Great, greater, greatest

There’s the Tennessee Waltz and there’s Johann Strauss's Blue Danube Waltz. There’s the Beer Barrel Polka and then there's Rachmaninoff’s Italian Polka, which I blogged about the other day when I was gushing over Vacheslav Gryaznov’s arrangement and performance of it. Different strokes for different folks, we say, when we're trying not to look like snobs, and making subjective quality judgments about where any given cultural product lies on the spectrum between art and kitsch. But that's only one dimension. It's the distinction we generally make when the line is between popular culture and a level of engagement which takes cultivation. There's also the quality of performance of any given piece by different artists, where we're more likely to be talking about differences in taste than in quality.

I was especially taken by Gryaznov’s performance, and the reminder of how much real talent pops up when and where you least expect it. Forgive my prejudice here, but I knew nothing of this marvel called the “Grand Piano Series” held at the Vanderbilt Presbyterian Church in Naples, Florida. I can’t help it; I’ve just got to add, “of all places.” But that's me, forgetting that if we can do great things in Berkeley, California, why shouldn't they be able to do great things in Naples, Florida?

I remember when I first learned about the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra with its wonderful chorus and musical director. They are based in San Francisco, but they give (used to give - before the pandemic) regular concerts at the Congregational Church in Berkeley, among other outlying places, a 10-15 minute walk from my house. Taku and I became subscribers and for years had seats in the second row of the balcony. Happy times. And a great reminder that world class artists are sometimes accessible if you just keep your eyes and ears open for when they come to town and you set aside a few shekels for the events.

The same thing is true for the incredibly broad array of music available on YouTube. I know. I’m becoming a broken record with my rave endorsements of YouTube, but they have kept me sane in this time of lockdown, and I can’t show enough gratitude.

One activity I love to engage in that was not possible until recently is tracking down a piece of music that captures my fancy, and then watching that same piece of music sung or played by any number of artists.

Many people don’t realize that classical music is not holy writ. There is perhaps an original transcription by the composer. But in many cases there are numerous versions by professional arrangers and transcribers, sometimes with cadenzas added and great liberties taken.  Slava Gryaznov's transcriptions are but one example. He took this wonderful Italian Polka by Rachmaninoff - the kind of tune that, once I've heard it, refuses to stop spinning around in my head for days or weeks - and added a flair that many now use for their own public performances. Go to YouTube and type in “arranged by Gryaznov” and you’ll see what I mean. They go on for days.

And he’s not the only transcriber/arranger to have at Rachmaninoff’s Italian Polka. There are two others, both arguably with even more razzmatazz. One of these is the wild and crazy Arkady Arkadievich Volodos. Yes, another of those magnificent Russian artists with an Olympic athlete's proficiency level at the keyboard. You want to cringe at the dissonance and bombast, but you also want to jump to your feet and shout, “Bravo!” 

And, pièce de résistance for me is Vladimir Horowitz’s version, if anything even more stunning. Here’s Horowitz playing Rachmaninoff’s Italian Polka, I believe as an encore, at his memorable return to Russia concert in 1986. Horowitz left the USSR in 1925 and didn’t go back for sixty-one years. When he did he was welcomed as a conquering hero.   People mobbed him, men and women sobbed openly at his performance at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory concert, some had camped out all night to get a ticket, two hundred non-ticket holders forced their way in, and they just wouldn’t let him leave the stage, even after three encores and an eight-minute standing ovation. He finally had to beg off.

Watch his performance of the Italian Polka to get a feel for his talent and skill and for that audience’s adoration. 

And if that makes you want to watch a documentary on that trip, it’s available here.

Dos land iz dayn land, dos land iz mayn land

I have a special place in my heart for the Yiddish language. Don't know why, except possibly it goes back to memories of a Yiddish-speaking grandmother of my friend Sheila, in high school. The family thought the time had come when grandma could no longer live on her own, and transplanted her very much against her will. She was miserable. Home for her was a Yiddish-speaking world in Brooklyn. How could she be expected to live in rural Northwestern Connecticut. We had a synagogue which today calls itself "reconstructionist-leaning."  Don't know what it was then, but I doubt it was her cup of tea.

I heard her speaking Yiddish with Sheila's mother, her daughter, once, and what she was saying sounded to me like some form of German, and I jumped in. High school chutzpah, what can I say? If I had thought about it, I would have held back. For all I knew, barely ten years after the end of the war, she might have felt seriously antagonistic toward the German language. On the contrary. For her it was "close enough" and suddenly she had somebody around besides her daughter she could communicate with. I always got a warm welcome when I'd drop by Sheila's after school.

For obvious reasons, Yiddish is not classified as a dialect of German. But German-speakers find, with a little effort, it's a whole lot easier to pick up than Dutch, say, or even certain other German dialects. And growing up in America, among Ashkenazi (German-origin) Jews, I've always had a fondness for Jewish humor and the large numbers of Yiddish words that have made their way into the English language. Chutzpah is a fully accepted loan-word, for example. So is kvetch. And shmooze. But so are many other terms, as in "What's the difference between a shlemiel and a shlemazel?" Answer: A shlemiel goes around spilling soup on people and a shlemazel is the guy he spills it on.

So imagine my delight when I discovered the other day that somebody had made the effort to translate Woodie Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land" into Yiddish.

