Just back from short, crazy trip to the Verbier Festival, a.k.a. HEAVEN.
I tried to get cynical about Verbier last year. Circus tricks: spot the megastars wandering about ski resort off-season, listen to concerts in a tent where you can't hear anything when it rains - and don't you DARE go through the doorway designated to the sponsors. True. Very true. The megastars do wander about. You can't help but spot them from your cafe or hotel breakfast room or when you're sauntering up and down the main hill. You stumble upon Mischa Maisky reading the daily schedule on the Place Centrale noticeboard, or Pieter Wispelwey in dark glasses heading down to a rehearsal; this morning I ended up having breakfast with the marvellous young pianist Jonathan Biss, a recent interviewee of mine who happened to be staying in the same hotel. It's also true that you can't hear the concerts terribly well when it rains - last night it poured most of the way through the Schumann Piano Quintet played by Andsnes, Znajder, Cerovcek, Imai & Wispelwey. But heck, it was wonderful anyway!!!
So it all feels too good to be true and there must be a catch somewhere. Trouble is, it IS all too good to be true, but so far I haven't quite found the catch. A few possibles regarding aspects of the youth orchestra and of course that tent, but these don't amount to much in the grand scheme of things from the audience's point of view. If your two prime requirements for heaven are the most beautiful mountains and the greatest music, Verbier is for you.
Most stunning of all: Vadim Repin, soloist for Shostakovich Violin Concerto No.1 on Monday night. That concerto isn't my favourite piece on earth, but I was completely mesmerised by him. I vowed on the spot not to miss any more of his London concerts, because hearing playing of such combined intelligence, power, finesse, magnetism and vitality is rare indeed. He doesn't do the Vengerov showmanship thing, he doesn't do the Josh Bell Learns To Ski knee bends, he doesn't force the tone like some others I could mention; instead he puts everything straight where it ought to be: the music, the instrument, the intensity, the spirit.
I followed this, the next morning, with a trip up the mountain by cable car and a lovely walk at the top, gazing at snowy peaks, listening to silvery cowbells on the local herd and the soft rustle of waterfalls, spotting tiny pink orchids and brilliant blue gentians among the meadows of wild flowers. Mountain walks are shiatsu massage for the soul; over the last few years they have somehow become essential to me. This was my one and only this year, and I appreciated every second of it.
It was tempting simply to miss the plane home and vanish into the mountainside. I failed to work out how to do so in time, however, so here I am at my desk, blogging once again.
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Saturday, July 17, 2004
Help!
OK, I admit it. I need some advice.
Today I lost something that I really shouldn't have lost. It won't kill me and it won't stop me getting to Verbier on Monday. But it's daft. And it has enough bearing on the world beyond my four walls to make me look a trifle silly. I don't know if it is entirely my own fault or if Tom has been tidying up over-zealously, since I am not a great one for throwing anything away and something appears to have been thrown when it shouldn't have been. Nevertheless...
...I have a problem with piles of paper. They sit on my desk waiting to be organised. Then they transfer to the study rocking chair and thence to the floor. Occasionally I load them, unexplored, into large plastic boxes from Ikea. Meanwhile the CDs are breeding. I honestly think they engage in some form of plastic cell multiplication when my back is turned. As for the magazines, they arrive in a rush once a month; I look through them and try to keep track of the ones that contain my articles and dispose, eventually, of those that don't...eventually......
On TV recently there was a series called 'Life Laundry'. A cheery presenter visited families whose houses had been taken over by their excessive stuff, and helped them to get rid of it. I enjoyed this mainly because I could see that my mess problem isn't so bad that I need to call in the BBC. It was also interesting to discover that most of these families had some kind of past of which they just couldn't let go and which lay at the root of the trouble.
I'm good at living in the present and I do know that it isn't good enough just to clear the study twice a year, once at Christmas and once at - er - some other time as yet to be determined. Yet the task becomes so daunting that I keep putting it off. I'd rather do anything else than face it.
Does anybody have any tips on good psychological tricks to help oneself get organised? If so, please send them my way!
