How
dramatically tastes and conventions change over time. If a pianist
today were to perform with the aid of the score, he would be criticized
for being unprepared or for not taking his art seriously. Sviatoslav
Richter was the only twentieth century pianist I can think of who
performed with the score in public, and his contemporaries (viz.
Horowitz, as the story goes) expressed their bemusement at this
practice. This is also something that seems to be unique to pianists.
Orchestras and conductors always make use of scores, but the soloist in a
piano concerto must nevertheless perform blind. Organists make use of
scores, too. What has been described as amazing feats of memory on the
part of organists like Marie-Claire Alain and Daniel Chorzempa in
playing without sheet music is doubtless perfunctory memorization for a
pianist. Yet in the nineteenth century it was not so. If a pianist did
not perform with the score in front of him, he was considered arrogant
and crude. Even if he wasn't comfortable looking at the score while
playing, he was advised to place it on the piano nevertheless, for the
gratification of his audience. When Karl Tausig, who was notable in
playing from memory in an age when it was highly frowned upon, died at
the young age of twenty-nine, the pianist Amy Fay believed in all
seriousness that his death was the result of typhus fever brought on by
overtaxing his musical memory.
Another nineteenth-century practice that has long fallen out of fashion is playing a prelude before launching into a piece. I mention this, because this served an important purpose in its day. Performers often improvised a prelude before a piece in order to draw the attention of their audiences (often loud and crude) to the fact that music was about to be played. They would quiet down, and no part of the main performance would go unheard. The tendency to prelude, as it were, bordered on obsession at times, and not playing a prelude - like playing from memory - was viewed as an affront to the audience. Composers often wrote preludes into their own works, and what today may seem like an introductory passage that is nevertheless an organic part of the piece may have been in those days a prelude to what followed. The result was that some performers improvised preludes to the composer's prelude, the sheer ridiculousness of which it is difficult to comprehend in an age when the practice is all but unheard of.
It was all very strange, I'm sure. Josef Hofmann was one of the last pianists to play preludes at concerts, though Horowitz can be heard striking a few random chords before at least one piece at his 1986 concert in Moscow. Nowadays audiences are generally quiet (to the point of being stuffy), so that a performer need only sit down at the piano or hold up a hand to produce silence. Still, the initial applause when the performer walks onstage is unavoidable, and one would think that the performer would have the sense to wait for it to end before beginning to play.
Martha Argerich, for some reason, does not. She launches into a piece, even as the audience is still applauding her, even before she sits down. What can one say to that? The effect it produces is hideous. That coupled with the fact that her technique has deteriorated with age, and her musical ideas have all but left her, produces a singularly unpleasant effect. The effortless poetry that she had in her youth is gone. Now she is out of control - in a bad way. Her Chopin's Third Scherzo from 2000 was over a minute faster than her performance from the Chopin Competition in 1965, and about thirty-seven times less pleasant. But her diehard fans, who can't see past her sex appeal, will call this "fire", and marvel at how one so old can play so youthfully. All I can say is that Martha Argerich is the archetypal has-been, and for the sake of the pianist she once was, I'm glad she has stopped giving solo recitals. Incidentally, Horowitz post-1965 and pre-1986 was also unbearable to listen to. Rubinstein's the only one who was at the top of his form throughout his life. What a musician!
As a footnote, much of this information is from Kenneth Hamilton's After the Golden Age (except, of course, for my brief rant about Argerich's playing), an excellent book for those interested in Romantic pianism and such.
Another nineteenth-century practice that has long fallen out of fashion is playing a prelude before launching into a piece. I mention this, because this served an important purpose in its day. Performers often improvised a prelude before a piece in order to draw the attention of their audiences (often loud and crude) to the fact that music was about to be played. They would quiet down, and no part of the main performance would go unheard. The tendency to prelude, as it were, bordered on obsession at times, and not playing a prelude - like playing from memory - was viewed as an affront to the audience. Composers often wrote preludes into their own works, and what today may seem like an introductory passage that is nevertheless an organic part of the piece may have been in those days a prelude to what followed. The result was that some performers improvised preludes to the composer's prelude, the sheer ridiculousness of which it is difficult to comprehend in an age when the practice is all but unheard of.
It was all very strange, I'm sure. Josef Hofmann was one of the last pianists to play preludes at concerts, though Horowitz can be heard striking a few random chords before at least one piece at his 1986 concert in Moscow. Nowadays audiences are generally quiet (to the point of being stuffy), so that a performer need only sit down at the piano or hold up a hand to produce silence. Still, the initial applause when the performer walks onstage is unavoidable, and one would think that the performer would have the sense to wait for it to end before beginning to play.
Martha Argerich, for some reason, does not. She launches into a piece, even as the audience is still applauding her, even before she sits down. What can one say to that? The effect it produces is hideous. That coupled with the fact that her technique has deteriorated with age, and her musical ideas have all but left her, produces a singularly unpleasant effect. The effortless poetry that she had in her youth is gone. Now she is out of control - in a bad way. Her Chopin's Third Scherzo from 2000 was over a minute faster than her performance from the Chopin Competition in 1965, and about thirty-seven times less pleasant. But her diehard fans, who can't see past her sex appeal, will call this "fire", and marvel at how one so old can play so youthfully. All I can say is that Martha Argerich is the archetypal has-been, and for the sake of the pianist she once was, I'm glad she has stopped giving solo recitals. Incidentally, Horowitz post-1965 and pre-1986 was also unbearable to listen to. Rubinstein's the only one who was at the top of his form throughout his life. What a musician!
As a footnote, much of this information is from Kenneth Hamilton's After the Golden Age (except, of course, for my brief rant about Argerich's playing), an excellent book for those interested in Romantic pianism and such.
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