter.

From myearliest acquaintance with this first concerto, the performancestandards have changed considerably. During the 20^thcentury and before that, it seemed customary to try to adapt earliermusic to fit a more modern (usually larger) ensemble of playersusually producing a bigger thicker sound, which maybe did nothing topreserve the best aspects of an earlier musical style involving muchinterplay among voices in the musical texture.. More modernperformances seem intent to try and incorporate some authentic or“period” aspects; limiting players per part, using period instruments or allowing extensive musical filigree (sometimes calledornaments or mannerisms), which are supposed to indicate something ofthe freedom allowed talented musicians of the time. These wouldperhaps interest younger players and audiences who might be hearingthis music for the first time.

So hereis the Brandenburg Concerto #1 in F Major BWV 1046, played byMozart-Orchester under the direction of Claudio Abbado.

1. (Allegro moderato)

2. Adagio

3. Allegro

4. Menuet - Trio I - Menuet da capo - Polacca - Menuet da capo - Trio II- Menuet da capo

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It Couldn't Be Any Simpler Than This

2011-09-11T17:26:00.003-04:00

Oneof my current objectives is attainment of proficiency to play thesepieces; the first set of Songs Without Words (Lieder ohne Worte) by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), his Op 19, written in the years1829-30 by the then 20 year old composer. There are some remarkablethings going on in this music. Just to give you an idea, I'm postinglinks to Daniel Barenboim's capable performances:

No. 1 Andante con moto in E major

No. 2 Andante espressivo in A minor

No. 3 Molto allegro e vivace in A major ("Hunting Song")

No. 4 Moderato in A major

No. 5 Poco agitato in F-sharp minor

No. 6 Andante sostenuto in G minor ("Venezianisches Gondellied" (Venetian Boat Song No. 1)

Schirmer's Standard Edition

Thereare eight books of six songs each of these Songs Without Words. Itis usual to try and give some of them to pupils to strengthen certainperceptual and motor skills as they attain greater physical abilityto play the piano, but from a performance standpoint each of thebooks offers a condensed set of fascinating music to challengepianist and audience alike.

Of the six in this first book, I'mparticularly partial to the fifth. This is really a condensed sonataallegro and it is stunning in design and intricate but not impossibleto play. Everything in Mendelssohn seems to follow some predictableand logical basis or puzzle, once one attains it, for example theleft hand stretches in the “development” section of thismovement, while not impossible are not as immediately determinable onthe keyboard as one might suppose. Mendelssohn might have had anaturally wider spread in his left hand than in his right as alsoseems evident from some of his writing.

Instyle, there are a few things he shares with Schumann, but I see abasis for Mendelssohn's style in Beethoven and Bach with a hint fromMozart to try and stay within bounds. The "bounds of exuberance" one encounters in the secondhalf of the first, the entire third, the “hymn in the village inthe deep Alpine valley” of the fourth, the compact use of so muchsubtlety in the famous sixth, are all the unique personal touches of thiscomposer. These are piano vignettes that together may take a year orso to learn and play comfortably and a lifetime to learn to interpret.

Icertainly like Barenboim's preferences as inspiration for a startingplace, although what I have in mind is more a combination of ardourand conviction as in this music we are in that critical cusp ofstyles that included Chopin, Schumann and Liszt. I also have Perri Knize to thank for the inspiration toinvestigate these pieces. I certainly wish her all the best as she may bestudying these pieces herself or has already done so. May I in turnrecommend to her and of course others, the work of that “Chopin of the North,” EdvardGrieg. His Lyric Pieces are in many respects the direct outgrowth ofwhat Mendelssohn so ably planted; the idea of incorporating groups ofpiano pieces in books issued periodically throughout a composer's career,notebooks of pianistic achievement during a time in whichnaturalistic and realistic portrayal of human emotion was a paramountconsideration, a preference and an understanding of which seem soforeign to most these days.

Henle's Urtext Edition

I usually set at least three of these pieces to go through at least once and sometimes twice in one half hour practice session at the piano. I'm still learning them but am in process of committing them to memory now, so I will work with and without the music. But what is critical is to avoid over-kill. When that happens, I get up form the piano and do something else, because I do not want any impressions made on my subconscious mind that would distract me from learning how best to perform these often deceptively easy pieces (they aren't easy). The editions pictured are the most often encountered edition (Schirmer's) and the best printed one (Henle) to my knowledge.

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Eighth Interview – Going Out On A Limb

2011-08-24T21:51:00.002-04:00

Sibelius and His World: Silence & Influence

We should get a few things out of the way. You were able to attend a concert last Sunday, at Bard College ...

Yes. Just down the road …

The last concert in this year's Bard Music Festival: the theme was Jean Sibelius again. My, this certainly seems a Sibelius summer.

Laughs.

You can't imagine the effect this concert had on me. By the end as we stood watching the torrents of rain pour down outside, I was just trying to keep myself from bursting into tears. To have heard the 7^th Symphony and Tapiola played live, and played magnificently by the American Symphony Orchestra under the apparently gifted baton of Leon Botstein, was almost beyond my capacity to respond to in words.

The program also included Vaughn-Williams' 5^th Symphony and the 1^st Symphony of Samuel Barber.

… which proved a few things conclusively: Samuel Barber has often received scathing criticism from people who are no better for their work or words, and this first Barber Symphony is a better piece than most might believe, especially when played as well as this orchestra played it, no doubt due to Botstein's deliberate, tough, stark stroked, no holds barred interpretation.

Nevertheless …

Nevertheless this symphony was written by a young man while the 7^th of Sibelius was written by a man near my own age with the experience of having written the previous six symphonies behind him. Above everything else Sibelius' 7^th is a mature piece of music best intended for those with mature emotions.

… and so you didn't think Barber's piece was as good as Sibelius'.

No way! In fact the Vaughn-Williams symphony wasn't as good either. These pieces were clearly inspired by Sibelius, but neither used the ideas behind Sibelius' unique orchestral style nearly as well. Barber's deficiency was in both his youthful exuberance and that he overcrowded his orchestration so much so that even as good as the ASO played it (about as good as it gets), it just couldn't have stood up against anything Sibelius wrote.

You told me you were surprised by discovering that Sibelius was an alcoholic probably suffering from either chronic depression or manic depressive syndrome.

Well I think there might be a terrible idea that might take root in people's imaginations; that great classical composers wouldn't have been able to produce what they did unless they were abused as children (Beethoven), orphaned as a child (Bach), or suffering manic depressive syndrome and self treating with alcohol and cigars (Sibelius).

I don't like the idea either. But aren't you suggesting that without some hardship, nothing of greatness usually results and demonstrating it by your examples?

There were materially successful composers, probably no more or less as a percentage than in any other trade. A few were miserably poor. Some had runs of both at various stages of their lives. But aside from judgement by today's standards about how much money one has, how much one will be able to retire on, day to day standard of living concepts, there's the music they produced, much of which verges on either the priceless or the metaphorically ecstatic and transcendental as to be in a category apart from all other categories.

The religious?

Nodding in the affirmative.

To hear and be one with certain aching phrases in the Sibelius 7^th is almost to transcend that moment and to comprehend answers to whole lifetimes of suffering and joy, to know the ache in the heart of every mother, every lover, the anguish of the infinite itself. It's almost too much to bear.

And this is considered mere entertainment?

If one is a real die-hard philosophical materialist, great music as we know it is scarcely that. One would hear it differently, would never get it at all, never mind the heights or depths as I have attempted to describe these states of awareness. And it may not make them less human for not getting it, for that's not for me to say, I can have no ultimate judgement.

Oh, I just have to ask; how did they play Tapiola?

Menacing, frightening, creepy at times; at the point in the music when it finally lets loose, Batstein drove them through it relentlessly, mercilessly, without missing a beat, among the best performances of anything I've ever heard.

Better than the 7^th?

Perhaps, if that's possible. During much of it I couldn't make up my mind whether the forest Sibelius was describing was Dracula's or a metaphor for the modern world about to face a day of reckoning.

[ Insert: Jean Sibelius: Tapiola (Complete) Berliner Philharmoniker - Järvi ]

Classical Music & Snobbery

You have discussed with me the supposed relationship between classical music and snobbery and wanted to touch on it head on.

The subject comes up once in a while. Classical music, as every human activity, is not any more free of “human all too human problems.” John Bell Young wrote me a while back and described a kind of experiment of his to try and provoke controversial discussions about classical music (which might have led somewhere) on on-line forums, only to discover that a high percentage of those who would be among classical music's audience, were apparently into it for reasons that have nothing to do with the essence of the art's purpose or importance for those who pursue it.

Something about fascism and people wanting to be fascists.

It got down to it being more important to win arguments and establish bandwagons people would willingly jump onto, as if these discussions were matters of winning or losing, demonstrating some surprisingly weak egos, etc.

But what is classical music's purpose? Can't let you get away with slipping that in without explaining it.

All right. To begin with, classical music is about preserving musical treasures, at this point there are mountains of these treasures and yes some have yet to be adequately mined. Beyond that classical music usually finds people from all walks of life who eventually “get it” and prefer it to all other music.

But this does not make it better than other music.

There have been a few books written about it. John gave me some references, and I do intend to read them, but there has been so much going on lately that I haven't gotten time to dig them up and read them. Here's the basis for the snobbery, that if you like classical music, or even play it, you are expressing a preference for the traditional pastimes of the socially more prominent and therefore would have a station from which to look down upon others. We are lucky that this is usually not the case, especially among the musicians themselves, many of whom though erudite and consummate professionals in other fields (doctors, lawyers, dentists, accountants, teachers, etc.) do not pursue their musical lives for anything more or less than the privilege of being able to play the music. We also know many who came from quite humble origins. But what it all amounts to is that we know what we like, what we love and what we value as imperishable for the appreciation of the whole human race.

So it's really about feeling …

It's about everything … and sometimes there is NOTHING like a live performance to make that connection happen, the music will take your breath away, if and when you are open to it.

So there really is no basis for snobbery in regard to classical music.

No, there shouldn't be. It's open to everyone and there are plenty of places to hear live performances. We should also support our musician friends by attending their concerts whenever possible. It's just that we don't hear nearly as much classical music as other music out in public. We aren't exactly trying to push our music on anyone, and that's a good thing, but just because we understand and like what we play or listen to, does not mean everyone must or will see the point of us devoting ourselves to it as we invariably must if we're truly hooked.

You also discovered that your friend Mr. Young was quite handicapped, how did that make you feel?

John Bell Young is a consummate pianist, by which I mean, he's the real thing and it shows in his playing. He plays Scriabin about as well as anyone I know, and yet his hearing isn't the best. He and I are both visually impaired though I bet he sees better than I do. But anyway, I felt deeply humbled and maybe a bit reprimanded by the universe for not having devoted myself nearly as much as John has to music. As I remarked many times to my mentors and associates over the years, perhaps things would have gone better for me if I'd just stuck to playing the piano.

But you had to know the truth.

Yeah, I had to be inquisitive about perhaps too many things, know what was going on, become informed, etc.

But you aren't getting into any of that, are you?

No, not immediately. I am thinking about doing something else.

The Literary Project

Just how do you want to get this rolling?

How about by telling everyone that I have written a book, a novel, the genre would be science-fiction, mystery adventure. It takes place in 2004, about the time I wrote it. If I were to publish it, it would run around 640 pages.

Have you tried to get it published?

I approached a publicist friend a few years ago, but he wasn't interested in the genre.

So you are going to serialize this work on this website beginning in September. How much of it will be free?

It will be free for the time being. I want to find out what the response is before I decide to charge anyone anything. Times are tough and fiction is cheaper than ever. If I decide to charge for it, I'll make it cheap enough that those who like it can read it for as they say, a song. Of course I'd love to be discovered and have my work circulated more widely, and reap the benefits from that too, but for the time being this will have to do.

Well, how are you getting this started? I mean, what is the story about?

It's intended to be a kind of “adult” Harry Potter and by “adult” I don't necessarily mean pornographic. It's better to suggest than to visually describe in lurid details anyway.

But it will have some romance?

Yes. And it's also intended to substitute for easily more tedious and boring essays on society, economics and politics, which I might have written to express similar concepts as appear in this book.

It's not about the same subject matter as Harry Potter is it?

Magic? No, not at all. In fact the most significant difference between Harry Potter and what I have created is that all my characters except one are adults not children. The story has more in common with works involving what happens to castaways, including The Wizard of Oz or Lost Horizon, but it's not those stories either.

How did you come to write this book?

I was on assignment in the Bahamas and its broad outlines were part of my dreams one night while I was there. I decided that as soon as I returned home I would begin writing it down to see what it would become.

And 640 pages and so many years later ...

I really finished it in the fall of 2007 and have edited some of it since.

But when it appears here it will be “official” and finished?

Yes.

OK, then so what is this story about?

It's about an abduction of an oceanographic research vessel and its passengers and crew to an Earth like planet farther away in the universe than anyone imagines possible.

By whom?

By The Protector, a being / machine from a previous extinct human civilization. It was originally conceived as a planetary defence system, from asteroids, but since it was a conscious being as well as a machine and had sufficient time and resources to discover new techniques with which to scan the universe and, as it were, to create transit beams across time and space, it eventually found Earth and began to capture people in serious trouble and rescue them by bringing them to his planet to restart human civilization.

So it has a gender.

It usually communicates to humans as a hologram of an old man in a toga.

Really?

Yeah, well that's just how I dreamt it.

What else do you want to tell us at this point?

It's assumed that the abductees will never get home, but in two years they eventually all get sent back to Earth.

So what's special about this planet?

It's populated by humans form four principal sources; people periodically rescued from Earth, people from a more technically advanced race of humans on another closer planetary system, some people from a planetary system doomed by its exploding sun who were rescued before that event and scattered among humanoid colonies on many planets and finally a distinct race of humans from perhaps the closest planet inhabited by humans who have six fingers and toes and other unusual attributes.

What's the name of the planet where your story takes place?

