The Barber of Seville

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t “get” The Barber of Seville. Perhaps what I am about to say is sacrilege to many opera lovers.

Rossini’s opus is perhaps one of the most popular operas of all time, and yes, it is performed all over the world, to the point that the aria Largo al factotum was immortalized in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I saw it for the third time this past Saturday, in a new production by Vancouver Opera. I have to admit that my reservations regarding the opera were not changed by the performance.

Both Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and Rossini’s The Barber of Seville were based upon plays by Pierre Beaumarchais, with pretty much the same cast of characters. But this is where the similarities end. Mozart’s Figaro is a divine comedy, with meltingly beautiful music that one never tires of hearing. Yes, The Barber of Seville has memorable music too, but the few great arias in the opera are interspersed between music that is rather bland and trite. Where Mozart’s opera is both sublimely beautiful and supremely funny, Rossini’s music is merely pretty, and its humor superficial. And whereas Mozart’s characters and drama is a commentary on humanity, Rossini’s merely serves to give us an evening of light entertainment. Yes, both operas feature the same Figaro, the same Count Almaviva, the same Rosina, and the same Doctor Bartolo and Don Basilio. But how Rossini’s portrayal of these same characters pale in comparison with Mozart! Mozart’s characters are real, with flesh and blood, whereas Rossini’s remain two-dimensional stock characters to give us a few laughs.

I find that in The Marriage of Figaro, the most humorous scenes are sometimes also the most moving. In the scene when Figaro realizes that Marcellina is actually his long lost mother, I often find myself weeping tears of joy. There is one genuinely funny scene in The Barber of Seville, at the beginning of Act II, when Count Almaviva poses as Rosina’s “substitute” singing teacher. But even this scene is no more than merely funny, and the drama never really raises above the level of Blake Edward’s Pink Panther movies.

Vancouver Opera mounted a good production of Barber of Seville, with wonderful voices singing Rossini’s demanding music. But updating the opera to a movie studio in the 1940’s did not add anything new to the drama. Yes, there are tunes in the opera that sends you out humming, but one does not leave the theatre walking on air.

Is this too much to expect from a work of art? Absolutely, I think. A great work of art should lift us above our everyday existence and elevate us into a higher sphere of well being and awareness. I’m afraid The Barber of Seville falls short of this criteria.

Of course art can be entertaining, but entertainment is not necessarily art.

The Wittgenstein's

Knowing of my fondness for Vienna and things Viennese, a friend passed on to me a book that she assured me would make interesting reading. For the next couple of days, I sat completely engrossed in The House of Wittgenstein – A Family at War, by Alexander Waugh, himself the grandson of Evelyn Waugh, famous Catholic convert and author.

I have known some dysfunctional families in my time, but the Wittgenstein’s top them all. In fact, when I think of the story of the Wittgenstein family of Vienna, I immediately think of Tolstoy’s famous opening to Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion.” According to an article in the New York Times Book Review, “the Wittgensteins of Vienna could give the Oedipuses a run for their money” when it comes to dysfunctional families. To varying degrees, I suppose we are all victims of our upbringing.

Waugh’s book on the Wittgenstein family offers not only fascinating insight into a famous and fabulously wealthy family, but a glimpse of the political and artistic climate of Vienna in the early part of the 20^th century. I agree with the opinion of the Literary Review that “It is hard to imagine another account showing such fluency, wit and attention to detail.”

Of the nine children of Karl Wittgenstein and Leopoldine Kalmus, two committed suicide, and one simply “went missing.” The surviving children all share a passion for art and for music, but there was no love loss between any of the siblings.

Even if you know nothing about the Wittgenstein family, you would have at least heard of two of the family members. Ludwig Wittgenstein is considered by many to be one of the 20^th century’s great philosophers. And many musicians and music lovers would have heard of Paul Wittgenstein, who was a student of the legendary Theodore Leschetizky, and a pianist of promise, but lost his right arm during World War I.

