In Search of the True Musician

A recent article in the New York Times bears the eye-catching title Virtuosos Becoming a Dime a Dozen. In it, Mr. Anthony Tommasini, critic for the paper, wrote that, “A young pianist has come along who can seemingly play anything, and easily, is not the big deal it would have been a short time ago.” Mr. Tommasini went on to discuss how technical proficiency at the piano has been raised to an incredibly high level, comparing it to athletes breaking the record for the four-minute mile, once thought to be an impossible feat. 

The role of the interpreter is to bring forth the logic and beauty of a great piece of music, to draw the attention of the listeners toward the music and not the player. We have a problem when the interpreter uses music as a mean to glorify oneself, something that we do see in some of today’s musicians.  Naturally, a great musician will inevitably bring his or her own special view of the music and inject freshness into the score. Even so, the music is, or should be, the focus of the listeners’ attention.

To be sure, musicians like Arthur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Jascha Heifetz, Yehudi Menuhin, Herbert on Karajan and Arturo Toscanini, were very strong personalities. But when these artists came on stage, they knew they were there in service to the composer and the music, not to themselves. Today, there are many pianists who can play the piano very well indeed. Nothing seems to elude them, at least technically.

But are they better musicians?

To be sure, we can measure how fast an instrumentalist polish off a Chopin Etude, or a Paganini Caprice, or how many false notes he or she had played. But we cannot quantify interpretation, depth, musicality, or whether the playing moves an audience.  Playing an instrument is not quite the same as running the four-minute mile.

Ever since the advent of the long-playing records, where recorded technology allows the elimination of wrong notes in a performance, audience attending a concert have pretty much expect the same level of polish in a live performance. We live in an age when, with the press (or touch) of a button, we can instantly access a “perfect” performance of any piece of music. Because of this, audiences have come to expect perfection in performance, at least from a technical standpoint. Or they might expect a live performance to sound "just like my CD at home."

I once listened to Yundi Li’s live performance of Chopin’s First Piano Concerto. Afterwards, I listened to one of Arthur Rubinstein’s many recordings of the same piece. In terms of musicality, depth of feeling, and getting into the core of Chopin’s music, Mr. Rubinstein’s performance made Mr. Li sound like a very talented conservatory student. Ironically, Mr. Li’s live performance was technically more polished than Mr. Rubinstein’s studio recording. Can any of the no doubt talented Julliard students playing Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto match the unbearable excitement and indescribable tenderness in Horowitz’s performance of the same piece? Can anyone today play Bach with the same clarity and passion as Glenn Gould? And I challenge any of today’s young keyboard titans to give a performance of greater sweep and sense of grandeur than Alfred Cortot’s recording of Chopin’s Etude in C Major, Op. 10, No. 1.

Yes, there are indeed many pianists today who can play their instrument very well. But look at whom we had in the first half of the 20^th century – Emil von Sauer, Moritz Rosenthal, Harold Bauer, Leopold Godowsky, Frederic Lamond, José Vianna da Mota, Eugene d’Albert, Alexander Siloti, Edouard Risler, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Josef Lhévinne, Marguerite Long, Ricardo Vines, Josef Hoffman, Erno von Dohnányi, Alfred Cortot, Ossip Garbilowitsch, Harold Samuel, Egon Petri, Artur Schnabel, Ignaz Friedman, Wilhelm Backhaus, Arthur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Myra Hess, Benno Moiseiwitsch, Clara Haskil, Annie Fischer, Walter Gieseking, Alexander Brailowsky, Guiomar Novaes, Simon Barère, Robert Casadesus, Solomon, Rudolf Serkin, Claudio Arrau, Wilhelm Kempff, Dinu Lipatti, Maria Yudina, Mischa Levitzki, Vladimir Sofrontisky – and this list is not even exhaustive. A little later on, we had Alfred Brendel, Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels, Rudu Lupu, Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Leon Fleisher, Gary Graffman, Byron Janis, Van Cliburn, Maurizio Pollini and Glenn Gould, to name just a few.

Would Mr. Tommasini have said that virtuosos were a dime a dozen then?

The fact is that all the pianists I named above were stupendous technicians, but the difference is that they did not make technical perfection their chief concern. And I believe that is what made them such interesting artists, each in their own right.

