Today is Bartok's birthday!
Here is a radio interview with him from America in 1944, given during a recital of his music by his wife. He sounds quite ill; by this time he was already suffering from advanced leukaemia and he died about a year and two months later.
Now here he is playing his own Suite Op.14, recorded 1929.
"Somehow I felt now, after a long time of no work, like a man who lies in bed over a long, long period, and finally tries to use his arms and legs, gets on his feet and takes one or two steps. A man like this cannot just suddenly walk up a hill. I, too, gradually grew accustomed to movement: and so in this manner I only produced piano pieces. But even this was something. Because, to be frank, recently I have felt so stupid, so dazed, so empty-headed that I have truly doubted whether I am able to write anything new at all anymore. All the tangled chaos that the musical periodicals vomit thick and fast about the music of today has come to weigh heavily on me: the watchwords linear, horizontal, vertical, objective, impersonal, polyphonic, homophonic, tonal, polytonal, atonal, and the rest; even if one does not concern one’s self with all of it, one still becomes quite dazed when they shout it on our ears so much. ... But now things are all right; you can imagine how pleased I am that at last there will be something new, and something I myself can play, on my own, instead of the eternal Allegro barbaro, A Bit Tipsy and Rumanian Dance."
(Bartók to his second wife, Ditta Pásztory, June 21, 1926, quoted in Tibor Tallián, Béla Bartók, The Man and His Work (Budapest, 1988), 141)
I have found a wonderful online 'Bartok Virtual Exhibition' here. Visit and enjoy!
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
"Sergei Sergeevich, maybe you will tell our viewers about your work?"
This amazing film footage of Prokofiev plopped into my in-box from Marc-Andre Hamelin, who tells me it's been doing the rounds of pianists' emails for a while. He has also kindly forwarded this translation of the Russian, which was sent to him by Dmitry Rachmanov:
Prokofiev is being asked: "Sergei Sergeevich, maybe you will tell our viewers about your work?"
He replies: "Well, right now I am working on a symphonic suite of waltzes, which will include three waltzes from Cinderella, two waltzes from the War and Peace, and one waltz from the movie score "Lermontov." [The War and Peace] has just been brilliantly produced in Leningrad, where the composer Cheshko (?) made an especially noteworthy appearance as a tenor, giving a superb performance in the role of Pierre Bezukhoff. Besides this suite, I am working on a sonata for violin and piano [no.1 in f minor], upon completion of which I will resume work on the sixth symphony, which I had started last year. I have just completed three suites from the Cinderella ballet and I am now turning the score over to copyists for writing the parts, so that most likely the suites will already be performed at the beginning of the fall season."
Enjoy!
Monday, March 23, 2009
On Beauty...
Fascinating debate in The Observer yesterday, springing from a live one at the Royal Geographical Society as to whether Britain has become indifferent to beauty.
I have a few things to add and invite you to do the same...
First, I reckon people in general love beauty. But today's decision-makers and creators in art, architecture, music and more have a narrow idea of what popular beauty constitutes and they don't like it: it is out-dated, being associated with the 18th and 19th centuries. An attitude derived from Socialist Realism has dominated everything from TV to concert-hall design for the last 50 years or more. If and when a semblance of beauty exists, it often seems suspect because it's associated with the wrong kind of politics: those of the first half of the 20th century. Thought process: beauty=conservatism=evil.
This, though, confuses beauty with prettiness. Beauty, genuine beauty, has nothing to do with politics, isn't skin deep and on the surface may not be pretty in the slightest. Personally, I think that beauty is what results when a work of art spirals into more than the sum of its parts, telling us a startling truth about the human condition, mainly through compassion and empathy. I found the film The Lives of Others beautiful, because it carried a powerful message about feeling, suffering and sacrifice. Even Apocalypse Now has a strange and terrifying beauty to it. There's nothing pretty about either film; nor about Salman Rushdie's overwhelming novel Midnight's Children, full of beauty that springs from the power and gleeful originality of the man's virtuoso imagination.