While a prisoner in the Russian war camp, Paul became determined to continue his career as a pianist. When he was later returned to his family in Vienna, he devoted himself to becoming a left-handed pianist. Family members reported him, with grim determination, practicing eight or nine hours every day. Initially, he rearranged many of the pieces from the standard repertoire, as well as the few pieces that had already been written for the left hand alone. This included an arrangement by Leopold Godowsky for left hand of Chopin’s famous Revolutionary Etude! Later on, he commissioned composers to write works for the left handed pianist.

Probably the most well-known of the left-handed piano repertoire would have to be the Concerto pour la main gauche by Maurice Ravel. This is an absolute masterpiece, much darker in colour and turbulent than the composer’s jazzy and breezy Concerto in G. Listening to the piece with one’s eyes closed, one would be hard pressed to tell that this is played by someone with only one arm. Unfortunately, relationship between pianist and composer did not remain cordial. Wittgenstein insisted that Ravel’s orchestration was too thick, and the composer accused Paul of distorting his music, and that “he was an old hand at orchestration and it does sound right.” In the end, Paul Wittgenstein capitulated, and played the concerto the way Ravel wanted it. The premiere in Paris on January 17^th, 1933, with the composer conducting, was a great success, but the incident left both soloist and composer with bad tastes in their mouths.

Other than the Ravel, there is also Sergei Prokofiev’s 4^th Piano Concerto, written in 1931 for Paul Wittgenstein but never performed by him. According to some sources, the pianist claimed that he did not understand a single note of the music. The world premiere of the concerto, incredibly enough, did not take place until September of 1956! The pianist who played the premiere, Siegfried Rapp, had lost his right arm during a battle in World War II.

Another composer Paul Wittgenstein commissioned was the then young Benjamin Britten, who wrote his Diversions for Left Hand and Orchestra. Paul Hindemith wrote Piano Music with Orchestra, and Richard Strauss Parergon zur Sinfonia Domestica, with themes from Strauss’ great symphonic work of the same name. Viennese composer Franz Schmidt wrote a set of Beethoven Variations, based on a theme from the composer’s Spring Sonata. Lesser known composers like Josef Labor (a close family friend of the Wittgenstein family), Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Sergei Bortkiewicz, all wrote numerous works for the left-handed pianist, thanks to commissions by Paul Wittgenstein. Paul continued to concertize and teach until his death on March 6^th, 1961.

Reading this book, it hit home that composers like Ravel, Britten, Prokofiev, and Strauss, names we read in music history books, were actually contemporaries of Paul Wittgenstein.

Granted that Paul Wittgenstein’s family wealth allowed him to promote his own concert career and to commission works by famous composers, one has to admire his perseverance and courage for not just continuing to play but performing, in the face of this very significant handicap.

In our own time, pianists like Gary Graffman and Leon Fleisher, who both lost the use of their right hands, benefitted from this relatively large body of piano works for the left hand alone. Posterity has Paul Wittgenstein to thank for giving the world a large body of piano literature that would otherwise not have existed.

And what a family the Wittgenstein’s was! Perhaps not people you’d like to be friends or share a meal with, but it sure was fun reading about them.

Music for Movies

Who can forget the impact of watching the first Star Wars movie in 1977?

A black screen with the words, “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” Then the now famous music of John Williams burst forth with the opening sequence, filling the audience in on the background of the story. That opening sequence, I think, is pure cinematic magic, and a stroke of genius on the part of filmmaker George Lucas. The music promises the great adventures that are to come.

Now imagine watching the same opening to the same movie, but without any music at all. Much of the impact is gone, isn’t it? To make a film without music is to take away an entire dimension of filmmaking. What I said above about Star Wars can be said about most of the movies that we have grown to love. Can we really imagine the opening of The Godfather without that famous trumpet solo? And can we see James Bond entering a scene without that taunt and suspenseful theme by John Barry?

In the wonderful Alfred Hitchcock film I Confess, a Catholic priest, played by Montgomery Clift, walks into a church into the middle of the night because he heard a noise. He is about to encounter a man who is about to confess that he had committed murder. Composer Dimitri Tiomkin, who wrote the musical score, quotes the Dies Irae (Day of Wrath), the sequence from the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass. By using this sombre 13^th century music, the composer immediately creates the tension and atmosphere that is to pervade throughout the film.

