Musical Fiction

The lives of the great composer have always been used as raw materials for writers of fiction, be it novels, plays, or screenplays. Over the years, there have been fictionalized accounts of the lives of Chopin (A Song to Remember, Impromptu), Schumann (Song of Love), Liszt (Lisztomania, Song Without End), Grieg (Song of Norway), Mahler (Ken Russell’s Mahler, Bride of the Wind), and Tchaikovsky (The Music Lovers), just to name a few. In 1979, Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus was a great hit on London and Broadway stages, and was subsequently made into an even more popular film.

Creators of a very few of the films mentioned above did try to approximate the personality as well as facts about the composer’s life. Others, like Ken Russell, completely disregarded any semblance of truth in his insulting treatments of the lives of Mahler, Liszt and Tchaikovsky. When it comes to Hollywood and classical music, conductor and composer André Previn wrote, “When Walt Disney decided to film a life of Beethoven, he felt that deafness was too downbeat and not really germane to the story, so for once, and in glorious Technicolor, Beethoven retained perfect hearing to the end. Classical music has generally been a closed book to the movie executive mind…”

Even serious writers of fiction have taken over the lives of the composers in their creative efforts. Other than Shaffer’s Amadeus, writers as great as Alexander Pushkin fictionalized the death of Mozart in his 1830 verse drama Mozart and Salieri, subsequently made into a one-act opera by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. In Rose Tremain’s beautifully written novel Music and Silence, composer and lutenist John Dowland made a “cameo” appearance.
In 2011, writer Sarah Quigley wrote The Conductor, a fictionalized account of conductor Karl Eliasberg’s heroic efforts in organizing a performance of Dimitri Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony during the siege of Leningrad. The only fact that one can establish about the story is that Eliasberg was indeed a conductor, not a great one, but who did indeed conducted Shostakovich’s wartime symphony, which very much raised the morale of citizens of Leningrad during the siege.

Without taking away any credits or merits from Quigley’s novel, her book does remind me of Soviet journalist and writer Vasily Grossman’s 1959 magnum opus Life and Fate, an epic story of the lives of Soviet citizens during the German invasion in World War II, focusing especially on the battle of Stalingrad. I did find Quigley’s The Conductor well written, and I was especially moved by her poignant description of the sights and sounds of everyday life - the challenges to find food, any food, the heartbreak of people dying, and the cruelty and kindness people show one another in times of trial - of people in Leningrad during the siege:

There had been a scuffle outside the bakery: a woman pushed against the wall by a teenager, the bread snatched from her hand. When Nikolai himself emerged from the bakery, the woman was still sitting empty-handed on the muddy curb. No one had helped her; the rest of the queue had said nothing, done nothing, simply stared as if they had no connection to thief or victim. The crime, the indifference – neither was out of the ordinary. By now everyone had learnt that survival meant looking after yourself.

At best, fictional works based on the events surrounding the lives of the great composers can do much to make aware and popularize great music. There is of course the danger that writers and filmmakers would distort the personality of these great musical figures and reduce their lives to the level of a soap opera. As much as Amadeus raised awareness of the music in the minds of non-music lovers, I am certain that many would remember Mozart as a buffoon who just happened to have been a genius, a charge that can easily be disproven by reading the composer’s many letters.

Every piece of musical fiction, like any creative work, must really be judged on its own merit. Sarah Quigley’s The Conductor is, for me, a serious and moving work of fiction that is worthy of our attention, and a stirring tale of human tragedy and heroism.

Life and Work of a Romantic Composer

With so much of the serious biographical material on Robert Schumann available only in German, a noteworthy book on the composer in English is always most welcomed. In 1985, psychiatrist and musician Peter Ostwald wrote Schumann – The Inner Voices of a Musical Genius, excellent psychobiography of the composer. Dr. Ostwald applied the same clinical analytical methods to his book Glenn Gould: The Ecstasy and Tragedy of Genius, an effort which I thought was less successful.

