Obama on the Runway

Its silly season in the presidential race. Obama captures Berlin and mows Sarkozy down to size in Paris. The Obama team does have a thing about images, and they think big. Now we have McCain saying Obama is really in the same league as Paris and Britney...and just as clueless. That recent ad juxtaposing the two lifestyles..Obama versus the Clueless Duo...would seem to be a particularly nasty bit, but those Rovians are past masters at the devious. What disturbs is the underlying imagery in this ad....as noted in the Huffington Post. Turn off the sound and you see the undercurrent of violence, ending in a blinding flash, suggesting the assaination of Obama. I wonder how many will clue into that. Talk about subliminal! What is lacking so far is any depth of talk about the issues. Its all fearmongering and insults....so we are back to square one. McCain does have egg on his face as he said he would not run this kind of attack campaign...but obviously he has changed his mind. Obama is a great orator, but his Berlin speech was all pose and no substance. I rather miss Hillary and her vast knowledge of current problems, and her rather grim determination to get it across. But it is still silly season, and August is a long month.

The London Proms

Late July brings memories of going to the Proms at the vast Albert Hall in London. If you can't visulize this domed hall that seats 9,000, just revisit "The Man Who Knew Too Much" that classic Hitchcock film where most of the action takes place in the hall. After all, the pistol shot timed exactly with cymbal crash is a great piece of cinematic art. Aside from this ( and Doris Day screaming "Que Sera, Sera..." at the top of her lungs) it is quite something to attend a performance here. I remember Stokowski conducting the Scriabin "Poeme of Ecstacy" in the summer of 1970, and standing at the stage door to watch him exit to an adoring crowd. He threw roses to the crowd from a huge bouquet he was carrying, and Perri Daraz, who was standing next to me, caught one.

Now one can listen via the computer to live concerts for a period of almost two months. Recently I heard the young Russian pianist Yevgeny Sudbin play the Rachmanioff First Piano Concerto. That's the one that Rachmaninoff suffered greatly over, and revised extensively over the years.This summer the Proms are presenting the complete concerti, including the "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini". Olga Kern, late of Columbia, South Carolina and the Southeastern Piano Festival, will play the latter. Sudbin is just 26...almost old by today's piano world...and very much in the Horowitz mold, to whom he is being compared. He played with fire and great precision, but also with alot of heart. He managed to make the thick writing sound out over the orchestra, but he never pounded to do so. I liked his natural sense of phrase, and the directness of it all. To his credit, he played, went to bed, got up and flew to Naples where he was married the same day.

This performance reminded me how kind London is to pianists from all over. It seems that London is really where the center of the piano world is today, and has been for decades. As a student there in 1959-61 I became aware of the international level of piano playing. Marta Argerich was just starting out, and I remember seeing her and her mother at all the piano recitals. Marta is very tall, and stands out in a crowd. She had roared in from the plains of Argentina, and in just a few years was a world figure. Elusive, distrustful of the press, and wayward in cancelling at the last minute, she nevertheless is one of the greatest pianist alive. She has lived in Lugano for years and now has a festival each June which features chamber music. The once gleaming black locks are now entirely gray, but her hair still hangs to her waist.

Strolling around London during Proms one can hear radios through open windows playing the most wonderful music. Its a way of life in the summer...almost like a world gone past.

A Bach Moment....

Hearing performances on the car radio can be a challenge to your schedule. I mean, have you ever parked at your destination waiting for the end of the composition to see if you have guessed right, are way off the mark, or just plain out of it. Today I heard some riveting Bach...one of the Concerti with orchestra...this one featuring the piano instead of the harpsichord. My first thought was about the rhythm. It was absolutely as tight as a tick and very accented, so there was no missing the beat. The articulation of the keyboard player was crisp,fastidious to a fault, and completely original. At first I was startled. Who would have the nerve today to play like this? It was almost too original, to studied to take in all at once. Then, on second thought, who would be playing this today on the modern grand, other than Peter Serkin or perhaps Andras Schiff . What caught my ear was the tension in the playing. It sounded almost contemporary in the way dissonance was made to stand out. The variety of touch featured a rather clipped sound, and a certain stacatissimo way of playing. It was all of a piece, love it or leave it. The sound was so good I thought, now what new recording is this? It turned out to be Glenn Gould in an LP recorded in 1960 with Vladimir Golschmann and the Columbia Symphony. WELL GLENN...you sound just as fresh as a daisy as you did 48 years ago. . and just as startling.

