Pierre-Arnaud Dablemont, pianist » Thoughts

Needing Rebirth? I don’t think so…

Pierre-Arnaud — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:00:52 +0000

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.

What will 2010 be like?

Pierre-Arnaud — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:00:49 +0000

I haven’t been writing much lately, and I’m sorry about that. First of all I wish you a wonderful 2010 with lots of musical achievements.

At the start of this year, I tried to think about the directions my writings could take for 2010. It is thus self-evident that this blog will still be about piano and music, but I would like to give a new impetus and provide more didactic content. Let’s see what will 2010 be like.

First, I would like to introduce you to the world of music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and to convey my passion for contemporary works. Through a series of articles dealing with musical trends, composers themselves and their works, I would like to draw your attention to their logic and aesthetic. To some it may seem pretentious but I will humbly try to convert the recalcitrant and improve the knowledge of others.

At the same time, I will focus on the “problem” of interpretation and we will try to respond together to some of its inherent problematics. Which tools for the interpretation? How to make a coherent interpretation? A few questions among many others that I will try to answer from my, admittedly personal perspective.

I hope this menu will be suitable for everyone, and please also feel free to make your own proposals!

The record: a help or a hindrance to artistic creation?

Pierre-Arnaud — Fri, 08 May 2009 06:00:47 +0000

For a long time, I devoured records. All of them, even the bad ones. They allowed me to discover the repertoire as well as fascinating performers. They were part of my musical education and partly trained my ear. They had an influence on my music personality, it’s certain. But which one? Did they helped me or, on the contrary, did they hinder me?

When I have started listening to a lot of records, I did not know at all or knew very little about the repertoire for piano. So I primarily listened to pianists. Thanks to them, I rapidly gained knowledge of the repertoire of my instrument and started to become interested in the rest. I have also acquired a critical ear on these interpretations, trying to understand why I disliked such-and-such record. They sometimes brought me new ideas and opened my musical world.

The downside is that all these interpretations have influenced my ear. While some were good catalysts, many others prevented me from developing my own sound imagination, putting in my head already-thought sounds. Instead of searching, I have long used the “all ready” solutions offered by the record. Here is the problem though: I have long believed that knowing by heart a record means knowing the work perfectly. Rather than trying to learn from the work and draw an interpretation, I used to try to reproduce with more or less success what I already heard without really understanding the ins and outs. Without realizing it, I was standardizing my play and loosing my imagination.

Of course, it is necessary to listen to records, if only for the benefits I have mentioned, but in my approach I lacked hindsight: I was like a painter contemplating a Velasquez and wanting to reproduce the same thing. Today, I have evolved enough to search for my own style and understand that even if Velasquez fascinates me, I must not copy Velasquez, but rather try to find what makes his strength.

Musical analysis: a musical strategy

Pierre-Arnaud — Fri, 01 May 2009 06:00:40 +0000

After a long debate with a student about musical analysis, I needed to write a few lines on the topic. Why is musical analysis so helpful for musicians? Why do we often deny its necessity? Musical analysis: a musical strategy, I said, because it allows me to draw up a plan for each piece, each concert.

Going on stage without a strategy is really dangerous. As well as a good technician, a pianist has to be a good strategist. Giving the final blow, taking the audience from the rear, we have to think about it, and analysis helps us to carry out this important work. Where is the climax, how this piece can be divided, we do not leave this to chance, our sound strategy depends on it. We have to do this using various scale levels: a movement, a work, a program and even sometimes a whole season or career. In piano playing, there is in fact a very little space for inspiration, I know this can be a deception for some of you, but understand that this little space plays a really important role at another level.

One very often hears of lack in cohesion. Musical analysis allows us to find out how a composer builds his work, and to understand the logic integrating the different movements in a whole called his work, to finally convey this logical system to the listener.

A composer thinks in terms of structures and musical forms (among others) to give a spine to his work. The interpreter has to understand it in order to build a coherent musical composition, and has to convey to the audience the cleverness of the structure.

And you, how does analysis help you?