Today I lost something that I really shouldn't have lost. It won't kill me and it won't stop me getting to Verbier on Monday. But it's daft. And it has enough bearing on the world beyond my four walls to make me look a trifle silly. I don't know if it is entirely my own fault or if Tom has been tidying up over-zealously, since I am not a great one for throwing anything away and something appears to have been thrown when it shouldn't have been. Nevertheless...
...I have a problem with piles of paper. They sit on my desk waiting to be organised. Then they transfer to the study rocking chair and thence to the floor. Occasionally I load them, unexplored, into large plastic boxes from Ikea. Meanwhile the CDs are breeding. I honestly think they engage in some form of plastic cell multiplication when my back is turned. As for the magazines, they arrive in a rush once a month; I look through them and try to keep track of the ones that contain my articles and dispose, eventually, of those that don't...eventually......
On TV recently there was a series called 'Life Laundry'. A cheery presenter visited families whose houses had been taken over by their excessive stuff, and helped them to get rid of it. I enjoyed this mainly because I could see that my mess problem isn't so bad that I need to call in the BBC. It was also interesting to discover that most of these families had some kind of past of which they just couldn't let go and which lay at the root of the trouble.
I'm good at living in the present and I do know that it isn't good enough just to clear the study twice a year, once at Christmas and once at - er - some other time as yet to be determined. Yet the task becomes so daunting that I keep putting it off. I'd rather do anything else than face it.
Does anybody have any tips on good psychological tricks to help oneself get organised? If so, please send them my way!
Friday, July 16, 2004
The great British amateur #1: The Piano Teacher
Can you imagine a scenario in which a skilled, specialised profession is so little regulated that anybody, absolutely anybody, can set up as a practitioner? A practitioner to whom young people return week after week, perhaps for years, to have their attitudes and expertise formed? Yet that practitioner has no qualification, accreditation or 'answerability' for what they do? If this person was a surgeon or a lawyer, that would be a national scandal. But for British piano teaching, this is normal.
One of the most fascinating things about my examiner training has been watching the different levels of ability, musicality and nerves that come through the door with the candidates. Most are nice kids who try very hard. Some of them have an unerring ear, others none whatsoever. Some seem thoroughly to enjoy playing their pieces; others sit petrified, tinkling out the notes with glassy gaze. Youngsters' attitudes to performing - and hence adults' attitudes to performing too! - are subject to influences from parents, peers and more; but the most telling instances are when a teacher enters a stream of pupils for exams and they turn up, one after the other, all exhibiting exactly the same problems.
On one of my days, five or six kids arrived in succession, each pallid with terror. Each was attempting a grade too high for his/her abilities. Not one of them could play scales, other than a basic easy major, to save their lives. They certainly couldn't sight-read (not that many can) and tried to stand about a mile away from me, with backs turned, for the aural tests. The common factor? The teacher - who must be unnerving the lot of them on a weekly basis, has no qualms about entering them for exams ill-prepared and is somehow instilling in them the idea that playing music is something to fear, not something to enjoy.
I find it terrifying to think of some of the people in charge of children's musical education. In my very first job, at Boosey & Hawkes in the educational music department, besides proof-reading scale books I had to write rejection letters to would-be composers of music for educational use, who had eagerly submitted unsolicited manuscripts hoping for instant publication. Many came from alleged music teachers who, to judge from their handwriting, presentation and general idiocity, were mentally way off the deep end and probably should have been on medication.
Regulatory bodies and recommending organisations do exist. If you're looking for a teacher, you can consult the Musicians Union or the Incorporated Society of Musicians, who will help find someone with a decent professional mandate. The music colleges and the Associated Board itself provide courses and qualifications for teachers. But there is no legal requirement for anyone wanting to teach the piano to hold such a qualification; and the too-numerous total charlatans in the profession cannot be stopped, because there is nothing from which they can be struck off.
Even some teachers who ARE accredited, who ARE members of professional organisations, occasionally purvey such crackpot ideas, such dangerous theories, such damaging and often destructive approaches, that to say the mind boggles is not putting it strongly enough. This is not solely an issue for the Great British Tradition of Amateurism: I've heard worse stories still about theoretically respected professors at such august institutions as Juilliard and the Paris Conservatoire.