It's worth noting that some liberties have been taken with the translation. For one thing, instead of "to the New York island" (which never made much sense to me, since nobody refers to Manhattan as "the" New York Island anyway), they've chosen to say "From California to Ellis Island." And that does make a lot more sense, since most Jews, like most immigrants from the European continent, came in through Ellis Island, and the place has very special significance for all those who first set foot on the American continent there.

The other change is they used not the usual jingoist version, but a version which takes into account the fact that America began with slavery and genocide and its dream is not unalloyed. It is nonetheless a celebratory song of gratitude, one that can be sung enthusiastically, without the schmalz that comes with "God Bless America" or "America the Beautiful."

I think they did a brilliant job. Have a listen.

And here are the lyrics, in anglicized (transliterated) Yiddish, and actual Yiddish (i.e., written in the Hebrew alphabet):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnP8zWcy1ZA

(Daniel:)

Kh’hob mir gevandert in a land a frayen

Aroys fun midber, vi mi-mitsrayem,

Gezukht a nayem Yerushalayem,

Dos iz a land far mir un dir.

(REFREN:)

Dos land iz dayn land, dos land iz mayn land

Fun Kalifornye biz Elis Ayland,

Fun di groyse oz’res biz di breyte yamen,

Dos iz a land far mir un dir.

(Sarah:)

Ikh gey ariber di berg un teler,

Arumgeringlt fun zise keler.

Di ritshkes murmlen, di feygl zingen:

Dos iz a land far mir un dir.

(Lorin w/ piano:)

Kh’ze a groysn moyer mit a shild vos vornt:

Vil men araynet, shteyt az me tor nit

Nor af yener zayt, shteyt dortn gornit

Ot iz di zayt far mir un dir.

(Sveta & Patty w/accordion:)

Gey ikh mir voglen, di zun fun oybn,

Nor beyze vintn tseblozn shtoybn,

Durkh di tumanen, her ikh gezangen:

Dos iz a land far mir un dir.

(Michael:)

Af nase gasn, in tife shotns,

Ze ikh vi mentshn betn nedoves

Bay aza dales, darf ikh zikh klern

Tsi dos iz a land far mir un dir.

(Linda and all:)

Es ken shoyn keyner undz nit farshtern,

Di fraye vegn undz nit farvern.

Nito keyn tsamen, ven nor tsuzamen.

Dos iz a land far mir un dir.

דאָס לאַנד איז דײַן לאַנד פֿון װוּדי גאָטרי, 1940

פֿאַרטײַטשט פֿון ליבע גריץ און דניאל קאַהן

מיט חײם באָכנער, מײשקע אַלפּערט, און דזשאַש װאַלעצקי

כ'האָב מיר געװאַנדערט, אין אַ לאַנד אַ פֿרײַען

אַרױס פֿון מידבר, װי ממצרים

געזוכט אַ נײַעם ירושלים

דאָס איז אַ לאַנד פֿאַר מיר און דיר

רעפֿרען: דאָס לאַנד איז דײַן לאַנד

דאָס לאַנד איז מײַן לאַנד

פֿון קאַליפֿאָרניע ביז עליס אײַלאַנד

פֿון די גרױסע אָזערעס ביז די ברײטע ימען

דאָס איז אַ לאַנד פֿאַר מיר און דיר

איך גײ אַריבער די בערג און טעלער

אַרומגערינגעלט פֿון זיסע קעלער

די ריטשקעס מורמלען, די פֿײגל זינגען

דאָס איז אַ לאַנד פֿאַר מיר און דיר

כ'זע אַ גרױסן מױער מיט אַ שילד װאָס װאָרנט

װיל מען אַרײַנעט, שטײט אַז מע' טאָר ניט

נאָר אױף יענער זײַט, שטײט דאָרטן גאָרניט

אָט איז די זײַט פֿאַר מיר און דיר

גײ איך מיר װאָגלען, די זון פֿון אױבן

נאָר בײזע װינטן צעבלאָזן שטױבן

דורך די טומאַנען הער איך געזאַנגען

דאָס איז אַ לאַנד פֿאַר מיר און דיר

אױף נאַסע גאַסן, אין טיפֿע שאָטנס

זע איך װי מענטשן בעטן נדבֿות

בײַ אַזאַ דלות, טו איך זיך קלערן

צי דאָס איז אַ לאַנד פֿאַר מיר און דיר

עס קען שױן קײנער אונדז ניט פֿאַרשטערן

די פֿרײַע װעגן אונדז ניט פֿאַרװערן

ניטאָ קײן צאַמען, ווען נאָר צוזאַמען

דאָס איז אַ לאַנד פֿאַר מיר און די

Blaybt gezunt un shtark kegn fashizm!

Vyacheslav Gryaznov

There was a time when the most remote place on earth was captured in the name “Ultima Thule,” a Greek mythological place beyond the bounds of the known world. These days we all have our idea of “the boonies,” remote places that suggest loneliness and isolation. Siberia calls up that image, a very real place where Russians who were troublesome to the powers that be were banished, often never to return. But Siberia can’t hold a candle to the island of Sakhalin, off the coast of Siberia. It takes eight hours and five minutes to fly to Moscow, direct, from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the main town. From 1905 until 1945 it was called Toyohara, the name the Japanese gave it when they colonized it as part of Japan’s “Northern Territories,” and shipped off troublesome Koreans. It couldn’t have been that bad a place, though. When the island reverted to Russia, 20,000 Koreans decided to stay on, rather than be repatriated to Korea. I want to focus on other things here, so I don’t want to be distracted here by the fate of the Sakhalin Koreans, which makes fascinating, if chilling history. If you want to read about it, you might start here.