The human inhabitants are limited to only one continent on the entire planet, the others being uninhabitable. This continent is called Mindora [MIN-door-a]. There is some play on the concept of a golden mind that is incorruptible. Since they never get off this continent, and surprisingly few deem it necessary to go travelling through space, they usually refer to their planet and their continent by the same name. It is orbited by two much smaller, more rapidly moving satellites, each much smaller than Earth's moon.

But there is also something else too.

Yes, everyone has the ability to read everyone else's mind, if they are physically close enough. The abductees become aware of this universally shared ability and soon acquire the same abilities as the natives.

So in the beginning they are at everyone's mercy. There is no privacy and they can never get home again, how horrible!

No, it isn't like that. You'll see.

So they eventually get to go home. What happens to this mind reading ability when they return? Is it gone?

Unfortunately they still have it and the results work out differently for each of them. Most aren't too happy about it.

Why would they? They'd be considered insane here.

Yes.

Wow, so what's the point?

You mean the moral?

Nodding.

It's entertainment.

Thought provoking entertainment?

It's entertainment..

So when are we going to give the people more details?

Probably before the end of the month, I'll begin by posting the treatment which will contain sufficient details to give everyone their bearings when they begin reading the story. It will appear on its own page.

What is the title of the book?

I've provisionally called it The Linton Bequest. The story is told by the participants in a series of documents. Each of these documents, or parts thereof, will be presented in sequence (serialized) over several months.

Well I hope it does well. It might catch on. Didn't you discover just last night that most people who are avid readers read fantasy?

Yes, and believe me folks, everything I describe in my book is fantasy and I hope everyone enjoys it too.

OK then folks, look for a page called THE LINTON BEQUEST appearing on Dave's blog page, right here, very soon.

FINIS

Returning to Tanglewood – A Sibelius weekend

2011-07-19T05:31:00.014-04:00

It really was an event, a rehearsal for that evening's concert at Tanglewood. The Boston Symphony players are clearly happy people doing what few of us can imagine doing, and the music they are making is a tradition involving people from all over the world coming to Tanglewood, usually knowing the music ahead of time and having certain expectations about what they might hear. Again, as last year, the weather was warm and wonderful. The program was to consist of pieces entirely by the great Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) .

John Storgårds (a 48 year old Finnish conductor for the music of The Finnish composer) made his début at Tanglewood in fact with this particular open to the public rehearsal. One is never guaranteed a complete play-through of any of the pieces on the programme for the evening performance, though you usually get most of them.

Let's begin with Valse triste Op. 44 composed in 1903 (when the composer was 38 years old) as music for a play about Death. How fast do you usually hear this piece played? It's probably too fast. This is fantasy music about an old woman dancing with Death. It has to sound weary and tired at the beginning and Storgårds gets the phenomenal talent of the Boston Symphony Orchestra to transmit the inevitable gloom and darkness of this piece in a way seldom heard. But we didn't get to hear the whole thing. (Incidentally I have a piano transcription of this piece and I think I might actually try learning it.)

Storgårds was also not very interested in Finlandia Op. 26 composed in 1899 (when the composer was 34) but we did get to hear the terrifically rousing end of it with the powerful brass of the BSO. We loved hearing this from half the distance of our seating last year, it was really loud.

Sibelius was adept at using brass choirs to create landscapes in sound, as backdrops with the low registers in musical instruments preferred. This creates a weight and might to the sound, a coldness and density too, like snowcapped mountains seen along a horizon under a crisp clear sky. The BSO's brass are what I think of as a golden sound. Storgårds' rehearsal of Sibelius' Symphony #5 in E Flat Op. 82 composed between 1915 and 1919 (Sibelius was 54 years old in 1919) seemed to be about layers, the strings, the woodwind parts, always wonderfully written by Sibelius, and then of course the brass. This is music that has always seemed to me about forces of Nature more than anything to do with humanity specifically. There are here and there some folksy elements, but this is stunningly transcendent music. Is it really cold music or is that a mere useless canard associated with Sibelius' ethnic associations? We didn't think so. Dark? Yes, certainly some of it is quite dark, though of course there are exceptions, especially in his writing for solo woodwinds as they appear in many of his symphonies. Sibelius style remains unique and enigmatic. Things sort of swerve around in terms of tonal centres, they even overlap each other deliberately. No, the orchestra isn't playing wrong notes. Sibelius is asking us to hear things differently, almost visually, and in terms including the vantage points of jumping fish in magic pools or of birds flying through seamless air. I've no doubt that Storgårds more official début at Tanglewood featuring this same programme will be noteworthy due to his interpretation of this symphony.

Sibelius' Violin Concerto in d Op. 47, written when the composer was 38 or 40, during the same period as Valse triste, was played through. It turns out that a lot of the shmalz in this work is based on Sibelius failure to satisfy his own personal desire to become a great concert violinist, which was not fated to be because as he came to understand it, he lacked both the physical coordination and the psychological aptitude. "It was a very painful awakening when I had to admit that I had begun my training for the exacting career of a virtuoso too late," he said. There are a lot of tear jerking parts to this one, but is this really only the intensity borne of not being able to become a great violinist? We're asked to consider the depths of emotional pain due to an unfulfilled lifelong dream that remained unrealised. The music seems too intense for something like that, but many things are certainly possible.

The violinist Nikolaj Znaider who played this very soloistic violin concerto has a similar background to that of the conductor, but the conductor, Storgårds, seemed to present him to the orchestra, as well as the audience, as if to say, “listen to him do this one, he'll amaze you.” Znaider's style was closer to Jasha Heifitz or Zino Francescatti, a sort of hot spun gold sound. I appreciated being able to hear clearly the unusual angular phrasing in the violin lines without the usual scraping and scratching of the really heavy bowers that swash-buckle the violin concert stage these days. The violin Znaider played was one that had been Fritz Kreisler's, a Guernari del Jesu violin from the 1740's or 271 years or so ago. Can one imagine it? This violinist is hot stuff! Simply stunning!

Some time later, returning to my place, I entertained my guest with recordings of Sibelius' symphonies 4 through 7, three my friend had never heard before. Later when discussing what we'd experienced all weekend, we began asking seriously whether Sibelius was putting us on, whether in fact he had indeed had the last laugh, dared to compose his really “out of the box” music and after all the joke was on us. As was the case with Bartók's music, weren't we being asked to follow the composer into some curious if not questionable territories? There are lurid outcries in Sibelius' 4^th, strange combinations in his 5^th with that priceless and frankly silly conclusion, there is mastery in his 6^th, probably my overall favourite among Sibelius symphonies, but there is everything the others had plus a deep inconsolable ache in the 7^th, his last symphony. Sibelius was probably right to think it inadvisable to put out anything after that unless he could write something better. He has in fact been criticized for quitting before he was dead, which now seems a little idiotic, when in fact he wrote his last symphony at the age of 59 after at least three decades of hard work (and if you think musical composition isn't hard work for most who dare attempt it, think again!). Isn't 30 years of it long enough? Even if you or I are the only people still listening, fortunately not the case, would anything have justified saying more than this 7^th symphony does so well about the heroism and yet the tireless longing of the human race for something more, something better?

Here's what Sibelius looked like in 1939, at the age of 74, making a rare appearance a year earlier conducting his Andante Festivo (written originally for string quartet in 1922), and he still had 17 more years to live, but he wouldn't be caring much about music by then and didn't like talking about it much after consigning many papers and who knows how many unfinished compositions to the flames in 1945 when he was 80 years old and still had 11 more years to live.

We recall to general public awareness in this blog from time to time the many disparities between composers, for instance a Mozart who composes virtually his entire greatness within ten years, while a Sibelius is granted much more time. We get two different kinds of music as well.

I could have put anything or nothing to listen to in this entry. The Boston Symphony Orchestra played or rehearsed great parts of the 5^th at Tanglewood, but have a serious listen to this, Sibelius' last symphony, written near the end of his career as a composer:

Karajan: Sibelius Symphony no. 7 (1/3)

Karajan: Sibelius Symphony no. 7 (2/3)

Karajan: Sibelius Symphony no. 7 (3/3)

Herbert von Karajan's performance still holds up reasonably well. This is a complete four movement romantic symphony deliberately smashed into one titanic movement comprising everything in the usual sequence one usually expects in the themes and moods in what I really think is one of the unsung gems of the entire symphonic repertoire, this final great symphony of Jean Sibelius, completed in 1924 is.in a way a cousin to Mahler's unfinished 10^th symphony written exactly 100 years ago this year, though it took longer for Deryck Cooke to finish and even longer to gain acceptance. I guess it makes a difference when the composer is granted time to live long enough to retire from music and see his works gain status in the world's orchestral repertoire independent of himself. But when I consider the music of the composers of 100 years ago I often ask myself just how much the audiences are getting out of what in most cases is more emotionally sophisticated than momentary plays on our quick responses to sound impressions, note sequences suggesting susceptible mood changes, plus all the technique involved in getting it to sound as intended which is itself always surprising, thrilling or simply astounding.

All in all, this weekend offered us a good chance to return to Tanglewood (a place we still regard as sacred ground) and to have another glimpse at the music of Jean Sibelius, one of our favourite composers of all time.

PS: For the interested, this brief interview concerning Sibelius' symphonies as a project of the Berlin Philharmonic under Simon Rattle, who is one of my favorite conductors at this point in time. He seems to say that the orchestra had been unfamiliar with this music, but hadn't
Herbert von Karajan done the Sibelius cycle with this orchestra? That would seem to have been ancient history. Rattle reports an excellent response to his re-introduction to this music. We earnestly look forward to the fruits of this collaboration. Rattle said that the orchestra regarded Sibelius as one of the six greatest symphonists of all time (I can guess who some of the others might be). I think it's a fair assessment to consider Sibelius' contributions to symphonic literature among the very greatest of all time.

FINIS

York Bowen – The English Rachmaninoff

2011-07-15T20:27:00.001-04:00

There were a few loose ends to tie up from my last visit to New York. One concerned a composer, previously unknown to me; York Bowen (1884-1961), a composer of some 155 works, a pianist with vast talents, an accomplished musician on many fronts. The first time I had any opportunity to hear anything by Bowen was from an English pianist named Simon I met while upstairs at Beethoven's in New York. Simon was playing on a Hailun HG 198 grand to good advantage, as it responded to everything he tried on it with apparent ease.

Of York Bowen's music, it would in some cases cause you to think it's perhaps something by Rachmaninoff you haven't heard yet, as Rachmaninoff wrote a great deal of music most people haven't heard yet, myself included. But it isn't; there's also some scent of Arnold Bax (1883-1953), or of an even a more obscure English or Irish composer, as there were some a hundred years ago or so, as the English and Irish woke up from their cultural delusion about the value of making music, having left it to foreigners for as long as 200 years.

For a first taste of it, a comparatively late work, written in 1957, Bowen's Toccata Op, 155, which is apparently quite popular among aspiring virtuoso pianists because it's obviously quite difficult to play. One realizes as a pianist that the most complex strings of notes in this piece are only a series of connected shorter movements of fingers, hands, wrists, arms, shoulders, waist and legs, with appropriate breathing. For the listener, there is much that can be gained from being able to listen to several versions of the same piece, which is how one gets to “know” or at least recognize a piece of music. For those who listen, but do not play a musical instrument, you can imagine just what is required for a pianist to “learn” a piece of music well enough to play it, whether pianists decide to read from the music as they play or do it completely from memory (as each one must decide how best to pull off the best performance they are comfortable with). As for musical style, there is much emulation of Ravel and Debussy, perhaps even of Prokofiev.

So here are examples of this piece:

SABRINA KOZAK plays Toccata Opus 155 by YORK BOWEN

An apparent piano virtuoso in the making (following a long tradition of promoting child prodigies, for the good or ill it does to music), this young lady certainly knocks out all this composition's contours very nicely. This superb performance should serve to challenge all of us. (By the way, her teacher, Kevin Fitz-Gerald, has a long association with the Newport Music Festival, where he has acquitted himself very nicely to many great masterpieces of the Classical and Romantic – still don't like the terms – piano repertoire, so I am not surprised this young lady played this well.)

York Bowen - Toccata, Op. 155 (1957) Hojoon

This seems a bit more of a studied performance, very clear definite phrasing. I do not know who Hojoon is, but he plays this very well indeed.

Bowen Toccata, Op. 155, Alison Chang

Yet another version, notice how smooth she has made all the phrases you might have thought of as pointed, while listening to the previous versions.

Obviously interest in this composer should be on the increase because those of us around the world who are interested in this art form with the passion accorded to a life's work, a religious understanding or something perhaps even deeper, and Bowen left a great many pieces of music, large scale works, which have not received the attention they deserve. But as Mahler said of his own works, “my time will come,” so does this apply to the largely undiscovered work of York Bowen, the English Rachmaninoff.

FINIS

Discovering Leif Ove Andsnes – A Pianist After My Own Heart!

2011-06-18T05:22:00.002-04:00

Leif Ove Andsnes - Grieg (Mountain Top)

A friend in France, a piano teacher at a conservatory there, posted a link to a documentary this pianist had done, of which there were supposed to be 8 parts. Well, actually I was only able to find the last 6 and the complete documentary he did. The entire thing doesn't appear on the internet yet so I will have to find it and view it in its entirety, since it is so good. Before this, I'd never heard of him, but then he was born in 1970.

Andsnes, or Leif Ove as he seems to prefer, is among other things a proponent and exponent of the music of Edvard Grieg (1843 – 1907). He has recorded the Lyric Pieces on Grieg's own Hamburg Steinway B, the kind that used to have raised lettering on the signature Steinway diagonal spur in the plate of the piano. It's Grieg's birthday on the 15^th of this month, so Grieg's music is now well over 100 years old and still holds up remarkably well.

