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 (16 days)

Kresge Auditorium, as seen from the Chapel. (Photo by L. Ciampa, 12 Oct. '10)

Upon the death of his father Herman Heinrich ("Henry") Holtkamp (1858-1931), Walter Holtkamp, Sr. (1894-1962), assumed control of the company that was then called the Votteler-Holtkamp-Sparling Organ Company. Despite the financial difficulties of the Depression, Walter wasted little time in developing his radical ideas. His 1933 addition to the E. M. Skinner organ of the Cleveland Museum of Art (the first "Rückpositiv" ever built in North America), quickly established him as the most avant-garde organ builder in America. These Baroque-inspired instruments had a brightness and clarity completely unfamiliar to audiences of the 1930s, who were accustomed, instead, to the lush, woolly sounds of organs by E. M. Skinner - instruments more suitable for Wagner transcriptions than for Bach's great organ works.

In 1951 the company was renamed the Holtkamp Organ Company; Walter was named President. The company's finest work dates from this period, including important installations at Crouse College (Syracuse University) and Battell Chapel (Yale). The consultant for many Holtkamp instruments, including the two MIT organs, was Melville Smith (1898-1962), one of the most influential organists of his time. In addition to his involvement at MIT, Smith was President of the Longy School. Smith was one of the leaders of the so-called Organ Reform Movement, which repopularized the Baroque music and organs that Smith so loved. He had a particular passion for French Baroque organ music, especially that of the composer Nicolas de Grigny (1672-1703). This explains why on Chapel organ, the stop named "Cymbal" is actually a Sesquialtera.

Eero Saarinen (1910-1961) was a Finnish-born architect of world renown, known for such diverse creations as the St. Louis Arch and the tulip chairs on Star Trek. Saarinen designed and buit MIT's Kresge Auditorium and the smaller Chapel.

Why was Saarinen as amenable to acoustics and organ placement in the Chapel as he was unamenable to them in Kresge?

It is said that Walter did not enjoy building the Kresge organ. Besides the cramped space and unideal placement relegated by Saarinen's design, the auditorium was not ideal acoustically - a fact that didn't seem to disturb Saariren. Acoustics, Saarinen said in 1955, were a "modifying factor" but "not a science with the authority to impose a basic shape." Therefore, according to legend, Saarinen attempted to mollify Holtkamp with the Chapel, by providing him with an ideally placed organ loft and the type of acoustical environment about which organ builders dream.

Nevertheless, the Kresge instrument is a large and colorful one which fills the 1226-seat auditorium with some of Walter Holtkamp's most characteristic sounds.

John Allen Fergusen's judgment of the Chapel organ could easily be applied to the Kresge organ, as well:

"[The] organ appeared in the mid-fifties and embodied so much of the essence of Holtkamp's style, convictions and interests. ... [This organ] reveals Holtkamp, as much a radical in his field as Frank Lloyd Wright was in architecture, at work in a space designed by the respected contemporary architectural firm, Eero Saarinen and Associates. Here the combination of gifted organ builder working together with a creative architect demonstrates again that organ building, when practiced responsibly, can produce instruments of exceptional visual and aural distinction." (John Allen Ferguson, "Walter Holtkamp: American Organ Builder" (1979)).

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

CHOPIN

Today marks the 200th birthday who, for most of my life, has been my ultimate favorite composer.

It can be said that some Brahms sounds like Schumann or Beethoven, or that some Bach sounds like Pachelbel or Buxtehude. Whom does Chopin sound like? He must certainly have been the most original composer in the history of Western music.

I'm happy to announce that in September and October of this year, I will play six Chopin recitals at First Church (formerly First & Second Church) in Boston's historic Back Bay. It will be a labor of love.

Organists as Musicians, Part II

Though it may seem like an artistic step backward, this notion of mass-producing pipe organs, I think the outcome would be the opposite.

In the 19th century, builders as diverse as E. & G. G. Hook and Cavaillé-Coll had catalogs that advertised "stock models." Model 1, Small Organ, X amount of stops, Y dollars. Model 2, Medium-Sized Organ, and so forth. And yet the quality was not lower than the organs of today but higher.

