As I was reading the review in The New York Times of the recent piano recital by Murray Perahia at Carnegie Hall, I was reminded of the last time I had attended a live piano recital locally. I do not recall the year, but the featured pianist was Richard Goode, and I believe the program consisted of Beethoven and Schubert.
While I don't have any overtly negative memories of the pianist, I remember very well the person who invited me to the performance, and she remains the lasting memory to this day of why music reviews should be done sparingly or not at all. Her name escapes me, but she wrote the program notes for the piano series and had posted a Craigslist notice asking anyone who was interested in attending the recital to write her back and explain why they should accompany her, and the winner would be her guest. Now I would like to think that at least a few people entered the little contest and mine was judged the best of the group, but as time has gone by, I've occasionally wondered if the reason why I was chosen was that I might have been the only applicant.
Regardless of the circumstances, I was delighted to attend, especially since the performance would take place in what used to be called the Intermediate Theater of the Performing Arts Center (now Newmark Theater). I attended the opening program in 1987 and immediately loved the warm acoustic provided by the cherry veneer paneling that served as a perfect compliment to the brighter reflective sound from the overhead shell. To my thinking it was (and still is) the best of the auditoriums in Portland, along with the Keller (the Winningstad sounds too strident to me while the Schnitzer requires artificial amplification to such an extent that the aural experience between the main stage and balconies is exhaustingly unpleasant).
But back to the hostess for the evening. She was not a formally trained musician but had studied in her spare time and considered herself a resource for enlightened, thoughtful reflection when it came to music performance. She considered her program notes to be well researched, and useful to both the amateur and professional reader. Needless to say, modesty was not one of her traits that she chose to promote.
After reading the first several paragraphs, I knew it was going to take a major effort on my part not to embarrass one of us (probably me) by pointing out that while the gist of her writing was accurate and informative, it had one major shortcoming, and that was it considered minutia to be a substitute for the love or magic of that composition. It is one thing to explain sonata form; it something quite different (and much more difficult I might add) to make it resonate with the music being described. In the hands of someone who is both a skilled musician and writer (Charles Rosen comes to mind; Alfred Brendel and Stephen Hough as well), program notes can be informative and an invitation to enter the world of the music being recreated. With this person I felt the program notes were her attempt at justifying her presence within this special realm.
That recital remains the first and only time I ever wished I could sit away from a specific person. Her desire to analyze the music, the performance, the piano, the tuning/temperament, served only to drain everything of whatever potential magic there was, leaving for me at least the sense that nothing mattered but how the music related to her...without her, nothing in the performance mattered.
Now there is nothing wrong with her basic point: music, especially live music, should connect, has to connect with the listener in some visceral, emotional way...but there is something fundamentally wrong or sad when one component of the circle of composer, musician and listener is distorted so much that the other parts do not matter; that the balance is lost, sometimes forever. I was reminded of how our society's relentless quest to do or have everything done faster and better can so often result in quantity but at the expense of quality...and in the arts, there will always be devotees and performers, but artists...people with talent and the ability to share that with love and grace...will continue to be rare and defy the kind of analytical description she was doing and enjoying.
What kind of listener should be nurtured? First and foremost of all, someone who can listen and be willing to see beyond the notes and structure of a piece and be touched by the underlying inspiration. The kind of effortless, simple joy that a child brings to life is something we all had at one time or another and can, if we are able to grasp it again, make everything seem special again. For sure, having sufficient background in a subject to understand history, context, etc., is always useful but it is not always necessary...as a matter of fact I suggest that in many cases, that can inhibit true enjoyment because of all sorts of peripheral reasons (like elitism, feelings of superiority) can end up stripping art of its spirit. I suppose at its essential core, the best listener is someone who believes in the magic inherent in hearing something performed live and actively listens because one never knows when that special sense will happen, and the anticipation of that moment possibly happening makes the experience special for both the performer and listener.
I thanked her for letting me attend the performance, left quickly and after coming home played some Debussy performed by Paul Jacobs. I had purchased these recordings some 25 years earlier and still listened to them rapturously because of the simple, graceful performance; nothing pulled or stretched about, the music being allowed to breathe, ebb and flow. If the piano or acoustic isn't completely perfect...so what? What matters most is what the music contains, and here away from the harsh spotlight of that person's mindset, one could sense again some of the subtlety and nuance, much like the delicacy of a butterfly's wings illuminated by the sunlight instead of caught and pinned on a specimen page.
That is why I don't do many reviews these days. Analyzing and critiquing is not as much fun as encouraging others to listen in, to attend in person, to participate...all with the joy inherent in witnessing something live, ephemeral and perhaps enduring in the mind afterwards.
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