The Performers; 14; Music That Survives Everything, Pianist Rosalyn Tureck with Omar Shapli

oh in order to play this music you must stop it so that you can not be simpler basis of a performer and intuition the intuition is terribly important but it is by no means you know because tastes are not absolute music that survives everything i'm a law sharply with a conversation with rosalind jurek and this is the performer it's a serious concern and the act of performance as seen by the performance of the audience and those who prefer the way for a performer one of the most distinguished and celebrated pianists of our time

she began our conversation by speaking of a composer particularly close to her that people should not be such a great genius that he had survived everything that anyone has ever done to him but it survived all the variations and mutilations that session of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century we must include the twentieth century because we mustn't think that it was only the nineteenth century that mutilated by and that no one in the twentieth century and seven so we must realize that there is no composer who could use a lot for pot harris has used to come out on top apparently empty not the important thing there's seriously as for instance is to swing those can do what they did with

it and everyone is quite surprised to hear me mention me and for me love it as a matter of fact in one of my lecturers the george washington university in st louis where as professor for several months and gave lectures on pop i actually introduced a couple of pieces from one of those swing low chords those who need to know where i hadn't said that corporate ads that presented to one of two pieces to show me janet treatment which as we see now i will say that i find them rather fun but one mustn't think that

someone buys a record of the swings to introduce a child to buy or for anyone <unk> orchestrations for instance in march this is this pretty much everyone knows this is unfortunately it's out of date i think the cost is that is a genius thing in his way but these id's of transcription and this particular orchestration type of love treatment of barclays something about at least fifty years behind the times it was useful in its way it did bring off to large audiences who would never have thought listening and otherwise to a regional center to when you think of the history of the music of bach exist the history of rediscover it the senator baucus rediscovered by mendelssohn and then later we discovered why beethoven was rediscovered and

so for those of us to caucus was rediscovered ballot probably should've this is a major re discovery well you're quite right actually this past summer i've been writing a book on this subject and there it will deal with the hope the discovery of bof the history actually the history i love the performance of bach's in the history of attitudes towards off since his or during his lifetime up to the present day and this deals with this just this very thing that you have brought up it seems that the significance of our debt and as it is were down has been in a kind of primal factors a prime mover in music or something beyond which an ultimate distillation of a certain quality number one mankind was writing a long list of one sentence descriptions of those composers the only thing you could say about it was

genesis one one piece is a rather ingenious qualities know it seems to it seems to be essential in order to expand have one expands from insurer goes into it yes yes well that's very true that and that i would like to approach it from the other end saying that off has everything you see has this vastness intellectually emotional a structurally in the idiom informed it is such rich music the composers are always returning to his music for new rules the ration and particularly in our time with the revolt against the nineteenth century not only composers but all artists jumped over the nineteenth century and went back to earlier times the teens seventeen sixteen fan i'm not increased about the

eleventh century and even that's getting robin naidoo studies but the point is the nba really serious and deep way so we moved into a totally different sphere in thinking in the sense of form and what we were looking for aesthetic and emotion and supplied these great route now let me say that in a gentle way for myself are absorbed me all the time i've devoted so much of my life to this music and to the thinking of that period everything connected with it which involves also today because as you know although i have studied bach and as a student and a scholar but i have never been an antiquarian because the party is not does not belong that's dr do something otherwise it doesn't the

arctic is it becomes a statistical survey done so we left and that sort of thing in mind regarding is everything for us today and that leads to the question that is often raised about the performance of the particularly the keyboard music and that is legal question i love the quote mathematical unquote against the romantic again quote unquote though this is about a so women are constantly arguing about i think it's probably much more than the musicians really feel about that you feel that that there is a tendency to her to over romanticize the of the keyboard music that that has argued that this is not a significant issue you have heard this kind of question about the all my life ever since i was a child and done one thing i'd like to

say first we're now of nineteen sixty five years will spend sixty five years of this century revolting against our current century the nineteenth century we can't we can't get over the fact that we followed the nineteenth century don't you think it's time that we came out of these early adolescent stage a revolt against our new house grew up and forgot about this talk about over romanticizing under romanticizing to mathematical instruction lies and try to put the pieces together and realize that brought as a genius mad genius that he is he was and you realize how much music that men vote how couldn't that out stature been only a mathematical are only emotion now it's that they structure that is fantastic which is

unbelievable the more you know of bach as a professional you ever cease to wonder and how he rode his music and professional teams in structural terms but at the same time he has such a tremendous humanity in depth of feeling and get cake you once say about science and got that it is one warren he visited so it must be the beginning of this rather than some kind of framework that one votes for it music as everything just as you say a rembrandt no one's rembrandt emotional or was he mathematical you see it was shakespeare in which i was the mathematical harkin left such questions of such great geniuses and is that the question is the wrong question what about levees let me rephrase that and what gets deal

