Leonard Bernstein, wrote Oscar Levant in his acidly amusing autobiography, "Memoirs of an Amnesiac," "uses music as an accompaniment to his conducting."
I thought of that quip recently after hearing Lang Lang assault concertos by Grieg and Rachmaninoff at Ravinia. Many of us felt the music became an accessory to the soloist's acrobatic performance. The cherub-cheeked Chinese pianist, looking even younger than his 20 years,did everything at the keyboard but turn handstands. He swooned. He raised his arms as if embracing the heavens. He reclined to an almost horizontal position. All he needed was a white sequined suit and a candelabra and Ravinia could have sold him as the new Liberace.
The problem was that if you closed your eyes to all the visual distractions, you heard performances that bore scant resemblance to what Grieg and Rachmaninoff actually composed. Lang distorted the Grieg A-Minor Concerto almost beyond recognition, slowing phrases to the brink of stasis when he wasn't pulling others out of shape or tearing through fast sections at warp speed. Indeed, there were few moments in either performance when one didn't feel the music was being used as a pretext for self-indulgent exhibitionism.
No direction Perhaps the saddest thing of all was that Ravinia music director Christoph Eschenbach -- Lang's chief mentor, ironically enough did absolutely nothing to rein him in. While fleeing the Pavilion, I ran into one of the faculty members from this summer's Steans Young Artists Institute. He looked both sad and disgusted. I could imagine why. The gifted, hand-picked musicians he coaches at Ravinia put in long, intensive hours studying, rehearsing and performing music with precisely the integrity and seriousness of purpose many, including the faculty musician, found missing from Lang's playing.
What particularly troubled the faculty member, he said, was that few of the Steans young artists can hope to achieve anything close to the big celebrity career Lang is already enjoying while barely out of his teens. I nodded in sympathy as we walked toward the John D. Harza Building on the Ravinia grounds. For both of us, the 200 or so yards that separate the Pavilion from the Steans Institute facility had suddenly turned into a yawning gulf.
How right was the eminent pianist Arthur Rubinstein when he observed that a loud and fast performance, no matter how unmusical,always will produce a roaring ovation. It was dismaying to see the Ravinia audiences bursting into frenzied approval at the end of both concertos Lang played.
Forty or 50 years ago, when the festival provided a summer retreat for such composers as Stravinsky, Hindemith and Walton, Ravinia seemed to be cultivating a musically sophisticated public. Nowadays, no such discrimination is encouraged there. Blame America's cultural devolution. This nation really does appear to be suffering from a musical illiteracy greater than at any time in the three decades I have been attending concerts. That illiteracy can be observed on both sides of the stage and flourishes most insidiously in the citadels of managerial power.
Show biz vs. substance
The classical music business, faced with a famously shrinking and aging public as well as a diminished pool of bankable superstars, has been slowly turning serious music into just another branch of show biz. When the schizophrenic David Helfgott (remember him?) can be billed as a phenomenon of the piano, and Andrea Bocelli as a superstar of opera, it's a sign that the traditional checks and balances that once ruled classical music no longer apply. Nowadays a performer's worth is measured not by how profoundly he or she can penetrate a piece of music, but how much of a show they can put on and how many seats they can fill. Just like a Madonna or an Ozzy Osbourne.
This is not to say classical music shouldn't make room for the excesses of its most gifted musicians. It did so 40 years ago when an eccentric if wildly talented young Canadian pianist named Glenn Gould played Bach with a brilliance and individuality unlike any Bach playing the world had heard before him. Like Lang, he went to extremes, he took risks,and he seemed blithely unconcerned with how bizarre he may have looked at the keyboard.
