I don't know how I'm surprised. All artists eventually disappoint you - relatively speaking, but very time I buy a new week-long ticket to the Berlin Philharmonic's digital concert hall, I find myself a little less in awe of Kirill Petrenko. In some ways, I'm more in awe than ever, but he's almost too extraordinary for his own good. Everything moves like light speed and quicksilver, more nuances per second than virtually anyone in the history of the profession. And yet to what purpose?
What is music for? Music is not a quantifiable process, and just because you hear certain details articulated with precision does not make great music. And if a conductor exerts extraordinary control over the music, is he then repressing the chance for the performance to grow into a more human experience? If you view music as a schematic process, or architectonic, or a deductive process, that's perfectly acceptable, but you shouldn't expect that music makes you feel any more gratitude to be alive than a tchochkeh gifted by a friend you don't like. But if you view music the way a gardener might a plant, the music can take on the miracle of life, and a performance allows the music to grow into your inner life of its own accord in ways that contravene a score's blueprint.
Now, that does not mean a performer should impose their own conception on top of the score's, it does, though, mean that the performer should 'follow the music' in whatever manner it develops. A performer must know the score intimately, the score is order, but a performance is chaos - music is literally the aural process of making order from the chaos that is our auditory process. So therefore, if the performer's momentary instinct contravenes the score, they have to follow the instinct.
What creates great music is the tension between the score and the performance. A performer who slavishly follows the score finds no music within it, but a performer who willfully distorts the score has no score to interpret. What creates great music is the coming together in a special space; not a space just to coordinate notes, but a community of performers and listeners who express things to each other as in a conversation. Like any living process, things can get both repressive and chaotic, but such is life, and if there isn't a certain amount of the living process where questionable decisions aren't allowed , it's either dead or a robot, but it's not alive.
Make no mistake, Petrenko's no robot, nevertheless, there is still something about Petrenko that feels like a perfect conducting machine - one might say the same thing of Igor Levit's pianism (they even look like they could be brothers). Both of them have enormous vitality, intensity, focus in their musicmaking. Both of them feel like looking at a musical x-ray, and listening to them both can be a profound, revelatory experience. But does the enlightenment they provide really result in a changed life? When I heard certain conductors live: Dohnanyi, Blomstedt, Jansons, I felt as though the curvature of my life itself was changed. I emerged feeling as though life was more bearable, durable, that music itself was there so that our souls could be purged and pacified. Petrenko and Levit elicit so much detail as to be an awesome experience of enlightenment, like looking into the Hubble Telescope. But when I emerged from Dohnanyi or Brendel, I felt as though I knew what it was like to live in outer space.
The story of no artist is written until the end of their career, and there are already all sorts of great performances with the Berliners: not least Beethoven 9 and 7, Shostakovich 9 and 10, Tchaikovsky 5 and 6, Dvorak 5, and of course, all that Suk which is as great a service to music as Mackerras performed to Janacek... but when I hear the way Petrenko performs the works that matter the most to me: when I hear how he drives Brahms and Schubert mercilessly, when I hear the absence of tragedy in Shostakovich 8, when I hear blandness in Mozart's Gran Partita, I begin to wonder if a bit of heart and spirit is missing amid all that nuance and hard work, and I find myself missing Simon Rattle, who never tried to nail every nuance, but always let the music breathe and flow.
Rattle always got a bum reputation because he flew so high, but anybody who doesn't get Rattle has to re-evaluate their priorities, because they're missing out. The execution can be dirty, the interpretive decisions occasionally questionable, and sometimes, he can be just boring. But it is astounding how much humanity his performances can have. His performances are organic, they bleed color and breathe in and out with the flow of the work's harmonic tensions, and if he really gets the piece, he is as exciting as any musician on earth. Though lacking Lenny's genius, he is the closest thing Bernstein has to an heir. He has Bernstein's open-hearted communication, his spirit of embracing the audience, his omnivorousness that embraces every style, every expressive mood, every composer, every new idea, but he can also be self-effacing, and has an ability to 'downsize' and be intimate that Lenny's larger-than-life spirit lacked.
Rattle is the 'liberal' to Petrenko's 'conservative.' Rattle's is an open process that allows for enormous mistakes, but he also allows for enormous rewards. He is clearly creating his interpretations in the moment, and the spontaneity allows for the most gorgeous surprises that stun even the musicians, and through that process shines through a glow of discovery, or a flow of an adventure. Petrenko's is a closed process, air to Rattle's water. Every note is checked, double checked, triple checked, for meanings he has clearly studied and worked over for years, and never allows for surprises in performance. The technical and intellectual process involved in Petrenko's approach is biblically awesome, but it does not feel of this world, and there's a level of humanity it lacks.