And of course, wouldn't you just know it, he has played one of the truly underrated gems in the piano literature, Grieg's eternal and unforgettable Notturno:

Notturno - Edvard Grieg, lyric pieces op.54 no.4

Leif Ove's documentary was important in many respects, it was beautiful – using many scenes from Norway, it conveyed Leif Ove's view of pianism, as including the qualities of silence as much as sound, indeed Leif Ove says that we are overloaded with sound and cannot endure silence, that we need to listen for silence, for what it does to clear the mind and bring relaxation, inspiration, etc. He also spoke of the sound during the moments of a piece as being as significant as the whole piece, of the notes constructing an enclosure for the silence inside, all sorts of wonderful ideas which he could execute as he plays in what I must say is a deeply poetic style to my hearing as well as being technically precise. You can hear the way he has paid attention to this idea of musical moments as in this piece:

Watchman's song - Edvard Grieg lyric pieces op.12 no.3

This awareness of episodic sound qualities in the music he plays enables Andsnes to learn the most complex music as if he's breaking everything apart into moments and then stringing them together. The effects produced are in some instances unfamiliar, but always effective and often more satisfying to the ear and the mind. The documentary shows some of Leif Ove's preparation for his première in St. Petersburg, Russia in the same beautiful concert hall featured in a previous post about Gustav Mahler's Fifth Symphony played there. His ambitious choice, the Third Piano Concerto of Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873 - 1943) , which is my favourite of his concertos for among other reasons that it was written to be premièred in New York.

Well, I couldn't find that performance anywhere either, but there is this one he played with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Lionel Bringuier, who I've never heard of either.

What you are going to hear is remarkable, as if all of the various sinews of Rachmaninoff's music are made distinct and have their unique and personal moment for you and everyone else to appreciate them. This includes the ways Leif Ove mingles the piano's line with those in the surrounding orchestra as Leif Ove says, and I agree, this work is splendidly orchestrated. Here is a frank reading, not overly gushing as some play it, completely on top of it technically, played in the same spirit as if this were Bach almost, so precise but more letting you have just that little extra time to hear everything. At times the sense of it is so thrilling that you are more sure than anything that you have heard a new and distinct way of interpreting not just this concerto but all the rest of Rachmaninoff as once Byron Janis' interpretation thrilled me. .Just listen to this man play the piano! What he does is often breathtaking!

Rachmaninov's 3rd pianoconcert - Leif Ove Andsnes - 1:5

Rachmaninov's 3rd pianoconcert - Leif Ove Andsnes - 2:5

Rachmaninov's 3rd pianoconcert - Leif Ove Andsnes - 3:5

Rachmaninov's 3rd pianoconcert - Leif Ove Andsnes - 4:5

Rachmaninov's 3rd pianoconcert - Leif Ove Andsnes - 5:5

It should be duly noted that in most instances Leif Ove Andsnes is shown playing Steinway pianos, more than likely built in Hamburg. They are very difficult to beat at producing just what he wants. However the piano he used for the Mountain Top shots was a Bösendorfer as they have a distinct tail design no one else uses. CORRECTION: I took another look at the piano and got a good look at the fallboard and the name on it revealed it to be an old Ibach grand! Alas, Ibach, once the oldest piano making business in family hands for six generations had to call it quits a few years back. They are still great pianos!

FINIS

ELIICA

2011-06-16T23:57:00.001-04:00

ELIICA, an electric supercar, is quite a story. Of those whose passion was evident in the making of this story in the videos which appear on You Tube, I want it to be known that we are impressed with your achievements, that we share your great and obvious happiness in what you have accomplished, and we look forward to greater things from you in the years ahead. Congratulations from friends around the world who you will be helping!

Enjoy this incredible story.

Eliica - Super Electric Car - Part 1 of 5

Eliica - Super Electric Car - Part 2 of 5

Eliica - Super Electric Car - Part 3 of 5

Eliica - Super Electric Car - Part 4 of 5

Eliica - Super Electric Car - Part 5 of 5

FINIS

Walking Into Massachusetts from New York

2011-06-11T21:12:00.002-04:00

“In memory of my wife Desiree Pardi

an amazing woman, loving wife, caring doctor, a true gift

'This moment shall never come again – embrace it.”

October 29, 1967 – September 6, 2009

This plaque is affixed to a bench on the trail in Taconic State Park, New York. It was I am sure placed there through some special bequest, signifying as it were to the rest of the passing world, that someone had found this place among the most blessed on earth. (I even wondered if perhaps the ashes of the dearly beloved young Dr. Pardi might not be scattered about?) A blessed place, where everyone along the path was friendly and the path would have been passable to all able bodied: at least it seemed that way to us, my friend from the city and I, as we walked the path leading to variously named Bash Bish falls, or Copake Falls, the tallest falls in Massachusetts accessible only by this trail from New York. That trail starts here:

This past winter had been cold and the first parts of spring cool and rainy. The canopy of foliage and the swift running stream in the comfortable air invigorated with plenty of oxygen as you walk the faily easy path which leads to the falls.

The water was very clear and the air filled with the sounds of falling water, the rush of the stream a continual gushing susurus.

And as we walk along, my friend and I spoke of the legend behind this place, a Mohican legend, concerning a woman named Bash-Bish who had been unfaithful to her husband and forced into a canoe to be thrown over the falls when she was supposedly rescued through the aegis of a cloud of white butterflies.

Bish-Bash escaped for a while but eventually came back where she was married to a chief or strong man of the tribe.

But try as they might, Bish-Bash and her husband couldn't conceive. Meanwhile from the first marriage, Bish-Bash had given birth to a daughter called White Swan. This daughter eventually come of age but had been rebuffed by her first love.

Then, you come to the border and this sign welcoming you into Massachusetts.

Then it's not long and you see the falls through the trees. I've seen the biggest at Yosemite in California, so these are really small falls to me, but the last time I was here, it was the end of summer and the falls, the stream, everything seemed to be carrying less water. So this day, the 4^th of June of 2011, turned out to be one of the best times to come here, in spite of the mottled grey overcast sky and mild inconclusive temperatures. You never know here at any time whether you'll have rain or sunshine.

Finally, Bash-Bish Falls, aka Copake Falls, the highest natural falls in Massachusetts, where legend has it that a Mohican maiden and her daughter chose a mutual suicide pact to bring to ends their unhappy lives. The chief or strong man married to Bash-Bish supposedly dove in to the pool below the falls to try and save them, but he died in the process and neither woman's body was ever recovered. Again, the cloud of white butterflies seemed to be involved, de-materializing them.

Thus it was that I returned to this falls, maybe fifteen years since my last visit. We were struck by the kindness of the people on the trail, by the kindness of the benches here and there along the trail, which would be easy enough for most senior citizens in good health. Sometimes a musician needs a little immersion in nature. I was certainly thinking of phrases from the music I am attempting to add to my repertoire as I walked up and back (or in and out of the gorge in which the falls is situated in the low old Taconic mountains which are hills everywhere else). Every now and then, we need to get away to refresh ourselves.

FINIS

The Legend of 1900

2011-05-24T08:05:00.001-04:00

A motion picture featuring pianism was brought to my attention recently. I have not seen this film in its entirety yet, but shall try to do so very soon. This is a pre-emptive review of sorts.

The film centres on a re-enactment of a fictional contest between the legendary American ragtime / jazz virtuoso, Jelly Roll Morton (Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe) (1885-1941) self-credited (and probably beyond much dispute, the “father” of or inventor of jazz) and a fictional legendary pianist called Novecento, the Italian for 1900, probably because the cruise ship was under Italian registration and the floating piano virtuoso was born either on board ship or shortly before in 1900. The film is inspired by a theatre monologue called, Novecento, by Alessandro Baricco and was directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. It was shot on location in Italy and the US and produced in English. It has become quite a cult film and probably deserves it. Those of us who love pianos, and anything to do with them, will find this an attractive film. BUT, there is some well chosen vulgarity used! The interested will certainly find plenty on this film all over the web.

The contest between the two pianists, on which some men have wagered, happens on a cruise ship that plies its course between America and Europe and on which the fictional Novecento resides. The time is sometime during the 1920's. When the notoriously haughty Jelly Roll Morton enters the ship's ball room, a magnificent piano stands ready. Novecento is at the piano as Morton quietly tells 1900 that he's in his seat. This piano, as all pianos in films, tempts piano buffs (fools for piano, that's us) to try and determine what make it is, model too if possible and of course the vintage of the piano.

This one, a semi-concert grand, usually around 7' in length, in a beautiful burled wood case, I have determined cannot be a Steinway because of the Boston style close it uses for its fallboard and that it is missing a key dead give away brace in its plate, which only Steinway uses on its three largest grand piano models -you don't see too many shots that reveal the plate so maybe it's really there in which case it is a Steinway, but you never see the name of the piano. Another thing I tried seeing is whether the tail end of the grand piano had any breaks in it or whether it was curved all the way around. It looked to be the latter which would rule out the piano being by Bösendorfer, which also has some tell tale bracing designs in its plate, not seen here either. That means it is either likely a Chickering (American) or Bechstein (German) grand and by the style of the art case, certainly made before 1900. One more thing; it looks and presumably plays and sounds brand new. I suspect it was carefully restored by some of the wonderful craftsmen who do such great work restoring and rebuilding the great pianos of the “golden age” from 1880 through the 1920's.

In any case we're treated to some amazing piano music, not all of it possible in the case of 1900's Gershwinesque impromptu, but I really frankly doubt whether either actor in the film is really playing anything. That's what happens quite often in movies about pianists or pianism; they get someone else who really plays to record the soundtrack that's used. This piano contest is about what I have commented on in a previous post; playing fast and loud. Musical competitions certainly have its predecessors, going all the way back to Bach vs. Marchand, but the American variant is usually only concerned with amplitude and velocity to the exclusion of more subtle and delicate musical effects.

As I was taking in this fictional scene and the music employed certain things came to mind that are worth sharing here to raise appropriate musical consciousness:

First, Americans really do have a “classical” music of their own. All of it used to be popular music in its day but has been superseded by the pop idol hits of today and is so often rarely heard that few but a devoted coterie are even aware of it. It was invented by people like Jelly Roll Morton, who grew up playing piano in New Orleans whorehouses.

Secondly, and again in conformity with Andrew Violette's universal rule regarding the social class relationship between artist and audience as it has pretty much always existed, the artist, no matter how egocentric, was still ranked socially below the status of his audience. Obviously Jelly Roll Morton thought of himself otherwise. Well for that matter so had Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner and others. This has always been the real friction, not the often more obvious ones we sometimes read about and we will be discussing these issues more often and openly here in this forum.

And thirdly, and consider this folks, the traditional ragtime, or jazz pianist was probably close to being musically illiterate in the sense that they rarely wrote anything down (not always and they did use transcribers before the advent of recording too as Scott Joplin's rags were published before the First World War) but without the simultaneous inventions of sound recording and the various player piano technologies, we'd not have much of this music today. But we do have it in forms that any reasonably competent and diligent pianist can read and play. In fact we have it in transcribed form; people painstakingly heard the pieces performed and rendered them in some cases note for note..

But before you decide to rush out and get yourself a copy of some of the music you will hear in the scenes from this film, be advised that only really advanced players can even attempt most of it. It's physically quite rigorous. What the transcribers have given us is the means to attempt to re-create this really quite attractive piano music from a bygone era. Now it's up to us to pick it up and make it a part of our own standard repertoire.

This is also my lead up article to an important musical introduction to follow. Yes friends, America has made its contributions to serious music (all of which was once merely popular) and we will be dealing with that considerable subject in some successive posts.

In any case, enjoy the featured videos:

Part 1

Part 2

FINIS

Why We Don't Have More Beethovens

2011-05-13T18:13:00.000-04:00

"I dreamt that I was composing a symphony … I had gone to my table to begin writing it down when I suddenly reflected, “If I write this part, I shall let myself be carried on to write the rest. The natural tendency of my mind to expand the material is sure to make it very long. When the symphony is completed I shall be weak enough to allow my copyist to copy it out and thus incur a debt of 1,000 or 1,200 francs. Once the parts are copied I shall be harassed by the temptation to have the work performed; I shall give a concert in which, as is sure to be the case in these days, the receipts will cover barely half the expenses; I shall lose what I have not got; I shall want the necessaries of life for my poor invalid wife and shall have no money either for myself or my son's keep on board ship.” … I throw down my pen saying, “Bah! I shall have forgotten the symphony tomorrow.” But the following night the obstinate symphony again presented itself …"

Hector Berlioz Memoirs c. 1850's

It used to be more often said than was even kind, when confronting abortion, that we might be denied another Beethoven. I always found the comment in considerably less than good taste on many levels, chief among them that humanity had not fully realized who and what the original Beethoven was and what he had accomplished under really incredible circumstances.

People are always far too often interested only when there is some “overcoming tragedy” element in a story. Otherwise I guess, anything that gets accomplished must have been done easily because less effort or intelligence was required. Under all circumstances in the modern world, we probably wouldn't be able to recognize another Beethoven were one to fall into our laps.

It's appropriate to mention that Beethoven regarded some trees with more truly fond regard than he ever considered more than a few men. And why wouldn't he? The real Beethoven was an abused child who later suffered from it through profound deafness. No one explains it that way, but that's exactly what it was. Meanwhile, these days the culture destroyers have already made the name Beethoven synonymous with a dog in a motion picture comedy series that soon nobody will remember because that's what commercialization does; it produces a steady stream of worthless trash for a fickle public attention span that itself is manipulated. The real Beethoven wanted more for his listeners and players than that. Those who stood in his shadow and a few who came before him (in whose shadows he stood) certainly wanted more for their audiences, for humanity itself.

An interesting book, Quarter-notes and Banknotes by F. M. Scherer tries to answer the meaty questions concerning how composers managed to earn their livelihood and focuses on a statistical analysis of fewer than 1,000 composers who were born between 1650 and 1850. I bet you thought there must be millions of composers. Well there weren't and still aren't. The bulk of the standard “classical” music repertoire came from perhaps less than 50 people working over the last 300 years. This book is a real eye-opener. We can put the pieces together and get an idea of how small the real “classical” music scene was (and still is). We can see how conspicuous consumption among nobles and a few clergy kept a lot of this musical scene going through the 18^th century, how the industrial revolution and wars altered this music scene through the 19^th century. We can extrapolate from this work what happened to this same musical tradition through the mid 20^th century too. (Did it go underground after about the time I was born? Or was it for the most point destroyed after two world wars?)

