Kirill Peternko and the Mountain of Musical Performance - Vastly Expanded From Initial Post

 

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. 

Are Most Conductors Fakes?

 So a conductor acquaintance of mine just released a big rant on facebook about how it's particularly the frauds who rise to the top of the profession. Given the timing, it's fairly clear he was particularly talking about Gergiev.

With artists like Gergiev who clearly have a dark side, there is a temptation to rewrite history and say that we never thought these guys were 'that great.' The truth is, until fifteen years ago, almost all of us were entranced with him, and if he was not 'traditional' in his technique, we all attributed it to a fault of the profession, not him. His approach was so different and so exciting, the music literally seemed on fire. Levine was similarly idolized until about twenty years ago, and now thousands of music lovers are saying 'we never loved James Levine.' Bull. In the 90s it was taken for granted by every music lover that short of Carlos Kleiber, he was his generation's best of the best. If you don't believe it, look up internet music message boards from that time. And unlike Gergiev, Levine's skill was unimpeachable.

The problem is that it's precisely the vagueness of the conducting profession that makes it so fascinating. Are there really that many 'frauds' in conducting? No, but like any profession at all, there are many, many practitioners whose approach is deeply flawed, and unlike among singers and instrumentalists, when the approach is flawed, few people know because the music is never made by the conductor.

The best equivalent to conducting is, believe it or not, being the front man of a rock group, and being a rock group front man is extremely challenging in itself. Even if the musicianship is lacking, yes, the personality of the musician matters, it matters more than nearly anything. It makes all the difference between making the musicians behind you giving their all and an empty musical experience.

I doubt that Otto Klemperer had the physical coordination or even stamina to truly lead performances for the last twenty years of his life, and yet he inspired his musicians to give so much more than a perfect technician like Leinsdorf. Why? Because musicians were inspired by him. They were inspired by the hardships of his life story, they were inspired by his sense of humor, they were inspired by his knowledge of the score, they were inspired by his expressive insights, they were inspired by his memories of the bygone era of Mahler and Strauss, and yes, they were a little afraid of him too. Klemperer is one of the greatest conductors not because of his technique, but because he inspired musicians to give of themselves, and created a spiritual space in which each of their contributions were heard and valued.

Is Gergiev a fraud? Absolutely not. He is a deeply flawed musician and still much more, a deeply flawed man. He has given more bad performances in the international arena than any conductor since... probably Leonard Bernstein. And yet Bernstein has left so many great performances that his greatness is not legitimately open to question. Is Gergiev on Lenny's level, absolutely not. But in the music he really knows, he was truly great, and still likely will be again. We will remember him the way we remember Willem Mengelberg. Mengelberg was a much, much more skilled conductor than Gergiev, but his aesthetic could be just as repellent. He too was an unsubtle artist who led performances of the most overwhelming excitement that put himself at the center of people's focus. Mengelberg still inspires cultish devotion in people whose personalities seem vaguely authoritarian, but the greatness in repertoire that suited him isn't open to question, including a lot of Beethoven.

If so many conductors rise to the top of the profession whose approach can be viewed as fraudulence, then it is the fault of the profession, not that particular conductor. When there's a Norrington or a Sinopoli up there who's just making non-sensical motions and gives no indication that they hear what's going on onstage, they don't rise to the top because they're frauds. They rise to the top because they provide a different approach that proper training does not allow for, and that means that conservatories need to be much more inclusive and flexible in what they teach. If conducting is just textbook motions, harmonic analysis and bowings, it's stupid. It's nothing an orchestra can't coordinate on its own. So conductors like Norrington and Sinopoli aren't even really frauds, they're just outsiders, and if properly trained musicians had similar ideas, those would be the celebrated conductors, and the ideas would be executed better.

So the bigger problem is the same problem that much of the classical music world has. Conductors are, generally speaking, not the most intellectually engaged people. They're the same 'do things by rote' people that exist in all sub-departments of conservatories except perhaps composition, and one graduate is pretty much just like the next. So they can't be surprised when musicians with a different approach rise to the top who lack all the skills they learned in conservatory for a decade.

