Countdown to Planyavsky at MIT (13 days)

Last week in one of my posts, Marian Ruhl Metson wrote of her experience with the composition by Peter Planyavsky, "Fantasie in memoriam A.H." (The title refers, of course, to Anton Heiller). Below are YouTube links of this very interesting composition, played by a student of Planyavsky, Peter Peinstingl.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A8-xVfu8Hs (Part I)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_zLjUlpYWQ (Part II)

Countdown to Planyavsky at MIT (15 days)

Photo: The 1742 Schmahl organ in Sitzberg, near Zürich.

Peter Planyavsky was one of Heiller's greatest students and closest friends. He later became Heiller's biographer. Who was this Heiller character?

Anton Heiller was the greatest interpreter of Bach's organ works of his time -- maybe of all time. But there are several facts that are very interesting about this.

First: It's hard to think of anyone else of Heiller's generation or the generation before who played Bach anything like him. From whom did he learn how to play Bach like that? Who influenced him? Where did he get it? (I asked that question once to my teacher, the Heiller student Yuko Hayashi. She answered, "From Bach.")

Second: Heiller could as easily have had a career as a conductor. In fact, at age 23 he was offered the job as conductor of the Vienna State Opera! He turned it down. Why? So that he could devote more time to playing Bach on the organ!

There isn't space to speak of Heiller's Bach playing in any detail. But there is an anecdote worth repeating, told to me in 1994 by Yuko Hayashi.

YH: He played the Orgelbüchlein up in the hills near Zürich [Sitzberg]. An organ restored by Metzler [in 1961, built by G. F. Schmahl c. 1742] And I was assisting him, turning pages. Jean-Claude Zehnder was there. By the way, I'm not a good assistant, so I stayed away from doing it. But that one time in Switzerland when I did do it, it was so EASY. He had this rhythm in his body, and he didn't have to do anything like that [nodding]. He didn't have to nod, he BREATHED. And I felt his breathing. It was so easy.
LC: Like a singer, he breathed, and you knew exactly where to turn the page or pull the stop.
YH: And he was so relaxed. Before the concert he was very nervous. But when the music started … CALM.
LC: So he played the concert.
YH: First he had dinner. Then he went up to this mountain, when into the church, and started to try out registrations, one after another, while Jean-Claude Zehnder and a few students from out in the church would say, "That's good." Then it was time for the concert. Double the amount of people that the church could hold showed up! And you know what he did? He announced to the audience, "Half of you go back into town for dinner and come back later." He played the recital, the whole Orgelbüchlein. He smoked for ten minutes -- in those days he smoked. Now the second audience that had had dinner was in place in the church, and he played the recital AGAIN! I got tired just turning the pages. He got better and better. Meanwhile, there were cows around. The cows liked the music. You could see them through the windows and hear their beautiful bells.
LC: And this was all happening during the concert?
YH: Yes.
LC: It must have been idyllic, having this mixture of nature and classical music.
YH: Then I understand, after that, he recorded.
LC: He made his Orgelbüchlein record.
YH: Yes.

Peter Planyavsky plays a free organ recital at Kresge Auditorium, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on Friday, January 27 at 8 p.m.

Countdown to Planyavsky at MIT (18 days)

Peter Planyavsky with the author (Brookline, March 9, 2004). Seems odd that the Austrian is drinking the chianti and the Italian is drinking the Weizenbier!

In March, 2004, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Brookline, MA (where I was then Music Director), I organized "HeillerFest," a week-long festival commemorating the 25th anniversary of the death of the great Anton Heiller. Naturally, a "HeillerFest" would not have been complete with Heiller's star pupil, close friend, and future biographer, Peter Planyavsky. The following is an excerpt from an article that I wrote for the July, 2004, issue of The Diapason. The excerpt describes the opening event, a Choral Evensong which I personally tailored with the sole purpose of showing off Planyavsky's improvisational gifts.

"There are two types of performers: those who emit electricity, intensity, and sometimes neurosis, for whom every piece seems a matter of life or death (Caruso, Horowitz, Heifetz); and those who exude mental and physical health, for whom each pieces feels like the first of many encores (Gigli, Rubinstein, Kreisler). Peter Planyavsky is of the second type. The 75-minute Evensong service seemed short. One felt that another twenty-five improvisations could have fallen from his sleeve without any detectable effort.

"There is something Beethovenian about Planyavsky, a certain Viennese ruggedness. It snowed as we walked down St. Paul Street together, yet he seemed unconcerned about his photocopied prelude and postlude which he held, uncovered, under his arm. "In Vienna I always walk around like this, "he explained. He spent not much more than an hour at the Bozeman organ, an eclectic instrument on which the stop names are on plaques next to the stop knobs. I myself occasionally pull the wrong stop! Not only did he never do that, but he had a total comprehension of the organ's tonal resources, as if he already knew how every combination would or wouldn't work.

"I knew firsthand of Planyavsky's brilliance as a liturgical improviser, and I designed the Evensong around it. No trite compline hymns for him; I chose Aus tiefer Not and O Welt, ich muß dich lassen. And while the prayerbook rubric permits a "moment of silence" before the Mag and the Nunc, respectively, I translated "moment of silence" as "three-to-five-minute organ improvisation." The individual improvisations complemented and contrasted each other: the simple effectiveness of his bicinium on Le Cantique de Siméon; the color and fluid virtuosity of his Magnificat; the rich, impenitently German-Romantic O Welt; and so on. Each improvisation seemed to enhance the others." (From The Diapason, July 2004, p. 14)

Peter Planyavsky plays an organ recital at Kresge Auditorium, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on Friday, January 27 at 8 p.m. Admission for this grand event is FREE.

Countdown to Planyavsky at MIT (21 days)

Here is the program that Peter Planyavsky will play at MIT's Kresge Auditorium on Friday, January 27 at 8 p.m. – with a few words about the unusual work by Anton Heiller.

Fantasy in B flat major
Alexandre Pierre F. Boëly (1785-1858)

Kleine Partita über "Nun komm der Heiden Heiland"
Anton Heiller (1923-1979)(Reconstructed by Monika Henking)

"Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten"
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Toccata in C major (BWV 566)
J. S. Bach

I n t e r m i s s i o n

Sonate II (Lebhaft - Ruhig bewegt - Fuge: Mäßig bewegt, heiter)
Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)

Fugue in f minor
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Allegro, Choral and Fugue
Mendelssohn

Improvisation on a submitted theme

A word about Heiller's Kleine Partita on "Nun Komm":

On September 14, 1972, Heiller played a recital on the historic organs of Udine Cathedral, in the North of Italy. He improvised eight variations on "Nun Komm, der Heiden Heiland." Heiller's brilliant student and companion, Monika Henking, notated the variations based on a recording of the concert. Heiller did not have huge confidence in the musical worth of his improvisations, but he felt Henking's impressive reconstruction was accurate and allowed it to be published. It is an interesting work, atypical in many ways of the music he was composing in 1972.