Make real music
But unlike Lang, he had a deep intellectual grasp of the content and structure of the music he was playing. He was an artist of vision, a musician of all-embracing culture. He knew what the rules were when he bent them. He was, as conductor George Szell famously observed,both "a nut and a genius." Nobody needed to tell him -- as Eschenbach and his other mentor, pianist and Curtis Institute of Music President Gary Graffman, should be telling Lang -- to knock off the antics and get back to making real music, before it's too late. Thirty years or so ago, Harold Schonberg, the longtime chief music critic of the New York Times, lamented the gray uniformity of the young instrumentalists and singers turned out by the conservatories and music schools of his day. "So few have any personality, imagination, flair," he grumbled. That was in 1969. If Lang Lang 's curious career trajectory is a fair example, a good many among the present generation the opposite direction.
If their teachers, coaches and colleagues need to drum any Eternal Verity into their heads, it's this: The art of musical performance is a fragile bond that extends from the composer through the performer to the listener. The bond is forged in mutual trust and musical respect. If that trust and respect are violated, the bond is shattered. When that happens, the art is diminished, and so, by extension, are we all.
朗朗在 Ravinia 弹的 Grieg 与 Rachmaninoff concertos 象是用来点缀他自己的杂技表演.他弹琴的夸张动作,除了还没有整个人倒立站起来以外,其他的动作似乎都做尽了. 他表现得过度沉醉在音乐里,有时高举双手象是要拥抱天堂,有时把身体向后仰几乎成直线.他若是穿些有点缀的衣服,Ravinia 当局还可以把他比成是新一代的 Liberace 来宣传呢! (Liberace 是以前专弹半古典半流行曲的钢琴家,表演时的衣着挂满许多玲郎满目的点缀物).
问题是,当你闭上眼睛不被他夸张的动作干扰时,你会发现他弹的 Grieg 与 Rachmaninoff 与作曲家真正所要表达的很少相似之处. 他把 Grieg A-Minor Concerto 扭曲得你几乎认不出来.有时他会把一句弄慢致几乎不成形,在快的部份有时则以不恰当的速度切割.他似乎常常过度沉醉於要利用音乐来吸引人们对他的注意力.
没有方向
最悲哀的是朗朗念的学校的校长没有制止朗朗的不当的地方.对朗朗的表现,最近一位教职员满脸的不快,因为这学校的学生皆很认真,严肃与诚实的对待音乐,独朗朗没有. 最令这些教职员悲哀与不满的是,认真,严肃对待音乐的其他年轻人却在事业远远落后於还未成年的朗朗.
钢琴家 Arthur Rubinstein 曾经说,一场没有音乐性的演奏,只要演奏者能大声与弹得很快,听众总会感到大快而起立鼓掌.见到 Ravinia 的听众在朗朗演奏完毕后的热烈疯狂反应,真感到不解.
五十年前, Ravinia 的听众注重的是有音乐性,有质量的演奏.如今的情况己不如往年. 美国这个国家在最近这三十年里巳有音乐文盲的顷向. 这与有权力控制着一切音乐的组织有关.
显耀但空洞 与 有质量演奏
由于古典音乐爱好者越来越少,古典音乐这行业己渐渐由严肃转向无实质而显耀空洞的表演.如今一个表演者的身价不是决定於他对作品能了解多少,而是决定於他的门票能卖多少,就好象Madonna 与 Ozzy Osbourne.
着重演奏真正的音乐
Glenn Gould 也有怪的地方,他不顾他弹琴时看来有多怪,但是与朗朗不同的是,他是有才华的,他真正理解他所演奏的音乐.人们称他是怪物同时也是天才. 他虽然看耒怪,但他知道他在做什么,没有人介意他的怪处(据我知道, Glenn Gould 喜欢坐自巳带来的矮凳子,且口中会跟着音乐唱).朗朗的学校院长应该告诉朗朗趁早抛弃不必要的动着而专注於真正有质量的演奏.
作曲家的音乐通过演奏者传达给我们,这个联系是多么的脆弱,听众期待演奏者尊重作曲家原意而把真正的音乐带给听众,若是演奏者没有做到这一点,艺术被摧毁,同时我们,包括演奏者也都一起被摧毁.
