Pianoroll

Last year, the great musician and violinist, Joel Lester, conducted a workshop in Jerusalem about Bach’s music for violin solo and asked us to play the Preludio of Partita No. 3 in E major with Schumann’s piano accompaniment. In the video linked below, Daniel Askarov played the violin and I played the piano accompaniment, with Joel Lester turning the pages. (Joel Lester turning pages for me reminds me of a funny story about Enescu and Schnabel, which I will tell you at the end of this blog.)

As I played Schumann’s piano part I was wondering why on earth would Schumann add a piano accompaniment to Bach’s perfect music for violin solo. Joel Lester said that in Schumann’s days these things would not be played without an accompaniment.
This year, when I started playing the violin part of the Partita, I finally understood the meaning of Schumann’s piano accompaniment. It is amazing how identical it is to the phrasing of the Bach Partita. Schumann studied Bach extensively and his accompaniment can be used as an exercise in counterpoint and in phrasing. Schumann might have thought that Bach needed more counterpoint and polyphony in his violin Partitas, so he added his piano accompaniment which makes it sound more harmonically and polyphonically present.
And here is the story about Enescu and Schnabel. It involves the Romanian violinist Sandu Albu, a friend of Enescu’s. It took place in the late 1920s in New York when Sandu Albu was touring in New York and his accompanist turned sick. As luck would have it, he ran into Enescu in the street and asked him if he would accompany him that evening on the piano, and Enescu said, no problem, he could do it. Later that day, Enescu ran into Schnabel, who asked if Enescu wanted to go to the movies with him. Enescu said he had a concert, but if Schnabel would turn pages for him, they could go out afterwards. Schanbel said no problem, he’d turn pages for Enescu. Next day, in the New York Times review, they wrote the following about the concert: “The music was very good, but there was a slight problem with the casting: Enescu should have been on the violin, Schnabel on the piano, and Sandu Albu should have been turning pages.”

I want to tell you the story of a very unusual Pogorelich recital I heard in Jerusalem a few weeks ago (on March 17th).
When I arrived at the concert, a few minutes before it was to begin, Pogorelich was on stage playing Islamey with two fingers, dressed in a gym suit and wearing a Santa Claus hat. Islamey was not on the program. Some people applauded, but he told them that the concert hadn’t started yet. He then left to change and returned later with a page turner who stayed with him throughout the concert.
Pogorelich began with Chopin’s Nocturne Op 62 No 2 in the most bizarre interpretation I ever heard. He played it sooooooo slowly (with a metronome sometimes as low as 50) that it took him about 12 minutes – I kid you not. I was thankful he didn’t play Op 62 No 1, which is my favorite. For some reason, he chose to emphasize (bang?..) all the wrong notes, the ones that should be played piano. The unusual interpretation produced some whispers in the hall, and every few minutes he turned to the audience and said:
“Stop toking!”
After he finished the Nocturne, he got up and faced the audience:
“Let’s make e deel. You stay silent, I stay on steij. You tok, I go hom. We are in e concert, not in de Knesset.”
Someone must have said something rude (judging from the tone) in Serbian, and Pogorelich answered in Serbian (using the same tone). Then he sat down and played Chopin’s Sonata No 3 without any breaks between the parts. He didn’t even take his foot off the pedal between the parts. Again, there was some stir in the audience, and he continued yelling “Stop toking” every now and then. Pogorelich once said in an interview, many years ago, that you may not like how he plays Chopin, but you will remember it. Well, this was once concert I am sure to remember for a long time.
The concert reached its lowest point with Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No 1.
Here is a Youtube rendition that illustrates the general style of his playing Mephisto these days (in 2 parts).

But the performance was not as good as the one on Youtube, and people really started talking, so there was more yelling from the stage.
After the Mephisto the piano was a mess, so during the break a tuner came on stage to fix it and bring it back into shape. Some people left at the intermission.

The second part consisted of Sibelius’s Venus Waltz and Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit. There was more “stop toking” during the Sibelius, and everyone started laughing. Someone yelled back:
“Start playing and we’ll stop talking.”
Pogorelich yelled back: “Ven I am play you are shut ap.” This piece was not a success, and people kept leaving.
The concert ended with Gaspard de la Nuit by Ravel, which was in fact the best part. But then a phone rang in the middle of the piece, and Pogorelich said:
“You are de chempions over us Serbs. Why you go to concerts? Stay hom.”
Then at bar 232 of Scarbo he snapped the lowest D# string on the piano.
After he finished playing he stood up, closed the lid and the keyboard of the piano, walked backstage and locked himself up in the green room. There was no encore, lol.