Why? There are many reasons, too numerous and complex to list here. However, a very significant reason is that they had the opportunity to build and rebuild and re-rebuild the same instrument. What if piano builders had to build a brand-new design for every single piano?! Think of how flawed these experimental pianos would be! Yet this is what pipe organ builders routinely do ... reinventing the wheel each time ... requiring formidable cost on the part of the consumer ... and the results are frankly variable.

If, instead, there were a stock-model organ, developed with the same type of trial and error that a Mason & Hamlin was developed, think of the instrument that would result! Movable organs, not tied to any church or building! Predictable tone colors that composers would know how to approach! Soon enough, there would be organ chamber ensembles, and composers providing repertoire for them! And did I mention that they would not be tied to the church?

If the highest quality tracker-action pipe organ costs $30,000-$40,000 per stop, it is inevitable that companies producing pipeless organs should be able to sway the public with instruments at a fraction of the cost. As the technology increases and these instruments sound "almost like pipe organs," the pipe organ companies are going to be in real doo-doo. As soon as someone figures out how to combine the Hauptwerk® set-up with those Bose® two-tower speakers, I doubt any church will buy a pipe organ. Why should they?

If, however, some pipe organ builder heeds my advice and starts building a 10-stop portable stock model organ, at a cost of say $100,000, and if fine composers started composing repertoire for it, I think this and only this would give the non-pipe companies a run for their money. If a concert hall can spend $100,000 on a 9-foot Steinway, they can just as easily do the same for this new type of pipe organ. It won't help for Saint-Saëns or Mahler, but it would be ideal for Bach, Handel, Haydn ... and all the wonderful chamber music and concertos yet to be written!

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.

The Effect of Paul Manz

Since Mr. Manz's death last Wednesday, I have listened, re-listened, and re-relistened to the three Pipedreams shows on Manz.

No two people are touched by the same thing in the same way. I knew a cleric who could hear Christian rock music of the lowest music and theological quality and say, "That touched my heart." Thus, these things are impossible to measure. That said, I have in these days been so touched -- in fact blessed -- by Mr. Manz's playing of his own music. It has "jumped out at me."

There are several qualities which make this man and his music remarkable and, well, touching.

A composer playing his own music. Without question, my greatest dilemma as a musician has been the inability to replicate how the composers played their own music. Even if, by some miracle, we could be certain of every articulation, rubato, and inflection of a composer, even by reproducing every one of these details, the personality, the "spirit" (and spirit is real) would never be right. Chopin is an extreme example. We know almost nothing about how he played. (Yes, I own Chopin: pianist and teacher, The Chopin Companion, and every other relevant book. So what? We still don't know what he sounded like. Or as Baron Munchhausen said, "Vass you dere, Sharlie?")

Then in 2001 I discovered the recordings of Ernesto Lecuona, playing his own music. From the "classical" point of view (I don't know what that means, but I said it anyway), the music is not on the level of Chopin, Liszt, or Debussy. But hearing Lecuona play it, it moved me on a profound level. It sounded ... well, right. Not just musically right -- spiritually right.

In 1989, in Newport, RI, I heard Charlie Callahan play the world-premiere of his Partita on "Slane." I remember seeing members of the audience in tears -- and they were musicians. Someday, a student of a student of a student of Callahan will exhume this piece and play it. And it won't be the same.

As a teenager, I played a lot of Neobaroque chorale-preludes, published by Concordia, of various composers of the Manz mold. Useful stuff for church, not all of it great. Today we know a lot more about how Baroque music was constructed. Improvisers like Bill Porter and Harald Vogel are not as rare as they once were. There are quite a few musicians today who can fashion Baroque-style music. We hear it, and in our snobbery we wonder, "How 'authentic' is it?" This week, hearing Manz play his music, the question instead was, "How right is it?"

In the context of church. The music of Manz seems even more right, because he wrote it for use on Sunday morning, during actual worship. Manz went one step further: instead of giving traditional organ recitals, he gave hymn festivals, playing hymn-based compositions and improvisations interspersed with hymns sung by all present.

