Schubert Across the Classical/Romantic Spectrum

At today's piano teacher workshop at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto, I watched a brilliant masterclass given by Marc Durand. The final pianist on the program played the Schubert Impromptu in G flat major Op. 90 No. 3, and Durand talked about the various approaches to Schubert's piano music. Although Schubert's piano music was closer to the classical tradition of Mozart and Beethoven than much of his other music (lieder, for example), pianists traditionally stake their claim either on the classical or romantic side, or somewhere in the middle. Durand likened this axis to a political one, with the classical left wing being held firmly by Alfred Brendel:



The center is held by pianists such as Murray Perahia or Clifford Curzon, embracing the strengths of both styles:



The right wing viewpoint is espoused by pianists such as Maria João Pires, whose playing of the G flat Impromptu can be rather Schumannesque at times:



With the Canadian federal election looming on Monday and the NDP's Jack Layton swiftly gaining in popularity, perhaps a left-wing, Mozartean reading of Schubert might be appropriate at this time of the year...

Adjudicating (and Eating) in Edmonton

View from the hotel balcony

In case you're wondering why I haven't posted since the Easter break, it's because I've been adjudicating piano classes at the Edmonton Kiwanis Festival. This has been a fascinating week, and I've heard a lot of fine young pianists with lots of promise. But what made adjudicating so special this time around is that for nearly all the Grades 4-6 classes that I judged, the pianists had new and interesting repertoire. Very rarely did I hear the same piece twice, and I think that this variety of repertoire reflected well on both the teachers (who showed inventiveness and creativity in choosing unique rep) and students (who were inspired by some truly fine music).

Then again, I wasn't thinking about music for the entire time - here are photos from some of the places I managed to visit in the last few days.

Waterpark at West Edmonton Mall

Pirate ship at West Edmonton Mall

Wiener Schnitzel at Bistro Praha

Croque-monsieur at Queen of Tarts

Carrot cake at Queen of Tarts

Speedlinking - 21 April 2011

Here are some links on various music-related topics that might make for some relaxing reading as we head into the Easter weekend, right in the middle of what is often the busiest time of the year for many of us...

• It's April. You're booked solid. You can't take on anything more. Geraldine Boyer-Cusac writes about how to say no as an accompanist.
• Need some inspiration with the practicing? Erica Ann Sipes looks at how to apply game mechanics to your practice session. 
• Want to make a living in the pit? Take a look at Peter Hilliard's how to be a good musical theatre pianist and MusicianWages.com's Resources for Broadway Musicians.
• For those interested in taking the plunge into music education, Meri Dolevski-Lewis has some questions to ask yourself BEFORE starting to teach music lessons. Then again, Eileen Huang merely says good luck.
• Not all teaching gigs are what they seem. Billie Whittaker finds a listing for two jobs rolled into one.
• Not all awesome pianists are pros. AmateurPianists.org looks at the piano world from the perspective of those who play for pleasure, unfettered by the need to make a living at it.
• For those of us working in the classical music profession, doom and gloom are the order of the day, as these articles show.
• Finally, Christopher Taylor talks about the only 2-keyboard Steinway ever built:
  
  

The Alberta Accompanists Association: Serving Communities and Repertoire Needs

The Albert Accompanists Association is an organization (similar to Australian ones) which should serve for a model in more communities across North America. Its mandate:

The Alberta Accompanists Association is a group of collaborative artists that serve the music community in Edmonton and area, connecting supporting musicians with other instrumentalists, vocalists, and ensembles. We promote excellence in collaborative artistry by maintaining high standards for our members. The directory is publicly available and aims to connect groups and individuals with excellent musicians.

The community can count on strong accompanists that are skilled in their area of interest when working with an AAA member.

Each member of the association is a working collaborative artist, with a minimum 2-years of experience in their specialization. Moreover, each member is recognized by the music community as a musician of great skill. The community can access the information about members by searching specializations, years of experience, geographic area, etc. in an online database. Users search for specific types of accompaniment (choral accompaniment, classical music, musical theatre, etc), and have access to a filtered list of musicians.

Each member has worked in the community for at least 2 years, has received payment for their work, has worked with at least 3 different clients, and has education (or substantial experience) in the field of accompaniment.

An arm's length jury evaluates each member to ensure a high level of quality among artists

The AAA also receives funding from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts for its operations. The site consists of both a search tool for those needing services (with fields for skill needs, experience, musical style, and location) and a registration process for pianists who want to join the association.