Hot off the press is German musicologist Martin Geck’s Robert Schumann – The Life and Work of a Romantic Composer, translated by Stewart Spencer (University of Chicago Press, 2013). Professor Geck set out, I think, to write not so much a purely chronological account of Schumann’s life, but more a discussion of the life and art of the composer within the context of the artistic and political milieu of his time. For me, what is even more intriguing is the fact that interspersed between chapters of his book are nine Intermezzi, essays that deal with various aspects of Schumann’s art.

With any biography of a well known figure, musical or otherwise, the acid test lies in whether one can learn something new about that historical figure. Other than facts of Schumann’s life, which are well known to music lovers, I do find the author’s discussions on the composers work and art most insightful.

Although friendly with his famous contemporaries Liszt and Wagner, he was not really close to them as friends or as artists. However, Schumann shared with Liszt and Wagner the belief in the idea of “the total artwork”, and searched for ways “of ensuring that the grand idea of a universal art might acquire a physical, tangible form.” Although it is well known that Schumann was regarded as a composer as well as a music critic, the author reminded me that Schumann viewed his music criticism and his writings on music not as reviews “in the traditional sense but as a form of poetic discourse”, not as criticism but as discussions of art and music.

One also finds within the chapters and in the Intermezzi quite detailed analysis of specific works of Schumann. I find the author’s discussion on the composer’s Kreisleriana, Op. 16, particularly interesting, even exciting. Geck points out that in Schumann’s pianistic masterpiece, the composer was writing

with Kreisler looking over his shoulder, and it is Kreisler who gives him the courage to indulge a fantastical imagination unsupported by any program and to create a cycle that explores what Franz von Schober had called “life’s untamed circle” with a tremendous wealth of ideas but without the sort of safety harness that Bach and Beethoven had at their disposal in the form of an initial theme on which their respective sets of variations are based. It is now Kreisler / Schumann who provides the theme.

Geck also highlights for me two major works of Schumann’s that have been all but ignored by contemporary musicians – his opera Genoveva and the oratorio Paradise and the Peri, as well as some of the composer’s choral works. He goes on to discuss and analyse Schumann’s universally popular Träumerei and argues that the work refutes Hans Pfitzner’s dictum that “Great works of art spring from the unconscious, not from the conscious.” In Träumerei, Schumann “was deliberately flying in the face of the ideal of natural beauty” by having an extremely carefully calculated and constructed work sounding like it was the composer’s “feeling” that “painted” the scene, or the dream.

The composer’s marriage to pianist Clara Wieck, the subject of much misinformation since Schumann’s death, is also handled well by Geck. It is neither the haliographic account of an “ideal marriage between two artists” nor the feminist viewpoint of Clara’s genius becoming completely suppressed by the forces of social convention. The author discusses the role Clara played in the marriage, as well as the challenges faced by women composers in the 19^th century.

Martin Geck’s book on Schumann is not an easy read, but is an intelligent, insightful, and ultimately interesting addition to the literature on the great 19^th composer. The author did not set out to write a biographical study as exhaustive as Ernest Newman’s biography on Wagner, or Henry Louis de la Grange’s massive study on Mahler, but he does provide interested readers much new insight on Schumann’s life and the art, as well as the times in which he lived.

Chamber Music Evening

The Han-Setzer-Finckel Trio was in town yesterday as part of the Friends of Chamber Music series of concerts. The trio, comprising pianist Wu Han, violinist Philip Setzer and cellist David Finckel, essayed Felix Mendelssohn’s towering masterpiece, the Trio No. 1 in D minor, and Antonin Dvořak’s Trio in F minor, Op. 65. Mr. Finckel and Ms. Han opened the concert with Richard Strauss’ rarely performed Cello Sonata in F Major, Op. 6. Setzer and Finckel are no strangers to Vancouver audience, as they regularly appear as members of the Emerson String Quartet.

Richard Strauss’ Cello Sonata is a charming work, written when the composer was seventeen. The idiomatic piano writing is similar to that of the composer’s youthful, but unfortunately also rarely played, Piano Sonata, Op. 5. In the third movement, there was a particularly charming exchange between piano and cello. At this point in his compositional career, Strauss’ style is still firmly rooted in the early 19^th century, with the result that the music sounded almost like Schumann.

