Before the concert today, let’s take a step back (or forward) and take a look at what our performers have to say about their pieces.
The Final Instalment
You have seen the composers in our series of articles, their idiosyncrasies and all that jazz – their stories, their struggles, and the ensuing moments of brilliance. But what about the stories of the performers themselves?
To our dear performers we posed three questions,
1. What are the difficulties that you face in rehearsal?
2. What are some of the features of the work that strike you as interesting and deserving of attention?
3. What do you think makes the work you are playing unique?
Balance and Coordination
One common theme was the need for performers to understand their partners; to modify their playing chemistry to the demands of the music. Yin Ngai, playing the Polonaise, an eight-hands piece by Lyapunov, writes that “the difficulty arises in balance i.e. the 4 pianists have to be aware of their respective roles at all points in the piece.” Exceptional care has to be taken to ensure that the intricate figurations can be reflected in the playing by the four pianists; to delineate the finer details of the music without losing the cohesive whole.
On the other hand, Mark, playing Mozart’s lively and vigorous Sonata for Two Pianos, raised another problem: that of “coordinating the continued passages of semiquaver runs”, and the need to “cue each other in for precise entrances”. Indeed, the ideal of music as ‘gracefully flowing oil’ seems to require an effort plainly at odds with the simile’s allusion to naturalness and beauty. This pursuit is only made more difficult by the percussive nature of the piano; but therein lies the nobility of piano-playing.
Arrangements
A great part of the programme for Touch 2015 consists of arrangements of orchestral works, far more colorful in their timbres and sounds than that of two pianos. Translation issues can leave performers with the task of rewriting the “un-pianistic”, and to look beyond the written score to tease out the music within.
Clarisse and Joan, tackling a two piano arrangement of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, “needed to reinterpret certain parts of the score”. Her sentiments are echoed by Ying Hong, playing Raff’s Cavatina. She mentions that there is a need to balance the tempo of the piece to create “a feeling of serenity” evoked by the violins in the original score. The slow movement demands high emotional intensity, but performers’ efforts are thwarted by the inherent inability of the piano to sustain long notes. Zhi Xian, playing yet another transcription (Mendelssohn’s Scottish symphony), agrees that special care is needed to ensure the piece does not end up sounding dull.
Highlighting another challenging facet of two-piano arrangements was Matthew, lamenting that “the second piano is not treated as an equal partner in a duo work” in Addinsell’s ‘Warsaw Concerto’. What this amounts to, however, is not defeat but the taking on of an artist’s challenge to “find ways to make music together”.
Rare Works
It is no accident that people love the music they are familiar with. For performers who are assigned rarely-played pieces which they do not enjoy on first listening, a difficult paradox arises; how can they ever be able to give one-time audiences a different impression?
Chua Soo Min and Jin Yujia, playing the Scherzo of Glazunov’s Fantasia Op. 104, faced this dilemma. With perhaps some inner trepidation, they wrote that “it was really difficult to find information about the work we are playing”. In response, they sat down and analyzed the music, noticing “the clever manipulation of a simple 4-note motif" and "the (many) syncopations and hemiolas”. The attention paid to the details eventually led to a greater appreciation of the work with more clarity and refinement.
The curious case of reputation preceding the composer does work to the performers’ benefit at times. But not so for Xin Ying and Yi Ying, who are playing Czerny’s Overture; the composer’s dreaded etudes emphasizing the distilment of techniques has deeply entrenched our perceptions of his compositions. The performers face a tall order of bringing out the musicality embedded within the technical religiosity, accentuating “the changes in mood throughout the piece” while adhering to the mechanics that drives the piece.
We hope you have gained some insights into the world of the performers through our reflections. No frightening exposés here – only a continuous emanation of warmth that seems to waft in from the past and onwards onto forever.
Come down for Touch 2015, and join us where we revisit our roots and reconsider what playing as an ensemble really means.