There are only 13 pianists listed on the site at present, but this is an excellent start to filling the needs of singers and instrumentalists who are often always in need of a pianist for upcoming engagements. Hopefully pianists in the Calgary and Lethbridge areas might be interested in joining and allowing the AAA to expand its reach beyond Edmonton.

I can't see why this model wouldn't work in other areas in Canada or the United States. It can be exceedingly difficult in places such as Toronto to find a pianist in the peak season, and a local directory of this sort might be a great way to streamline the search process of finding a pianist for specific niches. I can also imagine that an "arm's length jury" might easily devolve into a racket in some cities, so ethical governance would be a priority for any start-up organization of this sort.

What are your thoughts about and experiences with accompanist organizations?

Bostridge and Uchida's Winterreise in London

Now that's a pairing I would love to see in recital sometime: Ian Bostridge and Mitsuko Uchida performing Schubert's Winterreise. From their recent Wigmore Hall appearance, Martin Kettle writes in the Guardian:

Bostridge's light, high tenor, and his punctilious German, were especially effective in the dreamier, more hallucinatory songs such as The Linden Tree and The Crow, and his account of the cycle became increasingly gripping. It reached a dark intensity in the solemn pairing of The Signpost and The Inn, and ended with a typically bleak rendering of The Organ-Grinder. Some may dislike Bostridge's habit of pacing around the platform in front of the piano, but this is a cycle that compels restlessness. Both the unusual timbre of Bostridge's tenor and the calculated physicality of his stage manner add to the sense of the protagonist as a person on the edge.

By contrast, Uchida's piano-playing became almost mannered in its restraint and introspection. But the control, the mastery of half-tones, and the profound seriousness of her playing of Schubert's chords, especially memorable in The Inn, was music-making of the highest order. As so often in performances as an accompanist, Uchida seemed to be silently singing every word. Not a conventional art-song Winterreise in any way, but an absolutely riveting evening all the same.

Here they are performing the first six songs from Die schöne Müllerin on Japanese TV:

Joshua Bell and Awadagin Pratt Perform Ravel's Tzigane at the White House

If you're a pianist, part of what must be so awesome about getting a chance to play at the White House is not just performing with Obama in the audience, but playing a one-of-a-kind 1938 custom Steinway. Here are Joshua Bell and Awadagin Pratt playing the Ravel Tzigane in late 2009. It's worth noting that Awadagin has a brand new release with cellist Zuill Bailey - the complete Brahms Works For Cello and Piano.

Open Comment Thread: Should Freelance Collaborative Pianists Be Regulated in Universities?

I've received a number of emails over the last while regarding initiatives at several universities to regulate the activities and business practices of freelance collaborative pianists who work there. Some of the issues at stake include:

• the right of universities to determine who is allowed to freelance in a school of music
• caps on maximum hourly rates and flat fees
• types of services which can and cannot be billed
• the right of collaborative pianists to determine contractual terms, such as billing for missed coachings

The perceived rights of freelance collaborative pianists to work on a self-employed basis at universities which cannot provide staff accompanying services for all their students can be a contentious issue, and I can think of several arguments both for and against granting pianists a free market in the college setting:

For

• having a freelance pianist market can literally save schools of music hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in accompanying fees and staff pianist positions
• excessive control of pianists by university administration is not always in the best interest of maintaining a high artistic standard at the school
• students might not wish to work with pianists mandated by the university
• pianists should be allowed to charge fairly for their work, and will go elsewhere if this right is denied

Against

• freelance pianists work on the property of public and private institutions, whose administrators have every legal right to manage labor standards, and whose departments and faculty have every right to manage academic standards
• freelance work by piano students on student visas may jeopardize their legal situation vis-à-vis allowable employment
• non-student freelance pianists might not be working legally in the country, and liability for any immigration laws being broken may lie with the institution who allows them to work there
• students need to be protected against unscrupulous billing practices by pianists, especially at peak times of the academic year

Your comments on the subject are welcome. I also respect your right to post anonymously. Just remember that if you comment on this subject on Facebook, your views will most certainly not be anonymous, since people on both sides of this issue have a stake in the outcome and may very well be viewing the comments.