I thought of that quip recently after hearing Lang Lang assault concertos by Grieg and Rachmaninoff at Ravinia. Many of us felt the music became an accessory to the soloist's acrobatic performance. The cherub-cheeked Chinese pianist, looking even younger than his 20 years,did everything at the keyboard but turn handstands. He swooned. He raised his arms as if embracing the heavens. He reclined to an almost horizontal position. All he needed was a white sequined suit and a candelabra and Ravinia could have sold him as the new Liberace.
The problem was that if you closed your eyes to all the visual distractions, you heard performances that bore scant resemblance to what Grieg and Rachmaninoff actually composed. Lang distorted the Grieg A-Minor Concerto almost beyond recognition, slowing phrases to the brink of stasis when he wasn't pulling others out of shape or tearing through fast sections at warp speed. Indeed, there were few moments in either performance when one didn't feel the music was being used as a pretext for self-indulgent exhibitionism.
No direction Perhaps the saddest thing of all was that Ravinia music director Christoph Eschenbach -- Lang's chief mentor, ironically enough did absolutely nothing to rein him in. While fleeing the Pavilion, I ran into one of the faculty members from this summer's Steans Young Artists Institute. He looked both sad and disgusted. I could imagine why. The gifted, hand-picked musicians he coaches at Ravinia put in long, intensive hours studying, rehearsing and performing music with precisely the integrity and seriousness of purpose many, including the faculty musician, found missing from Lang's playing.
What particularly troubled the faculty member, he said, was that few of the Steans young artists can hope to achieve anything close to the big celebrity career Lang is already enjoying while barely out of his teens. I nodded in sympathy as we walked toward the John D. Harza Building on the Ravinia grounds. For both of us, the 200 or so yards that separate the Pavilion from the Steans Institute facility had suddenly turned into a yawning gulf.
How right was the eminent pianist Arthur Rubinstein when he observed that a loud and fast performance, no matter how unmusical,always will produce a roaring ovation. It was dismaying to see the Ravinia audiences bursting into frenzied approval at the end of both concertos Lang played.
Forty or 50 years ago, when the festival provided a summer retreat for such composers as Stravinsky, Hindemith and Walton, Ravinia seemed to be cultivating a musically sophisticated public. Nowadays, no such discrimination is encouraged there. Blame America's cultural devolution. This nation really does appear to be suffering from a musical illiteracy greater than at any time in the three decades I have been attending concerts. That illiteracy can be observed on both sides of the stage and flourishes most insidiously in the citadels of managerial power.
Show biz vs. substance
The classical music business, faced with a famously shrinking and aging public as well as a diminished pool of bankable superstars, has been slowly turning serious music into just another branch of show biz. When the schizophrenic David Helfgott (remember him?) can be billed as a phenomenon of the piano, and Andrea Bocelli as a superstar of opera, it's a sign that the traditional checks and balances that once ruled classical music no longer apply. Nowadays a performer's worth is measured not by how profoundly he or she can penetrate a piece of music, but how much of a show they can put on and how many seats they can fill. Just like a Madonna or an Ozzy Osbourne.
This is not to say classical music shouldn't make room for the excesses of its most gifted musicians. It did so 40 years ago when an eccentric if wildly talented young Canadian pianist named Glenn Gould played Bach with a brilliance and individuality unlike any Bach playing the world had heard before him. Like Lang, he went to extremes, he took risks,and he seemed blithely unconcerned with how bizarre he may have looked at the keyboard.