think that's you as a performer in the year nineteen sixty five playing the oceans are going to deliver a performance that would have been recognizable as a correct performance in bach's own time for an audience of boxing title or do you think that there does involve a kind of a slightly different gear slightly different feeling with the change and time again now you have asked a very interesting sort of a double question and you you connected these two questions with the word or not being the twentieth century we think more in terms of and not either or as nineteenth century thinking if i maybe about status if you look at it today i would say both are true and i would say this about my own playing because i knew how much work

i have given to research i gave her i have put into thinking about this music and how deeply i have had to delve into the practices of the farmlands the practices of composition the way people thought the way people felt in those times i'd been playing harpsichord clavichord and the organ since i was fourteen years all out so that i feel a very deep identification with his music and the quantity of thinking and feeling of the time at the same time i am a person of today and i will not claim as some people claim that they have the right way of rain because i think this is an absolute lie nobody has the right way i'm sure about himself would say that i have played a great many they are works of

composers living today you know perhaps that i had been much involved in contemporary music and i've played many print years of major works and that isn't a composer that i've played for i always go to the composer and played where fourteen first before my public performance as you know it's as you know i mean it comes to you anything and they want different interpretations isn't a really creative artist who would try to pinn one down to a village it into the agendas with images of performances about that that there is more than one and creative the impulse going to work but there is one thing however that it would not only require but i think that my must demand and that is that one cannot simply sit down and play bass out of the usual musical and kill more firing training

of today no matter how find their training is because the fafsa music is the connected with performance the traditions about ba'ath party something that was last after his death and they one last stab at it isn't as though oh we had an immediate tradition with our vessel in order to play this music you must study so that you cannot approach it on the simpler basis of a performer and intuition intuition is terribly important but it is by no means not because tastes i'm not absolutes a taste or something of the time and therefore no matter how much talent and good taste may bring to the act is still bringing that which belongs to iraq time and if you really have not had contact me at

or study gdp today in law it's what went into making the taste in the eighteenth century and in germany in particular which is very different from a tinny of england france of the same period one you can go terribly wrong so one must half scholarship and art and business marriage and evaluates the viola same as the shift the topic of this discussion somewhat to rescue you just a minute we're speaking on just the new nautical on the significance of the work in the in by scholarship about performance of the early dr schweitzer graduate say briefly what would you feel that the basic significance of the not as much as what it was in action yes i'd be delighted to he was very important

in his contribution to the understanding of at the beginning of our century his work came out in nineteen oh five and that he was the first to meet a definitive state mint about the the text of the music of being connected we have the music itself in other words he pointed out that he's bought had a word to deal with say such as anguish which is a word which occurs in the opening chorus of the saint matthew passion in english it would be the opening words are trying new daughter's share my anguish and overworked and rich by has raised the phrase such pete giorgio design depicting the quantitative agony and anguish at this is one

example that and to the new bridge is absolutely racing now this occurs all the time in bach in this is that another answer to these people who are afraid that was so intellectual and so remote one out strikes at the vote and a large part of his work to these very best subject and he was the first who made his definitive statement and dirt called the attention of serious musicians and scholars to lose fact since then lee is a great development in being musical logical research we know that this was a practice of baroque composers it wasn't only buffer because this was a general way of composing so we've learned a great deal about this approach real laws and not at all not at all and of course at the time that he wrote

the music world was deep in the sky there are going to do either bought was very good for you and very intellectual and a good exercise and good for their fingers or it was something enormously emotional lives and over transcribed and so forth and so on so this was a very important statement that fights and light rail as i said before research has not developed enormously and we've gone far beyond site says this sets and his work so that kept their meetings in his work which do not hold in which we know that iraq is outmoded no such a study about oh oh i would say yes at it said it still has some good material some awfully good material in it and i think that everyone who is something of a student in by the layman who is

interested in this subject not to read his work because it is a classic but david was writing about as a as an element in the history of the music of bach rather than as a an immediate so authoritative study about my correct yes it's as good things in it because like so many things but a great part of it is outdated and then over theorized because shiites are in pointing out that his relationship with the text of music then tries to make a kenny hawk the area of it i think every time you find and a phrase of this kind are phrases that it means it means sadness because this kind of phase is over a word that means sadness was it a tendency that we were going to shoot on records and thought yes there's a matter of fact that when you think of those charges on performance ms reichl well i