But the Berlin Philharmonic was never an orchestra of this world, it was always an instrument meant to cause awe, not move to tears. There was no reason for Rattle to go to Berlin except the ego trip of landing the world's biggest appointment. Rattle is a towering artist, but he does not have the sheer gift of either a Petrenko or a Karajan, and he belongs in a place like London or Boston, that can appreciate him properly for his huge but occasionally flawed humanity and talent. The other day I compared Petrenko's Brahms 2 to Rattle's, and there was no comparison at all. Rattle, though not a Brahmsian for all time, was by so many miles the better performance, and then I listened to Semyon Bychkov, who is a Brahmsian for all time (and Petrenko's teacher), and oh my god....
Artists disappoint you, that's as much the nature of artists as athletes and lovers. There's no such thing as an artist you can look to for constant enlightment. You listen to them as part of their journey and yours. You rejoice in their successes and feel betrayed by their failures. If you feel constantly satisfied by an artist, you're probably trying to will yourself to hear what the artist hears. I love Mariss Jansons's musicmaking as I have no conductor I've ever heard live, especially in all kinds of Austro-Germans nobody thinks of him for.... but Jansons was a terrible Mahler conductor and I don't even care for him in the Richard Strauss recordings so many others love. The more I hear Semyon Bychkov, long before he lead the musical pack in condemning Putin, the more I came to think that Bychkov has that Jansons-like generosity of heart married to musical skill and sense. Like Blomstedt or Dohnanyi, the rewards are delayed, and even if it takes a while, you eventually realize musicians like them reveal 'the world behind the world' and after it's done, you live your life differently. My reaction to artists like Bychkov is deeper than mere tears, it's days and days worth of mental peace. And yet I too find Bychkov a bad Mahler conductor - wooden and bombastic.
Nobody in your life delivers what you need from them all the time. The only question is, who delivers it essentially?
I've come up with a kind of 'mountain of musical performance' that I use as a metric for how meaningful a musical experience I've had. Please do not take this seriously in any sense, I understand that it's metaphysical bullshit, but it works for me and I'd encourage you to come up with your own.
As my 'expertise', so to speak, is firstly conductors, then pianists, then violinists, this will only apply there. I don't have the depth of experience with singers to know how consistent are their rewards. And while there are only so many times I can listen to violin music before thinking to myself how paltry are the offerings compared to the piano, violin was in many ways 'my world.' On the other hand, however much I played chamber music as a kid, it's still something I'm slowly assimilating to the point that I feel I can offer meaningful comment. I don't think I'm there yet.
Furthermore, please also mind that this 'mountain' only applies to questions of musical experiences that are already excellent. Mediocre music is mediocre music, and there's nothing to be done about mediocrity except to accept that the world will always have much more of that within it than excellence.
There are clearly levels I'm missing. I don't know where to put artists who combine passion with formal severity in a way that creates an experience of that is both self-effacing and of the utmost emotional extremity, so I don't quite know where to categorize artists I greatly esteem like Emil Gilels, Jascha Horenstein, Gianandrea Noseda, Kyung-Wha Chung, or even Isaac Stern.
So at the bottom of this mountain is 'merely' excellence. Excellence is its own reward, and there are plenty of artists gifted enough to provide that excellence in which you find no flaw. Excellence is always a staggering achievement which takes enormously hard work. When I've heard Riccardo Chailly conduct, when I hear piano played by Pollini or Julia Fischer on the violin, I am in awe of what they do, I'm astounded by their technique, their intelligence, and their energy. I cannot even imagine the decades of study it takes to build their musicianship to its fullest capacity. And many times, my brain is fed by their insights and I find things in the pieces I'd never heard before. But I am never moved, and if it's on a stereo (as usually), I feel a deathly chill that often motivates me to turn it off.
As you begin to climb it, you get to 'delight,' and there's a special place in your heart for every one of these musicians. Even if you're not sure the artists aim for anything deeper than fun, you really do feel joy in their music. Among conductors, the obvious exemplar is Thomas Beecham, among pianists perhaps Ignaz Friedman, and among violinists, perhaps it's, dare I say, Maxim Vengerov. You could also count among this kind of artist Louis Lortie or Renauld Capucon. They're not deep, their performances are neither meaningful nor easily identifiable, they just play exuberantly with great personality, and almost inevitably give a joyful experience.