Make real music
But unlike Lang, he had a deep intellectual grasp of the content and structure of the music he was playing. He was an artist of vision, a musician of all-embracing culture. He knew what the rules were when he bent them. He was, as conductor George Szell famously observed,both "a nut and a genius." Nobody needed to tell him -- as Eschenbach and his other mentor, pianist and Curtis Institute of Music President Gary Graffman, should be telling Lang -- to knock off the antics and get back to making real music, before it's too late. Thirty years or so ago, Harold Schonberg, the longtime chief music critic of the New York Times, lamented the gray uniformity of the young instrumentalists and singers turned out by the conservatories and music schools of his day. "So few have any personality, imagination, flair," he grumbled. That was in 1969. If Lang Lang 's curious career trajectory is a fair example, a good many among the present generation the opposite direction.
If their teachers, coaches and colleagues need to drum any Eternal Verity into their heads, it's this: The art of musical performance is a fragile bond that extends from the composer through the performer to the listener. The bond is forged in mutual trust and musical respect. If that trust and respect are violated, the bond is shattered. When that happens, the art is diminished, and so, by extension, are we all.
朗朗在 Ravinia 弹的 Grieg 与 Rachmaninoff concertos 象是用来点缀他自己的杂技表演.他弹琴的夸张动作,除了还没有整个人倒立站起来以外,其他的动作似乎都做尽了. 他表现得过度沉醉在音乐里,有时高举双手象是要拥抱天堂,有时把身体向后仰几乎成直线.他若是穿些有点缀的衣服,Ravinia 当局还可以把他比成是新一代的 Liberace 来宣传呢! (Liberace 是以前专弹半古典半流行曲的钢琴家,表演时的衣着挂满许多玲郎满目的点缀物).
问题是,当你闭上眼睛不被他夸张的动作干扰时,你会发现他弹的 Grieg 与 Rachmaninoff 与作曲家真正所要表达的很少相似之处. 他把 Grieg A-Minor Concerto 扭曲得你几乎认不出来.有时他会把一句弄慢致几乎不成形,在快的部份有时则以不恰当的速度切割.他似乎常常过度沉醉於要利用音乐来吸引人们对他的注意力.
没有方向
最悲哀的是朗朗念的学校的校长没有制止朗朗的不当的地方.对朗朗的表现,最近一位教职员满脸的不快,因为这学校的学生皆很认真,严肃与诚实的对待音乐,独朗朗没有. 最令这些教职员悲哀与不满的是,认真,严肃对待音乐的其他年轻人却在事业远远落后於还未成年的朗朗.
钢琴家 Arthur Rubinstein 曾经说,一场没有音乐性的演奏,只要演奏者能大声与弹得很快,听众总会感到大快而起立鼓掌.见到 Ravinia 的听众在朗朗演奏完毕后的热烈疯狂反应,真感到不解.
五十年前, Ravinia 的听众注重的是有音乐性,有质量的演奏.如今的情况己不如往年. 美国这个国家在最近这三十年里巳有音乐文盲的顷向. 这与有权力控制着一切音乐的组织有关.
显耀但空洞 与 有质量演奏
由于古典音乐爱好者越来越少,古典音乐这行业己渐渐由严肃转向无实质而显耀空洞的表演.如今一个表演者的身价不是决定於他对作品能了解多少,而是决定於他的门票能卖多少,就好象Madonna 与 Ozzy Osbourne.
着重演奏真正的音乐
Glenn Gould 也有怪的地方,他不顾他弹琴时看来有多怪,但是与朗朗不同的是,他是有才华的,他真正理解他所演奏的音乐.人们称他是怪物同时也是天才. 他虽然看耒怪,但他知道他在做什么,没有人介意他的怪处(据我知道, Glenn Gould 喜欢坐自巳带来的矮凳子,且口中会跟着音乐唱).朗朗的学校院长应该告诉朗朗趁早抛弃不必要的动着而专注於真正有质量的演奏.
作曲家的音乐通过演奏者传达给我们,这个联系是多么的脆弱,听众期待演奏者尊重作曲家原意而把真正的音乐带给听众,若是演奏者没有做到这一点,艺术被摧毁,同时我们,包括演奏者也都一起被摧毁.
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