Alban's Blog

Sugar and Music

after the toronto performances in a bar…As promised in my previous blog about Schumann in Toronto, going back – again – to these negative reviews which have started to make me think about expression in music, I will try to express my thoughts about it, since I am very much aware of the fact that these are not just some critics believing I am not expressive enough, but also many cellists .
Seemingly there is no right or wrong anymore in music making. Anything goes, there are no borders to how expressive, slow, fast, loud, soft any piece may be played. The other day a famous pianist played one of the Rachmaninov Concertos in 57 minutes – the composer himself took for the same piece about 30 minutes. I am convinced Rachmaninov was right, I like the rather introvert approach, not the “heart on the sleeve” kind of expression. For me it easily becomes vulgar and over the top. But who is to say that I am right? Maybe the famous pianist was right and it was much more expressive?

I see a similarity with food: my wife for a certain while started to put more and more salt into her delicious Puerto Rican dishes, and after a while I didn’t like the restaurant food anymore, because it seemed not salty enough, not “enough taste”, not enough expression if you like. We got used to the high amount of salt she added at home – luckily we realized it and forced our taste back to a lower amount, since it is not good for your health, I guess. But also you can taste more of the food you are eating when it is not drained in salt. Same for sweets: especially in the US everything has become so much sweeter that I don’t even eat desert here anymore. I used to love eating the raisin scones offered in the bakeries and Starbucks – now they all have this heavy sugar coating on top that it is impossible for me to enjoy the taste.

But obviously people consume and like this. So I guess something similar is happening to music and maybe especially to cello playing. I truly believe that if Feuermann would be reincarnated and playing the way he used to play, people wouldn’t get it. Far too refined and subtle, far too intimate, not outgoing enough for nowadays taste. Is it worse or better? It doesn’t matter, this is the time we live in. The development of the vibrato speaks for itself. We all use too much of it, and it can easily be a turn-off for new listeners who don’t know that “a lot of vibrato means lots of emotion”. Because this is wrong – emotions are not created by the way how much we vibrate, but what we do with the music altogether, not with some hornily vibrated single notes.

I heard string players vibrate without any sense on some “comfortable” long notes in an almost sexual way, followed by some notes without any expression. No, not every note has to be vibrated, but there has to be some kind of sense and continuity behind it, not just where it is technically comfortable “to go for it”. I find it very helpful to practice entire pieces without vibrato and to try to find the expression solely in the way I use the bow. Articulation, different bow speeds and weight, sometimes more into the string, sometimes on the surface – it’s challenging, because we are so used to rely on the vibrato as our “expression-machine”.

At least these are things related to the music making. An other aspect of “too much sugar in music making” are the gestures some musicians put on. No, I won’t mention any names, I am sure you can come up with a couple of names yourself 🙂 But here is one very interesting story which I’ll make very short:

This is an experiment in Hannover, where several critics and musicians where invited to hear some pianists in a studio. They didn’t know that the three pianists played playback, miming the exactly same recording. The only difference was the way they acted behind the piano. The first one was totally calm (like Horowitz and most pianists from old times), the second one moved in a moderate way, and the third one threw his arms, shook his head, just the full monty of some of today’s pianists.

Well, guess what – 85% of the viewers thought, the last one was the most expressive, purely musically speaking, while the thought the first one was just boring. Are all these people superficial, or is it just a fact that in a live performance we also listen with our eyes. Yes, the charisma counts, it is important, and I don’t mind at all people moving expressively on stage. But if this starts replacing the real musical expression I get a bit worried. If it, the so-called “show” becomes the main subject of the players attention, to have a great choreography without any musical statement, music itself is in trouble.

And if the lack of exaggerated movements, head shaking and extensive groaning is being interpreted as emotionless, it is indeed a bit worrisome. What can one do? Stay unimpressed and focus on the music, would be my first advice, but not to close the eyes in front of the reality either. People want the event, there want the drama on stage, be it real or not. Do we have to give it to them? They pay money to see it, and we live from it. At the same time we have to stay faithful to our musicianship (if there is any) and our believes, we have the duty to show them what we believe is truthful and real, so I guess, for now I won’t change much, just keep on listening to myself and look for true emotion.

The problem is that every musician’s feeling are real, but we don’t know how well we translate them into music, into the hall, where the people are listening…

Comments

  • George

    WOW..I think that the public’s perception has been altered and to a certain their expectations by the mass marketing that has been put forth for artists like yo yo ma. I would expect more from critics who are supposed to be more informed and aware of the musicality that is put forth by an artist.. It would be interesting to see how Feuermann would be perceived in today’s world..The view of what makes good music has changed..it was different back in his day than it is now..when Piatigorsky and Casals were coming up…How would they be judged??…The power of the media is affecting all this. The critics all have many stars these days to see and to judge…how an artist looks, the theatrical aspects of what takes place and of course the performance must be perfect..I imagine this must be difficult to live within…do you honor your feelings and your artistry in what you do? or play to the media?..I don’t understand why the world of the critic and the standards that are applied have changed..I may not agree with critics and their opinions but I have come to expect that they provide a knowledgeable, informed and true opinion of something…not what they think will sell papers.

