Shakespeare is my therapist III

"And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything."
(As You Like It)

I have a love-hate relationship with the city. Being within striking distance of people and institutions is so essential for one's "career." Yet the city discourages the fostering of the very skill or product that said career is banking on.

Take a singer. (It took all my restraint not to append the word "Please" thereafter. For I know singers. But in any case, take a singer.) Singer goes to Manhattan, in order to "make it big." To make it big doing what? Singing. And what are the elements of good singing? Breathing. Relaxation. A true sympathy with the emotions of the music. And so forth. Well, how the hell are you supposed to breathe in Manhattan? There are more poisonous gases in the air than oxygen. Relaxation? No comment. And sympathy for emotions? I'm going to suggest that Manhattan is not the ideal place on earth to develop that commodity.

Yet Manhattan is the place where the famous voice teacher is, the one who is going to reveal to you the secrets of Caruso and Nellie Melba and Adelina Patti and Gigli. The teacher who, for your convenience, accepts all major credit cards. (I'm not joking. There are voice teachers in New York who accept credit cards. In Boston there are lawyers who still don't accept credit cards!)

But what if that teacher does not keep as many secrets as you think? What if there are aspects of Caruso's art that are revealed only in the rural suburbs of Naples? The sound of the dialect being spoken ... the smells and tastes of the food ... the attitudes ... and most importantly, that feeling in the air -- that certain something that makes you feel like making music? I felt it the first day I was in the province of Naples. It's like a chemical in the air that just doesn't exist in other areas of the world.

But what about the important and influential managers back in New York? But if you're going to market something, that something has to be of a certain quality to start with, or else why market it? That quality is obtained by exposure to "tongues," "books," "sermons," and "good." What if those four things are more plentiful in the country?

Now that the Internet is becoming more diffuse, we are becoming a society that goes beyond what I dreamt of in the early 90s, before the discovery of Cyberspace. I dreamt that if I could get my career to the point that I could live off of royalties, all I'd need was an address. That address could be in a village in Sicily as easily as in Manhattan. But how do you accrue such royalties? Well, today there is a whole other stratosphere of possibility: living in Sicily and building a career while you're there. With CIC I correspond with composers in countries all over the world, most of whom I have never even met. With a computer and Internet access, it is all possible. There's nothing I've ever done with CIC that I could not have done in an Alpine village.

The difference is in the quality of my product. When I smell the aromas of smoked Würst'l wafting through the Alpine air, my mood to make music is twice what it is here. When I see the mountains reflected in the lake, so much music rushes through my head that I could never write down all of it. These are the truths of music, not the hypocrasies of Conservatory professors perpetuated from their professors and the professors before them. I live in the city not to receive these truths but to market them. But if the Internet could permit me to do both from the same location ...

The most idyllic place I have ever played was neither in the south of Italy nor in the Austrian Alps. It was Altenberg, about a half-hour from Cologne. Downtown Cologne resembles Downtown Boston in so many ways. Modern. Dirty. Depressing. Sure, there is that small matter of the Kölner Dom. But the day I visited it, the Cathedral was so infected by "public haunt" -- and by seminarians holding plates that said, "Für den Dom" -- that I doubt a moment's feeling of prayerfulness would have been possible there.

But travel 17 kilometers -- 10.5 miles -- 25 minutes by car -- and you are in Odenthal. You are in the middle of a postcard. Trees all around. The babbling brook. The castle in the hill. You couldn't hope to be anywhere more beautiful on Planet Earth. And in the northern part of Odenthal is a section called Altenberg, where there is a High Gothic cathedral -- right there amidst the trees! (See the photo if you don't believe me.)

One of the best parts of an organ tour is when they give you the key to the church, and you're all alone -- you, the organ, and the music that you're free to make on it. Being closed up in that particular Cathedral, the moonlight seemed to blend with the tones of the four-manual Klais organ. There were no people around to disturb it -- no clergy to cry about money, no parishioners to complain that the hymn was too loud or too soft or too fast or too slow or too overdone or too unfamiliar. Take away people and you have the silence of truth. Add people and you have the white noise of fiction.

During my practice breaks, I walked to Odenthal and was part of the postcard. In America you walk out of the church, and there's K-Mart.

So is there a way to learn the truths of music in this type of environment and also make the connections in order to market the music created from these truths? With a good laptop, perhaps so.

