Thinking of Glenn Gould

The world of classical music has definitely become a lot less interesting since the passing of Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. When I was in my teens, I would eagerly await every new recording by the great pianist and, would often listen to him or read about him in radio or magazine interviews.

Since his very premature death, interests in Gould seem to have grown. Not only does the Glenn Gould Foundation work hard to keep his memory alive, but Sony Classical, Gould’s recording company, as well as the CBC seem to keep reissuing his recordings in one guise or another. Schott, the German music publisher, has been publishing many of his compositions and transcriptions, including his beautiful piano solo arrangement of Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll. Moreover, there have been many books written about every aspect of Gould’s life and art. One can also find videos of the many performances he gave on television.

Recently, there have been the release of two feature length films about Glenn Gould – Bruno Monsaingeon’s Glenn Gould Hereafter, and Michèle Hozer and Peter Raymont’s Genius Within – The Inner Life of Glenn Gould. Monsaingeon’s film focuses on the effect Gould’s music and philosophy have on listeners around the world, while Hozer and Raymont’s film examines the private life of the pianist.

I did notice that musicians who were interviewed about Gould almost always discuss the more technical aspects of his pianism, including his fabled control, as well as the absolute clarity of his musical line. Listeners, not surprisingly, focus almost exclusively on the emotional impact Gould’s music making has on them. To me, more of the listeners seem to have hit the nail on the head when it comes to what makes Gould such a remarkable artist.

I once played Gould’s recording of Bach’s Partitas for a musician friend, and she said she found it remarkable, since she never thought Gould’s playing was so musical! Another friend, also a musician, declares that she prefers the Bach playing of another Canadian pianist, also known for her Bach performances – a comment that caused me to almost fall off my chair!

To my ears, what is remarkable about Glenn Gould’s music making is the incredible emotional intensity his playing conveys. From his recording of Bach’s little Two-part Inventions, to the Goldberg Variations, to his performances of Schönberg, Berg or Krenek, there is a searing, emotional and spiritual quality in the playing that immediately hits the listener. Yes, the pianism of Gould’s playing is always remarkable, but it is the incredibly emotive quality, not in Gould’s playing that draws people to his music. When people remark on the clarity in Gould’s playing, there is, to me, something clinical, even sterile, about that description, and there is nothing “clinical” or “sterile” about Gould’s playing.

This then brings me to what a passionate, romantic, musician Gould was. Listen to his recording of the Brahms Intermezzi, or the slow movement of Beethoven’s G Major violin and piano sonata with Yehudi Menuhin, or Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, and one hears a palpable feeling of warmth, of love.

In today’s world of the mass marketing of classical music, we can do with a musician like Glenn Gould, who lived life and make music his own way, away from the limelight of the stage (literally), and whose entire life was his art.

Patrick May

Vacant Podiums

This has been a bad year for conductors. Seiji Ozawa, recovering from oesophageal cancer, has been cancelling concert for more than a year. Ricardo Muti collapsed during a rehearsal with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and has been diagnosed with “extreme exhaustion as a result of prolonged physical stress.” Valery Gergiev is also suffering from exhaustion and has been cancelling performances. James Levine, music director of the Metropolitan Opera and, until last week, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, had to resign his position in Boston because of ill health. Claudio Abbado suffered from stomach cancer about a decade ago, and has been pretty much working as a part-time conductor the last few years. And André Previn is looking quite frail these days.

Are we witnessing a Götterdämmerung, the twilight of the age of the great conductors? Aren’t conductors known for living long fruitful lives? Or is this merely a period of changing of the guards, for a new generation of conductors to emerge?

Conducting is the most inexplicable and mysterious of all musical arts. Theoretically, conducting is nothing more than someone beating time so that all the musicians play together. One can teach the basic technique of conducting in about ten minutes – how to beat one, two, three, four and six. Some conductors look elegant on the podium, others look clumsy. Some conductors conduct with a clear beat, others make vague motions in the air. Somehow, the mere presence of a great conductor standing in front of an orchestra changes the sound dramatically.

Composer John Williams wrote that there are two types of conductors, “The first will offer less than what your ‘inner ear’ imagined the music to be, and the second will infuse the music with a beauty that is beyond what you have imagined.” Obviously the second group of conductors described by Williams is made up of only a small handful of true “Maestros”.

I once witnessed a performance of La Boheme at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, conducted by a competent but decidedly second-rate Kapellmeister. The world class MET orchestra sounded, on that evening, very much likes a passable provincial orchestra. I have witnessed this also with our local symphony orchestra, which sounded a few notches better on evenings with a good guest conductor. So it is true that a great conductor can make a so-so orchestra sound like the Berlin Philharmonic, and a bad conductor can make the Berlin Philharmonic sound like the local high school orchestra.

