Types of Pianists

I have a theory that there are six kinds of pianists, based on three core factors: whether their playing focuses on themselves, the music, or the instrument. So, we have . . .

Hams: Full of technical display. Seek to strike the audience with a sort of friendly awe, as if to say, “Isn’t it great that I can wow you with fingers and fireworks?” Horowitz. Lang Lang.

Eccentrics: Interesting, unique, and convincing interpreters. Provoke the audience to think, “So, that’s how that piece goes–never thought of it that way!” Glenn Gould. Andre Watts.

Knights: Seekers of THE GOLDEN TONE, with a chivalrous, courtly attitude. Obcessed with presenting the piano in its best light with idiomatic literature. Rubinstein. Dame Myra Hess.

Nice so far, then we encounter these pianists:

Protagonists: Hams gone too far. Thorns of life and inner demons. May produce genuine catharsis, when not indulging in silly histrionics. Sviatoslav Richter at his worst. Serkin sometimes.

Prophets: Eccentrics gone off the deep end. Specialize in channeling a dead composer’s CURRENT thoughts about a piece (often on harpsichord or fortepiano). Wanda Landowska. Rosalyn Tureck.

Professionals: Modern knights. They want to be perfect and use the instrument to please everybody. The “not too” pianists: not too fast, not too slow, not too obscure, not too familiar, not too pretty, not too percussive, not too interesting. Ralph Votapek. Emanuel Ax at his worst.

I don’t mean to be harsh about the last three, dismissive of Hams, or awestruck about Eccentrics and Knights. Horowitz could be profound, Landowska right, Hess boring, Serkin courtly, Gould silly, etc.; but, these are useful generalizations.

So, the next time you hear a piano competition, try to identify these six types of pianists–one each usually shows up among the finalists. Heck, with some modification, this might even work for American Idol. Personally, I’m partial to a sort of hybrid eccentric-knight, which of course, might just be another way of saying Pirate!

Slime

I have a problem. Well actually, 88 problems. I have been besieged with slimy piano keys.

Now, I rarely let the condition of piano keys bother me. Pink Peal Eraser bits on keys, no problem. Broken ivory keys, no problem. Cigarette-burned keys, no problem. Singer’s spit and anthrax powder on keys, I’m immune. In fact, I prefer playing on slightly slimy keys that haven’t been over cleaned. Clean keys are “clingy.”

But, there are exceptions. Once, back in music school, I was the last student to a play a jury (final exam in performance) during a heat wave at the end of the spring semester when the AC had yet to be turned on. Several dozen piano students had sweated through the monuments of piano literature and left about a quart of mineral-oil-like slime on the keys–they were as frictionless as the dry erase surface of a white board. I did OK on the jury (surefooted as a Grand Canyon trail burro, thankyouverymuch), but I thought my teacher was going to burst open laughing when I protested about the condition of the keys to the utter indifference of the rest of the piano faculty. This was beyond just-swipe-‘em-with-a-hanky slimy.

Anyhoo, I was perplexed as to why I’ve had to use the nuclear approach (rubbing alcohol) on my keys TWICE lately, until I realized the culprits. (Yes, I wash my hands before playing.) I hadn’t cleaned the plastic case of my Wittner Taktell Piccolo Metronome in ages. And some of my oldest scores have permanently slimy covers from having been handled so much. I was getting enough “transfer” to make a CSI field agent happy.

Yet, my mind is not at ease. Will I become like Howard Hughes? Will I become all paranoid about slime and germs? Become obsessive-compulsive about cleaning? Oh, heck, my hair gets greasier than the piano keys ever do, and I can live with that! (Hey, there’s another source of key slime!)

November Fingers

I love early (now mid) November, and look forward to starting a new “piano year” by reviving part of my “Festive Repertoire,” favorite pieces to play at various times throughout the Holidays (before launching into innumerable December readings of hymns, carols, and secular Christmas songs–just try to get away with not playing “Jingle Bells” or “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” at a family gathering or party, IT CAN’T BE DONE).

This Festive Repertoire is an odd little collection of fast, loud, and happy works from which a selection or two seems to please people before they start requesting to sing/hear “Rudolph.” These pieces are also, for the most part, rather demanding, although everybody has a friend of a friend’s nephew, now a brain surgeon, who played this stuff at the age of seven for a Carnegie Hall recital, from the comments I tend to get!

