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.

The much-more interesting world of opera

Today, I posted the following on a popular organist listserv. I'm guessing the organist-types won't care so much for it. I thought you would enjoy it more!

My good friend Andrew Farkas sent me this today:

http://operachic.typepad.com/opera_chic/2009/11/gloves-off-angela-gheorghiu-blasts-alagna-he-wants-me-back-his-family-in-corriere-della-sera-intervi.html

It is entirely more interesting than anything going on in our little organist world. True, the musical and vocal level of singing has never been lower. But at least there's something INTERESTING to read about. Bigger-than-life personalities, like the Greek gods throwing lightning bolts at each other.

These folks aren't circus attractions who get 15 minutes of fame from their little trick. ("I can play 'Granada' with my ear lobes!") They do more than inspire curiosity. These are personages who dominate a stage, and what's more, they have a relationship with their audience. Their audience sees through the performer who says, "I want your attention and will stoop to absolutely anything to get it." These operatic titans are simply living their operatic lives, and they get attention because they are INTERESTING -- interesting people who are really living life -- not always cleanly, but living it they are.

Biggs and Fox were interesting. Menuhin was interesting, and he happened to be a prodigy. But just being a prodigy doesn't automatically make you interesting. (And what happens when you grow up? An old prodigy becomes like a retired baseball player, increasingly grateful for the people who still remember him. And if they're really unlucky, they live long enough that no one remembers them except some bespectacled librarian. "Oh, yes, I remember you! You pitched for the Manhattan Island Red Stockings in 1742.") Liberace was interesting, and he happened to wear sequins. But putting on sequins doesn't automatically make you interesting. There has to be something more.

Biggs and Fox had something more. Horowitz and Rubinstein had something more. And these operatic numina? Well, they don't sing so good, some of them. But boy, do they have that something more! I was on the edge of my seat reading about the Sicilian tenor and the Romanian soprano. And I immediately became sad that in my inbox today, there was nothing about organs that put me on the edge of my seat. In fact, it's not just today.

The Pianist and the Critic

(The following is an article I wrote five years ago. I’d almost forgotten about it till this morning, when by chance I came across it on the web. Amazingly, it found its way to the Wladyslaw Szpilman "The Pianist" Official Homepage (http://www.szpilman.net). It is an impassioned piece that I enjoyed re-reading.)

THE PIANIST AND THE CRITIC

“Those who can’t do, review.”

by Leonardo Ciampa

Last night I finally saw Roman Polanski’s film, The Pianist. I avoided it like the plague, the bitter taste from Shine being still in my mouth. (Shine was a perfectly enjoyable movie, until I actually heard Mr. Helfgott play in real life. Perhaps he was so named because even mit der Hilfe Gottes he still can’t play accurately.)

Not so with the Pianist and its subject, Wladyslaw Szpilman.

Firstly, just in terms of moviemaking itself, The Pianist is a phenomenal artistic achievement. This fact was all the more palpable because the previous movie my wife and I had seen was Gangs of New York. In comparison to Polanski’s work, Scorsese’s was like a bad comic book. Typical Hollywood sensationalism which, starting from the very first scene, screams to the viewer, “This is not in any way realistic or even artistic. This is just an extravaganza of superficiality designed to win awards.”

The Pianist had the ring of truth from the getgo – in large part due to the fact that Szpilman’s work was written in 1946. How brave to document his tragedy so soon after it ended.

There is an old adage, “Those who can’t do, review.” It’s one of those silly sayings about which I wish I could say, “They’re not accurate – they’re just debunking expressions used by people who like to dish.” Experience, however, has told me that this expression in particular is a truthful one.
Critic Norman Lebrecht suffers from the same ailment as virtually every other critic: They seem to be against everything but for nothing. Lebrecht’s book, The Maestro Myth, is a case in point. He glories in the demystification and deflation of every great conductor under the sun. The fact, however, remains that it is harder to conduct than it is to write about conductors.

Particularly deviant are Lebrecht’s criticisms of Maestro Szpilman, in a 2002 article entitled “The Real [sic] Szpilman Revealed.” Consider the following utterances:

Whether he was a good, bad or moderate musician is immaterial to his story.

