Queen of the Night - Mozart Staccato and Upside Down

 I have a weakness for the razz-matazz.  Much as I'd like to think of myself as a sophisticated listener of classical music, lyrical pieces like Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words or Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, I'm more often drawn to pieces that require technical virtuosity - fingers that "fly across the keyboard."

My go-to music is instrumental, chiefly piano, and also violin.  But I have no trouble defining the human voice as an instrument, as well, and this especially holds true, it seems to me, for singers with exceptional talent and well harnessed raw powers - singers like Pavarotti or Joan Sutherland, to name just a couple of my favorites.

When it comes to showing off at the piano, Liszt comes first to my mind.  But there are many others: Chopin, Prokofiev, Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit.  

But I want to focus here on what I think must be the most difficult piece ever writtten for a coloratura  soprano, credit going for Mr. Mozart himself.  I'm talking about that challenge not only to the voice box but to the lips and tongue and cheeks as well: "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen (The Vengeance of Hell boils in my heart)" from The Magic Flute. It's kind of a rite of passage for coloratura sopranos to attempt it, so there is no shortage of performances to listen to.  For me, the leader of the pack has got to be Diana Damrau.  Here she is all gussied up on a costume that does justice to her magical vocal skills, a gown suggestive of a bonfire and a wig that looks like she's wearing a Victorian sofa nestled in an electric fan.  Pure theatricality to give form to what's going on here on stage: a mother, known as "The Queen of the Night" telling her daughter, Pamina, that she has to put a dagger in the heart of Sarastro. Not because he has been holding Pamina hostage, but because he has robbed her, the queen, of her powers.  "Do it," says the queen, or "you will be my daughter nevermore!"  A heavy trip to lay on an innocent kid.

Opera is by nature histrionic, but nowhere more excessively dramatic than in this aria, which is part of opera lore, and not just in German-speaking countries, where they call German operas like The Magic Flute not by their Italian name, but by a German name, a "Singspiel" - a song play.

An example of how much fun German speakers can get out of this over-the-top piece of music can be seen in the jazz takedown by Bodo Wartke, Germany's cabaret artist and musical satirist par excellence.   To help you follow along (and why wouldn't you?), here are the lyrics in English translation and in the original German:

[I hope I haven't crossed the copyright lines here.  If so, I will take this down immediately, of course.  But just so you can follow Bodo's performance... 

Hell's Vengeance Boils in My Heart,
Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen,

death and despair,
Tod und Verzweiflung,

Death and despair flames around me!
Tod und Verzweiflung flammet um mich her!

Doesn't Sarastro feel the pain of death because of you,
Fühlt nicht durch dich Sarastro Todesschmerzen,

Sarastro's death pains,
Sarastro Todesschmerzen,

Don't you, my daughter, ever again.
Sot du meine Tochter nimmermehr.

You never do that to me, my daughter.
Sot du mei, meine Tochter nimmermehr.

Aaaaaah...
Aaaaah...

my daughter never again.
meine Tochter nimmermehr.

Aaaaaah...
Aaaaah...

My daughter will never do that again.
Sot meine Tochter nimmermehr.

Be cast out forever and forsaken forever,
Verstossen sei auf ewig und verlassen sei auf ewig,

May all bonds of nature be shattered forever,
Zertrümmert sei auf ewig alle Bande der Natur,

Abandoned, abandoned, and shattered
Verstossen, verlassen, und zertrümmert

all the bonds of nature, all the Baaaa...
alle Bande der Natur, alle Baaaa...

Aaaaah..., gang, all the bonds of nature,
Aaaaah..., Bande, alle Bande der Natur,

If not for you Sarastro will turn pale!
Wenn nicht durch dich Sarastro wird erblassen!

Hear, hear, hear revenge, - gods!
Hört, hört, hört Rache, - Götter!

And lest you think he's the only one making silly of this Queen of the Night aria, here's a lady doing it upside down.

So much for attending the opera in a black suit and a starched collar.

Coughing in Warsaw

Part I: All about me.

Polish audiences seem to have a wonderful capacity for holding in a cough.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

It's 2025 and I am once again in thrall to the performances of some of the world's best pianists at the 2025 Warsaw Chopin Competition.  It's also October and there's lots of flu and colds in the air, apparently.

The contestants come up the stairs, down onto the stage, bow, sit at the keyboard, adjust their chair, get out their handkerchief, wipe their hands and sometimes the keyboard, and stare nervously at it, lift their arms, and begin.

Out comes some of the most beautiful music ever written and the world is effectively shut outside my door.

They play a number of pieces, sometimes, as with preludes, moving from one to the next without delay.  When they do delay, as if to gather strength to move on in another direction, we are suddenly presented with a barrage of coughing. It's clear people need to cough, but have been holding it in until it is socially acceptable to let it out.  After a number of these displays of respectful silences followed by loud hacking, the whole thing becomes quite funny.  And distracting.  I'd almost prefer it if the audience would just let loose when they need to.

Maybe I'm overly focused on coughing.  I have a lung disease and that means I also have a chronic cough and I'm more than a bit pissed that I can't go to public performances anymore for that reason.  Except that actually I can as long as I get seated early enough to calm my breathing.  I don't cough if I don't exert myself.

Part II: All about Western Civilization and racism - and me again

When asked about my race, I check the Caucasian box. Both my parents go all the way back to fade-out as Europeans in origin. And I am profoundly disgusted when I encounter MAGA folk who are white supremacists. I have loyalty to my LGBT brothers and sisters, to my fellow German-Americans, to both Germany and Japan, countries whose cultures I have had the luxury of playing around in and who have offered me great benefits: Germany gave me a year of university education and an introduction to the joys of urban living.  Japan gave me a good living for 24 years and enough money to buy a house in the San Francisco Bay Area.  It also gave me a husband I'm terribly fond of.  But I have no loyalty whatsoever - zero - to the Caucasian race.  If two men could make a baby, I'd be more than happy to have a mixed-race Asian-Caucasian baby to love and to raise as much as I love my dogs and cheerfully pick up their poop off the sidewalk when we go on walks. I don't understand why one would give credit to accidents of birth.

At the same time, maybe because I lived those 24 years in Japan and because my first lover was a black American, and my last one, my husband, and the one before were Asians, I am race-conscious and totally committed politically to the notion that racism needs to be eradicated all over the world.

