Nathan Schiller

This is the third post in an audio series about classical piano. Listen to the first two posts:

(1) Classical piano is awesome, and problematic and bumbling, but still, it’s awesome

(2) You know it when you hear it: A long, brief journey through classical piano

Transcript:

It is unfortunate that one big barrier to classical piano’s popularity lies within one of its deepest truths: that the music often contains layers of beauty and intrigue that are inaccessible without deep engagement. 

This is not about putting classical piano on a pedestal. Mainstream music also allows us to engage with instrumentals. It’s just that, who listens to Madonna for the drums? Or when you get pumped for a Slash guitar solo, isn’t getting pumped the point? When RZA explains the creative process behind his new ice cream truck jingle, isn’t he doing so for the purposes of selling ice cream without racist music?

Mainstream music is definitionally communal, while classical music is highly internal to individuals. A piano recital is a sedate affair. Audience members do not speak or yell or dance. They sit, in silence, then clap. If they’re really feeling it, they’ll clap while standing.

This wasn’t always the case—Franz Liszt’s concerts in the 19th century were uniquely Dionysian—and anyway it’s changing. Personally, I like when classical pianists and program directors risk money and reputation to innovate in artist-audience interplay. 

But I also love the status quo, because it ensures that, in a standard recital—unlike in a film soundtrack, or a concert in the park, or even a piano competition—the music remains the main event. 

Before going to a recital, I like to read the pieces, play them, listen to different recordings. It helps me grasp the live performer’s interpretation, that artful algorithm of tempo, dynamics, phrasing, that sense of soul, without which music struggles to transcend sound.

Of course, I rarely have the time and energy to do this to my liking. And even if I do, I’ll still miss stuff. And, sometimes, the music will not allow a full accounting. Sometimes, the best ideas for teasing out melodies simply won’t work. 

Frédéric Chopin wrote four scherzos, and each one is like a chocolate cream: devilishly dense, with a gooey middle. Here’s how the first one starts . . . and here’s where it goes.

Chopin stuck to the same structure and aesthetic for his second scherzo. That’s the piece we were listening to earlier and have now picked back up. The first times I heard it, I wasn’t sure what it amounted to, perhaps because I’d become fixated on this one brief part. I listened to this part once, twice, endlessly. Each time, I felt it come closer, but also pull away. 

The part consists of eight measures repeated once, in the key of A and ¾ time. In the bass clef, the left hand almost always plays one note on the beat, while the right hand of the treble clef plays over and between them, eighth notes only. Chopin instructs the same fast tempo of the entire scherzo, but specifies a brisk, light, delicate style for this part, which is what creates that blur of sound. 

The hands are meant to be played together, of course, but it’s not until we separate them out and slow them down that we can really hear them. Here is the right hand played like that.

So that was my unsteady right hand, not Marguerite Long’s. She’s the pianist whose excellent and very old recording we’ve been listening to. I love her interpretation. But I also love how these notes, when you hear each one, constitute an almost different sound. This tempo would never work for a performance, but it’s a wonderful way to hear the music. 

Conducting this little experiment produces an even more startling effect with the left hand. Let’s listen to Marguerite Long’s recording again. Try to distinguish that dashing, whimsical run of higher eighth notes from the deeper tones of the bass line.

If you want some guidance, here’s what you’re listening for. For the record, that was my own recording, slowed down a bit, with the key notes isolated. A bit sloppy, but decent enough.

Now let’s listen again to Long’s recording. She’ll play the bass line twice, and play it a little faster and, um, better.

So, if that line stands out a bit more, it’s because a) you now know what you’re listening for, and b) because Long’s interpretation is one of the few that even exposes this bass line in the first place, giving lay listeners a credible opportunity to hear it on their own. Most pianists, even brilliant ones, with incredible interpretations, will go heavy on the dynamics of the speedy right hand.

Still, though, we have no idea what the left hand really sounds like until we completely slow it down. So here is my version of that.

Sounds totally different. You can actually hear the second and third notes of each bar. Performances conceal them without choice; the tempo ensures it. But the slow version not only reveals these notes, but imbues them with meaning, making the whole thing sound—to me, anyway—like a rock ballade from the Eighties. Here’s my slow left hand again, with the full buildup and finish for context.

The scherzo is for solo piano, but the conundrum of concealed music is most prevalent in the piano concerto, where the instrument competes with the orchestra. I’ll give just one example, from one of my favorite moments in one of my favorite pieces, Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto.

A few minutes into the first movement, this beautiful piano melody changes direction, and the orchestra crescendos with it. I love this part, but I hate how the swell drowns out the left hand of the piano. So here is my clip of that left hand.  

Again, here’s the full version, and here’s what’s happening all the way underneath. And just for fun, just to really elicit the supporting melody, let’s hear that final run of triplets pared to their elemental notes. They undergird one of the most famous pieces for piano and orchestra, and I doubt any listener has ever heard them. 

This is the part where I confess that I have no idea what could or should be done about this. Composers will not change notes, performers will not lecture audiences, listeners will not study scores. And, truthfully, they don’t need to. If every participant in the musical experience gives as much as they are or are not willing to give every piece they encounter, well, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just how art works.

So that’s the post. This is an audio story, so I’ve edited for audio. As usual, in the text version on the web, you’ll find links to all the pieces. Be sure to check nathanschiller.com in the coming months for the next piece in the series. And, as a special bonus, for those who’ve made it this far, here’s my interpretation of the part this post explores. Thanks for listening.