Altoona II

When I play in Europe, the instrument I am playing is merely one part of the experience. I'm inspired by the building (often a church) and the surrounding neighborhood. In some towns the local color is especially, well, colorful.

I don't need to describe the inspiring décor and ambience of the legendary Mishler Theatre. It's exactly what you want an old theatre to look and feel like. Yet no less inspiring was an eating establishment around the corner, named Tom & Joe's Diner (http://www.tomandjoes.com). Like the Mishler, the walls of this 1933 establishment seemed to talk. Talk -- they were downright kibitzing! There was not one aspect of my experience there that I would have changed. Not one! The place was mobbed. The waitress zipped from one table to another, not lingering a second longer than physically necessary. She practically threw my straw at me; she didn't have time to get close enough to the table to actually give it to me. By the time it landed she was already half-way to the next table. The food? Macaroni & cheese that I couldn't have improved upon. Fried haddock that I couldn't have improved upon. Plus a salad. The brusqueness of the waitress made it all taste even better. It was a perfectly authentic and an authentically perfect experience.

After eating I went to the register to pay. The cashier said, "$7.45."

I thought it was a mistake. "What was that?"

"$7.45."

"For everything?"

"Yes."

"Oh. I guess I'm so used to Boston prices."

Another waitress passed by and, in a smoky basso profondo voice, said, "You can pay more if you want!"

I think it's fair to say: the concert was a great success. Soprano Jean Danton, whom I accompanied, is an all-around pro. She is a true performer, for a true performer performs even better when there's an audience. She took energy from the people and imbued her songs with life, but not in a way that distorted all that we'd rehearsed. She was just great.

As for my solo numbers ... Performing them felt like the culmination of the whole experience. The green, rolling hills; the city with its Cathedral, its diner, its theatre; the ambience of the hall; the incredible people from St. Francis University who waited on me hand and foot from the moment I stepped off the plane. These things all combined to become part of the sound that I made at the piano.

My schedule had been very full prior to my arrival in Altoona. I hadn't practiced in enough days that I was getting nervous. In Altoona my practice time was on the morning of the concert from 10:30 to 12. That was it. Other than additional warm-up rehearsals at 2 and 6:30, I had only the one serious practice session. But as a result, I focused like a fiend. I had to.

And in the case of the Gershwin, I was playing from a combination of Gershwin's written-out song arrangements, some arrangements transcribed from his 78 records, and some of my own ideas. The songs never came out the same way twice. I sat on that stage and literally was not sure what I was going to play. Something else that's good for one's focus: FEAR.

It's a great city, that Altoona. I believe someday it will have a renaissance and see some of its former glory. But I like to think that the renaissance has already started, and that Misher's great theatre is an integral art of it.

Vous jouerez du Mozart en mémoire de moi

(or, Mozart By Total Immersion)

How is it that Chopin was my favorite composer, yet his final words on his deathbed -- "Play Mozart in my memory" -- never made sense to me?

Mozart? Why Mozart?

I used to think that Mozart was certainly a Wunderkind, and certainly he was on to something with his latest works, but had he only finished his Requiem and lived longer -- I thought -- maybe then would Mozart have written some great stuff. I held it against him that his music didn't seem "crazy" enough.

But my dear teacher, Yuko Hayashi, warned me during my teens, "Don't judge a piece based on how other people play it." This was a genuine fault of mine, and Mozart was the biggest casualty of it. I was poisoned by the profusion of sane Mozart playing.

On June 14th I had the privilege of performing Mozart's Piano Trio (K. 548) with my beloved colleagues, the Lavazza Chamber Ensemble.

I hadn't played any Mozart in years (save an occasional accompanying gig). I had never played a piece of Mozart chamber music. And for various reasons, I didn't begin practicing this piece -- I mean, I didn't even open the book -- until the Monday evening before the concert.

Mozart by total immersion.

No matter what piece I am preparing, I feel the struggle between preparedness and spontaneity. If every note is too secure, the result isn't music-making that lives and breathes. If the notes aren't secure enough, the music sounds spontaneous but reckless. Every composer forces the interpreter to find that balance; but with many composers the balance is quite easy to find. In a 20th-century étude, you'd better be sure and prepare all the notes. In a lyrical, Romantic slow movement, it might be better not to plan the exact rhythm or dynamics of every note.

