January 4th, 2005
In case you didn't know, I play piano. Not nearly as well as I used to, but still pretty well.
So today I will prattle on and on about:
The Italian Concerto by JS Bach
You know what I really like about the first movement of this one, more than any other first movement of any other concerto? It's the way it declares itself loudly in your face right at the very start: "Boom-boom, here I am! Shut up and listen!" Then stops dead for two fat heartbeats so as to make you start to wonder if you really heard what you just heard, and then it repeats itself (this time in C--the dominant key of F) in the same manner, as if to say, "That's right, bub, just sit yourself down and be quiet!"
I remember once going into a piano store full of old top-quality restored and new high-end grand pianos, the cheapest of which costing more than I can imagine ever being able to pay (and besides, I have no living room suitable for containing such a beauty). I was dishevelled and unshaved that day, and I seem to remember that I was at the end of a laundry cycle, which meant I was wearing clothes in need of either cleaning or possibly disposal.
There was a neat-looking Asian salesman in a sharp-looking suit very vocally flogging the ivories to a Asian family who were talking loudly among themselves. I didn't really look in their direction, though I could tell they were all huddled around a piano, and I could feel the laser beams of their eyes on my back originating in the din behind me as I walked around and looked at the pianos for a while. I guess I looked untrustworthy, dangerous, maybe larcenous. (They'd better watch their pianos carefully, and count them before I got out the door ...) They seemed to be in great disagreement about something and the salesman was losing what sounded like a battle over whether or not they should buy the piano.
Finally, I sat at a $20,000 piano and ripped into the Italian Concerto.
"Bang-bang, here comes a steam train!"
In that break between the opening bars in F and the repetition in C (a silence which, in my opinion, should be milked for its full emotional impact) they all stopped talking.
"Bang-bang, did you hear what I just said?"
Finally, once I started into the rest of the piece, they laughed nervously at the incongruity of what they saw and what they heard. Then they continued discussing the piano, though muted. I stopped playing before the end of the movement, because I'd seen another piano (an upright grand piano) that I wanted to try out, but when I started playing that one (different piece, and not Bach) the in-your-face impression was gone.
I walked out thinking, "I showed them, didn't I?" Though when I think about it these days, I am sure the impression was helped along by a $20K piano and JS himself.
But it was kind of nice to knock someone's socks off, even if only briefly.1
* * *
It's the second movement of this piece that really does it to me, though. It's perfect for those players that are just undisciplined enough to make an experiment here and there, but still in need of things being spelled out quite explicitly, just in case they wonder what to do next. I mean, there is a metric tonne of ornamentation in this movement; it's so well notated that it gets so you are painting by numbers, but then he lets you fiddle with tempo and volume (well, he prescribed a two-keyboard harpsichord--a loud and a soft; we can use the more versatile piano) so that even though everything in this movement is exceptionally scripted down to the 19th decimal place, he then gives you the direction "Ad Libitum" at the start, and I take full advantage of that.
Really, there is nothing more beautiful in my world than sitting in complete dark late at night with the headphones plugged into my digital grand piano and playing this one any friggin' way I feel like. It's simple enough that I can listen to myself, and it's versatile enough that I never grow tired of playing it. Ironically, though, I no longer enjoy listening to it like I still do other pieces. The price you pay, I suppose ...
* * *
The third movement is a disappointingly candy-coated sugar confection. And I don't play it very well because I let myself run away at the fingers; I get "all the notes in", but I couldn't care less about trying to find any artistry in it.
Come to think of it, I haven't even played this one in about three years, much less practiced it. Though I had it down "pretty good" at one point. Frankly, it sounds like something manufactured on the assembly line, like a fast car. Fast, sexy, stylish, but mass-produced and mechanical. Great if you worship cars, not so great if you love that second movement the way I do.
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1 I still burn, while appreciating the honesty, at what a professor once told me: I was a good concert pianist, but I'd never be great. No matter how hard I worked, I would always be, at best, "the top of the B list" ... the guy who got the call to come play when all the top notch people were busy or out of town.