Vyacheslav Gryaznov - “Slava” for short - was born in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk to an engineer father and a mother who was a German-language teacher. I’ve commented before on the Russian propensity for nurturing child prodigies, and evidently these folks recognized that they had, if not a prodigy, at least a seriously talented musician on their hands. They managed - I don’t know the story - to uproot themselves and move to Moscow so their son could get the schooling and musical training he would need to become successful. At great cost. Slava’s father died when Slava was only eleven, in the financial chaos of post-Soviet Moscow, as Slava tells the story. But their efforts have paid off. Slava, who credits his mother and father for everything that has happened to him, has thrived. Today he is a first-rate concert pianist, thanks to his training at the Moscow Conservatory, and is becoming known world-wide. Not just for his concert performances. His decision to display his talent on YouTube led to his being hired, in 2014, by Schott Music Publishers as an arranger and transcriber and today he works, as well, as a piano teacher.

I won’t fill the page with all the links to his performances, which you can find by the dozens by going to YouTube and typing in Vyacheslav Gryaznov. But to get just one sample of his talent, here’s a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Italian Polka, for which he has written his arrangement.

And if there are any of you out there who doubt the difference there is between music played proficiently and accurately, but mechanically, and music played by a human being with a soul, even one with a bad haircut, listen for a minute or two - actually thirty seconds will suffice - to the same Italian Polka, programmed for a player piano, and then go back and listen to Slava again.

Player piano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFJGKU-IrGM 

Slava again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj8vzloRKQ0

photo credit

Playing with Shigeru

When I was seven years old, they tell me, I announced one day to my mother and father that I wanted to learn to play the piano. I have a pretty good memory of things back in 1947, actually, but I don't remember any details to the story of how my father located an upright sitting on somebody's back porch they wanted to get rid of for twenty bucks and he, and probably his brother Bill, managed to haul it into our house, where it sat, next to the staircase, for the next half century or so until both my parents were gone and the house went to the State of Connecticut for having sheltered the old man in nursing homes the last several years of his life.

I can't remember the maker. I can pretty much assure you it wasn't a Steinway or a Bösendorfer. It could have been a Baldwin. Japan was only two years beyond Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so Kawai and Yamaha were not yet on the horizon.

I remember a piano tuner coming in and spreading the parts all over the living room floor while he tingled and plunked and hammered it into shape, replacing a couple of the missing ivories and no doubt giving my mother serious second thoughts about indulging her little boy's fantasies - would he stick with it? Or would he move on to his make-believe kingdom in the woods in back of the house where he got to wear a cape and order imaginary subjects around? I started lessons with Marguerite Curtis, the church organist at the Second Congregational Church (we went to the First) for $1.25 an hour, and for a time the elders in my family imagined having a concert pianist in the family, particularly when I got gigs playing for ballet classes and became the organist in the Methodist Church for a year or two at age sixteen.

I've written before how grateful I am for those early years. All children should be so lucky as to have parents willing to imagine great things of their children. I don't remember their faces when I told them I had figured out I didn't have what it takes to become a serious musician. I lacked the discipline to keep up with the Czerny exercises, and even being asked to accompany the summer hymn-sings at the Little Church in the Wildwood couldn't motivate me to work harder. The glass-half-empty story is I burned out by eighteen; the glass-half-full story is I acquired an awareness of what it takes to become a concert-level player and a love of music that gets me through the current lock-down. I have no regrets. I made the right decision.Those who can, do; those who can't, have YouTube.

When my friends Don and Alice had to give up their beautiful Madame Butterfly house in Yokohama, they needed to dispose of the grand piano they had acquired for family entertainment. It so happened I was living in a house that had once been owned by a concert pianist and she had reinforced the floor to hold the weight of her piano, no mean feat in Japanese houses designed to surrender to nature when the winds blow and the earth quakes. 

Good Son Stuart managed somehow to expense the move - they had to practically take a wall down to get it in. And when I moved out I simply gave it away to the owner rather than incur the expense of moving it out again. Another chapter in my life when, if my musical talent had sufficed, I might have given it another go. The wife of a German colleague gave concerts and I got her to visit a few times to brighten up the place. But once again, it would be them what can vs. them what must be satisfied with just listening and admiring.

I played for my own entertainment, not to become more proficient, and it used to annoy me when tradespeople came to the door and apologized for interrupting my practice. What is it with these pathologically earnest people, I used to ask myself - always practicing for life, never simply enjoying it.

Eventually, though, I got over my early antagonism about all things Japanese, married one of them, eventually, and came to appreciate this love of excellence and the work it takes to acquire it. I include in my personal history a memory of Ms. Curtis bewailing the fact that her nephew had brought home a Japanese war bride ("I really don't think the races should mix") during the time when "Made in Japan" was another name for shlock. And a memory of the first time I realized what a good car Toyota made and vowed I'd never buy any other make of car. I'm nurturing my '97 Toyota to this day toward 180,000 miles (I'm still at 140,000), and am now convinced it's going to outlive me.

Torakusu Yamaha, of Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, began making reed instruments in 1887 and expanded into pianos in 1900. Today Yamaha is the largest manufacturer of musical instruments in the world. At some point Torakusu took in his neighbor, a young man named Koichi Kawai, to work for him, when he spotted him driving a four-wheeled wagon and thought maybe that meant he could build pianos, as well.  The piano business faltered in the 20s, but by this time Koichi believed he had developed the know-how to strike out on his own, and suddenly Hamamatsu had not one, but two piano manufacturers. Yamaha recovered and they're both going strong today.