If music is such an integral part of films, why are composers who write music for film being held in such low esteem by critics and Classical music cognoscenti? Other than the fact that many people, especially critics, tend to like to label musicians into easily definable categories – he is a showman, she is a scholarly player, and so forth. Another reason may be that movies are viewed by many as entertainment and not art.

Conductor, composer and pianist André Previn, who spent his teenage and young adult years as composer and arranger for MGM Studios, had to fight against the labelling of “Hollywood composer” when he later embarked upon his career as a symphonic conductor. Early reviews for his concerts would, he said, inevitably begin with the phrase, “Last night, Hollywood’s André Previn…” He quipped that people would more likely forgive him for being a mass murderer, but not for having written music for films.

If we were to look at some of the “famous” composers who had written film music, the list is pretty impressive – Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Honegger, Richard Rodney Bennett, Aaron Copland, Phillip Glass and Sir William Walton. Hardly any of the men listed above would neatly fall under the labelling of “Hollywood composer”. Copland’s music for the movie The Red Pony is in a class of its own, and would even occasionally show up in concert programmes. The same can be said for Sir William Walton’s music for Battle of Britain. And John Williams’ moving music for Schindler’s List has entered the active repertoire for many of today’s great violinists.

There have been composers who managed to straddle the world of films and the concert hall. Miklós Rózsa’s violin concerto was written for Jascha Heifetz and his viola concerto for Pinchas Zuckerman. John Williams wrote concert music as well as his music for many memorable films. Nino Rota wrote two beautiful piano concerti. And the operas and symphonic music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold is slowly making their way back into concert halls, opera houses and recording studios. And yet, to quote Previn again, “Music critics have made it quite clear that any composer who ever contributed a four-bar jingle to a film was to be referred to as a “Hollywood composer” from then on.”

After a performance of a symphonic work by Sergei Rachmaninoff who, incidentally, never wrote a film score, a critic refers to the work as “music for Doctor Zhivago”. A few years back, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who has consistently tried to extend himself as a performer, made a recording of the film music of Ennio Morricone. The music as well as the performance is beautiful and moving. Yet I am quite certain there are those who would accuse Mr. Ma as being a sell-out, and pandering to popular taste.

When will the distinguished writers of the press stop categorizing music and musicians and judge performance and musical works purely in terms of their merit, and help rather than hinder listeners in truly enjoying music?

Arthur Rubinstein in Hamburg

I am a Youtube addict.

But when you have documentaries and legendary performances by Rubinstein, Horowitz, Richter, Gilels, Bernstein, Mehta, Ozawa, Abbado, Von Karajan, Menuhin, Stern, Ferras, du Pre and Ma at the click of the mouse, how can you resist? Recently, a kind soul posted an entry that I have enjoyed immensely. If you go into the Youtube site and type “Rubinstein in Hamburg”, you will be rewarded with a documentary, less than 30 minutes in length, about Arthur Rubinstein’s visit to the Steinway & Sons factory in Hamburg.

Because of the tragedy of the two world wars, and especially because of the atrocities committed by Germany during World War II, Arthur Rubinstein made the decision not to perform in Germany and Austria. To this end, the pianist even directed royalties from records sold in Germany towards helping victims of the holocaust. He did, however, made several trips to these two countries for personal and professional reasons. He went to Salzburg to attend a performance of Wagner’s Meistersinger, one of his favourite operas (he named one of his daughters, Eva, after the heroine in the opera), Frankfurt to promote his memoirs, and Hamburg on a couple of occasions to choose pianos.

The documentary I mentioned before is a record of one of Rubinstein’s visit to the Steinway factory, to try out one of his pianos sent there for repairs. In it, the pianist tried out the piano by playing snippets from various works in his vast repertoire, works by Chopin, Ravel and Schubert. In addition to the historical significance of the visit, the documentary once again reinforced in my mind the greatness of this particular artist, and the emotional impact of hearing Arthur Rubinstein live.