There are pieces of music whose “message” will come across regardless of the performance; there is also music that calls for a greater effort in the part of the performers to bring alive. The Strauss Sonata belongs, I think, to the latter category. To my ears, the performance needed greater projection. The ensemble between pianist and cellist was flawless, but I guess I was wishing for a bit more “soloistic” playing from the individual player, a bit more abandon.

In spite of his genius, many of Mendelssohn’s music sound, to me, effective rather than moving. There are of course notable exceptions – the E minor Violin Concerto, the Scottish Symphony, the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the work performed last night. In these works, one feels that the composer was divinely inspired. Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in D minor is one of the crown jewels of the chamber music repertoire. As individual musicians and as an ensemble, the trio certainly met the musical as well as (considerable) technical challenges the work calls for. Mendelssohn was himself a virtuoso pianist, and the piano part in this trio is as demanding as the composer’s piano concerti as well as the Variations Serieuses, Op. 54. Pianist Wu Han played her part as if these difficulties do not exist. My only minor quibble would be a slight heaviness in the piano playing in the second movement, there was a sense that the pianist was marking the beat rather than projecting the line of the music.

In the second half of the programme, the trio performed Dvořak’s very Brahmsian F minor Trio, Op. 65. The influence of Brahms is most apparent in the first and fourth movements, with the result that, especially in the first movement, the music sounded like the composer was too much in the shadow of his mentor. I thought that Dvořak’s own compositional genius did not really come through until the second movement, with the third movement sounding particularly inspired. The performance by the trio was spectacular. I was especially moved by the exquisite violin playing of Philip Setzer in the gorgeous Adagio movement, where the composer favoured the violinist with an unbelievably beautiful melody.

With such distinguished musicians performing, it was a little disappointing to see a half-filled hall last night. A friend, a long-time subscriber to the series, told me that there used to be waiting list for subscription to these concerts. The sparse attendance to this wonderful performance serves once again as a reminder of what role the arts play in our society today. I do hope and pray that the Friends of Chamber Music, now in its 65^th season, will be able to continue to bring to our stages world class chamber ensembles performing music from this, the purest form (and most democratic) form of music making.

A Magnificent Cinematic Experience

Taiwanese cinema has come a long way since its very humble beginnings. From films made under Japanese colonial rule in the first half of the 20^th century, to movies made under the auspices of the Nationalist government since 1949; from barely watchable, low budget kung-fu films in the 1960’s and 1970’s to diabetes-inducing romantic melodrama, Taiwanese cinema came of age during the so-called New Wave period, beginning in 1982, and it has brought to audiences some of the most innovative contributions to the genre of film.

Director Edward Yang (1947 - 2007) has done for the family drama in the late 20^th century what master filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu had done in the first half of that same century. In fact, Yang acknowledged his debt to Ozu by naming one of his first films Taipei Story, as homage to Ozu’s Tokyo Story, widely considered by film connoisseurs to be one of the greatest films ever made.

I am one of those people who can watch the same movie many times. Like listening to a great piece of music, I never cease to discover previously unnoticed nuances when I re-watch a worthwhile film. One film by Yang, one of his most magical and moving films, that I have returned to time and again, is Yi Yi (2000), loosely translated as A One and a Two – a more literal translation would be One and One.

Running an epic 178 minutes, Yi Yi tells the story of an upper-middle class family in Taipei. Each member of the family: NJ, an executive in a software company, Min-Min, his wife and their two children, teenage Ting-Ting and Yang-Yang, their young son.

The movie begins with the wedding of Min-Min’s ne’er-do-well younger brother and his very pregnant fiancé. When the family returns home after the banquet, they discover that Min-Min’s mother has suffered a stroke and is now in a coma. One of the most interesting aspects of this movie is that this elderly figure, who remains unconscious throughout the film, serves as a silent confessor, someone everyone in the film would go to with their problems, their thoughts, their worries, as well as a channel for them to express their suppressed emotions.

