Sarah’s last post, about a Philadelphia critic blasting iconoclastic piano legend Ivo Pogorelich for giving what the critic perceived as a “bad” performance (a performance which, from all appearances, went exactly as Pogorelich wanted it to go, begging the question of what defines “bad” if it isn’t simply a lack of competence) got me thinking about other musical boundary-pushers. When does a performer’s prerogative cease to be artistically satisfying, and become more about ego? Should we as listeners be allowed to carry our own aural history around with us to concert halls, using the stock of recorded music in our head to judge against any performer who dares try something radically different? And if not – if we decide that every performance should be judged in a vacuum – then aren’t we guilty of the musical equivalent of moral relativism?
Okay, that’s all probably a bit too weighty, so I’ll try to scale it back a bit. Specifically, Sarah’s post got me thinking back to performers who once caused me to completely rethink what music could be back when I was too young to have Perspective. Or, to give perspective another name, Baggage. I grew up in small towns near Boston and Philadelphia, two of America’s most conservative musical cities, where tradition reigns, concert halls are stately and dark, and there is an almost bizarre reverence for the way classical music sounded from roughly the 1930s to the 1960s. So you can just imagine my reaction when I happened across this performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons playing on Philly’s WYBE-TV back in the early ’90s…
The fact that Nigel Kennedy’s Vivaldi wouldn’t cause most young listeners today to bat an eye is testament to how much the world of concert music has changed in just the last couple of decades. At the time, I’d never heard anything like this, and I’d certainly never seen a rock-star-pale dude in a designer suit (funny – in my memory, he was wearing leather) stand on a barely lit soundstage and strut like David Bowie while he assaulted Vivaldi’s score with unauthorized ponticello, tempos at the outer edge of playability, and a rough-edged attack that could be said to be completely antithetical to baroque music. I mean, I never thought of a lute as a particularly ironic instrument until I saw the closeup of one in that video.
I found Nigel Kennedy utterly entrancing on first hearing mainly because I didn’t have any deeply ingrained opinions yet about how certain specific pieces of music ought to be played. And, of course, there is no “how it ought to be played,” really. Those distinctions are arbitrary shackles that we place on music when it becomes familiar enough for us to decide that we are now experts on its content. We all reach that stage eventually, whether it’s because we’ve listened too many times to a particular recording, because too many performers decided to perform a given piece exactly the same way in a given time period, or simply because we ran into a performance so captivating that we could no longer imagine that particular work being played any other way.
I soured on Kennedy less than a decade after I first heard him play, when my own taste-o-meter kicked in and I started to be offended by some of his more, shall we say, shameless interpretations of classic repertoire. But was it that he allowed his ego to get in the way of making music, or that I grew calcified in my view of how those pieces should sound? I’m inclined to say the former, simply because I can still appreciate so much of Kennedy’s earlier work, and I still love hearing familiar music reimagined in general, but then, I would take that view, wouldn’t I? None of us likes to consider the possibility that our own tastes might be governed by nothing more than arbitrary boundaries set up when our brains stopped deciding to accept new information.
When I read the review of Pogorelich’s Chopin that so offended Sarah, and then viewed the video of the concert that she posted, I have to admit, I had some sympathy for the critic. To me, there’s a fine line between exploring new ideas and simply steamrolling the composer with your own ego, and Pogorelich might well have crossed it.
On the other hand, I sit on stage for more than 20 weeks a year under the baton of a music director whose approach to Sibelius and Beethoven is hailed internationally as a revelation, but which might have gotten him booed out of a concert hall in 1960. I’ve played concerts with Osmo that have made me completely rethink pacing, flow, and harmony and how I can use them. His Sibelius 2 has pretty much ruined me for any other conductor. Same with his Beethoven 6. And judging by the ovations those performances have gotten from audiences in Minneapolis and around the world, I’m not alone.
But what that really means is that I’ve locked myself in, mentally, to believing that there’s a “right” way to play those pieces, and that it is Osmo’s way. I don’t really believe that, of course, but no matter how hard I try, I’ll probably never again be able to really enjoy the thick, syrupy Sibelius of so many mid-20th century conductors. And that’s my failing, not theirs. And while I don’t necessarily agree entirely with Sarah that a critic’s personal baggage should be checked at the door of the concert hall, there’s no question that a critic who allows his lone perspective to become more important than an appreciation of fresh ideas is probably doing his readers a disservice.
I’m not a music critic, nor do I read much that music critics write. When I do I’m always astounded by how much difference there can be between them in their assessments of the identical performance they have all heard. What somebody else thinks is the “right” way to play a piece is of no use to me. Either the music “speaks” to me or it does not. As Shaw’s Saint Joan says: “What judgment can I judge by but my own ?” A music critic would be more useful to me if he/she drew my attention to aspects of the performance that “spoke” to him/her. I might then be able to attune myself to those and thereby increase my pleasure in hearing the performance, even in retrospect.