And now we're in the 21^st century and those who are impressed enough by this music and its traditions to take it up and care for it are coming from places largely outside Europe where it all began. We expect great things from these newcomers, not only as performers, but as composers. But what does it take to become a composer?

"No one can become a capable musician without arduous self-teaching, and most undergo on the job training." Quarter-notes and Banknotes, page 82

It takes work that may not be rewarded in one's lifetime. To take up the craft of making music in this way, by writing it down so others can perform it long after you're gone, takes a considerable act of faith. Once again, I am reminding all those who read this of the parallels between serious music study and religious experience. There's nothing quite like it in this life.

Certainly composition was more than enough for Ludwig van Beethoven and the less than 1,000 others, many whose names are long forgotten or whose music many not have been played often or at all. It's astounding to me that for instance the six Brandenburg Concerti were written by J. S. Bach sometime before 1721 FOR NOTHING but the hope of a sponsorship from a local noble and that these incredible works were left on a dusty shelf in some palace library until they were discovered in 1849! We have a lot of great music that came about this way.

There's ample evidence in Scherer's book to support Andrew Violette's contention that musicians have always been regarded as of lower class than their audiences and the same was true of composers. Those who were employed to play music, or compose it, in private homes were on a par with the rest of the household servants and required to behave in a subservient manner with very little regard for who they were. The composers themselves more often than not came from the emerging middle class or trades backgrounds, a few from wealth too, very few from the ranks of the vast majority of agricultural workers or peasants. There has always been social friction between those who would be leaders of the world (nobles or aristocrats or those who would be those people) and those who worked hard to aspire to a place between the world leaders and the peasantry, long before anyone wrote about it (Karl Marx).

These days a worship of celebrity, including those with vast riches and national or international power prestige positions, permeates everything that is broadcast over what's called the mainstream media. The magnetism of power and wealth has always attracted musicians and still does. As I said in a previous post, it is almost expected that one looks up to get rewards and the amount of grovelling and boot licking becomes more obscene the higher up one goes. Composers have always faced this problem in order to survive.

Meanwhile if one is a member of an audience, one is expecting to be “entertained” by those who might have tremendous musical talent (as if they were trained moneys or idiot savants) but are nevertheless of lower social rank than themselves. I can even remember when I was young that all everyone wanted to hear me play was something played as fast and as loud as possible. Why? Did they want the musical experience to be over more quickly? And why so loud? They weren't really listening, but I didn't know that back then. What then happens when the social class to which the audience belongs is forced down in social rank through economic manipulation by those who are socially on top? It's simple; the musicians and the music must be of even lower social class and artistic content or it doesn't satisfy. Real music doesn't satisfy too many and it never did. Idealistic attempts to make serious or "classical" music into a mass draw are doomed to fail.

What are most people interested in musically? Not very much actually. They never were either. Back in the Vienna of the 1780's, at the same time Mozart was trying to become on a social level with the nobles he was trying to entertain, the lot of common people were more inclined to hear the … even lower class than themselves, bawdy and ridiculous antics of wandering minstrels and acrobats, jugglers and … inevitable pickpockets. People's ears have never been that good. People's musical taste has often been low and continues to be so. These days we even have many with academic backgrounds who willingly spout such drivel as that the greatest art these days comes from prisons where the convicted felons are featured “folk” artists. This is merely another aspect of Andrew's argument concerning the relationship between audience and musician that has existed in one way or another for a long time.

What were the composers themselves interested in? In most cases, just earning a living through their genuine interest in music. A few of them, including the maybe 50 major luminaries, spoke of something else, of higher aspirations, daring to place themselves above the nobles of their day or of future days, they longed to bring the level of the average man's awareness up and to do it through music . But this was a dream carried by their acts of faith. When one seriously considers how much was delivered to the world, often without remuneration of any kind at all, by these very few people, one almost automatically feels something akin to … a great distaste for the vast numbers of people who just don't get it.

I don't recommend this book to everyone, but along with such master works as Arthur Loesser's Men Women and Pianos, this work should be read and referenced by many of the really interested. You should be able to get it through your local library as it is out of print and relatively rare.

FINIS

Seventh Interview – A Day in New York's Piano Row

2011-05-05T00:09:00.007-04:00

Steinway Hall on W. 57th St. New York City

Our initial conversations on your return indicated that you'd had a good day at the piano stores you visited on Saturday, April 30^th. Perhaps you'd like to introduce them briefly and please tell us what exactly is New York's “piano row”?

Well, first of all, the area I specifically refer to as “piano row” is situated along West 58^th Street between 7^th Avenue and Broadway. There are four piano stores on this block, all of them representing the first tier of great pianos available for sale in New York City.

But Steinway Hall isn't one of these stores, why not include it?

Without question, the American retail headquarters of Steinway, the flagship store in fact, should be included, though it is a short walk away on West 57^th between 6^th and 7^th Avenues. All these places are a short walk from Carnegie Hall, in a manner of speaking, the “spiritual” focal point of the “classical” music world in New York.

But you don't ever go to Steinway Hall.

No, I haven't gone in there in years, but I want it clearly understood that it isn't that I don't approve of them. After all, the name Steinway is synonymous with the best pianos available in all the world and they are certainly still making them.

But you've become better acquainted with their competitors, many of whom offer Steinway pianos for sale. What's the difference?

Well, for one thing Steinway Hall certainly needs no advertisement from me. They'd like it just fine if I came in there, hopefully with a prize I'd won at some piano competition, and a nice bankroll ready to plunk it down on a nice new Steinway. American Steinway has been a leader in pianos and piano technology for over 150 years and I am pleased and proud to have recommended their products (even in some cases above their compatriots' products from Hamburg, Germany) and as I will take some pains to explain, my practically lifelong recommendation and confidence in Steinway pianos has very compelling reasons. For those interested, I encourage them to visit Steinway Hall and get the scoop on their great pianos directly from them.

So you weren't able to visit all four stores?

No, I originally intended to visit only two; Faust Harrison and Beethoven's.

But something happened.

Yes, I discovered that Allegro Pianos had taken Faust Harrison's store location and Faust Harrison had moved a few doors down. I visited these two and then finished up my piano tour at Beethoven's.

The fourth store?

It's Klavierhaus, which is also top tier. I just didn't have the time and really after you get to experience as much as I did, you really begin to experience a kind of weariness similar to what you get from spending too much time in an art museum. Your senses just get overwhelmed.

Sort of like what happens when you practice too long?

Similar, yes. (laughs) Or even listening to too much music. That keen edge gets dulled.

Allegro Pianos, Manhattan showrooms

So let's begin with Allegro Pianos. This was your first introductory visit wasn't it? What made you decide to go in and have a look inside?

The usual curiosity. I'd heard something about the owner from the Piano World Piano Forum, apparently a rather colourful figure, and knew he had some connection with Faust Harrison, but that he perhaps preferred dealing in other makes of pianos.

So you got to see and play several different makes of pianos.

Well, two in particular anyway. I was really more curious to know about Allegro Pianos' special focus and so I spent a lot of time discussing them with the company's Eric Johnson, himself a pianist with his own blog.

You told me Mr. Johnson served you the first cup of coffee you'd had in maybe two years? (laughs)

Something like that, yes. I just didn't have the heart to put the man through whatever difficulties might arise from asking for tea instead. (more laughs)

So was it a good cup of coffee?

Dr. Mark Malkovitch as I'd like to remember him

Oh yes, I enjoyed it very much. He offered me another, but I think I would have been dancing on the ceiling in no time had I accepted. Before I go on, I also want to mention something else Eric Johnson told me that I hadn't heard about before; the untimely death of Dr. Mark Malkovitch, who was practically the heart and soul of the Newport Music Festival in Rhode Island. I reacted to this terrible news about as if someone had socked me in the stomach. Through fortunate circumstances, extending over many years, I had been able to attend concerts at this festival and had met Dr. Malkovitch at several remarkable concerts there. It was at Newport that I heard Frederic Chiu perform the Chopin Mazurkas and Agustin Anievas play the Brahms Variations on a Theme by Handel and later his heroic concert in 2009 featuring Schumann's Fantasie Op. 17, after which concert he encouraged me to learn it also.

So Dr. Malkovitch's son is probably running the Newport Music Festival now.

Yes, but for how long I just don't know. He probably doesn't have the intense passion for it his father had. I was once again struck by how tiny the serious music world is (maybe a better term than “classical” music) and how the luminaries often know each other.

So Allegro Pianos' emphasis?

It would be brand new high end pianos which might be brands other than Steinway.

You played some of these and wanted to discuss them?

Yes. Let's just say I started my tour at the top, playing a Bösendorfer Imperial grand (Model 290). I'm fascinated by grand piano plate designs and this is a picture I took of the interior of this piano. Sometimes if I can get a good look at a plate's shape and design it will identify the piano to me without having to see the name on the fallboard.

You told me you really hadn't sat down and actually played a Bösendorfer for any length of time since college when someone on the faculty had one in his studio. Can you describe your reactions this time?

Well the first things I noticed were the diminished key dip and the clarity of tone, almost magical in that everything I played sounded far better than I had any right to believe myself capable of. Indeed this piano shows up every imperfection a pianist brings to it. I played through Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words Op. 19, numbers 1, 2 and 4 only, which went very well, and then switched to Beethoven's Andante Favori which seemed a breeze on this piano. Mr. Johnson complemented me that it seemed I had practised. Little did I know then just how perspicacious his remark was. If I had this piano to play every day, I am convinced I would soon tackle more difficult pieces and become a better pianist as the action was quick and responsive and the tone gave immediate feedback on what I was or was not doing. Something else occurred to me later as I put this experience in proper perspective; I was playing a “performance” piano rather than a “practice” piano, so that everything I would have had to learn and make part of how I played a certain piece of music, would already have been formed in me before coming to play it on this piano, which certainly belonged on the stage of some concert hall somewhere.

Or in someone's home as a “salon” piano.

That's a subject for a future conversation because it's the other side of the pianist's equation; if I decide to become a pianist, where will I decide to play, for which people, for what possible gain? Without an interested audience, there's little hope for any music whether it be “classical” or otherwise.

But there are people who would still like one of these big concert grand pianos for their own homes. What are the advantages?

It's like asking why would someone want the best of the best. For one thing, pianos at this level are quite rare and rarity alone always confers greater value. They are status symbols or investments, like fine works of art. At the present time, a Bösendorfer piano is a product of the longest continuously owned and operated piano maker on earth. That honour used to belong to Ibach, but they closed their business a few years ago. Ibach pianos are still first tier pianos when you can find them.

These are pianos that rival Steinway in quality, but how are they different?

They tend to play and sound differently, but even when a few months back someone had posted tracks of five fine concert grand pianos on the Piano World Piano Forum, I was unable to properly identify the pianos. It may have been the recordings, I don't know. It's a very personal and unique thing to try and express in words.

While at Allegro Pianos you also played a Steingraeber & Söhne concert grand?

Yes, I also took a picture of the inside of this piano. Notice how it differs from the inside of the Bösendorfer. I decided to try a Chopin Nocturne on it, Op. 15 #1, which turned out better than expected, and also Schumann's Romance in F Sharp Op. 28 #2 (I'd eventually like to play all three of these in sequence). This piece got Eric Johnson's attention: perhaps he might decide to learn it. It's certainly a good one to test how to bring out a melody, a duet really, that floats between a bass and treble accompaniment, to best effect. I guess I'd have to describe my Steingraeber experience as preferable to the Bösendorfer, but that's a pretty subjective assessment, and again I was playing on a piano that really belongs in a concert hall. Another thing struck me at this moment as well, just how much better all these pianos would sound after being played (and kept in prep by a competent tuner/technician) for a couple of years, as their hammer surfaces get compacted through regular use. I left Allegro Pianos quite happy that I could confidently recommend them to those looking for that 1% best of all the pianos out there for sale. Of course the same claim would be made for all the stores on this street, so Allegro Pianos have plenty of competition.

And of course one pays more for the best.

That goes without saying. Another way of looking at these pianos was by comparison with hand made (or small shop, limited quantity manufacturing) of famous race cars or those often called “grand touring” automobiles. Whereas my piano at home drives and sounds like some stripped down utility van or truck, these pianos were race cars. You can't play things on mine that would be attainable on any of these. Once you learn anything, you couldn't cover up any mistake; every missed note would glaringly remind you that you were in need of more practice. Performance pianos are often like performance cars and should be.

And Practice Pianos are different?

Yes they are, as I was soon to discover.

A “Master Class” at Faust Harrison's Manhattan showrooms

Faust Harrison is a company dedicated to helping people find the best pianos available. They specialize in Mason & Hamlin and Steinway but offer other Asian and European piano makers as well. They have done quite well and are expanding into Westchester and Long Island locations. As I stepped into their Manhattan store, I heard what one should expect to hear in any high end piano store; the sounds of great piano music played by aspiring pianists on excellent pianos, sort of what some of us might imagine pianist heaven to be like.

She was quite a talented young lady.

Yes, and Sara Faust was showing her around asking her to play something on various pianos, beginning with a couple Mason & Hamlin pianos. She was playing a Chopin ballade and the finale to Beethoven's 7^th sonata (Op. 10 #3), a piece formerly played by a member of the Piano World Piano Forum who had recently passed away rather suddenly. I recalled his performance as I was hearing hers. What moving ironies there are in life!

Yes.

Sara Faust was doing far more than showing a customer pianos. In this case she was concerned to get the attention of this young lady (who was accompanied by her mother all the way from central Pennsylvania) to the challenges and rigours of concert pianism. There are all sorts of people who for whatever reason need a piano, but of these there are relatively few committed pianists with any real talent. This young lady was clearly one of these. Sara asked her questions like “do you really want to be a pianist?” or “if you really want to become a pianist?” Because the truth of it is that there are far fewer who can, and ultimately will become concert pianists, and that once one decides one is committed there will be ups and downs, moments when one would willingly give it all up, but where there are certainly plenty who would be there to pick up the mantle should you wish to drop it (unsaid: because for many of them it's their only way out of a life of grinding poverty, misery or obscurity), and for these aspiring pianists something else is required in terms of a piano. Sara Faust was acquainting this aspiring young lady with the facts of life concerning concert pianism, and should there be a piano upgrade for this young lady, just what that piano must be.