Practicing in Detail: A Quick Method to Get Started

Image by easylocum

If you're a developing pianist, it's important to learn how to practice. When I mean practicing, I mean not just running through pieces a few times, but really looking into musical details, discovering problems, correcting them, and repeating the solutions over and over en route to a viable performance. As I explain the art of daily practicing to my students, I'm always on the lookout for an easy-to-understand process that can be tailored to any student at any level. Here's a quick method for getting your musical preparation to run more efficiently:

1. Pick a few bars. Four to eight bars is a good number at first.
2. Practice the right hand.
3. Practice the left hand.
4. Practice hands together.
5. Are you satisfied with how you play the passage? If not, go back to step 2. If yes, then pick the next passage and repeat from step 2.
6. Once you have a few passages learned in this way, you can work on putting two or more of these segments together. If things fall apart, then once again pick smaller units (especially transitions at this stage) and repeat the process. Continue working in this manner until eventually you can play the entire piece fluently.

The above method looks simple, but applying it can take anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours depending on the length of piece you're working on and how much detail you want to go into.

As a starting point to the absorbing activity that practicing can become, I'm emphasizing an initially simple step-by-step process with somewhat complex applications if it is used over the course of an entire piece and perhaps evolves into deeper practice processes en route. My reasoning behind this approach is to get students away from merely playing through their pieces (even advanced students can fall prey to this habit) and discovering a way to work on the smaller stuff with a view towards achieving much larger goals of performance, discovery, and musical evolution.

Milestones and Timelines

When learning music as a soloist, it's always a good idea to learn the notes well ahead of time so that we can allow the music time to mature, for the delicate arts of interpretation to take shape over the course of weeks or months, so that our outlook of the piece can mature at the same pace as our bodies become more comfortable with the act of performing the work.

As collaborative pianists, we rarely have the luxury of time. We often have only days to prepare a work well enough to bring to the first rehearsal. Since we are constantly juggling projects with different completion dates, interpretive and ensemble choices need to be made  and remembered on a split second basis. Comfort with playing a work must be learned extremely quickly if we are to both survive and thrive in performance.

Nearly all collaborative pianists feel a disconnect between these to learning timelines. My advice for pianists learning how to cope with fast-approaching deadlines takes two forms, first a gentle approach, then a more direct one.

I'll take the gentle approach first. We need to honor these seemingly contradictory learning processes, building on the strngths of learning a work slowly and carefully over time while also learning the lessons of quicker prepararion. Fitting these two methods of preparation into our process will allow us to more fully experience the diversity of approach we can undertake as performers.

Next, some more direct advice:

Deal with it.

Pianists: how do you cope with the pressure of fast-approching deadlines and still maintain interpretive integrity?

Call for Composers and Librettists: The Tapestry New Opera 2011 LibLab

One of the most difficult but ultimately satisfying things that one can achieve as a composer or writer is the herculean feat of writing an opera. Few are the composers who have not fallen under its spell at some time in their lives.

But many questions remain for both writers and composers: how on earth do you learn to create such a wonderful work of art? How do you find a librettist who can feed you the story you need? How do you find a composer you can trust to make your words come to life? Under what circumstances can you create a viable working process between the two of you?

And above all: where on earth can you go to actually learn the trade of writing an opera from people who actually know what they're talking about and who create operas on a regular basis?

You go to Toronto's Tapestry New Opera.

Yes, the 2011 running of the Composer/Librettist Laboratory is happening from August 22 to September 1, and Tapestry is looking for four writers and four composers who are eager to take the plunge and start the ball rolling on the next round of opera creation both at Tapestry and across North America.

Submissions are due on April 30, 2011. You can get full submission information from this pdf file, from which the following information is especially important:

Please do not staple or bind submissions in any way. Submissions should be on paper that is 8.5 x 11, single sided. Preference for submissions of scores is unbound and copied on 8.5 x 11 paper. Preference for excerpts from published works from writers is unbound and copied onto 8.5 x 11 paper. Please provide ONE copy of written materials and TWO copies of scores, cd’s and writing samples.

All applicants please submit:

1. A cover letter that includes your name, address, telephone number, e-mail address & website (if applicable).
2. A resume or CV outlining your professional experience and relevant academic and professional training.
3. A one-page description stating your interest in participating and why you would benefit from the program. This may be included as part of the cover letter.
4. For applicants who do not yet have a known body of work, a letter of reference from a professional in the field. This may be included in your application or sent under separate cover directly to Tapestry.

