This culmination may be at the end or in the middle, it may be loud or soft; but the performer must know how to approach it with absolute calculation, absolute precision, because, if it slips by, then the whole construction crumbles, and the piece becomes disjointed and scrappy and does not convey to the listener what must be conveyed.
Sergei Rachmaninoff to Marietta Shaginian, cited in G. Norris, “Sergey Rakhmaninov,” The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie, London, Macmillan, 1995, vol. 15, p.555.
Rachmaninoff on the culminating point in performance
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The forgotten aspect of music
“One of things that’s been forgotten in music for a long time is the ability to be nakedly emotional”. David Lang, composer Cited in “When Opera Is New and Unproved”, Anne Midgette, The Washington Post, 7 September 2008.
The role of an interpreterThe interpreter is really an executant, carrying out the composer’s intentions to the letter. He doesn’t add anything that isn’t already in the work. If he is talented, he allows us to glimpse the truth of the work that is in itself a thing of genius and that is reflected in him. He shouldn’t dominate […]
Appreciating beautyMusic exists only in a passing of time, racing past us like the mid-nineenth-century trains Ruskin so hated. It is utterly non-fixed, and to focus on one moment is to destroy the whole. It is a forest that we have to pass through, not a single tree that we can contemplate or capture. But, if […]
The status of classical music in Australia“I would like to see the emphasis in teaching shift from the performer to the three elements necessary for satisfying music-making: the composer/ improviser, audience and player. I would also like to see the intelligent, inspired exploration of the question of interpretation – in Indian classical music, for instance, it is the opening up of […]
Bruckner the countAnton Bruckner developed a condition call numeromania that compelled him to count everything – cathedral gables, stars, leaves on the trees; even the number of bars in his lengthy symphonies. Source: Lawrence, Christopher (2001) Swooning. Sydney: Random House, p.70.
Arthur Schnabel“Artur Schnabel is a pianist unlike any other. One is conscious in listening to him of a powerful and original mind revealing unsuspected meanings and complications in music as familiar as Brahm’s Intermezzi and Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata. His tone is as a rule dry in anything above a piano, but a sudden touch of pedal […]
Beauty Around UsTitle: Beauty Around Us Composer: Greg Smith Based on text by: Bernhard Severin Ingemann Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score Related products: – Beauty Around Us (hymn version) – Beauty Around Us (easy piano version) – Beauty Around Us (mp3) SAMPLE:
Gramophone: no substitute for live performanceBritish conductor Thomas Beecham was not too impressed with early recording technology (the gramophone): It was put to him that for people who lived in remote districts, far from orchestral concerts, the gramophone was an alternative: "It is no alternative to this," he said, waving his arm towards the hall, where the orchestra was waiting […]
A little poem by MozartDearest Stroll! good old troll! you sit in your hole drunk as a Mole! – But you’re touched in your soul by music’s sweet flow. – Mozart, in a letter to Anton Stoll Cited in: Spaethling, Robert (2000) Mozart’s Letters; Mozart’s Life. London: Faber and Faber, p.438.
The RinkTitle: The Rink (Silent film soundtrack) Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score Related products: – The Rink – MP3 soundtrack BACKGROUND: FILM: Written by: Charles Chaplin, Vincent Bryan & Maverick Terrell Starring: Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell, Henry Bergman & Albert Austin Directors: Charles Chaplin & Edward Brewer Year of release: […]