When I first went to Japan, back in the 1970s, I remember watching a TV program where they were teaching Japanese how to applaud. How much was too much, how much was not enough. It was hilarious.  So very Japanese, I thought, in focusing on doing the right thing rather than allowing for spontaneity.  All they succeeded in doing, I thought at the time, was stressing that western music was alien.

That's the thing.  "Western" music - Bach, Beethoven and Brahms - do not belong to Germany, or to Europe, or to "Western civilization." They are world composers and belong to us all.  When I still had legs that could go all night long, I used to dance in a kolo folk dance group. I'm not a Yugoslav.

And that takes me to make the observation that now, when the contestants at the Chopinowski competition (to give this a Polish slant) have more Asian names and faces than you can shake a stick at (if you're a white supremacist and into shaking sticks) I feel obliged to mention that not only does the list of contestants contain several Lees from Korea and four Lis from China, but there is also Kevin Chen and Ryan Wang from Canada, Eric Lu and another Wang, William, from the United States. And if that doesn't make my point, you've got to include the Polish speaking Viêt Trung Nguyên from Poland and Yuanfan Yang from Edinburgh.

Part III: Sweet mysteries of life...

How the judges make their decisions continues to baffle me.  I know I'm just showing my limitations here, but when I began listening to the first round all I could hear was perfection. Then I listened to the second round and had to admit I thought the performances as a whole were actually somehow better than they were in the first round.  Obviously the judges were onto something.  But what?  How could I be so out of it?  I had good musical training as a youth, was a church organist for a while and accompanied choruses and ballet lessons.  I wasn't good enough to go on to a career in piano or in music, but I thought I had a well-trained ear. But the judges are miles ahead of me.  This is one serious bunch of musicians, and that probably explains why I'm inclined to use words like "thrill" and "joy" when reacting to the competition.

Part IV: Favorite composers

Following up on my musical limitations, I often say, when asked to identify my favorite composer that I don't like ranking world-class quality talent.  If forced to, I'd put Mozart and Chopin out beyond all the others, but I'd still list Liszt and Rachmaninoff and Bach and Tchaikovsky as gifts from the gods.  As with the Olympics, much of this probably stems from the tendency of countries to claim their heroes as national heroes.  Austria gets Mozart, Germany gets Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Mendelssohn and a whole bunch more, Russia gets Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev and many others, and Poland says it will be damned before it lets France take Chopin away from them.  Hence this every-five-year spectacular thing in Warsaw.

Part V: Chopin, in particular    

Sitting for hours in front of the tube (or the computer) listening to 28 contestants display ways to do things with their fingers that are not humanly possible (like watching divers or pole-vaulters in the Olympics), I realize how much, even after all these years, I still have to learn about just what Chopin managed to do in writing over 250 known and numbered pieces of music, in addition to many which got lost or never got numbered. He wrote more than twenty waltzes, more than fifty mazurkas.  Of all his music, it's the nocturnes (all 22 of them) that go most directly to the soul, the etudes that blow my mind, the polonaises that make me want to get up off my chair and pretend to be the King of France, the rondos and scherzos that make me happy to be alive.  And where does that leave the four ballades - utterly beautiful pieces of music - and the impromptus and the two concertos.  And the bolero and the berceuse and the barcarole (music for boats??? - yes, I understand he got the inspiration from Venetian gondoliers).

The excitement isn't over.  They are, as I write, just beginning the third round and the winner won't be announced till the end of the month.  I've chattered on about spin-off thoughts rather than pretend I'm in the running to judge the performances.  You can find those easily; they're on YouTube.

Again, words that I reserve for things like the Warsaw Chopin Competition, if you haven't watched fingers fly in a while, go to YouTube for the thrill of it all.  Joy.  Pure joy.

Hamilton auf deutsch

Friend Julian in Japan just sent me a link about this amazing theatrical phenomenon, the translation of Alexander Hamilton into German. 

The translators have been working on it for three years, in close cooperation with Lin-Manuel Miranda, and it's opening in October in Hamburg.

In July 2020, after I had seen the original on stage, I wrote the following review:

What I found so appealing about it was how comprehensive it was. It had originality, in the way it brought rap into the picture. And the way they gave black people a reason for investing in the founding, by performing it with a mostly-black cast. Brilliant idea. If I were black I suspect I'd be as luke-warm to cool about the founding as American Indians are about Columbus's "discovery." By bringing blacks in this way, Miranda gives them reason, now that they are in, for considering how American democracy might be viewed as a long-term project created by highly imperfect people and still only getting started. If that can happen, he's done the world a real favor, in my view.

It had great theater in the way it was staged. The circular turning stages were a brilliant invention; it had wonderful singers and dancers, i.e., it was a first-class production. And the script was the most exciting thing I've heard or read in ages in the way it laid out history of the time of the founding of American democracy. It had humor - George III was one of the funniest characters I think I've ever seen on stage. Thomas Jefferson was played as a joker, as well. The characters were really well-written: Hamilton as a very smart man brought low by a moment's weakness; Burr as a quintessential politician who could never take a strong stand on anything; Washington as an intimidating big Daddy. And the composition - just fabulous - the way the song "My Shot" was introduced early on and foreshadowed the climax, the maturing of the characters between the early years in the first act and the later years in the second.

In putting out my latest blog - which is not one of my best - too unfocused - I spent a lot of time reading about the chronology of the Revolutionary War and the progress from the First Continental Congress to the Second, so the names that came up of minor players in the history of the American revolution, like Rochambeau, who I don't remember hearing about before, were fresh on my mind and made it easier to follow the story. I'm currently fighting off the temptation to order books on the American Revolution and read my eyeballs out. The play did that for me, and that's one hell of an endorsement, in my mind. The value of art is always measured, I think, by the aftereffects on the viewer, especially if it leads to behavioral changes.

I am a total fan of Leslie Odom, who played Aaron Burr. Not surprised he won so many awards for the role. Lin-Manuel Miranda is not the best singer in the world, but not so bad, I thought, that his performance detracted from the quality of the show as a whole. And considering what he accomplished in writing it, it would have been a crime not to let him play the lead role

So glad somebody got it together to make it available for us plebeians who couldn't afford to fly to New York and pay $500 for a ticket back when it first became all the rage. Glad to see it is still worth going way out of your way to see it.