Koichi had a son, Shigeru, who took over when Koichi died. And Shigeru passed on his skills to his son, Hirotaka. Hirotaka continued to build the company, adding robots into the manufacturing process. The love of excellence carried into the third generation, and Hirotaka came out with a piano to beat all pianos, and named it after his father. That means there are Yamaha pianos of extremely high quality, Kawai pianos of extremely high quality. And, move over Steinway, more and more concert halls and artists are choosing to play their concerts on the Shigeru Kawai piano.

If Steinway is the Rolls Royce of pianos, the Shigeru Kawai might be called the Ferrari. I'm getting out ahead of my expertise here, so I won't push the analogies.

But I've been listening to people discussing the relative merits of a Steinway over a Fazioli or a Bechstein. America's Baldwin, like America's Ford and Chevy, seems to have lost its ability to play with the big boys and even Bösendorfer has been bought out by Yamaha, so the Japanese are today known for more than their world-class automobiles and their Nikon Cameras.

We can all work together to build excellence. Russia seems to have chosen to produce child prodigies. Japan is now working hard to provide the instruments for them to play on.

Just a sample.

Elisey Mysin

In sharing my favorite videos of musical, mostly piano, performances in recent months, I've made several references to child prodigies, and suggested that virtually all of the greats become great in large part because they are recognized as exceptional early on and are properly nurtured. Mentoring is an essential for talent, I believe, if we want it to shine.

I’m a sucker for young kids who shine from an early age, and I’ve followed some of them for years now. Alexander Malofeev, for one example. The Jussen Brothers, for another.

I fall in love with these kids, and focus as much on their person as on their talent. I love Alexander Malofeev’s beautiful blond hair, the innocent smiles of all the child prodigies, the evidence of precocious personalities, whatever makes them distinctive as representatives of the best the human race comes up with, all in addition to what should probably be the proper focal point, their exceptional talent as performers.

In doing this, I think there’s an important line we sometimes cross which deserves more of our attention. When, in showering attention on children, however deserved, are we confusing an appreciation for the artistic, the esthetic, with a base instinct for titillation and an unworthy inclination to use others for our own entertainment. When looking at a child of three or four or five playing Mozart - Elisey Mysin is a good example - is it a love of Mozart that captures our attention, of the rare - not to say freakish - fact that we’re witnessing evidence that superhuman talent did not stop with Mozart?

I put the question out there for debate. Is our human love of excellence - something the Russians excel at, by the way - worth risking the potential destruction of a child’s healthy psychological growth? Is this a modern-day analogue to castrating exceptionally talented boy sopranos so that we don’t lose what is arguably a national treasure? 

The better question is probably, “Can we nurture a child prodigy properly without destroying the child in the process?” If so, then the answer is moot, I should think. Or rather, the response should be full steam ahead.

Let me take a closer look at Elisey Mysin, since he’s already out there and not a merely hypothetical case. From all appearances, he seems to be thriving. There’s no evidence, at least not at present, that he’s headed for a psychiatrist’s couch or a mental institution, or wherever they put people with nervous breakdowns these days.

Here’s a good place to start with the boy Elisey. The interview is in Russian, but I think his intelligence, precocity and sophistication come through gloriously. This is no five-year-old playing with dump trucks; this is an exceptional human being.  He’s already ten by the time this video is made, but my reference to him as a three-year or a five-year-old is not out of line, as evidenced by these couple of videos, here and here at age 6.

I won’t go on linking to other videos; they’re easy to find on YouTube. I just wanted to make a couple of points. One is that this is a child playing. His fingers are not long enough to hit all the keys. And despite his obvious ability to be physically moved by the music he is creating, he is not old enough to show the technical nuanced style we expect of a mature musician. It’s the fact that we’re looking at what appears to be a modern-day Mozart, somebody with extraordinary potential. Not an actual concert pianist. Not yet.

I don’t want to downplay the wonder of what we’re looking at. I just want to stress the importance of remembering this is a child who deserves to have a childhood and to be protected in his vulnerability.

God bless the Russians and their love of excellence. And their ability to foster it. And God bless the precocious children in our midst, whether they are musicians, Olympic athletes or architects in the making, poets, dancers or empaths.

And let’s keep our priorities straight. I’m with Kant. Human beings should be the ends of our moral consciousness, never the means to those ends.

Human compassion first, entertainment only when no one gets hurt.

But I’ve gotten too serious. Let me end with this video, where Eliseiyushka performs Rachmaninoff’s Italian Polka, first alone, then as a duet with Denis Matsuev, arguably Russia’s best-known concert pianist currently. Note the discussion of Elisey’s daily life, and the concern expressed that he be allowed to be a little boy. But then compare that with the comment that in Germany, such a performance as this would not be allowed because of the child labor laws.

Hard to get this thing just right!

photo credit

Sasha, still growing, still getting better every year

Geoffrey Peter Bede Hawkshaw Tozer was born to Australian parents in India on November 5, 1954. Eight years later, he composed his first opera.

