Attending a dear friends 95th birthday was a great excuse to return to a country I fell in love with as a student in the late 1950's and early 60's. My first impression still remains vivid...that of seeing spotless white curtains hanging in picture perfect windows, pots of flowers on the sills. That image seemed to capture the basic stillness that is a remarkable trait of Dutch life. Tightly packed cities mean closely packed apartments, and life has many moments spent indoors. But the typical Dutch living room is still very much the same: comfortable chairs drawn up in a circle, places for books and coffee cups, and plants on the sills, desk, and table. Vermeer likes to show oriental rugs as table covers, and this is still a favorite, although the rugs are thin, so drape elegantly. Coffee seems to be a passion like it has always been. The Dutch must grind the coffee, filter it slowly, so that the waiting around for the first cup is an equisite pleasure.
The stillness pervades everywhere. Villages abound in cottages with beautiful small gardens, metticulously maintained. This May there were elegant rhododendrums of every shade, all in perfect bloom. I was lucky, as the week before mine had bloomed in Hopkins, and were equally wonderful this year. The many parks and canals add their own quality of life, and I still find the tree lined canals places of poetry and nostalgia. Sitting with friends on a Sunday morning having brunch at a sidewalk table, we watched a slow parade of bicycles, many tamdems for two, draw by and fade in the distance, like silent ships. Once in a while a motorcycle wound go by, bringing the stillness to a halt, but even these riders tried not to stick out too much. It seems we were viewing riders taking a circle tour of seven villages, a Sunday tradition.
My friend's apartment looked out over the center or Eindhoven, which was bombed relentlessly in the final days of WWII. A lazy town river flows by her second floor terrase. We floated in and out for four days, celebrating a long life filled with great happiness, but also dark moments of war. The Dutch speak of eating tulip bulbs when there was no food. They laugh about it, but underneath is the resolve that saw them through.
The celebration party was a work of art, held inside and out at a lovely restaurant inside a beautiful park. Everyone was in long dresses and black tie, adding that touch that the hostess preferred. It was like a panorama of life, brief connections with one's past, filtered through many years of living.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Suddenly It's May
We had a beautiful, long Spring, with a few detours along the way, especially from violent storms, bringing high winds, hail, and pounding rain. A new roof, by way of State Farm, got baptised immediately, but it held firm and there were no surprises. It seems I stayed home for weeks, and I took advantage of the time to work on new repertoire. This summer I will be a presenter at the Alabama MTA Convention, and also teach at the South Eastern Piano Festival at USC. We auditioned some great pianists, and I think it will be a treat for all of us. Then in July its back to London (where I have just been for two weeks) to play for the Bosendorfer Piano Series in Regents Park on July 27. It will be Brahms, Schubert, Debussy, and the Great Themes from Movies of the Forties, including the Warsaw Concerto of Richard Addinsell. A couple of Piano Portraits in Charleston in September are on the horizon, and also I will perform on the September Concerts for the first time since I retired.
I have been learning the transcription by Lucien Garban of Debussy's great symphonice work, "La Mer". It is a most interesting transcription, quite pianistic, and sounds lovely on the piano. It is full of notes, but it is not overwhelming in difficulty. I do have the advantage of having performed all of Debussy's piano music, so I see many correlations and similarities. I would say keeping the line moving forward and constanly varying the color and voicing are things one has to master. It will be interesting to see how people react. I have taken most of the tremeloes out, not wanting to sound like a silent movie piano player! Actually, I find it is very engrossing, and I am amazed at how Debussy composed this work. It is much more complex than one would think, as when we listen to it on recordings it seems to float by. The challenge is to the EAR more than the fingers. The harmonic changes are often veiled, hidden away in the texture in such as way as to always sounds like you never heard then before each time you come to them!. He has the ability to come up with fascinating choices, usually ones you would not suspect. His technic of composing is that of constant variation, one section evolving out of another in this incredibly fluent stream of sound. One always thinks Impressionism is vague, formless, and full of mist. That is all a put-up-job. It is as highly constructed as Beethoven or Mozart, and has all the mastery of counterpoint (with some novel twists) found in Bach.
A recent visit to London found everyone recovering from two 4 days weekends, and social calendars were all mixed up. The Wedding entralled the nation, and was an enormous pick me up for a public terribly put upon by inflation, difficult job market, and loss of benefits. Sound familiar? I avoided the central areas, and instead visited friends in the suburbs, going around by bus. It was a great visit, and I always leave with regret. The consolation is when I get home, I am so comfortable and it is so beautiful, I wonder why I left in the first place!
I have been learning the transcription by Lucien Garban of Debussy's great symphonice work, "La Mer". It is a most interesting transcription, quite pianistic, and sounds lovely on the piano. It is full of notes, but it is not overwhelming in difficulty. I do have the advantage of having performed all of Debussy's piano music, so I see many correlations and similarities. I would say keeping the line moving forward and constanly varying the color and voicing are things one has to master. It will be interesting to see how people react. I have taken most of the tremeloes out, not wanting to sound like a silent movie piano player! Actually, I find it is very engrossing, and I am amazed at how Debussy composed this work. It is much more complex than one would think, as when we listen to it on recordings it seems to float by. The challenge is to the EAR more than the fingers. The harmonic changes are often veiled, hidden away in the texture in such as way as to always sounds like you never heard then before each time you come to them!. He has the ability to come up with fascinating choices, usually ones you would not suspect. His technic of composing is that of constant variation, one section evolving out of another in this incredibly fluent stream of sound. One always thinks Impressionism is vague, formless, and full of mist. That is all a put-up-job. It is as highly constructed as Beethoven or Mozart, and has all the mastery of counterpoint (with some novel twists) found in Bach.
A recent visit to London found everyone recovering from two 4 days weekends, and social calendars were all mixed up. The Wedding entralled the nation, and was an enormous pick me up for a public terribly put upon by inflation, difficult job market, and loss of benefits. Sound familiar? I avoided the central areas, and instead visited friends in the suburbs, going around by bus. It was a great visit, and I always leave with regret. The consolation is when I get home, I am so comfortable and it is so beautiful, I wonder why I left in the first place!
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