[lit-ideas] The king who abdicated and the revolutionary new guard
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- Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2011 22:16:58 +0100
Two threads that I'd tie together more succinctly if I had the time ....
The King who abdicated:
Today is Alfred Brendel's 80th birthday. Brendel retired 'from the
concert platform' (as Wikipedia puts it) in 2008.
Here's an excerpt from Alfred Brendel in conversation with Bruce Duffie
http://www.bruceduffie.com/brendel2.html
AB: I try never to forget that the composer is there first, that
without the composer I would not be on stage at all, that one has to
serve the composer as best as one can. But it means not to be just
totally literal, but to bring a piece to life, and to bring it to life
before our present-day ears, for our present-day conditions. So it is
not possible, what I felt was sometimes done in the fifties and early
sixties, to try to switch off your own personality and expect the
ghost of the composer coming down directly from heaven if you do.
BD: You’ve abandoned this?
AB: I have never done it. I was always opposed to it, but I felt that
at that time there were quite a few people who subscribed to it.
And the revolutionary new guard? Just over a year ago I waxed
ecstatic about Lisa Batiashvili. On Jan 1st of this year I
serendipitously tuned in to a most interesting 'bringing to life
before our present-day ears' of Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D Major
(Op. 61).
As an anodyne to the seasonal melancholy from which I know I suffer
not alone, i particularly prescribe that piece of music. I translate/
paraphrase freely from Paul Bekker's opus on Beethoven's work:
"Beethoven obviously wrote here with a special love during hours of
happiest inspiration. The work opens in celebratory anticipation; the
themes stress the lyrical qualities of the violin as the queen of the
orchestra - here almost dreamily singing, here shining with majestic
splendour, closing the movement in yearning rapture. The slow second
movement takes on the poetic character of an improvised conversation;
not as a debate between opposites, but a confirmatory dialogue between
orchestra & soloist. The work pinnacles in a violin song of bewitching
beauty & intimacy, out of which suddenly rises the orchestra
energetically calling out the joyous life-affirming finale."
I wrote in late 2009 about Lisa Batiashvili; this year it is another
young East European - Patricia Kopatchinskaja - who has captured my
attention with a rather controversial interpretation (the critics
unsurprisingly span the spectrum). I'm glad to have heard and to
continue to listen to it. Does anyone else who's heard it care to
comment?
Chris Bruce,
writing with best wishes to
all of you for the New Year,
from Kiel, Germany
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