'This song sticks in my head'

Just now with most of the world asleep I have been sitting here sipping my coffee and listening to performances of Prokofiev's Toccata.

I like this piece. It reminds me of a big tank, moving forward, inexorable and robotic. A big machine. All you have to do is hit the notes, which is obviously not easy, but once you do that and work out your staccato feel, the reward is that Prokofiev does most of the work.

Here is Lisa de la Salle playing it. I like Lisa de la Salle because her clothes remind me of my clothes. Also I love the idea of someone playing the Prokofiev Toccata in those shoes. I am sure Prokofiev would like that too.

That is Lisa de la Salle pictured above. She is only about 22 and has a great look.

Here is Prokofiev playing the piece, on a piano roll. It is kind of slow. I love how someone comments, "Someone needs to speed up the piano roll." That is an idea! But the problem could be that Prokofiev's chops were not up to the piece. That is what I have heard.

Here is a cool picture of Proky at the piano. That looks like my old piano from my old apartment!


I know speed and great chops are not the answer to everything. But I have to say that the Prokofiev Toccata is one piece I would love to hear over-the-top fast, I mean as fast as it can be and still be correct, which is of course the big challenge.

Martha Argerich's is pretty fast. Ha, ha! Look at the first comment: "This song is stuck in my head."

Now I am going to be really immature but I am sorry:

This really cracked me up.

I think it is Horowitz playing. But that visual treatment, you cannot beat it. Just the first three seconds, and I am laughing.

Let me tell you, this is something that sticks in your head.

Great Scot

This morning what with Ash Wednesday I got onto this priest's blog that I often check out, because I have Mass tonight and I like to study up on the prayers beforehand. And that is where I read this business about the Scottish composer James MacMillan. That is a picture of MacMillan up above, getting a blessing from a priest. I lifted it off a blog creatively called godzdogz.

Apparently MacMillan loves the Latin Mass the way I do and he is trying to advocate for it and some Catholic publication refused to print his letter.

You go, Mr. MacMillan!

We know James MacMillan here in Buffalo. The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra has performed his music several times. I remember in particular his percussion concerto "Veni, veni Emmanuel."

I am not much for modern dissonant music and I more or less filed MacMillan's piece under the category of: Do I admire the craftsmanship and art that go into this music? Yes. Will I come home and pour a glass of wine and listen to it? No.

But I do remember being struck by the emotion when he references the ancient chant, which you can hear in the link above. And I remember the music gave me an idea of his sincerity, and his faith.

This morning I found myself revisiting the piece. I found this interview with MacMillan about it.

I found a performance of the concerto here and sure enough, there was the chant, as I remembered it. The whole piece is up on YouTube if you would like to explore it.

You can read MacMillan's letter, the one that the Catholic magazine won't publish, here.

This business about liturgy is a hot topic in the Catholic Church right now because the Pope is making moves to bring back the traditional Latin chants. As I understand it, he is even encouraging that in English language Masses, you do parts of it in Latin -- the Credo, say, or the Gloria.

Very interesting changes afoot, especially for Catholics who love music! But naturally we do not feel the effects much in Buffalo.

We are always the last to get with it.

Wasn't that a party?

This morning what with it being Mardi Gras I was thinking of Schumann's "Carnaval" as I knocked around the kitchen drinking coffee and kneading up bread dough.

I played "Carnaval" myself a couple of years ago, coached by my teacher Stephen Manes who has now, alas, moved to California. There are a couple of things about "Carnaval" I got to love and I was thinking about that this morning.

One is "Aveu." It sounds just like ragtime. Like a slow Joplin rag. Listen to it here played by Claudio Arrau, a pianist I love, and tell me if you do not agree.

Here, for comparison's sake, listen to this hippie playing "Bethena," that wistful Scott Joplin waltz.

"Aveu," the little ragtime piece, is the first piece in that clip. (See, I keep throwing it at you hoping you'll listen.) The clip ends with the end of "Carnaval," the "March of the Davidsbund Against the Philistines." I love the big ringing fanfare that begins that piece. So Schumann! It is a riot to play, I can tell you that. It feels great. You feel as if you are in a bell tower ringing a big bell. Like in one of those cartoons, where the character is swinging holding on to the rope. That is how exhilarating it is.

The "Davidsbund" was a slacker invention of Schumann and his friends. You know how you sometimes sit around bars dreaming up lists and things. They dreamed up this club that was supposed to be for wonderful musicians who were not stuffy and took a stand against people who were. They inducted Mozart into the "Davidsbund" posthumously. I liked that, how they recognized Mozart's boldness and greatness in an era when a lot of people saw him as a childlike puffball.