It is a happy fact that we still do have great artists in our midst. Thank goodness we still have pianists like Richard Goode, Murray Perahia, Krystian Zimerman, Andras Schiff, and Mitsuko Uchida, pianists who play with musical integrity, and depth of feeling. In the younger generation, I would single out Ingrid Fliter, runner-up to Yundi Li at the 2000 Chopin Competition, and Ingolf Wunder, coincidentally another silver medallist in the 2010 edition of the same competition. Both are original artists with interesting ideas about music. Again, although equipped with a complete technique, they use it in service to the music, to the composer, not as an end in itself. Certainly true artists are not a “dime a dozen”, a phrase that cheapens both the art and the artists. 

And thank God many of these artists would play a wrong note now and again. It serves to remind us that there is a human being playing in Carnegie Hall.

Mahler in Bellingham

There is something very special about hearing young musicians play. Not jaded by “experience”, young people can sometimes bring freshness and excitement to even very familiar repertoire.

Such was the case yesterday at the final concert of the Marrowstone Summer Music Festival, based on the campus of Western Washington University in Bellingham. This is a two-week festival in which young musicians from both the United States and (to a lesser extent) Canada participate in coaching, masterclasses, rehearsals, culminating in performances of both chamber and orchestral music.

There were two full-sized orchestras that played yesterday – a Concert Orchestra made up of younger and less experienced players, and a Festival Orchestra made up of pre-college musicians with more performing experience. In the first half of the concert, the Concert Orchestra gave exciting performances of Brahms's very familiar and justly popular Academic Festival Overture, and Benjamin Brittien’s less familiar but nonetheless beautiful Symphonic Suite from his neglected opera Gloriana. I would judge the Britten to have been more successful than the Brahms. Conductor Ryan Dudenbostel brought incredible energy and excitement to the Brahms, but failed to gage the many climaxes within the relatively short piece. This was unfortunately not helped by the very resonant acoustic of the university’s Performing Arts Centre, and this made for a very loud performance. In the Britten, the conductor was able to bring out more of the many subtle shades of colours to the four sections of this very beautiful suite.

It is difficult to imagine that audiences in Gustav Mahler’s day found his symphonies largely incomprehensible. Today, performances of Mahler’s nine symphonies are inevitably considered as “events” by both orchestral players and audience. The Festival Orchestra’s performance of the composer’s first symphony was extremely successful. Conductor Stephen Rogers Radcliffe had obviously thought carefully about the music, and led the young artists in a highly polished and exciting performance of Mahler’s first symphonic opus. The musicians obviously responded to the kaleidoscopic changes in colour and the angst-on-sleeve feeling of the music. From the hushed opening of the first movement to the exultant finale, musicians and conductor were one as they journeyed through Mahler’s huge orchestral canvas. Only in the second movement did I wish that Mr. Radcliffe had made more of the idiosyncratic rhythm of the ländler. Likewise, in the third movement, at letter 5 (Ziemlich langsam), the playing was perhaps a touch too straight-laced. According to Bruno Walter, Mahler’s one-time assistant, this section should be played with a degree of vulgarity. Nevertheless, this performance was a remarkable accomplishment, especially considering the relatively short (but I am sure intensive) time that the musicians had lived with this music.

Regardless of whether these young musicians would go on to a career in music, an experience such as Marrowstone is an invaluable experience in any young person’s personal and artistic growth. In today’s society, obsessed with competitive sports and popular culture, it is extremely touching to see young people with as much dedication to the arts as many others would to hockey or soccer. These young players give us hope in a future where great music remains an important part of our humanity.

Mahler's Catholicism

During Vancouver’s Cultural Olympiad 2010, music lovers had an opportunity to experience Gustav Mahler’s 8^th symphony, nicknamed “Symphony of a Thousand” because of the colossal forces it called for. Any performance of this music is always an "event".

The opening movement of the 8th symphony is a monumental setting of “Veni Creator Spiritus,” a hymn written in 809 by Raban Maur, a Benedictine monk and prelate living in Mainz, to celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit to the apostles on the day of Pentecost.

Listening to that stirring music has always prompted me to think of Mahler’s faith, his religious conviction. Mahler was Jewish by birth, and a great number of musical scholars have dismissed his conversion to Catholicism, accusing him of mere opportunism.

Composers reveal themselves most truthfully in their artistic creations, and an examination of many of Mahler’s symphonies and songs leads me to believe that the composer’s Catholic conversion as much more than just a baptism of convenience.

