Kristina Miller

If you don´t know who Kristina Miller is, take a few minutes to watch her perform at the piano. She's one of those people who remind you of those Olympic gymnasts who make you sit back and say, "That's got to be photo-shopped; the human body can't actually do things like that."

Kristina Miller has a great sense of humor, which you can see in her choice of fun pieces for the piano.

Here she is playing the Blue Danube Waltz, for example, with full pizzazz. 

And the theme from Die Fledermaus.  

I say "pizzazz" but I think that's an understatement. She's using the elaborated versions (known as "paraphrases") transcribed by György Cziffra, a Hungarian of Roma background, one of the greatest virtuosos of all time, with fingers that seem to be able to move at lightning speed in all directions, and always with total accuracy. Great fun to listen to. [You might want to check him out, as well, on YouTube.]

I've been fascinated with Kristina Miller since I discovered a serendipitous connection. Our paths might have crossed if we had lived in the same historical time. In 1960-61, I was a student at the University of Munich, in Germany. I lived in a dormitory run by the Lutheran Church at Arcisstrasse 31, on the corner of Hessstrasse, just two and a half blocks up the street from the klunky old building at Arcisstrasse 12, built during the Nazi years and known as the Führerbau, the "Führer's building, the place where Hitler and Chamberlain, to his everlasting shame, signed the Munich Agreement in 1938, leading Hitler to believe he was going to be able to get away with murder. When the war ended, Germany converted Arcisstrasse 12 into what is today the Hochschule für Musik und Theater.

And that's where, but for several decades intervening, my path would have crossed with Kristina Miller's. At the age of twenty, the former child prodigy, after winning all kinds of awards for her skill at the piano in her native St. Petersburg and in Moscow, won the prestigious Steinway Prize, which accomplishment led to her being admitted to the Music Hochschule (University, in English). Since then she has emigrated and now lives in Vienna.

She can, of course, like Yuja Wang and Martha Argerich and all the other many concert-level pianists, also bring you to tears with lyrical interpretations of the great composers like Rachmaninoff.

But there are times when I just want to sit and appreciate more with head than with heart, and stare in disbelief and her stunning virtuosity, which not many can imitate. What a gift to the world.

photo: from her Facebook page

Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto

Over his lifetime, forty-four years in Russia, twenty-six in the U.S., Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff managed to produce an astounding number of well-known compositions. Among the best known of these are his four piano concertos for piano and orchestra. And among these four, it’s his second one that makes the biggest impact on me; I have revisited it again and again over the years. Recently, thanks to YouTube, the greatest gift of the gods maybe ever, I’ve had the pleasure of being able to listen to it performed by more than a dozen brilliant concert pianists.

The other day, in talking about my love of piano music with one of my favorite nephews (all my nephews, chosen or biological, are my favorite nephews), I suggested he listen to two of these performances, one by Alexander Malofeev and one by Cateen (Hayato Sumino). No sooner had I done that than I decided to see who else YouTube had made available. I came upon such a treasure that I took practically the entire day yesterday to listen to them all. Call it a form of madness, I’ve never done anything like that before. I just couldn’t get enough. Eventually it became hypnotic, and I found, instead of seeking out my favorite(s), as I expected would happen, I found that I was able to let them all just wash over me, each with their different styles and emphases. In some cases, I focused more on technical skill; in others more on lyrical style; and in yet others I grooved over the obvious close relationship between pianist and conductor, getting a feel for maybe the first time how important such a relationship must be.

Nowhere is this truer than with Nobuyuki Tsuji. He is blind, and has been from birth. Not only has he had to commit this stunningly complex (and beautiful) piece of music to memory without ever seeing a musical score; he has to perform it with an orchestra without being able to follow the conductor. How the two of them pulled this off is a true mind-blower.

There are not one but two YouTube videos of Tsuji playing the Second Piano Concerto, actually, one from a year ago and one from seven years ago.

But this Tsuji and conductor combo opened my eyes to other pianist/conductor works of marvelous cooperation and I began to find another level of appreciation for orchestral performances I had only observed in passing before. This time I found myself concentrating on how often and in what ways the two signaled their thoughts to each other as the performance progressed. Another example of how the more intently you study a piece of music or a performance, the more reward it brings. Some people argue you should just sit back and enjoy and not fuss over such details; I find the more you focus on the nitty-gritty of talent and skill the more there is to appreciate. I now understand why so many students of music spend weeks poring over musical scores and never tire of repetition.

Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto is Rachmaninoff’s comeback piece. His first symphony was a dud and the lack of an appreciative response sent him into a funk that lasted for years. Because the Second Piano Concerto had considerably more success, he bounced back – and dedicated it to his shrink. It is composed of three movements: Moderato, Adagio Sostenuto and Allegro Scherzando. It’s the second movement that is most likely to move people to tears, if music does that to you.

People have described this piece as written for people suffering from bipolar disorder. The emotion is raw and it bounces back and forth from aching melancholy to exquisite serenity. That's his appeal for me. He was a fish out of water for his time. The world was moving away from melody and romance to music that was experimental, often dissonant. Not old Sergei Vasilievich. He brought out the big guns, embraced romantic music to the fullest, stretching boundaries only to the degree he wrote for others who had his giant hands and could reach the octaves on the chords - he loved to imitate church bells - all the while recognizing most performers would not be able to keep up: for them he often wrote ossias - easier variations for those who aren't capable of handling the music as written.

But to get back to the Second Piano Concerto, in the list of comments I came across I found this one, which speaks to the power of music to touch the emotions better than I can:

My son lived 19 days and died of a heart condition. On the day he died just before surgery, knowing it would take a miracle, I played for him one last song from my mp3 player right before his surgery. I chose the 2nd movement of this piece. I wanted to blur the lines between heaven and earth. 10 years later, I don't regret the decision. 

