Speaking of Pianists

Gabriela Montero recently changed the program content of her upcoming Portland appearances.  She sent the following program notes for her all-improvised recitals:

To my listeners: This might be the first time, or one of the first times, that you attend an all-classical improvisation recital. This is not a jazz concert and I am not a jazz pianist. I am a classical pianist, and when I improvise, my language derives mainly from that world of sound, harmony, and structure.

Recently, I’ve decided to include in my concert schedule recitals that are entirely improvised. You might ask why. But why not? Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Albeniz, and others all extemporized with great skill before delighted audiences; and some, like Liszt and Thalberg, even participated in improvising duels. Some composers improvised on their own pieces in concert. The abilities of Chopin, Liszt, and Beethoven at this were well-known, and it was common for them to improvise portions of their already-written pieces. Why has this art nearly disappeared? I suggest that a desire to perfect the notes on the page (Is that really possible? How can we measure it?) has eclipsed the search for spontaneous creation. But spontaneity has its own value. By begetting a unique experience shared by the performer and audience, improvisation can invoke the moment when a classical piece arises from the subconscious and crystallizes in the composer’s mind.

Now, I don’t mean to put myself in the same category as Beethoven and Bach! But I was born with a talent for improvisation, and when doing that I feel most free and alive as a musician. When I improvise, I seem to inhabit a white void, and that is where my music comes from. I can’t stress enough how the process that these improvisations go through is as much a puzzle to me as it is to everyone who asks me: How do you do it? The value in this music is that it is created without thought, and that what leads me is pure inspiration, and not formulas or patterns.

Thank you for taking part of this musical experiment. I hope you enjoy the evening. Let’s imagine that we are back in the early nineteenth century…

— Program notes by Gabriela Montero

For ticket information, go here.

Pianist Richard Goode will play Franz Schubert’s final sonata in his second Portland recital on Tuesday, October 14th.

The Sonata in Bb Major, D. 960, written in the last year of Schubert’s short life, is a work of transcendental beauty.

Goode discusses Schubert over dinner with the late David Blum, author of Quintet: Five Journeys toward Musical Fulfillment (Cornell University Press, 1998).

“Some people feel that there’s a premonition of death in those last sonatas,” he said. “Yes, there’s a darkness and fatalism, but you find those qualities in Schubert from way back, not only in his last year. One of the things that move you in Schubert is the coexistence of marvelous beauty, sweetness, and grace with a kind of terror waiting to be disclosed.  More than Beethoven, he evokes the uncanny. You feel how vulnerable that beauty is.”

In addition to the Goode piece, Blum’s wonderful book contains stories about Yo-Yo Ma, Jeffery Tate, Josef Gingold and Birgit Nilsson.

Tickets are available for Goode’s Tuesday evening Portland performance.  Go here for information.

To put it mildly, the listening experience at the Twelfth Van Cliburn Piano Competition, held in 2005, was intense. But it was one of my greatest experiences ever.

Portland Piano International will again host  a group of up to 40 piano lovers to the Semifinal Round of the Thirteenth Van Cliburn Competition May 27 - June 1 in Fort Worth, Texas.  This round takes place over a four-day period, and provides the opportunity to hear the twelve remarkable young artists chosen for this round striving to communicate their very best, and thereby gain a place in the Final Round.

One of my favorite parts of the competition was hearing the five commissioned works for the competition. Repeated performances of these new works really gives the listener a chance to get to know them well.  My favorite of the group was Ruth Schonthal’s Sonata quasi un’improvvisazione.  Schonthal, a former student of Paul Hindemith, died the following year at the age of 81.

A real joy for us was hearing each of these Semifinalists performing the great piano quintets of our repertoire – Brahms, Schumann, Dvorak, and the lesser-known Cesar Frank, with the great Takács Quartet.