A Steinway piano?

Yes, a Steinway piano with the typically warmer sound than the crisp and clear Mason & Hamlin, that is more difficult to bring out because the action is weighted to be slightly heavier than many others. As the young lady played these Steinway pianos, Sara would occasionally stop her, have her repeat the phrase with a little more emphasis and to assess just what the pianist needs to know to learn how to control, contour and develop all those extra rich nuances that Steinway pianos are capable of. Sara pointed out something I never hear from anyone but which happens to be true; the bass end of a piano will always project, it is the upper registers that require extra attention. (Sara mentioned, attributed to Vladimir Horowitz, that we all play with our little fingers. All pianists should immediately recognize the importance of their right hand little finger, but also of their left hand little finger for those big bass leaps.) Sara had the young lady play many Steinway pianos and as I watched and listened, I was hearing all the incredibly subtle differences between these instruments, like distinguishing between fine wines, fine chocolates or fine teas. We were, as it were, getting a “master class” lesson, a very detailed, profound and for me timely piano lesson. There were but five of us there, Sara Faust, the young lady and her mother, myself and Mr. Sam Varon who would be managing Faust Harrison's new Long Island showrooms. Through Sara's demonstration, we were encouraged to think differently about pianos, to consider the merits of a “practice” piano as well as of “performance” piano. The former are what one learns music on, all the way from identifying the notes and phrases to play, as well as getting through the “sculpting phase” where after perhaps 150 times through the same piece, one is able to play it as an inspired and incandescent masterpiece, to bring all it contains to an audience of other people, which is really the final goal of the art form itself. A good practice piano should make you more confident to play on any performance piano you come across as many will be in worse repair and tuning than yours at home, nevertheless a performance must go on. Maybe for the first time I realistically considered the merits of the smaller Steinway models as practice pianos; the O's, M's, L's and even S's, that are often neglected by those seeking their A's or killer B's.

So Sara Faust was trying to get the young lady to understand the merits of a piano that was perhaps a bit harder to play but which promised greater musical rewards?

From a concert pianist standpoint, yes. It was really quite wonderful actually, like getting an insightful look from an experienced insider.

You told me before that Sara Faust was herself a considerable talent.

Once she played a few passages in Debussy's L'isle Joyeuse to demonstrate a piano. Her confidence in that performance blew me away. She knows what she's talking about. Let's just say that I left Faust Harrison having certainly been given a terrific piano lesson, one I'll probably never forget and one likely to colour my perceptions of kinds of pianos for the foreseeable future.

Beethoven Pianos Manhattan store

Ah, so what's new at Beethoven's?

Well, you might ask. Of all the piano stores on New York's “piano row”, Beethoven's has always struck me as innovative to the point of doing things, whether the cost or effort justified them or not, just because certain things are so precious as cultural treasures or of such artistic importance that they just must be done. Sitting out front this time is a peerless Bechstein semi-concert grand piano (I think it was in the 7'4” range) in a fabulous art case. It's a magnificent musical instrument as well, which looks, sounds and plays as if brand new. It was at Beethoven's where many years ago now, I discovered what the new Estonia pianos were like, and I recommend them, though their representation has since passed to Allegro Pianos and Faust Harrison. It was here that I got to play a piano that took them ten years to rebuild, an American Steinway from 1873 with 85 keys, real ivory and stunning performance characteristics.

Ah yes, 85 key grand pianos.

I want to make a few comments here about the 85 key grand pianos of this vintage when competently rebuilt. These would ordinarily be Steinway A's, but could be by others made around the same time. These pianos, with the three keys that are seldom used missing at the top of the keyboard, sell for considerably less than their 88 key counterparts and represent a good bargain for those who know they wont need them. I even heard from the staff at Beethoven's that some concert pianist had bought an 85 key piano and had them make the three extra fake keys as if to continue the keyboard so that the pianist wouldn't be visually confused. Knowing the quality of their cabinetry, I am sure they could make it look as if those fake (and of course not working) keys had always been there.

You'd say this was your favourite of all the performance pianos you played all day?

It certainly was. I played the Beethoven Sonata Pathétique, a little of it anyway, as well as some other things. It was as if I were playing a brand new Steinway piano with hardly any miles on it and recalled to me a similar piano at Faust Harrison a few years back that I also liked tremendously. They were different instruments but cousins, the one here a little brighter and less sweet sounding. But we are describing the differences in the finest pianos in terms similar to different vintages of the finest wines, the finest blends of tea from various estates, etc. It's difficult appraising masterpieces when you must compare them. I saw many masterpieces that day at Beethoven's.

Like this “brand new” ancient upright piano?

Here's innovation for you. They take an old vintage upright piano with a good art case, this one is a German make, but some they've had are American. They save the case and throw out the inside, repair and restore the cases to “as new” condition, then replace the piano inside with a new modern German upright piano and sell it all at an astoundingly reasonable price. The result is a masterpiece of both visual art and musical instrument. There are all kinds of people who want pianos for various reasons. Some care as much about what a piano looks like as how it performs. In this case one will get a very good practice piano in a wonderful old style case of the kind that can't be made any more.

You were interested in other things here too.

After Sara Faust's lesson, I realized that what I should really be looking for, for my own living room (and future studio), was a good practice piano, that wouldn't hold me back, but would encourage me to take on more difficult piano pieces as well as encouraging me to work harder to achieve the required balances and tone. I began to wonder about how some pianists I admire acquire their strength and recalled that I had the misfortune to grow up with a piano that had a light touch. I have always preferred pianos with a slightly heavier action, but nevertheless responsive.

You began to see pianos as either “practice” or “performance” instruments?

Yes, and what I needed to focus on was a practice piano. I was expecting a greater variety of makes on the main floor than usual. What was I seeing instead? I remember laughing to myself. Under the circumstances it really shouldn't have surprised me. Why was I asking myself why I hadn't seen things this way before?

They were all Steinway pianos.

Mostly, yes. I was going among them trying various things out to ascertain their tone. One I liked a lot, an M or L in a mahogany case. I even liked an S I played in an ebony polish, which I far prefer.

You like your pianos black?

For me, and it's probably related to how I see, a black piano reduces distractions. I also like my keys dull, not shiny, with a little extra grip to them.

Then you prefer genuine ivory?

I don't need it and probably wouldn't pay extra for it.

You dulled the keys on your own piano after you got its keys recovered.

A little steel wool was all it took.

At Beethoven's you wanted to take a serious look at a new contender in the piano world, Hailun pianos. What did you think?

If you think all those piano makers that aren't Steinway have given Steinway a run for their money over the years, you'd be right. Steinway was the first great piano maker to get it all together and by the 1860's they had defined the modern grand piano. All the others were either trying to catch up or trying to make theirs different enough to compete on its own terms, like Bösendorfer. Many just couldn't make it and folded. Weber and Knabe and so many others in America that were later folded into Aeolian American in order to survive weren't what Steinway had become. As close as they got, they were not a Steinway. Steinway has been careful to preserve its reputation as practically owning the concert pianist world. But starting with Yamaha, Steinway began to get some real competition. Now they'll have stiff competition from China that simply can't be ignored. The Hailun pianos sell for less than half what Steinways usually go for and out of the box have striking similarities in tone, touch and overall feel. Will they hold up? Will they develop their tone as their hammers get compacted through use? Will their action parts hold up? Who are their designers? You take a look at the plate design and whose does it most look like? Bösendorfer's. We understand that many of their staff come from the great house of Bösendorfer as well as some other European makers. This fall Hailun will release a newer series of pianos that will “blow away” what they have already produced.

You are going back down when they arrive?

Yes indeed, sometime early in November.

So what will you do about getting a better piano for yourself?

It depends on many things. This conversation may inspire others to think ahead about what they are going to do, whether they will acquire a new practice or performance piano for themselves, what music to tackle and even where they may be five, ten, twenty years from now in their musical lives. Of course everything depends on costs for everything. There are never any guarantees. In human history, civilizations as we have known them are relatively rare, barbarism is more often the rule. Hence one begins to see another fundamental behind an interest in pianos, pianism, the so called “classical” music, certainly other music as well, certainly other art as well, the fine arts generally including everything that matters to make life bearable, comfortable, interesting and yes, worth living.

That's really what you are all about in a way isn't it?

It's what all the really great music was about, what the greatest of everything we have made is about; the very meaning of our lives.

Closing remarks?

You'll simply not go wrong dealing with the piano stores on New York's piano row. From all of them, you can expect the highest standards of integrity and honesty in this business, which has at times suffered from tactics similar to those of used car salesmen. People come from all over the country and around the world to find their pianos in New York and there are very good reasons for this. You simply wont often find this much of the top tier regularly displayed in one place. There is bound to be a preponderance of Steinway pianos as this is Steinway town. But as I said, there are reasons for this too. For many it will be not which piano they are seeking as which Steinway. Never fear, there are very many of them here, all just a little different from each other.

You said your next excursions are going to deal with the piano shops that supply these stores?

It will require a more extensive trip to locations outside New York City. I'd also really like going down to have a look at a piano store in Philadelphia. Those efforts will take more time and money than I can commit at this time.

Understood. Please keep us posted. Thank-you for sharing your experience, I'm sure many reading this looking for pianos will have a better idea of what to look for.

FINIS

Sturm und Drang in Mozart

2011-04-12T16:48:00.002-04:00

Sturm und Drang (German: "Storm and Urge", although usually translated as "Storm and Stress") was a European artistic and philosophical movement which ran counter to the Enlightenment rationalism of the times. It ran from 1776 (though it can be traced back as far as the 1760's) when it first appeared in common usage, through the early 1800's. Sturm und Drang is actually a better term to describe all the “classical” music which followed it commonly known as “romantic” music today, because counter to the false notion implied by the word romantic; i. e. fictional, Sturm und Drang represented an attempt at emotional realism, focused at an individual and personal level, which the movement's proponents considered to be neglected by the schools of “enlightened” rationalism, empiricism, and universalism.

A perennial favourite of mine is this piano piece by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) called the Fantasy and Fugue in C Major K394, which was written in 1782, clearly within the influence of Sturm und Drang. Almost all of Mozart's music is catalogued with what some have called K numbers, the more learned call them Köchel [KUR-shel] numbers after the man who created them, the Austrian musicologist Ludwig Ritter von Köchel (1800-1877).

Mozart was among the most prolific composers. He probably dashed this out, or as was more likely ... was just taking dictation, as few of his original manuscripts show any corrections of any kind. I want that point to sink in. Mozart was also clearly ambidextrous, able to use each hand independently of the other, as was demonstrated on many occasions, one good example being while sitting on a terrace behind a café in Linz, writing music with his left hand while writing a letter to his father with his right.

The date of this particular work, 1782, places Mozart in Vienna and established as a composer there; during the time he was being paid in solid gold snuff boxes if one remembers rightly from that mix of urban legends, etc. made of his life called Amadeus. He was already world famous before his big arrival in Vienna in 1781. From this point in his career, Mozart would have but nine years to live and would compose most of his greatest works within a span of ten years. I'd like that point to sink in too, because when one contemplates Mozart, there is just so much of it, a veritable ocean of music that literally poured through him. There's never been and probably never will again be another Mozart.

That being said, you will hear things under the strict playing of the inimitable Glenn Gould that you'd likely miss or take in another way, especially in the fugue. More than anything else I have always believed that this piece represents Mozart drawing directly from nature, especially in the mathematical games he plays with turns in the tonality; what are often called harmonic progressions, or episodic series. In the Fantasy you can imagine scenes from a country setting, perhaps the day is fair interrupted by an occasional pelting of rain or hail, or there is something arduous being done, perhaps something to do with animals, horses maybe, anything at all your mind can imagine. This is not music about anything in particular.

With the fugue Mozart is offering, as it were, a toast to the great Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) who was and is in “classical” music's sense of it, everyone's musical grandfather. But Mozart takes the fugue into harmonic territories Bach seldom dreamed of. This is truly modern music in ways that Bach was not. As usual, I have a few criticisms of Gould's interpretation, but one has to admit that he makes the work cohesive. And there are contours, more geometric games with the harmonic progressions which leap out at you, which can only be achieved if one plays the piece at this galloping gait of his.

Featured: Glenn Gould's performances on You Tube

Fantasy

Fugue

FINIS

Sixth Interview – Of Time, Times and The Times

2011-04-03T16:55:00.003-04:00

Kanye West, Lets Have a Toast Runaway

"I went upstairs to my room, but I was not alone there. I could hear someone mellifluously playing Schumann. No doubt it happens sometimes that people, even those whom we love best, become permeated with the gloom or irritation that emanates from us. There is however an inanimate object which is capable of a power of exasperation to which no human being will ever attain, to wit, a piano."

Marcel Proust

Cities of the Plain

Chapter Two

We've made it to Spring, 2011 and you have finally decided to make a trip back down to New York at the end of this month.

Yes.

You plan on going straight to piano row once you get there?

Yes. I kind of would like to take in a museum too, but we'll see. I'll only be there a few hours, then back home. Anyone who wants to meet up with me can contact me at dpbmss@aol.com.

OK. You're still reading Proust …

… and other things …

… and still practising?

Of course.

Nevertheless, you find your piano exasperating.

Even were my piano among the better ones it would be, but I put that Proust quote up to give pianists some idea of one of the most common obstacles to attaining pianism; the dislike for piano among others who have to endure a pianist's practise sessions.

Yes, that's a problem some think they've solved with electronic keyboards. You don't really agree though.

No, I don't, but then again my practise sessions may be quite different from others'. Any musician must rely on their memory one way or another, either the music is written out down to the individual grace note, or it is “charted” or is of some universal form, like a blues. It all requires some non-distracted memory. If playing with others, the musician has to know when to play and how to play and memory is always involved. As long as a musician plays with the intention of being heard by others, they will use their memory. When their memory fails a musician, intuition can sometimes pose “creative” solutions, and most people probably wouldn't know the difference in the music anyway …

Why is that?