Back to "Carnaval": One of the best things about it is that it ends with the music collapsing in a heap. Allow me to toss that link at you one more time so you can hear how it ends. As if you just had the most wonderful time of your life but now you're drunk and you've had it and you will pick up the pieces of your life tomorrow.

Isn't that what Carnaval, Mardi Gras, whatever you call it, is supposed to be like? You have the greatest time and the next day is, uh, Ash Wednesday...

Except as my mom griped the other day, most people who celebrate Fat Tuesday follow it up with Fat Wednesday.

Alas.

Brother blogger

Remember the pianist Stephen Hough? We write about him now and then. We like the British pianist Stephen Hough at this blog and at the Leonard Pennario blog. And he likes us, too! Anyway he was kind enough to peek in in the past.

Well, now Stephen Hough has begun blogging! Check out his blog here.

I like his blog because it is all about piano and also has big doses of Catholicism which, you know me, I eat up the way I eat up a big bucket o' wings at the Anchor Bar. Stephen Hough is more hard-core than we are in that direction. He is always quoting Chesterton and St. Augustine. And he takes potshots against atheists. This is amazing!

Not as much Latin as I or my good St. Paul's Cathedral friend Ward personally would like but then Stephen Hough has just gotten started. His first blog entry appears to have been on Christmas Eve. Give him time.

One nice thing about Stephen Hough's blog as that he is very good about answering people. If you comment on Stephen Hough's blog, the odds are good he will write you back.

That is a most wonderful thing in a famous pianist.

We celebrate by listening to Stephen Hough playing the slow movement of the Chopin F Minor Concerto, a piece that Pennario played incredibly and that Stephen Hough plays beautifully too.

We welcome him to Blog-O-Land.

Save me the waltz

The always vigilant Prof. G wants to alert us here in Blog-O-Land to a recording of a waltz supposedly by Franz Schubert. Here it is on YouTube.

Quoth Prof. G, "Please let me know if this is spurious."

I like that, being set up as judge and jury. Ahem.

The waltz in the link above is called the "Kupelwieser Waltz," because the story goes that Schubert wrote it for the wedding of his friend Paul Kupelwieser, and it was just passed down through the family, generation to generation, no one writing it down.

Paul Kupelwieser was the brother of the painter Leopold Kupelwieser, who did the sweet drawing of a young-and-handsome, not bespectacled-and-tubby Schubert pictured above. Maybe you have stumbled on those heartbreaking letters Schubert wrote about how his health would never be the same again. He wrote those letters to Leopold Kupelwieser. Leopold Kupelwieser also did the drawing you see if you watch the video, of Schubert and his friends heading off into the countryside.

And he did this painting you see all the time of Schubert and his friends -- rehearsing, the caption says, but it looks more like horsing around. They did have some fun in that circle! That is the idea I always get.


So what to think of this story? Is this waltz genuine? That is what we are wondering.

I had heard the story that there was a waltz that Schubert had played at someone's wedding, and it had been passed down. But I had it in my head that it was the "Trauerwaltz" that is to be found among his piano waltzes. It is amazing, the stories you can carry around in your head and never question or think about.

Here is the waltz I had thought that story was about. Hilarious performance! But, you know, things like this remind you that this music lives. Here is this girl playing this waltz for her friends and she cracks up and Schubert, I think, would have liked that.

About the "Kupelwieser Waltz," my first thought I have to confess is: Why didn't someone along the line write it down?

I am just saying. What, did the Kupelwiesers just sit around and gloat over it, that they had this waltz by Schubert, and no one else did?

Because no one wrote it down, I would bet we are dealing with a kind of game-of-Telephone situation -- one person tells it to another who tells it to another and gradually over the years little things are lost and changed. That ending, for instance, that does not sound like Schubert to me.

You get a lot of that Telephone situation when it comes to Schubert, because his biographer Otto Erich Deutsch -- as well as others, I am guessing -- went around and interviewed Schubert's friends when they were near the end of their lives. Thank God they did, but you get some misinformation mixed in there.

With all this in mind, though, there is something so touching about this waltz. Actually it reminds me of the "Trauerwaltz" I mentioned up above. So I tend to believe the story.

Here is the "Kupelwieser Waltz" played by Aldo Ciccolini, which does give it some legitimacy. They identify it as "Kugelwieser Waltz," by the way, if you look. More misinformation!

It is interesting how Ciccolini plays the theme, treating the upper notes in the right hand as accompaniment. What a beautiful little piece.

But a bit out of place, I am thinking, in that big, formal setting.