To give some idea of  the importance of the Cliburn Competition, PPI has presented the following Laureates of the competition since 1978:

Ralph Votapek, Cécile Ousset, Radu Lupu, Mark Westcott, Vladimir Viardo, Steven De Groote, Jeffrey Swann, André-Michel Schub, Panayis Lyras, Santiago Rodriguez, Jeffrey Kahane, Christopher O’Riley, José Feghali, Philippe Bianconi, Barry Douglas, Emma Tahmiziàn, Alexei Sultanov, Simone Pedroni, Christopher Taylor, Jon Nakamatsu, Katia Skanavi, Stanislav Ioudenitch, Olga Kern, Antonio Pompa-Baldi, Davide Cabassi, Roberto Plano, Joyce Yang and  Alexander Kobrin.

A few places remain for the exceptional event sponsored by Portland Piano International.  For information and a registration form, visit our home page at portlandpiano.org

Mary Kunz Goldman writes in the Buffalo News about a recent performance of a Mozart Concerto by pianist Robert Levin.

“What made the Mozart concerto an adventure was the featured pianist, Harvard professor Robert Levin. Levin, an authority on Mozart, has a unique approach: He improvises as he plays. No, really. He wings it. On the phone last week, he confessed that he never is completely sure how a performance is going to turn out.

I have never heard the 23rd concerto like this. Levin doesn’t just play the music. He lives it. It shows in his face, in his whole body. He delights in every note, every chord change. Did I say chord change? He is making me think of jazz.

Because Levin really does use Mozart as a vehicle for improvisation. He goes far beyond anything any other pianists have done in this department. He takes chances. It is like watching a high-wire artist.”

Later in the same article Goldman says “It’s a shame that, over the centuries, classical musicians have dropped the ball on improvisation. Fie on them. It’s time this art was brought back.”

You can read her entire review here.

Although the recent article by New Yorker critic Alex Ross is not specifically about improvisation, he takes a look at some of the performance practices of the past, fairly way-out by our current standards. Ross sums it up well: “Piano recitals were, by modern standards, completely nuts.”

He describes a Franz Liszt evening: “In one favorite routine, Liszt brought onstage a large urn into which his listeners had dropped slips of paper, each one inscribed with a suggestion for a tune on which he might improvise. He then drew out the messages one by one, taking delight in those which wandered off topic. Hamilton* writes, “On turning out the urn in a concert on March 15, 1838 in Milan, Liszt found a piece of paper with the question ‘Is it better to marry or remain single?’—to which he slickly replied, ‘Whatever course one chooses, one is sure to regret it.’”

The Alex Ross article, Why so Serious, from the September 8th edition of the New Yorker may be found online here.

Pianist Gabriela Montero brings back the art of improvisation in her Portland recitals on October 26 and 27.  View her complete program here.

*From Kenneth Hamilton’s book, mentioned in a previous post, After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance (Oxford).

For the most part, programs in our upcoming PPI season represent the real core of the pianist’s repertoire, with a few departures to Medtner and Tchaikovsky.  It is some of our most remarkable music, but last year we heard some fairly offbeat performances - works by Weissenberg, Thalbert, Louie, Stravinsky, Strauss, Tcherepnin and Trenet. There are few surprises in the 2008-2009 season with one unique exception. I don’t use that adjective often, but I believe it is deserved here.

In October, Gabriela Montero will do her part to revive a tradition from the 19th century, a rich heritage practiced by Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn (one of the best) and most other performers of the era; the art of improvisation. Competitions that we would consider completely tasteless today, pitting dueling pianists against each other, were an important part of the musical life of the time.

Take this example of the art of improvisation in the extreme, written by British pianist Charles Salaman and related by Harold C. Schonberg in his book, The Great Pianists:

“I recall an interesting incident at a morning concert given in June, 1844, in honor of that gifted and most pathetic of famous violinists, Heinrich Ernst. Bach’s Triple Concerto in D minor was played by Moscheles, Thalberg and Mendelssohn – what a trio of giants! And each performer was to play an impromptu cadence [cadenza].  Moscheles, a famous improvisatore, led off with a fine cadence.  Thalberg followed with perhaps even more brilliant effect.  Then Mendelssohn, who had been leaning listlessly over the back of his chair while the others were playing, quietly began his cadence, taking up the threads from the subject of the concerto; then, suddenly rousing himself, he wound up with a  wonderful shower of octaves, indescribable in effect, and never to be forgotten.  The audience was so excited that the applause at the end was all for Mendelssohn.”