After the concert, a bunch of my friends and I went back stage to talk with him, but he was locked in his room for so long that we were about to go, when he came out of the room and seeing us said in Russian всего хорошего (”all the best”).
Before anyone gets any wrong ideas from this blog, Pogorelich is a phenomenal pianist, as can be seen both in his early and recent recordings. I think he plays Bach better than anyone. Watch this breathtaking performance from the English Suites and enjoy!

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Another awesome Pogorelich performance is Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit of 1983, maybe the best performance ever. Here is Ondine, the most difficult part.

The number of people who can play this piece well can be counted on one hand.

I recently heard an opera called Kullervo by Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen. I had no idea about Sallinen until I heard Kullervo (although I know quite a few contemporary composers), but right now he is (to me) one of the most amazing composers around.
Kullervo is a story based on runes (chapters) 31 through 36 of the Kalevala. It starts out with a fascinating introduction (Untamoinen verkot laski kalervon kalavetehen, have no idea what it means, lol). The chorus is accompanied by low wind instruments that sound to me like tuba, baritone, sarussophone, and such…
Here is a scene that can give you an idea of the type of music Sallinen writes.

Sallinen combines the traditional belcanto style with fierce, dreadful-sounding atonal harmonies. He also has harmonies, that at times sound very pretty and sweet (with pedal points, progressions in cycles of fifths, etc.), followed immediately by a frightful-sounding atonal part. I think this combination is very effective. Other composers who use this kind of mixture of tonal and atonal portions thrown together are Luca Francesconi, John Musto, Hans Werner Henze, to name a few.
I have now read the plot of the opera, but before I did, I knew that the opera was very tragic. The use of tonal harmonies to precede atonal harmonies is a sign of tragedy, of intensity. In the entire opera, Sallinen has not one really joyful or cheerful aria or chorus part.
The performance I heard is by the Finnish National Opera Chorus and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ulf Soderblom. You can find it on www.naxosmusiclibrary.com if you have a subscription ($150 for a year, but definitely worth it!).
BTW, I first heard this opera when I was in the car. I didn’t know who the composer was, so I was pretty sure it was Arvo Pärt, lol.

This month I played at a master class conducted by Richard Goode, following his recital here in Jerusalem. I played Mozart’s Sonata in C major, K330.
Here are selections from the master class. The full lesson was one hour. Because Youtube limits the length of videos to 10 minutes, I broke up the lesson into six videos. The link is to the first video, which begins with my playing the first part of the sonata and continues with Richard Goode talking about the operatic nature of the music. There is a link from the first video to the second one, and so on, should you want to see the continuation of the lesson.

Richard Goode’s approach to this lesson (and to K330) could be summarized as “interpretation by analogy with opera,” highlighting the different characters, colors, styles, and dynamics present in the music. He said that Mozart was first and foremost an opera composer. (Others have told me that my playing should be more colorful, but most of the time I like a certain matter-of-fact, understated quality in my style). I fully agree with Richard Goode, however, that Mozart combines all qualities and opposites in this sonata (light and dark, happy and sad…).
I learned a lot from this master class, not necessarily about opera but more about style and touch. I was amazed by his Mozart touch, by the grace and elegance with which he plays Mozart. I had some difficulty picking up on his idea of representing colors and opera characters in playing the sonata because this is not my usual style.

Richard Goode conducted a series of master classes as guest of the Aldwell Center, at the Conservatory of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and at the Jerusalem Music Center. The Aldwell Center offers young pianists a rich program of workshops and master classes with some of the greatest pianists and teachers of our time.

Here  is a video of Chopin’s Etude Op 25 No 1 that I played in a master class for Andrej Jasinski, the legendary teacher of Krystian Zimerman, among others. Watch the choreographic teaching style. I think his dancing and gestures replace the teacher yelling “Top voice, top voice!” and other instructions. Jasinski explained about Chopin’s style, texture, voicing… in a believable way. He is one of the most “Chopinesque” pianists/teachers around.

I liked Jasinski a lot as a teacher, more than others I played for… I like teaching by exemplifying different works and describing how similar or different they are. He is a great “exemplifier” (and I don’t mean the dancing, lol), and made connections with some five mazurkas, and even Mozart’s K491.
By the way, my favorite performance of this etude is by Stanislav Bunin. You can check him out on YouTube.
At the same master class I also played the Nocturne Op 62 No 2 (a much better piece), without choreography.

Jasinski conducted a series of master classes as guest of the Aldwell Center, at the Conservatory of the Jerusalem Academy of Music. The Aldwell Center offers young pianists a rich program of workshops and master classes with some of the greatest pianists and teachers alive.