When he died, at age 54, in Melbourne, former Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating, spoke at his memorial service for forty-five minutes. According to Keating, the loss of Tozer was the kind of loss the Germans felt after losing Dresden to British and American bombs. According to Tozer’s Wikipedia page (no citation given for this, alas), he knew music so well that he was able to imitate the styles of Donizetti, Bellini, Rossini, Verdi, Wagner, Bartók, Piazzolla, Cage, Satie, Gershwin, Brahms and others, a trick he often performed as an encore at one of his concerts.

Until yesterday, I had never heard of Geoffrey Tozer. Yesterday, I listened to him all day long. Have a look at the technical proficiency (and the sang-froid) of a performance of his of Liszt in 2009.

Nikolai Karlovich Medtner was born on Christmas Eve in 1879, in Moscow. Until yesterday, I had never heard of him either. He is a prolific composer and Wikipedia (again, without a citation!) tells us he is now, twenty-five years after his death, gradually becoming recognized as one of Russia’s greatest composers. No small praise, that, given the status of Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and so many many others.

But to love Rachmaninoff is not necessarily to love Medtner. Geoffrey Tozer, known for calling attention to Medtner by playing nearly all of his nearly impossible-to-play piano pieces (some say “and nearly impossible to listen to,” as well, evidently did, and I suspect, if you don’t know him, you’ll agree with me that he’s an acquired taste. Where Rachmaninoff (his second Piano Concerto, for example) writes for the heart, Medtner writes for the intellect.

Rather than talk about this notion, have a listen to Tozer playing Medtner, and I think you’ll see what I mean. Here’s a score of Medtner’s Sonata Minacciosa for you to follow, if you like doing that sort of thing (I love it, and it’s all I can do to keep up). “Minacciosa” is Italian for “menacing.” When’s the last time you heard of a “menacing” piece of poetry or other work of art?  Like I said - for the intellect, not the heart. 

Hope you can get through the whole thing. It’s almost eighteen minutes long, but it’s an amazing experience - at least I found it so. And physically exhausting.

If you’re not into getting tired, you can skip ahead to the reason I got into Tozer and Medtner in the first place. Alexander Malofeev, whom I have watched grow as an artist and as an extremely appealing human being, has recorded what I think is one of Medtner’s easiest-to-relate-to pieces, the Sonata Reminiscenza in A minor. Harsh, even angry in places, and demanding. But not threatening. Passionate. Consuming.

And, unlike Tozer, whose face seems to show little emotion, Alex - Sasha - Sashenka - love how affectionate the Russians can get with their nicknames - lets you see what he’s going through as he plays, emotions shifting from moment to moment. Sometimes you get the impression he’s in a bubble, playing just for himself, waking up when he’s done, but recognizing that he can always count on an adoring audience.

And a word about the audience here. Russian audiences are quite sophisticated. They can mess up. Some jerk forgot to silence their phone, which goes off at about minute 4 - and Alex is distracted momentarily, thus putting the lie to my assumption he is unaware of his audience. And I have heard performances where people applauded between movements, a breach of concert etiquette. But here, at this performance, watch how they sit and wait for Alex to come out of his trance at the end of the piece. Only when he relaxes his muscles do they know the piece is over. They give him that last moment of being completely carried away by what he’s playing.

Love the Russians. Just love’em.

Photo of Alexander Malofeev, from a source unrelated to the above text: credit

Flavio Villani - Crossing Rachmaninoff

Flavio Villani

My list of greatest pianists of all time continues to grow. I’ve divided it into several categories. The top category consists of the best pianists of all time, and that group is different from the rest in that I have people on it I have never heard play, people like Liszt and Chopin, people I take other people’s word on. After them I have listed Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur Rubenstein, whom I have heard play, and can vouch for the fact that nobody can match them. The third list consists of others no longer living who might match them, depending on how you rate talent so astonishing that it seems tacky to be making comparisons at all, people like Van Cliburn and Glenn Gould, and Svatislav Richter.

At some point, though, I have to stop and ask myself, “What the hell are you doing, pretending that musical talent is a zero sum game, and a contest where everybody has to be lined up and graded, with the implication that world-class talent is about winners and losers?

So let me stop that game right here. I have my favorites. Currently Yuja Wang and Martha Argerich are on that list, both mature talents, and a whole bunch of young up-and-coming talents I’ve gushed over at some point, like Alexander Malofeev and the Jussen Brothers. But I don’t want to rate them. I know who they are and am inevitably excited when I take note that a new performance of theirs has been made available, usually by YouTube, since we are at the moment confined to isolation and dependent on others to let us know what’s happening out there in the world.

I came across a documentary the other day that reminded me I needed to create yet another category. This one I’d have to call the “very very talented not yet ready for the genius label” if indeed they will ever meet that high standard. The documentary is called Crossing Rachmaninoff. It’s about Flavio Villani, a gentle soft-spoken Italian man who has made his home in New Zealand. He works in IT to make a living, but has for years asked himself if he has the talent to become a serious concert pianist. He works, at present, as a piano teacher and occasional performer.

The film begins with his return to Italy to play Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with the Orchestra Filarmonica in Calabria. The orchestra’s director, Filippo Arlia, heard him play somewhere and started up a correspondence with him. These exchanges led Arlia to conclude it was worth giving Flavio the chance he needed to play with an orchestra for the first time.

Most films of this genre feature the lives of prodigies and other world class performers known for their ability to win competitions and outshine their peers. This is the story of a more ordinary man, talented enough to make it to the concert stage, but it focuses not on his superhuman proficiency but on the effort he has had to make to get there. You can find any number of world class musicians who can perform Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto in C-minor as well as or better than Flavio can, but this is more than anything the story of a man with the desire to succeed who is willing to make the commitment to put in the effort to make it happen, to make a concert-level pianist of himself. 