The performing musicians I most admire share qualities that make their playing beautiful: attention to the detail of tone, shape, colour, but most of all to the soul beneath the music. Bashing the hell out of a piano has nothing to do with this (unless a composer has specifically requested it); nor does playing a violin in strict metronomic time with banned vibrato just because it is deemed 'correct'. It's about empathy, intuition, humanity. It's about understanding the composer, the work and and the instrument, about knowing how to bring out the best in all of them.
As for new music, beauty exists, but it is certainly undervalued and bizarrely feared. It was the profound and very unexpected beauty of Gorecki's Third Symphony that made it so popular; of course it was criticised for that. Yet it does contain beauty, wrought by digging deep and opening up a ravine of intense humanity. And James MacMillan's opera The Sacrifice, the little of it I heard, struck me as incredibly beautiful, but certainly not pretty.
Meanwhile we had to have The Minotaur on primetime TV, which probably put a bunch of people off modern opera for life. It wasn't either pretty or beautiful. It was powerful in its way, but noisy, upsetting, and, overall, a jolly nasty experience. Just because something sounds hideous, that doesn't mean it automatically contains beauty; but equally just because The Phantom of the Opera is gentler on the ears, that doesn't make it beautiful either.
It can seem as if everyone is terrified of beauty, but actually what they're frightened of is prettiness, or the version commonly termed "mawkish sentimentality". Even that idea needs to be gently prodded: is there perhaps a danger of going too far the other way, denying any semblance of human feeling for fear of - well, of what? Feeling something? Being thought uncool? Being bullied in the playground for wearing a baseball cap with the peak at the front instead of the back?
So in terror of one potentially twisted emotion, we run a mile from another and desperately espouse its reverse. But the reverse isn't appealing either, so everyone scarpers from that too and the result is...empty chairs.
There's a problem with real beauty: there isn't much because creating it is too damn difficult. Nothing gratuitous is ever really beautiful; nothing that sets out to copy beauty is likely to succeed in reaching us at the gut level on which beauty works its magic. It's an opening of the channels, a freeing of the circulation from specific to universal to mystical. When, with infinite care and compassion, a great artist shows us the humane inner essence of the image or the sound, and we stand back and gasp - that's beauty.
Ideas, folks?
I have a few things to add and invite you to do the same...
First, I reckon people in general love beauty. But today's decision-makers and creators in art, architecture, music and more have a narrow idea of what popular beauty constitutes and they don't like it: it is out-dated, being associated with the 18th and 19th centuries. An attitude derived from Socialist Realism has dominated everything from TV to concert-hall design for the last 50 years or more. If and when a semblance of beauty exists, it often seems suspect because it's associated with the wrong kind of politics: those of the first half of the 20th century. Thought process: beauty=conservatism=evil.
This, though, confuses beauty with prettiness. Beauty, genuine beauty, has nothing to do with politics, isn't skin deep and on the surface may not be pretty in the slightest. Personally, I think that beauty is what results when a work of art spirals into more than the sum of its parts, telling us a startling truth about the human condition, mainly through compassion and empathy. I found the film The Lives of Others beautiful, because it carried a powerful message about feeling, suffering and sacrifice. Even Apocalypse Now has a strange and terrifying beauty to it. There's nothing pretty about either film; nor about Salman Rushdie's overwhelming novel Midnight's Children, full of beauty that springs from the power and gleeful originality of the man's virtuoso imagination.
The performing musicians I most admire share qualities that make their playing beautiful: attention to the detail of tone, shape, colour, but most of all to the soul beneath the music. Bashing the hell out of a piano has nothing to do with this (unless a composer has specifically requested it); nor does playing a violin in strict metronomic time with banned vibrato just because it is deemed 'correct'. It's about empathy, intuition, humanity. It's about understanding the composer, the work and and the instrument, about knowing how to bring out the best in all of them.
As for new music, beauty exists, but it is certainly undervalued and bizarrely feared. It was the profound and very unexpected beauty of Gorecki's Third Symphony that made it so popular; of course it was criticised for that. Yet it does contain beauty, wrought by digging deep and opening up a ravine of intense humanity. And James MacMillan's opera The Sacrifice, the little of it I heard, struck me as incredibly beautiful, but certainly not pretty.