And then you get to the level of 'magic moments,' provided by those musicians who, however inconsistent, always provide those magic moments when the music is never short of transcendent. Whenever I woudl hear Christoph Eschenbach conduct the National Symphony, I came to think that however unrehearsed or pompous an interpretation is otherwise, there are always moments - usually in the slow passages - that belong to the stars. And to be honest, that's also how I feel about (pauses for dramatic effect...) Daniel Barenboim.... Unless you think thick textured soup is a style, their styles are not even particularly recognizable, and they're not nearly as deep as their acolytes think they are (to say nothing of themselves...), but they almost inevitably provide moments, flashes, that make us wonder if the genius everybody alleges is really there. This is also, after more years and a number of mediocre live experiences, how I now feel about Michael Tilson Thomas.
Then you get to 'enormity', the gigantic personalities who cannot help but be themselves. This is Furtwangler, this is Gould, this is Menuhin, Richter, Horowitz, Scherchen, Gieseking, Cziffra, Sokolov. the artists that; however enormous their insights and inspiration, are so larger than life that capture the composer on their own terms is nearly impossible. When you hear the aforementioned, you cannot help hearing the artist rather than the composer. They are, obviously, capable of the most titanic performances, but hearing their intensity can also feel like a terrible violation of your well-being. Spend too much time in their company and you could be driven mad.
Past there is a level of 'education:' The instructional artists, whose every bar seems to be a running commentary on the piece. When you hear them, you can't help but understand better what the music is supposed to mean, even if you disagree completely with their conclusions. This is Bernstein, this is Arrau, this is Cortot, this is Edwin Fischer, this is Gidon Kremer. and though cut off before his old master years, Zoltan Koscis was exactly this sort of pianist. Manfred Honeck is a particularly magnificent example of this sort of artist among today's conductors, and Adam Fischer is perhaps an extreme example of it. Ton Koopman is a particular example of this among period instrument keyboardists and conductors. However distracting or invasive, the new insights are almost constant in every bar of music, and it's nearly impossible to come away without thinking you've had a meaningful experience.
And then, perhaps as the air gets a little thinner, there's 'enlightenment.' Not in the sense of some Buddhist zen thing (though maybe we'll get to that), but in the sense that by hearing them, you feel as though you can get a kind of absolute understanding of what this music is about (though of course that's an illusion). Though they're capable of so much more, this is Kirill Petrenko, this is Igor Levit. Before them it was Carlos Kleiber and Claudio Abbado, it was Eduard van Beinum, Igor Markevitch, Karel Ancerl, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Michael Gielen, Bernard Haitink. It was the inhumanly awesome violin playing of Tossy Spivakovsky. It was Josef Hofmann, it was Robert Casadesus, Friedrich Gulda, Wilhelm Backhaus, Aldo Ciccolini. It's Paul McCreesh's revalatory but slightly pedantic performances of early music. You are almost a passive listener in an awesome experience, demanded at every moment to perceive what you're hearing at a level deeper than how your ear receives the content. Listening to them gives you an intellectual apprehension of exactly what the piece is - not in phrase-by-phrase, as more instructional artists do, but the work entire.