Because they aren't usually listening hard enough to catch it.

Will they know if a musician blows it or if the performance …

Sucks? Yes, they'll know. If they don't know the music; what to expect next, they'll just experience a temporary disappointment, and may not even know why or even care to know.

Music for them is …

Ephemeral; it isn't really a prime concern, just something to do or something to keep the non-committed mind occupied while doing something else.

That's what music is to most people?

Apparently.

So your practise sessions …

… often have to coincide with others not being around. And then there's the other problem, they may not like what you play.

You have that problem?

Yes, of course and it shouldn't be too surprising. Many find the music I play “too pretty” or even worse.

You would perhaps like to be playing more popular styles?

If I wanted to play them, I would learn how, either with a teacher or on my own. I have enough technique to grasp a lot of it at least in theory. But none of it is really me, so I don't. And even so, some of the music I play now isn't really me.

For instance?

Well Chopin is really a different style from say J. S. Bach. I'd say that Bach was a lot closer to “me” than Chopin.

You could play whatever you want, I don't really get it?

You mean why try and play Chopin? Because he was really the first composer dedicated to the piano and his achievements are associated with the instrument in many inescapable ways. Most people recognise his music immediately and like it. It's like learning anything, you have to master certain techniques to fully appreciate playing piano. Chopin was in his day a great piano teacher and he still is; if you really want to learn how to play the piano, you must master some elements of Chopin and make them sound convincing or accomplished. That's one possible goal to attain pianism; learn to play a few pieces by Chopin.

But others who might be bothered by your practising and your music have their music which you no doubt have heard.

Of course.

You wanted to say something about this?

Well, I'll start with something Andrew Violette told me years ago, something about class and musicianship; that most people tended to expect musicians to be from a lower class background than themselves, that it would have been unthinkable for a prince back in the day or these days for a corporate mogul, to commission any original musical work from a person of his own class.

You still think this idea has legs?

Look around, check out what we have now. We have a lot of different kinds of popular music these days. But it all has something in common. Every bit of it is projecting values from social strata that are below the level of the average American, European or Asian middle class, expressing a preference among the “market” for musical forms and styles, for what I'd pretentiously term the “sub-bourgeois.” This applies to all so called “world music” too, which is music usually from some local aboriginal group which again lives below the level of the average middle class from any of the first world countries.

You're saying that this preference for … low class music is …

It's largely unconscious, but it's part of a longer historical process. The other books I'm reading these days are history, particularly from the late Middle Ages into the present time.

You said you were making a study of the history of financial institutions.

Yes. I'm also trying to see historical events and developments from different perspectives than the rosy “progressive” slant they were given by my American “public school” education. Most people just blithely and thoughtlessly digest whatever attitudes, perspectives and outlooks they got from their teachers, while a few of us, who are often fated to be regarded as obdurate, obtuse or recalcitrant, or in my case profoundly sceptical and unconvertably cynical, must continue to ask why and demand to see things form different perspectives.

So, what lately … (much laughter)

Let's begin with the Renaissance as a huge misnomer. They weren't waking up from anything to anything else. In many ways the world is still asleep. We're in the same mess today that our ancestors were in the 16^th century; war upon senseless war, regime after regime going into stupendous debt and declaring bankruptcy, the common people insensible to what was going on and being dragged along by events. There has been material and technical progress since then, especially concerning the means to kill more people faster and destroy more of the earth's surface faster. There are many more of us than there were then too …

… and some still think there are too many …

… and the people are essentially the same kinds of people in charge back then, with many of the same attitudes ...

So there's been no real progress?

Materially and technically, yes. Otherwise, no.

And this surprises you?

No, not really. The other day I saw something on You Tube where someone was asking people in the street if they knew the news facts of today and they didn't know any of them about their own country, let alone the rest of the world. Should I dare ask the embarrassing question here about WHY we should be paying for public schools that produce this shoddy level of performance? Or was that intended all along? Should I perhaps ask why people don't want to know the correct answers? Because it wouldn't matter to them if they did? Should I ask why they don't care about not knowing? Should I ask why they would be content with the rude “bread and circuses” the great republic turned empire (without their consent but certainly while they were kept sleeping and didn't ask why) is doling out to them?

… and the music they listen to …

… is part of the big picture and it agrees with Andrew's point about music and class consciousness; people want music and musicians to express an even lower level of social status than their already pretty abysmally low level.

They don't care about the smut that is part of the rap scene.

No, and why should they? They can and do usually just laugh at it. It gives them someone or something they can look down on whether consciously or not.

And so all the popular music is like this?

For the most part, yes. Even though, and this is really sort of interesting, most of the popular music of today shows evidence of great precision and intention, particularly evident in the percussive effects.

Those may all be mechanical or created by mixing sound tracks on a computer.

Well, we can all look down on computers as having lower social status than ourselves.

(Laughter)

You said that this social status thing has all sorts of resonance in other areas of our lives.

It certainly seems to. Look we're in a worldwide depression that is being fought by those who are in control of the financial institutions who are afraid of being found out. If the average dumbed down person in the street knew, and some do only dimly, then those in charge fear they might be toppled from power.

And replaced by who?

Very good question. But in the meantime the average Joe knowing little or nothing about what's really going on way above his head can feel content to look down on someone else; some scumbag with billions of dollars is still essentially “lower class” than he and his six pack swilling friends with barely passing high school educations. They already consider everyone else below their own dignity except raw power, “the man” with his tazer or other implements of pain or destruction.

So this isn't really a good time for eh, “serious” music.

I don't believe any particular time has been really great for it. It's just that here and there in Europe and to a lesser degree elsewhere, once in a while, out of a culture that supported it, a few talented musicians were encouraged and provided with enough money to get them to produce what we have today as the miracle of so called “classical” music. How it manages to continue amounts to a “religious” effort among the “interested.”

And you can't get people interested if they aren't interested.

Which is why when they do get interested, it's usually like a religious experience; something awakens in them. If they aren't aware of it, then develop the thirst for knowing more, they may hear something and it only sounds “pretty” or “antique” or in whatever way not modern, current or popular.

And anyway all that's popular is only of limited interest to its audience.

Someone else I know said they don't listen to music by people who have died.

That would certainly cut out everything you play. (laughs)

Yeah. It would. But I want to drop another bombshell of sorts having to do with the foregoing argument concerning music and musicians as traditionally looked down upon. The argument doesn't just apply to music.

It applied to the English as a nation from the time of Purcell (1659-1695) to Edward Elgar (1857-1934).

Well they were importing everything including their kings from elsewhere. Perhaps they admire the institution (which they put back up after tearing it down) whilst they look down upon those currently bearing its titles. It's possible.

You're stretching this to apply to human relations aren't you?

Well look around and what do you see? A lot of people are with people who are beneath them in dignity and attainments. They even seek them out. Some even set themselves up as persons of lesser social status just to get dates. Often the very good looking or well accomplished are among the loneliest.

They may not want the association of their equals. Too predictable, too boring.

Exactly. The people of lower orders, which would be the vast majority in their many faceted ways, are often more interesting and less threatening than those at one's own level. One looks up to those from whom one expects to gain something, and looks down to those from whom less is required. It gets weird when those one looks up to are worse than those one looks down upon.

You're saying everyone does it.

Giving some people more esteem and respect than others? It's done all the time. Watching people do it is highly instructive. The higher socially one goes, the more absurd the ingratiating becomes too. Nobody is sincere up there. It is seen all the time in great corporations, large organizations, governments, academe, etc.

Well one can't just stand there and say nothing.

Indeed and the habitually silent among us often risk pejorative labels as sneaks, underhanded or back-stabbers, whether they are or not. It's always best to say something.

So an ingratiating comment …

… is something to say in the hope of getting something beneficial from someone above yourself in social status. That could even include being otherwise left alone.

Yes. OK, well what about electronic keyboards for being left alone while practising?

They just aren't the real thing. Most don't even play like the real thing, with all its peculiarly exasperating qualities. Pull the plug and they're off. No electricity and you're without a piano. No, I own one, a good one, and I never use it. The piano I own, limited as it is, is still a piano.

So you insist that a person committed to pianism must work on a real piano?

People do whatever they can with what they can. If an electronic keyboard is what they can do, then that's all they can do and it will have to work for them until they can get something better. If I could get something better, don't you think I would?

But every committed pianist should have their own real piano.

It's something to work for, something to go out there and look for, something to aspire to. You wont really know what it's like to play a real piano if you only play an electronic keyboard and don't go out there and see what real pianos can be like.

You aren't making some claim that acoustic instruments are better than electronic ones are you?

One doesn't do that if one's discussing electric guitars as they are distinct from acoustic ones. One could do that when discussing electronic keyboards that attempt to reproduce acoustic piano sound and feel and what I said before wouldn't really apply to synthesizers that use the keyboard as an interface because we'd be discussing sound that wouldn't be acoustic piano sound.

This applies only to pianos that sound like pianos.

To unique piano sound, yes.

Some think maybe electronic pianos will take over.

If there is no “classical” piano music, or if interest in it dies out, as is possible, since the market for music that one looks up to rather than down upon isn't going anywhere and hasn't for at least 66 years (see my previous entry), with the possible exception of Nikolai Kapustin, then who cares how the “piano sound” is reproduced? Nobody will be listening that hard to care anyway.

You still working on your compositions?

Not right at the moment no.

Why not?

Isn't it obvious yet?

But surely someone might really want to hear them.

You think? Well, let them grapple with the works of Andrew Violette first.

FINIS

Did Bartók write the last great piano concerto?

2011-03-09T01:44:00.006-05:00

Béla Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 3 in E major (Sz. 119, BB 127) was composed in 1945 by the Hungarian composer during the final months of his life. As is typical with compositions calling themselves concertos, this piece has three movements; 1. Allegretto, 2. Adagio religioso and 3. Allegro vivace. (For the present, a movement is synonymous with a section. To most people, each movement will seem as a separate song, so this piece will have three songs to it.) It was not commissioned (which would have meant he got paid for it), as was much of Bartók's work, but composed as a surprise birthday gift for his second wife, Ditto Pásztory, who was a skilled pianist, as was Bartók. One must be serious to play this piece, though it is usually considered technically the easiest of Bartók's three piano concertos.

Bartók died on September 26, 1945, after a long fight with leukaemia, with this concerto unfinished. We know that it was complete but for the last 17 measures, which fell to Tibor Serly, a friend and pupil of Bartók to finish. He did a superb job too. We also know that before his end, Bartók had managed to be able to travel to North Carolina and to the Adirondacks in upstate New York. The entire work was written in America and as can easily be heard, strongly resonates with much that is typical of this country. The second movement, possibly the emotional focus of the entire work, was probably written in North Carolina and maybe even the middle section, the climax, may have been written at the same time as first atomic bombs in combat brought about the end of World War II. For Bartók, this part was most likely a personal statement of existential agony, but Bartók was always keenly aware of his duties as a serious composer, to attempt the almost impossible task of writing music for the ages. From our vantage point we can look back on this period right after the war, which gave us some notable pieces by composers who had sought refuge in America, as about the last time that music of the spirit of doing what those of the calibre of a Bartók would have been produced.

The question at the top is hardly rhetorical. I ask all my friends and acquaintances to suggest any composition of standing that merit comparison with this concerto written 66 years ago this year. If this was indeed the last great piano concerto to be written, what's that say of the future of piano concertos, of this business of daring to write music for the ages? I maintain that it is a sign of a kind of degeneracy borne of modern times, of factors and conditions that shaped the world long before any of us were born. Will these conditions continue? Could the idea of doing something in music that will be as close to immortal as it is possible to achieve will take root and flourish elsewhere on the planet once again? Could we hear the next great piano concerto come perhaps out of Asia? We'll just have to wait and see.

But some things are certain; the audacity required to create it will have to be matched by enough people to respond to it, that it may become a thing of universal memory. As it is, I know of perhaps a dozen people who have ever heard of Bartók (and of those few pronounce his name correctly!), fewer still know this piece, fewer still who have ever heard it. For me things like this might seem tragic but for my realization that after all people like Bartók were and are rare. Their music is rare too, and those who like it or play it may be rarer still. We have always been in a minority as those who admire the greatest poets are. Yet I honestly can't think of too many pieces I would be sadder not to have known as this one (how can one even say such a thing?). I find in it an ode to the longing in the human spirit, with a keen sense that the longings for this particular composer happened in and around New York City, a place I consider to know well, of other places that seem familiar to me through my travels and life down south and here in upstate New York.

My personal acquaintance with this great piece goes back into my teens when I first heard Peter Serkin play it. He is still playing it as of March 5, 2011! Those in the vicinity of Tanglewood take notice; it's time to get behind the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra, in Williamstown, Massachusetts!

So now it is with great pleasure that I draw your attention to an accomplished performance of this wonderful concerto by Andrãs Schiff, the ... Hungarian born pianist. Is there anything he can't do? The Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (UK of course) is directed by one of my favourite conductors, eh, SIR. Simon Rattle. Imagine being a conductor with the name Rattle, isn't it funny? Well, his interpretations are not funny unless that's exactly what the music intended, you know, intentional as in “on purpose.” That's what makes all of this stuff any good. It's all strictly intentional, every little nuance of it.

You might notice that these videos take a while to download and stopping and having to wait in the middle of a piece is really a drag. So to avoid that, you may want to select each of the videos in a separate window and wait until they're all downloaded to play them. Enjoy.

András Schiff and Chopin

2011-02-18T14:05:00.001-05:00

Once again, Classical TV provides a unique glimpse into the life and work of one of our favourite composers whose 200^th birthday was celebrated last year. András Schiff came to my attention years ago as a marvellous interpreter of Beethoven. In the two featured videos Schiff is revealed as a wonderful performer of Chopin's music as well.

Two things; first in the video on Chopin's life, which is really remarkable, Schiff as the narrator comes off as one of the most humble, gentle and worshipful souls in the world; the kind of person one would cherish meeting in person and secondly, in the video of the Chopin preludes, the sound and texture of the music played on a piano which is a Pleyel rather than a Steinway, gives us another glimpse into the smaller venues, the Paris “salons” in which many of Chopin's works were first introduced by himself and his pupils.