In case anybody is interested, here’s my Festive Repertoire:

• Bach: Italian Concerto (1st mvt.)
• Scarlatti: Sonata in G Major, L. 288
• Haydn: Sonata in G Major (3rd mvt.), Hob. XVI/39
• Haydn: Fantasia (Capriccio) in C Major, Hob. XVII/4
• Mozart: Sonata in C Major (3rd mvt.), K. 279
• Mozart: Sonata in D Major (1st mvt.), K. 284
• Joplin: Cleopha

This year, it’s shaping up to be Scarlatti L. 288 and the Haydn sonata movement. I’m especially fond of Mozart K. 284, however, and may just have to add/substitute that (although I did clear the room once at a party taking the repeats).

Heave Ho, Piano

A famous disaster happened after the inaugural performance on a new Steinway piano purchased by the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in the early 1970s. The stage hands managed to allow the piano to lurch, flip on its back, and fall down a chasm left by a descending stage elevator that was supposed to help with moving pianos.

I didn’t know, until I read THIS, that a similar thing happened at the Birmingham-Southern College Theatre. Moving pianos is tricky, as I can attest from my Samford School of Music days . . .

[Thus beginneth the anecdote.] When voice students gave their junior recitals, they would often present a joint recital (two students sharing the same program) or invite a pianist to “assist” by performing a movement (portion) of a piano concerto. This was to provide some rest for the voice, allay nerves, increase attendance, etc.

A concerto performance involved two pianos, a second pianist to play the orchestra’s part, and a page turning lackey for said second pianist (it’s hard simulating an orchestra, one gets too busy reading and playing for dear life to turn and slap pages). Such performances also enlisted the help of the “proctor” as a piano mover (above and beyond the normal duties of keeping attendance and acting as stage manager). The page turner got the honor of being a furniture mover, too.

The university recital hall had an absurdly shallow stage and a big organ (on a stage wagon) that would be left parked to one side for long periods of time, freed from the storage closet. The stage was so shallow that placing two grand pianos side-by-side would have the soloist’s piano flush with the very edge of the stage.

Now, my teacher and I had moved pianos many times for our own concerto rehearsals, so I was quite familiar and adroit with the process. But, I had never done so WITH THE DEAR ORGAN dominating stage left. No-one knew that this presence would place the pianos atop a big sagging spot or dip in the middle of the stage that had only recently gotten worse. So, when one piano was moved to the edge of the stage, it wouldn’t stay there. It would roll into the dip. Then the second piano couldn’t fit beside it. And the organ was in the way, so it was hard to get around behind the pianos and push. And there were moldings decorating the back wall of the stage that stuck out a couple of inches for piano #2 to hit and scrape.

So, one fine evening when I was enlisted as page turner for a concerto performance during a voice recital, the proctor and I discover all of the aforementioned problems as we . . .

Push, and huff, and nudge, and puff, and pull, and push, and grunt, and bump, and knock, and blush, and heave, and strain, and scrape, and force, and stop.

The audience is giggling, since our Herculean efforts have left the keyboard of one piano six inches out-of-line with its neighbor, which won’t do for the performance. So now, once again, it’s . . .

Strain, and nudge, and force, and knock, and pull, and push, and heave, and blush, and scrape, and bump, and grunt, and huff, and heave, and push, and knock.

Still giggling, the audience may have actually applauded our hard won success at finally aligning the pianos (I can’t quite remember due to embarassment).

The following week, another recital featured a half-time concerto show. I felt glad to be in the audience as the proctor, assisted by that page turner and the brother of either the singer or the pianist, got to move the pianos. Brother-man knocked a flower arrangement down and spilt water all over the organ. Giggles galore.

The following week, yet another recital. This time a half-dozen people had been conscripted to jump up out of the audience and manhandle the pianos. It was sort of like raising the Flag on Iwo Jima. It went better, but the audience still giggled.

After the first fiasco, I told my teacher what had transpired. With a gleam in his eye, he said, “You should have rolled the piano off the stage so we’d get a new one!”

Generic Peanuts

I just discovered that at some forgotten point in the past, I purchased the piano solo score for Linus and Lucy. You know, the Charlie Brown theme. Playing through it feels like Christmas . . . or Thanksgiving . . . or Halloween . . . or Valentine’s Day. In fact, there is a Peanuts special for just about any and every holiday, although few of them are seen anymore on TV.

