Valentina Lisitsa

THE ABSURD TIMES

You have to hear this.

MUSIC

Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto #3, called "Rach 3", is at the pinnacle of classical music concertos.  Any pianist who can master it, if any ever really masters it, has achieved one of the greatest feats possible.  Daniel Barenboim never tried to record it as best I know, nor Vladimir Ashkenazy, and many others.  Many have tried it and failed, falling short either in places or all over in time and tempo.

The first able to play it well was the composer himself, Serge, and the recordings are available on CD.  He is to this concerto as Arthur Schnabel is to the Beethoven Sonatas.  Serge was well-known and acclaimed as a concert pianist even before this concerto and it made him the only living master of it.

One day, Vladimir Horowitz played it while Serge was in the audience.  Many analogies occur to me, but I'll pass them by.  Horowitz was apprehensive to say the least until Serge shook his hand and said "It is now yours." 

After that, a few came along.  Van Cliburn having won the Tchaikosky competition in Moscow during the cold war, was jingoistically promoted and sold a lot of records and, to his credit, helped many younger pianists.  Still, he was no giant, to say the least (although he was very tall).

I remember much later some pianist in Australia suffered from a form of schizophrenia and lost what could have been a great career.  Well, he recovered somewhat and recorded the Rach III.  I had no idea about the movie or Grammys and Oscars -- just not my interest), but I suspect his recording was a best seller for some time.  I heard it and laughed a bit, thinking it was a parody.  No harm intended, I assure you.

Most recently, a pianist named Lang Lang recorded the Rach III.  Even though he hit every note, exactly at the right time, and more quickly than anyone had a right to expect, somehow it seemed to miss the emotional impact the work once had for me.  I kept remembered a recording by Richter that was much better for me.

Well, now there is a new artist.  She is one of the best new artists to appear since Glenn Gould. 

Valentina Lisitsa plays the Rach III dynamically, driven, filled with passion and intent.  There seems to be nothing missing.  I played it several times and then went back and compared the Horowitz (yes, with Ormandy) and Rach himself (I don't remember the orchestra), and she is right there with them, at least for me.

            Not many realize this, but she also has a great brain or mind.  She started out wanting to be a professional chess player and is very outspoken about Ukraine.  If she had only one composer to play, ever, it would be Beethoven.  Many of her performances are available on You Tube and have attracted millions.  All of this came as a bit of a surprise to me as I only knew her for her incisive remarks on Twitter, and only became aware of her as a pianist when the (pardon the expression) Toronto Symphony Orchestra cancelled one of her performances because of bitching by Kiev supporters.  (I told you she could think).

            She was born and grew up in Ukraine, but now lives in the U.S.  Check her out on You Tube.  She also has recordings on DGG, Decca, and a few other labels. 

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Season's Greetings

The Winter Celebration

[Editors Note: Last year, I reposted this as an antedote to Bush. Well, this year we have Obama who, by not being Bush, was awarded the Nodel peace prize. Upon being told this, he immediately set to work devising a way to emulate Bush by escalating in Afghanistan (Iraq would be plagarism, after all). Anyway, there does not seem to be as much Christmas "Cheer" this year, but there is still a need for the reminder. Also, at least one radio station, streaming online, will spend all of next week playing nothing but Beethoven. That's right, in Blagojevitch's home town. At least there is something to look forward to.)

This time of the year, especially this year, leaves less and less to celebrate. In fact, there is hardly and reason to celebrate anything anymore. There may be a few happy moments here and there, but the senseless killing that continues leaves no ritualistic period untouched. This particular week, we have seen only stock market reports and airline delays as well as major highway shutdowns and deaths on our interstate highway system, all precipitated by a few days off for those fortunate enough to still remain employed during which they are obligated out of habit to spend money they do not have to send things to people they have no real use for and whom they would just as soon never see again.

One wonders how many Beethovens, or potential Beethovens, or great artists have either been killed by war or aborted by poverty or economics. This winter solstice is the anniversary of Beethovin's premire performance of his fifth symphony, and his sixth, as well as his fourth piano concerto, all at the same concert, with Beethoven as conductor and pianist. How often in the history of the universe does a phenomenon such as that occur? Yet I know of no mass celebration of what is clearly one of the greatest accomplishments of humanity. Beethoven spent his life yearning for international peace and brotherhood and eventually expressed in in his 9th symphony which you may hear this season, complete with the text of Schiller's "Ode to Joy". I shudder to think how many people may sit through a performance of it out of a sense of duty.

Is it too much to believe that such accomplishments can be paralled? In 1595, in England alone, perhaps 100,000 people were able to read and write English, and this is being generous. Out of this came Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Nash, Greene, Sir Philip Sidney, Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare, Sir Francis Bacon, and many others whose literature survives and lives to this day. Imagine any city or town with a population of 100,000 and imagine what would come out of it today? In addition, at that time, 95% of everything written was written in Latin, the remaining 5% in the various "living languages." The King James version of the Bible was to follow as was John Milton.

And it was not a matter of these people, these great artists, being unrecognized in their own time. Beethoven himself was widely praised, most prominently by Haydn who had also praised Mozart. However, Goethe and Beethoven were reportedly walking together down a street and passersby would wave. Goethe lightly ovserved that these people should stop flattering him with the recognition and Beethoven reportedly asked "How do you know they are not waving at me?" There was no contradiction.

So we can think of Goethe and Beethoven, Shakespeare and Spenser, and look for our modern parallels. Perhaps Nietzsche was right when he said that Darwin had it wrong, that "survival of the mediocre" is the rule. Even more of a warning is the thought that they both were right -- the fittest are the mediocre.

Solstice.