We're Not About to Have World War III

We're in no danger of WWIII. Putin's game is both not as terrifying and in some ways even more terrifying. He has always wanted to conquer the world, but he knows he can only do it through something other than war because in a war, he knows that Russia's world standing is finished forever. Before all this, the idea was to do it through intelligence and misinformation. That's ultimately what swung a critical mass here to Trump and in Britain to Brexit. Now his objective is to bleed the Western alliance dry by turning them all into Russia. Russia does not have much influence on the world except with oil, but on the issue of oil, the world economy is as delicate as a stack of cards until we finally switch to an alternative energy source. With Europe so dependent on Russian oil, a long term boycott of Russia ruins the European economy, which in turn can ruin the US's.

Furthermore, if China does to Taiwan what Russia's doing to Ukraine, will the US respond with a similar boycott to China? It would ruin our economy in an instant. Europe would see the American hypocrisy right away and turn still further away from alliance with the US. And in a year or two, many Europeans would long for a Farrage or Le Penn or Chrupalla who can normalize relations with Russia, restore economies to normal, and throw out immigrants who take jobs from the native-born citizens (and there are many more now...). This would lead to the breakup of NATO and potentially Western democracy itself for the rest of our lifetimes as conservatives in every major democracy work to tip the political systems to their favor in every single election.

In Putin's office is not a picture of Lenin or Stalin, it's a picture of the 18th century Czar, Peter the Great, who is still regarded as the single greatest Russian leader. Putin's objective is not to restore the Soviet Union or to be Stalin or Hitler, his objective is to be a new Peter the Great that re-modernizes Russia for the 21st century and is well ahead of all other world leaders in understanding how to use the internet to control populations - and we all now see how easy that is every day. Controlling a bit of territory is no power at all compared to the ability to control the opinions of people around the world through propaganda. The confusion about his motives is because in order to do that, he also has to restore Russian pride after the 'humiliation' of losing the Cold War; but in a war with the US, he becomes known as the Russian ruler who subjected his people to the ultimate humiliation - the wholesale destruction of Moscow and Petersburg. He would be remembered with exactly the opposite legacy of what he wants to be.

We are not going to get nuked. And though they will undergo unfathomably dreadful things, Ukraine won't get nuked. It just runs counter to every Putin objective to escalate to a nuclear level, even if the fear of it is very much in his interests. Even after a nuclear war, America could rebuild to its full capacity and possibly better than ever before, but Russia wouldn't even be able to build to the level of what Ukraine was before this. That doesn't mean none of that could ever happen, but it does mean it's extremely unlikely, and if it ever happened, it's because events got out of Putin's control - which has never really happened before. Putin surely had to know the extent of the Western response before he went in, Putin has had less miscalculations than any major world leader, and for his judgement to change like that is impossible, even if he's sick. The point is to get into this sort of quagmire, unite the Russian people in their hatred of the West, and turn the rest of the world into places like Russia that resent the hell out of liberal democracy. What's terrifying is how close he's already come before, and even if he dies soon, he can still come closer to his goal. 

Why Dohnanyi is so great

 

One of the greatest performances I've ever heard live was Christoph von Dohnanyi leading the Philharmonia in Brahms 1. This is, by and large, exactly the interpretation I remember nearly 20 years later. Regrettably, the second movement is slower, but otherwise, it is, now as then, illuminated by a grace that almost seems divine.

What makes a guy like Dohnanyi so magnificent is the same as others like Jansons or Bychkov, and before them, Klemperer and Erich Kleiber. Performance is neither about them nor some perfect rendering of a score that makes no sound (though Dohnanyi is obviously a stickler for the score). Ultimately, it's clearly about the musicians and giving each of them a space to be heard - to me, that is the single highest ideal of a conductor's art. Music does not exist to be a score blueprint, and it doesn't exist for conductors to showcase their own interpretations or ability to excite the audience, it exists so that musicians can share something they appreciate with an audience.

