The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: This 90-year-old Belgian classical pianist learned how to play slow movements by Mozart and Beethoven by hearing Ray Charles – and shows why The Ear likes the arts reporting on PBS and NPR
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By Jacob Stockinger
Yesterday, I posted a disconcerting story from the Columbia Journalism Review about how most mainstream newspapers and traditional media are cutting way back on art coverage.
After all, runs the conventional wisdom, how can the arts compete with sports, politics and crime for attracting readers?
Here is a link to that post:
Well, that kind of mistaken thinking is one reason why The Ear likes to watch PBS and national Public Radio or NPR. Especially on the PBS NewsHour, you find terrific stories about and interviews with major figures in the fine arts and the performing arts.
PBS treats the arts as vital and essential, not ornamental or secondary.
A wonderful example happened this week on the segment called “Brief But Spectacular” in which people offer their thoughts about their own lives and careers.
In this case, it was Jean Stark — a 90-year-old Belgian-born woman who was an accomplished concertizing classical pianist. She performed in Carnegie Hall and Town Hall in New York City, and in halls around the world, and who talks about her life and career for PBS.
In the four-minute interview, she laments how classical music isn’t promoted these days and emphasizes how wonderful it was to be alive during the golden years of classical music with such great figures as composer-pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff and Sergei Prokofiev.
But, she confesses, for all her accomplishments she was unsatisfied with how she played slow movements of sonatas by Classical-era masters Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven.
Until she came to the U.S. and went with a friend to a concert by Ray Charles.
Charles, she says, taught how to play slowly.
The Ear only wishes she had been more specific about the lessons she learned. Was it phrasing? Tempo? Accents? “Rubato,” or flexible timing?
It is a great, heart-warming story and typical of the kind of human interest arts coverage that you generally do not find on other television news channels, whether traditional networks like CBS, NBC, ABC and FOX or cable TV channels such as CNN and MSNBC.
So The Ear offers it as both an enjoyable and informative arts story, and as an endorsement of the PBS NewsHour and especially reporter Jeffrey Brown, who does such a terrific job of reporting on the arts.
Here is the segment, which you can find on YouTube, along with other recordings by Stark:
An after-thought: To the best of his knowledge, The Ear thinks that the music you hear her playing is the “Aeolian Harp” Etude in A-Flat Major, Op. 25, No. 1, by Frederic Chopin and part of the suite “Pour le piano” (For the Piano) by Claude Debussy.
What do you think of arts coverage on the mainstream media and on PBS?
What do you think Jean Stark learned from Ray Charles?
If you saw this story, how did it affect you?
The Ear wants to hear.
Tags: ABC, accents, adagio, Arts, Bartok, Beethoven, Belgium, Carnegie Hall, CBS, Chopin, Classical era, Classical music, CNN, Columbia Journalism Review, Debussy, etude, FOX, Jacob Stockinger, Jeffrey Brown, Ludwig van Beethoven, media, metronome, movement, Mozart, MSNBC, Music, National Public Radio, NBC, New York City, Newshour, NPR, PBS, PBS Newshour, phrasing, Piano, Prokofiev, Queen Elizabeth, Rachmaninoff, Rachmaninov, Ray Charles, rubato, Sonata, Suite, Television, Tempo, town hall, TV, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Wisconsin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, YouTube
Classical music: Violinist Henning Kraggerud, who solos with the Madison Symphony Orchestra this weekend, speaks out against perfection and for improvising and composing
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By Jacob Stockinger
Norwegian violinist Henning Kraggerud plays beautifully, even flawlessly, but always expressively.
You can hear that for yourself tonight, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon when he solos in the popular Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor by Max Bruch with the Madison Symphony Orchestra under the baton of John DeMain. (The famous Symphony No. 6 “Pastorale” by Ludwig van Beethoven is also on the program.)
Here is a link to more about the MSO concerts:
But Kraggerud is also a serious thinker about music and musicians.
He recently appeared in a blog posting. There he praised the use of improvising and composing as ways to explore and expand one’s musicality. And he practices what he preaches: three of his own compositions are on the MSO program this weekend. (You can hear more about his own training in the YouTube interview with Henning Kraggerud at the bottom.) He also improvised Thursday afternoon on The Midday program of Wisconsin Public Radio.