am one of which is certain article which i wrote about sights and i said that bush he has been criticized a great deal especially in recent years in his performances because it's just that his technique is not good enough and so forth and so on your ankle yes well i would say this i agree on the whole it's fights there was not a performing i would say this web sites was not a performer in the usual sense but if you listen to sites and we are the requirements that to listen to a major performer in a field he would not live up to the requirements there's only one thing however that one should not miss and that is his spiritual vision i'm not talking about romanticism over romanticizing are under tremendous citing schweitzer did have a vision not having a vision doesn't mean that you're a romantic

it's not true but this is often confusion today because we have been so frightened by anything which approaches human feeling that i mean even the word emotion is all it has been almost eight oh for a long time as fighter did have a vision and this is something that that is all to the court as one must be able to separate that interesting to speak of the church in this collection of it has been people were speak of the trouble certain connection to beethoven concern that but to many recordings he makes many mistakes and that has a certain amount of technically sloppy play and so forth but there is nevertheless as a vision as they're making very disparaging gestures that well you know this accusation of schnabel with sloppy playing i could only say that this is the result of listening to records because bert people forget that and most records made to date and

mate and tape and the tape is spiced up and all the correct notes i spliced in all the little mistakes as blind comps now schnabel as vivian struggles playing we have a complete moon and played at one time and we also had the inspiration that goes with it today we have more often a synthetic interpretation which is not what the performer play at all and as a matter of fact i have heard people say that much rather listen to records there then go to kansas because they don't do that today there's no doubt there's a great emphasis on these technical accuracy with all correct notes and this has sprung up mainly since it's been possible to splice tapes and the long playing records over that leads to the question of the usual question of that recorded performance as opposed to we're about four months before an audience of mostly farmers have quite strong feelings on the subject you

who doesn't want to have the race it does look like a working without an audience well i have found a modus vivendi week recording and with radio and television i have found a way of dealing with it and playing it reduces i shall never forget the first time i recorded first year ago i hid being their recording and for his master's voice in london and deb for the first two yes it i was recording marlowe and then all of the sudden stereo became a great thing and all my work boys chorus transferred to stereo from that point on and the first time that i walked into the studio to do my first stereo recording sessions i was terrified because we're i had been using the same studio on

for a long time and then at the end of one wall is you know there was a glass window through which i could see the engineers and also of course the average light comes on to give you the seat know when to begin they were still some sense of human contact even through the house because we could see each other and if something were to go wrong at the delaware to explode and they could see that this happened in something could be done about it but this time i walked in the gas pedal had been taken away a solid war had been put in its place that silk elmo was there with a telephone by my side and the only contact with the outside world and double doors or ground the stereo might just being very different as they are at times two steel poles which are about twenty feet

high and there were three or four of them around this enormous studio and they look like enormous insects harling of the plo and it was just about the time that people were beginning to go up into space and it as though it were in a space museum disconnected from the entire world and weave like only hope ark connecting with the telephone and the sense that perhaps something happened that made me feel as though i reunited being approaching life and done all i could do was pick up the telephone and connect to the internet doesn't have a word with him or they would we need and i would speak with them and then of course is correct if i'm sitting down to record music with fundamentally he's a means of communication and read

communication from people to each other when they demanded a lot of scary stuff this week could you speak just briefly as a conclusion about the actual nature of the basic kind of performance day performance before an audience the year so what is can you can you really say what is the contribution of the audience into the performance this is a virtual interview as a matter of going to be very hard to pinpoint but most farmers and if you were there is elliott an ingredient that it by the audience and the person wouldn't specify or shouldn't say sen neighborhoods issue which wanted something extremely substantial and realizing that effect is so so real that i wouldn't say that it's it's almost like this tangible almost physically it is perhaps physically tangible because the communication that i feel from my

audience and from myself to them is so tremendous of that debt that sometimes is that a quality itself is it's overpowering in washington there is no doubts that an audience gives back what you give them just too much sugar experiencing this with his quality that everywhere to say that this is this might be an imaginative thing it's not at all is one knows that one knows the difference between playing in a studio with great stereo insects mites and then a human audience and down i think it won't be possible to do away with the human beings don't always seem to be

moving into that's the eyewear a performer and artist joe works alone in the studio and it would be televised plea on the air and so forth i think we were always have to have a human being the physical and the beings presence and there's no question that there is a tremendous qualitative that evolves that develops quick play with an audience and between each with no words there are ways of communication i mean we couldn't have argued that didn't communicate could narrow music that survives everything a conversation with rosalind jurek recorded in new york in september nineteen sixty five i'm omar shapley and this has been the performance reviews for wypr the fm station of the riverside church in new york city this is the eastern educational radio network