Dohnanyi's generation was particularly good at that approach - so many greats born between 1920 and 1935 leavened their antiromantic approach with a warmth that could only be described as romantic. But among them all, none excelled Dohnanyi.

Under Dohnanyi, everything not only comes through with clarity, but with a spiritual grace that, for reasons I don't really understand, many people allege Dohnanyi lacks. I suppose one can ask for a slight bit more rawness or flexibility, but just listen, by moderating the emotions just a little bit from what we're used to, it almost sounds conversational. Brahms's orchestral balances, so muddy among other conductors, emerges here with perfect clarity. Every instrument is heard, every note in every chord. it's like we're hearing some Platonic ideal and need no visceral thrills to be mesmerized. It needs no influence from HIP because the orchestras under him already incorporate the best HIP has to offer without the worst - clarity, orchestral balance, dynamic contrast, and rhythmic definition, but with the singing espressivo you can only get on modern instruments.

There are other ways to reach the top of Olympus, many greats find great spiritual warmth with a much more pro-active hand on tempo and contrast. But this is Brahms in its ideal state. It demands to be heard, and Dohnanyi's achievements demand all the attention we give to Abbado and Haitink and Carlos Kleiber, and maybe still more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhioJVdEjSg

Tales from the Old New Land - Generation 7 - New Beginning

 

And then the people of the world did all return home. And the city of Babel in the Valley of Shinar did measure every rainfall, every wind, every cloud, every thunder, with trust placed in every city that the Edicts of Babel would ensure no new flood. And there was a veritable harvest of new babies, the Children of Babel, each born of fathers they knew not whom. 

And in the first year, only one new edict came from Babel: "Verily, the rain passeth from November to April, therefore let us make a law to save half our harvest for the dry months." A few complaints passed from farmer to farmer, but the cities were bounteous and less men starved. 

And in the second year came another two edicts: 

"Verily, the light of thunder only doth strike the tallest structure, therefore let all cities to build an inanimate rod of metal 100 cubits high, and the flashes shall strike the rod rather than the house." And the rods were built, and men were spared death by lightning. 

"Verily, we at the Tower have discovered that the human body hath vessels within that doth animate life: heart, kidneys, spleen, liver, hypothalmus, uterus, bladder. We shall in time understand how they do work, and death shalt be conquered." And the Tower did generate equal hope and fear throughout the lands. 

And in the third year came three edicts. 

"Verily, we have discovered a divine number: 22/7, which we may write as 3.14. It may be used to predict the tides of seas and the flow of rivers, and perhaps even to make objects that do fly through the air as gods." And the tower did generate results throughout the lands. 

"Verily, we have invented the means so that heavy objects might easily be lifted. It shall called 'lever,' and thou must put it upon a fulcrum, and thou canst move all the objects of the earth." And the tower did generate results throughout the lands. 

"Verily, we have used the divine number to invent an object circular in shape which may transport all the heavy objects of the earth to any amount of distance. This object shall be called the wheel." And the tower did generate results throughout the lands.

But the people did begin to whisper wroth words, for the Tower did promise the conquest of death, yet solely added qualities to life. 

And in the fourth year came a first edict:

"Verily, the wind showeth there shall be floods in the month of Adar. Let us all abscond to mountains that we may pass this flood above the water." 

And lo, the entire world did abscond to nearby mountains, and peoples did journey a month to climb them, but minimal flood did come, and all the world around there was neither flood remarkable nor rain exceptional, and they did return and were wroth with Babel, for verily, there was no flood.   

And the the Kings of Babel, Persepolis, and Uruk did call a second counsel of all the kings of the Earth. And the kings of the earth did invoke their promise "Verily, thou hadst promised trusting mensuration for an end to floods, yet thou hadst not provided faithful measurement."  And the three kings did say "It is better to burden with great care to avoid flood than than to take little burden to meet flood." And the kings of the earth did accuse them "Verily thou hadst not used thy plenty in the service of faithful measurement." And the three kings did respond "Lo, thou hast availed great use of our pronouncements. Thy subjects do live who shall have died, thy vines do multiply which shall have withered, and thy buildings do stay which shall have fallen." 