But the GBTA does the charlatans too many favours. Traditions of good music teaching need decades, if not centuries, to build up, and they require formalisation and support at state level, with sensible advice from the wisest of music educators, if they are to take hold. Amateurism merely begets more amateurism. That greatest of British traditions is deeply rooted in our green and pleasant land and will take a long time to eradicate, assuming anyone ever sets about eradicating it. New Labour's music manifesto - the one that MP Boris Johnson just described, to Tom & co's delight, as 'more hot air than the wind section of the London Philharmonic' - isn't going to do much to help.
It's the taking part that matters, goes the old English maxim, not the winning. OK, we can't all win the Tchaikovsky Competition. But in music, if you are not taught the basics well enough and early enough, you will never even be able to take part. That's how music is. Get used to it.
One of the most fascinating things about my examiner training has been watching the different levels of ability, musicality and nerves that come through the door with the candidates. Most are nice kids who try very hard. Some of them have an unerring ear, others none whatsoever. Some seem thoroughly to enjoy playing their pieces; others sit petrified, tinkling out the notes with glassy gaze. Youngsters' attitudes to performing - and hence adults' attitudes to performing too! - are subject to influences from parents, peers and more; but the most telling instances are when a teacher enters a stream of pupils for exams and they turn up, one after the other, all exhibiting exactly the same problems.
On one of my days, five or six kids arrived in succession, each pallid with terror. Each was attempting a grade too high for his/her abilities. Not one of them could play scales, other than a basic easy major, to save their lives. They certainly couldn't sight-read (not that many can) and tried to stand about a mile away from me, with backs turned, for the aural tests. The common factor? The teacher - who must be unnerving the lot of them on a weekly basis, has no qualms about entering them for exams ill-prepared and is somehow instilling in them the idea that playing music is something to fear, not something to enjoy.
I find it terrifying to think of some of the people in charge of children's musical education. In my very first job, at Boosey & Hawkes in the educational music department, besides proof-reading scale books I had to write rejection letters to would-be composers of music for educational use, who had eagerly submitted unsolicited manuscripts hoping for instant publication. Many came from alleged music teachers who, to judge from their handwriting, presentation and general idiocity, were mentally way off the deep end and probably should have been on medication.
Regulatory bodies and recommending organisations do exist. If you're looking for a teacher, you can consult the Musicians Union or the Incorporated Society of Musicians, who will help find someone with a decent professional mandate. The music colleges and the Associated Board itself provide courses and qualifications for teachers. But there is no legal requirement for anyone wanting to teach the piano to hold such a qualification; and the too-numerous total charlatans in the profession cannot be stopped, because there is nothing from which they can be struck off.
Even some teachers who ARE accredited, who ARE members of professional organisations, occasionally purvey such crackpot ideas, such dangerous theories, such damaging and often destructive approaches, that to say the mind boggles is not putting it strongly enough. This is not solely an issue for the Great British Tradition of Amateurism: I've heard worse stories still about theoretically respected professors at such august institutions as Juilliard and the Paris Conservatoire.
But the GBTA does the charlatans too many favours. Traditions of good music teaching need decades, if not centuries, to build up, and they require formalisation and support at state level, with sensible advice from the wisest of music educators, if they are to take hold. Amateurism merely begets more amateurism. That greatest of British traditions is deeply rooted in our green and pleasant land and will take a long time to eradicate, assuming anyone ever sets about eradicating it. New Labour's music manifesto - the one that MP Boris Johnson just described, to Tom & co's delight, as 'more hot air than the wind section of the London Philharmonic' - isn't going to do much to help.
It's the taking part that matters, goes the old English maxim, not the winning. OK, we can't all win the Tchaikovsky Competition. But in music, if you are not taught the basics well enough and early enough, you will never even be able to take part. That's how music is. Get used to it.
Thursday, July 15, 2004
...yes, Yes, YES, !!!!!!YES!!!!!!!
