Tamara Brooks (1941-2012)

Photo by Jeff Thiebauth (http://jefftphoto.com/). Used with permission.

Yesterday morning, I heard the devastating news that choral conductor Tamara Brooks died of a heart attack, at the age of 70.

After Joe Maneri, Tamara was the most inspiring, and most musical, musician that I ever encountered at New England Conservatory.  She was the real deal, the genuine article, a person whose deep passion for music was never spoiled by the world.  

She started at NEC the same time I did, September of 1989.  She came at an unenviable time in certain ways.  The legendary Lorna Cooke deVaron formed the NEC Chorus in 1947 and directed it till her retirement 41 years later.  During a one-year interim period, Lorna's replacement was sought.  The word was that no less than Joseph Flummerfelt was to come to NEC.  Negotiations were at a rather late stage, late enough that a salary (in the six figures) was already decided upon.  However (as the story goes), he insisted that all voice majors, not just undergrads, be required to take Chorus.  The voice faculty had a fit, and Flummerfelt walked away from the deal.  Tamara was, in effect, the "second choice." (To what extent she knew, or felt, that, I don't know.)

An obituary described Tamara as "firey."  I don't know if "firey" really captures it.  Sure, she was passionate.  But there was something elemental about her musicality.  If the writer meant "firey" as "like fire," I'll buy it.  But she was also like water, like earth, like air.  Maybe from a technical standpoint one could quibble with her.  Her beat was not always clear.  She did little if any vocal coloration — she wasn't one to talk about vowels.  She regarded everyone in that large chorus as a musician.  "You're all soloists!" she exclaimed one day.  Sometimes we sounded that way.  However, there's only one kind of good educator: an inspiring educator.  If she was one thing, she was inspiring.  She was a spring of anecdotes about great composers and conductors and performers — anecdotes that were always pertinent to music.  It wasn't just raconteurism for its own sake.  Like Joe Maneri, she was from New York, therefore she knew everybody who was anybody (perhaps even more so, because she studied at Juilliard).  Also like Joe Maneri, her stories were not only profoundly musical but profoundly human.  One day she said, with tears in her voice, "I still haven't accepted the fact that Vincent Persichetti died."  And she spoke of a musician, utterly unknown, utterly unschooled, utterly self-taught, who lived and made music in Cyprus.  "He was the greatest musician I ever knew," she said.  The fact that she so highly regarded this un-prestigious musician, solely on the basis of his innate musicality, was so foreign to the goings-on at the Conservatory. It immediately reminded me of a similarly unknown/unschooled/self-taught Italian priest whom I knew, Don Antonio Simioni, whose music touched me in a similar way.  I never told Tamara that, but I took great comfort in knowing that, had I told her, she would have understood perfectly.

 

The piece Tamara chose for that first year was Brahms's Requiem. I remember so many things about the experience.  Because Tamara was only about the music, the rehearsals were only about the music.  They were outrageously inspiring.  She also could be brilliantly funny.  In the sixth movement there was the phrase "kleine bleibende Statt."  She declared, in a put-on Teutonic accent, "Put more Vibratt on the Statt!"  Of course, that she would even ask for such a thing from a chorus shows how unorthodox she dared to be.  I also remember her time management.  The fourth movement was at concert-level in late September, while parts of the sixth movement were being look at for the first time in January, one week before the concert. 

But what a concert it was!  Life-changing, unforgettable! At the warm-up rehearsal in Jordan Hall, she conducted in a calm, controlled way.  She said she was saving it for the concert and wanted us to do the same.  I remember that the harpist was inexperienced playing with orchestra.  Tamara said to us in the chorus, "I might be conducting only the harp during this passage."  She was attentive to individual students' needs and could accommodate them in a way that was never belittling.  Again, it was only about the music.

It came time for the concert to begin.  She had deliberated which piece to pair with the Brahms.  She chose Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture.  I heard it from the hall.  She made the hackneyed music sound fresh, as if I'd never heard the piece before.  And I still remember the flutist saying to me afterwards, "She was wonderful.  She actually explained the music to us."  

