Titans in Warsaw

An international Chopin piano competition is taking place in Warsaw, Poland, and performances are streaming live on the Internet. There is a nine-hour time difference, so much of the playing is in the middle of the night for me; still, I have seen almost all the archive tapes and many of the recitals.

The preliminary round had 346 players, winnowed to 80 in the first cut and then to 40 on the second day, where each musician presented a 20-minute program for a distinguished jury and a packed house (the audience doesn't even cough except between selections.) Pianists choose from four pianos, a Steinway, a Kawai, a Yamaha, or a Fazioli, the most expensive piano in the world, with a top model costing $400,000. Most choose the Steinway. The top prize for the contest is 30,000 Euros, but each of the ten finalists will get a substantial reward.

I would not like to be on the jury for this competition, though the jurors and I agreed on about half of the semi-finalists. Every candidate is technically flawless; the programs are performed from memory and one hardly ever hears a note error. One thing the jury is listening for is a certain Chopinesque style, especially in the Mazurkas and Polonaises. But the defining requirement is that the listener be moved by the performance.

The tools for executing a moving performance are limited: Beyond the notes, rhythms, tempi and dynamics the composer specifies, the player needs to define the importance of the various elements of the composition. When the composer indicates piano or soft in a place having several notes playing simultaneously, he is specifying an over-all volume. Not all the notes have the same value, nor do all the musical lines and phrases. These are details the artist must decide upon, and the memorable performances are like stories, with a beginning, a development and an ending, high points and interludes. The player who only plays the notes will be accused, as was one contestant, of "sounding like the recording", even though he did nothing particularly wrong.

This is some of the best Chopin playing I have heard anywhere, any time. Almost all the pianists have something to say with their music, but the players I have loved the most were the ones who made me feel I had never heard the pieces in quite the same way before. Nicodemus and I agree on most musical things, and he said it better than I could: In the most profound musical experience, a spiritual truth is revealed.

Of course, mastery of the instrument is a prerequisite.

Because all the finalists obviously could not be Russian, only six of the extraordinary Russian players advanced to the semifinals, cutting two of my favorites. There are three Americans, two players each from Italy, China, Poland and France, and one each from Bulgaria, Austria and Australia. The semifinalists include 13 men and seven women. None of the 15 Japanese players, four Koreans, three Israelis, the Canadian, Croatian, German, Swiss, Armenian or Spanish pianists made it to the list of twenty.

The Page Turner

I wasn't even playing; I was just turning pages for Bob, the extraordinary pianist of the Trio Cabrillo. It was a long program, an hour and three-quarters, not counting intermission. Lots of it went so fast it was all I could do to keep up. I was so pumped up, it took hours to get to sleep that night.

You learn a lot about a pianist when you turn pages. Most of this I already knew about Bob, having turned for him several times, but I want to note these traits of his for the benefit of pianists who welcome performance tips.

1. He cares more about the work he is playing than about himself, the person playing it.

2. He is even-tempered, which makes people like working with him.

3. He has done his homework. He knows the music.

4. If he makes a mistake, he doesn't let it throw him.

5. He is not afraid of making a mistake. He doesn't make excuses.

6. He is willing to take risks.

7. When he plays, you feel that he wants every note; every phrase is beautiful.

8. He doesn't complain about the piano, even when to the observer the piano seems less than grateful.

9. He doesn't complain about the page turner, even when she doesn't notice the repeat sign.

(Photo is Bob playing the Saint-Saëns piano concerto with the Coastside Community Orchestra)

Playing Poorly

Well, sometimes we just don't play as well as we'd like to.

That was the case when I massacred Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel Waltz at the Coastside Chorale's concert last June. I knew it was bad, but didn't know how bad until I tried to listen to the CD a few days ago.

The accompaniments to the rest of the program are probably all right, but it was the solo performance which was, frankly, awful.

My teacher always had the same answer for times like this: "Take your lumps".

Nonda reassured me: "I have lots of CDs like that. Just put it in a drawer somewhere and don't listen to it."

Aargh.

Piano Dreams

My usual piano dreams run something like this: I am supposed to play for a wedding, but I can't find the church, am late, arrive without my music books, desperately try to think what I can play without sheet music.

I have ruined instrument dreams. Usually it is a school, where someone has left beautiful pianos, harpsichords and clavichords out in the rain. Sometimes it is a church (Episcopal, strangely, though I have only rarely played for Episcopal churches) meeting in a basement with a ruined organ.

