Earlier this year at the Well Tempered Conservatory we were presented with a dilemma that again required tact and discretion, as well as gentle guidance and a judicious use of extrinsic motivation: to wit, cake.
A pair of particularly polite and philosophically astute siblings were reluctant to participate in the spring recital.One felt embarrassed as he had begun lessons at a later age than most. His sister felt that if the brother didn't perform, it would be unfair to require her to do so.
Both of course had to be shown the fallacies behind their faulty reasoning. In the brother's case, it is true he started lessons later, but because of his diligent practice and hard work and his more mature learning skills and fine motor coordination, he had advanced far beyond the usual first year student. Also, it is not the technical difficulty of the piece that signifies, but the musicality of the performance for which I offered the pedagogial illustration of Arthur Schnabel.
Schnabel, whose performances of Beethoven and Schubert have been hailed as the model of interpretive penetration spent much of his life perfecting his performance of Traumerei- one of Robert Schumann's Kinderszenen, (Scenes of Childhood) that in most instances would be categorized as an intermediate level piece. (Schnabel also once famously divided his audience into two groups: coughing and not coughing- but that is a subject for future musings). As Edward Krankshaw notes in his preface to Arthur Schnabel: My Life and Music, "..it was simply that this extraordinary genius could not play to his liking a little fragment one learns in the nursery and then never thinks about again."
A pair of particularly polite and philosophically astute siblings were reluctant to participate in the spring recital.One felt embarrassed as he had begun lessons at a later age than most. His sister felt that if the brother didn't perform, it would be unfair to require her to do so.
Both of course had to be shown the fallacies behind their faulty reasoning. In the brother's case, it is true he started lessons later, but because of his diligent practice and hard work and his more mature learning skills and fine motor coordination, he had advanced far beyond the usual first year student. Also, it is not the technical difficulty of the piece that signifies, but the musicality of the performance for which I offered the pedagogial illustration of Arthur Schnabel.
Schnabel, whose performances of Beethoven and Schubert have been hailed as the model of interpretive penetration spent much of his life perfecting his performance of Traumerei- one of Robert Schumann's Kinderszenen, (Scenes of Childhood) that in most instances would be categorized as an intermediate level piece. (Schnabel also once famously divided his audience into two groups: coughing and not coughing- but that is a subject for future musings). As Edward Krankshaw notes in his preface to Arthur Schnabel: My Life and Music, "..it was simply that this extraordinary genius could not play to his liking a little fragment one learns in the nursery and then never thinks about again."
Legend has is that one morning, late in his life and just before lunch, Schnabel again was practing Traumeri, and this time there was a shriek from the back of his house. "Arthur ---you've got it! Twice more he played it through. That was Therese, his wife, who had been the most celebrated singer of Lieder in Germany before anyone had heard of Arthur Schnabel.
"What do you mean, I've got it?"
"You've been playing it wrong for 40 years.!"
"What do you mean, I've got it?"
"You've been playing it wrong for 40 years.!"
 Sister's reasoning need a complete reversal from the notion that performing at our recital is any form of punishment. Perhaps she had taken overly seriously the directive of that most extraordinary interpreters of Bach since Bach himself: Glenn Gould, who gave up performing live in 1964, at the age of 31. Although he continued to record until his death at age 50, he considered the public concert to be not only anachronistic but a force of evil. He felt recitals and concerts devolved into a competition with the audience mostly concerned with possibility of error or not meeting critical expectations. This he set forth in his conceit of GPAADAK, the Gould Plan for the Abolition of Applause and Demonstration of All Kinds." We here at the Well Tempered studio hold no truck for such self absorption and cynical posturing. Our audience of parents, siblings, grandparents and worthy aunts are hardly a hostile crowd. Brother and Sister were gently advised that to performan is not a duty, but a gift- to themselves and to their loved ones. Although many people own cds and albums of Glenn Gould, how more valuable would have been the memory of seeing him perform live. Both Brother and Sister performed graciously and beautifully. And it surely would have been a calamity not to enjoy this after the recital. |
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