So, can I buckle down, really learn Linus and Lucy, and have every holiday covered, as far as anybody over 40 who actually remembers specials like It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown is concerned?

Of course, one also has to know Misty, As Time Goes By, Für Elise, and Ashokan Farewell, for some reason, no matter the occasion.

Encore Une Fois

And once again serendipity strikes. David Cook will be the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, Nov. 1, 2008.

Well, my first piano lesson was Nov. 1, 1975, which fell on a Saturday. So, All Saints’ Day is also my Piano Anniversary, an auspicious occasion, indeed. The scene of the crime is still there, Park South Plaza (click HERE) in Vestavia on Hwy. 31 (near the locations of the former dinner theatre, drive-in, and PCA church), where I had lessons at Leo’s House of Music for a while before moving on to my piano teacher’s home studio (with the occasional lesson at Opus II in Eastwood Mall after Leo closed shop). Back then, there was a karate school next door to Leo. It was fun to watch those lessons while waiting for mine. I begin a new Piano Year cycle each Nov. 1st.

So, this David Cook guy just keeps douplegangerin’ around. (Isn’t it fun running all this totally into the ground.)

Fast Away the Old Year Passes, Fa, La (Etc.)

Another “Piano Year,” which runs Nov. 1 to Oct. 31 (more on that in a future blog entry), is winding down. I’m trying to tie up some loose ends. I’ve been hashing new notes for Scarlatti’s Sonata in B Minor, K. 27, L. 449, as well as Bethena by Scott Joplin. I’m doing a second run of sorts for Inventions Nos. 13 and 14 by Bach. (I hadn’t done those in student daz–devilishly difficult, really.) Oh, and I’m going bonkers dealing with J. S.’s Gigue from the Fifth French Suite. All this after playing a bunch of other things during the summer. So, my plate of leftovers is full.

And I am musically tired. I’m always frustrated and frazzled at the end of Piano Year. Not so much from the actual (almost) daily playing, which has been very enjoyable (and I’ve earned some happiness there, I tell you what), as from the grinding “music director” duty of managing one’s playing . . . depending on the emminent teachers Yuron Yurown and his brother, Mitas-Welbyon Yurown . . . listening to the critic Yugottu B. Kydin.

I feel a sort of piano life shift happening towards cultivating a vast repertoire of already half-learned things more than hunting and gathering new literature: a melancholy relief as what is takes over from what could be.

Oh well, maybe I’m just blue because the days are getting shorter (but I do love fall). Hey, instead of a Pealism, here’s a Deep Thoughts (I can do those, too):

Don’t you hate it when life gives you squash instead of lemons, and all you know how to do is fix lemonade?

Sock, Now Knob Gremlin?

While playing the piano today, I kept thinking that something was wrong. Turned out that the bench was a hair too high. The same gremlin that steals a single sock from each load of laundry must also be responsible for twisting the knobs on a piano bench when no one is looking!

Which brings to mind the story that when Glenn Gould was playing a concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra, he spent an inordinate amount of time during one rehearsal flutzing with the height of the bench. The conductor, George Szell, finally exclaimed, “Perhaps if I were to slice one-sixteenth of an inch off your derriere, Mr. Gould, we could begin.”

Good Ol’ Victor

Victor Borge, at his comedic and musical best, improvising an accompaniment to Monti’s Czardas for violinist Anton Kontra. (It really gets rolling halfway through the video.)

Borin’ Recitals

Things to do during a dull voice or piano recital:

1. Watch the moths flying around the spotlights.

2. Watch other people watching the moths.

3. Watch the bugs crawling on the potted Boston ferns placed on stage.

4. Count how many times you can see the singer’s uvula.

5. Watch the tail of the piano lid bounce up and down while the pianist plays chords.

6. Count how many times the page turner gets lost.

7. Make faces at the singer.

8. Ignore the singer and watch the accompanist.

9. Rattle the program and cough.

10. Repeatedly turn around and look at something in the back of the house.

11. Watch the pianist’s ears turn red.

12. Watch the singer grip the corner of the flap on the piano lid until his or her knuckles turn white.

Above all else, think how fortunate you are not to be at a viola recital.