Last night's dream was different. I was back at Skyline College, late to class, didn't have my books, couldn't find the room...and when I found it, there were a dozen people sitting on the floor, waiting to be taught, but no pianos.

So at the dream-Skyline, I had all the students sign a paper, lacking a proper roll sheet, and began the lecture. "We are going to talk about seeing today. We are going to talk about description. No matter what you choose to communicate, whether by written word, spoken word or music, the clarity of your vision is essential."

Casting about for something to use as a model, I picked up an instrument from a pile of discards in the corner of the room. A banjo. As the dream ended (and my real-life cat decided it was time to rise and shine) there was one lone plunk from the banjo strings: A lecture coda.

Clef Signs and Piano Duets

To the non-musician, the treble clef sign is just an icon representing music; the bass clef sign is a mystery, and the other clef signs are nothing but hieroglyphics. To the musician, however, the clef signs are fixed stars. They show the unchanging location on the lines or spaces of a particular music note, and just as you can find your way by knowing East, all the other notes may be found from the one.

The treble clef sign shows the G above middle C and the bass clef sign shows, between its dots, the fixed location of the F below middle C. The less familiar clef signs fix the location of middle C and are used by cellists, violists, trombone players and others who spend lots of time in that desert between the top line of the bass clef and the bottom line of the treble. Tenors in choirs use a treble clef which sometimes has a little figure eight at the bottom, since their notes are sung or played an octave lower than written.

“Treble” means high and “Bass” means low. Most pianists are used to having the right hand on the higher notes and the left on the bottom. We never take the clef signs for granted, however, since both hands could play in either treble or bass.

In the wonderful world of piano duets, it is common practice for primo or prima (the high part) to play using two treble clefs, with secondo or seconda playing two bass clefs, both hands on the bottom part of the piano.

In the old days, before phonographs and radio, piano duets were often the only way people could hear the latest orchestral or chamber music works when they lived far away from cities which had orchestras (almost everybody had a piano and many people could play a little.) Four hands would split the parts of the instruments between them. Even Brahms, during whose lifetime recording was invented, provided four-hands versions of some of his works.

In the 19^th Century days, a courting couple might be left unchaperoned if the lady’s female companion could hear the piano from her post outside the salon door. A few three-hand piano pieces date from this time.

Scrambling the clef signs produces a different kind of recreation for the player with no discernible difference in the sound. Chopin, Schumann and others would sometimes write a bass clef note higher than the treble note played at the same time. The effect is that the player’s thumbs cross, a kind of “Hello” from the composer, since the listener can’t tell from the sound that this is happening.

Mozart at least once wrote duets so that one player was still holding a key down when the other player landed on it. Mozart’s duets were probably played with his sister Nannerl, so he managed in this way to give her finger a good poke.

Other composers including Schubert and Brahms arrange the clefs so that the duet player’s arms cross. Great examples of this are the last part of Schubert’s piano duet piece called “Our Friendship Never Changes” (“Notre amitie est invariable”) and the fourth Brahms Hungarian Dance which John and I are playing in the video.

Duet references: Cameron McGraw, Piano Duet Repertoire, Indiana University Press. Ernest Lubin, The Piano Duet, Grossman.

Tears and Moonlight

When I first encountered Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 27, No. 2, quasi una Fantasia—famously known as the “Moonlight”—I was heartened by the fact that I could play the first few bars and that they sounded like something. Never mind that the beginning of the Adagio sostenuto is just a single repeated broken chord; I was a teenager and sincerely wanted to express drama, misery, mystery. Not to mention seeming to be a better piano player than I really was.

Mrs. Pack, my teacher, coolly informed me that the sonata had three movements and that I might want to get acquainted with the other two. Undaunted, I practiced the Adagio—the easy movement--for hours (or at least half-hours) on end and achieved my goal when I played it for my friend Audrey and she cried.

Since that time, I have probably taught the slow movement of the “Moonlight” several hundred times, the middle movement two or three times, and the third movement not even once. “Try to remember that it is their first encounter with this music,” Mr. Sheldon reminded me when I complained about always having to teach Beethoven’s “Für Elise”, Mozart’s C Major, the “Moonlight” and Debussy’s Clair de Lune. “Remember how you felt when you first heard it.”

There is power in the Adagio of Beethoven’s Op. 27, No. 2. How else can I explain the lengths to which some students will go to try to play it? One student, barely in Level Two, taught himself the first page using diagrams of the keyboard with the hands drawn in.