Throughout the film, every member of the family searches for the meaning in their respective lives – NJ’s company is going through a crisis, and his brother-in-law owes him money, then Min-Min, as a result of her mother’s illness, goes through a spiritual crisis and finds a complete lack of meaning in her own life, and Ting Ting experiences the first brush of romance; even little Yang Yang, forever bullied by the older girls at school, becomes suddenly aware of the opposite sex. The movie examines both the interior lives of each character, as well as the interaction of each character with the people around them.

For me, the star of the film is Yang Yang, played with a perfect combination of innocence and wisdom by Jonathan Chang. With the aid of a camera, Yang Yang goes around taking pictures of people’s back, because people never can really see their own backs, says he. Eventually, little Yang Yang is the one that manages to say what all the adults in the film fail to convey.

Yi Yi deals with the crisis of spiritual emptiness and clashes of values in the modern man, and the forces that threaten to break down the family, all against the backdrop – the sights and sounds - of a metropolis. Like Ozu, and unlike many of today’s commercial directors trying to get a film to clock in under 120 minutes, Yang takes time to tell a story, and allows for the characters and the action to fill in each frame – and what beautiful frames they are! We see many of the scenes in the film through an open window, or through the reflection of a window pane in the night, almost as if we are eavesdropping upon an intimate conversation. In one scene, we hear the fight between a next door neighbour and her lover, but we “see” this conversation from the outside of the darkened apartment window. At the end of the movie, the audience witnesses a supernatural occurrence that leaves it wondering – did it really happen, or was it merely a dream?

Because of his short life, Edward Yang’s output is relatively small, but every one of his films deserves to be explored. Like any great film, we see in Yi Yi a little bit of ourselves, the questions we ask of our lives, and a reminder of how easy it is to lose sight of one’s integrity

Stereotyping Wagner

If you haven’t seen the 1978 movie The Boys from Brazil, I can tell you that it is a most exciting and enjoyable film.

Based on the novel by Ira Levin, the story tells of the exceedingly evil Dr. Josef Mengele’s attempt to clone Aldof Hitlers (yes, plural). The movie boasts extraordinary star power – Sir Laurence Olivier as Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman, and a brilliant casting choice of Gregory Peck as Dr. Mengele. Peck, most noted for his playing of extremely decent men, most notably Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mocking Bird, masterfully plays the Nazi physician, with evil oozing out of every pore of the character. Interestingly, the movie also stars John Rubinstein, youngest son of pianist Arthur Rubinstein, as a young American aiding Lieberman.

At one point in the film, Dr. Mengele is reliving his past glories, and at that very moment, the music swells to a full orchestral fortissimo, and the music sounds very much like that of Richard Wagner. Indeed, Wagner’s music has been so much associated with the Nazi era, especially in the popular media, the unknowing might think that the composer had lived in the 1930’s.

Yes, Richard Wagner was no saint, and his anti-Semitic article, Das Judenthum in der Musik (Jewishness in Music), was not his finest moment as a man or artist, to say the least. In fact, certain members of the Wagner family were enthusiastic supporters of the Führer in the 1930’s and 1940’s. And Jewish inmates of the concentration camps probably did hear the music of Wagner played by the camp commandant, and would therefore have very painful association with it. Yet, to stereotype the music of Wagner as only associated with the Nazi is grossly unfair.

In his wonderfully witty and touching memoir, A Book of Hours, Father M. Owen Lee, one of opera’s most astute observers, shares with his reader an exchange he had with a German innkeeper in Nuremberg, who has very negative views on the composer. To me, no one has written more eloquently about Wagner, the man and the music, as Father Lee has, and what he writes in the book can give us much food for thought:

(I)n a many-sided genius like Wagner, you get many faults, self-destructive faults, that we ordinary people don’t have. That is one reason why the works of art that geniuses produce are so rich. What they can’t work out in their lives they are compelled to work out in their art.

About Wagner being misused by Hitler, Father Lee says:

(W)orks of art are often created by very imperfect men, out of a kind of madness that, if wrongly used, can be destructive.

He goes on to point out that the Bible has been quite often misused for man’s own end, just as Homer’s Iliad was used by Alexander the Great to justify his massacres.