Among the younger generation of conductors, the one who has been generating the most newsprint, or internet space, has to be Gustavo Dudamel, although it might be too early to tell whether the excitement will last. To my ears, the three most interesting of the younger generation of conductors are Kent Nagano, Myung-Whun Chung, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

I do feel sad that we seem to be witnessing the passing of a generation of great conductors. It appears that we will see many “job openings” in orchestras the world over, and that a frantic round of musical chairs will be played in orchestras around the world within the next few years. All we are waiting for are the right persons to come forward. I do hope that there will be many who will have the right combination of talent and charisma to step up to the podium. Although every generation has something new to offer, I cannot help but wonder whether the age of greatness, of a larger-than-life quality in conductors and conducting, is passing?

I sincerely hope that I am very wrong in this.

Patrick May

Forbidden Music

Well, its official – the folksong Beautiful Jasmine Flower is now being blocked by China’s internet firewall. According to the latest issue of the Economist, Googling the folk song’s name would now only produce an error message. As ridiculous as this sounds, this is all part of the Chinese dictatorship’s efforts to suppress any stirring of a Tunisian-style “jasmine revolution”.

Of course, throughout history, one sees dictators or dictatorships banning specific pieces of music, or certain types of music. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, the music of Chopin was banned. The Nazis also forbade what they refer to as Entartete Musik, or degenerate music. This included music or the composers of such music who did not fit inside the Nazi’s political world view. Music by Jewish composers like Felix Mendelssohn, Arnold Schoenberg, Franz Schreker, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Gustav Mahler were all banished from German concert halls and opera houses. Music with Jewish or African characteristics, like the music of Ernst Krenek, was also banned, as was music by composers of modernist music, such as Paul Hindemith, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern. The Nazi applied similar criteria to visual artists, and considered certain art works Entartete Kunst.

In the Soviet Union, Stalin hated Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, wrote an article in Pravda stating his views, and hounded the composer for many years. Shostakovich only later redeemed himself in the eyes of the Party with his triumphant sounding fifth symphony. Throughout their lives, Shostakovich and Prokofiev had to walk the fine line between their creative impulses and not exceeding the aesthetic boundaries set by the Party. Shostakovich said that he always had a suitcase packed and ready, just in case he was going to be sent to the prison camp.

Back in China, all Western Classical music was banned during the Cultural Revolution, as being bourgeois. Even today, with the seemingly enormous numbers of musicians coming from China, the tradition of Classical music in China began actually relatively recently, and it will take many more generations before Classical music really become a part of people’s lives.

Any government that has to resort to controlling even art and music no longer has any legitimate claim to govern. The Nazis and the Soviets had come and gone, and the Chinese government is worried that their number may be up as well. It is indeed a sad state of affairs when a government has to worry about a syrupy little folksong inciting revolution.

I cannot help but wonder whether Puccini’s opera Turandot, which directly quotes Beautiful Jasmine Flower, is now banned in Chinese opera houses?

Sleepless in Seattle

To sit in front of a great orchestra, under a great conductor, and experience the music making, is an indelible experience. When I was a teenager, I travelled with my family in one of those if-it’s-Tuesday-it-must-be-Rome tours to Europe. We landed in Lucerne, still one of my favourite cities in Europe, and I saw a poster advertising a concert with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic, of which he was music director at the time. I managed to purchase what must have been one of the last tickets, found the hall, got to my seat, and waited in anticipation.

I live in a city with a good orchestra, but nothing prepared for the pure visceral sensation of experiencing the sound of the New York Philharmonic. The first notes of Dvorak’s Carnival Overture hit me like a tidal wave, and I sat breathless until the end of the piece. It was as if I was hearing a symphony orchestra for the first time in my life. The rest of the concert, with Wieniawski’s first violin concerto (with Sidney Harth) and Beethoven’s Erioca Symphony, was as much a revelation. I left the Lucerne Konzerthaus walking on air.

I had the good fortune to experience Maestro Mehta’s conducting one more time, this time in Vancouver, where he gave a concert with the Israel Philharmonic – Bach’s third Brandenberg Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s sixth symphony.