Composers – In addition to one copy of #1 through #4 above, please submit:

-Two samples of your work, including scores and recordings, with at least one sample of work written for the voice.
-Two copies of each score and recording are required.

Writers – In addition to one copy of #1 through #4 above, please submit two copies each of:

-Two samples of your work, including an excerpt from a dramatic work for the stage, to a maximum of 20 pages in total.
-Two copies of each sample are required.

Submissions must be postmarked on or before the submission deadline.

Deadline for Submissions: April 30 2011
Notification Date: approximately six weeks after the submission deadline

Submissions should be directed to the Attention of:
Ms. Susan Worthington, Producing Director
Tapestry New Opera
55 Mill Street, Bldg # 58 Studio 316
Toronto, ON M5A 3C4

For More Information Please Contact:
Susan Worthington, Producing Director
416 537- 6066 ext 225 / liblab [at] tapestrynewopera dot com

Once again, I'll be one of the pianists in the workshop and will play roughly half of the works which are written in the frantic 10 days of fevered artistic creation. Best of luck to everyone who is applying and thanks for supporting the renaissance of operatic creation in North America!

Talk To Your Audience

Knowing how to talk to audiences is vitally important these days, and I'm a firm believer that every concert should have at least some kind of spoken component in order to engage with those who have made the effort to see one perform. My latest article for the Music Teacher's Helper blog looks at the reasons for talking when you perform and how your audience can connect with you in ways that they might not if you only kept silent during the course of your program.

Why Talking to Audiences is Essential When Playing Classical Music

The Top 30 Classical Music Blogs - April 2011

Wikio's listing of the top classical music blogs for April 2011 is out, and CPB falls 4 places to #16, which is understandable in the busiest month of the year. Ironically, this has been the blog's best month ever for traffic, with 9,922 onsite viewers viewing 19,182 pages and ~1300 subscribers viewing 14,396 articles via RSS feed.

I'm also glad to see some of my favorite blogs on the list, including Sandow, Adaptistration, Musical Assumptions, Chamber Music Today, Stark Raving Cello, and Africlassical.

1	Clef Notes
2	Sequenza21/
3	Opera Chic
4	Opera Today
5	Proper Discord
6	Sandow
7	The Opera Tattler
8	Adaptistration
9	Musical Assumptions
10	Nico Muhly
11	Ionarts
12	Michael Huebner's Blog & Column - al.com
13	Of Music and Men
14	Andrew Patner: The View from Here
15	Eric Edberg
16	The Collaborative Piano Blog
17	oboeinsight
18	Summer is Coming In
19	Lynn Harrell
20	Jason Heath's Double Bass Blog
21	A Beast in a Jungle
22	Chamber Music Today
23	The Classical Beat
24	Likely Impossibilities
25	The Stark Raving Cello Blog
26	Bryan Pinkall's World of Opera
27	MusicaSacra
28	Violinist.com
29	Brian Dickie
30	AfriClassical

Ranking made by Wikio

Are Tabla Accompanists Becoming More Important Than Soloists in Indian Classical Music?

Just as collaborative pianists are beginning to achieve increased prominence in North American and Europe, the same thing is happening with tabla accompanists in Indian classical music, with an unintended change to the power dynamic between soloist and accompanist. Take a look at this excerpt from an editorial by Kuldeep Kumar in the Times of India:

...just as the Hindi film music has made a transition from being melody-based to becoming rhythm-based, Hindustani classical music too is slowly following suit. In the process, the centuries-old equation and relationship between the main performer and his percussion accompanist is getting warped. In the bygone era, accompanists on tabla, sarangi, violin or harmonium used to sit on the concert stage in a way so that they did not directly face the audience but facing the main performer. This arrangement gave primacy to the main artiste and enabled the accompanists to take the cue from him or her. Today, most tabla players face the audiences. They want to be treated at par with the main performer. It is not at all unusual to see listeners sitting with deadpan faces while a sitar or sarod player is probing the depths of a ragain the alap-jodjhalasection and breaking into an uproarious applause the moment the tabla accompanist starts playing.

On most occasions, it is the tabla player who receives more appreciation and applause from the audiences whenever the main artiste repeats the melodic line and allows the accompanist to play solo sequences. As vocalist or instrumentalist want to attract as big an audience as possible, they too go along with this so that the concert becomes 'successful'.

Fascinating. Who are the headline collaborative pianists that would influence your decision to attend a concert?