The crowd went silent. A moment passed, the hall brimming with anticipation. The maestro inhaled and leaned forward ...
Frozen in this moment, I was reminded of the wise words of poet Allen Grossman, who said, "In reading a poem out loud, one must pay special attention to the beginning. To tune the beginning, one must reflectively fall silent -- only then can the poem flow from within."
... His hands come down with poise, the notes pour out, and so Leon Fleisher began the pinnacle of this past weekend's events, Franz Schubert's "Sonata in B-Flat Major," the last piece Schubert wrote before he died. The occasion? Shriver Hall Concert Series' 40th anniversary, marked by a weekend-long celebration of the piano. The extravaganza had been in the works for over two years, with planned lectures on piano playing, construction, history, as well as a number of top-caliber performances. Why dedicate the whole event to one instrument? Perhaps it is the piano's unique capability for potent individual expression. The ability of the pianist to give form to our emotional fog is at the root of the truly great piano recitals.
One proviso before moving on -- I am but an amateur lover of classical piano, though as Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic for the New York Times pointed out in his lecture, amateur didn't always carry a negative connotation. From the latin "amator" (lover of), the word denotes someone who engages for pleasure rather than vocation. So, amateur that I am, I listened eagerly at the weekend's opening event, Julliard professor and master pianist David Dubal's lecture on "The History and Future of the Piano."
A formidable figure, Dubal looks remarkably like an 18th century composer and speaks in staccato notes, accentuating his consonants as one might strike the ivory.
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"Nobody is really an authority on the piano," he says -- and then proceeds to trumpet several lofty claims with just such authority.
Dubal laments many modern developments, some more coherently than others. "Tremendous overpopulation," he says, "is the scourge of our time." An over-population of pianists? On one hand, Dubal regrets that most pianists cannot make a living doing what they do, that artists have been reduced to little more than "marketplace concepts."
But for every such sentence there was one encouraging us all to take up the great instrument, praising the sublime joy of piano playing, of which we've been stripped by the technology and the passivity of consumer commercialism. How many people, he asks, still play live music at home for their friends? Despite these incongruities, above all Dubal exudes a deep love for the commitment and devotion it takes to play the piano.
Later that night, the crowd migrated over to Shriver Hall for the first of the recitals. Friday night's headliner was Krystian Zimerman, the Polish maestro, who has made a habit of not announcing the program of his recitals in advance. It was with some surprise, then, that I read over his rather predictable choices, but Zimerman's exuberant personality helped avoid the pitfalls of performing canonical works through and through, from Mozart's Sonata in C Major to Beethoven's "Pathetique." Often, while the right hand glided over the lyrical passages, his left gestured in the air. His liberal interpretation of rests allowed the pieces to breathe, pausing for a moment of reflection before diving back in.
The real gem, though, came in the second half, when the program advanced to Chopin, Ravel and finally Grazyna Bacewicz, arguably Poland's most famous female composer of the 20th century. Zimerman dedicated this last piece, which showcased his complete emotional palette, to his daughter, happily seated in the second row.
On Saturday morning, the BMA again played host to a number of lectures delivered by experts on all things piano-related. The highlight of the morning was undoubtedly Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic for the Times, and an accomplished amateur pianist in his own right. Kimmelman told the story of how he dropped being a music critic and decided to go back to playing instead.
The defining moment, he recalls, was an experimental music "performance," which consisted of a French guy flicking on some switches in his apartment that played street sounds. "Is there a concert going on here?" he asked himself. Drawing a smile from the attending Dubal, Kimmelman said he enjoys the "implied morality" of submitting oneself to music, the devotion and dedication. And so he decided to take up playing again as a respite from the journalism world, to buy himself, as he put it, "a little purchase in the sublime." The reaction from his peers was skeptical to say the least. "This is unfortunately an age of specialists," he laments, "and we tend to react negatively to someone who thinks he can do it all." But after the first concert, his friends were duly impressed, and Kimmelman continued to play while studying under Seymour Bernstein. "The best amateur," he beams, "plays like a professional; the best professional remains an amateur at heart."
And then there was Fleisher. Crippled when two fingers on his right hand became immobile in 1965, the maestro was essentially forced into early retirement as a concert pianist. For years Fleisher mastered the frustratingly limited repertoire for left-hand only piano pieces, while doubling as conductor and teacher. Sitting sideways on his piano bench, Fleisher addressed the audience with a dilemma. While encores are a common practice, when a program ends with a piece such as Schubert's, one runs the risk of trivializing the whole affair by tacking a piece to the end. A sensible solution was found: he would play the encore before the rest of the show. The audience laughed, and Fleisher gracefully delved into Bach's sublime "Sheep May Safely Graze."
Losing the ability to play with both hands, said Fleisher, took the focus off the apparatus and allowed him to focus on the essence of each piece. In other words, treat music as music. "It seems less momentous in a sense -- but more, an extension and a continuation." A perfect description of Fleisher's take on Bach.
Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, in a rare display of short-sightedness, famously remarked that the piano was a tinker's kettle, an iron monger's instrument. If the weekend had proven anything, it is the extraordinary breadth and vitality of the instrument. It is rare that one is privileged enough to come into contact with true genius, and rarer still for that feat to be repeated in the span of one weekend. That's what the Shriver concert lineup promised, and that's exactly what it delivered.
