WMV Music Web Log

OK, a blog about technique (piano technique, that is). So, I used to hear other piano students play astonishingly well, and feel quite abashed. What I was responding to was often a kind of physical grace, agility, elegance, and power, which I didn't see myself as particularly having at the piano. (Why didn't I give up? That's another story). So I think technique is precisely this grace, this physical joy in the process in all its big and little gestures. And technique is about joy in the feeling in your own body in relation to the making of the music. And I remember gratefully now these young people and how beautifully they made music, according to their own most natural and graceful way. So it was not that I had no intrinsic grace and elegance - it was that I had not yet discovered or understood how to cherish my own. There is a lot of forgiveness involved! But there is also an exhilarating permission.

Oh, by the way, check out this video (and cakeyoo's other videos): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGgYSere2QE

And this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvcQ2BnkYxg&mode=user&search=

Cool! The 2nd movement of the Stravinsky Sonata has an accompaniment figure which sounds just like spitting. Suits my mood.

It is all very depressing. A public funding peer review panel that apparently thinks our chamber music concerts are "insular" and don't serve the public, because we draw an average audience of 80 people. In NY that would be considered a pretty good crowd for a chamber music concert. The hall only seats 100-120, and we have had as many as 131. Furthermore, they feel that our artist fees are far too high - too high!! We barely pay union scale. I am depressed beyond words.

The most important lessons I have learned, however, come from an almost 40 year association with my artist wife, Marilyn Banner. She goes into her studio every day before a blank canvas, and makes and unmakes work drawing directly from an inner muse. This is quite a humbling thing for an artist. I have learned that when the muse is not there, it is just not there. It has its own rhythms and moods and seasons, and there is no way you can force it or fake it. If I sit down to the piano and nothing sounds right, I just get up. I can plan all I want to, but if a piece of music does not want to be played, it won't be.

Another "pedagogical" thought: in the last 10 years I have learned a tremendous amount from my colleagues, the musicians, singers, and composers that I work with, things that no piano teacher could ever have taught. It was on the job training! This last year has been particularly fruitful, because I have been able to learn from first-rate jazz musicians about syncopation, swing, rhythm, accent, "laying back", tight harmony, arrangements, etc. I have learned from opera singers what really inspired Chopin's piano music, and how exciting ornamentation can be in a vocal line. I have learned from composers what they mean and don't mean by certain markings, what is most important to them, and what not so important. I have learned from master performers about relaxing in front of an audience, and when it is OK to improvise (even in "classical" music). I have learned from orchestra musicians how to count, and from jazz musicians how not to count. I have learned how to be "cool" in the middle of red hot music. All in all, this is probably the most exciting period yet in my "music education".

Interesting comment today on our YouTube video of the Smetana Trio (third movement):

"The music was very nice, but Mr Banner, what's with the getting up when you hit those subito forte sections? I'm all for expression and getting into the music, but those things often distract the audience. But like I said, the music was lovely. Four stars."

I haven't figured out yet how to reply. These responses come to mind: I used to get up more, but I seem to do it less as I get older and tireder. Any musician who objects to me standing, growling, or shouting is automatically fired. (And believe me, it has happened). Maybe the audience needs a little more distraction. I'm just a piano player, but I'm not dead yet.

Glad you liked the music! I did too.

I don't know what you think of the value of the arts, but I can tell you what it means to me to sit down at the piano. I picked up the Sunday Times this morning and read about the most unbelievable disasters, injustice, and mayhem in the world - very upsetting and depressing. So, I threw the paper on the floor, pasted up some new scores, and sat down to play the Stravinsky Sonata, a pretty gnarly work, neoclassical though it is.

All the news just melted away instantaneously, like a bad dream. I am thoroughly delighted with the quality of the staccato accompaniment, the witty harmonies, even the thinly disguised rage of the composer. Playing this music I am completely engaged in something that somehow heals me from the "realities", political, historical, economic. That is pretty strong medicine. How does it do this for me? I'm not even sure that I know.

Two photos of Charley Gerard, to publicize "The Mighty Saxophone of Charley Gerard", our September 11 concert at the Ratner Museum (to be repeated on October 7 on Ben Redwine's St. Andrews series).

We rehearsed in his DUMBO ("Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass") apartment on Tuesday and Wednesday. He does play a mighty powerful saxophone - this is going to be one heck of a concert.

I have been meaning to write a little more about piano pedagogy (I, who do not teach!). In St. Louis there were intense rivalries among piano teachers, quite fierce, as I guess is not uncommon, though it seemed like such a small pond. There was one pianist from there, Malcolm Frager, who became quite successful on the concert stage, and of course my teacher was jealous - they knew each other from childhood, I think. Malcolm was very good - I heard one of his recitals.

My teacher believed that piano playing was a craft, and that everything had to be controlled, modulated, nuanced, expressed etc. His put down of Malcolm as a teacher was that he was said to have remarked, "Just play the notes; the rest will take care of itself." Shocking! I have thought about this some recently, and conclude that both points of view are right, and both are incomplete. When I have finally come to understand a piece of music (I am heading towards 60 years old, after all, so it does happen), then yes, just play the notes - there is nothing in particular that you have to do, because everything you do is always right, whether it is loud or soft, fast or slow, legato or staccato - it really doesn't matter much. But on the way there, I spend a long time thinking about the way the notes are put down and what they are supposed to do, and try a lot of different things. Now, I still think that the notion of a constructed performance is a recipe for a stilted and boring result, so I guess at this point I am largely in the Malcolm camp.