Then, this past Saturday, February 26th, Mr. Mehta visited the west coast again, this time in Seattle, and gave a concert with the Israel Philharmonic at Benaroya Hall. This concert was part of the Israel Philharmonic North American tour in celebration of the orchestra’s 75^th anniversary and Mehta’s 50^th anniversary conducting the orchestra. It is moving to see this orchestra, originally made up of musicians escaping Hitler’s Europe, takes its place among the world’s great orchestras. Mr. Mehta, who has devoted much of his professional life to this ensemble, certainly deserves a lot of the credit for the orchestra’s present standards.

After acknowledging the enthusiastic reception of the audience, Mr. Mehta opened the concert with Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3, a touchstone of the orchestral repertoire, and one of the composer’s four efforts in writing a suitable overture for his opera Fidelio. Mr. Mehta lets the music speak for itself, without overly exaggerating the music’s dramatic elements. Mr. Mehta is not a rigid-tempo conductor, and he does not hesitate to give the music a great deal of elasticity, or plasticity. Throughout the evening, it is apparent how the conductor allows the music to breathe, to expand, or tighten, all according to its natural flow.

Few conductors would dare to go on tour by programming the music of Anton Webern – not exactly a composer that tops the classical music charts. The orchestra performed Webern’s Op. 1 Passacaglia, music still steeped in the expressionstic, post-Wagnerian harmonic language. From his first concerts with the Israel Philharmonic, Mr. Mehta has been committed to performing music of the Second Viennese School. He gives an ardent and impassioned reading of this early Webern score, without forgetting to clarify the rather dense texture of the music.

Before the interval, the orchestra went on to play the composer’s 1928 Six Pieces for Orchestra. Written less than a year after the Passacaglia, this music falls squarely into the world of atonality. Perhaps this was Webern’s homage to his mentor and teacher, Arnold Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra. In spite of their brevity, the composer fully exploited, in the best sense of the word, the resources of every instrumental group in the rather large orchestral forces, and the music is in many ways just as dramatic as the Mahler that follows. As in the Passacaglia, Mr. Mehta gave a splendid reading of the score, reminding us that there is much beauty in the music’s many dissonances.

After the intermission, the orchestra gave us Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony in C-sharp minor. Mehta’s takes the opening Trauermarsch at a more brisk tempo than many other conductors. As the music progresses, I began to realize the logic behind Mehta’s choice of tempi, and his pacing of the music, from one section to the next, and into the Stürmisch bewegt movement, as it highlights the relationship between these two movements which make up the first part of the symphony. In the final measure of the first movement, Mehta is the only conductor I have heard to direct the violas, celli and basses to actually play the final pizzicato note pianissimo, as written by Mahler. Many conductors would ask for a very thick string tone for this final note, which is not called for in the score. In the second movement, I find especially Mehta’s handling of the brief appearance of the chorale (to be heard again in the fifth movement) intensely moving.

The massive scherzo, the centrepiece of the symphony, at 819 bars, is one of the longest of all Mahlerian scherzos, according to Henry-Louis de la Grange. The Mahler biographer and expert also points out that unlike other scherzos by Mahler, this one contains “no conscious element of parody or caricature”. As in the first part of the symphony, Mehta deftly negotiates through the extremely tricky transitions between the scherzo and the two trio sections, such that the music flows naturally and logically from one episode to the next.

The third part of the symphony begins with the justly famous Adagietto, a declaration of love from Mahler to his wife, Alma, according to conductor Willem Mengelberg. Both in atmosphere and in its thematic material, the movement is reminiscent of Mahler’s song Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen. The strings of the Israel Philharmonic did themselves proud here, playing with great beauty of sound and depth of feeling.

Mr. Mehta made the final pianissimo of the Adagietto so beautiful and drawn out that the French horn entry of the fifth movement took me completely by surprise, and the feeling was one of waking up from a beautiful reverie. Henry-Louis de la Grange writes that this final rondo, “with its absolute mastery of technical means and compositional procedures inspired by the classical tradition, but enriched by his inexhaustible musical imagination, marks a new high point in Mahler’s output.” Mr. Mehta’s handling of this large scale movement is no less masterful. Again, the tempo shifts from one section to the next was so well done that the flow of the music takes on a sense of inevitability until the end. Again, the soloists of the Israel Philharmonic play this music like virtuosi, and with great confidence. The magnificent trumpet chorale, hinted at in the second movement, never sounded more glorious as on this evening.

I feel privileged to have been a witness to this incredible artistic event. I will remember, and be thankful, for the beauty of the Beethoven, Webern and Mahler for a long time to come, and for this wonderful group of musicians for making it all possible.

Ingrid Fliter in Vancouver

A wonderful celebration of music took place in Vancouver this past Sunday. Pianist Ingrid Fliter gave a recital of music by Haydn, Beethoven and Chopin, one that left me in a state of exultation and wonderment.