So the story is not about an “ordinary” man, exactly - he’s too talented to be reduced to “ordinary.” But he serves as an example of the old saying that genius, talent, success is one-tenth inspiration and nine-tenths perspiration. 

Much of the film is intensely personal. Flavio’s mother says he was a child who had secrets, who kept pretty much to himself. He is gay, and when he came out to his family, his father gave him two hundred euros to make his way in the world and told him not to come home again. Hence his decision to make his way to New Zealand.

This is not a gay coming-out story. That chapter is behind him when the film begins, as is whatever difficulty he had connecting with his father. When he returns in the film, a week before the upcoming concert, what you see is a soft-spoken, very loving young man being warmly embraced and welcomed home by his family - all of them, brother, mother and father. The goal of the filmmaker is not to present a tension-filled drama, but an affection-filled tale of a young man who sets his goals high, and then goes out and meets them. There is tension in the film, but it’s not found among the characters - there are no bad guys - but in the trial Flavio has set for himself, the quest for the answer to the nagging question, “Am I good enough?”

If you go to YouTube and type in Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No. 2, you’ll find at least twenty entries by many of the greats I mentioned above.
And after watching Crossing Rachmaninoff, I had to pick one just to hear that piece - which may be my favorite piano piece of all time - but there I go with the comparisons again! - in its entirety, uninterrupted.

But I’ve added Flavio Villani to my list of “sixty favorite concert pianists.”

Crossing Rachmaninoff is available on Amazon Prime.

Photo is from a video interview Flavio gave at a film festival in Mendocino, where Crossing Rachmaninoff was presented.

Flowers in your hair

I came across a real gem this morning. A piece of film footage taken in the Haight-Ashbury District of San Francisco in the late 60s.

I watched it filled with nostalgia.

Then I read the commentary and laughed. As with all commentary in this age of social media, lots of people use this platform to express their anger and frustration with life. Lots of hostility. And lots of gushing on the other side, as well. That's the extreme I'm more naturally drawn to.

Many complain that there's no sound.  That's like giving somebody a wonderful present and all they can do is complain about the wrapping.

These were my first years in San Francisco, after getting out of the army in 1965. My friend Linda lived three blocks up the hill from the corner of Haight and Ashbury, on Frederick Street, with friend Dora. When Harriet, who eventually became the center of my extended chosen San Francisco family, first arrived in San Francisco, she stayed with Linda and Dora for a couple weeks before finding her own apartment. Dora's sister visited at some point. I remember two things about her sister. One is that she had worked for JFK in the White House and the other is that she really wanted to get to know the hippies, so she used to walk down and sit on the sidewalk with a bag of potato chips and wait for people to stop by and sit with her.

At one point Harriet dropped her wallet somewhere in this area. A young woman found it and found Harriet's ID, which fortunately had Linda's address on it. She showed up at the door one day. Linda and Dora and Harriet were thrilled at the thoughtfulness, so when the woman asked if she could move in they didn't know how to say no. (Even non-hippies had space on the floor back then.)  I forget the woman's name. I think it was Jane. Linda, if you're reading this, refresh my memory. Jane used the word "Wow!" all the time. And "Groovy." And "weird." I believe they started referring to her as "Weird Jane." Linda, I need refreshing on this, as well.

It took some doing, but they found a way eventually to ask her to move on. Which she did. No big deal. It was all groovy.

What strikes me about these images is how white the crowd is, and how thin. And how many people actually walked barefoot. And how many non-hippies there are in the crowd, how hippies and non-hippies shared the same space. And the sheer number of people out in the streets!

The early days when I lived with the feeling that I had found my home. When Tony Bennett's "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" resonated with me, despite the schmalz. And the line from "San Francisco" - which Jeanette MacDonald made famous and which serves now as the San Francisco theme song, played as the finale of every Gay Men's Chorus concert and other performances at the Castro Theater: 

Open your golden gate

You let no stranger wait outside your door

San Francisco

Here is your wandering one

Saying I'll wander no more...

Three quarters of my life ago now. And it's still my home, although I haven't been to the Haight-Ashbury in at least twenty years, probably.

Strange kind of nostalgia, having lived through the sixties in San Francisco, claiming the hippie culture as part of my own, but never being a part of it.

I did have the hair and I did have the clothes. Walking barefoot in city streets wasn't for me, but it's great to remember how bright-eyed and innocent I was, how positively I saw the world, how I resonated with the song, "When you go to San Francisco, wear flowers in your hair..."

Hope you can relate...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9a8qqUpI8A

Faith-based sedition

If you've seen Religulous, or have watched Bill Maher for any length of time, you'll be familiar with the comedian as one of America's leading voices speaking out against religion.

I part ways with his wholesale rejection of all things religious. I think anything that has played - and still plays - as important a role in history, right down to the present day - should not be rejected out-of-hand, but analyzed with nuance. Which is just a fancy way of saying I think there are all kinds of religious impulses in the human race, from inspirational to toxic. Toxic religion is right up there with fascism and genocide as far as I'm concerned, when listing evidence that evil actually does exist. But I see no reason to undermine anyone's search for meaning, provided it reflects good will and genuine human yearning. I follow the simple rule of thumb that if you encounter somebody trying to tell you what God wants you to do, lock your windows and doors and call the cops. If you find somebody listening in hopes of hearing "the still small voice of God," embrace them as a fellow temporary resident of Planet Earth seeking to find meaning in this mystery called life.