But what do you do in Mozart? Every note has to be perfect; the tiniest smudge in Mozart is like a coffee stain on a white shirt. Yet if it's too controlled and calculated, it ceases to be Mozart at all.

I suddenly, but begrudingly, started to agree with a former teacher, who a quarter century ago maintained that Mozart was the most difficult composer to play. I would name a composer; she'd answer, "Mozart is still more difficult."

The problem with most Mozart playing in the 20th century: it wasn't just unemotional -- it was antiemotional. This was the greatest defect in "historically informed" musicians. To reason "Romantic = emotional" is in itself not too harmful. But as soon as you reverse it, "Emotional = Romantic," now you have a real problem. All of a sudden, musicians started stripping away the emotions like old paint. Bach became robotic, Mozart became robotic, everything pre-Beethoven became robotic.

I remember Stephen Drury saying in a masterclass, "Never forget that a Mozart concerto is virtuoso music." I would add to that that Mozart is dramatic, operatic music. The Historical types feared that it would be the Mahler type of drama. So they played it safe: throw out all the drama. And the Tchaikovsky type of virtuosity? Better throw out all the virtuosity as well.

To play Mozart without drama is to play Schubert without lyricism. (But then, some people do that, too.)

But how do you make Mozart always elegant and simultaneously always dramatic?

And how do you play Mozart virtuosically? Better play him very fast! The second biggest problem with today's Mozart playing -- and not a problem that with which we Lavazza folk did not wrestle.

So how did I overcome these obstacles and learn K. 548 in mere days? I tried out a new idea. I set a timer, and I practiced for 25-minute sessions. My breaks between sessions varied, but they were never less than 10 minutes and never more than an hour. And I did not listen to any recordings. (To this day, I still have not heard a recording of this work.)

To think that I had held it against Mozart that his music wasn't "crazy" enough. Despite its tonality of C major, K. 548 certainly gets crazy. Mozart tosses you sudden harmonic and melodic shifts all over the place. And yet the music always flows like oil. How Mozart achieved this dichotomy perhaps will never be known.

There's something interesting about C major. Several passages occur twice, first in the exposition and again, in a different key, in the recapitulation. When one of these occurrences was in C major, that was always the more difficult one to play. I have decided that C major is by far the most difficult key to play in on a keyboard instrument. Students learn C major first because it's musically the easiest. But note that Chopin started his students not with C major but with B major. There's no question that the more accidentals a key has, the easier its scale is to play. (Or like my father once said: "If you find the right key, you can play in any flat.")

A very interesting Indian woman came up to me at the post-concert reception. She herself was a pianist. She asked, "Are you a Mozart specialist?" I was floored by the question, but I couldn't help but feel that, at the very least, I must have achieved the musical effects that I was trying to achieve, for her to ask such a question. Then she floored me again by declaring, "Mozart is the most difficult composer, and C major is the most difficult key to play in!" Clearly this woman got it.

Altoona!

Last week I visited one of the most wonderful and interesting cities in America: Altoona, Pennsylvania.

I confess the only reason I had even heard of Altoona was because of George Burns's first book. I am a big Burns fan; I own literally all of his books. His first one was entitled, "Living It Up, or, They Still Love Me in Altoona."


I presumed, therefore, that Altoona was a town that had a vaudeville theatre. That was all I knew about it.

Who knew what an imporant city this once was! It was an important railroad stop en route to Pittsburgh -- important enough that Hitler plotted to destroy the stretch of tracks known as the Horseshoe Curve. Who knew that steel magnates Andrew Carnegie and his successor, Charles M. Schwab (not the later Charles R. Schwab of financial fame), threw so much money 'round these parts? Who knew that Altoona and its environs contained such a stunning array of architectural gems, large and small? Altoona's Cathedral is like a mini-Vatican, perched on a hill and visible for miles around. Such a sight as this I have never seen outside of Europe. Also very European is the quantity and architectural quality of churches which dot this landscape.

And then you have the theatre ...

The great Mishler Theatre was built in 1906, burned down six months later, but was immediately rebuilt, they say even more opulently than the original. It is a spacious yet intimate auditorium whose walls still seem to echo with all of the greats who have performed there -- everyone from Al Jolson to Jascha Heifetz ... and, of course, George Burns.

The piano, a Baldwin concert grand, was perfect for much of the repertoire I was playing. But it was the Gershwin that felt like magic. To play Gershwin in that hall ... I shall never forget it.