And yes, I agree, it's really helpful to have subtitles. The lines go by very fast, and it's very compact.

Wonderful experience.  Absolutely wonderful.

Now a pair of German writer/translators, Kevin Schroeder and Sera Finale, have come up with a German version, one that Miranda fully endorsed, following the motto, "as free as necessary, as close as possible."

I'm especially interested in the translation, because I have worked in my day as a translator and once thought nothing would be more romantic than being an interpreter at the U.N. One of many youthful fantasies that fell away once I got a whiff of the work involved.  I know the challenges and the different kinds of translation: glossing (essentially a word-for-word translation), literal (rendering it into the target language while keeping the tone and essence of the original), free (taking liberties with the actual vocabulary, but keeping the essence of the original) and cultural (basically a re-writing in which 'translating' means moving the context from something the person in the original language says to something the person in the target language might say if they found themselves in a similar situation.

The translators of Hamilton did a cultural translation, the most artistic creative kind, where they allow for the fact that German audiences may lack the background knowledge English-speaking audiences are likely to have. The translators sought to find references the German audience could relate to. In some cases the original English spins off the work of other English-language rappers. For example, in the German translation, instead of translating the original English text, they spun off the work of German rappers.

And there's more going on than cultural translation. Berlin and other German cities have become multi-cultural. I remember a time when, if you saw a black person speaking German, you could assume that they were a child of an American GI. That is no longer the case, and today there are about a million Afro-Germans living in Germany, about one German in 83. And apparently enough of them have the kind of talent it takes to put on a performance of Hamilton in German.

Have a listen to an interview with the translators. And don't miss the fact that there is somebody hoping to pull off a translation into Japanese, as well.

Even if you don't know German, sit back and listen the internal rhymes and the end rhymes and note how they made use of the fact that German, like English, is a "rhythm and stress" language. Syncopation works, for example, in the same way, and the target tempo is the same as the original tempo, pretty much. A brilliant translation job in my view.

Wish I could get to Hamburg!







photo credit

Celebrating the musical culture of religious groups

I spent the morning listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

You can take the boy out of the country, they say, but you can't take the country out of the boy. For reasons that baffle me - well, not so much baffle as tickle and humble me - to this day, my aversion to religion has not stopped me from grooving on the hymns I knew and loved when I was young and very much in the church's embrace. 

I've had some serious teeth-grinding encounters with the Mormon Church, particularly during the early 2000s when they joined forces with San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer to remove the right of gay people to marry.  The Mormons represent, for me, the perfect example of how power corrupts. A church once persecuted for its unorthodox beliefs gets out from under that persecution and what do they do? Forget their days of being bullied and outbully the bullies in spades. Like they say, bad guys take naturally to doing bad things; for good guys to do bad things, that takes religion.

We remember it as the dark days of Prop. 8, when members of authoritarian Christianity in the U.S. united to impose their religious view on people who do not share their religious affiliation. A nasty bit of bullying that has returned, also in spades, of late.

But through it all I refuse to paint all the good folk of Salt Lake and elsewhere around the world who believe the Garden of Eden is located in Missouri with the same brush. I still find common ground with anybody who stops to listen for a quiet inner voice, no matter whether they take it as a divinity talking to them or a thought force making them aware of the beauty and richness of life and the importance of humility.

I also note that I find myself among a large number of folk who have learned from the Jews how to distinguish between religious faith and the culture which grew up around it. Hitler was not the only one to make the assumption "once a Jew, always a Jew." The many Muslims who have emigrated to Europe and left places like Saudi Arabia where to be a Saudi you have to claim you are a Muslim have followed suit.  Europe is home to many Muslims who have shed their religion but insist on identifying with the Muslim Community. Listen to this guy on an anti-Mormon religion site who insists on keeping his Mormon identity even after chucking out the religious dogma.

The distinction between a religious Christian, which I am not, and a secular Christian, which I remain, is a very useful one. It recognizes the reality that no large group can be reduced to a single set of types of people, and that most definitely includes religious groups. I try each Christmas to join a group singing Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, and whenever I hear Ave Maria, whether it's Schubert's version sung in Latin by Pavarotti, or in German by Jessye Norman, or another version entirely, I shut everything down to listen.

I cannot identify with the folks who have been manipulated by the Trumpists into worrying that their once ruling class white protestant tribe is at risk of being wiped out. The reason for that is I couldn't possibly care less about the so-called white race. I identify as a (cultural) Jew, a (cultural) Mormon, a (cultural) Catholic, a child of immigrants, a citizen of a mixed-race nation - to name just a few of my many identities - because I grew up among these people. I've written elsewhere about how a cantor in a synagogue made me an instant convert to Jewishness the minute he opened his mouth.

One of the things I think the Mormons, some of them religious, some of them cultural, have done that is worthy of admiration is build a musical center in Salt Lake City with five - or maybe it's four full-time and two part-time - organists and a magnificent choir and orchestra which, among other things, attracts people such as this delightful Norwegian soprano, Sissel:

Here's what I was listening to this morning. 

It's only 90 minutes long, and I hope you can listen to the whole thing.

If you can't, at least zero in on the highlight piece, Slow Down.  

YouTube has made that available separately, here.

Stay safe.

photo credit

Rachmaninoff for days

I spent the morning watching the opening ceremonies and first performances of the 2022 Rachmaninoff competition now taking place in Moscow. I can't think of a better way to start the day. I'd like to share my thoughts. 

Path I - If you want to bypass all talk about the music and the composer and the unavoidable discussion of the political implications of holding an international event in Moscow these days, click here and go to the YouTube presentation. Jump ahead to minute 37:00, the Symphonic Dances, and then jump ahead again to minute 1:45:50 where Denis Matsuev is introduced and plays Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Symphony.

Path II -  For a little background information on Rachmaninoff, and my view of the political context in which this competition is taking place:

Some composers have both loads of fans and people who can take them or leave them, but ain't nobody don't like Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff, in my experience. His unabashed romanticism is unmatched, leading many to complain his compositions are best suited for romantic Hollywood movies - a cheap shot if ever there was one. (If you're inclined to think in that direction, let me suggest you first listen to his Third Piano Concerto.)  One of my music tutors over the years clucked that I would one day give up my passion for Grieg and come to appreciate Richard Strauss (he was partially right - I came to appreciate Strauss, but I didn't give up on Grieg.) And I've encountered no end of opera snobs who insist that bel canto or verismo style operas are for plebeians and prefer either Wagnerian bombast on the one hand or Alban Berg or Hindemith and the like, on the other, music which I think is written for the head and not the heart. I'll take old fashioned melody and harmony any day.