Meanwhile we had to have The Minotaur on primetime TV, which probably put a bunch of people off modern opera for life. It wasn't either pretty or beautiful. It was powerful in its way, but noisy, upsetting, and, overall, a jolly nasty experience. Just because something sounds hideous, that doesn't mean it automatically contains beauty; but equally just because The Phantom of the Opera is gentler on the ears, that doesn't make it beautiful either.
It can seem as if everyone is terrified of beauty, but actually what they're frightened of is prettiness, or the version commonly termed "mawkish sentimentality". Even that idea needs to be gently prodded: is there perhaps a danger of going too far the other way, denying any semblance of human feeling for fear of - well, of what? Feeling something? Being thought uncool? Being bullied in the playground for wearing a baseball cap with the peak at the front instead of the back?
So in terror of one potentially twisted emotion, we run a mile from another and desperately espouse its reverse. But the reverse isn't appealing either, so everyone scarpers from that too and the result is...empty chairs.
There's a problem with real beauty: there isn't much because creating it is too damn difficult. Nothing gratuitous is ever really beautiful; nothing that sets out to copy beauty is likely to succeed in reaching us at the gut level on which beauty works its magic. It's an opening of the channels, a freeing of the circulation from specific to universal to mystical. When, with infinite care and compassion, a great artist shows us the humane inner essence of the image or the sound, and we stand back and gasp - that's beauty.
Ideas, folks?
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Ice cold in Philly?
Charlotte Higgins wrote in yesterday's Grauniad about the intimations of crisis at the Philadelphia Orchestra. "Though it has an interim music director in Charles Dutoit, it has no permanent holder of that post, nor a chair of trustees, nor an executive director. It has just announced staff and pay cuts, and cancelled a tour to Europe this summer."
Of course the American arts scene faces a harder, faster crumbling under the current economic woes than its European counterpart, being almost wholly dependent on the whims of sponsors and the health of the stock market. Whether Obama's package will help is uncertain. But isn't it the case that the better the management, the better the chance of any organisation, of any kind, to weather the blast? If, as Charlotte says, this orchestra has no music director, no chair of trustees and no executive director, that doesn't appear to put it in a particularly good spot right now. How is it possible for a world-class orchestra like this one to land up rudderless? Better no music director than a bad one (we in London know all about that from the last recession...), but it sounds as if the great Philadelphia Orchestra, Fantasia or none, has more to worry about even than world economics.
Of course the American arts scene faces a harder, faster crumbling under the current economic woes than its European counterpart, being almost wholly dependent on the whims of sponsors and the health of the stock market. Whether Obama's package will help is uncertain. But isn't it the case that the better the management, the better the chance of any organisation, of any kind, to weather the blast? If, as Charlotte says, this orchestra has no music director, no chair of trustees and no executive director, that doesn't appear to put it in a particularly good spot right now. How is it possible for a world-class orchestra like this one to land up rudderless? Better no music director than a bad one (we in London know all about that from the last recession...), but it sounds as if the great Philadelphia Orchestra, Fantasia or none, has more to worry about even than world economics.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Meet Kate Aldrich
Here's a real operatic mezzo-soprano with a heck of a great dramatic voice. Opera Chic today breaks the story that Kate Aldrich from Maine will be opening next season at La Scala Milan in a new production of Carmen.
Her website has some super audio clips - try the gorgeously tragic Chausson Chanson Perpetuelle. When I looked Kate up on YouTube I found two clips, one featuring a ghastly Donizetti duet with an even ghastlier tenor, the other featuring decent music (Benvenuto Cellini) but one of the weirdest productions I've ever seen. She is absolutely terrific in both, but...well, you just have to see this thing. Fasten your seatbelts.
Her website has some super audio clips - try the gorgeously tragic Chausson Chanson Perpetuelle. When I looked Kate up on YouTube I found two clips, one featuring a ghastly Donizetti duet with an even ghastlier tenor, the other featuring decent music (Benvenuto Cellini) but one of the weirdest productions I've ever seen. She is absolutely terrific in both, but...well, you just have to see this thing. Fasten your seatbelts.
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