Is it necessary to give Classical Music a facelift? (part 2)

Pierre-Arnaud — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:00:30 +0000

In the first part of Is it necessary to give Classical Music a facelift?, we talked about dress at concerts. Today, I would like to share with you my thoughts on concert programming. A good programming is indeed essential. However, isn’t it tiring to hear the same works every year, everywhere in the world? “It’s the law of the market!”, organizers and agents say, “you must play what the audience wants to listen to”. But if no one introduces anything new to the audience, they won’t ever want anything else. And, as the audience cannot know all the repertoire, one always finds the same works in most programs.

I would like to begin with a quote from Maurizio Pollini: “People who go to concerts are occupied during the day with completely different things than music. It is therefore not for them to decide what one plays or not”.

Is it necessary to play what the audience wants to hear? No, it is not. Building a program is an art and a science. A program, by letting the “law of the market” operate, looks more like a medley of classical music endless hits than a program which has been coherently drawn up.

To attract a new audience, nowadays, there are crossover concerts, combining different styles within the same concert. Let’s take, for example, a great singer and make her/him sing Haendel, Fauré with some arrangements of Norah Jones or The Beatles in between. This is quite simply stupid: you might as well be asking your plumber to fix the roof. As classical musicians, we are not trained for this and are only able to give ridiculous or pompous versions of these music genres.

Instead of making us perform what we are not able to do, or decerebrate our programs, it would be interesting to notice that the programming of contemporary works is always a success with audiences which are not much or not at all used to classical concerts.

Could “broadening the audience” and “updating the programming” rhyme? Should we not, at last, for the greatest pleasure of all, commonly and durably combine Chopin with Boulez, Beethoven with Murail? The music of our times has often proved that it could attract young audiences!

There is a French idiom saying “One is only old in one’s mind”. Programming does not need a facelift, but it is necessary to stop making it voluntarily old. Classical music is alive and its forces are intact, but as a result of living too much in the past, it now seems old and moribund. It’s up to us, interpreters, to follow our artistic path and to refuse to be confined, without trying to make programming a tool to reach an ephemeral glory.

Is it necessary to give Classical Music a facelift? (part 1)

Pierre-Arnaud — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 06:00:39 +0000

Today, in order to attract young audiences (or maybe quite simply an audience) all efforts are oriented in the same direction: to show you that classical music is not boring nor rigid, and that you, too, are likely to appreciate it. Shortened concerts, lunchtime concerts (a little bit of Beethoven between sandwich and office), concert programs with two doses of film music for one of classical, standardization of programs so the audience does not feel “lost” (It has often been proved that the public comes to see what they already know), and so on. Well, I’m telling you, this is all wrong: classical music is not cool.

I will devote some posts to review the attempts at a makeover administered to our old friend. My objective: to show you that all this is useless and does more harm than good. Today, in this first part, I will focus on the dress code issue.

The concert ritual is often considered as being too strict, notably concerning the dress code. The public must feel comfortable, I agree with it, but one should not forget what clothing as a social code represents.

Imagine one moment you are in the artist’s shoes. You enter the stage and find the concert hall with most of the spectators wearing torn jeans, jogging suits and mini-skirts. Horreur! It would certainly make you wonder what’s happening here and why are you wearing a tuxedo. We could reverse the roles: you are in the audience and the artist enters the stage in a sloppy dress, almost in pajamas, what would be your reaction? And yes, you cannot deny it, you would be shocked (there has been precedents).

Indeed, as a pianist, I like people dressed “like penguins”. It is not bourgeois folklore, but simply a mark of respect to the artist. One cannot either deny the aesthetic side: a well-dressed public is much nicer from the stage.

The dress, be it the artist or the public, is a way to communicate. Both communicate their mutual respect to each other through the sartorial code. When one knows how easy it is to slip into a dress or a suit, it would be a shame not to do so.

In the next episode of Is it necessary to give Classical Music a facelift? We will talk about programming. See you soon!

Never give up on what your heart is set on

Pierre-Arnaud — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:00:50 +0000

I have always encouraged everyone to be themselves and never give up on what their heart is set on. However, I am the last person to follow my own advice. There are always good reasons to put off doing something I have planned for a long time.