Not that music has to enter only through the heart. Just as the Japanese understand that food should be enjoyed by the eyes as well as the tongue and palate, I think melody and harmony are greatly complemented by demonstrations of genius in competition and virtuosity in performance. I love music competitions where, to win, artists have to practice for months to stand a chance of being selected by a jury not of their peers but of the most accomplished of their lot, including former competition winners.  I spent the better part of October last year holed up and listening to the competitors in the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, and I continue to follow the winners to this day.  One of the highlights of the entire year 2021.

This Rachmaninoff competition, which is set to run from the 14th to the 27th of this month,  was originally promoted by Russia's best-known classical and jazz pianist, Denis Matsuev, but it's a three-part production. Officially, the title is the Rachmaninoff International Competition for Pianists, Composers and Conductors. Matsuev heads the pianists' group, Yuri Simonov the conductors', and Alexander Tchaikovsky (no relation to you-know-who) the composers' group.

It is striking - at least it was to me - that the two people chosen to introduce the opening event, did so in English as well as Russian. I know that English functions now as the primary international language, but somehow I assumed that considering the war in Ukraine, some hostility to English might have wormed its way into the events. Both Denis Matsuev, and Valery Gergiev, Russia's best-known pianist and orchestra conductor respectively, are known to be outspoken Putin supporters, and both have run into hostility in Europe. Gergiev was asked to leave his job as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic and as honorary conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic. He has also been dropped by the Met in New York and performances under his baton have been cancelled in Switzerland, Scotland, and in Hamburg, and apparently Milan has him on its drop list, as well. So much for the career of "one of the world's leading conductors."  Matsuev has run into similar difficulties after going on record in support of Putin's invasion of the Donbas and the annexation of the Crimea.

There is little doubt that the competition has been profoundly affected by Putin's war on Ukraine.  It has been sponsored by the Russian Ministry of Culture - a branch of it known by a name only a Russian bureaucrat could come up with: the Federal State Budgetary Institution of Culture, or "ROSCONCERT" for short.  Putin spoke at the dedication and made all the usual claims of its being a vehicle for international understanding. Which it is, of course, even though in the piano sector (the others did better) one contestant was from Brazil, two were from China, and the other ten were all Russians.

Forgive the quibbling. I should not be detracting from the brilliant performances and the evidence that life goes on, despite tyranny and the war.

It's just that looking at the devastation in Ukraine, the fact that it has taken over a hundred days for the Germans to get off their buns and deliver the weapons they promised while 200 Ukrainian soldiers are dying daily, and the fact that Russians - such extraordinarily wonderful people in the grip of oligarchs and a would-be modern-day czar,  are getting a real bad rap. That breaks my heart, and I couldn't pretend it's not the elephant in the room when an international music competition takes place in Moscow.

I won't list the links to the concerts. You can find them by typing in rachmaninoff competition 2022 to YouTube.

If you do, hours of glorious music - not just Rachmaninoff, but especially Rachmaninoff - await you.

Kerson Leong

Kerson Leong

Don't know if this is a trend, or just a nice coincidence, but I love the idea of Canada - what's not to love about Canada? - being a place where Asian families can immigrate to and produce brilliant young musicians. I know, I know.  One sweetly twittering birdie does not a springtime make. Or two, for that matter. But after going off the deep end over Montreal Canadian Bruce Xiaoyu Liu at the Chopin Competition this month, I am now grooving over another Chinese Canadian - this one from Ottawa, I believe, also really easy on the eyes, whose mode of seduction is the violin.

His name is Kerson Leong. For a little background, click here.

Here he is playing Zigeunerweisen, that honey-on-sugar-cubes overschmalzed Hungarian tune erroneously attributed to Gypsies by the Spanish composer, Pablo de Sarasate, back in the 1870s. Everybody knows the tune. It's an oh-so-Hungarian (think Liszt's Rhapsodies) romanticizing of the Gypsy Life (Zigeunerleben), the German analogue to Stephen Foster's Old Kentucky Home where "tis summer and the darkies are gay."  Today Zigeuner is a word effectively banned as insensitive in modern-day German. The traditional "Gypsy Sauce" is going the way of Aunt Jemima and Eskimo Pies and being replaced by "Paprika Sauce."  

But I digress. Here's Kerson playing "Gypsy Airs," using the "traditional" word (Zigeuner) for gypsy.

And it's a toss-up which part of the whole I love most. The beautiful young face, the music, the patent leather shoes, the virtuosity at the violin...

I guess I'd have to say the shirt.

I've got to get that shirt to wear at weddings and parties.

Once again, Zigeunerweisen. Click and swoon.

photo credit

XVIII Konkurs Chopinowski*

 Bruce Liu, on hearing 
he's the first prize
winner

I feel I've just come back from music camp and I'm so filled with music that I'm seriously disoriented. I don't know how to get back to life as normal. Taku tells me it's time I focused on some of the things around the house begging for attention - the kitchen drain keeps backing up and we probably need a new garbage disposal - it will be our fourth! And the busted recessed light over the kitchen sink is crying equally loudly for an electrician. But I've been listening to Chopin's études, mazurkas, polonaises, sonatas, nocturnes, preludes and impromptus for two weeks now - almost morning till night, and the expression "from the sublime to the ridiculous" has taken on new relevance as a summation of the absurdity of life.

The hardest part of the experience is recognizing that my friends, bless their hearts, by and large, don't seem to want to put their lives on hold and listen to four to six hours of Chopin all day every day, and I've had to go this alone. Not that my friends don't like Chopin; it's that most of them have lives. Some actually go to work.