Watching Rubinstein at the piano is a lesson, not just about playing the instrument, but on an artist’s entire approach to music and to art. Moreover, viewing a Rubinstein performance gives us a revelation of healthy use of one’s body. According to Arnold Steinhardt of the Guarneri String Quartet, who frequently played and recorded with Mr. Rubinstein, music “was like food for him: he was living off the experience of making music. He wasn’t expending energy; he was getting energy.”

When Arthur Rubinstein plays the piano, he is intently listening to the music being made at the moment. When the pianist plays, he is not only playing an instrument, or even playing music, he is music. There is simplicity, as well as a complete naturalness and honesty in his playing, physically as well as musically, that I have witnessed in no other pianist. Daniel Barenboim commented that Rubinstein made it sound like someone who did no more than simply being willing to take the time.

I am grateful that such a moving documentary about Mr. Rubinstein exists and is available. In today’s musical world, where many artists are more concerned about what they wear on stage than the music they play, watching Arthur Rubinstein again reminds us of another time when music was a noble calling and not a mere “career”.

From Paris, With Love

In this age of mass-marketing of music, it is refreshing to encounter a performance that comes to the audience from the heart of the musician, and gets into the heart of the music. The latest CD release from pianist Henri-Paul Sicsic, a 2009 live recording from Paris’ famed Salle Cortot, delivers such a performance. The programme includes a generous helping of Chopin, including the Mazurka, Op. 59, No. 1, Impromptu No. 1, Op. 29, Nocturne, Op. 48, No. 1, Valse, Op. 42, and the Sonata No. 2, Op. 42, and continues with Toronto composer Alexina Louie’s I leap through the sky with stars, Maurice Ravel’s Ondine, and Évocation and Triana from Isaac Albeniz’s monumental and fiercely difficult Ibéria Suite.

While each composer challenges the performer in different ways, no composer of piano music is more difficult to play, technically as well as intellectually, than Chopin. Arthur Rubinstein confessed, “I could play a pyrotechnical Liszt sonata, requiring forty minutes for its performance, and get up from the piano without feeling tired, while even the shortest étude of Chopin compels me to an intense expenditure of effort.” The difficulty of Chopin’s music, though, lies within the inherent structure of the music. The many technical and musical challenges in Chopin’s music are never written for the sake of challenging the manual dexterity of the pianist – even though many world-famous pianists treat it as such. To be sure, it takes a virtuoso to play Chopin, but it takes so much more than a virtuoso to bring out the beauty and integrity of the music.

There is a sense of rightness in the style and flavour of Sicsic’s Chopin interpretation that is very much his own. Chopin wrote more than fifty Mazurkas, and they are the most elusive of his compositions. George Sand quipped, not without malice, that there is more music in one Chopin Mazurka than in all the operas of Meyerbeer. Perhaps more insightful is Liszt’s observation that one has to harness a major pianist to play a Mazurka of Chopin. The later Mazurkas are especially intricate to play, and calls for a balance of rhythm, timing and silence. I would agree with Liszt’s comment, and say that Henri-Paul Sicsic is a major pianist indeed. The rest of the pianist’s Chopin group is no less remarkable than the Mazurka performance. In the Impromptu, he captured the elfin lightness of the music. In the Nocturne, the other-worldly beauty of Chopin’s music is made all the more apparent. The Op. 42 Valse is probably the most difficult of the waltezs, and Sicsic once again rose to the occasion, capturing the many shifts in mood as well as the spirit of the dance.

Ever since the work was written, many pianists have attempted Chopin’s second sonata, but there is always room for another valid interpretation. Sicsic’s performance of the great Funeral March sonata is stunning. He takes the opening movement at a whirlwind tempo, which suits the impetuousness that the music calls for. The sounds he created in the shattering climaxes of the movement are overwhelming. There is relentlessness in his playing of the famous (and much maligned) Funeral March, and the lyrical middle section has never sounded more beautiful. In spite of having heard this work so often, the last movement of this work never fails to send chills up my spine. Sicsic’s playing of this movement is spooky indeed, and brings out the weirdness and the death-haunted feeling of this music.

