This week, a post a little more personal. I would like to comment Greg Sandow’s post entitled Needing Rebirth, which sparked a controversy in the american blogosphere. At first I paid no attention to it, then after rereading it, I started to think deeply about it.

To sum up, Sandow talks about two concerts he heard in Washington: Janine Jansen playing the Sibelius concerto with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam and one of the ECCO (East Coast Chamber Orchestra). Both took place at the Kennedy Center.

According to him, both concerts were “dismaying”. Too much technical focus (???) and not enough or an overflow of emotion respectively for ECCO and the violinist. He therefore decreed that classical performances need to be reinvigorated [...] because there’s something somewhat impersonal about them.

Besides the fact that Sandow based his article on two isolated concerts to define basic assumptions extended to all interpreters, he did not mention an essential parameter: The search for emotional truth and accurate emotion is a lifetime work for an interpreter. Criticized interpreters are relatively young and need time to develop their skills towards perfection. But their potential is enormous, and with time they will reach a certain perfection.

Deviating slightly from the discussion, I would like to draw your attention on an underlying problem. Today the world is going faster and faster, are we still able to wait for an artistic maturity that requires time to fully develop? Are we still able to judge an artist as “still evolving” and not as a finished product once he is on stage? I pose the question without being able to answer it…

Sandow raises an important point in his article: Interpreter’s focus on technical perfection of performances. But isn’t it finally healthy? I mean, by the hope of a technically perfect performance, we express our need to free ourselves from technical requirements to better express our artistic soul. Technical freedom is then a first step towards freedom of expression. I think this focus, sometimes excessive, is just a necessary transition to mastery for the young performer. This focus on the technical side of things surely evolves towards artistic perfection in its time.

It is not fair to ignore external factors that may have influenced the interpretation during these concerts. Were they tired? Did the acoustics of the hall suggest them to adjust their interpretation? Did Jansen find that the hall was sounding flat and decided, to compensate, to overplay things that evening?

To conclude, I do not think that classical music is in need of a rebirth. We should stop thinking of performers like machines able to play perfectly every evening. Each concert is an adventure having good and bad sides. The quality of an interpretation depends on so many parameters not related to the musician that sometimes the conditions are not met and don’t lead to an optimal performance. But more importantly, being an interpreter is a lifetime training: we must let time takes its course and never forget that we are in a context of constant evolution towards a delicate balance.