No matter. I have been following the competition practically from when it started, nineteen days ago on the 2nd of this month, gradually gathering steam, learning more than I ever thought I would about Chopin and his music and watching the pool of some 150 wannabes in the preliminaries get whittled down to 87 pianists from 18 countries for the first round, then 45 for the second, 23 for the third, and 12 for the final round. By the time they reached the final round I felt I had a personal connection with all the contestants and - from the privacy of my room where I can choke and tear up at will - I began seeing them all as my kids. I picked a favorite - Bruce Liu - early on - and tried to persuade myself it was his beautiful hands making beautiful music that was the sole criterion, but I knew down there somewhere inside I was also being drawn to him as a sympathetic dude from Montreal, charming as he is handsome, and I'd make an absolutely terrible judge.

But picking a favorite among such talents seems crass, somehow. It's like being asked to choose your favorite child, your favorite dog, your favorite finger on your right hand. You don't have a favorite, in the end. You thank the stars you are not on the jury of world-class Chopinists choosing the latest to join their ranks. The Warsaw Competition is right up there with the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow that Americans - well, this American, at least - became aware of back in 1958, when the prize went to Van Cliburn. I was 18 years old and at the point of recognizing that my brief glory days as a pianist and organist were in fact never going to take me into the major league. I was always going to be an enthusiastic listener, always a bridesmaid, never a bride.

Today I have absolutely no sense of having missed out. I am delighted that I got a good music education as a child in the public schools of Winsted, Connecticut. These days at the top of the list of the many ways my country is messed up is the way in which it distributes its wealth so badly that it keeps its military and its corporate executives going strong all the while insisting that civics, art and music classes are luxuries we cannot afford. I don't know how many others around the world and in the United States were glued to YouTube these past three weeks, but I wish the whole world might have put things on hold to share in this breathtaking adventure. I take great consolation in the fact that since these performances are available on YouTube, they should eventually reach a much greater number than they have so far.

I've always loved Chopin, but until this experience, when asked to name my favorite composer I would say Brahms or Rachmaninoff. Chopin was always a bit too much on the flowery side to take the number one position. I'm not sure I want to revise my list - the metaphor of having to choose a favorite finger holds in this case, as well. But I am humbled by having been exposed to so many more of Chopin's compositions into realizing I simply didn't know enough to be even close to making an educated assessment. In any case, I will always appreciate the fact that it was Chopin who made piano music what it is today. Nobody composed more - or better - for the piano.

What struck me most about the contestants was how young they are. 

The twelve finalists, listed from youngest to oldest with their birthdays are:

Eva Gevorgyan - April 15, 2004
JJ Jun Li Bui - June 10, 2004
Hao Rao - February 4, 2004

Hyuk Lee - January 4, 2000
Kamil Pacholec - November 11, 1998
Bruce Liu - May 8, 1997
Jakub Kaszlik - December 23, 1996
Martín García García - December 3, 1996
Aimi Kobayashi - September 23, 1995
Alexander Gadjiev - December 24, 1994
Kyohei Sorita - September 1, 1994
Leonora Armellini - June 25, 1992

(for a complete list of competitors, click here)

The average of all the birth years is 1997.8, which means the oldest, Leonora, just turned 29 this summer,  the youngest three are only 17 and the median and average age is around 23. This is a competition among young folk, many of whom have been playing since they were prodigies. I think I can be forgiven for thinking of them as my "kids." On the basis of age, they could all be my grandkids!

When I began tuning in to actual performances, I listened to some of the 87 of the first round quite at random, and immediately found myself thinking, "This has got to be the winner." Then I'd hear the next one and think, "Well, maybe this one - he/she's just as good." And this went on and on, each new player wowing my socks off. I've never had this experience before, never listened to talent this conspicuous in such intensity, one after the next. I was hooked. Couldn't stop. Had to hear the next and the next and the next.

I needed a point of focus, and that became the contestants from Japan. I'm married to a Japanese, but even more significantly, I taught Japanese students, mostly undergraduates, for most of my career, and developed a sense of familiarity and affection over the years. The occasional rotten egg would show up now and again, but overwhelmingly I had the fortune of getting to know dozens and dozens - more like hundreds - of really great Japanese kids between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three, for the most part. It was natural for me to see the twelve Japanese contenders among the initial 87 in the same light as I saw my students. Only here they were nervously putting themselves all out, showing their best sides, and absolutely shining. I found myself beaming. My kids were blowing them away!

One of the contestants, Hayato Sumino, I was already quite familiar with. I have been listening to his YouTube videos for several years now. He's a bit of a showboat, but his brilliance never fails to get your attention. He's very versatile, does jazz piano as well as classical, plays around, even playing duets with himself on the Steinway and a toy piano simultaneously, and although I began tuning out when he got overly chummy (and I think intellectually lazy) with his fans, I never stopped tuning in when he played seriously. I had a contestant to root for.

In time, however, I began to realize there were other Japanese that could more than match him. Kyohei Sorita first caught my attention, then Aimi Kobayashi. When these two made the finalist list and Hayato (who goes by the nickname "Cateen") didn't, I realized I was using YouTube as a filter without a lot of justification. Young talent commonly fail to get the attention it deserves. Kyohei and Aimi are well known in Japan, it turns out. Just not by me. And there in a nutshell is sufficient reason for holding competitions like this one in Warsaw. These kids need to be put on stage and heard perform. If I could go back in time, I would attend the Hamamatsu and Sendai competitions in Japan as well as any others within reach over the years.

By the time the twelve finalists got to perform, I had had time to expand beyond the Japanese contestants. I was now familiar with Leonora, from Italy, with Alexander from the border town and his dual Slovenian-Italian identity, the Spaniard, Martín García García, who delighted me no end with the way he bounced in his seat, tossed his head back and forth and hummed along. I remember reading about how Glenn Gould used to hum unconsciously along with his playing and engineers making recordings of his performances frequently had to stop him and start over. It was a bit annoying when I first saw Martín do the same thing, but this quickly turned into something too charming for words. How could you fail to appreciate an artist so into his own playing that he can't stop singing along?

Other trivia caught my attention. Like how many East Asians were present. In my own lifetime, I remember (in about 1970) NHK putting programs on television instructing audiences how to applaud. I found this hilarious, and maybe a bit embarrassing. But more recently a friend invited me over to hear Chinese audiences learning to appreciate Western classical music, and I realize how recently Asians have started breaking into the field, and how they are taking (have taken) it over with a vengeance. I mean that positively. It's hardly a hostile takeover; they're adding so much to what Europeans and Americans have called their own cultural possession for centuries and have made it truly universal. And I have to mention, along that line, that half of the twelve finalists are East Asian, ethnically, and that the two Canadians among the finalists are both ethnically Chinese - and one of them, Bruce Liu, is the gold prize winner. Bruce was born in Paris and raised in Montreal, and one has to add "cosmopolitan" to the list of adjectives he might use in boasting about himself, if he were so inclined. They tell me he is not so inclined.