Once a requirement for any successful performer, improvisation has been lost to us for the past 100 or so years, replaced by the pianist as performer rather than the composer as pianist.  Fortunately, it’s coming back, and I believe a time will come when no pianist will be a complete musician without having some degree of expertise at this skill.

James Fenton in the Guardian (UK) quotes from Kenneth Hamilton’s excellent book,  After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance (Oxford University Press, 2007).

“The concert pianists of the Romantic period did much that would surprise a modern audience. Many of them were skilled improvisers, and improvisation on popular themes was something that their admirers insisted on hearing. If you weren’t good at improvising, you lived in dread of these ordeals. At any moment inspiration might dry up and you might make a fool of yourself.”

Gabriela Montero does not live in dread of improvisation, and will take requests for themes from audience members (yes, that’s correct), so put on your thinking caps and gather your courage.

“The first half I get into who Chopin was, who Schumann was,” she says, “while the second half is really my world. I have no plan, no road-map.”

National Public Radio has featured Montero in seven segments since 2006.  Those are archived here, and have wonderful clips of improvisations sung to her by telephone callers to the program “Sing It and Wing It”.

Pianist Jon Kimura Parker – Jackie to his many fans and friends in Portland - is a featured artist on Performance Today this week, talking about a work he commissioned Canadian composer Alexina Louie to write for him twenty years ago.

Listen to Jackie’s stories about his work with Louie in the creation of this exquisite piece, and then hear his performance of  Memories in an Ancient Garden, the second movement of Scenes from a Jade Terrace.  American Public Media’s Performance Today site is here; click on the “New Music Comes Alive” link to hear the interview and colorful performance.

Performance Today also replays the world premier of Peter Schickele’s (aka P.D.Q. Bach) Music for Orcas Island, commissioned by the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival.  Parker is the Artistic Advisor for the summer event.

Oregon M.D. and pianist, Ron Potts, one of the newly elected Board Directors of Portland Piano International, is a finalist in the Seattle International Piano Festival Amateur Competition. The final round of the competition, new this year to Seattle, will take place on September 20. Best Wishes to you Dr. Potts!

The upcoming Seattle event represents the growing trend of recognizing the many excellent pianists who have (wisely) chosen not to pursue music as a profession, but make piano study an important part of their lives.

The most famous of these events, and the likely inspiration for many of the regional competitions, is the Van Cliburn Foundation’s International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, held every four years. Portland pianist Sylvia Gray was a contestant in the 2007 competition. David Stabler, classical music critic for the Oregonian and one of the judges for the event, wrote about her here:

Stabler followed Sylvia’s progress through the competition, so click on “Cliburn Amateurs Competition” for other archived posts from the Oregonian.

There is also the Cliburn’s YouTube Competition for Amateur Pianists, held this past March for the first time; a second online competition will be held in the summer of 2009. This sure saves a lot of money on travel expenses for the contestants and judges! Here is the basic story from Stabler’s Oregonian blog:

“Building on its competition for amateur pianists, the Van Cliburn Foundation recently held a YouTube contest for amateurs. Christopher Shih, a gastroenterologist from Maryland, won by popular vote. Forty-one amateur pianists, ages 35 and older, took part.

On his video, Shih comes across as a clean and tidy player with an agile technique. He gets an automatic entry to the sixth International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, to be held in the spring of 2011 in Fort Worth. Last year, Portland pianist Sylvia Gray competed and came away with new friends and a new confidence in her playing.

Shih won the YouTube contest with his playing of “Los requiebros” from “Goyescas” by Enrique Granados. The Cliburn’s second YouTube Contest will be held in the summer of 2009.”

And one more recent story about a dedicated amateur, this courtesy of thestar.com (Toronto, Canada).