After the Mendelssohn, the choir met in Brown Hall.  She gave us a short pep talk, telling us (convincing us?) how well-prepared we were.  Then she did the most inspiring thing she could have done.  She read a passage from a biography of Brahms, quoting a contemporary of the composer.  The room was nearly silent.  I don't know if anyone else felt transported in time, but I did.  We filed up to Jordan Hall and sang the Brahms.  

Tamara was the opposite of what she had been in the warm-up.  Her passion filled the stage.  She was so musical that we felt it was safe to be so, ourselves.  At the end, at the final "Selig"'s, the harp was playing, and the chorus was singing their F's and A's, and Tamara, who was 50, looked about 20.  I was not the only chorister to notice it.  Her face was transfigured. 

After the concert I was in another world.  I remember walking down Hemenway St., singing parts of the Requiem at full voice, without realizing it was full voice. 

A few days later, in my mailbox at school, was a hand-written thank you note from Tamara.  This was remarkable for two reasons.  Not only did she take the time to thank every individual chorister (and probably also instrumentalist), but the stationery itself was decorated by hand.  Each piece of paper had these flowers, done with several color markers or calligraphy pens.  No two pieces of paper had the same design.  Probably she whipped them off pretty quickly.  Still, I could not believe that she would give me, an undistinguished inhabitant of the back of the bass section, a hand-written AND hand-designed thank you note.

I left NEC and returned two years later.  This year, Tamara chose a different requiem: Verdi's.  The voice department almost had a stroke.  They tried to prevent Tamara from doing the piece and causing such laryngeal stress upon their students.  Tamara prevailed, but I imagine it took its toll on her. 

The rehearsals were as inspiring as the Brahms rehearsals two years before.  Tamara conducted from a facsimile of the manuscript, and from time to time she would exclaim things like, "In your score there are three p's.  In mine, Verdi writes SEVEN p's!", or, "In your score it says, 'senza misura.' In mine, Verdi writes, 'senza tempo'!"

I didn't sing in the concert, as I'd left school a few weeks before.  I did attend one of the orchestral rehearsals, at which Tamara was both the interpreter and the educator.  In a certain passage there was an interplay between the viola and clarinet that Tamara thought was very unique.  She had the violists and clarinettists play it and made everyone else in the orchestra stop and listen.  I don't think any of the orchestral conductors took such pains to inspire and educate.

I attended the concert, which I don't think I fully appreciated at the time.  The tenor and bass sections were not strong enough, the voices being too young and too small in number.  However, Richard Dyer of the Boston Globe waxed poetic, declaring that Brooks's performance was "the clear winner in this season’s Verdi Requiem contest." There were two other Verdi Requiems during that same three-month interval in 1992, one by Ben Zander and the Boston Philharmonic, and another by Seiji Ozawa at the Boston Symphony.  Dyer called Tamara's performance a "sublime, spiritual experience," adding, 

everything was drawn out of the music and the situations it depicts and embodies; nothing was superimposed. And this made every moment of it profoundly original…Everyone sang within what they had and with the purpose of personal expression.  Though there were plenty of soaring climaxes, this wasn’t a blow-out Verdi Requiem; it spoke to humanity’s most intimate fears, hopes, and confidences, and it compelled the active participation of the audience’s feelings, too. More than once I wept.

One of the greatest lessons I ever learned from Tamara occurred in a rehearsal, either in '89 or '91.  She was talking about tempo in general.  She said that tempo had to be chosen according to harmony.  She went to the piano and played Chopin's Aeolian Harp etude at a rather brisk tempo.  She then played either a Bach chorale or Chopin's C-minor prelude (I no longer recall which), placing each chord deliberately, almost forcing us to hear the color of each harmony. 

Hankus Netsky got it right when he said, 

Tamara was incredibly dynamic, charismatic, energetic, a vortex of passion, love, and talent.  When she got excited about something, there was no stopping her. And she got excited about a lot of things. When that happened, she was 100% there and never imagined that her students or others might not be as excited about a project as she was.

