Essays - ... food for thought - 1977

OPUS - Faculty of Music Student Journal

(Vol. 12 No.7, March 1977, p.4)
by Dr. Damiana Bratuz of the applied department. [Comment to be added]

During the nine years in which I have been in charge of the Piano Literature classes, I sometimes have delighted in jolting the students into some awareness of the "whys" of ouf profession, and away from the endless submersion into the "whats" and "hows" …Two years ago I asked the class to first ponder upon and then answer the following two questions:

1. Several years ago in New York, before conducting a concerto with Glenn Gould as soloist, Leonard Bernstein informed the audience that although he had agreed to collaborated, he wanted it to be known that he totally disagreed with the interpretation of his soloist - who favoured an incredibly slow pace in Brahms' concerto.
   Around the same time in Cleveland, Peter Serkin cancelled his appearance with the Cleveland Symphony rather than submit to the conductor's demand that he change his reading of a Beethoven concerto.
   According to your present understanding of the role and the integrity of a performer, how do you think YOU would have behaved?
   
   
2. A sensitive student came to me recently with a question which was troubling him deeply: What was the value of devoting one's energies to playing the piano in a world such as ours, where some other activity might help to bring about the needed changes and benefits? I will let you guess my answer, which, since you have heard me speak so often about music, you should be able to reconstruct.
   Write down your own answer, in order that you might test your thoughts against those of other musicians, artists, and thinkers and discover through their ideas, your own feelings. You may gain insights into your own aspirations. As Boulez once said, "if we look at ourselves in a mirror, we see a single image; but if there is another mirror behind us, there appears an infinite possibility of images, angles and permutations …"

Among those who replied was Tomson Highway, who had attended my Piano Literature course.

On Question 1:

These stories provides my reply to the question of how I would have behaved if I had been in Mr. Goulds or Mr. Serkin's position, taken, of course, from the standpoint of my present understanding of the role and integrity of the performer.
Initially, I would be quite confused.
However, I have it in my mind that a soloist has a work learned in a certain manner, a certain personal interpretation that has, over a period of time, "settled" and become ingrained in the personality of the performer. If a conductor was to come along and demand an interpretation accustomed, I'm sure it would be horrendous in a performance situation. The soloist's portion most often has the greater part of the 'lime-light'…
I should think, in the final analysis that a compromise could be reached between the soloist and the conductor. However, I would find the question unresolved in my own mind.

On question 2:

…This question triggers off very elusive, complex thoughts…. Yehudi Menuhin said 'that art provides the high points which emerges from a continuing living process, as well as being the gift and benefaction from heaven. 'It appears to me that the essence of humanity is a delicate balance between the spiritual and the physical….Language serves to define the relationships between different orders of reality, between different levels of consciousness…Art gives the greater coherence to this marriage of spiritual and physical.
As a pianist, to realize this supremely disciplined ordering of sound which Bach or Beethoven have bequesthed us, and to refine it to the extent that it assumes a true level of "artistic expression", is to go one more step towards achieving a communion with the universe, a sense of spiritual will-being…This, I think, is what Centin Kuerti meant when he said that to make people understand Beethoven is to make them understand life.