For me
the written word and live music are separate animals. Even when purposely brought
together as in song or opera they act as dueling parties, circling each other
and waiting for the opportunity to pounce and steal focus. For this reason
(mainly) I am vehemently opposed to concert programs and their perennial notes
on the music. Aside
from its minor role as a musical checklist for those who must always know what
is coming next in life, today's classical concert program actually
exists to raise advertising revenue, promote future events having nothing to do
with the concert at hand, and to back-pat the venue’s illustrious contributors.
The program notes, in the guise of helpful context, lurk threateningly in the
corner of this plump publication, daring you to approach: “Pssst…Hey you! Yeah you,
the one who never paid attention in Music Appreciation 101? You’ve got ten
minutes to read this and summarize in front of the class. Otherwise…well,
there’s no chance you’ll ever be able to grasp the complexities to come.”
Often, these notes are not even written by the artist, but by a more suitable
expert-for-hire. I find it hard to understand what bearing historical facts
or interesting anecdotes can have on the living, breathing music to follow. Sometimes this information will be at complete odds to the actual
performance and only serve to confuse matters; while innocently leafing through
the program backstage before a recent concert (always a tragic mistake) I was
perplexed to learn that the “Presto” movement of the work I was just about to
play–presto–was actually marked “Andante” in a recently discovered manuscript.
Touché!
Can you imagine entering a
concert hall and not being bombarded with this hopelessly distracting
interface? No fascinating pre-concert talk about Beethoven’s state of mind in
1803, no fund-raising curtain speech, no off-putting egg-headed notes? Just
someone walking out and making music, warts and all? You would–gasp!–be allowed
to experience the performance without any preparation or preconception beyond
what life has given you so far. Sort of like how we go to see film, popular
music, theater, dance and most visual art, wouldn’t you say?
I try to craft my playing to
directly meet the minds and hearts of a blissfully unprepared and uneducated
audience, no matter what the repertoire. If I can’t do that without first
forcing the Castor oil of scholarship down their throats, then it is doomed to
fail from the start. Yes, I will at times coax my listeners to meet me in the
middle; this should never be about pandering or sugar-coating (with a largely
20th century repertoire I am hardly in danger of that). Rather, my goal is to play in a way that Greg Sandow so brilliantly describes as “vividly": in a palpably alive and sense-driven way that
strives to make an intensely clear impression on any listener. In the end, it’s MY job to
be smart about the music. It’s the audience’s job to show up, get excited,
learn from the experience and hopefully come back for more.
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