The first time I ate skate, I'm sure it was a fillet that was sautéed and crispy. A piscatorial classic of the bistro, it was made with lots of butter, and probably capers. It's a classic that requires an act of virtuosity, the cutting of the fillet. Fancy fish sellers and well-trained chefs turned a rather ordinary ingredient into something most cooks couldn't really do. About ten years ago or more, skate started showing up unfilleted on … [Read more...]
Clover V
In considering the ways today's art is an art of appropriation, let's notice a basic change that's occurred in writing, composing, and design. Editing used to involve re-writing, re-typing, re-drawing -- physically copying some previously used material into each new version. Computer-enabled editing techniques now mean that the virtual copying and pasting of material from one version of a project to another is routine whether we're working with … [Read more...]
No fervor
Hearing Liszt's "Feux follets" at Alice Tully Hall -- it crossed my mind that it was the most accomplished performance of the étude ever played! This solo recital was won by the pianist as part of a competition prize. Tully Hall was mostly empty. No critics and no bloggers were there to document this considerable piano-playing achievement. And that makes sense -- it wasn't "news." It may be puzzling that today's highly accomplished, … [Read more...]
Can we play too well?
It's been suggested (by Charles Rosen) that a pianist who plays difficult passages notated in Robert Schumann's piano music, to today's standard of accuracy, is not giving an "authentic" reading. No one in the early nineteenth century could have done it, so, the argument goes, "mistakes" would be part of "authenticity." (We might speculate on the impact the sounds made or make...) In Ghent, a year and a half ago at the Orpheus Institute, we … [Read more...]