A catholic theologian friend of mine and I once got into a Facebook argument over who has inflicted more harm on the planet, atheists or religionists. I maintain that if atheists have done harm, they have not done so under the mantle of atheism.  Stalinists and Maoists were atheists, but their brutality was motivated by their particular take on communist idealism, not by atheism per se. In contrast, there is no escaping the obvious connection between organized religion and some of the most wide-spread abuses ever committed. 

It was not a real argument - I don't think you can have a real argument on Facebook, by the way, so I stopped early on exchanging views on that venue. Where I would take the argument, if we moved to a suitable forum, would be to point out that religionists commonly feel obligated to impose their will on you, but non-theists are by and large quite passive about their beliefs. The so-called "Four Horsemen of Atheism" who have achieved some fame (or notoriety, if you prefer) as public atheists - Christopher Hitchens, now sadly deceased and greatly missed, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett, are actively engaged in what they see as disabusing believers of their folly, but they are intellectuals committed to changing minds through reason-based argument, not men with armies like ISIS or others inclined to use force to come out on top.

Their starting and concluding point is the conviction that truth should be defined as the sum total of all knowledge to date, alterable at any point with the introduction of new contradictory evidence. The religionists, in contrast, claim the strength of their convictions is grounded in scriptures they consider holy, or in papal pronouncements, or in the claim that "God told me so." For many, it suffices to say "I just know in my heart it's true."

I've argued before that the downside of the fact that the U.S. is the modern world's most religious nation is that once you convince yourself that "faith" is a positive thing, you've opened the door to all manner of nonsense and removed the guardrails, those guardrails being critical thinking and a "show me" attitude. The difference between the world today where we live to 100, some of us, and the day when people routinely died at 37 of an abscessed tooth is that we live by the conviction that things are not so simply because you desperately want them to be so, but because there is reason to believe they are so, backed up by evidence.

Bill Maher just came out today with his newest and latest volley in the battle for reason, the same argument I was making, but better articulated. "If you accord religious faith the kind of exalted respect we do here in America, you've already lost the argument that mass delusion is bad."

"Magical religious thinking," he says, "is a virus, and QAnon is just its current mutation." 

It's not a coincidence, he points out, that every Senator that objected to certifying the Electoral Vote in Arizona is an Evangelical Christian. 

But let me stop quoting him from the video. Check it out for yourself here.

 

Getting back to normal

My father blew my mind one day when he listened to me ramble on about something near and dear to my heart for a while and then pronounced, "You surprise me. You're a Christian, after all."  I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that I was anything but. I left my faith behind some time in my twenties, and became a religion basher with a vengeance. How could my father be so wrong?

It took me years to realize what had happened is that while I had left the church, I still embraced the ethical values of the community in which the church had thrived. The Christianity I was inculcated with as a youth understood Christ to be the guy whose words were printed red in my Bible. Most of what we know of Christianity comes down from Paul and the originators of the Gospel whose writings have been credited to the Apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. But the real deal, I was given to understand, was the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount. The guy who prioritized love and compassion and forgiveness for wrongs done to you. The guy who spoke of giving a stranger not only the coat that he asks you for, but the cloak off your back as well. The guy who performed miracles, raised people from the dead, walked on water, and turned water into wine. The guy who asked you to give all your belongings to the poor and walk barefoot through life with nothing but the clothes on your back - if you still had any that you hadn't already given away. People who tell me they want to follow that guy have all my support. Impractical. Probably unachievable, but hell, what's life if your reach doesn't exceed your grasp?  Go get'em, kid, I want to say. More power to you.

Unfortunately, one of the things the Christians got right was that human beings are an imperfect lot, and most followers of this Christ figure can't hold a candle to him in terms of love and compassion. Some of them are downright mean and nasty, and some will actually kill you, given half the chance. When people tell me they are Christian, sometimes I think, "Where's my gun?" I don't carry one, and fortunately most of the Christians I know are mighty good folk. But some of them - Jeez Louise!

When I hear all this huff and puff about living "according to the Bible," I set it against what I remember from my Sunday School days, when I first discovered the gap between what the people around me practiced and what they preached. I realized very early on that the Christians couldn't possibly follow that red-letter Jesus. He was simply too impractical, too demanding. Nobody was going to give away all they had to the poor. Why were they so intent on pretending they believed in this guy?

I asked a member of my born-again family once if when Jesus said, "Let the little ones come unto me," he actually meant, "except the Mexicans," The response I got was, "Well, you have to take care of your own first."

Fine, I said. I can go along with that. I'm like most Americans in believing it is not practical, not realistic, for us to allow unrestricted immigration into the country. But then I am not a hypocritical (let me be a little less aggressive - a "conflicted") Christian. I know there are more ways than Sunday to interpret Jesus's message, but no matter how you cut it, I seriously doubt he meant to add "but not Mexicans" to that bit about bringing the children in. 

What a tragedy, for Christians, for conservatives, for evangelicals, that so many of their number have tied their wagon to right-wing politics. Some of them - the Southern Baptists, for example, have a history of god-awful behavior, so it's nothing new that they should get behind the likes of a Nixon, a Reagan, a Huckabee, a Ted Cruz or a Donald Trump. But that they should want to go on defining themselves as Christians really blows my mind.