She opened her programme with Haydn’s E Minor sonata, Hob. XVI:34. Coincidentally, Ms. Fliter played the same sonata in her last recital appearance here, and it is interesting to hear how she has evolved as an artist – every turn of phrase is now more exquisite, every note in a passage work like pearls in a necklace, and every one of the many pregnant pauses charged with meaning.

Ms. Fliter also manages to bring out the quirky sense of humour that is so unique to Haydn’s piano sonatas. In the instantly memorable third movement, I was reminded of the words of Ignaz Ernst Ferdinand Arnold, who wrote in 1810 that, “The last Allegros or Rondos consist frequently of short, nimble movements that reach the highest degree of comicality by often being worked out most seriously, diligently and learnedly… Any pretence at seriousness only serves the purpose of making the playful wantonness of the music appear as unexpected as possible, and of teasing us from every side until we succumb and give up all attempts to predict what will happen next.” Indeed, this movement, a highly structured hybrid of rondo and theme and variations, aptly fits this description. Ingrid Fliter captured Haydn’s innocentemente marking to perfection, and the lightness and nimbleness of her playing making the performance a breathtaking one.

Beethoven sonatas have been an integral part of Ingrid Fliter’s recital programmes since her first recital here. In her previous two recital appearances, she played, respectively, the composer’s Op. 31, No. 3 and Op. 10, No. 3 sonatas. On Sunday, she turned to the middle of the three Op. 31 sonatas, and gave a performance that captured the high drama of the first movement, filled with portentous silences, the almost peaceful and tranquil second, disturbed by interjections of quick triplet figures, and the ethereal third movement, which somehow always reminds me of the composer’s famous Für Elise. I hope to hear Ms. Fliter in some of Beethoven’s later sonatas - perhaps the Op. 101, Op. 109, or Op. 110 sonatas would suit her beautifully.

After the interval, Ms. Fliter treated us to ten of Chopin’s waltzes, beginning with the first two published ones, Op. 18 and Op. 34, No. 1, and then proceeding in her own planned order until she ended her performance with the masterful Op. 42 waltz. The surprise in her programming was her inclusion and beautiful performance of two of the Op. Posthumous waltzes, the A-flat major and the A minor, the latter of which is not even included in the otherwise comprehensive Paderewski edition of the composer’s works. Her performance of these waltzes reminded me how unique each of the waltzes is, and how each work is, remarkably, with its relative brevity, absolutely self-contained and developed. Especially moving was her performance of the great C-sharp minor Waltz, Op. 64, No. 2, in which she brought out the otherworldly beauty of Chopin’s music. Ms. Fliter’s performance was sometimes whimsical, sometimes impetuous, and always ravishing. She delivered the waltzes with a freshness and sincerity that made me feel that I was hearing them for the first time.

The two delectable encores – Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 9, No.3 and the scherzo of Beethoven’s Op. 31, No. 3 sonata – were just as memorable. She gave us all the nobility and beauty of the nocturne, and brought split-second timing in bringing out the humour, as well as the final “punch line” of the ending, in the Beethoven scherzo.

Ms. Fliter is an artist who uses her musicianship and considerable pianistic ability to bring us close to the heart of the music. We the audience are the beneficiaries of the fruits of her continuing artistic journey. I, for one, can only hope for many more of such memorable musical experiences from this remarkable musician in the nearest future.

Musical Memories

A musician’s autobiography is often as revelatory about the artist as well as the human being.

Musical memoirs roughly fall into two categories. There are, on the one hand, the raconteurs, who use the medium to chronicle their storied careers – encounters with famous personalities, marriages and love affairs, memorable performances. The danger here is that such books often end up to be nothing more than name dropping. The second of Arthur Rubinstein’s memoirs, My Many Years, unfortunately falls into this trap. In Glenn Gould’s wicked but killingly funny piece of writing, Memories of Maude Harbour, the pianist mercilessly makes fun of how Mr. Rubinstein recounts one amorous encounter after another in his autobiography.

Other musicians, while telling the story of their lives, share with readers their philosophical viewpoints, political sympathies, or musical insights. Yehudi Menuhin’s Unfinished Journey is just such a book. Both types of memoirs can make fascinating reading.

Pianist Leon Fleisher’s My Nine Lives – A Memoir of Many Careers in Music – co-authored with Anne Midgette, cannot be so easily categorized. While telling the story of his life and career as pianist, conductor, and teacher, Mr. Fleisher also gives readers his personal insights into many of the musical masterpieces that have been the cornerstone of his pianistic repertoire. They take the form of intermezzi sandwiched between various chapters of Mr. Fleisher’s life story. Personally, I find that such a format disrupts the flow of the narrative, and would prefer to have them at the end of the book as appendices.