Alexina Louie, no stranger to Canadian audiences, must be somewhat of an unknown quantity to the Parisian audience. Perhaps because of the title of the music, I have often thought of this work as having a very visual quality to it. It reminds me of the paintings of Marc Chagall, with people (and cows!) flying through the night sky. Henri-Paul Sicsic exploits, in the best sense of the word, the large palette of colours the composer put at his disposal, and paints a picture as vivid and vibrant that the music calls for.

In Ondine, the first movement of Maurice Ravel’s tone poem for piano, Gaspard de la nuit, Henri-Paul Sicsic effectively recreates the composer evocation of shimmering waters and its strange and beautiful watery spirit. There are pianists today who can play this difficult music as if it were child’s play, but not everyone can successfully capture the sonic ambience of this music. It struck me, at this point in the recital that Sicsic has, without us realizing it, taken us into a sound world that is so radically different from that of Chopin.

With the two pieces from Albeniz’s Iberia Suite, Henri-Paul Sicsic takes us into yet another realm of sound. This is not the sun-drenched Spain of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol, which is a much more descriptive piece of music, or even the Spain of Bizet’s Carmen. In Iberia, Albeniz gives us an evocation of a landscape filled with shadow and mystery. Like the Chopin Mazurkas, there is a real danger of playing this music with a “foreign accent”. This is not the case here, for Sicsic’s playing of these two masterpieces is highly idiomatic, capturing the essence of the Spanish rhythm as well as the ever changing colours, and the lightness and shadow in the music.

Sicsic rewarded this enthusiastic audience was rewarded with an encore – Chopin’s Étude in A-flat Major, the first of the Op. 25 set of Études. The pianist’s playing of this euphonious music brings out the richness and beauty of Chopin’s harmonic and melodic inventiveness.

Henri-Paul Sicsic used to be an active member of the Vancouver music scene, but now teaches at the University of Toronto. One city’s loss, as they say, is another’s gain. I look forward to this wonderful pianist’s next return home.

A Breathtaking Recital

Theodor Leschetizky, the famous pedagogue, reportedly said to Arthur Schnabel, his celebrated pupil, “You will never be a pianist, you are a musician.” I am happy to share that Ryo Yanagitani, the recital soloist at yesterday’s University of British Columbia Noon Hour concert, is both pianist and musician. January is perhaps too early for predictions, but I doubt there would be another concert of equal artistic merit in the coming months.

Mr. Yanagitani was born and raised in Vancouver, studied at the UBC School of Music, and subsequently at the Cleveland Institute and the Yale School of Music. Among his many accomplishments, he won the gold medal at the 10^th San Antonio International Piano Competition, and received kudos from the judges for his performance of all four Ballades by Chopin. The powers that be at the university, in their infinite wisdom, have appointed him Assistant Professor at his alma mater, but only for a single year.

Glenn Gould used to say that playing in Toronto, his home town, inevitably terrified him. I do not know if Mr. Yanagitani felt such pressure yesterday, playing in front of former professors and fellow students, and perhaps many who watched him grow up, but he certainly acquitted himself wonderfully. One of the hallmarks of a true performer is the ability to make an emotional connection with the audience, even before a note is played. I have witnessed this quality in musicians like Arthur Rubinstein and Yo Yo Ma. Mr. Yanagitani possesses such a quality.

It takes a brave man to begin a recital with Beethoven’s Sonata in A Major, Op. 101, one of the composer’s most elusive and technically challenging. I love the young pianist’s pacing in the first movement, as well as, from the first notes, the expressiveness of his playing. He certainly understood Beethoven’s instructions for the movement, Etwas lebhaft und mit der innigsten Empfindung – somewhat lively, but with deep inner feeling or emotion. Innig is an impossible word to translate, but “deep innermost feeling” is the closest I can think of.

The Schumannesque second movement, which never fails to remind me of the middle movement of the Schumann Fantasy, was played with great confidence and panache, not to mention rhythmic incisiveness. Time stood still in the brief but emotionally packed Adagio, marked Langsam und sehnsuchtvoll - slowly and longingly – before a brief return to the opening theme of the first movement brings us to the energetic, at times exuberant 4^th movement. Yanagitani negotiated his way through the complex contrapuntal thread of this movement like, to use Busoni’s words, a man who losses and finds himself at the same time.

