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Guest post by Erica Ann Sipes

A few years ago I found myself in the middle of a musical mid-life crisis. I started playing music when I was five and went to music school for my undergraduate and graduate degrees but after that I opted for getting married and shelving my dreams of being a high-level performer. (These two things don’t have to go hand and hand but I decided to link the two.) As with so many people who study music throughout their lives, music has always played a huge role in my life. Without it I am simply not me. So along with playing my roles as wife, mother, library supervisor, and toystore manager, I have also always worn a musical hat; I’ve played for church and school choirs, accompanied students and professionals, and have been a practice coach to others. My musical mid-life crisis occurred several years ago, not because I wasn’t incorporating music into my life but because I wasn’t giving enough value to that musical hat. I was judging it against my immature notions of what I had always thought it meant to be a successful professional musician.

One of the problems with devaluing our musical hat’s worth is that it can often keep us from sharing our gifts and the gift of musicking* with others who need it – in other words, just about everyone. As I’ve engaged others in conversation both in person and on social media and as I’ve dealt with my own struggles, I have come to the worrying conclusion that too many of us aren’t sharing our gifts as much as we can and perhaps should, largely because of labels and misguided notions that make us question what we have to offer. Post-musical mid-life crisis, I am here to help redirect as many of us as I can to a healthier respect for our musical selves by looking at some typical devaluing roadblocks that we set up for ourselves and that can keep us from feeling confident that we have something to offer others as musicians. Here are a handful of these roadblocks:

  • I can’t deliver perfect, flawless performances.
  • I can’t easily perform by memory.
  • I can’t perform difficult, virtuosic music.
  • I like to perform music that’s not considered legitimate classical.
  • I don’t get invited to perform at the best venues or around the area, country, or world.

All these statements are ones that I myself can claim. A few years ago they would have driven me back into my shadows but now I gladly accept them because I realize I am no longer a child. With becoming an adult we can shed these expectations that for many of us aren’t possible or practical. We no longer need to use them as our measuring sticks for success because we can reframe them to motivate us rather than cripple us. Here’s some reframing in action:

  • Perfect, flawless performances are miracles, at least they are for me. And audiences rarely hear mistakes. What’s important to me is delivering the essence of a composition, its composer, and myself. If I can move the audience in some small way – to smile, to reminisce, to cry, to laugh, to dream – I have succeeded. 
  • There is no need to perform by memory unless I want to. These days, with the advent of iPads and page-turning pedals, with a flesh and blood page turner, or with a little paper and tape ingenuity, having music in front of me doesn’t make me any less of a musician. I’d rather perform with music than not performing at all because I’m not comfortable playing by memory.
  • I have small hands and have struggled throughout my life with overuse and misuse injuries so it’s not in my best interest to perform virtuosic works. There are plenty of amazing pieces out there to perform that can impress the audience but won’t jeopardize my body’s health.
  • I enjoy performing music of many different styles even though I’ve mostly received training in classical music. Jazz, ragtime, blues, minimalism, movie soundtracks…it just doesn’t matter. If I like what I’m playing I’m more likely to play it well. Audiences also like variety. If someone has an issue and doesn’t like something, oh well! There’s always going to be pieces on any given program that someone doesn’t like. And because I’m not a famous pianist I don’t have to worry about bad reviews.
  • There are wonderful venues in the most unexpected places and for me, personally, satisfaction comes more from the audience anyway. I’d rather play in a restaurant with a decent piano and an appreciative, engaged audience than I would a famous venue with an audience that isn’t receptive. Would I turn down an opportunity to play at a great hall? Of course not. But not being invited to perform at them does not meet I don’t have something to offer.

Ever since my musical mid-life crisis I have worked to move roadblocks from my life that keep me from doing what I love. I’ve also learned to take off my musical hat and to really look at it in order to evaluate its true value. Upon doing so, I’ve discovered my hat is in fact invaluable. Music brings me together with people and is a bridge to my communication with strangers, whether they’re in the audience or sharing the stage with me. Music gives me an outlet where I can tell my story. Music gives me a chance to prove to myself that I am a legitimate musician.

I strongly believe that there are more of us out there with these golden musical hats – we just need to get some dynamite and blast the roadblocks away…or chip away at them slowly if that’s more your style. As I’ve been doing that, I’ve been able to truly listen to and appreciate the feedback from audience members and what ’ve learned from them is how much music can heal, restore, and inspire others, myself included. I don’t think there’s a limit to how much of that the world can hold.

So let’s take another look at our musical hats, get rid of some roadblocks and grow up, shall we? The world needs you to.

 

* ‘Musicking’ is a term I got from Christopher Small’s wonderful book by the same name. A definition of the term that I love can be found in the abstract for one of his articles in the Journal of Music Education Research: “Musicking is part of that iconic, gestural process of giving and receiving information about relationships which unites the living world, and it is in fact a ritual by means of which the participants not only learn about, but directly experience, their concepts of how they relate, and how they ought to relate, to other human beings and to the rest of the world. These ideal relationships are often extremely complex, too complex to be articulated in words, but they are articulated effortlessly by the musical performance, enabling the participants to explore, affirm and celebrate them. Musicking is thus as central in importance to our humanness as is taking part in speech acts, and all normally endowed human beings are born capable of taking part in it, not just of understanding the gestures but of making their own.”