Before Beethoven, symphonies have been purely instrumental works. But ever since Beethoven, in his 9^th symphony, introduces solo and choral voices in the famous “Ode to Joy” finale, composers have been following his example. Four out of nine of Mahler’s symphonies include sung texts, chosen with great care from prose and poetry that have great personal meaning for him. For Mahler, every text he chooses to set to music reflects his own belief and conviction. Significantly, the words he set to music invariably address death and resurrection, life in heaven, and man’s relationship to God.

A solo alto sings the hymn-like Urlicht (Primal Light) movement in Mahler’s second symphony, “I am of God and wish to return to God!” In the finale of that same work, subtitled “Resurrection”, the choir intones, “Oh believe, you were not born in vain, have not lived in vain, suffered in vain,” and ends with, “Arise, yes, you will arise from the dead, my heart, in an instant! What you have conquered will bear you to God.” Here is Mahler, the believer, going beyond the 19^th century’s metaphysical view of redemption, declaring his religious conviction for the world to see.

In the composer’s third symphony, a chorus of angels rejoices, “That Peter was freed of sin,” and that, “Heavenly joy is a happy city. Heavenly joy knows no end. Heavenly joy was granted by Jesus to Peter and us for our eternal felicity.” Mahler continues in the same vein with his fourth symphony, which ends with a charming description of heavenly life through the eyes of a child.

Finally, one of Mahler’s many songs, Um Mitternacht (At Midnight), describes a man, anxious and lying awake at night. He is searching his soul, and longing for peace. At the end, he prays the affirming and consoling words, “Lord! Lord over life and death, You are standing on guard, You, You are on guard at midnight!”

Certainly doesn’t sound to me like the voice of a cynical non-believer, who chooses to become a Catholic as a mere career move.

On Hearing Ingrid Fliter's Beethoven Sonata Recording

When I was a little boy, I used to anxiously await every new recording by my musical heroes – Arthur Rubinstein, Glenn Gould and Herbert von Karajan. Since those golden times, the nature of the recording “industry” has greatly changed, and recording companies are much more reluctant to take chances, not only on repertoire, but on emerging artists as well. Image has now become the forefront of any recording company executive, and CD booklets often display glossy, carefully manipulated images of young musicians, making it look more like a fashion magazine than linear notes for the music being played.

I was delighted when EMI announced that pianist Ingrid Fliter had joined their roster of artists. Ever since winning second place at the 2000 Chopin Competition in Warsaw, Ms. Fliter has busily performing all over the globe. Unlike a few of today’s young paragons of the keyboard, Ms. Fliter does not rely upon a vast publicity machine to further herself, and has always put her talent and artistry in the service of the music she is playing. Every recital I have heard her play has been illuminating.

So far, Ms. Fliter has recorded two Chopin albums for EMI – a debut album covering many of the composer’s different genres of music, as well as a recording of the complete Waltzes. Most recently, she has shared with us her thoughts on the sonatas of Beethoven. Her latest release includes performances of three of Ludwig van Beethoven’s thirty-two solo piano sonatas – Sonatas No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 13, ‘Pathétique’, No. 17 in D Minor, ‘Tempest’, and the justly famous No. 23 in F Minor, Op. 57, ‘Appassionata’.

Recorded in the idyllic surroundings of Potton Hall in Suffolk, England, I was amazed at how beautifully the EMI engineers captured the sound of Ms. Fliter’s piano playing. Even the most fortissimo passages, of which there are many, did not sacrifice beauty in sound for the sake of brilliance.

In the Grande Sonata Pathétique, Ms. Fliter immediately commands our attention in the opening Grave section. Unlike some artists, she does not overdo the dotted rhythm. This is of course a matter of personal taste, but in this case it serves to give the music a sense of repose in the midst of high drama. In this sonata, as well as in the other two on the disc, Ms. Fliter has obviously scrupulously studied and observed Beethoven’s dynamic markings as well as the many tempi and performance indications. All of the sf, rf, fp, sfp markings, hallmarks of so much of Beethoven’s music, have been realized to perfection. With the fp markings, Ms. Fliter sometimes give the note, or the chord, a fraction of a second more time for the sound to die away, a very interesting thought.

I like her choice of tempo in the beautiful Adagio cantabile movement, giving the music a forward motion without compromising on highlighting the beauty of the sound. This can also be said of the Rondo-allegro, where she allows the quiet pathos of the drama to unfold.

