The Times Quotidian

There is a romantic image connected with the piano music of Chopin, and especially with his nocturnes. A candlelit, elegant salon filled with ladies of all ages, fashionably dressed. Many are swooning or about to. Chopin, his delicate features lit by some inner vision as his lean, aesthetic fingers draw from the keys the most ephemeral tracery, while George Sand stands nearby puffing on a cigar.

The scene may be somewhat fanciful and overdrawn, but it is part of the Chopin legend, and it has rubbed off on a number of pianists since the composer’s time who have sought to rekindle his image in the concert hall. There is a great temptation to turn this wonderful music into a kind of romantic mush, to linger languidly over every turn of phrase until the music falls apart into a series of fleeting wisps of pink clouds.

Artur Rubinstein was one of the great figures on putting that portion of the legend to rest. His playing of Chopin was a revelation. Most of all, it revealed the strength, the richness of imagination, the sheer genius that lies embedded in the music itself. He gave Chopin stature, made him not merely the beloved panderer to the romantic tastes of the salon, but a composer whose every measure was full of daring and powerful musical thrust. — Alan Rich

Here is Artur Rubenstein playing Chopin Nocturne Op. 72 – No. 1 in E Minor

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An old friend of mine recently commented, “you always have had the best taste in music!”  Well thank you, but Alan Rich is the man! He has been the voice for Los Angeles music criticism for 20 years and I have learned more than a thing or two by keeping abreast of Alan’s work. Now, we are so lucky to have SO I’VE HEARD, the blog.

To say that this is a Rich resource would not only be a bad pun, but also an understatement. So I’ve Heard has cataloged reviews going all the way back to January 1983 when Alan Rich and Steve Reich discuss together Reich’s, then new recording, “Tehillim”. It’s heaven!

When I was informed of So I’ve Heard, I immediately added it to my blogroll. I encourage everyone to spend some quality time browsing Rich’s reviews and recommendations. The rewards are great.

Here is a sampling of some current material:
Devastation, March 22, 2009

The slow movement of Mozart’s G-minor Quintet is as heartbreaking as any music I know. I have written about this music before – a couple of pages in the foreword to my book of this same name repeat an article from New York Magazine in the 1970s, which in turn regurgitates wisdom verbatim from the classrooms of David Boyden and Joe Kerman at UC-Berkeley in the 1950s. Hearing it again last Friday, wonderfully played by the Calder Quartet plus Paul Coletti’s second viola at Zipper Hall, I found myself reacting more strongly than ever before to the G-minor outcry that begins the next movement, the ensuing Arioso – Mozart’s refusal to let go of the agonies he has shared with us over the eight minutes of the previous movement – and I ended the evening aware that my years of adoration of this one Mozart revelation so far have been in no way adequate.

That movement remains unique. Just the subtlety in the range of its tone color makes it so, in demanding that its five instruments perform muted until that overpowering release, the single high D that proclaims major triumphant over minor. In schoolboy enthusiasm I once proclaimed that D my favorite note in all music, and friends came over and asked me to play it for them – the one note! That’s nonsense, of course; a note is only a note in context. And when Ben Jacobson played it on Friday, because of the way he and his four partners had gotten themselves into the context of that amazing entire work, that stupendous panorama of suffering and irony and, in its final movement, an almost insolent masque of resolution, that high D had once again become, indeed, my favorite of all notes, ever. …

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