I could not applaud this more loudly! We have dissected Bach's music from every angle and with every rationale. The composer whose music I most love to play is Bach. And the composer about whose music I feel the most subconscious is Bach. Every time I play a note, I imagine that I've broken ten rules. Maybe it was too legato or too staccato or, worse yet, it "wasn't in the style." What that "style" is, of course, no one knows, a fact that we've already established. It's a rather fluid thing; in ten years the "authentic style" will suddenly be something different.

But hearing Manz play his Neobaroque compositions, in the context of worship, I feel like I'm brought closer to the spirit of Bach. While the organ professors were out having fistfights over articulation, here in the Midwest, far from Boston, was a fervent Lutheran musician, improvising on Lutheran hymns during a Lutheran service. That is much closer to the Bach experience than some Bach recital by some top teacher on the trendy tracker of the time.

A good person making good music. Around 1991, I was at Duquesne University, playing what I think was the world-premiere of the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano by Elliott McKinley. It was some sort of new music festival organized by David Stock. One day, Bill Bolcom did a composition masterclass, during which the discussion somehow meandered to "good" music written by "not necessarily good" human beings. Bolcom mentioned Wagner and admitted that he wasn't sure how to reconcile the fact that great music was written by ... well, Wagner. I admired Bolcom's candor about it; he was brave enough to say, "I don't know the answer to that one."

It is a question that I've thought often of in the almost 20 years since.

There's no question that great people sometimes write bad pieces, and bad people sometimes write great pieces. And frankly, we can't always judge how "good" or "bad" a historical figure was. Some claimed that Verdi, Brahms, and other composers "believed in nothing." Chances are, they very much believed in a Higher Power but did not believe in the church hierarchy. Put differently, God's laws and church laws are not necessarily synonymous. The latter they were happy to break -- and historically the clergy themselves have been only too willing to break both categories of laws. ("Do as we say, not as we do," proclaims their conduct.)

However, what I do know is that when you have a great person writing a great piece of music, it transcends all earthly stratospheres. The greatest music of Perosi is greater than the greatest music of Wagner or some other reprobate. We have, for instance, a recording of Perosi conducting his "Giudizio Universale." This is a musical/spiritual level that Wagner never reached.

And so there is "a certain something" about the music of Paul Manz. It comes across that there is a great human being making this music. There is a simplicity -- a quality that is not childish but childlike. Manz, in his music, seemed to be behaving the way Christ admonished us to behave.

Here are the Pipedreams shows. Experience them for yourself:

http://pipedreams.publicradio.org/listings/2001/0114/

Long live the memory of Paul Manz.

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.

Shakespeare is my therapist

From the Mailbag

I just don't understand why some readers felt my last post, about the disintegration of voice technique, was exaggerated. In one quadrillion years -- no, one quintillion -- I would never admit to being an exaggerator.

Anyhow, onward ...

***


There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. -- Hamlet

In my opinion, there were three things that were lacking in my education, although only the first was actually available to me.

1. I wish I had learned to read all seven clefs, for ease of score reading and transposition (and reading those bloody Breitkopf & Härtel Bach scores). The conservatory did teach this skill in its more advanced solfège classes.

2. It should have been required -- required -- to speak German and French fluently. I mean fluently. The two most important languages for any musician, even moreso than Italian.

3. There should have been a required course that fully explained the greatest passages and one-liners of one William Shakespeare.

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Do you realize that roughly 99.5% of the world's problems would be solved if we all could grasp this?

Think about it: the events in your life that have bothered you, even scarred you -- were you hurt by the events themselves, or by how you felt about them? Is a man hurt by being short, or by being afraid that no one would ever want to marry a short man? Is a musician hurt by making music in a non-trendy way, or by the fear of alienation because of the music-making? Is a country hurt by being powerful, or by thinking that because it's powerful, it must act a certain way?