In the Appassionata, the eerily quiet and deliberately colourless opening contrasts wonderfully and dramatically with the first outbursts of ascending chords at measure 17. And yes, she does keep the tempo very steady in these ascending chords. What strikes me about Ms. Fliter’s performance of this sonata is how she balances the beauty of the individual “moments” with the overall architecture of the piece, giving the impression that the performance is conceived in one enormous arch from beginning to end. The Andante con moto movement, sometimes treated as a mere intermezzo between the two outer movements, is carefully thought out and executed, and the transition between this and the final movement is realized to perfection.

In the third movement, Ms. Fliter even successfully managed the crescendo passages where Beethoven has written single note runs for just one hand, an extremely difficult assignment since the notes can easily become rough for the sake of an increase in volume. (This is akin to what Beethoven often does in his symphonies, giving fast tremolo passages to the high strings, instructing them to play a crescendo with no support from the woodwinds and the brass.) In the presto section, a cause for sin for many musicians, she maintains the drive and the forward motion of the music, without losing the sense of rhythm.

For me, the highlight of this recording is her simply magical account of the Tempest sonata. Hearing her performance of the composer’s middle period masterpiece really shows me how the music foreshadows that of Beethoven’s final compositions. In just the first nine measures of the opening movement, Beethoven lavished the music with five different tempo changes, and almost as many dynamic indications. Ms. Fliter observed the composer’s instructions, not in a slavish way, but to highlight the genius and beauty of the music.

Ms. Fliter’s performance captures my attention with the first chord of the Adagio movement. And even the tricky left hand triplet figures did not disturb the serenity and peacefulness she brings to the music. The return of the theme at measure 51, accompanied by rapid 32^nd-note runs in the left hand, stunningly played by the artist, reminds me so much of the unbelievably beautiful return of the theme at measure 130 in the Arietta movement of the Op. 111 sonata. Ms. Fliter deftly manages this incredible thematic recapitulation in the present sonata.

At risk of exhausting the list of superlatives, I simply cannot think of a more beautifully realized rendition of the Allegretto movement of the Tempest sonata. The “magic movement” in this movement, for me, is when Beethoven takes us, ever-so-briefly, into E-flat major at measure 232. I am certain that Beethoven would have been pleased with how Ms. Fliter highlights this special moment in the music.

I do not know how many discs Ms. Fliter’s contract with EMI commits her to, and I do wish for further recordings of her Chopin performances. But after hearing her performances of the Beethoven sonatas on this present disc, I can only say, “More Beethoven please!”

Evening at Symphony

The first time I heard the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, they played Brahms’ First Piano Concerto with Claudio Arrau, as well as the Symphony No. 1 in C Minor. The conductor that evening was Maestro Kazuyoshi Akiyama, then Music Director of the orchestra. The music, as well as the conducting that evening, made an indelible impression on me. Since then, the orchestra has been conducted by several different Music Directors, but I always recall the dozen or so years with Mr. Akiyama with particular fondness.

So it was with eager anticipation that I attended the Saturday May 2^nd concert of the orchestra, when Mr. Akiyama returned to conduct Brahms’ First Symphony once more. During his tenure as Music Director in this city, the conductor has repeatedly shown his affinity for the central European symphonic repertoire, the “bread and butter” repertoire for any orchestra, in particular, the works of Brahms, Schumann, Dvorak, Strauss, Mahler and Wagner. This concert was yet another reminder of what a great (and somewhat underappreciated) conductor and musician we had in our midst all those years ago.

The other two pieces the orchestra played in that wonderful concert were Alexina Louie’s The Eternal Earth, a colourful three-movement that fully exploited the resources of a very large orchestra, and Jean Sibelius’ dark and brooding Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47, with the young violinist Augustin Hadelich.

Originally written for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, The Eternal Earth is, in spite of its relative brevity, a rich, large-scale work, with two brilliant outer movements, and a more lyrical central movement that serves as the emotional core of the music. Mr. Akiyama brought out the brilliance of the orchestration, and tied the three movements into one organic, cohesive whole.

Mr. Hadelich appeared to be a gentle and unassuming young man, in possession of an awesome violin technique, with musicality to match. Conductor and soloist were of one mind in exploiting the dark, swirling colours of Sibelius’ only major work for the instrument, and the solo violin blended into the rich orchestral fabric perfectly. Like many of the great 19^th century instrumental concerti, the Sibelius is as much a symphonic work as it is a solo concerto. Mr. Akiyama is an ideal collaborator for any soloist, and the result was a deeply satisfying and moving account of this popular late romantic masterpiece.