When I listen to the music of Wagner, I hear love, compassion, magnanimity, generosity of spirit, nobility, and inner peace, qualities that Wagner himself did not possess. Again, quoting Father Owen Lee:

An artist has to pay for the gift of his genius. Wagner paid. He was defeated, one way or another, all his life. His own self-destructiveness always pursued him – possessed him, even. But what he couldn’t do, his characters do. They come to understand themselves and find peace.

I believe that it is possible, even crucial, to dissociate an artist from his or her art. In his play Amadeus, Peter Shaffer portrays the great composer as a vulgar, over-sexed, childish man. Although not historically accurate, I believe the playwright is making exactly the same point as Father Lee - that geniuses are, more often than not, less than perfect men or women.

Wagner’s curse is that his music was purportedly loved by Hitler, although I suspect the Führer’s understanding of Wagner’s music was probably very superficial. Hitler also professed to love the music of Schubert and Bruckner, and their names have never been tainted because of it. Another one of Father Owen Lee’s many books is titled Wagner: The Terrible Man and His Truthful Art. The very rich body of music was Wagner’s true contribution to humanity.

To all who read this article, I wish you a very joyous and peaceful Christmas, and a very happy and healthy 2013.

50th Anniversary in Los Angeles

On January 15^th, 1961, a young conductor named Zubin Mehta arrived in Los Angeles to rehearse the Los Angeles Philharmonic in preparation for a series of concerts. Mr. Mehta was almost completely unknown to orchestra or audience in Los Angeles. He had just been appointed music director designate for the Montreal Symphony, but who in Los Angeles had ever heard of the Montreal Symphony in 1961? Mehta’s appearance with the orchestra was the result of a cancellation by Fritz Reiner, who was supposed to have conducted.

At both rehearsals and concerts, the chemistry between conductor and orchestra was apparent from the start. The day after an especially successful concert, the orchestra administration offered Mr. Mehta the post of “associate conductor”. There have been many versions of the events that transpired next, but what eventually happened was that Georg Solti, the orchestra’s music director designate, was offended that he was not consulted about Mr. Mehta’s appointment, and resigned before he even began his tenure with the orchestra. Suddenly left without a music director, and seeing Mehta’s incredible success with both orchestra and audience, they offered the job to him instead. For the next 16 seasons, Mr. Mehta elevated the Los Angeles Philharmonic to a world class orchestra, with successful concerts throughout the musical world and recordings that still remained cherished items among music lovers.

This past weekend, the Los Angeles Philharmonic celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the beginning of Mr. Mehta’s tenure as music director of the orchestra. The programme was a re-creation of the concert he conducted as music director – the Busoni version of Mozart’s Overture to Don Giovanni, which incorporates the use of trombones as well as music from the end of the opera, Hindemith’s Mathis der Mahler Symphony, and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 7.  It is a serious programme, certainly far from the “showy” pieces Mr. Mehta has been accused of favouring.

Mr. Mehta’s 16-year tenure with the orchestra was not all smooth sailing. Despite his chemistry with the orchestra and popularity with audience, he would, for years, receive scathing reviews from the Los Angeles Times and its chief critic, Martin Bernheimer, who seemed to have devoted much of his career to (unsuccessfully) destroying Mr. Mehta’s reputation. Indeed, in his younger days, Zubin Mehta did not seem to have much luck with the critics, the main complaints being the conductor’s apparent superficiality, a lack of discipline and “depth” in his interpretations. I remember one reviewer, praising the conductor’s recording of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies, adding that, “Alas, he is good for nothing else.” Such a statement is not only an insult to Mr. Mehta’s talents, but also disparaging towards the music of Liszt.

I have had the good fortune to hear Mr. Mehta in person on several occasions. In those occasions, and in listening to the conductor’s many recordings, I find the complaints from the gentlemen of the press entirely unjustified.

Is Zubin Mehta a great conductor? Certainly.  Is he the “greatest”? I do not know, because I do not know what the word means. From listening to his music making, I can only say that Mr. Mehta is a hugely talented and extremely serious musician. Yes, he did conduct the by now famous “Three Tenors” concert, but then so did James Levine, whose reputation did not seem to have suffered from such an association.

