Pianotech

This set of rambling thoughts I sent out last evening to my mailing list of supporters of concerts at Hammerwood. It has been well received in that arena and may be of interest in the wider piano community. Hammerwood was built by Benjamin Latrobe in 1792, the first professional architect of the USA. The house was abandoned by Led Zepellin and has been the subject of restoration since 1982. Somehow Latrobe's heritage at Hammerwood pulls aspects of our turbulent times into focus. I appreciate that in mention of some issues here I'll be touching on perhaps very sensitive areas, and for which I hope that you might forgive me from a perspective across the pond.

Yesterday the UK Classic FM website quoted a pianist on the subject of a piano store looted in the USA which inspires thought. https://www.classicfm.com/artists/yuja-wang/responds-damaged-piano-store-philadelphia-protests

Yuja Wang highlights how music could and should bring people together. Instead, a store selling expensive pianos is seen to be a symptom of class and educational divide.

Yesterday I went on a journey to retrieve a university student related to the Hammerwood Team of volunteers from university. I had the radio playing with BBC Radio 3 and explained to her how classical music could convey emotion inexpressible by words, how from phrase to phrase one heard voices in conversation, questions, answers and sentences. She told me that in music classes at the local state school she'd never had it explained like that. We were then lucky enough to hear a performance by Cyprien Katsaris of some pieces by Stanisław Moniuszko, father of Polish opera, Carl Filtsch, a star pupil at the age of 13 who was dead just two years later with Tuberculosis. Fast forward on https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000jnm3 to 2:24:50 . I've probably mentioned the name of a performer, Adolfo Barabino about whom I rave on his playing, and his pupils (who include Alexandra Kremakova and Ralitsa Penkova who regularly play at Hammerwood) and Katsaris' performance evokes the techniques with which I'm familiar from Adolfo. The phrasing is exquisite with emphasis in places by deemphasis rather than screaming exaggeration - particularly the piece at 2:30:40.

In explaining classical music to my passenger, this performance on the radio made the explanation easy to understand. It's worth listening and afterwards you can hear the contrast with other pianists who play like machine-gun fire and destroy the meaning in the phrasing (as exemplified by two competitors at the Nice Competition last year https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ8i7ao1lyE, the good performer being Sohyun Park from East Anglia). Later on https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000jnm5 at 1:47:43 was a performance of some Schubert which loses its meaning because the pianist is playing "machine-gun" style with each note interrupting the music - and to the extent to which I didn't recognise the composer at all. The difference in phasing, and its importance is audible.

I'm sure the difference will be audible even to non-musicians - and it's for this sort of reason that we try to promote music with such discernment at Hammerwood and this is the reason for my passion in asking audiences to bring children and young people to concerts where such a genre of musicians perform.

Why should my young passenger on our journey have been denied the emotional exploration that classical music can bring by having gone to the ordinary school? By bringing discernment between one type of pianist and the other exemplified by the BBC broadcasts yesterday perhaps in the future piano professionals might be able to make a difference in promoting the understanding of the meaning of the music we espouse.

In 2003 I was invited to go to America by the family and descendants of Benjamin Latrobe. We were privileged to have access to the Capitol, The White House, St John's Church Lafayette Square https://stjohns-dc.org/, Decatur House https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decatur_House, Baltimore Cathedral and other Latrobe buildings and bridges and other structures built by his descendants.

The Wiki article for Decatur House refers to urban slavery within sight of the White House.

On our tour to other Latrobe family related places including the Maryland Historical Society we passed wealthy areas on the outskirts of Baltimore, and if memory serves correctly not a million miles from John Hopkins University, where the inhabitants cared only for the numbers of thousands of daffodils they could plant in their squares. This contrasted with the poverty of descendants of slavery to whom education and opportunity had been denied in vicious cycles of disinclusion and reliance on whatever mere subsistence benefits might be available. The poverty was of no interest to the daffodil planters who had no interest whatever of addressing the issues of its heritage, redressing the balance and making education and opportunity equally available to all. After this week these issues will not go away.

The symbolism of the piano store demonstrates the difference that we all can make by widening the reach of classical music. At Hammerwood we provide the resource, and in promoting the sort of musicians of the quality of communication exemplified by Katsaris and Barabino, and encouraging audiences to bring people who wouldn't otherwise come, perhaps it might be possible for the resource of classical music to be brought and made alive, worthwhile, to the new generations and to those to whom education had not provided an explanation..

Perhaps also if you can here the difference pointed out in the examples here between the BBC Radio 3 examples this afternoon, it might be possible to help us to encourage those performers who show discernment in their playing more, rather than just relying on the accolade of big names that one hears promoted on the radio. 

Of course I was writing to our concert supporters focussed on Hammerwood, but I've changed above to bring wider relevance which I hope comes through. On of our supporters responded:
"I have very similar feelings about the piano styles you contrast. At its best the instrument can be a conduit to empathy, humanity and sensitivity. Or it can be a symbol of mechanistic competitive selfishness. The former qualities allow us to see the past and understand why people feel and act as they do. The latter qualities simply cause us to hate piano burners and count daffodils.
Greetings and best wishes,

David P