Terry, whom I encountered at the grocery store yesterday, lettered every single note of the Adagio and triumphantly played the last chord after three months of diligent practice. He refused, however, to play it in the annual student recital. The piece was already on the printed program, so I announced that I would play it in Terry’s place.

As I played, I noticed stirring and tittering from the audience at the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, the seaside concert hall where we used to hold our recitals. I was well into the Adagio when I saw the reason.

Terry’s wife, Cynthia, had cut out a cardboard moon and, using a rod and reel, was lowering the moon on a line from the balcony until it swung right over the big Steinway.

Grace Under Pressure

Quinn needed to make an audition tape for music camp, but we ran into technical problems. After trying three different ways to videotape his Handel, we finally succeeded in getting a recording on his cell phone. Mimi the cat, however, wanted to get in on the act.

In the video, you can see her pacing back and forth. Then you can hear me slap the piano book back on the rack after she knocked it askew by rubbing her face on it. Finally, she decided to help me play the piano.

There was no help for it; the deadline was on him and Quinn (who never stopped playing during all these shenanigans) submitted the cat-assisted tape. Not only was he accepted by the camp, but he won one of the Coastside Community Orchestra's music scholarships and will be playing with the first violins in this Saturday's concert.

High Drama in the Pit

The things you worry about in performing are the things you can’t practice or predict. Pianists often do not know the quirks of the instrument on which they will be playing; when accompanying, one never knows what the other performer might do or not do. When playing outdoors, keyboard players know to assure their power source, take lots of clothespins, minimize the page turns. All these reminders have been learned the hard way.

The wedding for which I most wanted to play beautifully, my niece and namesake Mikie’s marriage to Mark Newton, took place last week in an apple orchard in Napa, in gale-force winds.

Charles and I had prepared our favorite cello and piano pieces, had packed the instruments, stands, books. A few days before the wedding, the father of the bride, my musician brother Les, said that his friend the trumpet player would be able to make it after all, and would I mind playing the Clarke with him for the processional. Unfortunately, there would be no opportunity to practice, so we would just have to talk it through beforehand.

Which we did, scant minutes before we had to play. “It’s the ‘Trumpet Voluntary’, right?” “You’re playing it in D?” “Do you take the trills from the upper auxiliary or the principal?” “Which repeats do you want to do?” “And, by the way, why don’t we do the Jeremiah Clarke ‘Trumpet Tune’ for the first part of the recessional?” “How does it go again? Oh, yeah. Got it.”

So out in the apple orchard, everything set up and clips in place, my aunt’s old faux fur covering my pretty wedding dress, the music stand blew over and cut my hand, which began to bleed. The cello music was scattered everywhere. I adjusted the keyboard so that the wind would be blowing from the side instead of the back. I asked my son Ed to hold the books down; Charles changed music stands to one which had less wind resistance and held his scores with his bow until he could get the clips on. When he picked up the cello again, it had gone completely out of tune in the cold.

Miraculously, the sun came out as soon as we began to play.

Between Larry, the trumpet player, and Ed, both reading music upside-down and sideways, the books more or less stayed in place for the seating music, lovely Barber and Bach.

All went well except that we had to play the Brahms “My Thoughts Like Haunting Music” instead of the Bach Air on the G String for the first part of the processional, since that’s what we had clipped down to the stands and there was no way to change all the clothespins in time. Brahms is never easy, especially under pressure, and I was paying really fierce attention to the page.

The little flower girls walked very slowly, adorably, scattering petals and investigating the bottoms of their flower baskets. The Brahms finished before they reached their destination, and I did a quick take on what key to modulate to before the Trumpet Voluntary. OK, C to A; no problem. Thank God for harmony classes. Later, I asked my brother Les if he liked the special piece I composed for part of the processional, “Noodling in A Major.”

Larry picked up his trumpet for the second part of the processional as someone signaled that the bride was ready to come down the aisle. “I’m freezing,” he said, putting his lips to the cold brass instrument. I can only guess at what accommodation a brass player must make for an instrument which has grown as cold as that trumpet must have been.

The wedding was brief and beautiful. Larry played the recessional and then Charles and I played Elgar’s “Chanson de Matin”. By the time we finished, all the guests and the wedding party had bundled up and were walking toward the Carneros Inn, where the dinner and reception were to be held.

Everyone said the wedding music was beautiful and nobody had the least idea that we had been fighting for every note.

