"Reactions to a piano are a personal matter; they are not always sharply defined and are subject to continual change. The pianist has to take into account whether he is going to accompany songs or brave the orchestra in the First Bartók Concerto; whether he is to perform before an audience of fifty or five thousand; whether he is to play Schubert or Stravinsky, Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata or Beethoven's Op. 110. Can one, nevertheless, lay down some general guidelines for the evaluation of an instrument, which could be of assistance to most pianists in most situations? Let me do so by submitting the following propositions:

1. The piano should be dynamically even in all its registers and at all levels of volume. This evenness can only be achieved by careful regulation of the action, together with the technique of voicing, which I shall come back to later.
2. The tone of the piano should be bright and radiant, but have no cutting edge. The rounder, duller, blunter the tone, the less chance one has to colour it, to mix timbres, to detach one layer of sound from another. Faced with the choice between a concert grand with an inherently beautiful but invariable tone, and a less noble but more colourful instrument, the pianist will usually prefer the more colourful one.
3. The volume of the piano should range from a whisper to a roar. This again depends on a carefully regulated action, which does not require the player to possess superhuman strength, and yet is responsive to his control of the most tender sotto voce. Furthermore, resounding splendour must be attainable even in passages and trills within the upper middle range without unduly tiring the hand.
4. The sustaining pedal must dampen precisely. Even when lowered quite slowly onto the strings, all dampers must remain completely noiseless. The much feared grinding and soughing of the dampers at the point of contact, a chronic complaint in recent years, will, as likely as not, be blamed on the pianist as a technical shortcoming. Without properly shaped and regulated dampers made of good felt, refined, atmospheric pedalling is simply impossible. The lever of the pedal should not have too great a degree of play.
5. The tone of the soft pedal, i.e. the depressed left pedal, should not be thin and acid, but should retain sufficient lyrical roundness and plasticity of sound variation.
6. The pitch of the piano should be able to survive a concert without major dislocation. (If a concert grand goes out of tune, the fault often lies not with the instrument, but with the inadequate skill of the tuner.) Where I expect some disagreement is over the question of the soft pedal. There are pianists who prefer a shallow, nasal con sordino tone, decidedly removed from the normal gamut of sound. This 'grotesque' tone can, by virtue of its sharper definition, be of advantage in over-resonant halls. However, it may be so intolerant of nuances that the result is a single, unvaried tone colour. I find this too much of a restriction. Distinct whispering, important as it may be, is after all only a very small part of the musical function of the soft pedal."

På den andra sidan har jag gått in ibland men inte haft någon konkret plan på vad jag skulle skriva. Men varje gång ser man i rollen till höger dessa ändlösa arga diskussioner som ger en knut i magen. Då har viljan att själv skriva något tynat bort.

I början av veckan stod ett tranpar på åkern här utanför och konverserade. De trumpetade med nästan konstant 10 sekunders mellanrum. Då trodde man att våren började komma igång ordentligt, men vintern hade ännu inte sagt det lilla den ville ha sagt detta år. Och så kom den på besök åter.

Fått nys om att en mycket duktig pianist vid namn Alfred Brendel ska sluta spela, han har spelat i ungefär 60 år och har gett en massa fina inspelningar till eftervärlden.

Det finns omkring 300 inspelade filer att lyssna till på den här sidan med Brendel. Jag gillar främst hans Schubertspelningar, men även Beethoven gör han bra.

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Hier soir j'ai relu quelques "Je me souviens...." de George Pérec.
Moi je me souviendrai ... des doigts totalement recouverts de sparadrap d'Alfred Brendel... J'aurais passé les meilleurs moments de ma vie à écouter les deuxièmes mouvements des dernières sonates de Joseph Haydn (surtout les n°34, n°48, n°49, n°50 et n°52, n°20...) que j'avais mis bout à bout sur des CD pour pouvoir les écouter littéralement en boucle. Elles ont défilé dans ma tête pendant des années. Et encore aujourd'hui (où j'ai moi aussi des petits bouts de sparadrap partout dans le cerveau à cause d'alzheimer) je ne me lasse pas de les écouter (sur un iPod maintenant). Et parfois même, quand il y a du soleil le matin au Jardin du Luxembourg, je les confonds avec l'automne...

J'appartiens au monde d'avant la pomme

We sat next to some nice people, essentially symphony groupies if that's even possible. The kind of people who travel and see orchestras like the CSO, as a hobby. no big tall fat people in front of me, so I had no problems seeing. The first piece, Haydn's 93rd, was really really good. Unfortunately it was overshadowed by those that followed it, but Haydn can hardly ever be considered an opening act. I was already having a fruitful musical weekend. I saw a friends band concert on Thursday and it kicked some serious ass, and I think I've now started to get interested in the whole band music culture, if one exists. The music was just so great. For my Orchestra class I need two outside class concert credits, and I was getting them both knocked off in one weekend; couldn't be happier to know that I had no obligations after this concert. But Haydn is always great, and this particular piece was very delicate and enjoyable. There was a great little quartet part in the middle of it, and one of the funniest orchestral puns I've ever heard. You guys are going to read this and laugh at me because it's not really that funny, but being an orchestra nerd, I chuckled. There is a part in the middle where only three or so violins are playing at all and they are all playing very quiet notes, in very slow intervals. And then there is a long pause, and a bassoon just blasts out the most obnoxious note ever from the back. It was awesome. And once again, our seats were awesome. We must have been, like, ten feet away from first violin Robert Chen, who is already quite a show to watch. He is one of the best violin players I've ever seen live, and he puts so much energy into his playing. It almost looks like he's relaxed though, it's hard to describe.