Beethoven's hot nephew

The other day, carrying on about Beethoven, I got wondering about that movie that came out a couple of years ago called "Copying Beethoven."

That is a terrible title by the way. All these people getting paid all these bucks, and that is the best they could come up with? Well, "Beethoven" was already taken.

I do not believe "Copying Beethoven" ever came to Buffalo. I did not ever see it. But from what I read about it, it sounded interesting. Well, I am a Beethoven nut.

Anyway, just now I went on YouTube looking for the movie. Maybe, I thought, I could watch a few minutes of it, or the trailer, or something. Sure enough, some geek has posted a whole bunch of scenes from the movie. Maybe the whole movie, who knows. I walked in on this scene in which the woman assisting Beethoven with his copying -- we would all like that job, wouldn't we, girls? -- has met Beethoven's nephew, Karl van Beethoven.

So I watch the scene. And, you know, the acting isn't great, but the movie looks like fun, and I find myself thinking about Beethoven and his nephew and their complicated relationship, what an adventure it would have been to be Beethoven's copyist, comparing it with my experience with Leonard Pennario, etc. Above is a picture of the copyist in "Copying Beethoven." It reminds me of me, in California!

Well, one thing I love about YouTube are the comments. So eventually I look at the comments to see what other viewers of "Copying Beethoven" are thinking.

Here is what they are thinking:

Oh... MY... GAWD!
JOE ANDERSON IS THE HOTTEST MAN EVER TO LIVE.

(Joe Anderson plays Karl van Beethoven.)

And the next comment ...

What A CUTIEEE *-*

And this is my favorite:

I'm sorry, but if he touched me like that, the last thing I would've done is slapped him. ;)

Followed by:

Ugh!! How dare she slaps him!!

(The deal was, Beethoven's nephew had tried to feel the copyist up.)

It goes on and on. You have to see it. Check out the link. Here it is again if you're too lazy to scroll up.

"His hat had me in tears." ... "Thank you dear God for making something so beautiful." ... "This one is a real masterpiece."

Such emotions! Such passions!!

Who says classical music is dead?

The nut, at his nuttiest

It took me till this morning for that goofy migraine finally to wear off. Two days of feeling out of it! Last night because I was so wiped out all I wanted to do was go to sleep. But alas! Howard chose last night to get into bed early when I did and he brought his I-Phone with him.

You can watch things on this I-Phone and Howard was watching YouTube. "Oscar Levant!" I remember him gloating, into my ear. "The Concerto in F!" Now, I love Gershwin's Concerto in F. Leonard Pennario used to play the heck out of it. This one recording he did of it was fantastic. Ask lounge sensation Guy Boleri. Guy told me, "It changed my life."

Howard is at work now so I cannot ask him but my guess is that the clip I was listening to is this. They interrupt so you can hear Walter Damrosch announcing that Gershwin has died.

It is great but imagine it blasting in your ear when you want to go to sleep! That was the situation last night. Well, Howard didn't know about my discomfort so I do not blame him. Also it is nice to be married to someone who listens to Oscar Levant instead of Britney Spears' "Womanizer." That is for sure.

That is a picture of a young Oscar Levant up above. I used to say his name "Le-VAHNT" until Jeff Simon at The Buffalo News finally snapped me out of it. He said: "For heaven's sake, Mary, he was a New York City Jew. You say it 'Le-VANT,'" he said with a big flat Buffalo A. So that is how I say it now.

I loved what Ward wrote the other day on the Leonard Pennario blog when we were discussing hypochondriac pianists, a subject we like to return to now and then. "Two words. Oscar Levant," Ward wrote. Ha, ha!

Probably Levant is more lovable in retrospect, seen in hindsight, than he was at the time, when you were actually around him. But in retrospect, he sure is funny.

I got to review this book on Oscar Levant by Sam Kashner called "A Talent for Genius." One thing that cracked me up was that Levant was from Pittsburgh and, Kashner wrote: "He maintained a lifelong dread of Pittsburgh."

Jerry Sullivan, the great sports columnist at The Buffalo News, lent me a book by Oscar Levant which, alas, I have not yet returned. But I know where it is! It is next to the bed. Jerry Sullivan says that Levant was a blogger before blogging existed. He is right!

Another Levant fan is Jackie Jocko, the lounge pianist down at the Hyatt we are always going to see. "Who is going to replace Oscar Levant? Who is going to replace Fred Astaire?" Jocko wondered aloud, pessimistically, late one night.

Nobody will. What a great character.

Just not someone you want to listen to when you are trying to fall asleep.