For some years now, I am “sailing” according to programs and works I am asked to play. But what about me? I dream of complete works, to take my time to get to fully know a composer, and to do a real aesthetic work on his oeuvre.

It is not easy at all, but worth it! For a long time now, I feel especially close to French music and even closer to Maurice Ravel’s one. Ravel has been recorded many times, played many times, and magnificently performed; all of this makes my task much more strenuous, but I really feel I can bring a fresh look at it, or at least, I feel I can express myself the best through Maurice Ravel.

I have thus decided to listen to myself, to my colleagues too, who pushed me to do it. So, in accordance with my agent, I took the decision to carry out this exciting project, which will include not only the recording of the work for piano solo, but also the two concertos and the chamber music with piano.

Through this blog, I will keep you updated on the progress of this adventure and on my work on Ravel.

A little question however: is there a book about Maurice Ravel you liked and would recommend reading?

Piano and Psychanalysis

Pierre-Arnaud — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:14:49 +0000

First of all, let me start with a quote from pianist Claudio Arrau: “We frustrate ourselves constantly. Out of fear — fear of failure and, strange as it may seem, fear of success as well — we artists suddenly fall sick before major appearances. We create frightful emotional upsets (…). Singers suddenly become hoarse, can’t make their high notes (…). Instrumentalists suddenly lose the use of some fingers or suddenly can’t play the simplest (or the most difficult) passages. Or out of competitiveness and the wish for almightiness, as it were, the least sign of imperfection can cause one to give up in the middle of an otherwise fine performance. Worst of all, the struggle may suddenly lose all meaning, and the artist, lost in a terrible maze of conflict and despair, may give up performing altogether. This giving up is a real death, the death of the soul. One descends into the abyss and the return takes the most heroic battle with the Furies (the dark aspect of the unconscious) which man is ever called upon to make and which requires all the remaining power of his soul to overcome.”.

The importance of mental wellness for a musician goes without saying. However, in conservatories, no psychological support is offered and no one will advise us nor help us in our musician’s inner life. In our profession, which is actually our life, we are subjected to an incredible pressure. A specialized help in time could have certainly avoided dramatic situations.

The most obvious manifestations of this fragility are what some call the artist’s excentricities before a concert, which are in fact rituals designed to chase the stage fright away and to ensure a fragile stability in the extreme conditions of a concert. It is not, in any case, a whim…

Only a little is enough to destabilize an artist. For a pianist, the duality solitude (with the piano) / public exposure (performance, disc…), almost even a public exhibition, is not always easy to handle. Some, unable to understand our work, this difficulty to which we face, or just by mere jealousy, prefer to ruin years of work by writing witticisms from their ivory tower.

The artist’s life is not an easy one!

Concert in the dark

Pierre-Arnaud — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 07:00:12 +0000

At the end of his career, Sviatoslav Richter liked to play in the dark with just a little lighting so he could see the keyboard. He disappeared thus in the concert hall’s shadow. But why concerts in the dark? Playing in the dark increases the concentration of the audience and allows to focus on the essential: music.

Richter used to say that there is nothing to see when a pianist is playing, nothing except work, and the spectator doesn’t need to see it. I totally agree with his thinking: a concert is above all for the ears, too often however, the pianist’s “show” prevails. We go to concerts to hear music not to see it. The problem would be perhaps that more and more people hear with their eyes…

Having tried the method on several occasions, a concert in the dark gives excellent results: a more quiet concert hall and less parasite noises. I could also feel from the public a very concentrated listening attention, and in return, I was more concentrated myself and played much better. During these experiences, the public always reacted very positively and found the experience much more pleasant.

For my part, I think that some works should be heard only in the half-light, especially for contemporary music. In this case, I do everything I can to play with the less light possible.

And you, have you ever attended this kind of concert? Did you like it? Would you attend it?

Happy Holidays!

Pierre-Arnaud — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 23:42:43 +0000

I wish you all Happy Holidays… and see you next year!