No, in fact, it was perfectly material. Here is a man who was so respected that Jews and Gentiles alike rallied to his defense. Would they have done this for just anyone? What made Szpilman stand out among the millions and millions of other Jews who faced the same fate? Obviously (at least, it would be obvious to one with a rational and healthy mind), Szpilman was a special person with a special talent.

The composer Andrzej Panufnik … failed to mention [Szpilman] either in his memoirs, or (his widow tells me) in any of their conversations. Reich-Ranicki, who knew Szpilman in the ghetto, likewise omits him from his memoirs. … None [of the other important Polish musicians] made public acknowledgement of his contribution, if any, to their careers.

Lebrecht began his article by saying, “In classical music, you’ve got to be dead to be good. Only two or three composers at any given time achieve posterity while alive. The rest go gently into that good night, praying for posthumous recognition.” Why, then, does Lebrecht contradict himself by gloating over his inability to find contemporary kudos for Szpilman? How much contemporary kudos did J. S. Bach garner? As a keyboardist, some. As a composer? Yet another case of Lebrecht’s illogic and his obsession with desecration.

Szpilman did not achieve individual renown. He appears to have been a man with no shadow.

J. S. Bach was not renowned until Mendelssohn revived the St. Matthew Passion 77 years after Bach’s death. Shadows are not always contemporaneous with the people who cast them.

On the other hand, movies tend not to be made about critics’ lives! That’s why criticism contains more ax-grinding than aural discernment.

Musical evidence has begun to emerge from the archives of Polish Radio revealing Szpilman as an artist of ironic refinement and restrained muscularity.

The evidence does not reveal this. It reveals a musician of the highest order, a Golden Age style composer-musician who seems not to have lost a thing despite six years (!) away from his craft. All that should be there is there: a well-grounded technique, a singing melody, an ear for voicing the harmony, an understanding of the structure of the music, all unified by God-given style and taste.

[The] two tapes of the Chopin Nocturne in C-sharp minor … avoid bombast, triumphalism or sentimentality.

Is that piece bombastic, triumphal, or sentimental? Perhaps, then, Szpilman was a good interpreter.

The pianist can almost be heard to smile when there was nothing to smile about.

No, it is Lebrecht who inappropriately smiles. An autographical observation!

In the ubiquitous Rachmaninov Prelude in G-sharp he makes no attempt to compete with the fingerpower of Russian masters, but tosses the piece off with near casual panache.

Incorrect. Szpilman does have fingerpower, which is why the piece sounds “easy.” How Szpilman maintained that fingerpower during those six unspeakable years shall remain one of the great mysteries of pianism.

[The] Sony Classical disc that comes out this week [is] a testament to a shy executant.

Shy? Why, because in Chopin’s Nocturnes he doesn’t pour gasoline into the piano and throw a matchin? Szpilman is one of the only pianists in history to capture Chopin’s dreamy introversion. Or do you prefer Rubinstein’s jaded versions that reek of debauchery?

The most interesting discovery on the disc is Szpilman’s own music… (etc.)

Typical critic behavior: Disarm the reader with a seemly complimentary sentence, then whip out the condescension.

In the ghetto he composed a Gershwin-like concertino for piano and orchestra, astonishingly cocky in the deadly circumstances.

Cocky? Here Lebrecht is making two ridiculous comments – one, that Gershwin’s music is cocky, two, that Szpilman’s is. Is any music that is “lighter” than Beethoven’s somehow brash? And what is the relevance of world events? In 1937 America was in a depression, the world was at the brink of war, and Cole Porter suffered an accident that would eventually result in amputation. That didn’t stop him from writing songs like Most Gentlemen Don’t Like Love, From Now On, and Get Out Of Town. Should he somehow not have been allowed to write light-hearted songs at that time?

Naggingly persistent, [the Concertino] is not a particularly likeable piece but it lodges in the ear like a grommet. It’s one of those pieces you find yourself humming and wonder where it’s from.

Typical mentality of the 20th-century music critic: If a piece is popular, it must not be good. So if the piece didn’t stay in one’s ear, would it then qualify as a masterpiece?

In a year or two, Szpilman’s music will be played no more than Górecki’s.

An easy statement to make, because in a year or two no one will remember Lebrecht’s review in order to refute it.

Leonardo Ciampa
2 February 2004

Copyright © MMIV Leonardo A. Ciampa. All rights reserved.

Note: The soundtrack is played not by Szpilman but by another excellent Polish pianist, Janusz Olejniczak.