See AC Douglas on Historically Informed Performance, or what isn't...
I was going to write something just like this, but ACD has got there first! SO glad I'm not the only one who feels this way, because enduring 4 years of the Cambridge music faculty in the mid-Eighties left me wondering if I was. But not any more. The turnround has arrived, and about time too. You want to hear some good Bach playing? Try Harold Samuel in 1931, playing Bach on the piano as if it's great music - not a sharpener upon which to grind the blade of yet another axe.
Another cause for celebration is the double bill at Glyndebourne of Rachmaninov's The Miserly Knight and Puccini's Gianni Schicci. Sergei Leiferkus stars in the former, Sally Matthews in the latter, Vladimir Jurowski is the red-hot conductor, production is absolutely spectacular and it's a clever pairing of works about the Evil Of Money - in front of the stonkingly well-heeled Glyndebourne-goers! Marvellous evening out. Get down there, PDQ.
I am wiped out by my last day of examiner training right now, so will sign off while I can still see straightish, if not spell.
I was going to write something just like this, but ACD has got there first! SO glad I'm not the only one who feels this way, because enduring 4 years of the Cambridge music faculty in the mid-Eighties left me wondering if I was. But not any more. The turnround has arrived, and about time too. You want to hear some good Bach playing? Try Harold Samuel in 1931, playing Bach on the piano as if it's great music - not a sharpener upon which to grind the blade of yet another axe.
Another cause for celebration is the double bill at Glyndebourne of Rachmaninov's The Miserly Knight and Puccini's Gianni Schicci. Sergei Leiferkus stars in the former, Sally Matthews in the latter, Vladimir Jurowski is the red-hot conductor, production is absolutely spectacular and it's a clever pairing of works about the Evil Of Money - in front of the stonkingly well-heeled Glyndebourne-goers! Marvellous evening out. Get down there, PDQ.
I am wiped out by my last day of examiner training right now, so will sign off while I can still see straightish, if not spell.
Saturday, July 10, 2004
Bach, pianos and a 'marauding Tartar'
ACD in Sounds and fury has an inspiring post at the moment about Wanda Landowska's playing of Bach. Nice to come across this while I'm in the process of checking out three different versions of the English Suite No.3 on behalf of a pianist friend who is performing it next week and is curious about who does what with it.
My three versions are Glenn Gould (1974), Rosalyn Tureck (1948) and Andras Schiff (1988). Each of them treats Bach with absolute respect. None of them allows their own personality to be subsumed in that respect. Instead, each individual, with all his or her quirks and idiosyncracies, joins forces with Bach to produce a unified vision of this intensely powerful and beautiful work. My personal top choice - after much chewing of cud - is narrowly the Tureck, which is available on a VAI disc called Rosalyn Tureck: The Young Visionary. She once famously said to Landowska: 'You play Bach your way. I'll play it HIS way.'
The following may be sacrilege to some, but I don't like the Gould recording. If madness and genius are as close as people say, I do feel Gould tips the balance in the wrong direction. Schiff sings and dances his way through the work in a truly uplifting spirit, achieving a little more weightiness with slightly slower tempi. I'd choose Tureck because she brings an extra awe-struck inwardness to the Sarabande, and the lightness of her articulation is staggeringly impressive, especially in the Gigue.
What I will be most curious about now is what my mate Rustem Hayroudinoff makes of it when he performs it at the Petworth Festival on 26 July. For any pianist, young or otherwise, approaching Bach is a daunting task. You have to ride on the crest of a wave that consists not only of all the arguments pro and contra playing Bach on the piano at all, but also the outstanding interpretations that have gone before you.
I should introduce Rustem to you. I first came across him ten years ago, when he was relatively new to London, fresh out of the Moscow Conservatory. He's proud to be a Tartar, from Kazan, and he happily marauds his way through life with a few assets: superlative playing, a quick brain and sharp eye and a sense of humour that spares nothing and nobody. He has so many hair-raising stories of life in Russia, people who take shameful advantage of naive youngsters from foreign parts and, not least, corruption in piano competitions, that I often tease him by saying he'd make his fortune fastest if he wrote his memoirs.
