RIP Vanya

RIP Vanya

in memory of Van Cliburn

2/27/13

A musical giant fell today.

Van Cliburn defined a generation--in fact he set a path for all pianists after him.

"The American Sputnik" launched careers and music competitions.  The Van Cliburn International Competition has been overseeing emerging pianists as one of the most prestigious competitions the world through.  Richard Rodzinski, the director of that competition for more than 2 decades is now the general director of the Tchaikovsky Competition.  It's a direct line.

Two things happened after Van Cliburn (Vanya) won the Tchaikovsky in 1958.  Well, three really.  First obviously is that Van Cliburn became a household name in America and elsewhere (including Israel, where I was at the time 7 years old and had started learning piano).  What that meant was a cultural phenomenon on Elvis Presley and the Beatles' level.  He became the first classical musician who was a superstar, a position that many aspire to but few really reach--yet one which is difficult to sustain for long.  So many have reached it since, and so many have fallen along the way.

Van Cliburn's star blazed and left an indelible mark on culture.

From his time on, pianists practiced differently, and they listened to a new beat out there.  There would be greater clarity in the playing, greater precision of performance, both technically and musically.  Music always listens to other forms of itself and informs itself with the idiom of the time.  It's only natural that music composed and performed in the second half of the twentieth century reflected mechanization, a steadier beat and a more explosive musical vocabulary.  Softer emotions were not necessarily part of this idiom.

Russian pianists emulated the technical prodigiousness of Van Cliburn, and do so still.  So did Juilliard, the leading music school in the US.

A new style of piano playing emerged after Van Cliburn won the Tchaikovsky.  It wasn't out of historical context, of course.  From its inception in the mid-1700's, the history of piano playing shows increase in virtuosic demand.  Exercises became etudes, and these became more than just finger practice.  Etudes--grand, symphonic, transcendental--became musical gems in their own right.  The art of virtuosic performance developed to an unprecedented extent in the second half of the 20th century, perhaps at the expense of the kind of emotional commitment that earlier interpreters had shown.

It's an age-old conflict between form and content, and somewhere inbetween the two lies art.

What Van Cliburn gave to the Russians and the rest of the world was a new interpretation of the grand romantics, and though it was fresh and technically brilliant, it was also steeped in the old romanticism.  His Tchaikovsky Concerto performance shows a budding romanticism unburdened by the angst of the Old World.  It is fresh and supple playing, and it's no wonder the Russians went totally wild for him.  Van Clibusn gave them what Elvis gave us.

What happened in the twenty years since his explosive performance in Moscow and his retirement in 1978 (there were "comebacks" as well as a sort of command performance here and there)?

Some say that he was a perfectionist and could never reach the standard he set for himself, so he was never happy with his playing.

Some say that he was burned out.  you can only do so many concerts a year.  There are only so many times you can play certain pieces before losing interest and becoming bored with them.  And boredom, as we know, is the first sin of music making.

There's much more that can be said of Van Cliburn's playing, and I'm sure much more will be said in the next few weeks, months and probably years.

Thanks for inspiring so many of us, Mr. Cliburn.  We are full of respect for you and grateful for what you've done for us.

Rest in Peace.

(c) 2013 by Boaz D. Heilman

A Perlman Event

A Perlman Event

Itzhak Perlman, violin, and Rohan De Silva, piano

Celebrity Series of Boston

November 23, 2014

A Perlman concert is an event.  Everybody knows it, including the esteemed violinist, who is the current undisputed premier artist of the instrument. 

Perlman brings a variety of audiences to hear him play.  There are, of course, the representatives of the Jewish/Israeli community who come to hear one of their own.  There are also those for whom Perlman represents the ultimate (and probably last) great violinist of the old, Eastern European tradition of playing, the kind where schmaltz is not disdained, where playing a musical line isn’t enough in itself—you have to make it sing, tell a story, convey an emotion.  Rhythm is biological, not digital.  Playing in the emotion-less style of the 21^st century just doesn’t cut it for this audience.  And if you aren’t dramatic, you might as well step off the stage, you don’t belong on one.

There are those who come to hear Perlman because he symbolizes empowerment over disability.  Seeing him walk onstage using his crutches, having his violin handed to him by a concertmaster takes your breath away even before he checks the already-perfect tuning.  And when he plays—he dances, he flies, and he swings you, his partner, off your feet.

And of course there are those who come to hear Perlman play because he is such a great musician, his insights into the music are such that you can only be inspired to understand the greatness behind Beethoven or Brahms.

He is also a great showman, enjoying his little jokes and gestures; he enjoys making his audience laugh.

Yesterday afternoon, Itzhak Perlman played his many audiences almost as well as he played his violin.  He had something for everyone.

Perlman has a mobile chair to take him to his place to the side of the piano.  Technology makes the entrance less dramatic, but also less painful to watch.  Perlman settled in, and the concert began.

The audience was often restless.  Sunday afternoons either bring out the dark, dusky kind of playing you would expect in a Faulkner den, or else the lighter, afternoon-tea schmaltz you could expect in the lobby of an Austrian resort.  Perlman gave us both.

The Vivaldi with which he opened, Sonata in A Major for violin and continuo, Opus 2, no. 2, RV 31, unfortunately showed Perlman not quite at home with the style.  The Adagio recitative was probably the best, allowing Perlman to be a bit more emotive and dramatic than in the other movements.

The Schumann Fantasiestucke Op. 73, lacked youthful sparkle.  Possibly the piano sounded a bit thunky, but the playing could have been more expansive, even darker at times, while still maintaining the embrace of all life that was so characteristic of Schumann, even at this point in his life, which saw an outburst of creativity after a period of illness.  Originally written for clarinet, Schumann indicated that Fantasiestucke could also be played on viola or cello—and maybe that’s the darker sound that I would have wished for, a sound that also would have allowed brighter points of light.

The Beethoven Sonata in C-minor, Op. 30, no. 2, was another story altogether.  It was Beethoven as Beethoven should be played.  Voraciously, beautifully, virtuosity alternating with lyricism.  The collaboration between Perlman and Rohan De Silva was wonderful.

The Ravel Sonata No. 2 in G Major was, for me, the highlight of the afternoon.  Influenced by orientalism as well as by jazz and blues, the sonata shows a working out of harmonies and rhythms that Ravel would later use in the D Major Piano Concerto (for the left hand). The sonata expects peak technical prowess from both instrumentalists, collaboration in color, texture and rhythms that either works or doesn’t—and yesterday it did.  It was nothing less than marvelous.

Still, not everyone in the audience is a lover of late Ravel.  You could sense the unease of the audience with the jarring 20^th century harmonies.  But when Perlman played a Jascha Heiftetz transcription of a Chopin Mazurka, you could hear a pin drop.  This is what they came for, and the audience imbibed it. 

Fritz Kreisler provided the salon music and schmaltz; it isn’t my cup of tea, but if you’re going to reach every audience member and you are Perlman, you are going to play the heck out of these pieces, and so he did.

Then came John Williams’ Theme from Schindler’s List.  Not a dry eye in the audience for that one. 

There was more, and there could have been more.  Following the Ravel, Perlman chose the music from what he and De Silva brought out with them from backstage.  With his customary good-natured humor, Perlman gave us the concert we came to hear.  He is one of the world’s greatest musicians, showmen and human beings, and there was love in the air—the way it should be.

It was an event to attend.

© 2014 by Boaz D. Heilman