 

Source:

I know many will find it insulting that I give such attention to just one of Rachmaninoff's many wonderful accomplishments. (Why are you not equally blown away by the Third Concerto? I can hear you say.) My focus here is not on scope, and I trust anybody who wants to can find tons of information on the man and his music. I just felt like sharing some notes with other obsessives out there.

If anybody would like to join me and take a day (or any number of days) to go through them all, I list them here. I’m sure you can find more, if you dig:


Performances of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, courtesy of YouTube:

1. Alexander Malofeev
2. Sumino (Cateen) Hayato 
3. Anna Fedorova 
4. Evgeny Kissin
5. Nobuyuki Tsuji -
6. Yuja Wang 
7. Hélène Grimaud 
8. H. J. Lim 
9. Lang Lang 
10. Khanatia Buniatishvili 
11. Sergei Rachmaninoff 
12. Vladimir Ashkenazy 
13. Daniil Trifonov 
14. Alexander Sinchuk 

15. Score to Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto


photo credit

From California to the Insula Novum Eboracum

I have known since college that "Vermont" is "Mons Viridis" in Latin, because I'm so damned old that they still used Latin at my college - Middlebury - in their diplomas.

And thanks to the lockdown, when we have little outside the house to distract us, and can spend our time googling all manner of trivia, I have been digging into how Cicero and Virgil might pronounce the other forty-nine states of the Civitates Foederatae Americae (USA to you).

Fortunately, there is a Latin version of Wikipedia (Vicipaedia, in Latin) where you can look this kind of thing up. 

A great many states have names that work "as is" in Latin.  There's Georgia with its capital at Atlanta. And there's Indiana, where even its capital, Indianapolis, works as is, provided, of course, you allow room for Greek loan words like -polis.  And there's California, for example, with its capital, Sacramentum, requiring the bare minimum of Latinization. And since we're on the topic of polis, there are also these states/state capital combinations: Terra Mariae (Land of Mary) - Annapolis; Virginia Occidentalis - Carolopolis (Charlestown); North and South Dakota (Dacota Meridiana and Dacota Septentrionalis) and their capitals Pierre and Bismarck, respectively: Petropolis and Bismarcopolis. Iowa and Des Moines (Iova and Monachopolis) take a bit of extra work, but they make sense once you press your French into service. And there's Montana - Helenopolis. And Ohium and Colombopolis. And last, but not least, Texia and Austinopolis.

Minnesota, with its capital at Sanctus Paulus, is an easy one, as is Novum Mexicum and Sancta Fides.  The city of Campifons is likely to throw you until you learn it's the capital of Illinoesia. And the state of Nova Caesarea may also challenge you until you learn its capital is Trentonia.

Pennsylvania and Harrisburgum and Rhodensis Insula and Providentia are no challenge. Neither is Uta and Urbs Lacus Salsi. If you happen to know that Ludwig is the German version of Louis, then you're ready for Ludoviciana and its capital at "Red Stick" (Rubribaculum). 

I won't go through all fifty states, but I do need to give special attention to my neighboring state (speaking now as a Vermonter) of New Hampshire.

That one is a real muddle. The reason is the original Latin for Hampshire is a muddle. "Hampshire" (with apologies to my British friends for explaining to my American and other non-Brit friends who may not know) is today a county, and not a town, in Britain, as the suffix "shire" indicates. But before the Normans invaded in 1066 and renamed the Anglo-Saxon "scir"s as comptés (counties in Anglo-Norman), "Hamm" the settlement in the bend of a river carried the name of Hamwic - "wic" being the word for "trading center." But for reasons I have been unable to ascertain, for some reason it also carried the name of "Hantune," which evidently evolved into Hantonia, the current name of the county in Latin, if the Great Seal of New Hampshire is any indication. It reads Sigillum Reipublicae neo hantoniensis."

I say "muddle" because the Vicipaedia page which carries a map of the United States calls New Hampshire "Nova Hantonia" on its list of states below the map, along with their capitals (Nova Hantonia's is Concordia), but "Nova Hantescira" on the map itself.  Which has got to be some sort of historical bastardization, since the Romans left before the Anglo-Saxons arrived.

A quick phone call to Bishop Peter Anthony Libasci at (603) 669-3100 might clear this up. He's the Archbishop of the Diocese of Manchester, which serves the entire catholic population of New Hampshire, and as far as I know the Roman Catholic Church is the only organization that still uses Latin with any frequency in their official dealings. He may know.

In case you wondered, this tangent is only one of many I followed after learning a great deal of information about the Saxon Kingdom of Wessex, the capital of which is Winchester, where Alfred the Great lived. It is located in what is now the county/shire of Hampshire. You will remember him as the first Saxon king to attempt to put his dream of a united England into effect.

I'm still waiting impatiently for Season Five, when the fictional version of Uhtred, if all goes as expected, regains his home in Bebbanburg, in Northumbria, and Alfred's grandson Aethelstan becomes the first actual king of a united Saxon and Viking England. In the meantime, if you think my straining over why Mons Viridis (Vermont, you remember)'s capital, Montpelier, comes out Mons Pessulanus is too trivial to fuss over (not a mystery: Mons Pessulanus was the ancient name of the city of Montpellier (with two l's) in France), consider what's going on down in Netflix land where they're trying to figure out how to make Alexander Dreymon, who plays Uhtret, look like a sixty-year-old man, all the while keeping his muscles rippling as he beheads his Viking foes in battle and slashes them in half. No mean feat.

I wonder how you say New Hampshire in Old Norse.

Nyi Hampshire, I suppose.