For me, the highlight of the concert was Akiyama and the orchestra’s account of Brahms’ First Symphony, Op. 68. This particular symphony figures prominently in Mr. Akiyama’s repertoire, and as I sat and listened to it again that night, it seems to me that his understanding of this music has deepened over the years. This was muscular Brahms, but without sacrificing the many lyrical moments throughout the piece.

There are two kinds of conductors in the world, ones who conduct the beat and others who conduct the phrase. Mr. Akiyama belongs solidly to the latter camp. Throughout the performance, he was not so much conducting the musicians, but prompting and guiding the musicians through the incredible four-movement journey of the symphony. I felt, from the ponderous opening of the first movement to the last triumphal notes of the finale, that Mr. Akiyama has taken the music through one single, long musical line. Perhaps because of his inspired direction, the musicians played with openness in sound, and with a fervour that we do not always find with other conductors.  

How fortunate we are to have Mr. Akiyama as Conductor Laureate with our orchestra. I only hope for many more years of his continued presence in our musical scene.

Young Artist with a Voice

It is sometimes wonderful to attend a musical event with no knowledge or expectation of the artist performing. Such was the case for me on Thursday, April 28^th, 2011, when pianist Yevgeny Sudbin played a solo recital in Vancouver. One can then respond to the music making without any prior exposure to, or bias towards, the artist.

Mr. Sudbin opened his recital with Franz Joseph Haydn’s Sonata in B Minor, Hob XVI: 32. His playing of the opening movement, as well as the subsequent Menuet, is beautiful and spacious, with impeccable timing of Haydn’s many pregnant pauses. The final presto movement was obsessive and relentless, with just the right degree of pathos. The young pianist drew a gorgeous tone from the instrument, which blended in perfectly with the beautiful acoustics of the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts.

The recital continued with four of Dimitri Shostakovich’s from the composer’s Op. 34 Preludes. In composing this set of preludes, Shostakovich followed the same key sequence as Chopin in his Op. 28 Preludes. Sudbin realized these four miniature masterpieces to perfection, highlighting for us the beauty, the black humour as well as the irony in this music.

Mr. Sudbin’s playing of Chopin’s Ballades Nos. 3 and 4 reminded me that even among some of the greatest pianists of any time, there are only a handful who can really play Chopin convincingly. To be sure, the young artist’s playing was extremely polished and musical, but he seemed to me to be wandering from one very beautiful episode to another very beautiful episode. Chopin, especially in the larger scale works, requires an artist who could give the music a structural integrity, where one musical idea serves as the seed for the next.

After the intermission, the pianist continued with Franz Liszt’s Transcendental Etude No. 11 in D-flat Major, the “Harmonies du Soir”, followed without interruption by Maurice Ravel’s equally transcendental Gaspard de la nuit. Perhaps Mr. Sudbin wanted to show the evolution, or relationship, of the harmonic language from Liszt to Ravel. The pianist’s incredibly beautiful tone certainly served him well in the Harmonies du Soir.

Sudbin gave a simply ravishing account of Ondine, the first movement of Gaspard de la nuit. He played Ondine with a very French sound, with the largest imaginable palette of sound colour. The second movement, Le gibet, is probably the trickiest movement to interpret. I believe that this movement should be played with an absolutely strict tempo, and I felt that Mr. Sudbin perhaps tried to make the music move along just a touch too much. The pianist has an incredible facility, and this is apparent in Scarbo, the final movement. But this incredible facility at the instrument seemed to have taken something away from the frightening, hallucinatory aspects of this music. To my ears, his playing of Scarbo sounded too much like his playing in Ondine. I believe that his quest for a beautiful sound took something away from the edge, the frightening intensity that this music calls for.

After an enthusiastic ovation from the capacity audience, Mr. Sudbin gave us two encores, an ardent reading of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G Major, and a stormy, exciting account of the same composer’s G Minor Prelude.

This is obviously a very talented young pianist, an artist who has something to say. Mr. Sudbin is booked to play with the Vancouver Symphony next season, in Mozart’s 24^th Piano Concerto. If this performance is any indication of what this young man has to offer, Vancouver audience should have a treat in store for them next year.

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