And many kings of the earth did respond "Our people hath neither crops this year nor work for harvest," To which the three kings did reply "But thou hast thy reservoirs of grain for the dry season," And the kings of the earth did ask "If we do give grain to our people for which they shall not work, they shall have no incentive," and the three kings did reply "They shall have all due inducement to work the greater upon the next harvest," to which the kings of the earth did respond "Thou is begat the involvement of foreign government in countries they know not," to which the the three kings did reply "But thou art natheless thine own governments to administer law as thou seest best fit." to which the kings of the earth did respond "but we must administer the laws upon which thou hath dominion over the earth," to which the three kings did say "If the world does wish to survive, then all our states must act with unity as one," to which the kings of the earth did reply "We wish not a federative community of nations, we do wish to be men in states with rights," to which the three kings did ask "But what about thy subjects? Are they too not men?" to which the kings of the earth did reply "We are men. They are but our subjects, chattel who hath not rights of men," to which the three kings responded "If thou wishest to survive a farther flood, verily thou must grant  rights of life to thy subjects,"

And to which the kings of the earth did proclaim "thou hast uttered a threat to compel our compliance with thy decrees. Thou do wish to liberate our subjects so that thou mayest enslave us. Babel dost wish to rule as lord and tyrant over the world - to act as Marduk, the world's father, and Ishtar, the world's mother. We do invoke offended gods against thee, we do invoke rites of war, we do renounce the brotherhood of kings."

And there was war within the world for which men were as chattel. 

Tales From the Old New Land - Century 2 - Generation 6 - Cut Down

So this letter is meant for God and Abel, though I don't know how to send it or if anybody else does. If anybody ever finds this letter, if you can find a way to send this to God I'll be very grateful. 

It's been a little more over 30 years since The Flood. From the way people talk about it you'd think everybody died, but it couldn't have even been one in a hundred who got themselves killed. Maybe if you were closer to the Mediterranean you had worse chance of living, but people here just hiked themselves to the Zagros mountains, and a lot of people with houses made of proper mudbrick just camped out on the roof and fished. 

As far as apocalypses go, the Flood just wasn't that big. ...It was big, but mostly for how it made us shelter in place for two years. It was just a pre-echo of the real event that came for us because of how we responded. 

We thought The Flood focused everything, solved everything, clarified everything. It obliterated from our minds all the trivial drek. The generation before the flood seemed to be the generation of partisanship and violence, but we were the generation of unity and love. Every man and woman on earth experienced the same loss, the same fears, the same meshiggas, the same boredom, the same rage. 

Everybody knew who was at fault. To make a flood this big, there must be a god so powerful that no other god can be much of a god, and it could only be Ea, this water god everybody believes in. There was even a movement to rename him Y'Ea because he was so willing to use his power, but nearly everybody agreed: if one god can be that powerful, we need a war on him before he kills the rest of us. 

Of course there were some who didn't believe this, Ea still had a bunch of loud partisans on Earth who were violent and dangerously powerful, but the partisans of the other six gods had an unbeatable coalition. Any system in which the partisans of Ea win is a broken system, and if the system was really this broken, the only option left was to go up to heaven and fix the system. It was one of those few moments in every lifetime when everybody seems to speak the same language. 

Nobody actually wanted the responsibility of a god, not if they thought about it... But they did want the right to sometimes be free of gods. Like every other god in their lives, they fulfilled every commandment of Ea's in good faith, they obeyed every obligation to sacrifice, they prayed to him whenever they were afraid, they talked to him when they were lonely, and only crazy people ever thought he answered. 

As for me? I knew that Ea was an old wives' tale. I just had a thought that maybe you B'H didn't think of, that this flood was related to all that kvetching you write to me about this heavenly schpritz. Maybe there's a leak in heaven, so I just wanted to go up there to point out the leak and help you fill it. 

