Chopin | The Casual Blog

November 14, 2010

Accessing a delightful comic opera

On Saturday I went to my first live opera in a movie theatre: Don Pasquale, transmitted live in HD from the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center to Raleigh’s North Hills Shopping Center (among hundreds of other theatres around the globe). When I lived in New York, I sometimes bought the best tickets I could afford for the Met, which were for standing room. There were always people who left after act one, so it was usually possible to get a good orchestra seat for the rest of the show. And so I learned that the Met is a magical place, with some of the most incredible singing on the planet, and also some of the most astonishing stagecraft. It was great to be back.

I put my interest in opera on the back burner after leaving New York for law school, and with the normal pressures of career and parenthood it fell off the priority list. I’ve come back to it recently with fresh enthusiasm. Part of the reason was my passion for the piano music of Chopin. He enjoyed what we know as the bel canto repertory (Donizetti, Bellini, Rossini), and I started listening to that music to better understand his musical thinking. It’s a kind of time travel, a visit to another culture that’s both submerged and still alive. A lot of bel canto music is not particularly deep, but it is charming and at times brilliant.

Sally took her tennis team to the state finals in Winston-Salem this week, and so was not able to go to Don Pasquale. Diane, Sally’s mom, is a big opera buff, and we went to the show together. I sent an email to the Red Hat local employees’ list offering her ticket for free, and Roger H. accepted. I had not reckoned on how difficult it would be to find parking at North Hills, and we ended up running late. Roger came to the rescue. As we circled the parking lot, he called my cell, and said he was saving good seats for us.

James Levine conducted. The camera faced him as he did the overture. He was very expressive, at times smiling, at times heroic, and full of enthusiasm. He’s had many health problems recently, and I felt privileged to see him, especially in this revealing aspect. He’s a national treasure.

Don Pasquale, which was new to me and to others I talked to, is the 64th of Donizetti’s 66 operas, first produced in 1843 (when Chopin was 33). It’s a comedy that concerns young lovers’ efforts to overcome the aged don, who fancies himself a young lover, and unite. The plot is not especially intricate or elegant, but the main characters are funny and lively, and the music is a masterpiece of the tuneful bel canto genre. Anna Netrebko was fabulous as Norina — flirtatious and sexy, even if she had put on a few pounds, and with an amazingly powerful and flexible voice. Barry Banks was Ernesto, her lover, and though his character was less interesting, his singing was very musical. John Del Carlo was hilarious as the Don. The photography was skillful, with varied angles and close-ups, and the sound quality was good. There were English subtitles. The music was delightful throughout.

Between scenes, the broadcast showed the work backstage on scene changes. I love backstage views, and getting a close up of how the magic works at this state-of-the-art theatre was fascinating. There were also good-natured interviews by Susan Graham with the principals. We also had a chance to get to know Roger, who grew up in Hong Kong, and briefed us on the music scene there. He said he really enjoyed the show.

Opera is an acquired taste. Once acquired, it’s incredibly enjoyable, but initially, it can seem mannered, strange, or boring. The audience for opera has always been limited, partly because it’s been so difficult to try it out and get accustomed to its conventions. It’s wonderful that the Met is using HD simulcasts of high quality to multiply by orders of magnitude the opportunities to experience this great art. I expect there will be many who try it and like it. I’m looking forward to seeing many more.

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November 6, 2010

Surviving political disappointments, and a note on my piano

For those like me whose political views face in a progressive direction, this has been a tough week. It’s really difficult to comprehend how so many people can get so bamboozled. Right-wing crackpots have beat the drum loudly for lower taxes for the rich, less of a health care safety net, punishing hardworking immigrants, smaller “government,” and assorted “moral” causes. The messages don’t seem to me to have much content, reasonable basis, or persuasive power, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

I can see how going along with the right-wingers accords with the self-interest of the wealthy few. And I can also see how people who’ve lost their livelihoods and face economic hardship are desperate, angry, and susceptible to demagoguery. But there are lots of others — sincere, well-meaning folks who this week voted against both reason and rational self-interest. This is hard to figure. It seems that Churchill was right: democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the known alternatives.

But we survived the Homer Simpson-like sunny nuttiness of the Reagan years and the fear-mongering ignorance, cynicism, and sheer dopiness of the Bush years. As bad as the situation looks at the moment, as painful as it is to think of the triumph of organized corruption and the huge problems that will not be addressed any time soon, most of us will likely survive for a good while. People will continue to be born, grow up, get married, have kids. People will continue to fall in love with each other, with ideas, with art, and with the beauty of the world. It’s good that this is so.