I've calmed down a bit in recent years and stopped church/religion bashing. I'm now in favor of not getting too upset when you discover some of your values contradict others of your values. It's part of being a work in progress. I'm OK with people who recognize that they cherry pick their religion, that they are "cafeteria Christians," people who identify as Christian and embrace the view that it's good to feed the hungry and clothe (and educate) the poor but they're not too sure about that virgin birth bit. They're OK with me. Sure beat the hell out of  Cardinal Cordileone in San Francisco, for example, who mumbles mumbo-jumbo exorcisms to remove evil spirits and wants to limit the sex act to man on top of wife making babies. They are at least more aware of things than the evangelical types who claim they follow the Bible as the literal word of God, an admission that does little more than reveal how unfamiliar they are with its contents. The phrase "believing in the Bible," given that the Bible is not a book but an anthology of Hebrew and Greek literature, is kind of like saying, "I live my life according to the Library."  Better than living it according to the gas station, perhaps, but no less silly.

I'd be quite happy to see Christian doctrine go the way of astrology and flat-earth theory, so long as we remembered the contributions through the centuries of what inspired Michaelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel and Brahms to compose the German Requiem and gave them their just due. And I'm quite happy to reconstruct the word "Christian" to mean "somebody trying to tie their wagon to Jesus Christ" and to leave the speculative theology to others. I'm always annoyed when people refer to the U.S. as a democracy. It isn't a democracy. It's a nation aiming for democracy. In the same way, I'm happy to accept as "Christian" a person who makes an effort to nudge their own behavior more and more in line with the other-orientation of Jesus, as they understand it, even if they're not all that good at it. It's not that different from me trying to be a socialist, and using what little influence I have over my representatives in Congress to stop bombing people with drones and supporting the bastards of the world simply because they further American business interests. As I said in a blog entry the other day, I'm not there yet. I'm still voting for candidates who most closely represent my ideas of social democracy and justifying it as the "next best thing." Voting for an outright rejection of capitalism in this country is the best way I know to squander your vote.

The collapse of the Republican Party saddens me and I think the evangelical zealots of America are in large part responsible for it. Throwing their weight behind a stunningly self-serving narcissist because their religious leaders told them he was anointed by God has to be the greatest folly of modern times. They, along with the greedy corporatists who thought they could ride the tiger, are now fighting it out between a lesbian trying to represent the homophobe party and a total wacko imagining Jewish laser beams in space causing forest fires. The nighttime TV satirists are having a ball yucking it up over the circular firing squad the Republicans have become, but I'm not into schadenfreude at this point. I'm not feeling a connection with Democrats who feel like celebrating the collapse of that bunch of retrograde folk who prioritize self interest while mouthing platitudes about freedom and democracy. I argued all during the Trump nightmare that Trump wasn't the problem, but the tiger-riding me-and-mine-firster Republicans who believed that desperate times call for desperate choices. I think we should not be celebrating the fall of the Republican Party. As long as we stay committed to a two-party system, wishing for one of them to fail is self-destructive.

Morality, for me, is not a bunch of static concepts, but an approach to life requiring endless negotiation. I proceed from the assumption that none of us is in command of the total truth, and what we know today can easily turn out to be wrong tomorrow. I think the only way to run a country is to provide a forum for people of good will to speak their minds and hope that the truth spills out in the exchange of views. I want the folks on the left to be challenged by folks on the right, and vice versa. I want to hear argument. Endless argument. I want folks to be able to see how they occasionally bark up the wrong tree and need to change their minds.  This situation we are in now, where the Republicans have lost all integrity and become a mindless mob following an incompetent would-be fascist (if he knew how), egged on by greedy corporate leaders interested only in profits brings home day after day the fact that the American pursuit of democracy has gotten off the track. I want to get back to a situation where people work to keep each other honest, speak truth as they understand it, and are willing to change their minds when people on the other side convince them they have gotten things wrong. I don't want a stunted Republican Party. I want a Republican Party that gives Democrats a run for their money.

And I want Christians to get their church back. It's a toss-up whether it's their religion or to their country that the mad men and women calling themselves "prophets" have done more harm to. Once truth went out the window and the self-serving politicians and hypocritical fundamentalists climbed on the back of the tiger, both took a big hit.

It's ironic. I know all the reasons so many Americans were persuaded that government is the problem. The long spell of ever-increasing inequity as the rich got richer in America and the poor got poorer made this anti-government upsurge inevitable. As a democrat, I call this ironic because I see tax breaks for the rich, which throw the burden for filling the potholes onto the poor, as the reason for this inequity. Some say it's mostly about white racism, this desire to bring back the happy 1950s, but I think it's also about how we divide up the American pie.

Hopefully this is a time for restoring balance. For shutting down the political Christians and allowing the spiritual ones to be heard again. For getting back to addressing global warming and the need to make education and health care more affordable.

We're still here. The latest American political experiment with neo-fascism seems to have petered out for now.

Time to get back to a place where Christians (real ones, not authoritarians masking as Christians), Muslims and Jews and Hindus and Buddhists and non-theists and fans of the Great Spaghetti Monster in the Sky can all get along. Time to find the parents of those kids taken from them by this administration credited with being God's anointed. Time to get the country vaccinated against the virus our Leader told us would die out by the summer of 2020.

Time to be able to go to sleep and no longer feel the need to pray for the Lord "my soul to keep if I should die before I wake."