But I had just been appointed court scribe in Uruk, and took the minutes of the Great Council attended by the kings of every major city except Egyptian Pharaoh, who claimed that the flood happened because the rest of us neuter our cats. But the king of every other major city was there: Eridu, Ur, Nippur, Ubaid, Lagash, Elam, Banesh, Kish, Babel, Persepolis, Erech, Accad, Calneh, Farsa, Ansha, Susa, Irsin, Larsa, Keddesh, Megido, Kass, Hurrain, Malatya, Armenia, Kizzuwatna, Luwia, Melid, Carshemesh, Mitanni, Washukani, Qatna, Armenia, Aramea, Cyprus, Hatti, Hattusas, Mycarae, and Ugarit.

Every one of these cities experienced the same flood, and every one of them believed another flood from Ea was imminent. We all thought we'd never see another gathering as glorious as this one. The Kings and entourages of every city of the world with all their finery and gifts and gold and raiment - all of them speaking barely comprehensible dialects to each other. Yet with even all that pomp and pageantry, the first meeting only took ten minutes. Everybody agreed what needed to be done:

A tower to heaven. An elite force of soldiers climbs to the top, does battle with Ea and his rain, defeats the water god, redistributes the rain to its proper season, and if possible, allots the rain more justly throughout the seasons so there is no drought. The tower doesn't need to last forever, just as long as it takes to climb up and down once with a 20 minute battle in between. 

They even agreed on a place: the City of Babel - a modest citystate lodging on the flattest part of the Valley of Shinar. Personally, nobody asked me, but I thought that was unnecessarily cautious to build in a valley rather than a mountain. That's ten thousand cubits more of material everybody needs to buy and build. 

The only problem was the contention of what we'd do once we get to heaven. It's one thing to declare war on a god, but not everybody is clear on how certain gods wage war; so everybody came up with their own plans based on what they believed Ea was. Every city brought their greatest artist to sketch their city's idea of what Ea looked like, dressed like, lived like, and the terrain of his celestial property. But before the  could even be shown, it was decided that Ea's presence is conjured by any representation of him, and can therefore see and hear what his opponents are planning in any room where such representations exist. So we burned all; the artworks along with the artists. 

The first day was met with an opening speech by the King of Uruk. I wrote it of course, but he couldn't read it so he said whatever he wanted. Nevertheless I outlined his idea to build a water basin in the sky which would drain all the water in heaven so that Ea wouldn't be able to cause another flood. If we built a detachable pipe, men should be able control how much rain falls to the ground in any given season. Everyone agreed to convene for a second meeting in three days, during which time each city could form coalitions with other cities to convene a proposal. 

As I was appointed recording secretary for the whole meeting, here follow the second meeting's minutes:  

Uruk's idea moves immediately into debate. The motion does not carry on account of widespread suspicions that wealthier cities would venture to use the water pipe more often than poorer ones. The motion does not carry. 

The Coalition of Eriddu ventures a much more modest proposal than Uruk. If Ea floods us again, everybody just climbs the tower to stay above water. The proposal moves into debate and leads to widespread discussion of how the people of the world would reach the tower, and how this plan necessitates the construction of boats around the world and maps with directions to the tower - which itself creates further discussion because so many landmarks would be subsumed by water, which leads to further discussion of which landmarks would stay above water. After twelve hours of debate, the motion does not carry. 

The Coalition of Lagash asks to be called upon later. As does the Coalition of Babel.

The Coalition of Ur proposes that since Ea is so powerful, he could come back and flood us again. But since the tower itself is such an amazing idea that it could only be a divine miracle, we might be able to invest the tower with godly powers of its own, and therefore their solution is to pray to the tower to defeat Ea. The proposal moves into debate, but leads to objections that if we give the tower powers of a god, Ea might offer the tower still better powers and the tower would work with Ea rather than for us. The motion quickly goes into vote and does not carry. 

The Coalition of Nippur proposes that since Ea is so powerful, he must be proportionally enormous, so their solution is to build a proportionally large bow so that once we climb the tower, the tower can be used as an arrow to stab Ea. The tower would subsequently be pulled out of Ea, then put back so that the soldiers may climb back down to the Valley of Shinar. The motion moves into debate. After three hours, the motion does not carry due to the dual objections that the tower might be lodged too deeply into Ea to remove from his torso, and also that Ea might be agile enough to move out from the tower's trajectory. 

