It’s always nice to find someone else thinking exactly what you’re thinking:
Wandering from one television channel to the next the other day, I came across young people playing the piano. One man, bearded and a little hefty, rippled through a Beethoven sonata, sharing with the camera complicit smiles, exultant grimaces, gazes to the right and left, and a gentle swaying from side to side.
The next, a young woman, sat down to Schumann, bending her back, lifting her head and gazing straight up. Maybe God was sitting in the rafters just above her, and she was using the opportunity to say hello. Both pianists were perfectly fluent. They kept time, played the right notes and sounded expressive when they were supposed to.
I had to turn away. I could listen, but I couldn’t watch. Two performers, four glazed eyes and four waving arms were too much for my stomach.
That’s Bernard Holland from the NYTimes. And I share his sentiments exactly. What is with these theatrics while playing? I remember seeing a cello soloist in Nova Scotia once where I found it just about impossible to pay any attention to the music, even though the music was beautiful. To say that she looked possessed by a demon would be a gross understatement. Possessed by an entire legion engaged in civil war might come closer. And then there was the pianist who kept gulping and looked remarkably like an oversized toad …
Holland goes on:
The television program I happened to come across was produced by or for (probably both) a major American piano competition, and the young people I saw on it were part of that process. The program also offered commentary by an eminent conductor talking about the differences between Apollonian and Dionysian approaches to art. The Apollonian refers (and I paraphrase) to symmetry, invention and elegance; the Dionysian, to art more from the gut, more spontaneous.
More personal too. Dionysus had the stage when I was watching: two ambitious young people were taking part in a system that asks them to use Beethoven and Schumann as ways to sell themselves. Maybe our eminent conductor could have added another distinction to his two-sided debate: that Dionysian pianists care about Dionysian pianists, whereas Apollonian pianists care about music.
Exactly.
Sydney