Anyway, the Haydn was pretty short for a symphony, about twenty minutes. But it ended and everyone clapped and it was very good. But that was only the beginning. At this point, the rest of the orchestra reconfigures for the guest player and all the basses leave and many of the band instruments, etc. I guess I didn't mention who the guest was. Alfred Brendel. For those of you who are not familiar with the man, he is essentially the greatest pianist alive. Or at least he might as well be. He could play fucking Yankee Doodle and I'd be floored, honestly. So the orchestra was rearranged and a big beautiful piano was brought onstage, and then Alfred comes out. He's in his late seventies, an old bird of an Austrian fellow, and he is kind of twitchy and his age shows. That's not to say he doesn't look like a very nice dude, but he's kind of getting up in his days. When he plays sometimes he makes random little groans and twitches, but it doesn't interfere with his playing and he is probably still in his prime. They played Mozart's Piano Concerto 17, which is the one that Mozart famously taught the first five bars of to his pet bird. Mozart is one of those composers that everyone knows for a reason; he is reliable, and I don't think I've ever heard a piece of his that I didn't like. But Mozart is about the greatest you can possibly hear, and there are only two or three composers that compare in my book. I'll get to that later.

I felt like this was the best piece I've ever had the pleasure of hearing the CSO do. Alfred sat there next to the piano while the rest of the orchestra started, waiting for his time, with this warm smile on his face, and to hear him start into his piano solos from complete silence when the rest of the orchestra has stopped, that's to find God in music. There is no question. The piece was only a little over thirty minutes and by the halfway point I already knew it was one of the coolest things I have ever heard. I just have a hard time believing how anyone can play the piano...it impresses the shit out of me. The theory has to be buried into your brain, because on Piano there it's really black and white, like fretted instruments. On a violin you can search for the right note, but on the piano, if you fuck up, you fuck up. And at that, both of your hands are operating, and Alfred Brendel does it on such a spectacular level. The emotion that he puts into even the simplest fills baffles me. And yet he puts the same emotion into huge intricate solos, and he does it flawlessly. Sometimes with his eyes closed, his elderly jowls going wild. It was a thirty minute piece that felt like ten, it was just TOO good. He got four ovations, three standing.

Somewhere in the middle of the piece, though, a woman on the back balcony caught my eye. She was either drunk, stoned, or not completely there in the head, but I still think she might have been one of the free-est souls I've ever seen. She was literally doing a sitting hippie dance during Alfred Brendels piece. That made me realize...this shit is pretty rockin.

During intermission, people usually walk around to exercise their legs, go to the bathroom, pick up a ridiculously expensive chocolate bar or glass of wine at the concessions, etc. But I was too floored to really stand up right then. It was obvious to me that this was one of the most impressive things to ever grace my ears. I can only think of one or two performances that have come close, and then actual recorded music which is quite different and more up for grabs. When it comes to recorded music, lots of songs strike me as just brilliant every time I hear them. Off the top of my head, Song To The Siren covered by Cocteau Twins, Fleeting Smile by Roger Eno, and Samba Pa 'Ti by Santana. I also saw Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble a few years ago, and that was also just unbelievable. But this was totally a new breed of awesome. So you'd think I'd be disappointed in whatever the last piece had to offer. Because really, how can something measure up to this? It's Alfred Brendel playing Mozart, that's pretty hard to beat. Like I said, only a few composers compare to Mozart. Bach is one, Handel is another. I usually don't think Beethoven when I think of favorite composers, but he is amazing enough in his composures that he should be making top composer lists for all fans of classical music.

To my disbelief, the Mozart was actually beaten out by something even more amazing, Beethoven's 5th. Even if you don't know shit about classical music, chances are you know that name. Beethoven's 5th. Everyone has heard the opening bars. It's just so a part of popular culture and music that it's hard to escape. And it's popular for a reason, most people consider it to be the greatest piece of music ever produced. It's not just the opening part that is great... Every minute of the thirty minute long symphony is absolutely ingenious, and not one fumble is made in the whole course of the music. It's the most amazing piece of classical music, bar none. It has load of energy and every time the piece explodes into beautiful sound within the last fifteen minutes, and it feels like about as many times, you just feel like this is the greatest thing you have ever listened to. And it's being performed by the CSO no less, all operating as one huge wonderful unit. Everything here was absolutely perfect, the pizzicato stretch, the complex solos bouncing off of each of the sections... This shit is hardcore. If there is headbanging classical music, this is it. No question, this was even cooler than the Mozart. I've fucking seen the light.

Anyway, Saturday was easily the best night of music of my life, I'm still trying to get over it.

Brendel certainly is a musical scholar, however, so he knows how the arc of a pianist's career is often different from that of other musicians. Violinists tend to be child prodigies, like 10-year-old Yehudi Menuhin, "who played the Beethoven concerto in Germany, and Fritz Busch, who was his conductor and a very critical musician, … said in his memoir that he played to perfection, and that means not just as a violinist but also in the understanding of the work. Sort of mysterious, but this happens." The catch is how that may create an intense pressure on the prodigy — "they have to keep it up." And "sometimes there is not much development after this."

Conductors, on the other hand, can go on forever, "or even longer," he noted with a laugh, recalling the Vienna Philharmonic's Karl Böhm, who kept at it until he died during a rehearsal, at nearly 87, "and there was a joke that in Rotterdam, before the beginning of the performance, the manager would come out in front of the curtain and say, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I am very sorry to tell you that Dr. Böhm has died. But in order to save the performance he is willing to conduct dead.' "

Pianists, he said, fall in between. Rarely are they quite such prodigies as Menuhin, but they can be long-lasting if they are lucky, even if the physical demands of the instrument mean they can't hang on quite like Böhm, or at least perform certain "athletic" pieces forever — persistent arm pain forced Brendel to give up the likes of Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" sonata a few years back. "But there's a lot of pieces left," he said.