The Coalition of Lagash asked to be called upon later. As did the Coalition of Babel.

The Coalition of Ubaid is more skeptical. They believe that Ea is too powerful to be fought, so they propose the tower ought purely to be used as a symbol of protest; that we should simply use the tower so that a messenger can shout to him daily our dissatisfaction with his treatment. This motion quickly moves to vote and does not carry because Ea's a water god and many things said on land cannot be heard through water.

The Coalition of Elam believes that the flood was dictated by Ea's mood, which itself is dictated by the position of the stars. So were the tower tall enough, we could make more precise astrological calculations about when Ea is most wroth. This motion is debated for eighteen hours, is voted upon five times, but does not summon the requisite votes because many cities wish for their own astrologer to have the honor of doing Ea's horoscope, each of which might pepper their findings with advice to favor their own city over other cities. The motion does not carry to the regret of all present at the council.  

The Coalition of Banesh's solution is not unlike the Coalition of Ur's: to worship the tower as a god. But since Ea is so powerful to subordinate all other gods to his will, Banesh proposes to worship only the tower as a god and no other god, so that the tower might be so moved as no other god was to fight for victory against Ea. This proposal meets with immediate objections from all sides about the inevitable afflictions of having only one god. The discussion quickly becomes so volatile that further discussion is tabled until a potential third meeting. 

The Coalition of Lagash asked to be called upon later. As did the Coalition of Babel.

The Coalition of Elam proposes that the tower itself is enough and no further contingency plan is needed. People would be able see it from all sides of the world, and when the waters begin to flood again, could journey immediately in the direction of the tower by foot, for which they would have enough time to reach the tower and climb to safety. A dissenting sub-coalition within Elam noted the unlikeliness that the tower would be tall enough to be seen at all instances, and therefore enters a revision that all the entire peoples of the should be moved within hiking distance of the tower. The revision is met with immediate objections and is voted against by unanimous consent. The original motion however is met with by no official objections, and moves into debate. After seven hours of debate, the original proposal is met by the objection that while the tower should be visible from across the world, the rain itself could obscure vision of the tower. The motion does not carry. 

The Coalition of Kish suggests that as the flood was accompanied by lightning, the tower should be used to serve as a lightning rod to send the electricity back to heaven, which would stop the rain before flooding. This lead to immediate questions from all sides about what electricity was, and the Royal Vizier of Kish explains that electricity is energy that can be used to provide light and heat for their subjects and could perpetually be renewed. This leads to objections from all sides that renewable energy would be too expensive. The motion does not carry. 

The Coalition of Lagash asks to be called upon later. As does the Coalition of Babel. But there were no  coalitions further to enter their proposals. 

The Coalition of Lagash ventures - and specifies that this must be entered into the record with great reluctance; that the tower is so ambitious that it is fated to be a failed venture. While the Coalition of Lagash does not dare use its vote to prohibit a project that inspired the unity of all cities, the Coalition of Lagash proposes that the tower be constructed as a monument to this moment of worldwide unity, brotherhood, and peace, so that future generations would know that the worldwide brotherhood of nations is possible. This measure is immediately voted against by unanimous consent. 

The Coalition of Babel, the city in which the projected tower shall be housed, enters the final proposal. Among the cities in Babel's coalition is Persepolis, and in an extreme departure from protocol, the proposal is given not by the King of Babel, nor even by the King of Persepolis, but by Persepolis's master builder, who brought a scale model of his own buildings - which many kings had seen, and of his proposed tower. 

The tower itself was so much smaller than many kings hoped, but the Master Builder of Persepolis explained that with all known substances across the earth, the maximum height any building could ever attain was 218 cubits, and even such a tower is in perpetual danger of collapse. "Towers get weaker as they grow, not stronger." There were kings who immediately objected; one shouted that the tower's divine properties could keep the tower standing a thousand years, the Master Builder silenced him very quickly "Recall all your divine structures, how many of them stood amid Ea's rage? How much more shall he rage against a divine structure built to defeat him?" 