Fifth Interview - Attacks on Asking Why are Attacks on Finding the Truth

2011-01-20T15:55:00.008-05:00

“The somber picture presented in this book, in which human life is mainly a process of filing in time until the arrival of death, or Santa Claus, with very little choice, if any, of what kind of business one is going to transact during the long wait, is a commonplace, but not the final answer. For certain fortunate people there is something which transcends all classifications of behavior and that is AWARENESS; something which rises above the programming of the past, and that is SPONTANEITY; and something that is more rewarding than games, and that is INTIMACY. But all three of these may be frightening and even perilous to the unprepared. Perhaps they are better off as they are, seeking their solutions in popular techniques of social action, such as “togetherness.” This may mean that there is no hope for the human race, but there is hope for individual members of it.”

Eric Berne MD (1910-1970) – Games People Play (1964)
Emphasis mine

Have you just now gotten around to reading this book?

Yes.

You hadn't read it before?

No.

Why not?

Probably because back when everyone was reading it, in typical recalcitrant fashion, I decided it was too popular for me to want to read.

You're like that with other things too, aren't you?

About books, movies, the latest gadgets, things like that, yes.

Well, you obviously got through it. This quote comes right at the end of the book. You told me about something else that had been bothering you, that you weren't sure you would be posting here because you considered it a religious matter …

Political too.

… and I told you that there would be a time when you would have to reveal more of yourself to your readers, in order to be true to yourself, and to them. Don't protest either. You showed me what you were going to post here and I agreed that the matter was serious and somebody would need to step forward and let people know.

(sigh) Why me?

Don't play a game with me!

(laughs) Right. Yes, but sometimes it's dangerous to point out the obvious to some people. They don't always get it, and most don't like it.

So what are you trying to do now, be liked by everyone?

(laughs) If so, maybe I would have had to have read Dr. Berne's book years ago.

(more laughs) I read it years ago, during the fad for it and it didn't help me become any more popular. (laughs) But before we get into the real subject of this interview, perhaps you'd tell us something of your current activities.

Current Activities

Well, I just got my piano tuned and am still working on my repertoire.

Progress?

Some, yes.

I know the general outlines, the Romantic period, yes? (nod) You're still on course?

Yes, well mostly.

Out of it, you're concentrating on what?

Now there are five Chopin Nocturnes, the Mendelssohn Op 19 Songs Without Words …

You like those don't you?

Yes. I'm impressed with the subtleties they contain and I intend on playing them differently from how I hear most other people play them. They are really quite serious little pieces.

Anything else?

The Beethoven Andante favori is certainly coming along. I want to start my program with that one.

You have also had some changes in your family?

Yes. My favourite uncle, whom I saw for the last time in 2007, passed away late last year. I wasn't able to go out and be with the rest of the family at his memorial service.

And you are dealing with the terminal illness of another uncle?

Yes, we are rotating hospice care for him in his home. He's 90, will be 91 at the end of the month. Some days he seems better but he's bedridden and has cancer and doesn't want treatment. His wife passed away last year.

I'm sorry.

Everyone says that and I guess it's just what is expected. There's no need to be sorry, these things happen. It's the one thing we can be sure of, that we will all die some day. But these uncles had something else in common; physically they were strongly built, athletic even, both of Swedish descent, tall handsome and good natured men who were easy to like and to be around. They both liked to laugh. The one who is dying now was a World War II veteran. He served in Europe and had many good tales from those days.

They ever meet each other?

Nope.

You still doing farm work? I guess not, too cold.

Horses and chickens still need to be fed and watered. Firewood still needs to be brought in.

Still reading Marcel Proust?

Yep.

Really? How far into it are you?

I just read about the most purple prose on the subject of homosexuality I've ever come across in Part One of Cities of the Plain.

So you're right in the middle.

Yes.

You're just reading it to be one of the few who have read all of it, aren't you?

In part, yes. But there were a number of very intelligent friends who recommended I read Proust and I'm beginning to understand a few reasons why. After all, this is in part a mémoire, his prose a series of period photographs of a time almost exactly 100 years ago in France. They still had royalty then, ruling houses of aristocrats. (They still do actually, it's just that most people don't see them in public view much anymore.) Reading Proust is one very good way to see what it was really like to move in their circles and to see the political dimensions of money and prestige running down through the social classes of those times and even have some idea of how the same mechanisms are still in use today. It's not just like reading literature in the sense of following a story, it's like reading social history with notes taken by a very articulate (verbose) reporter. But Proust's huge work is also about himself, his coming of age from a bourgeois background into the high society of his time and place. There's a sense in which this work is related to the huge Mahler symphonies and other artistic movements of the same period that strove for grandness of scale and an encapsulation of the whole world.

My, you're verbose! (laughs)

The Main Topic – The Attack on asking Why

Look, painful as it is, I think we want to get into the main topic of this interview. So why bring up an attack on asking why? (laughs)

Well you know that everything of a news nature that we read or listen to is delivered to us packaged and accepted as having some authority behind it, the government or some other official body, offering a kind of guarantee that what is being presented is true, honest and reliable. Nevertheless, for at least the last three years, some of us have been watching great cracks develop in some mighty institutions. By now, these cracks are becoming more obvious to everyone. People are wanting answers about why things are happening to them. They are given answers that do not make any sense by what they can observe around them. Meanwhile, and despite attempts to hide or spin the obvious, larger schemes of deceit and treachery and looting on monumental scales are being disclosed daily. I hate to be among those to tell the people behind those institutions that they have no clothes.

You think there are growing attempts to stop people from asking why?

Yes. But the good news is that more people every day are waking up to the fact that they have been lied to and gaining enough self respect to start demanding some real answers.

Let's get into this. You told me that you had been bothered by something that you considered a matter of personal integrity to get off your chest and regardless of the nature of this topic, it's controversial, religious …

… and political ...

and political nature, you felt it necessary to …

(sigh) I don't know, it was maybe about six years ago, maybe more? I was encouraged to research a certain Italian Catholic mystic, Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947), aka "Little Daughter of the Divine Will" who like Proust wrote a huge mémoire variously called The Book of Heaven or The Kingdom of the Divine Will. It runs to 36 volumes.

Oh my, did you read them all?

No, I only got to the end of Volume 8 where I read this:

"My daughter, in almost all of the events that occur, creatures keep repeating, over and over again: ‘And why? And why? And why? Why this illness? Why this interior state? Why this scourge?’ And many other why’s. The explanation of ‘why’ is not written on earth, but in Heaven, and there everyone will read it. Do you know what ‘why’ is? It is egoism, which gives continuous food to love of self. Do you know where ‘why’ was created? In hell. Who was the first one that pronounced it? A demon. The effects produced by the first ‘why’ were the loss of innocence in Eden Itself, the war of untameable passions, the ruin of many souls, the evils of life. The story of ‘why’ is long; it is enough to tell you that there is no evil in the world which does not carry the mark of ‘why’. ‘Why’ is destruction of divine wisdom in souls. And do you know where ‘why’ will be buried? In hell, to make them restless for eternity, without ever giving them peace. The art of ‘why’ is to wage war against souls, without ever giving them respite."

From The Kingdom of the Divine Will, end of Book 8 The Writings of Luisa Piccarreta via by “channeling” (or something else)

These words are reputed by this “seer” to be those of Jesus.

Really? They sure don't sound like Jesus.

That was exactly my reaction too and it was at this point that I stopped reading.

But you'd read much before you got to this.

Yes.

Were you apprehensive that this was a fraud of some kind before you got to this quote?

Yes, but for different reasons. The words in that quote certainly don't square with these:

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Reputed to be the words of Jesus

Matthew 7: 7-8

No, it's the exact opposite.

Exactly and isn't it obvious? These two quotes cannot be from the same person. Therefore the entire structure, including all attempts within the Roman Catholic Church to exalt this “seer” to sainthood, are laid bare as misguided at best and fraudulent at worst.

So it wouldn't be the best idea for the Church to go on promoting this, but so what? I mean why does this bother you? The Church stands accused of allowing its prelates to molest children without reporting it to the authorities. How does this square with Jesus' reputed words:

“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” Luke 18:16

It's a cynical perversion that they think people will just ignore because anyway they have certain powers and privileges and assume they can jolly well get away with it. But believe it or not, the real answer as for what these words of Jesus were about was in that book by Dr. Eric Berne; little children don't play games.

You had a good friend who made the connection between child sexual abuse and the unpardonable sin didn't you?

Yes, but don't change the subject. This is about daring to ask why on every level imaginable and having the right to ask why when the obvious truths are right there in front of us, more and more on a daily basis. The reason that Luisa Piccarreta's work has come to the fore is for some ulterior and political reason; they want people to become willing slaves of this or that new doctrine so they will accept repression easier.

So that's the other shoe that drops here.

If this “seer” for whatever reasons is a fraud misrepresenting Jesus, then who does this fraud help?

There are more questions than just why.

Of course, but they are all summarized by why. Their lies are easily discovered by the bare facts. Why are they lying to us? Why are they trying to cover up things? Then of course why pursue a course of action that is known not to work? Isn't that a definition of insanity? And then of course under what camouflage of authority is whose alleged interest being protected against the people's rightful interests? You see a lot of things happen when you start asking why. Maybe if they can't explain it they don't really know. Maybe if facts do not support their theory then their theroy is … mistaken. Maybe if they can't explain, they are really hiding things. Why? Whose purposes are being served by any of this?

Pull back the curtains, eh?

(nodding) There are people out there in the fields of religion and politics who want no questions asked by anyone, just blind loyalty and thoughtless servitude. For what? Why? In the case of Christianity, does this kind of blind submission have anything to do with Jesus?

You aren't going to answer that, are you?

Why should I? Maybe some of the followers of other religions need to start asking why too: it's not for me to decide. It's a personal matter for each of us to ask and do our own investigations. After all Jesus told us to seek and find, etc. not to be blindly submissive.

You wanted me to bring this up too, a friend of yours said that the biggest problems facing America today were caused by people who believe in God.

Yeah, and I agreed.

Why?

I was just waiting for you to ask (laughs) and my answer isn't going to be too surprising; it's because most of them don't really believe in God else they would behave differently. No, they're clearly just playing another game, this one called Let's Believe in God (LBG). It's ideological, has teams, has cheers and jeers, ways of making scores, etc. but it's just a game. Most people's idea of God is the bellhop in the sky, Santa Claus, or their local concierge who will take care of everything for them. Rather than accepting their problems as learning experiences where the real God may be the teacher, they prefer to complain. Most tend to connect their game of LBG with some political ideology the historical bases of which have been conveniently covered up so they are operating in a land of illusions that never existed quite the way they imagine. Meanwhile other less religious, more candidly political game players play games like, King of the Hill (KOH) in which the goal is to keep everyone else below their line of vision, figuratively and literally. But it's just a game. Some people, maybe most people as Dr. Berne said, are perfectly happy playing their games. But they're built on deceit, every single one of them, and the worst part of it is that if we as a body of sentient creatures on this earth don't get with something a whole lot better than playing games, and that includes the KOH game devised by the current world leadership, then we don't stand much of a chance of survival long term, certainly not with some of the odious technology we now have to play with.

Yes, I see that.

Well, you don't really have to …

No, I get it. Why now? What's the biggest problem you see on the horizon?

War.

Yes.

Total war. The games people play shall lead to the End Game.

Yes.

So, you see we have to keep asking questions, just as little children would. But little children are still people the same as so called grown ups. The greatest issue between grown ups and children has never been stated better than Jesus did; be as little children, inquisitive and innocent in the sense that they are not yet poisoned by game playing to achieve ends by ulterior means. Grown ups need to catch themselves playing games and try and achieve awareness, spontaneity (which has nothing to do with spur of the moment compulsions at all) and maybe even intimacy. Berne was right though, most people can't handle it.

So you think they'd better?

Right now, the stakes couldn't be much higher.

FINIS

All The Russias

2011-01-17T01:41:00.007-05:00

Savouring this set of documentaries from Classical TV (makes it sound as if it were about ancient Greece and Rome) as one would a box of the finest chocolates, or perhaps a packet of one of the finest exotic teas, I highly recommend a viewing of this remarkable series highlighting the music, much of which falls into the “classical music” repertoire, of one of the most important, influential and resilient cultures on earth.

ALL THE RUSSIAS: 1. THE LITTLE BIRCH TREE

ALL THE RUSSIAS: 2. HOLY MOTHER RUSSIA

ALL THE RUSSIAS: 3. DEVILS

ALL THE RUSSIAS: 4. ONCE UPON A TIME

ALL THE RUSSIAS: 5. LOOKING EAST, LOOKING WEST

FINIS

Carroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope

2011-01-09T15:04:00.000-05:00

(originally written around July, 1998)

[Despite my preference not to post anything of a political or religious nature on my blog, I found this recently and thought it appropriate for posting here at this time. It was a sort of book report I wrote for a former employer who had me read this large book. Of the many books I have read, I found this one to offer some very important information which actually could re-orient the world in a more hopeful direction. This is not an endorsement of Quigley's views as in many respects my opinions differ significantly from his; for example I happen to view certain things that are currently neglected or looked down upon as essential to life while other pursuits as either beneath contempt or a waste of one's time.]

Professor Carroll Quigley (1910-1977) was Bill Clinton's mentor at Georgetown. In 1966 he published his massive 1,310 page one volume history of the 20th century, Tragedy and Hope. It's mostly tragedy. I haven't gotten to the hope part yet except that he feels mankind was lucky to have survived the decade between 1953-1963, the height of the atomic bomb testing, etc.