In recent years, critics seem to have been kinder, at least fairer, to Mr. Mehta. Perhaps he will now receive what he has always deserved, to be judged by the merits of each performance, and not by the preconceived and malicious stereotypes.

Rather than relying on the words of the “distinguished” critics of the Times, maybe we could end by recalling the words of Arthur Rubinstein, who said, “Some of my most joyous and inspired performances have been in collaboration with Zubin Mehta.”

Endorsement indeed, coming from a pianist who had probably played with most of the greatest conductors of the 20^th century.

Alone with Ryo Yanagitani

When pianist Glenn Gould recorded the piano music of Jan Sibelius, the pianist experimented with what he termed acoustical “orchestration.” Different sets of microphones were placed at various distances from the piano, some only a few inches from the piano, and others yards away from the instrument. The final master tape was a result of a “mixing plan” that “favors (sic) the image of the instrument most appropriate to the music of the moment.” Listening to the recording, the sound is always subtly shifting from one “perspective” to another, all in order to suit the “mood” of the music.

Listening to pianist Ryo Yanagitani’s latest recording – Alone With Debussy – I could not help but think that Gould’s aforementioned recording plan would have further enhanced these already outstanding performances. Let me begin by saying that engineer Chris Cline did an excellent job of capturing the natural sound of the piano, and the recorded sound is one that is wonderfully alive and present. The recording team favoured a sound that presented the piano in a rather close-up fashion, almost like the pick up favoured by jazz pianists. The microphone placement in the present recording perfectly captured the musical character and sound of pieces such as the Prélude, Menuet, and Passpied from the Suite Bergamasque, the Prélude and Toccata from Pour le Piano, and Mouvement from Images. Other pieces, such as the justly famous Clair de Lune, the two Arabesques, and Reflets dans l’eau, I feel, would perhaps benefit from a more distant microphone pickup.

The music of Claude Debussy forms the cornerstone of many of the greatest pianists of our time. For me, as a listener, not every one who plays Debussy, even the greatest pianists, plays him convincingly or idiomatically. When I was younger, I was bowed over by Walter Gieseking, especially the ravishing pianissimos. After a while though, I felt that everything he played began to sound the same. Arturo Benedetti Michaelangeli’s playing of the composer benefits from absolutely perfect technical control, but leaves me cold emotionally. Yet another great pianist and artist, Claudio Arrau, was surprisingly heavy handed when he played Debussy.

In this new recording, I find Yanagitani’s interpretation of the many familiar pieces, and the one unfamiliar (for me) Ballade, presented in this recording, both technically impregnable and musically utterly convincing. I loved the spaciousness and impeccable sense of timing in his playing of the Prélude from the Suite Bergamasque, as well as the rhythmic incisiveness of the Menuet, and Passpied. The very much maligned Clair de Lune sounds ravishing in the hands of the young pianist, and shines forth as the masterpiece it is, as does the relatively rarely played Ballade.

Pour le Piano was Debussy’s efforts in fully exploiting the “vast possibilities of color (sic) and texture the instrument has to offer” (from programme notes). It is also a most severe test of the pianist technical and interpretative abilities. Yanagitani very successfully and effortlessly brought out the colours and excitement of the Prélude and Toccata, and conveyed the absolute serenity of the Sarabande.

Ryo Yanagitani sets an equally high level in his playing of Book 1 of Images. The difficulty lies not only in rising to the considerable technical challenges, but in capturing and recreating the composer’s three sonic evocations. Listening to these very pieces reminds me yet again how musical masterpieces can sound new and fresh under the hands of a talented artist, as is case with Mr. Yanagitani.

This is Ryo Yanagitani’s second commercial recording. Both this and his first recording (Alone With Chopin) had been beautifully recorded in San Antonio, Texas. Judging from the playing in this recording, I expect and hope that we will be hearing much more from this talented Canadian artist. Mr. Yanagitani will soon be in residence in Washington, D.C., as a result of being one of the winners of the S&R Foundation’s Fellowship programme. The capital of the free world will, at least temporarily, be the beneficiary of Mr. Yanagitani’s artistry and talents.

Canada must find a way to lure him back to his native land.