How much can a piano take?

Saturday night I went to the Huntsville Symphony. In its two most recent concerts, the symphony has sounded very good, and with a guest conductor (and pianist) this past week, I was mildly intrigued to hear how they would sound under a different maestro's baton. They started off with a Schumann symphony, which was a little bland, but executed well enough. After intermission came a Stravinsky piece, which was certainly different from anything I'd heard in a while (as Stravinsky usually is). Then came a Grieg piano concerto featuring Anne-Marie McDermott on piano. Although Mrs. S. and I have balcony seats in the center, second row (far from the stage), I also have an excellent pair of binoculars, a relic of my days as a horse race handicapper/writer. With those binoculars, we can usually get a fairly decent view of just about anything we want to see on stage. So I watched Ms. McDermott pretty closely for most of her performance.

Of course, she was playing a Steinway, and she was really having at it. The Grieg piece had a lot of up and down movement, and a lot of low register accents to drive and fill out the high register arpeggios and scales. These require the pianist to (BUM!) bash the left hand down, then (Be-da-da-duh, Be-da-da-duh...) quickly bring both hands to the upper register to thump some high accent notes before immediately rushing down the keyboard in a frenzy, then BUM, Be-da-da-duh, Be-da-da-duh, BUM, Be-da-da-duh, Be-da-da-duh, over and over again, for about fifteen minutes. It was as physically demanding a performance as it was musically interesting.

Then I got to thinking. A Steinway & Sons grand has no trouble standing up to this kind of incessant, harried, (essentially) uncontrolled pounding, and indeed, the Huntsville Symphony's Steinway grand sounded, well, grand, while succumbing to Ms. McDermott's relentless attacks and beatings. While I watched, I thought about my serviceable, but modest Yamaha P-70 at home. While it sounds good and has true piano feel and response, it is clunky at the best of times and is basic in construction and performance. It occurred to me that if Ms. McDermott were to play the Grieg piece on my piano, she could only play it once or twice before she completely beat the piano into submission. As I watched her play the Steinway, I kept mentally projecting the P-70 beneath her hands, and all I could envision were keys flying and plastic housings cracking, red felt pads popping out the bottom and sides, and electronic circuit boards splintering and sparking into oblivion. I mean, every once in a while, when I'm practicing and I get frustrated, I'm apt to bang on the keyboard, or get rough in my playing just to let out some frustration, whereupon I sense the keyboard's delicacy and allow the guilt to force me pull my punches and stop. I know one day, if I don't control myself, one or more of those keys are going to go down, and not get back up again. Ever. I'll really feel bad on that day.

Maybe I just need a Steinway, so I can beat the hell out of it once in a while.

Maybe not.

As I do after every live performance I attend, I buckled down and practiced yesterday. I never bashed my keyboard once, not even while mutilating a stride exercise or disgracing Falling Grace by playing too fast.

Tomorrow (or maybe Wednesday), a long overdue addition to the Yoity Tot list.

Vacation, and the upshot

Been ignoring this blog unintentionally, due to traveling back to Cleveland Ohio to attend a 70th birthday party for an aunt of mine. It was a bit of a cultural affair for Mrs. S and I, because in addition to meeting up with a bunch of family members we haven't seen in ten years or more, at the Indians v. Yankees on April 26, which the tribe won (yeah!), we went to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the Cleveland Zoo, and the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra.

Enough has been written about the evolution of jazz and parallels (or lack thereof) between it and rock, and we all know the influence of blues on rock and jazz, so all I'll say about the RNRHOF is that anyone with even the smallest amount of musicality will find something of interest there. Of course, I was brought up on church music but quickly moved to focus on rock and popular music before finally catching the jazz bug, so I really enjoyed most of the exhibits. My favorites were the costumes: various from Madonna by Jean-Paul Gaultier, Mick Jagger's Voodoo Lounge Tour costume, and the leather bustier worn by Grace Slick at Woodstock. As Adrian, my friend from England so perspicaciously noted, however, "They won't let you smell Grace Slick's leather vest." Which is a shame.

At the Symphony, at a matinee performance on Friday morning (average age of attendees: 68, 71 not including me and Mrs. S), I had my first exposure to the music of Kodaly (Dances of Galanta), which was an unexpected treat. I daresay I enjoyed that even more than the Bartok. After hearing Leonard Bernstein lecture on Stravinsky and Bartok having influenced jazz, I listened closely to the Concerto for Orchestra of Bartok, and to be honest, I want to believe I heard some jazz elements, but I would be hard pressed to say what they were and point them out to other listeners. So rather than try to say what I'm supposed to say, I'll say what I felt: I like the modern (or "post-classical") composers better because they get more out of the modern-day orchestra. Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, and that lot are all about dynamics: quietness, subdued tones, bright staccatos and long, breathy vibratos, then, stunning finales. Bartok, Berlioz, Smetana, et. al. like to blast you out of your seat by making every piece in the orchestra play something, usually together, so that the sound doesn't envelop you so much as smash into you. The effect is much more stimulating, and, for example, in a piece with which the listener is not familiar, like Kodaly, when the orchestra is on and at full bore, it's almost scary.

Because I lived in England for almost four years and New York for one, I've had ample opportunity to hear world class orchestras in the (somewhat distant) past. The effect was lost on my ignorance and inexperience, I'm afraid. Recently having attended two concerts of the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra, I thought I was ready for what the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra would present. And don't be confused, here. The Huntsville Symphony Orchestra is a fine orchestra. Professional, very capable, technically proficient. But the CSO is better. Much better. There is a crispness to their execution and a brilliance to their sound that the HSO lacks. Some of that could be attributed to the venues, where the HSO is spread across a relatively shallow stage at the Von Braun Center while the CSO is packed into a deep cavernous end of Severance Hall. I don't know. I think probably the CSO members have better, more dynamic instruments, and they have slightly better response and attack, and the conductor is slightly more experienced and aware, and once all that is put together, you just get a deeper, warmer, "better sounding" sound. I'll say again, nothing against the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra, but, there's a reason why the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra is considered world class and has dozens of recordings available and soloists/conductors travel halfway around the world to accompany/direct them, and one listen is all anyone would need to confirm their superiority.

Upon my return, after five days away from my piano. The rust was inevitable and heavy. I couldn't play anything. Trying a Parker head from Blues for Alice, I was lucky to play two bars error free. Plunking at a smattering of other blues like All Blues or Blue Monk, the results were no better. Flipping through the Real Book, I couldn't make Alice find wonderland, my prince never showed up, not even someday, I couldn't Take the 'A' Train, and I didn't like any of My Favorite Things. Hopeless. I played some soulless scales and went to bed. Last night, I shook off a little more of the dust and made one pass of Don't Get Around Much Anymore sound almost like a tune. I think I'm going to work hard on Blues for Alice tonight and try to get something out of that at tomorrow night's lesson. The trepidation for a sparse, unenthusiastic lesson is palpable.

But Cleveland deserved my attention, so I'll take the (very) good (enjoyable vacation) with the (not so) bad (temporary slide in musical ability).