Kraggerud laments the loss of well-rounded musicians who know more about the world than just music.
He puts the use of metronome markings in a subjective perspective by quoting famous composers like Johannes Brahms and Claude Debussy. He believes that expression, rather than precision, should be the ultimate goal.
And he condemned various practices, including teaching methods, recordings and competitions, that place technical perfection above personal, subjective interpretation as a goal. He praises the use of informed interpretative freedom from Johann Sebastian Bach onwards.
Here is a link to Kraggerud’s remarks and observations, which take on added interest and relevance due to his appearances in Madison this weekend:
http://www.classical-music.com/blog/problem-perfection?source=techstories.org
Tags: Artistic director, Arts, Baroque, Beethoven, Chamber music, Classical music, Compact Disc, Competition, compose, concerto, Debussy, Edward Elgar, expression, freedom, Henning Kraggerud, improvisation, improvise, interpretation, interview, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, John DeMain, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Max Bruch, metronome, Music, Norway, Norwegian, Ole Bull, Orchestra, Overture Center, pastoral, Pastorale, precision, recording, symphony, teaching, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Viola, Violin, Wisconsin, wisconsin public radio, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, YouTube
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The Well-Tempered Ear 
Classical music: This summer’s Token Creek Festival is CANCELED. Plus, a teenager’s piano “practice journal” on Instagram is instructive, entertaining and encouraging
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PLEASE HELP THE EAR. IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE IT or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event. And you might even attract new readers and subscribers to the blog.
NEWS ALERT: This summer’s Token Creek Festival (TCF) — with the chamber music theme of Legacy to run from Aug. 21-Sept. 6 –has been CANCELED. Organizers say they hope to launch a virtual online season of archived performances at the end of the summer. Also, once modestly sized gatherings are safe again, the TCF hopes to hold an off-season event. For more information and an official statement from TCF, go to: https://tokencreekfestival.org
By Jacob Stockinger
Somewhere in New York City is a young Chinese piano prodigy who can help you get through what is often the most challenging and discouraging part of piano lessons: practicing.
His name is Auston (below) – no last name is given – and you can find him, in T-shirts and shorts, on Instagram at Auston.piano.
Auston is quite the prodigy. A 13, he plays difficult and dramatic repertoire: the Nocturne in C minor, the Scherzo No. 1 in B minor and the Ballade No. 1 in G minor, all by Chopin.
You can also hear him play the Prelude and Fugue No. 3 in C-sharp minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, by Johann Sebastian Bach; the fiendish Toccata by Sergei Prokofiev; and the Piano Concerto No. 2 by Sergei Rachmaninoff.
One day, The Ear expects, Auston might well be among the impressive amateurs and, later, professionals who compete in international competitions.
But more than listening to him playing, his frequent social media entries – sometimes he posts two or three times a day — allow us to hear him practice. We even hear him practicing scales – so-called Russian scales that combine scales in parallel and contrary motion.
This week, he hit 100 video posts. Just yesterday Auston started sight-reading the “Winter Wind” Etude of Chopin, Op. 25, No. 11, which many consider to be the most technically difficult of all Chopin’s etudes. (You can hear the etude – played by Maurizio Pollini – and see the note-filled score in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Starting out, he often plays hands separately (below) and sight-reads the score very, very slowly, making mistakes and working out fingering. He also uses a metronome at a very slow tempo. He gets frustrated but he never gives up. He just starts over again and provides an excellent role model for aspiring piano students.
But this young man is also fun to read. In his one-minute or less entries of his “practice journal” – which he also calls his “practice journey” — he is witty and self-deprecating in his commentaries about the music and especially about himself when he makes mistakes. As seriously as he takes the piano and practicing, he doesn’t take himself too seriously.
All in all he can even encourage others – including The Ear –to persevere and go through the same frustrations of practicing and learning a new piece.
In this case, it is the piano, but the postings could easily apply to practicing any other instrument or even to singing.
Check it out.
You will be impressed.
You will admire him.
You will laugh along with him.
And you just might practice more.
If this practice journal is a pandemic project, it succeeds way beyond what you — and probably Auston himself — might expect.
Happy listening!
And patient, productive practicing!
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