The Master Builder of Persepolis explained his belief that rain happens because clouds become so full of midst that the midst turns to drops of water, and the water grows heavy enough that it drops from the clouds  to the earth. We know when clouds are heavy because they fall further toward the earth and grow darker; the closer and darker they grow, the more force with which they erupt. 

Persepolis's Master Builder further posited that certain temperatures and qualities of air were more conducive to greater intensity of rain, and that the direction of the wind would indicate to which direction the rain was advancing. The Coalition of Babel therefore enters a proposal that the tower be used as a weather station to record the distance, color, and amount of precipitation from each rain cloud, and further record the temperatures, the humidity of the air, the direction of the wind speed and the wind's speed. This would lead the world to better predict when floods would happen, and to respond accordingly.

The King of Babel, Nimrod I, and the King of Persepolis, Darius VI, therefore entered a unique proposition: rather than debate among the kings, the Master Builder may be called upon in interview to answer any objection raised by kings in debate. When their proposal was submitted into motion, it passed by the narrowest margin ever seen in a world congress. It was a tie, and the tie breaking fell to the normally non-voting host King of the debate, my sovereign, Gilgamesh XIX, who asked me for advice: 

What could I say? The Master Builder of Persepolis seemed like kind of a mensch who knows what he's talking about, so why not see what he has to say?

This interview raged every day eighteen hours for seven weeks, until the objections of every king of the world were answered and fully satisfied. Even while he was talking, the Master Builder of Persepolis carved all kinds of diagrams on tablets for something he called 'geometry,' which proved to all the kings smart enough to understand him how buildings stay put. He made demonstrations with clay, stone, bitumen, sand, and ore, and he turned it all into pottery, glass, soap, metals, plaster, even waterproofing. He even showed, just on a table, the exact proportions of stones to best support a tall structure, and exactly which kinds of stones, and he said the reason was something called 'mathematics.'

I didn't understand most of what he was talking about, and I suspect most of the kings didn't. But none of them wanted to appear stupid, so after seven weeks of this, they realized they had nothing to show for it except for this builder who'd talked over them for two months, so they had to approve his measure and get back home, and they had to make it seem as though they really believed in the solution they came up with.  

The whole world was prepared for Ea to rain his flood, so the world came together as one to build the tower. And even if the tower was much smaller than the kings of the earth thought it would be, it looked as though we'd built a tower all the way to the heavens. More people died while building the tower than ever died in the flood. And verily, when we reached the top, there was no Ea; just invisible light, and cloud, and cold, and occasional thunder that killed still more of us. But so unanimous was the agreement of the tower's necessity that every man prepared to die, every woman willing to live a widow, every child ready to take his father's place.

The Master Builder was a stealthy taskmaster, on the lookout the whole world over for a builder from any city he found to be at all skilled, even a mere workman, and did ask such workmen for their friends as well, and he did beseech the kings of the earth that men of such skill remain at the tower to help him gain greater rigor with his measurements. 

And when there was no Ea at the top, the whole world breathed one last sigh of relief. And lo, there was a great seven month celebration of all the world: a world's fair of bonfires, sex, golden idols, silver coins, dancing, music, raiment of wool, linen, and silk; circles in a thousand different camps, each playing a different music listened to lovingly by all, each teaching the dances of all to one another, every tribe and nation conceiving children of the other, men wearing the raiment of women from halfway around the world, women fornicating with distant men - dressed as men, even women fornicating as men and men fornicating as women, all tribes mingled with all tribes. And for all the world, minimal humans sacrificed, minimal children abducted, seemingly all partaking of festivities with nothing but joy. 

And then we all returned home, except for the city of Babel in the Valley of Shinar, who measured every rainfall, every wind, every cloud, every thunder, with trust placed in every city that the Edicts of Babel would ensure no new flood. And there was a veritable harvest of new babies, the Children of Babel, each born of fathers they knew not whom.