    Reply
  • Alban

    but this is the wonderful thing about music, it is entirely subjective. There are indeed people who don’t believe so, they believe there are certain “objective” standards by which you can judge a piece of art or a performance. But then you have these standards, you apply them to a performance, and even if all standards have been met, it might have not fulfilled you at all, or vice versa: no standards met, but you were touched. And each member in the audience experiences it in a different way. Rather fascinating…

    Reply
  • Neil Bennison

    We had something similar happen in the 2005-6 season of Nottingham Classics. Miklos Perenyi gave a very subtle and intimate performance of Dvorak’s Cello Concerto and one music critic felt that it didn’t project enough, yet every note could be heard. Maybe a case in point of our tendency to want to see more heart on sleeve?

    Reply
  • Alban

    Miklos Perenyi is a wonderful musician and cellist, but he plays indeed very introvert (which I like very much), much much more so than me. Under normal circumstances you would call my playing rather extrovert – just not self-indulgent… But yes, it is very sad, that the critic didn’t realize what musician Perenyi is. Projection or not projection, this is not so much the matter, but what we do with the music (as long as we are not completely drowned). Thanks for the comment, best wishes from Seoul,
    Alban

    Reply
  • Christine

    Well said, very well explained.
    It reminds me of a well known principal clarinetist….he told me that he has his “expressive face”, which is this ridiculous swooning and swaying and bug eye look. When a conductor asks for something “more expressive”, he plays the same way but does the face and the swaying and they are happy.

    I admire your approach, playing and philosophy. And your snobbish preference for European pastries over Starbucks, I couldn’t agree more. But Alban it must be said; sometimes excess is just the thing 🙂

    Reply
  • Alban

    But this exactly what I mean. Swaying does more than maybe really playing more expressive, and yes, you are right, excess is sometimes just the thing. Go crazy at some point, loose your control, your composture, yes, I am all for it – but if it’s all the time and whenever we feel we want to say something, it becomes flat and ,sorry for the comparison, goes in the direction of Mexican soap opera, if you know what I mean (the over-the-top crying and sreaming all the time – how believable is it? Actually not at all – same in music :))

    Reply
  • Guido

    interesting that you mention Feuermann as a model of subtlety, taste and sophistication, and then talk about people playing with too much vibrato – Feuermann uses more vibrato than any other cellist I’ve heard – basically every note, apart from when it is too fast to vibrate – he even vibrates some of the octave passages in the Dvorak that most cellists wouldn’t be able to do even if they wanted to!

    Reply
  • Alban

    you are absolutely right, Guido, Feuermann does vibrate every single note, for the longest time he was my hero in doing that and I still have the tendency to vibrate every note as well, which is sometimes good, sometimes can be annoying…
    Anyway: my complaint about “too much vibrato” is not so much the frequency but rather the quality of the vibrato. With Feuermann it is much rather a general colour of his playing, but since the amplitude of it is so narrow, it never bothers me, it never sounds hysterical and tasteless, but (at least for me), it does sound subtle. No, it is definitely not the vibrato I have a problem with, it is the exaggerated musical expressions, the rubati which fall completely out of proportions, or dynamics, when people see a little hairpin (?) and do a huge crescendo to ff instead of just a swell – do you know what I mean or am I a bit too confused so late at night?

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  • Guido

    It is late night here too (I’m only an hour behind here in Cambridge!). That makes perfect sense – Vibrato is such an intrinsic property of Feuermann’s playing that its impossible to imagine his ‘sound’ without it. I actually don’t enjoy alot of his recordings – most cellists adore his Dvorak concerto, but I can’t take all that virtuosity for its own sake (where he speeds up in the fast passages where most cellists would be struggling anyway). This is just my own experience of the music of course – other people love it, and it does not diminish his status as one of the greatest string players of the last century. For me though, Casals just had something which Feuermann never quite attained…

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  • Alban

    I must admit that in the past few years (or even decades) I have not really listened to any of them, actually I haven’t listened to recordings in quite a long time. I love going to concerts, and maybe from retrospective it is pretty impossible to judge these old cellists anyway – I am a different musician in a recording studio, so why not these guys as well? And mind you, Feuermann died about 50 years or so younger than Casals – who knows in what kind of musician he would have developed if he had lived a bit longer. What I just meant was that if people nowadays would play as straight forward (and yes, pretty quick) as Feuermann and also Casals (his Dvorak is about 5 minutes faster than what we do today, I think), he would be considered superficial and boring. The big gesture is missing in most of the old guys, and I like it, I am afraid…

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