PART I
The "minorness" of Rachmaninoff's
aesthetics and where (not) to
look for its origins
1. Structural principle and gesture
2. Old and New in Rachmaninoff's
Manuscript
3. Hypertrophy-but not in interpretation
4. Appassionato vs sostenuto
5. Feel-and what to do with it
6. How the “very old composer”
Rachmaninov teaches new things
PART II
Approaching the second
half of the motto
look at the old as the
new and the new as the old
... What characterizes our art practice as performers?
... What kind of knowledge and understanding are we talking about?
... What can we say – articulate – share...?
... How can we as performers document research processes?
This sub-project seeks answers to these and many others questions in the authentic description of situations arising in the relationship between performer and composer. I belive it will find its place in the key idea of the project The Opener : sharing the performer‘s process.
Introduction
In performance and pedagogical practice, including in a global context, one often encounters highly standardised approaches to well-known works and composers. These traditionally established and tested practices form that difficult to grasp notion of “style”. On the one hand, they are a way of identifying the manuscript code of the composer; on the other hand, the easy and painless conviction of correct style and stylishness risks vulgarising and simplifying the living and dynamic organism of the work. My choice of Rachmaninoff's figure is not aimed at a rigorous and comprehensive analysis of his interpretative language. It is not Rachmaninov himself who is the point of this text. As the best example, however, he represents the symbolic embodiment of many of our emotional and intellectual - that is, interpretive - simplifications in the name of style, leading ultimately to its loss. At the same time, a glimpse into his own interpretative practices in interpreting either his own music or the music of other composers best demonstrates the validity of the claim that it is important to be able to look at old and tried and tested situations with a new and fresh eye.
Just as older music often faces prejudices in terms of proper style, so too new music, or rather music from the early 20th century onwards, can be subject to simplistic views and a narrowing of the range of performance practices, especially in the area of tone creation. In this text I will try to explain why, when studying new music, it is important to be aware of the richness of the broad interpretative spectrum of the music that came before.
With a bit of metaphor, we can therefore express the basic motto - look at the new as old and the old as new. Let us first clarify what the term old means. In this context, it is meant as a terminus technicus for works of the past, creations with which we, the people of today, are confronted, works of the highest artistic value selected by history and surrounded by hundreds, thousands of works whose existence have made it possible to select the most perfect ones. Creative confrontation with such works allows contact with the highest criteria placed on a work of art - its form, its story, its plot, its emotional world. In this sense, then, it is also possible within the framework of interpretation to “help” new works, to “inspire” them and draw them towards these highest criteria, regardless of whether they belong there.
We do not know today which new works will be the old and immortal ones. When we take on a new work, we do not know its future value to history. We do not even know its present value. It is hidden deep within it, and no one can tell us in advance - this is the new Beethoven, look at it that way. Situationally, it will only have the value that we convey in its actual interpretation. We have no idea whether we are dealing with a work of regional significance or a work of great impact. Moreover ... what does regional significance mean? When are we allowed to name it? Who decides? And does it mean that a work of regional significance is allowed to be interpreted with lower criteria? If we don't view every interpreted work as potentially great, we don't give it a chance for its greatness to shine through. Very often we are tempted to say to ourselves - after all, this is enough. No one will recognize it anyway. If I were playing Chopin, then that wouldn't be enough, but here it's good... And here it sounds like such a weaker Brahms... ... But all the better! If we focus on this feature and apply the best we know of Brahms (i.e., knowledge and skill in applying interpretive finesse is essential), we may suddenly find a moment of original departure from Brahms and on that original departure we are able to build the originality of a new or unfamiliar work.
Another important point is that new works often bear signs of a certain overexposure of one of their parameters (or, on the contrary, underexposure). Perhaps this is because balance in the classical sense of the word has already "passed away" in music during the past centuries, and since the 20th century musical expression has been driven by the hypertrophy of individual principles. Thanks to a lively connection with the repertoire of the past - eo ipso perfect, brilliant works - we can contribute interpretively to compensate for the imbalance that would threaten the work.
And then there is the old in the interpretative sense - that is, the confrontation with the best that interpretative history has sorted out. Imagine if we had as many immortal interpretive achievements in a new work as we do in the established repertoire. It would put us in an entirely new situation and create entirely new criteria. But we must create them ourselves ... The new works will not have as many interpretive chances as the old ones. There is too much music in the world and too many other absorbing interests and stimuli. They probably won't get the chance for so much repeated and endless rehearsal, confrontation and experimentation, which will then, through the sweat and tears of the pianists, bring out the best and the unsurpassable in each other. More recent works, or rather music since the beginning of the 20th century, is subjected to simplistic views and a truncation of the range of performance means, especially in the field of tone creation.
New music often only gets a few tries - sometimes only one. It gets recorded (if it's lucky) and nobody invests in it anymore, another piece has to be played, this one has already been played. In the current Slovak setup of arts support, this moment is heavily represented. It is the cruel fate of new works, but that is precisely why the responsibility to it rests on the shoulders of us performers. We have to approach a new work, synthesizing all existing performance skills and selecting the most compelling ones. But if we don't stay in contact -and by contact I mean endlessly comparing ourselves to higher and highest models - we won't get the most out of ourselves. The new work is utterly powerless. It lives trapped within itself, dependent on our interpretive criterion.
Therefore, when studying a new work, it is important to give chances to imaginary hundreds of interpretations of it, with which we imaginatively confront ourselves and thus lead ourselves to better and higher results. Conversely, when studying works that have been performed repeatedly, it is also important to be able to forget all context, all knowledge, all custom and prejudice, conventions and expectations, judgments and traditions, and to look at the work and its interpretation from the pure score, just as we have at our disposal with a new work.
My text, respecting today's demand for illustrative audiovisual perception, should have included a largely live interactive component - demonstrations, comparisons. However, hand surgery, whose recovery and rehabilitation are significantly slower and longer than I anticipated, has changed my plans and my current condition, which does not yet allow me to actively perform and thus demonstrate the hypotheses and theses of this artistic research. This plan remains as a challenge for the next - practical - part of the research on this topic. The aim of this sub-project, which, given these circumstances, is currently conceived as a textual reflection with analytical elements, is to inspire, perhaps to disrupt the established, to point out interesting moments, perhaps even to provoke a little. In the name of Stravinsky's idea that technique is the whole man. The style is the man. Le style c'est l'homme.
