04-05-12, 02:47 AM
|
 |
Senior Member
|
|
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: east coast, USofA
Posts: 2,095
Rep Power: 49
|
|
Michael Moran on his high horse about similar issues, reporting from Chopin Festival last August:
Quote:
There are now a group of such pianists who use the music of the master composers merely as a personality platform. Clearly if such pianists, all 'geniuses' we are told from daylight till dark, gain the impimatur of the legendary Martha Argerich and the Lugano Festival, the Musikverein, the Verbier Festival, famous conductors, famous orchestras, Decca, EMI...or are winners or 'Laureates' of any competition you care to name in the farrago of competitions that beset us, then everything must be musically perfect and I am wildly wrong in my judgements. There must be something wrong with you Michael and your musical judgement. Would you expect me to admit this? Depends who tells me. I am perfectly open to discussion and change my mind if I think I am misguided. Well, music is a business after all, the entertainment business and if that is what people want give it them if you aspire to a brilliant and financially successful career.
However I can personally no longer respond to only digital pyrotechnics. Is this a sign of age? Probably. There is a considerable and in many ways alarming lack of charm, poetry and sensibility in the vast majority of young performances except of course the ones I have praised so highly at Duszniki and at this festival.
It seems I am out of step with modern 'star' demands and music teachers' priorities (they too have careers launched by successful competition students). A moderation in dynamics with an instinctive feeling for the size of the hall would be welcome. It might be merciful on the audience to grade the dynamics. All halls are not Carnegie Hall although you might be forgiven for thinking so.
I am clearly anachronistic and 'old-fashioned' in my wish for evidence in the playing of some cultural and stylistic context for the piece, a beautiful tone, refined touch, musical understanding and having something musical to say as well as poetry, charm, sensibility, love and above all the ability to move the heart.
I am obviously entirely at variance with what the vast majority feel and want from piano 'stars' and players today - the instrument to be played as loud as possible, as fast as possible and as egocentrically and exhibitionistically as possible. Liszt has given such people a wonderful opportunity to betray him.
|
http://www.michael-moran.com/2011/08...al-warsaw.html
|