Its Just That Time of Year....

The last of July always turns a small corner in the gardener's calendar, waiting for an even greater shift in mid-August. You have to look carefully when you live in the woods as I do, as things can seem monochromatic and even monotonous. But the other day I spotted a couple of scarlett leaves on the sasafrass shrubs that told me that time was marching on. Then quick glances at the rhrododendrons informed me that they had already set next May's blooms, and it promises to be another banner year of bloom. Its easy for them to get confused in our False Spring which comes just after the first big cold spell...usually in late November or early December. I have seen them blooming away around Christmas, doomed to an early death. Our rains this summer come in patches, just enough to stave off absolute drought, but we have lived on the edge the past few years. I nursed a pansy redbud for four years until it kicked the bucket last winter. I cut it down and went my merry way. In June I noticed an unusual purple-green bush growing in the same spot, and lo it had come up from the roots with vigor. I dump a bucket of water on it faithfully, and hopefully it will survive the winter. One of my best rhrododendrons was run over by Mr.Winston several years ago in his zeal to harvest wood from a fallen live oak. It bloomed magnificently this year....of course I call it "Ressurection".

Beethoven and the Kitchen Sink....

Watching design shows on HGTV has become as predictable as thunder storms in July in South Carolina. What is it that makes for all this blah paint color and bare floors. Home buyers today seem terrified of color, hate carpet and run from one sink bathrooms. The joke is that everything ends up generic, destroying anything that has any character in its path. Perhaps it is a vast marketing ploy that networks buy into. Everything has to be stainless steel, granite and huge. It is no news that most home buyers can't visulize anything in their heads, so everything has to be spelled out for them. Get rid of all but the most basic furniture, so that the rooms will appear bigger than they really are. Don['t dare put any pictures on the wall, except for the most hopeless expressions of decorator art. The joke is when you see the homes the prospective buyers are living in at present they stand revealed as overstuffed, usually filthy and tasteless. Functional means let it drop where you last used it. Stuff, stuff and more stuff.

Now apply this 21st century mentality to a movement of Beethoven. First of all, don't let your emotions get in the way. You might turn off a potential listener. Keep your technique efficient, cool, and stainless. Don't dare turn dramatic, and evoke all sorts of colors and moods in your interpretation. Keep it cool. Avoid the clutter of pedal effects and dare to distain tradition. Keep the cobwebs out of your interpretation. Down with the past. Who needs that. Cart it all to the dump.

Lets live in the present, hooked up to instant cells and computers, eyes glued to the screen. Don't talk to anyone except by cell phone, otherwise your body language will give away what you really mean. Be cool man...or woman...or inbetween.

In a few years trucks will be spotted carrying all that granite and stainless steel to the dump. What will be the next trend!! Don't worry...its just around the corner.

Sooner or Later.....

I once asked my piano professor at Yale if he ever heard from former students. Bruce Simonds scratched his head, as he always did when he was "thinking" and said "Only a few". I had only been teaching a few years, but I never forgot his words. It reminded me of what Virginia French Mackie said to us when we were her theory students at the University of Kansas CIty, way back in the 1950's. "Remember, you are teaching for the few". That meant just what she intended: get used to the fact that not every student thinks you are a genius and will light a candle at your shrine.

So when students write with news it is always a red letter day. CHRIS SARZEN, a brilliant student from Atlanta who was here at USC in the early 1980's, went on to get a Doctor of Medicine at Vanderbilt and has been practicing in the Atlanta area for quite a few years now. He has maintained his technique and has grown tremendously in artistry over the years. This Spring he entered the Atlanta Mozart Competition, won, and is at this very moment in Salzburg, Austria, studying for a few weeks with master teachers. Chris has continued to send me impressive CD's that he records at home. Some years ago he was traveling in England, and found an old Steinway in a village in the Lake District. He sent it to London to be restored, and it now sits in his living room in Atlanta. His recent recording of the Rachmaninoff Second Sonata is very powerful, one of the best I have heard. Chris plans to play alot more in the coming years, and I think it will be a successful second career in a very difficult field.