Chopin’s 1839 Scherzo in C-sharp Minor, Op. 39 and Schumann’s beautiful Arabesque, Op. 18 followed the Beethoven.

Although written at around the same time, the two pieces could not be more different from one another. The Scherzo fluctuates between ghostly passages, filled with angry outbursts, to music of utter calmness and peace. His playing of the Scherzo is stunning, and he brought out the almost schizophrenic nature of the fluctuating mood of the piece. Yanagitani has always been a wonderful exponent of the music of Chopin. His debut CD - Alone With Chopin – demonstrates his flair for the Polish composer’s works.

The pianist paid tribute to one of his teachers, the great pianist Claude Frank, and related to the audience how Mr. Frank would always bring his audience to tears with the Schumann Arabesque. Mr. Yanagitani played Schumann’s miniature masterpiece with great feeling and understanding, and his performance was followed by a long silence before applause broke out. How rare and special it was to have that split second pause before applause broke the spell.

The pianist pulled out all the stops for the final piece of his programme, Let Hands Speak by Canadian composer Kelly Marie Murphy. This was the commissioned piece of the 4^th Esther Honens Piano Competition, one that Mr. Yanagitani entered, and won the prize for best performance of this commissioned work – a great honour indeed. It is probably safe to say that the pianist owns this piece, which exploits, in the best sense of the word, all facets of pianistic technique. His incredibly virtuosic playing of this work won him a well deserved ovation from the appreciative audience.

To disprove the adage that a prophet is never appreciated in his own land, the University of British Columbia should seize this young artist and keep him here, before more prestigious institutions begin to clamour for his talents.

Ryo Yanagitani is clearly a great artist, and one who deserves to be heard by many and in many places.

The Sound of Silence

How often have we seen someone jogging, or taking a walk, or walking their dog, wearing headphones, completely oblivious to his or her surroundings? How often have we walked by a car, windows rolled up, but feeling the pounding bass of the subwoofer? Restaurants, shops, malls, gyms, would inevitably give you, like it or not, layers of musical wallpaper. Of course this is not new, which is exactly why we need to talk about it.

No wonder we are a generation of poor listeners. When we are constantly bombarded with sound, our ears become desensitized. When we really have to sit down and listen to a musical performance, we become fidgety, we want to check our e-mail, we text, we look at our watch to see when the concert will be over.

I was attending a performance at London’s famed Covent Garden Opera House, and noticed the man sitting in front of me e-mailing on his Blackberry. Does he really need to pay £100 so that he could check his e-mail? Are we not able to sit and listen to Mozart for a few hours without having to “multitask”?

In at least the last decade, when I attend performances by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, I noticed that people would applaud between movements of a symphony or a concerto. I have often attributed that to a lack of awareness or education in how to behave in a classical music concert, but I now wonder whether the need to applaud is merely a need to do something, a release of pent-up energy. 

Radio stations have marketed themselves to broadcast music for “easy listening”. Listening is probably one of the most difficult things that engage our brains. Listening to music is far from being a passive endeavour, not just catching the beautiful melodies whilst tuning out the other “bits”. True listening involves our total concentration, and should, ideally, elicit an emotional response within us. When listening becomes secondary to other mental activities, music becomes nothing more than one of the many sensory inputs clamouring for our attention.

Arts organizations everywhere are suffering, not only because of the financial climate, but because more and more people are unwilling to spend an entire evening listening to live music-making. Music is something we can access with the press of a button, so why pay and have to “waste” an entire evening when we can hear music and check our e-mail and surf the web and read our e-book?

I believe that we can learn from parents who give their children “quiet time”, and thank goodness there are still parents upholding such a lifestyle. Only by learning not to be bothered by silence can listening becomes, once again, a special experience. For those who learn music, the time to practice is really such a time, a time for listening to one’s own playing, and not merely repeating the same notes over and over again. I love the German word for practice or rehearsal – probe – to probe, to delve into the deeper meaning of the music. In order to probe, one must first listen. In order to listen, one must first have silence.

In our age of sensory overload, it really is worth our while to make time for silence.