There is a corollary to this: these days composers will often give us midi renditions of their new works, and these are sometimes not bad, especially for piano music. The computer "just plays the notes", and that is somehow almost good enough. What is required in this case is that the listener do the work of understanding the music, without the guidance of the performer. I like to think that it is whole lot easier to hear music when I play it than when the computer plays it, but I am not heavily invested in that idea. What I do care passionately about is live performance, because I think it has the capacity to be genuine ritual experience for all present.

Another big philosophical issue which has dogged me all these years is "technique". I still have a visceral revulsion when I hear that word. For now, all I will say is to quote Brahms quoting Corinthians: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as clanging brass, or a tinkling cymbal."

The wonders of YouTube!

Very interesting comments about our performance on YouTube from Paul Wehage, the saxophonist who played Jean Françaix's "cinq danses exotiques" with the composer at the piano:

"I knew Françaix and played this piece with him. Your articulations are not nearly as precise and dry as he wanted. It has to almost be slap tonguing. The tempi (except for the samba, which is exactly right, except the unmarked pause) are all too slow. To make this work, you've got to think as if you're just another finger on the pianist's hand.

Tell [Rhonda] to get the recording of Françaix playing this piece with his daughter with the two-piano version and articulate in exactly the same way and play with the same tempi. That's how he wanted it and it's really hard to do that way, but it works! Good luck to you!"

I ordered the recording, which is still available.

Marilyn found this in an old Art in America:

Artists outside the limelight are equally aware of the market's capriciousness. Agnes Denes quotes a bit of common wisdom, "if you don't make it when you are very young, you won't make it until you are very old."

[Joan] Semmel argues that the art system's brutal selection process serves a hidden purpose. "The market is structured in such a way that it can sustain only about five artists from each stylistic group. Once they have been anointed and their work has sold for a certain price, it is in the self-interest of all involved to maintain that investment. But what comes to the top is the result of a combination of factors. The goods have to be there, of course, but there are many others who also have them. So, we've erected this myth of the scarcity of genius, which is demanded by the market since, if there were many geniuses, prices would have to come down."

from "Artists vs. the Market" by Eleanor Heartney, 1988.

From Charley Gerard:

I heard an outdoor concert with violinist Lara St. John called 8 Seasons. she played in alternation the 4 Seasons of Vivaldi and 4 Seasons of Buenos Aires by Piazzolla. It was the sort of performance that a baroque specialist would have hated. I was inspired by her forthright self-expression that took precedence over being faithful to stylistic characteristics and the composer's intentions.

(Charley is a composer!)

Listening to Karyn Friedman sing Cara Speme, and Parto, parto, I think - only the human voice has not changed technologically as an instrument since the beginning. This music feels as juicy and authentic as it ever did.

From Mike Hummel’s PhD thesis, as part of an analysis of the absence of public funding for the arts:

“Sociologist Juliet B. Schor has speculated that Americans’ preoccupation with upward mobility fueled by a shift in their material reference point away from their neighbors (and, therefore, their socio-economic peers) and towards the upper middle and upper classes (which Schor believes comes from absorbing material values from television and its advertisers) has made Americans less interested in investing in the public sphere and more concerned with maintaining or advancing their social standing through signs of prosperity, especially consumption.”

Another mystery of the blogosphere: Mike's thesis has been downloaded 171 times from my posting in the last 24 hours (as compared to the Trout Quintet, which was downloaded only 44 times). Who are you (besides Mike Strand)? I am curious - if you are reading Dr. Hummel's thesis, what do you think about it? Are you local or are you in Costa Rica, Bulgaria or China? You can post comments here, or you can email me: dcmusicaviva at verizon.net.

Mike Hummel has been awarded his PhD degree from the U of MD. His thesis is comprised in part of an analysis of interviews that he did with me and two other local artists. It is a very strange sensation to read about oneself in this way, but it is actually about the issues, and they are quite serious. Here is a link to his thesis - "THREE AMERICAN ARTISTS AT MIDLIFE: NEGOTIATING THE SPACE BETWEEN AMATEUR AND PROFESSIONAL STATUS" © Michael John Hummel, 2007.

(I may have to take it down if I have second thoughts later or Mike complains of copyright infringement).

The Mazurka is a kind of swing. It's not a Waltz, which I guess is its own kind of swing. I like Chopin Mazurkas, but not Waltzes so much. Once a year or so I used to play all of the Mazurkas (I think there are about 35) at one or two sittings, but I haven't in awhile. They are a particular taste, but when I have an appetite for them, it is huge.

The same thing happens with Nocturnes. I think Nocturnes are not quiet - they are Night as in Novalis, Rilke, Baudelaire, Rimbaud. Night as an evocation of dark things, scary things, passion, comfort, etc. I binge on them, like the Mazurkas, and then forget all about it for a long time, which is why I have performed only one of them in recent years, the first. Maybe that will change. The thing about the Chopin Nocturne is that it emulates the unattainable, that is, the tinkly little piano notes suggest a vocal line but cannot make it. The more you try the worse it gets. Better to just relax and lay off, and then they play themselves.

There is a masterpiece cello sonata by Chopin, but I won't play it. Why? Because cellists have no concept of Chopin and they always want the pianist to follow them.