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Cyprien Krapsaris and a Rant Against Mozart

A clown, a creep, and a charlatan. Lacking any real musical ideas himself, Katsaris takes it upon himself to corrupt the minds of young pianists by means of the masterclass, in which he teaches students to bring out ridiculous inner melodies in Chopin's Scherzo No. 2 (just listening to him instruct the poor student on the nonexistent inner melody makes me want to reach into my computer screen and strangle his smug bizarre face), and hits on young girls.

He once played Cziffra's transcription of Flight of the Bumblebee (embarrassingly badly, I might add) before the guy on a TV show, and now he goes around telling people that Cziffra selected him to be his musical heir or something. That couldn't be further from the truth, since Katsaris is almost as unmusical and tone-deaf as Boris the "B'goshawful" Berezhovsky. 

Katsaris also arranged a spurious set of variations on the Happy Birthday song in the style of various composers for the occasion of Yehudi Menuhin's birthday. The slimy, ingratiating way in which he played the piece spoke volumes about the lengths to which he would go to further his stillborn career. The piece also revealed that Katsaris has a fundamental misunderstanding of what "in the style of" means, since he seems to think it means adapting the Happy Birthday melody to pieces that these composers have actually written. 

On Mozart:

I must say, however, that I think the Happy Birthday melody was a decided improvement over the confused gibberish that is the original Mozart. Some say Mozart died too young; others hold that he died before his musical ideas could develop into anything more complex than a trill. (And the maddening redness!)

Someone on Reddit recently posted a shockingly massive collection of quotes exalting Mozart on the little red man's birthday, and a lot of it sounded like the kind of vague, insincere compliments that a boss writes for an employee he has never met on the latter's wedding or funeral. 

In Bach we admire the depth of the human mind, and in Mozart the divine instinct? I think not. Bach is what the angels play before God, and Mozart is what they play for each other? Not a chance.

Mozart is joy at its most naïve. Oblivious passion. Idealism. A limited attention span that is distracted by every fleeting thought. Childishness. Prettiness that titillates you on a good day, and irritates the hell out of you on other days. Mozart is background music on a lazy afternoon, when the world is perfectly harmonious and the mind blissfully empty.

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