Lesson Eleven: Fascinating Rhythm

Pianists often think of musical rhythm as a chore, or something they’re not good at. I managed to fake my way through years of piano lessons without my teacher’s ever realizing that I was simply imitating her playing, playing according to how the notes lined up on the page, or guessing. Freshman musicianship and Hindemith’s Elementary Training for Musicians put an end to the guesswork.

Everyone who has a pulse has a sense of rhythm, but at some point an aspiring pianist needs to figure out the code. Simply reading the ups and downs of a melody is simplicity itself, but the way rhythms are written hardly ever indicates how long the notes and rests last. Besides, musical rhythm is physical, not mental.

The good news is that once you memorize the symbols, whole, half, quarter, eighth and sixteenth notes and rests, you do begin to see the beats march across the page and do not have to count all the time.

You can practice rhythm anywhere, walking, tapping, analyzing. When you hear music, try to figure whether it is organized in measures of two, three, four, or something else. Taking your own pulse, count aloud in groups of three and then four. The pulse does not have an accented beat the way music does.

Drumming is a good way to separate musical rhythm from melody and harmony so that you can concentrate on the rhythm. It’s also lots of fun. I have sometimes been impressed into service in the Coastside Community Orchestra’s percussion section and have had to have telephone lessons from my drummer son, Nonda.

Whacking the daylights out of a bass drum is strangely satisfying, with the reverberations traveling up your arm and throughout your body.

(Percussion instruments made by Nonda: pandero, guero, rain stick.)

Jubilate Mimi

The English poet Christopher Smart, confined to an English madhouse in the 18^th century, wrote about his cat Jeoffry in his “Jubilate Agno”, an ode to the Divine found in the natural world.

A busy music studio in Montara is far away in time and space from Bedlam in the 1700s, but a Montara cat named Mimi seems to consider keeping peace and order her primary job. It was not always so.

The San Francisco SPCA Maddie Center, where we first met Mimi, is a testament to the generosity of animal lovers. Individual air-conditioned light-flooded pet apartments have climbing trees, carpeted towers, videos of birds and fish, running water and fresh plants. The animals have social workers.

In fact, most of the cats at the Maddie Center are so comfortable that they seem to have little interest going anywhere else. Mimi, then called Millie, had only recently come to the shelter and did not yet consider it home. She had been moved to San Francisco from a Sonoma facility at the age of seven months. She was born September 3, 1998, and was adopted by us April 2, 1999 after we filled out questionnaires, submitted to an interview, signed papers, proved that we had a home, and paid $35.38 in fees. The Maddie Center employees informed us that they followed up on adoptions and would reclaim the animal if terms of the adoption were not met.

The name Millie didn’t suit this grey tortoiseshell at all. There was something French about her, something about the way she sashayed about and looked at us over her shoulder. We wanted to give her a French name, Solange, but the music students couldn’t pronounce it. Since French cat owners call “Mi-mi-mi” instead of “Here, Kitty-kitty”, she became Mimi.

At first, she was a daredevil, climbing up to the roof, refusing to come down, scaling one of our 80-foot-tall cypress trees. She would not drink water from a bowl, she often bit the hand that fed her; she would not sit in a lap or come when called. The sound of the cello drove her insane, and she would jump from table to chair to piano to stereo until the music stopped or she was evicted. The sound of a violin would send her straight to the door. In a twelve-by-eighteen-foot studio with a grand piano, a bounding cat was impossible to ignore.

However, Mimi had two redeeming qualities. She was beautiful, and she loved children. Like Christopher Smart’s Jeoffry, Mimi became “an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.” When music students showed up for their lessons, Mimi would greet them at the door and escort them to the piano, rubbing their legs as they walked.

Over time, she acquired other virtues. Jeoffry, Christopher Smart said, was docile and could learn certain things. ”For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon approbation.” Over time, Mimi learned to tolerate and even like the music in her new home. She would take her place atop the piano and listen attentively, sometimes commenting on the performances with an appreciative Meow. She learned to purr.

She began to like even the violin and once made a fool of herself over the Bach double violin concerto, weaving between the legs of the teenaged players, climbing on the piano bench, rubbing her face on the music score. The anxious performers discovered that it is difficult to be nervous when you are laughing.

Singers, rehearsing, have sung to Mimi as she gazes into their faces from her perch. Although she isn’t allowed to nap in the cello case, she now sleeps through most cello music. She allows small children to use her as a pillow.

Smart’s Jeoffry would “not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.” Although she is fed exclusively on weight-control kibble, Mimi has clearly outgrown her tree-climbing days. Now that she weighs 20 pounds, confrontations with other cats are out of the question: They stay well away from the giant kitty, even though she seems wistful as she watches them.

