Also this issue:

Disappearing Act
How the Vanishing Peoples of the Earth materialized in Philadelphia.
-Patrick Rapa

Spork in the Road
Two vagabond electronic artists are tuning out and moving on.
-A.D. Amorosi

Palomar
-Brian Howard

From Autumn to Ashes
-Andrew Parks

Unsilent Night
-A.D. Amorosi

KlezKamp
-Mary Armstrong

Reviews
-Patrick Rapa, Paul Burress and A.D. Amorosi

Beat Box
-Ain Ardron-Doley

December 19-25, 2002

music

suitespot

by Peter Burwasser on Classical

Quite a few years ago, in the manner of some of my more esteemed and experienced colleagues, I would attend musical performances, especially piano recitals, with the musical score spread over my lap. The idea is that in doing so, the critic can arrive at a more accurate appraisal of the performance. Then one fine afternoon, Rosalyn Tureck was playing the complete Goldberg Variations of Bach at the Walnut Street Theatre, first on the harpsichord, then on the piano. Tureck claims to have a direct spiritual connection to Bach that allows her to play his music on the piano, an instrument he did not compose for.

There was no reason to doubt her assertion. Within moments of her performance, I closed the music, and my eyes, and just listened. This was a revelation. Before, I had been listening to the notes. Tureck, through the grandeur and beauty of her artistry, made me listen to the music. Tureck does many things in her Bach-playing that are not in the score, things that might make purists curl their lips. But she gets the music. Bach comes through.

This is the question that should be at the core of any classical musical criticism: Is the composer served? Many fine musicians assert that this process should begin with as thorough a reading of the score as is possible. The score is the blueprint; this is certainly a good rule of thumb. And yet the music must continue to be a living, breathing expression, subject to the culture, intelligence and technique of the interpreter. Start with the notes, but get to the music.

Nearly all of my most memorable concert experiences involved performances in which some elements of the score were violated, perhaps unintentionally, as the artist pushed to achieve greater expressivity. Vladimir Horowitz crashing through a Chopin Etude, Leontyne Price pushing her phrasing in a Verdi aria to the breaking point, Robert Shaw staggering off the stage after roaring through a heart-stopping reading of the "Gloria" of Beethoven's "Missa Solemnis" with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra -- all were moments of glorious music making and magnificent artistry.

In a technical sense, these musicians were making mistakes, lots of them. Their performances would have been greatly diminished if there was not the passion that produced such mistakes. One of the world's most polished musical ensembles, our own Philadelphia Orchestra, makes mistakes every time they play. To my ears, the more mistakes they make, the better they sound. Those mistakes represent the striving for humanity that ultimately brings us closer to the heart of the composer's vision.