Fleisher was of the outstanding American pianists of the 20^th century. At the height of a brilliant career, he was diagnosed with focal dystonia of the right hand and lost its use in piano playing. Even with this major setback, Mr. Fleisher has continued his musical career by constantly “reinventing” himself – as pianist (with his left hand), teacher, conductor and musical administrator. Some of Mr. Fleisher’s early recordings, such as his Beethoven and Brahms concerti with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, remain classics to this day - a fact that Mr. Fleisher himself took pains to share with his readers.

What are unfortunate about this volume are the many instances of almost derogatory statements about some of his colleagues, or certain pieces of music. When writing of Arthur Schnabel’s recital programmes, Fleisher writes that Schnabel would have “a whole evening of Beethoven or Schubert, without a single crowd-pleasing bonbon like a Chopin mazurka or Liszt operatic paraphrase.” Chopin’s mazurkas as crowd-pleasing bonbons? The mazurkas are probably the most elusive of Chopin’s compositions, and are far from being crowd-pleasers. To categorically connect such diverse musical creations is unfair both to Chopin and to Liszt.

I was also surprised at Fleisher’s views on some of his fellow musicians. On conductor Sergiu Comissiona, Fleisher writes that “he was the best conductor of second-class music that I’ve ever known. He had his problems with Beethoven and Brahms, somehow; those performances never quite reached the heights of others I’ve experienced.” There are quite a few lines devoted to the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood where Mr. Fleisher was administrator for a number of years, and to Fleisher’s relationship with conductor Seiji Ozawa. Mr. Fleisher writes, “Seiji likes musical depth, and I was deep: a window into the tradition. Seiji doesn’t necessarily access that kind of thing himself, but he certainly appreciated it in other people.” When Fleisher is recounting his eventual famous rupture with Ozawa and with Tanglewood, it degenerates into a sad case of “he says, she says.”

There is no doubt in my mind that Leon Fleisher was and is one of the great pianists and artists of the 20^th century. Upon finishing the volume, I cannot help but feel that the entire thing is more than a little self-serving, and does not do justice to Fleisher as an artist. Not everyone, regardless of how distinguished they are in their own field, is suited to writing about themselves. Perhaps someday a more thoughtful biography will be written, one that does justice to the life, career, and artistry of this great musician.

An Insult at the White House

So Lang Lang played at the White House state dinner for Chinese Communist leader Hu Jin-Tao.

As an encore, Lang played a Chinese song, My Motherland, and instantly became a hero to people in China. My Motherland is a song from the 1956 film Battle on Shangganling, a film (as well as the song Lang played) that vilified the Americans and their role in the Korean War.

Hu must have been laughing when he heard the song, because of its highly anti-American stance. Why the Obama administration would choose to honour the leader of the Chinese dictatorship in such an elaborate fashion is a mystery. It is surprising that the White House, which usually plans its event down to the last detail, would not have vetted Lang’s programme beforehand. Perhaps the encore was a spontaneous decision.

Ever since he burst upon the world of classical music, Lang has been changing our image of a “concert pianist.” From his embrace of the latest technology in performances to his wardrobe, Lang has been attracting much of the world’s attention to himself, if not to the music he purportedly loves. According to Lang, he wants to make use of technology to bring classical music to a wider audience – a commendable idea. But his antics at and away from the keyboard seem to suggest otherwise.

When playing My Motherland at the White House, Lang writes, according to one news source, that it felt like he was “telling them about the power of China and the unity of the Chinese.”

Lang Lang himself benefits from his American education at the Curtis Institute of Music, and he enjoys the privilege (and it is a privilege) of living in a free society. I am certain that a significant portion of his concert fees and recording royalties come from America. This is a great way to repay his benefactor.

Politics aside, though, Lang has also violated, in my view, one of the basic tenet that a musician, an artist, should abide by, namely that he or she puts his or her talent at the service of the composer. When Lang uses his music to convey a political message, whether or not it was his intent, he has sunk to the level of the countless composers and poets, now thankfully forgotten, who churned out odes and cantatas to Hitler, Stalin, or Mao.

Even his worst critic would have to admit that Lang Lang has an incredible ability at the piano. I hope and wish that he would devote his considerable talent towards his own artistic and musical growth. Without that, no amount of designer clothing or glossy promotional material would be able to sustain his life as a musician.

Patrick May