Speaking of competitions, Portland Piano International will host a group of patrons at the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. If you are interested in the trip to Fort Worth, Texas for the semifinal round, see details here:

Today, August 22, is the birthday of one of our greatest composers of music for the piano: Claude - Achille Debussy. Born in 1862, Debussy was one of the most important composers of the twentieth century, continuing and expanding the Romantic tradition with his bold harmonic explorations. For pianists, he is arguably the most important composer after Chopin.

It was late in 1892 at the age of thirty that he was finally able to shed the name “Achille” (from the Greek warrior) and became, simply, Claude.

The Académie des Beaux-Arts was not impressed with Debussy’s new sounds and harmonies initially. The following rebuke, however, is important because it uses the word impressionism for the first time in the musical world.

Monsieur Debussy…has a pronounced tendency – too pronounced - towards an exploration of the strange. One has the feeling of musical color exaggerated to the point where it causes the composer to forget the importance of precise construction and form. It is strongly to be hoped that he will guard against this vague impressionism, which is one of the most dangerous enemies of truth in works of art.

So much for the taste of the Académie.

Pianist and author Paul Roberts, long-time friend of Portland Piano International, has made an important contribution to the Debussy literature. His new biography, Claude Debussy (Phaidon Press, 2008) is a gorgeous and engaging portrait of the composer, inviting us into Debussy’s life through letters, photographs and art of the period. Roberts knows the works of Debussy intimately and has recorded two discs of his music, including the complete Preludes.

[Roberts] “has succeeded, distilling a lifetime’s reading, listening and thinking to create an intimate portrait that takes us nearer to the heart of that music than any biography before.” (Michael Church, The Independent)

For Paul Roberts’ website, including audio clips, click here:

I’ve just finished reading his beautiful book; it’s like a good novel that I just couldn’t put down.

“Collect impressions. Don’t be in a hurry to write them down. Because that’s something music can do better than painting: it can centralize variations of color and light within a single picture - a truth generally ignored, obvious as it is.”
Claude Debussy, in a letter to his stepson, Raoul Bardac

“Listening to the pianist Richard Goode playing Bach and Chopin on Sunday was a perfect, soul-soothing tonic after a busy week.” So begins Vivien Schweitzer in her New York Times review of Goode’s Town Hall recital this past April.

Although the program is not the same Goode will play in Portland, the comments Schweitzer makes about the relationship of Bach and Chopin are interesting and pertinent to his Portland programs. See those October programs here, and read the complete April 29, 2008 Schweitzer review at this link.

Despite the fact that my last post focused on child prodigies and the need to begin piano studies at an early age, Goode doesn’t fit that formula. “I was in no way a child prodigy,” he says. “My parents weren’t involved in music, although my father had some musical ability. But, as a child, I heard mostly pop music.”

And he was 47 when he gave his first solo recital in Carnegie Hall.

In my opinion, his 1993 Nonesuch recording of the complete Beethoven Sonatas still remains the standard. Goode was the first American-born pianist to record the complete cycle.

The intriguing story of his rise to prominence is one of the portraits in the late David Blum’s book, Quintet, Five Journeys toward Musical Fulfillment (Cornell University Press, 1999).

Excellent seats are available for Goode’s Portland recitals on October 12th and 14th at the Newmark Theater. Go to the Portland Piano International website for ticket information.

Anyone hoping for a career as a pianist should see this series of seven clips from the BBC on YouTube (where else). These clips show some great talents, discuss the odds, and point out the joys and difficulties of the piano business. They’ve been around for a while, but worth a second view if only for the excitement of hearing some great performances.

Vladimir Ashkenazy says that in his thirty years of teaching there have been “only maybe a couple or three to whom I say, ‘well I think you really can make a big career’.”

The clips feature pianists and teachers Yoheved “Veda” Kaplinsky, Lang Lang, Joyce Yang, Stephen Hough and others, beginning with a very talented 11 year old, Benjamin Grosvenor. There is also a segment featuring one of my favorites, the Portuguese pianist Maria Joao Pires, who no longer travels to the United States.

See the clip series here.