While I'm chuffed as hell that Bruce won first prize (those hands! how could you not love those hands!) I'm also aware that were he not in the contest Kyohei Sorita would surely have won it. Luck of the draw. It's always that way. When you leave the judging of world-class performances in the hands of judges, no matter how sharp their powers of observation, it's always a subjective decision. I trust Kyohei - and Aimi as well - are just getting started, and I've got people to watch closely in the years to come.

Don't know how many years I have left.

I'm glad I lived long enough to have had this, my very own Chopin music camp, in the privacy of my bedroom, where I could choke up and tear up, and stifle sobs - long ago having learned that I don't cry that much with grief, and not at all with sadness. But beauty opens the ducts like nobody's business.

What a couple of weeks!

*I posted my last blog entry under the mixed English-Polish title of Chopinowski Competition. I thought this time I'd go all the way.

photo credit

Chopinowski Competition

For anybody tired of standing in line to get a flu shot, tired of people reminding you that Trump could become president again in 2024, tired of hearing how the Republican Party is now working full time to remove the right of black people to vote and how the Supreme Court could very well remove the possibility of poor women getting access to an abortion (rich women can afford to travel to Mexico), let me suggest you turn your attention to the 18th Annual International Chopin Piano Competition (XVIII Międzynarodowy Konkurs Pianistyczny im. Fryderyka Chopina, if your Polish is up to snuff) going on as we speak now in Warsaw. I promise you you won't be sorry. You may, if you're inclined to tear up at the exquisite, find yourself balling your eyes out. So much beauty has never come out of a Steinway or a Yamaha. Well, maybe that's a bit of an overstatement, but only just a bit.

For a full report, click here.  Or read on.

The first round of 180 contestants performed back in April. Half of those went on to the second round, known as the "Main Event" which began four days ago, October 2. It consists of three stages first with around 80, then 40, then 20 contestants each and a final stage with ten pianists.

I found a list of 87 contestants and zeroed in just on the Japanese ones, since they include some of the pianists I have followed for some time and gotten to be very fond of. There are twelve of them and they include one of my top two favorites: Hayato Sumino (aka Cateen). Fantastic as he is, if I read the results right, he didn't make it to the second round. Shows you how high the bar is!

STOP THE PRESSES.  MY BAD!!! Cateen DID make it to the second round, along with seven other of the Japanese contestants. Sorry for my error.

Just saw an interview with Garrick Ohlsson where he said, in response to a question about whether he was going to listen to the competition this year, "No." Too much of a good thing. I got to that point myself. Like dining on a banquet table with nothing laid out in front of you but an unlimited supply of chocolate ice cream. Had to jump to something mundane - like Chris Hayes' speculation that Tucker Carlson's head might be on the chopping block at Fox because of the sheer amount of misinformation on Covid he puts out there. Hayes believes Tucker is so over the top that even Fox is going to have to shut him down.

Garrick Ohlsson also related a wonderful tidbit about what a snob Chopin was. Referring to Liszt, he apparently once said, "Get that pig out of my garden."

What a world, where Chopin can call Liszt a pig.

Meanwhile, back down here on Planet Earth I can groove on the fact that in Russian, the genitive masculine adjective ending ends in -ego, but it's pronounced -evo for some crazy reason. The Poles apparently have the same -ego ending but it's pronounced -ego.

Must find out why the Russians have that peculiar feature. And why in Slavic languages surnames are adjectives. And that's why Mr. Tchaikovskii is Tchaikovskii and his missus is Madame Tchaikovskaya.

And when you look at her you're looking at Madame Tchaikovskuyu.

In any case, this is the 18th Konkurs (Competition) Chopinowski.

Just love that.

 I won't post links to any of the concerts. They're all online. All of them. You can find them easily on YouTube. Just type in some Polish - like Chopinowski. Or Chopinowskego, if you prefer addressing him in the genitive.

Or you could just start here to get yesterday's morning session. You’ll easily find your way from there to the other dozens of hours of c̶h̶o̶c̶o̶l̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶c̶r̶e̶a̶m̶ Chopin etudes, ballads, waltzes, etc. 

And brilliant young people to make you feel a whole lot better about the world.



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David Chen

David Chen

Imagine you’re a 13-year-old boy and your name is David Chen. You wake up ready to start your day. You’re in your home town, Geneva, Switzerland, so the thoughts that run through your mind are in your first language, which is French. They involve your father, who is a famous Russian pianist named Vladimir Ashkenazy. 

No, not the famous Swiss pianist and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy from Russia, the guy with the Icelandic wife and the five kids, one of whom is also named Vladimir Ashkenazy and is also a pianist. That’s Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy. He lives in Meggen, near Lucerne, about three and a half hours away. That Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy is your great uncle, the brother of your grandmother Elena Ashkenazy, teacher at the Moscow Central Music School, and sometime visiting professor of music in Tokyo. She and her brother are children of David Ashkenazy, your great-grandfather, after whom I presume you were named.

No, your father is Vladimir Sverdlov-Ashkenazy, Elena’s son. He’s not only a brilliant composer, but a virtuoso pianist, as well. Winner at age 14 in 1990 of the Central Music School’s First Prize in a piano Competition, and (lest you think he simply rode in on his mother’s coattails) at 16 toured Germany with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and three years later performed Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto with the Israel Symphony Orchestra. Two years after that, in 1997 now, he gave a solo performance at the Suntory Hall in Tokyo and from there went on to become the world-class virtuoso he is today. One Russian journalist even gushed that he is "the new Horowitz!” 

Your mother, Lyda was born to Chinese composer and conductor, Robert Chen (Chinese: : 陈亮声; pinyin: Chén Liàngshēng). She is a lawyer and also performs professionally on the viola.

And Lyda’s mother, your other grandmother (besides Elena Ashkenazy, that is) is often referred to as the best-known, most accomplished concert pianist alive today, the Argentine of Catalan Jewish heritage, Martha Argerich.

