All the piano pieces I didn't play. All the pieces I didn't cover, didn't learn... didn't perform... didn't record... All those pieces I never heard (of). It's my Anti-Repertory. Some of the old pianists covered more. (They had to, there was no recording -- ) Antimatter, Antichrist. (to be able to hear anything, it had to be played.) Doesn't matter. The molecules don't have to be made to vibrate. Music is not only outside us but inside … [Read more...]
Hesitant and lost
Frequently a pianist may hesitate before an important note of arrival in a phrase. Singers are more likely to stretch after they achieve the important note, hesitating to end it. (It's normal for singers to emphasize sustained vowels. Consonants can usually be prolonged only a limited amount -- even in Italian!) In scripted piano music, waiting just before important notes (especially if they are harmonically expressive) is tied in with knowing … [Read more...]
Scripture reading
In the evaluations I've been writing during the spring auditions, there are notations like this: B: 31-2 (I, II) Br: 5 (I) C: 10-8 I take down which pieces are performed by prospective students, referring, with this shorthand, to the classified canon of piano music, so compact and so sorted that in some cases, even more cryptic scribbling suffices: 111 (1) 959 (I, II) L'i j Maybe I've grown to enjoy this abbreviating too much? 111 would … [Read more...]
Bachtrauma
Gerhard Richter: Bach (1992) In my dream, J. S. Bach arrives to play on the clavier some of the pieces he's written down, but as he plays, the strangeness of the temperament and lowness of pitch, the flexibility of beat and rhythmic declamation yields some of the things he plays unrecognized, for moments, or even a long while. This music that we own, this familiar canon, under his fingers it is so strange, so far from the received … [Read more...]