For reasons too complex to go into here, he has had some bad luck from time to time which means that he has not yet become the household name that maybe he ought to be. However, when he found a volume of Shostakovich Theatre Music arranged for piano and realised that most of it had never been recorded, it was his sheer creativity and persistence that resulted in this becoming his first solo disc for Chandos a few years ago. The disc bowled over not only me but several other critics as well with its wit and vitality and Chandos sensibly signed him up for more. Earlier this year his CD of the complete Rachmaninov Preludes came out to universal acclaim (have a look at the reviews on his website), and a delicious CD of the Rachmaninov Cello Sonata with cellist Alexander Ivashkin was hot on its heels. At last many critics are realising that Rustem has more to say - and a more beautiful way of saying it - than many far more famous note-bashers of his generation.
You can hear him, if you're in London, on the afternoon of 25 July at the Chopin Society; and at the Petworth Festival in West Sussex the next day. The programme includes a substantial Chopin selection and, of course, the Bach English Suite No.3. All his discs are available from Amazon and I can't recommend them highly enough.
My three versions are Glenn Gould (1974), Rosalyn Tureck (1948) and Andras Schiff (1988). Each of them treats Bach with absolute respect. None of them allows their own personality to be subsumed in that respect. Instead, each individual, with all his or her quirks and idiosyncracies, joins forces with Bach to produce a unified vision of this intensely powerful and beautiful work. My personal top choice - after much chewing of cud - is narrowly the Tureck, which is available on a VAI disc called Rosalyn Tureck: The Young Visionary. She once famously said to Landowska: 'You play Bach your way. I'll play it HIS way.'
The following may be sacrilege to some, but I don't like the Gould recording. If madness and genius are as close as people say, I do feel Gould tips the balance in the wrong direction. Schiff sings and dances his way through the work in a truly uplifting spirit, achieving a little more weightiness with slightly slower tempi. I'd choose Tureck because she brings an extra awe-struck inwardness to the Sarabande, and the lightness of her articulation is staggeringly impressive, especially in the Gigue.
What I will be most curious about now is what my mate Rustem Hayroudinoff makes of it when he performs it at the Petworth Festival on 26 July. For any pianist, young or otherwise, approaching Bach is a daunting task. You have to ride on the crest of a wave that consists not only of all the arguments pro and contra playing Bach on the piano at all, but also the outstanding interpretations that have gone before you.
I should introduce Rustem to you. I first came across him ten years ago, when he was relatively new to London, fresh out of the Moscow Conservatory. He's proud to be a Tartar, from Kazan, and he happily marauds his way through life with a few assets: superlative playing, a quick brain and sharp eye and a sense of humour that spares nothing and nobody. He has so many hair-raising stories of life in Russia, people who take shameful advantage of naive youngsters from foreign parts and, not least, corruption in piano competitions, that I often tease him by saying he'd make his fortune fastest if he wrote his memoirs.
For reasons too complex to go into here, he has had some bad luck from time to time which means that he has not yet become the household name that maybe he ought to be. However, when he found a volume of Shostakovich Theatre Music arranged for piano and realised that most of it had never been recorded, it was his sheer creativity and persistence that resulted in this becoming his first solo disc for Chandos a few years ago. The disc bowled over not only me but several other critics as well with its wit and vitality and Chandos sensibly signed him up for more. Earlier this year his CD of the complete Rachmaninov Preludes came out to universal acclaim (have a look at the reviews on his website), and a delicious CD of the Rachmaninov Cello Sonata with cellist Alexander Ivashkin was hot on its heels. At last many critics are realising that Rustem has more to say - and a more beautiful way of saying it - than many far more famous note-bashers of his generation.
You can hear him, if you're in London, on the afternoon of 25 July at the Chopin Society; and at the Petworth Festival in West Sussex the next day. The programme includes a substantial Chopin selection and, of course, the Bach English Suite No.3. All his discs are available from Amazon and I can't recommend them highly enough.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)