The question is, “What do you want for breakfast?”

Have a look at some of the things David has been up to:

1. Performing a rap number with his cousin, Rafael Milan, on their abuela Martha, aka "Moo-Moo"; 

2. Playing Ravel with abuela/moo-moo;

3. Playing Rachmaninoff with mama and Vincent Boccadoro.

photo credit

Frust und Schönheit

Frustration and Beauty

You know how things can get lodged in some corner of your mind and you can't get them out? A tune that nags at you? Or a thought that won't let go?

I've been frustrated as hell, fighting with myself. One part of me is desperate to get back into the exchange I started with that antivaxxer guy from my distant past; another part of me tells me I need to recognize my own limitations: I'm not going to persuade this guy to change his views. I can't be sure whether I'm to blame for not finding the right words or to lay it on him for his inability to see how inadequate his skills are for engaging in a serious argument. I've made a commitment to not engage further because he appears to me to be the quintessence of obstinacy and all the alarm bells are telling me to quit before I say something unkind and unproductive. But the teacher in me nags away at the thought that giving up on somebody, effectively writing him off, is surrendering to my least worthy instincts. I should keep going, fight the frustration with more action, and not run to fight another day, in another way, with a more worthy opponent. The frustration is high.

I decided to pry the nagging thought loose with another nagging thought, this one a melody that won't let go and has been spinning in my head for weeks now. It's a melody by Schubert, his Fantasie in F minor, as played by the Jussen Brothers. I never tire of it and keep coming back to it for reasons I can't explain.

The sun has gone down, and I went up to my room, which has the last rays of the sun leaking through the drawn shades, and put the piece on and let myself get into a dark and wonderful meditative place. It has not dislodged the frustration, but it has coated it with something quite beautiful.

The beauty is not of my imagination. Credit goes to the producers of a concert the Jussen Brothers gave at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, who obviously know their stuff.

The two brothers are sitting on a bare stage with just a luxurious black-lacquered Steinway, dressed in black brocade jackets and bathed in a deep blue hue mixed with a golden light on their youthful golden hair and handsome faces.

And they start in. Da-dum-da DAH da. Da-dum-da-da DAH da. Those opening notes repeat endlessly throughout the piece and are the very essence of a sound that won't let you go. Not a lyrical melody. Not bel canto. Very German, somehow. But oh, so elegant. Orderly. Constant. Reliable sounds.

It takes a while to realize there's an audience taking all this in. For the longest time all I could see was the blue light and the contrast provided by the golden yellow of the inside of the piano, the hair and faces and white hands of the two young men and the dimly lighted chandeliers around the hall. Virtually no color. No reds. No greens or purple*. Just black and gold. And that exquisite deep deep blue.

There's so much there to admire. The talent of these brilliant concert young pianists. The production person who came up with the blue lighting idea.

And the audience, which knows to delay their applause for the longest time when they finish. They let the mood run its course, withhold acclaim until they see the boys relax entirely. What a treat it must be to play before such a sophisticated audience.

I'm still frustrated.

But I'm feeling oh so much better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J2WyyF_t2I

*OK, so there's a touch of purple!

With a little bit of help from my friends - and mom and maybe dad, as well

Philippe Jaroussky

I've been listening to one great musical artist after another for some time now, not just making lemonade out of the lockdown, but really getting into the fact that one of the greatest of benefits of the computer age is that we now have access to the top of the line, the very best singers, dancers, instrumentalists and others of exceptional talent.

As I was listening this morning to Philippe Jaroussky whose purity of voice puts me into a meditative state, I found my mind wandering to the question of how much effort he must have put in to get where he is today. It's clearly not enough to be born with talent. That talent must be cultivated. And although I'd never want to take anything away from these people who make you wonder where they get their superhuman abilities from, I know that in most cases it takes a parent or two and in some cases a village. Whether it's a mother who ties you to the piano bench, a teacher who spots you early on and gives you the grounding you need, a good friend wise enough to give you the kind of encouragement you need to keep going when things get tough, you almost certainly can't do it on your own.

If you're one of the lucky ones, born with talent into an environment that knows how to nurture it, good on you! We can only wish we were all so lucky.

Unfortunately, for all those who succeed, there are many more who don't. One way to work myself into a deep funk is to reflect on how bad parenting or bad schooling can mess up a kid. I'm furious with the American way of paying for schooling by taxing locals to pay for the schools their kids attend and then redlining and otherwise assigning poor people to poor neighborhoods where their kids have to make do with poorly funded schools. I want us to treat health and education as a national responsibility. I hate it that we can't make that happen, that a critical mass of people go along with the Republican way of keeping the wealth the nation generates in the hands of a limited few, that we cannot do right by kids and get them out of poverty by exposing them to the best schools the nation can provide.

I love excellence, and I love it each time I come across a musician who seems to have been dealt a marvelous hand of cards to play the game of life with, a child prodigy, or a musician with the personal discipline to train and bring out of the talent they were born with. 

This applies to lots of things besides music of course - I've been obsessed with the British diver Tom Daley, for example, and have shared my excitement over his winning a gold medal with his diving partner, Matty Lee, in the Tokyo Olympics this week. But music is my mainstay, and I know from personal experience what is involved in rising to the top in the world of musical performance. I had great prospects and raised a lot of expectations as a kid, as a boy soprano, and later as a church organist at the age of sixteen. I decided early on I didn't have what it takes to work the talent I had into something greater, and I have no regrets. It was the right decision and I am grateful that I at least have the ability to appreciate talent when I see it, and to feel the joy that comes from watching it grow, as I have watching Alexander Malofeev over the years. And the Jussen Brothers, to name just a couple examples.

After listening to this performance by the counter tenor Philippe Jaroussky, I looked into his background. His is a great story and he's still got miles to go and could well become even better over time, even though he's already good enough to have earned the right to the adjective "exquisite" when describing his singing.

I have a book on the Jews that managed to escape Nazi Germany who contributed their talents to the U.S. and other countries. Jaroussky's family left Russia because of its hostility to Jews, as well, and you can't help wondering how profoundly stupid and self-destructive people can be to let talent escape like this. Their loss illustrates the metaphor of shooting oneself in the foot. Not only do tyrants and genocidal killers perform horrors on their immediate victims; they remove chances of greatness from their own people as well. If their victims manage to escape, the talent is not lost and may even, ironically, get cultivated better for having been tested so severely. Not that that should be used as an argument for oppression, but it does illustrate the folly of mankind.