Looking back at my teenage years (when I knew everything), I positively refused to genuflect before the musical authority -- an authority racked with insecurity, with disingenuousness, with subservience to the mainstream managers, competitions, and recording labels. Today (no longer in command of the "everything" that I once knew), I wonder what would have happened if I made music the exact same way, not playing or writing even one note differently, but if simultaneously I befriended the more influential faculty members. By nature, conservatory professors are insecure -- for what eight-year-old kid ever said, "When I grow up, I don't want to play an instrument: I want to teach OTHERS how to!"? Had I only played on the insecurity of the department heads, starved for validation as they were, maybe other inroads would have opened up before me.

But then I think about my teens, and I realize: that is not the human being that I was. I am not that type of game-player. I am not that person. What point is there to wonder about what it would have been like to be another person? Why should a tall woman wonder about what it would be like to be short? Instead, all she has to do is to stop thinking about what her height means. A dog never asks, "What if I had been a cat?" That's why dogs don't have shrinks. They don't worry about whether or not they are "good."

Paderewski plays Chopin's Mazurkas

About a month ago I was talking to Dr. Joseph Maneri. We agreed that Chopin was one of the most original composers who ever lived.

Not that that is the only benchmark. Many Brahms pieces sound like Schumann, Schubert, or Beethoven. Bach and Handel imitated everyone. So that is not the only criterion.

However, it's remarkable how little of Chopin sounds like anybody else. A critic once wrote shallowly that the Chopin Nocturne was "a Bellini melody over a John Field bass." Chopin sounds nothing like Bellini or John Field. In fact, Chopin completed both sets of etudes and both concerti by age 20. No other composer, not even Mozart, wrote music that was as original, plentiful, and good by age 20.

But how does one play Chopin? What should his music sound like?

And what about those Mazurkas?

Chopin died in 1849. His last students were dead before pianists started making 78 records. In short, we have no aural evidence of anyone who ever heard Chopin play.

Ten or fifteen years ago, I was on a mission: to figure out how to play Chopin's divine Mazurkas. I bought every recording I could find made by a Polish pianist born before 1900.

I did conclude that only the Poles can play that rhythm. But even among them, there was much variety. Rosenthal's sharp rhythm was more Rosenthalian then Chopinesque. At the opposite end of the spectrum was Arthur Rubinstein, whose rhythm was watered down enough not to offend or confuse the non-Poles.

But then you have Paderewski ...

Pederewski was and is a difficult musician to adjudge. Today the most famous musicians are the ones with the most skillful and aggressive managers. 75 or 100 years ago, the most famous musicians were the greatest by the common consent of their colleagues. Singers agreed that Caruso and Gigli were the greatest. String players agreed that Kreisler and Heifetz were the greatest.

No one agreed about Paderewski.

His pianist-colleagues were unanimous: he stunk. The public was unanimous: he was the greatest pianist in the world. Never the twain did meet.

Was it "A" or "B"? The answer is: "Yes."

That he was the most famous no one questions. Liberace in his prime created nothing like the Paderewski frenzy. Women would rush the stage to touch Paderewski -- and not all of them were paid to do so. In the era between Franz Liszt and Elvis Presley, Paderewski was the world's most hysterically adulated musician (pace Caruso).

Nor does anyone question that Paderewski had his technical defects at the keyboard. He didn't start lessons till age 12. Only by age 24 did he find a great teacher, Leschetitzky. Paderewski tried to compensate by practicing like a fiend -- up to 17 (!) hours a day for certain events. Then one day (so the rumor goes), something in his hand "snapped" during a concert. (A tendon?) He finished the performance anyway. His playing was never the same since.

But forget all that. Forget the hysterical fans. Forget the faulty technique. Just LISTEN.

Listen to Paderewski play Chopin. Who else had that nobility? Or that melting lyricism? Or that golden tone that comes through even the crackly 78s? And who could imbue this music with more patriotism than the future Prime Minister of Poland?

Paderewski was accused of infidelity to the printed score. Yet his Chopin was more Chopinesque than Rosenthal's, Friedman's, Rubinstein's, or that of most any other Pole.

I am grateful that Paderewski recorded much Chopin, including the Mazurkas. His rendering of the Mazurkas in Ab and F# minor from Op. 59 will perhaps never be surpassed.