So I’ve been doing a little work on my cocoon. My most prized possession, my Steinway A grand piano, needed tuning this week. For many years I wanted a Steinway, and managed to buy mine by selling my Yamaha grand and adding money I inherited when my mother died four years ago. My mom was the first person I ever heard sing or play a piano, and she sang constantly as she did housework or ran errands throughout my childhood. Along with the words of every funny camp song or show tune she ever learned (dozens or hundreds), I got from her her love of music — a great gift. I think of her with love when I think of my piano, which is every day.

My regular piano technician for the past few years, Phil Romano, has also been working as Paul McCartney’s piano tech for his concert tours. This is cool — I like having a practical musical connection to Sir Paul — but has limited Phil’s availability. Phil was headed out of town for that gig when I called him a couple of weeks ago and couldn’t work me in, so I scheduled a tuning with Richard Ruggero. Richard has a great reputation as a piano dealer and technician, and turned out to be a very nice guy. He plays the piano himself, and quickly noted three or four keys that had minor shortcomings that he could improve. I was happy with his tuning, and agreed to get him back over to work on the nits.

It is one of life’s great pleasures to play on a freshly-tuned Steinway grand. That evening, I played some of my favorite Chopin — a couple of waltzes and the etude op. 10, no. 3. Also, some of my favorite Debussy (the first arabesque) and Liszt (Sonnetto del Petrarca No. 47). I also worked a little on two current projects, Schumann’s arabeske op. 18 and Debussy’s Reflets dans l’eau. All of this music is gorgeous, and some of it so transcendent that it gives me goosebumps. I felt happy.

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August 15, 2010

A musical dinner party

We had a small dinner party on Saturday night for some old friends. Sally put a lot of thought and work into the food, and I organized the music, including both recordings and some of my own piano playing. I’ve come to think that a musician’s work is inherently social. This isn’t completely obvious, since so much of the work consists of individual, solitary practice. It is possible to enjoy music alone, although even this has a social aspects, since it involves interacting with the musical ideas of others (composers, editors, previous performers).

But a musician’s conception that doesn’t get communicated is not quite complete. It’s like a meal prepared with infinite care which no one tastes. Listeners complete the musical circuit that runs from abstract idea to human emotion. Just as a meal is just an abstraction if it isn’t eaten, a musical conception isn’t really music until someone listens.

So I was happy that our friends let me share with them some of my musical ideas regarding Chopin and Debussy. I played the Minute Waltz, the D flat Nocturne (Op. 27, No. 2), and Clair de Lune, and managed to make some beautiful sonorities. There were some memory lapses, which I was not pleased about, but I recognized them as minor and didn’t get discombobulated.

Having listeners always changes the musician’s mental processing. It can cause greater inspiration and concentration, but it also causes greater stress, and sometimes system failure. The possibility of losing one’s grip and falling is part of the business of climbing, and the possibility of losing one’s place is part of the business of musical performance. It is strange, though, when it happens. The keys suddenly look completely unfamiliar, and the hands are paralyzed with uncertainty. It’s a terrible feeling. But it happens, and the only thing to do is move on. Despite the problems, I was glad I made the effort, and grateful to my listeners for completing the musical circuit.

Sally’s cooking was delicious, and there was plenty of laughter and lively conversation. Tony Judt, the historian and author of Postwar (a great book about the aftermath of WW II) who died of ALS last week, once said that talking was the point of adult experience. It certainly is a great pleasure to talk with kindred spirits about things we care about passionately.

At work last week I took a short class on the subject of “crucial conversations,” which was about how to communicate better when stakes and emotions are high. The class included a little film by a middle schooler who replicated Solomon Asch’s conformity experiment. In the experiment, the subject is told that there is a test of visual perception, and asked to compare the length of one straight line to another. The subject hears several people who are secretly in on the experiment give answers that are clearly wrong, and then, most often, agrees with the clearly wrong answer. The point is, most people go along with the group, even when they think the group is wrong. Those who are willing to trust their own perceptions and buck the group are a minority.

Why does this happen? Is it intellectual insecurity? The fear of being ostracized? It’s possible to imagine a certain evolutionary advantage might accrue to those that maintained stable groups with uniform, though wrong, ideas, so that their band was more effective in hunting, say, the woolly mammoth. But it’s also possible that a huge evolutionary disadvantage from group think that prevented admitting and addressing such global problems as the disastrous war on drugs or global warming from CO2 emissions.

Whether we admit it or not, we all struggle with the pressure to conform to the group, but some of us put up more of a fight than others. Our friends would probably be in the minority of Asch’s test subjects that was willing to go against the grain and voice their true thoughts. It makes for much more lively conversation. Before we knew it, four hours had flown by, and it was time to say good night.