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.

The Future of Classical Music, or of Anything Else

Being a "classical" musician (not sure what that means), it's hard not to wonder, at least occasionally, what the future of "classical" music is going to be.

Some corners of the classical music market certainly will fail. The major conservatories have already started their descent to failure, and the reason is a very simple financial one: tuition prices are moving in contrary motion to the salaries being earned by graduates, which means that the #1 fund-raising source of any school -- alumni -- is soon going to be no source at all. To put in layman's terms that even the administrators of a famous conservatory could understand: you can't teach someone to do a low-earning job and charge that person big money for the privilege.

Also on the road to failure are the major symphony orchestras. Again the reason is a simple one: people perceive that "classical music is boring," and as executed in the major concert halls, indeed it is. The last thing on Beethoven's mind -- the very, very last thing -- was a bunch of people wearing crisp tuxes, playing long programs, requiring the audience to sit for long stretches in total silence -- no one speaks to the audience, the audience speaks to no one. And, for this privilege, the ticket prices continue to climb. It defies all logic, and if fewer people are attending, it's probably for some of the same reasons that I don't attend (unless a friend is performing).

The future of opera? I won't even discuss it, because the level of singing is so low that I don't even respect the genre in the state that it's being currently perpetrated. (Recently I saw a video of a live Aïda from Verona, 1967, with an in-his-prime Bergonzi, Gencer, Cossotto, Colzani, and the list goes on. Excellect chorus. Excellent orchestra. Excellent direction by Capuana. And I remarked to my wife, "You could not even assemble a cast like this today. You could search the whole world and not even find this much talent and ability." And even if you did, you could never get from them a live, unspliced performance of this quality. Opera today is not even to be considered among serious music-making.)

There was an interesting article by Anne Midgette in yesterday's Washington Post about the topic of classical music in today's world:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/04/AR2009110404360.html

and many interesting blog responses, notably this one:

http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2009/11/quotation_of_the_day_8.html

The future of "classical music," or of anything else, will depend on the leadership not of the country but of musicians. Undoubtedly you will consider this to be exaggerated and mathematically suspicious, but I will state that 99.999% of musicians follow instead of lead. Instrumentalists apply for jobs in symphony orchestras because "that's what's done." When orchestras fail and something else becomes popular, they will apply for that thing because "now this is what's done." To survive in music is very easy. Do what isn't done. Be one of that 0.001% who is strong enough to say, "I feel passion about this, this has beauty, this has cultural value, I'm doing this." People will follow.

And who follows more obediently that a music critic? Recently a critic in a major newspaper was trying to get across how famous Gustavo Dudamel is. He wrote, "Dudamel, in case you've been living in an organ loft, is [a famous conductor, etc.]."

Here is the letter I wrote in response:

Dear [name of newspaper],

I object to Mr. [Critic]'s statement that "[Gustavo] Dudamel, in case you've been living in an organ loft, is [a famous conductor]." Some of my best friends live in organ lofts.

Sincerely yours,

Leonardo Ciampa
Cambridge, MA

They printed it.

The fact, meanwhile -- and the conservatory administrators will be the last, I mean THE LAST, ones to figure it out -- is that the pipe organ is beginning its ascent to a comeback. The reasons are numerous, but here are the two major ones:

1. Churches are gradually forsaking their organs for guitars and drums, and other churches are closing altogether, but in the meantime, there has been a spate of new pipe organs going into concert halls (see http://www.chordstrike.com/2009/06/romancing-the-pipes-an-organ-primer.html ). Secular groups are buying the closed churches, or buying and relocating the organs they contained. Strangely enough, the organ is benefiting from the church attendance crisis. The organ is gradually shaking its perceived affiliation with the church. It is an independent musical instrument, like the oboe or the piano. Because of this, people who normally would never give money to something church-related are giving money to organs and organ recitals.

2. In a world where live, acoustic music played on live, acoustic instruments has never been rarer, people are getting tired of the constant synthetic sound -- the iPods and mp3's and wmv's and TVs and CD players and every other medium of sound replication. The engineering of a pipe organ, and the physics of how it resonates in its acoustical environment, has never been more interesting to an increasingly educated society. It "sounds better." Real sound sounds an awful lot better than a Youtube recording of real sound. And there is no sound more beautiful, more varied, or more interesting than the sound of a good organ played by a good organist in good acoustics.

These are merely beginnings of the Renaissance. Carnegie Hall still reigns. Juilliard still reigns. The Met still reigns. But they are all weakening, and if you don't believe me, take a peak at their annual reports.

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.

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.