I leave you with a YouTube clip of Tamara conducting Victoria's O Magnum Mysterium.  You don't see a lot of her in the video.  But you can hear the shaping and the humanity.  In these respects she was inimitable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6iNnF7wKko

 

Chopin Concerts (Boston, 9 Sept. - 14 Oct. 2010)

LEONARDO CIAMPA
CHOPIN CONCERTS
FIRST CHURCH IN BOSTON, 66 MARLBOROUGH ST.
SEPT. 9 – OCT. 14, 2010
All Concerts 12:15-12:45 p.m.
Freewill offering

CONCERT I Prelude in B major Prelude in B minor (“Raindrop”) Mazurka in C minor Polonaise in A major (“Military”) Waltz in C# minor Etude in E major Ballade III in Ab major CONCERT II Mazurka in A minor (“Cries & Whispers”) Mazurka in Bb major Mazurka in F# minor Etude in Ab major (“Aeolian Harp”) Polonaise in F# minor (“Tragic”) CONCERT III Prelude in C minor Waltz in A minor Mazurka in D major Mazurka in C# minor Etude in Gb major (“Black-Key”) Polonaise in Ab major (“Heroic”) CONCERT IV Prelude in A major Prelude in E major Fantaisie-Impromptu in C# minor Mazurka in A minor Mazurka in F# minor Etude in C minor (“Revolutionary”) Ballade I in G minor CONCERT V Mazurka in F# minor Mazurka in Ab major Nocturne in C# minor Nocturne in F minor Ballade IV in F minor CONCERT VI Mazurka in G minor Mazurka in C# minor Etude in C# minor Waltz in Db major (“Minute”) Polonaise-Fantaisie in Ab major

09/09/10 Op. 28, No. 11 Op. 28, No. 6 Op. 30, No. 1 Op. 40, No. 1 Op. 64, No. 2 Op. 10, No. 3 Op. 47 09/16/10 Op. 17, No. 4 Op. 17, No. 1 Op. 59, No. 3 Op. 25, No. 1 Op. 44 09/23/10 Op. 28, No. 20 Op. 34, No. 2 Op. 33, No. 2 Op. 50, No. 3 Op. 10, No. 5 Op. 53 09/30/10 Op. 28, No. 7 Op. 28, No. 9 Op. 66 Op. 7, No. 2 Op. 7, No. 3 Op. 10, No. 12 Op. 23 10/07/10 Op. 6, No. 1 Op. 17, No. 3 Op. posth. Op. 55, No. 1 Op. 52 10/14/10 Op. 24, No. 1 Op. 41, No. 1 Op. 10, No. 4 Op. 64, No. 1 Op. 61

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.

History's Greatest Pianists I

When Liszt first heard Vladimir de Pachmann play, he said to the audience, "Those who have never heard Chopin before are hearing him this evening." Enough could never be said about this man's Chopin playing (see the fabulously informative website, http://nettheim.com/pachmann/ ).

And yet, critics of the second half of the 20th century dismissed him completely. Harold C. Schonberg just did not take him seriously. After all, he occasionally missed some notes! How could he?!

Here is a link to actual footage of this legend. The music you hear in the background is actually a 1925 piano roll of Pachmann's playing -- it isn't even a recording. And yet the piano roll has more nuance than the actual recordings of today's pianists.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwTw7hBZbkY&feature=related

By contrast, an actual recording (not a roll) of Pachmann playing the same piece two years previous can be heard here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3WuBOtCsYs

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.

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.

In Search of Sound II

More often than not, Vladimir Horowitz was appreciated for the wrong reasons. Yes, in the 20s and 30s, no one had a technique like him. But later we had people like Pollini, a veritable computer taken human form. I juxtapose these two names for a reason: Horowitz's technique included SOUND, which he never for a moment allowed to be absent from his playing. Pollini is simply a Godowskian mechanism (and without the tone or lyricism of Godowsky's era).

This is what I felt has always been underappreciated. When at the triumphant Moscow return in 1986, someone commented, "Horowitz is the only pianist who plays with colors," there, finally, you had a listener who understood what Vladimir Horowitz was accomplishing.

A scale can be scale, or it can be a fire cracker. An arpeggio can be an arpeggio, or it can be ocean waves. Octaves can be octaves, or they can be a cannonade. Horowitz's sensitivity to sound has probably never been equalled, not by Liszt or Anton Rubinstein, not even by Chopin or Debussy themselves. In fact, I want to say that Horowitz never played notes -- he made sounds. (Very musical ones, naturally. For Horowitz really was one of the great musicians, even if his musicality was sometimes sui generis.)