And then, maybe there's a place where the air gets more breathable again, and you get finally to 'human connection', where the artists share with you all their deeply warm humanity in a place where you can feel as appreciated as though in a hug from your grandmother. I confess, I think there's an important level or two past here, but I can't help most of these being my favorites. Of course, this is the sociable humanity of Artur Rubinstein, but it's also the vivacity of Barbirolli, the luminous gemutlichkeit of Jochum, it's the enthusiasm of Koussevitzky and the wit of Monteux. It's the romanticism + irony of Ferenc Fricsay and the ironic classicism of Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, it's the joy of Solomon, it's the bullseye characterization of Ivan Moravec, the immaculate suavity of Shura Cherkassky and the infinite subtlety of Rudolf Firkusny, the incredible mid-piece improvisations of Igor Kipnis, it's Bronislaw Huberman's mixture of gymnasium lecture and Yiddish street patois, and it's Ivry Gitlis's rolls in the gypsy mud. It's Benno Moisewitsch's journey through a perfume factory and Dmitri Mitropoulos's manic drama. It's Peter Maag subtle mayhem and Paul Kletzki's Yiddish-accented Furtwangler-keit. It's Klaus Tennstedt's desperate cry and Charles Munch's irresistible joie de vivre. It's the giant ursine tone of David Oistrakh's violin, the deceptively elegant incandescence of Zino Francescatti's. The intellectual restlessness of Thomas Zehetmair to the generous friendliness of Gil Shaham (who went vastly up in my estimation after I saw his approach in person as a now fully mature artist). Among today's conductors it's the non-stop experiments throughout the repertoire of Simon Rattle and Markus Stenz, and the non-stop experiments in traditional repertoire of Ivan Fischer and the non-stop song and dance entertainment of David Zinman. It's Marc-Andre Hamelin's non-stop piano adventures and Rachel Barton Pine's escapades through the violin's thousands of uses. It's Andrew Manze's period fun and Thomas Fey's period craziness. It's even Artur Schnabel and Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who both have so much in common with the educators, but are such loving educators that they seem to take you as their pupils through the entire universe. Everything from them is like a garrulous, friendly conversation, in which you are being invited with them to float on a boat down a gorgeous river while holding a beverage and talking about all things of the universe. They do not leave the work a space for itself but proactively guide the work with a rubato here, a dynamic swell there. Not so that you can appreciate merely them, but so that you can appreciate the work as they show it to you. When you listen to them, music flows, it makes you feel freedom and love.
But it strikes me that there may be an even higher peak than freedom and love. Maybe that's the peak of the mountain and my priorities are temporarily misplaced, but I think there's a 'spiritual' level even past human connection. With Solomon and Huberman, you talk all the things of this universe, but with Kempff and Szigeti, you feel connected to all things of this universe. A spiritual connection, that by listening to it, you feel connected to a much larger space within the universe than mere humans. In their hands, the trivialities cease and you begin to feel as though you can live through your days at peace. For me, that's the great German conductors like Erich Kleiber and Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer and Gunter Wand, it's Giulini in choral music, and it's Harnoncourt in Bach (which I've fallen back in love with). It's the combination of warmth and severity you get from 'greatest generation' maestri: Blomstedt, Skrowaczewski, Masur, Davis, Inbal, Tate, Cantelli, GR and RFDB. That combination of warmth and severity is also what you get from a violinist like Schlomo Mintz - the world's warmest tone, the world's most austere adherence to form; and while I was tempted to put Itzhak Perlman way down at the merely joyful artists, the Jew in me can't stop thinking that there is something much higher about Perlman's approach than it often seems. His sweetness is not diabetes, it is genuinely thought through and a means to lift the heart. It's the inexorable tread of Rudolf Serkin, it's the delicate gentleness of Dinu Lipatti. It's Stephen Kovacevich and Vladimir Ashkenazy and Krystian Zimerman. It's the giant organic vibrations in the harpsichord of Wanda Landowska, the lute-like strum of George Malcolm's, the lacerations of suffering from Zuzana Ruzickova and the warm severity of Rosalyn Tureck. It's also, frankly, the pagan sensuality of Janine Jansen and Leila Josefowicz (oy). Artists like all these are peaceful, calming experiences, that give you something much deeper than simply moving your heart or stimulating your brain. They reveal a luminous 'world beyond the world', and go straight to the soul. Every note is treated like a human being and given space to be heard.
And finally, there's the place beyond infinity, that simply lets you know the human place in the universe. A place of ultimate musical truth. It's the celestial sphere where music has miraculous healing powers, but quite simply: Rafael Kubelik, Fritz Busch, , Mariss Jansons, Christoph von Dohnanyi, William Steinberg, Semyon Bychkov, Ferenc Fricsay (in opera), Wilhelm Kempff, Alfred Brendel, Andras Schiff, and Leon Fleisher after his dystonia. Among contemporary pianists, I believe Paul Lewis belongs here as well. And among baroque keyboardists, probably only Gustav Leonhardt.
Among, violinists, it's harder to talk about, because I began on the violin, and there is too much emotion bound up in the instrument for me. There are a lot of violinists that mean a lot to me, and violinists go up and down in my estimation all the time. Perhaps Fritz Kreisler belongs here, even with all his schmaltz. Perhaps Joseph Szigeti, with all his severity. Perhaps Arthur Grumiaux, with all his predictability. Perhaps Nathan Milstein, with all his efficiency. But at the moment, there are only two that I know belong here in my bones: one is Josef Suk, who never met a work noble enough that he couldn't dignify it more. The other is Georges Enescu, whom even after his intonation went, merely had to put the bow to the string.
Beyond that is a place not even music can reach.
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