I just wanted to share what was going through my mind as I listened to this pure voice. It comes in a package that was roughly bounced around before it was delivered. Like Tom Daley, Jaroussky is a gay man, and it hasn't been all that long since gay people got out from under the heel of religious bigots. And not that long since Jews got out from under the boots of thugs, as well.

The battle isn't over. Tucker Carlson, the prime spokesman for America's white supremacist network supporting the destruction of American democracy, just paid a visit to Hungary to sing the praises of its authoritarian leader who is doing to Hungary what Trump tried to do to the United States. As Carlson kisses thuggish ass, the news comes that the LGBT community is out in force in the streets of Budapest protesting the recent attempt to cut back on the rights of lesbians and gays and transgender folk. So there are still many battles to be fought. 

Meanwhile, if you don't want to fuss with me over all this bad news, just sit back and enjoy the beauty of Tom Daley and Matty Lee's beautiful dive. And listen to Philippe Jaroussky singing Vivaldi with that wonderful baroque orchestra, the Ensemble Matheus.

But don't overlook how they got there. I like to wish the mothers of my friends well on my friends' birthdays, since they did all the work.

So listen to Philippe Jaroussky. And raise a toast to his mama.

Once again, that link is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zQX2XqAE8c

Photo credit

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

Italian Polka - a partial review

Rachmaninoff composed his Italian Polka originally for two pianos.  It is played that way, or with four hands on one piano, or by a single soloist.  Rachmaninoff first heard the tune in Italy, we are told, played on a street organ pulled by a donkey. He wrote it down and carried it back to Russia, where he arranged it for the Imperial Marine Guard Band https://www.windrep.org/Italian_Polka_(arr_Lucas) . It begins in E-flat minor and switches midway to E-flat major. Starts melancholy; ends joyful.

The Polka has a number of arrangers, beginning with Alexander Siloti. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=481AKTIWc7o. Not my favorite by any means. Too fast, too rigid.

The two best versions, in my view, are the ones arranged by Arcadi Volodos and Vyacheslav Gryaznov. Volodos’s version is a show-off piece and a little on the crazy side. Gryaznov’s is, for me, pure joy. I have a go at it at least once a week, and it’s one of the best pick-me-up pieces of music I know.

Listen to Anna Fedorova have at the Volodos version and you’ll see what I mean - not for the faint of heart. A real technical challenge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5IbL5AsSGI Mind-blowing, especially since I believe she was only about twenty-one years old at the time of this recording.

My personal favorite remains the Vyacheslav Gryaznov version for its rich musicality. Also technically challenging, it seems to be the one most people choose to play. He chose to perform it when giving a concert in Italy some years ago and it launched his career. People can’t seem to get enough of it. Here he is playing at a concert in a small church in Naples, Florida. I love the “wow” from a member of the audience at the end:

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

When you think of classical music, you think maybe first of all of the great German composers: Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, the Schumanns, Robert and Clara, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Handel (OK, so he gets to be called an English composer), the two Strausses, Wagner, Offenbach and all the many others. But I have a soft spot for the Russians, starting with Rachmaninoff, but also Tchaikovsky, Glinka, Borodin, Prokofiev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Moussorgsky, Scriabin, Stravinsky, and so many more. OK, Stravinsky not so much a soft spot as respect. I loved hearing Vyacheslav Gryaznov thank his predecessor Rachmaninoff for providing him with the gift that launched his career - almost exactly 100 years later.

Another version definitely worth listening to is the one by what I think is the greatest pianist of all time, at least modern times, Vladimir Horowitz. Horowitz, you may know, was actually born in Kiev, now Ukraine, but in 1903 it was part of the Russian Empire and he thought of himself as Russian. So when he returned in 1985 after abandoning his homeland for sixty years, he received a very warm welcome. To get an idea of how warm, listen to his version of the Italian Polka and to the ovation that followed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtxynUhUqFs  And if you’d like to see a transcription of the Horowitz version, it’s available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMFWuGd7vSo

And, a brief discursion here, if you want to see more of that Return To Moscow Concert, it’s available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4gALGMf3Mw

All sorts of people have fooled around with the Italian Polka. There’s the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szn0th8u39M

There’s the super jazzed up version by Igor Roma, played at the speed of light. Here is Roma doing a performance with Enrico Pace: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHdSPmIfO5U 

Here’s one arranged by Fritz Kreisler, a piano-violin duet with Tobias Ringborg on the violin and Anders Kilström on the piano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD9GLtiUyoU 

And one for two pianos, eight hands, which I like to think of as the drunk version, more gimmicky than musical: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fTvc_BHtOs

A version played by Russia’s latest child prodigy, Elisey Mysin and the man who I think is probably Russia’s leading concert pianist of today, Denis Matsuyev:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBcJ3krU3Wc

And not last, but maybe least, a version for two marimbas: (OK, that’s unfair. Sorry.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5wrdcXsvjk

Here’s a really good performance done to show off the Steingraeber E 272 Grand Piano by Oleg Volkov: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e04sbY1zeqs. You may appreciate the fact that he’s playing the Vyacheslav Gryaznov version.

Apologies to all of you who may think I’ve gilded the lily and overdone it terribly. But I hope some of you share my appreciation of how many different ways there are to make music and to vary a familiar or particularly loved piece. YouTube has provided many more, which you can easily find with a simple search.

I'll list a few more, which I consider vanilla, but no less enjoyable, versions and top of the line performances. The list is anything but exhaustive:

1. Dmitry Alexeev & Nikolai Demidenko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HtOsZpZwf0

2. Jun Ho Kim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlqtq5z9yNU

3. Evgeniy Kissin and Daniil Trifonov: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnnqSeaSg34

4. Anna Hetmanova & Anastasia Podniakova: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuclttQTix4

5. Dutch version, four hands, (2009) arranged by Igor Roma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6Y7UjtN5o 

6. Miloš Grnčaroski (17): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBfOzKr-Ay8

7. Szymon Nehring - wonderful young Polish pianist (born 1995) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naD7iba50v4

And with that, I’ll call it a day…