There was talk that "The Horowitz Piano" was somehow "rigged." For starters, there were at least four "Horowitz pianos" over the years. Secondly, it has been well-documented, by those who have played his piano after his death, that it was harder to play, not easier. The weight that would produce a mezzopiano on a regular Steinway thundered a fortissimo on Horowitz's. So to play all the gradations of p, pp, and ppp, you needed a transcendental digital sensitivity. Only Horowitz possessed it.

Somehow I realized that the technique-through-sound approach worked for me on the piano before realizing that it could work for organ, as well.

Last June -- six months before Jon Gillock's life-changing advice described in the previous post -- I was to play Chopin's Piano Trio in G minor with the Lavazza Chamber Ensemble. The strings have little to do, while the piano part is like Chopin's Third Concerto. I wasn't sure how to approach it, especially since I just did not have a lot of time in my schedule. I tried budgeting my practice time, practicing only the parts I didn't know. I practiced "just the notes," in other words.

And let me state: you do really need to practice notes! Not that I like to admit it. But there is no substitute for technical woodshedding, when necessary. And there are healthy and unhealthy ways to do it. The unhealthy ones can ruin both hands and psyche.

So I did the woodshedding, but it just wasn't coming together. As late as the dress rehearsal, I simply could not play the piece coherently or cohesively.

Meanwhile, in an earlier rehearsal, I was enjoying the music and less worried about the concert deadline. Kristina Nilsson, the violinist of the trio, remarked, "It's amazing that an organist can play the piano as well as you do." I said simply, "I just try to make the sound that I want to make." You know, the whole "water instead of arpeggios" thing described earlier. But more than that: when a pianist plays cleanly, doesn't it SOUND a certain way? And I think every pianist in the world thinks that only by playing every note with computer accuracy produces that clarity. It's simply false -- the proof being that Horowitz sometimes made mistakes. So to be honest, I tried to make the sound of a clean pianist. I simply approached it from the opposite side. A sparkling arpeggio sounds a certain way -- I tried to make that sound.

But as it got closer to the concert, I got more and more nervous about the notes. Then there was the problematic dress rehearsal at which I (and undoubtedly the others!) wondered what was to become of me. Because on top of it all: I had tendonitis.

Now ... before you start interpreting that word I just uttered ... a doctor will tell you that the term "tendonitis" can mean anything or nothing. It is like the terms "illness," or "treatment." They are undefined and undefinable.

So before rumors circulate that "Ciampa has tendonitis," I assure you that tense tendons come and go and can be as curable as the reduction of caffeine intake. (The notion of tendonitis being "permanent" was yet another misconception injected into me from my piano teacher of yore. Perhaps what she really was saying is: "If you get tendonitis, that's the point at which I give up on you and concentrate on the next competition-winner.")

I had a couple of days left before this concert. I asked my dear friend Anne Conner, "What am I going to do? I have to practice, but my tendons hurt." She said, "You know the piece. And even if you don't, nothing you do now is going to help you at this point." She was right. She continued, "Just run through the piece once, or twice if you feel up to it."

I played very little in those couple of days, and I was sure to practice from the standpoint of sound and to forget technique entirely.

I sat there at the piano, the downbeat came, and ... I knew the piece! No one could believe it (least of all the long-suffering string players!). It wasn't a note-perfect performance. But I realized that I really had practiced. All of that woodshedding really did happen, and the notes were there, in hands and brain. All I needed to do was to make music and, well, to sound good. It was one of those personal triumphs that make a career feel fulfilling.

Why it took me so long to realize that I could approach the organ the same way, I cannot say. I guess I'm a little slow that way. But I must leave you with a Horowitz anecdote which was told to me personally by Franz Mohr, his piano technician. Franz arrived at the Horowitz's 94th street mansion. Franz entered. Horowitz was playing. Franz said, "I see you're practicing." In feigned indignation, Horowitz declared, "Franz! I never practice! I REHEARSE."

And if you rehearse the sound as carefully as you want to rehearse the notes ... well ...