Quigley has many surprises in this book. He says that communism is basically bunk and was used only as a pretense by some very unscrupulous people, to take power over certain nations and peoples. He says that Castro only embraced communism because he wanted to stay in power as long as possible, basically he's no better than Hitler, or any other dictator, all spoiled little boys. He says that worldwide financial empires have helped create situations which have led to war. He says that Great Britain isn't really a democracy at all. He says that Russia has always been a separate civilization from Western Europe and of course from America. He says that most American foreign policy has been mistaken. But then again he sees British foreign policy in most respects as more devious still. He views what happened to Germany as a tragedy that they largely brought on themselves, although he blames Britain as well. He has more sympathy for the French positions than most. He has high praise for Israel and for Japan. But he describes a lot of the world as part of what he calls the Pakistani-Peruvian axis. And the problem of the human race as Quigley sees it boils down to what he calls "outlook".

The Pakistani-Peruvian axis or the "Arabic" outlook as described by Carroll Quigley; "They were warlike, patriarchal, extremist, violent, intolerant and xenophobic" (Tragedy and Hope p. 1,116). Regarding the males raised in such societies, "usually they are spoiled, undisciplined, self-indulgent and unprincipled. Their whims are commands, their urges are laws." (Ibid. p. 1,118). The Pakistani-Peruvian axis runs from Pakistan westward through the Middle East (except Israel) and then across the Atlantic and includes Latin America, all of it from Mexico south. Pakistan and India just got the A bomb. Are you scared yet?

Contrast this with what Quigley says about the salaried middle classes of Japan, they are "ambitious, hard working, loyal, reliable, very adaptable to bureaucratic organization, scientific training and rationalizing processes, they are suspicious of ideologies or extremist doctrines of any kind." (Ibid. p 1,151). Quigley credits this outlook with the reason for Japan's success. He could have said the same about the post war Germans, whom he similarly characterizes, although among Europeans, Quigley says that the French are the most civilized.

Quigley is very clear about the necessity for good leadership and often finds it lacking. He admired Kennedy's handling of the Cuban missile crisis. Although I think it's probably fair to assume he'd prefer the Democrats to the Republicans, he is not in favor of redistribution of wealth or disturbing the power and prestige of the rich. He'd much rather see them take on a more constructive role than they usually do in the affairs of the rest of the world. He is very realistic.

I recommend this book to any serious student of contemporary history. They would soon discover a lot about economics and who really runs the world and why they have to. [Somewhat Swedish way to end a sentence, perhaps from my ancestors.]

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The Maturity of an Audience for Classical Music and Other Concerns

2010-12-27T03:20:00.003-05:00

“I believe in God, Mozart and Beethoven,

and likewise their disciples and apostles;

I believe in the Holy Spirit and the truth of the one, indivisible Art;

I believe that this Art proceeds from God,

and lives within the hearts of all illumined men;

I believe that he who once has bathed in the sublime delights of this high Art,

is consecrated to Her for ever, and never can deny Her;

I believe that through Art all men are saved.”

Richard Wagner (1813-1883)

A friend of mine from the city went to a piano recital a few weeks ago. The program was devoted to the three last piano sonatas of Beethoven. The pianist, interpreter, his name not known to me, apparently had quite a respectful following. The performances were, as expected, both technically polished and emotionally probing. But that's not the phrase that I remembered most from her description of the concert. She said that everyone in the audience probably knew the music before they entered the theatre, some knew this music very well, had decided to attend this concert because they knew these particular pieces and loved them, perhaps even a few in this audience were pianists themselves and may have had the same sonatas committed to memory and most importantly, everyone behaved reverentially toward each other, relatively quiet yet intensely joyful.

This audience's special quality included the reality of the ageing and aged as a significant percentage. And why not? Why wouldn't that be just what one should expect? There is much adverse comment about this these days, as if the perpetual pursuit of unattainable eternal youth must pervade even these precincts, and this specie of criticism really needs to be rebutted and its relevance refuted with the following points:

1) This music known under the moniker of “classical” is mature, serious, and intended to last forever. There is no other music like it, none with the distinctiveness, the uniqueness of any of its great works, intended for a serious and mature audience, not for emotional adolescents or those whose only interest in music is as to serve as a prop for other pastimes.

2) The people who originally sponsored this music were serious and had considerable resources at stake for its production and promotion. It was intended from its inception to be deployed only among a select few. This did not mean then and does not mean today, that interest in it is restricted by any overt signs suggesting that certain people may not apply. Application is available to anyone in theory. Nevertheless it is axiomatic that what this music demands of its performers and audiences alike, necessarily means that its appeal will be to the self selecting few.

3) This music is not intended to be exclusive, yet it selects those who are interested in it. Those who aren't interested today may become so in future as their emotions and outlook on life mature or perhaps they never will become interested in it. There are quite a few who just don't see the point to classical music and they have a right to their opinions. But anyway, exclusive it always was from the very beginning and such shall it likely be for the foreseeable future.

4) Classical music is a kind of “straight and narrow way” and such is why on finding it, as many describe their first recognition of this music, that it is in its unique way very like encountering a religion with its own saints, martyrs (we'll highlight one here), savants, and other people who are held in as much reverence as those men and women whom humanity have called holy. There is a sincere and unique reverence accorded classical musicians by their audiences that is really unlike that of the celebrities or the superstars of other musical genres.

5) Its concerts, even when they are the highlights of informal parties in people's homes, have many of the same almost liturgical elements as a religious service. There are traditional programs, some extensions of these for more modern works to be presented, or for “early music” which is still in the purview of what is known as “classical music”, etc. Sometimes there are intermissions dividing a concert into two parts, other times music is presented with minimum interruption. Those who attend enough concerts begin to see the patterns. It may be difficult for some of us to believe it now, but these concerts, where some of the greatest of the classics were first premièred included food and drink as integral elements, beer and sandwiches being about the most common refreshments, although we are aware of certain venues that included wine punches, cakes and pastries as well as the usual fare of sausages and pickles.

6) The survival of this music is certainly not guaranteed, but it will not survive being watered down by “crossovers” from music that is other than itself, of different intent, for a different audience, not intended to be the focus of conscious attention but merely as … props for other pastimes. Its devotees can examine, in some ways similar to the ways people describe theological or moral ideas in their churches or synagogues, the various ways classical music has succeeded and where it has failed. Our analysis cannot fail but to acknowledge that classical music owes much to its ties with academic institutions, particularly its conservatories. One of the ways this music survives is by its being taught to future generations: basic musical pedagogy is and always has been crucial. In this regard it is unfortunate that classical music had to rely on state sponsorship through public schools because in that regard its practitioners became lazy and did not seek out sponsorship from the interested themselves. And it can be argued with considerable evidence, that the greatest composers may not have been produced through these schools of music or systems of pedagogy. Some of the greatest composers had little formal musical education and seem to have grown into their art as if by a primary natural means, Mozart and Chopin among them. Discussions should concern as much why certain musical talent was allowed to suffer and even languish in obscurity only to be recognized by future musicologists, as Mendelssohn is credited having rescued Bach from obscurity for future generations.

This same friend recommended a certain documentary to me, After the Storm, The American Exile of Béla Bartók. It is a very sad story, one which demonstrated somewhat as Richard Wagner is known to have said to some of his potential sponsors, that he held them and society in general responsible for ignoring Mozart and others of supreme musical talent and letting them die in obscurity, those who intended their creation to last forever and were fated to live amidst the inattentiveness of their fellows. Yet in order for anything to last, it not only must be kept in someone's memory and passed along to the next generation, it must be LOVED and cherished, held in esteem in a place by itself, a hallowed place in the human heart, a place accessible to each individual and yet a place as universal as to encompass all of humanity, to be truly universal in its message and appeal. In order for this to happen, a music must say something about the reality of the human condition, its highs, its lows, its poignancy, the contributions made by nature all around us, and even more things than can ever be described by mere words alone.

Such was my reaction upon seeing this documentary on the last years of Béla Bartók (1881-1945). Yes, we can say that in 1881, the fateful year that Brahms premièred his magnificent second piano concerto or the year after that great symphony of Hans Rott appeared, the world was blessed by the birth of Béla Bartók, arguably Hungary's greatest composer and one of the greatest of the 20^th century. But what of composers? No, So What of Composers? The New York City of the 1940's which offered Bartók a refuge and even more the sumptuousness for this particular and peculiar man to have access to the great folk music collections at Columbia University, nevertheless never really understood him. How could two so very different beings possibly get along: the sickly Hungarian composer who was a kind of austere ascetic anyway, and the spirit of the huge humdrum city of a still young nation, full of noise, full of its own common cares, without a consciousness of any culture or excuses for such niceties as fine art music?

It can always be said that were it not for what was offered Bartók, the commission which produced the Concerto for Orchestra (1942-1945), for which the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, wasn't even willing to take the composer's directions seriously, we might not have had the Third Piano Concerto (1945) or the Viola Concerto (1945) and Bartók might even have died earlier as he was a sick man anyway. We are also indebted to Bartók's disciple, Tibor Serly, who like Mozart's disciple Hummel, never equaled his master. We will probably never know what the crucible of life required of Bartók to create what he did. We are lucky to have these last works as they are among his very best.

Whether you decide to get this documentary and view it yourself or not, we can ask ourselves what of other Bartóks out there waiting to be discovered? They wont be the same as he was nor will their music be like his. What if their natural gifts are smothered by too much teaching, what if their lives are made too easy by too much fawning recognition received too easily? What portion of the crucible of life is required to produce the pearls of a creative genius like Bartók? We don't even begin to know the right formulas for any of this. Mostly we're probably too timid to be asking. And how much does it cost, how much should it be worth, etc.? Are we any better at pricing the value of the invaluable today than we might have been able to in 1945? Was the Concerto for Orchestra worth a mere $1,000 in 1940's money, which the composer was reluctant to take anyway as he wasn't sure he'd live long enough to complete the assignment? In an earlier posting, I brought the case of that unfortunate young man Hans Rott to attention. Today I bring that of Béla Bartók to similar attention. But as I said above, the numbers of those who could and would possibly care have always been small and maybe that's the way it must be, “the straight and narrow way which leads to salvation” in the deepest sense of finding meaning in life that few people ever find anywhere else.

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Making Ever New Discoveries in Old Classical Music

2010-12-26T21:59:00.003-05:00

Over the next several weeks, I will be considering various aspects of the music that we usually refer to as “classical” which distinguishes it from other kinds of music. One of the first things to notice is just how much classical music is out there, a veritable ocean, as an area of exploration to provide one the deepest possible rewards in human existence. There is so much of this music that it becomes a usual practice for the interested to discover for themselves new pieces of old music by known or unknown composers and make it their own; part of their own lives, their shared memories, their additional concert repertoire.

As a demonstration, today I'm showcasing an excellent performance of a seldom heard work by an oft neglected master of classical music; the Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra of Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), pictured above. He wrote it at the age of 13. It appears to be without opus number. Opus numbers were by tradition given published works at the time as a means to catalogue them. The manuscript for this work only turned up around 1951 and was originally premièred by Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999), who it is said purchased the rights to the piece as if it was brand new at the time, from relatives of Mendelssohn then living in Switzerland. We are certainly grateful to have this piece and such a brilliant performance of it on You Tube by Arthur Grumiaux with Jan Krenz leading the New Philharmonia Orchestra. The clarity and power of this performance reveal the gifted and accomplished French violinist with a crack British orchestra. This concerto is in the traditional three movements:

1^st Movement: Allegro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH1LXhNVxEU

We begin in territory firmly staked out by Mozart and Haydn. But Mendelssohn is extending the form, while at the same time making references to music that's even older than the two aforementioned grand masters. Grumiaux is technically spot on, defining the lines creating the landscapes between soloist and ensemble. We will hear all of this somewhere else, and that isn't even really the point. Mendelssohn's role was more conservative in the true sense. He was arguably the father of all we recognize today as classical music; the careful recreation of the music of long passed composers. And yet with all this, note the often unexpected glimpses into more emotionally charged territory, anticipation of even operatic elements, all still grounded in the stylistic framework of Mozart and Haydn.

2^nd Movement: Andante

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMU5x7Yh5Kg&NR=1

You'd think this was again Mozart or Haydn, but wait. It was 1822 when this was written. Haydn had died the year young Felix was born and Mozart had been dead 30 years. Beethoven, though at the peak of his powers, had a mere five years to live. Already, Mendelssohn is stretching the violin concerto as it had been known into some clearly unprecedented territories, the use in this movement of repetition of a theme (really only a phrase) of ascendency and yearning, including a cadenza, and then something like a dramatic departure just prior to the conclusion, yet all kept within the bounds of strict classical form. I frankly marvel, as I have for some time with much of Mendelssohn's work, at the breadth of musical knowledge, prescient and deliberate craftsmanship and sheer discipline required to create it.

3^rd Movement: Allegro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUm82FgyH6c&feature=related

Here's the standard four step rondeau with much influence from Mendelssohn's ethnic roots, a masterful combination, plus some startlingly brilliant counterpoint, operatic interludes almost comparable to a Paganini light. There's much “fun” going on here, but none of it, and I mean exactly none of it, is going to come off without tremendous technical effort, which is also, ladies and gentlemen, quite simply a key part of the spirit and soul of all classical music.

One cannot attempt this music without a degree of discipline and serious intent. Nothing else will do and this distinguishes it from all other music. We all know of lack lustre performances that we wish we'd never heard or been part of. But they are not what we strive for. We are not merely recreating the old, this is not a museum art form as some might like to suggest, we are releasing the spirit of the music itself, with every performance, and for most of us who actually play this music ourselves, this includes those performances we play while practising, away from the stages and other probably more critical ears than our own.

As the next year is rapidly upon us, I wish to extend my best wishes to all my fellow classical musicians and aficionados of this art form, for peace, prosperity, happiness and continuing to network among ourselves and find each other throughout the world, mindful that what we are about is preserving the jewels of our civilization for ourselves and for future generations. Here's for extending the reach and growth of the cultural tribe that visionaries like Felix Mendelssohn helped begin.

Of some interest, the entire Op. 19 Songs Without Words (first book of them) also by Felix Mendelssohn, is one of my goals at this time, as I strive to extend my potential concert repertoire. I have found this music both challenging and emotionally mature beyond the years of the composer who wrote it and highly recommend it to others. It is not only old music one hears as new that classical music offers us, but the same is true for those who play a musical instrument as well.

FINIS