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.

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Leafing through my history of the twentieth century, I could find at least three significant anniversaries. Perhaps a centennial is any less impressive than a bicentennial, but in 1910 were born Samuel Barber and Pierre Schaeffer, for example, and also died Mily Balakirev. Wouldn’t these people be enough significant in the history of music to celebrate the 100th anniversary of their birth or death? Or is it easier and more mainstream to decree that we should celebrate a composer already known to all and played a lot?

For 2010, I invite you to (re?) discover the work of these three illustrious personages. I already spoke about Pierre Schaeffer in details in an article about the musique concrète, but let me remind you what he basically did. Pierre Schaeffer has deeply changed the perception of sound and influenced all the music of the second half of the twentieth century. Father of concrete music, he used for the first time electronics as an interpreter. His theory of musical objects is a real jewel and his work has fundamentally influenced a whole generation of revolutionary composers: Stockhausen, Nono, Berio among others (let’s thank here Donaueschingen) or more directly Henry or Mâche. Other composers used his approach to move toward areas still unknown: Messiaen and his work Timbres – Durées (First work to implement spatial slicing performed on three tape trays), Varèse and Déserts, the first work combining acoustic instruments (in this case an orchestra) and tape, and even Boulez with his symphonie mécanique in 1955.

Samuel Barber has been considered by many as one of the most important American composers of the twentieth century. You certainly know his famous Adagio for Strings, but if it has somewhat overshadowed the rest of the work, we should go dig a little deeper. As a pianist, I focused on scores for my instrument and I learnt that Barber studied piano at the Curtis Institute, and payed homage to this instrument many times during his career. You should listen to his sonata or Piano Concerto, true masterpieces too little played today. Try also his fabulous excursions.

Finally, the last name of my list, Mily Balakirev, who died in 1910, is a central figure of Russian musical life. Islamey will certainly remind something to pianists… Balakirev extended and developped the thought of Glinka : Glinka had transmitted to Balakirev his strong nationalism and convinced him of the need for Russia to have a school independent from those of Europe. In 1857, after Glinka’s death, he founded one of the most important group of composers during the Romantic period: the Five. Balakirev met 4 other like-minded composers to reach his aim: Cui, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky. Struggling against academic education of composers, his magnetism and personality inspired his comrades to improbable heights of musical creativity.

I let you gather and listen to tracks and wish you a marvelous time with three composers not as media-friendly as Chopin, but who also could mark the year 2010.

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It apparently seems difficult for some to imagine that spending 8 or 10 hours every day at a piano is a serious job. It also apparently seems difficult for some to imagine that there is an aesthetic and intellectual research and that this is not just about pushing the right keys at the right time… I reassure you, being musician is a profession with many facets, taking up 100% of our time and asking a lot of work.

In the same vein, imagine for a moment the situation: you are invited to a dinner where at the back of the host’s living room is standing a piano… and suddenly it’s a drama, someone exclaims: “Are you going to play us something?” No way! The piano is often not tuned or in a so miserable state that it is almost unplayable, and in any case, is it really polite to ask a guest to work? It would not cross my mind to invite a friend surgeon and ask him to remove me an unsightly melanoma immediately with a kitchen knife as only instrument.

These little comments or situations, which have the knack of irritating musicians are legion… If today I (almost?) do not hear them anymore, it’s because I do not have much time to get out of my “jar”, within which everyone knows what I’m doing. A few years ago, I also had to face this fact and this is not always easy. Have mercy on us, simple musicians, think before speaking too much and good luck to you newbies, this will end up tailing off!

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