Since her only companions are humans, Mimi has taken on some human characteristics. She answers when spoken to. She almost always comes when called. She will sit politely at the dinner table without begging. She kisses. But like Jeoffrey, her best trait is that she can tread to all the measures upon the music.

(Reprinted from June Morrall's Half Moon Bay Memories)

Lesson Ten: Books

Yesterday my friend and fellow music teacher Marc phoned to ask me about a piano method book he had been reading. The book recommended playing all 24 scales with one finger until each was correctly learned. Only then would the poor student begin playing scales with standard fingering.

This is a great example of misinformation and wasted effort. It might result in learning the various key signatures, but it would involve more un-learning than learning in the long run, and I would guarantee that most people would give up scales before they mastered the 24.

The best books I have ever found about playing the piano are comic books, Peter Coraggio's series published by Neil A. Kjos called "The Art of Piano Performance", illustrated by Jon J. Murakami. The books are entertaining, of course, but also technically sound, comprehensive and useful. Until you are ready for the Oxford Musical Dictionary, Peter Coraggio's "Imagery in Music" is the only music dictionary you need.

I grew up with the old John Thompson red books which began with "Teaching Little Fingers To Play" and ended with Grade Five, but in my own teaching I use multi-key methods such as those published by Alfred and Hal Leonard (as well as a lot of individually-written sheet music). The old method books are based on playing in the key of C or mostly on the white keys, which trains the hand very early on to use a curved position because of the short thumb and pinky and the longer fingers in between.

Students who have grown up with multi-key methods are not afraid of the black keys, and their hands are accustomed to the various configurations and shapes involved in playing patterns and chords. The muscles remember. Although I find many beginners play by the numbers (now don't deny it; I know you do), at least they are getting an idea of intervals and the up-and-down patterns which they do not get when playing by "letters" or staying for a couple of years in a white-note position.

I think there is value in being able to play all the five-finger patterns, whether by tablature (with the keys shown on the page), ear or note. This leads right away to a muscular knowledge of all 24 major and minor chords, and this is the basis of keyboard harmony.

Plays Well With Others

Playing piano with someone else is a great way to get good at musical counting. Unless you both count at the same rate and observe the note and rest values correctly, the difference will become apparent right away.

Playing well with others fosters the ability to listen and accommodate. This video of a quartet sight-reading the Schumann piano quartet Op. 47 illustrates how this works at an advanced level. The cello enters a split-second too early, causing the piano to stutter momentarily. By the third or fourth measure, all four players hear where the beat should be and synchronize their playing without stopping or starting over.

My theory on this is that musicians playing together actually synchronize heartbeats. Certainly the heartbeat is our internal metronome; we play to our heartbeat. You can check it out yourself by taking your pulse after you have been playing five minutes or so.

Playing well with others in large groups, especially orchestras, involves not only careful listening, but also a complicated kind of ranking system. The concertmaster or concertmistress sits immediately to the left of the conductor, nearest the audience, and the principal cellist sits to the conductor’s right. Each is responsible for his or her section, for synchronized bowing and fingering. Their second in command shares a music stand, away from the audience, and is responsible for turning pages or acting as principal if the principal is missing.

In the second row, the player nearest the audience outranks the player sharing his/her music stand. Woodwinds sit in the middle, behind the second violins and violas. Percussion is always at the back because of the size and unwieldiness of the instruments. Piano and harp, unless they are performing solos, generally sit in the percussion section. The brass players sit in the back rows, sometimes to the dismay of the players in front of them (though many orchestras now have plastic sound barriers in front of the brass players, to protect the hearing of the other players.)

Each section leader is responsible for his own section and usually decides the ranking of the players. The concertmaster is the president of the orchestra and works with the conductor to come to an agreement on interpretation, tempo, and other fine details.

Non-principals are called rank and file players; someone outside the group who is called in at the last minute is called a ringer.

“Keeping Score”, the fine PBS series featuring Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, shows the research, practice and experimentation which goes on before the orchestra even meets to rehearse. The symphony even employs a copyist to write all the conductor's pencilled instructions into every individual part.

Professional groups such as the Symphony hold auditions, of course, but ability is not the only thing on display at these auditions. Sometimes under a new conductor, players will be replaced because of style or temperament, no matter how well they play.

The forming of duet partners and chamber groups, whether amateur or professional, usually happens because the players like each other, have similar skill levels and musical ideas. They play well together.