It's said the Mishler is haunted. It's even been featured on one of those ghost-seeking TV shows. I'm happy to report that I encountered nothing resembling a ghost. The scariest person there was undoubtedly yours truly.

To be continued ...

Farm-fresh lard

When I was a teenager (when I knew everything), I read in the paper that saccharine caused cancer in laboratory rats. I remember asking my mother, "How come they always replace something that's bad for you with something that kills you?"

I see it over and over. Butter? Mildly bad for you unless fresh. Margarine? Lethal. Lard? Not horribly bad when farm-fresh. Crisco? Lethal.

I saw this contradiction in non-culinary areas as well. In the 90s, all of a sudden Looney Tunes were "bad for you," said the disability rights advocates. After all, a show with a pig who stutters and a bald man with a speech impediment could not possibly send a healthy message. So what were the Looney Tunes replaced with on Saturdays? Pinky & the Brain, who every episode plotted to take over the world. Global dictatorship sends a healthier message than Tweety Bird?

I thought of all of this yesterday when I purchased a container of surprisingly delicious "sugar-free cookies" at a local bakery. Most of these tasty treats contained chocolate. What else they contained, I shudder to ask. I'm guessing granulated cancer. In fact, that bakery has saved us quite a bit of money. Now, instead of buying mouse traps, my wife and I spread the cookies all around the house.

Isn't it the same with music?

Were the 19th-century Romantic interpretations of Bach really so much worse for us than the 20th-century Antiromantic ones? Were Casals's cello suites further from Bach than Herreweghe's cantatas? Both men reaked of their era. But Casals reaked also of a profound musician. Casals's Bach was real, just like butter is real. Schweitzer's Bach was real; he was willing to let poetic feeling into his playing. Is Bach not poetic, even the Art of Fugue (especially the Art of Fugue)?

Think of how many historic buildings were razed in the 1950s and '60s, replaced with unmitigated ugliness that the architects professed was "better." An interesting comparison can be made in Boston between Old City Hall and New City Hall. The façade of the former is still extant. The reason it's extant is that it was so beautiful that even the barbarians of the 1960s didn't have the nerve to tear it down. So to this day, you can walk down School St., look at Old City Hall, then walk on Tremont one block to Government Center and gaze upon the visual cacophony which is New City Hall. That's why pharmacies in Boston sell very little ipecac. All we Bostonians need to do is to look at those two buildings in quick succession, and our system is instantly cleansed.

There you have it. Sugar vs. saccharine. Clapboard vs. aluminum siding. Oak chairs vs. plastic chairs. Real vs. fake. Beautiful vs. ugly. But please let's admit that that's what it is. Let's not try to say that ugly is "better for us" that beautiful.

Shakespeare is my therapist II

We are in Act II of "All's Well That Ends Well." The King is sick. Helena has a cure, but it is an unusual cure. And Helena is a woman, and who ever heard of a woman doctor? So the King is hesitant. But that's when Helena offers these immortal words:

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises; and oft it hits
Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits.

The king is convinced.

As a musician these words struck me. How often it is that a big organization -- a symphony orchestra, an opera company -- is in a jam because the "big name" performer is sick and a substitute is needed quickly. These are opportunites for the not-quite-famous artists to shine. How often it is that they shine more brightly than the overpaid big name would have! The shame, of course, is that they are hired not on their merits but because said organization was desperate.

In 2006, I traded my 1984 Steinway upright -- of which I was the original owner -- for a 1913 Mason & Hamlin upright. The former was professionally appraised for $9000. The latter was professionally appraised for $500.

The truth? The Mason & Hamlin is a better piano in every respect. Action? Better. Dynamic range? Better. Tone? Infinitely better. Voicing and regulation? Better, and this old piano had been heavily used. In short: pianistically and musically, this Mason & Hamlin was the superior to the Steinway across the charts.

I told a well-respected piano technician this story. He agreed that the professional appraisal, nine thousand vs. five hundred, was accurate. And yet he didn't deny the truth of what I was saying. In fact, it didn't surprise him at all.

Meanwhile, on eBay I found a company in England that made brass piano sconces in the Victorian style. I searched through the plethora of sconces, picked a pair that I like, ordered them, they arrived from England, and my tuner screwed them into the Mason & Hamlin. So now my piano has even more character -- enough character, in fact, that even I'm satisfied.