Nancy Hill Elton, one of my very first students at USC in the 1960's and a native of Columbia, was in town recently to play her most recent recital program for me. The hall at USC was being used to record, so Columbia College opened their doors to us and we used their splendid small recital hall with its venerable old Steinway. Nancy has developed a big following in Atlanta, and she is also soprano soloist at one of the biggest churches there. She did the incredible and got a Doctorate in Piano and a Doctorate in Voice. She played Beethoven Opus 81a, the Chopin Fourth Ballade, a group of Liszt pieces and the first set of Images by Debussy. She has natural technique and lots of drive, which she has tempered with beautiful sound and a composers sense of form. She was very effective in the Beethoven, where she avoided the pitfalls and opened up the emotional range of the work. Her Chopin is very secure, never hysterical, like so many tend to do, and always beautiful to listen to. Her natural technique shines in the Liszt, and she knows how to entertain. So many pianists are so serious in approach that they lose, or never develop this quality, but Nancy has enough showmanship to reach out to the audience and make them listen. Best was the Debussy, especially the moving "Homage a Rameau" one of the most difficult of all Debussy piano pieces. It is rare to hear intellectual qualities combined with the ability to convey the exact emotional content, but she made this happen. Some family matters have held her back of late, but hopefully she can soon reach out to the audiences that await her.

Early Menories of Kansas City

As a pianist of many years standing, I have seen a lot come and go on the classical scene. Imagine...one of my early teachers studied with Clara Schumann and was a friend of Johannes Brahms. Carl Friedberg was born in Bingen am Rhine, Germany, in 1872, and studied with Frau Schumann in her last years. Carl made his debut under Gustav Mahler and the Vienna Philharmonic in 1900, and came to the USA originally as accompanist for Fritz Kreisler, one of the all time great violinists. He later became a principal teacher at the Institute of Musical Arts in New York City, which later became the Julliard School

I met Carl Friedberg in Kansas City in 1950. My family had moved there from Birmingham, Alabama, and I was lucky to find a very fine piano teacher named Mary Newitt Dawson. She took me to a master class at the University of Kansas City conducted by Mr.Friedberg. It was held in a beautiful drawing room in the mansion that Colonel William Rockhill Nelson had built overlooking the Kansas City skyline, and the famous museum that bears his name, the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, one of the finest in the world.

Among the many pianists in the room that day were Malcolm Frager, who had come over from St.Louis, Albertine Baumgartner (now Votapek) Joanne Baker, Gerald Kemner and Mary Weaver, the most famous piano teacher in Kansas City in that era. I remember my teacher introducing me to Mr.Friedberg, and the comment he made, saying I had a remarkable teacher and to consider myself very lucky.

A master class like this didn't happen by chance. Evaline Hartley was a remarkable voice teacher at KCU who had studied in Germany as a young lady (with the great Julia Culp, no less), and she was a friend of Mack Harrell, a leading baritone at the Met and a faculty member at Julliard. (Yes, he was the father of Lynn Harrell, one of our best cellists today). She had persuaded KCU to bring him, his accompanist Conrad Bos, and Mr. Friedberg to town for a two week mastercourse. The course ran for a number of summers immediately after the Second World War.

I didn't play that summer, and when the classes were no longer held, Mr.Friedberg continued to come to Kansas City until he died in 1955. It was during this period that I had many lessons with him, learning the Schumann Concerto in A Minor, the Schumann "Carnaval", the Franck "Variations Symphoniques" and the Chopin "Barcarolle". There were also numerous Preludes of Debussy and other shorter works we studied together. In a later post I will write about our lessons and the impact they still have on me today.

A First Post

Windrushnotes is about the music world at large, observations on the art of the piano, and personal thoughts that are looking for a larger audience. Be my guest, add your own comments, and enjoy.