14Erica Ann Sipes, pianist, received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in piano performance from the Eastman School of Music. She has been an adjunct faculty member at Radford University and at the Governor’s School for the Arts, and has freelanced as a piano collaborator and coach in Michigan, Idaho, and Virginia. For the past two years she has led the piano intensive program at the Roanoke Youth Orchestra’s Summer Institute.  She has also performed with the Roanoke Symphony on occasion and has performed as a piano soloist with the New River Valley Symphony.  In the summer of 2012 Erica officially launched her own business as a practice coach, Beyond the Notes, offering coachings, workshops, planning sessions, and practice boot-camps for anyone that could use some help with practicing.

Erica can often be found talking about practicing, piano, and music or livestreaming her practice sessions on Twitter (@ericasipes). She has also been a prominent blogger, writing frequently about her views on performing, learning music, and the classical music world in general.  Her blog, “Beyond the Notes” can be found at http://ericaannsipes.blogspot.com.

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JS Bach – Chaconne from Partita No.2 in D minor, BWV.1004 arr. Busoni for piano
Busoni – Berceuse élégiaque (Elegy No.7), Op.42
Chopin – Sonata No.2 in B flat minor, Op.35 (Marche funèbre)
Stephen Hough – Sonata No.4 (Vida breve)
Liszt – Funérailles from Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, S.173; Mephisto Waltz No.4 (unfinished); Mephisto Waltz No.1

Stephen Hough, piano

Tuesday 19 November 2019, Tuner Sims, University of Southampton

My first visit to Turner Sims concert hall at the University of Southampton, and a treat of an evening in the company of British pianist Stephen Hough playing music by Bach arr. Busoni, Busoni, Chopin and Liszt.

This was a typical Hough programme, thoughtfully conceived and superbly presented, deadly serious, for the theme of the concert was death – pieces inspired by or identified with death, including Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2 with its famous Marche Funèbre, and Liszt’s Funerailles, written in the same month as Chopin died and at the time of the violent Hungarian revolution of 1849.

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Superlatives quickly become redudant when describing a pianist of Hough’s calibre, whose wide-ranging intellectual acuity always informs his programmes and his playing; therefore this is not a review, rather some reflections on what I thought was a most absorbing programme, especially the first half. In addition to the thematic asssociations between the pieces, there were musical connections too: the dark rumbling bass octaves in the Bach/Busoni Chaconne were reiterated in Chopin’s Marche funèbre – a plangent left hand accompaniment which, in the reprise of the famous theme dominated, with a dark tolling grandeur. And this figure was later heard again in the opening of Liszt’s Funerailles. Likewise, the haunting, unsettling soundworld of Busoni’s Berceuse (more a mourning song than a lullaby) was reflected in the finale of the Chopin Sonata, a curious, hushed fleeting stream of consciousness, and then in the wayward uncertain harmonic language of Liszt’s ‘Bagatelle without tonality’.

The Bach/Busoni Chaconne was a magnificent, emphatic opener for this concert, and Hough gave it a multi-layered, orchestral monumentalism. The Berceuse was a remarkably contrasting work, interior, intimate, mysterious and disquieting, and by segueing straight into the Chopin Sonata, Hough infused this work with a similarly discomforting atmosphere. With agitated tempi the Sonata moved forward with an anxious intensity but Hough lingered over the more lyrical Nocturne-like moments in the opening movement and the Scherzo. Like the Chaconne, the funeral march was magisterial rather than simply funereal and the tender, dreamy middle section lent an other-worldliness to the music’s atmosphere before the tolling bass and mournful theme returned.

Hough’s own piano sonata No. 4 ‘Vida Breve’ opened the second half of the concert, an abstract work constructed of five tiny motivic cells (including a quotation from the French chanson En Avril à Paris, made famous by Charles Trenet) lasting a mere 10 minutes, a comment on the transient, fleeting nature of life, its passions and turmoil. The concert closed with three pieces by Liszt – Funerailles, whose meaning is obvious, and two Mephisto Waltzes, devilish in their whirling virtuosity and frenetic, tumbling notes.

Stephen Hough plays the same programme at the Royal Festival Hall in March 2020. Details here

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Who or what inspired you to pursue a career in music?

As I was born into a family of musicians, I literally breathed music from my early childhood. It was just natural to me, and when I grew up that natural feeling turned into a passion that has not left me.

Who or what have been the most important influences on your musical life and career?

My father was my first mentor and definitely shaped my vision of music. Later on, I had the great luck to work with very inspiring pianists, each of them leaving their mark on my musical understanding. Today I feel that the great composers I listen to have shaped my musical world the most, and are virtually always on my mind: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

To avoid distractions and focus all my efforts on my main goal: making music.

Which performances/recordings are you most proud of?

I do not like looking back so much and am always most excited about my next project rather than my last.

How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?

I learn what I feel I have to learn, and nowadays I compose my concert programmes like a gastronomical menu, avoiding excess and trying to delight with the unexpected and surprise with the well-known.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?

I have been blessed to play in many wonderful venues, I liked many of them very much, however it is always the audience that makes a concert experience truly special.

What is your most memorable concert experience?

Whenever my excitement for the music reaches the audience, and people leave the concert noticeably happier then when they arrived, I am happy. As for anecdotes I definitely experienced a lot of funny and less funny situations, from being obliged to repair a pedal by crawling under the piano, to a member of the audience falling from his chair. Luckily it turned out it was only dehydration, and I came to meet him the next day and we shared a great laugh, making it a wonderful memory as well.

As a musician, what is your definition of success?

Making music an equally emotional, intellectual and spiritual experience.

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?

Reflecting on Edwin Fischer’s quote: “Nicht ich spiele – es spielt” (I am not playing – it plays).

Jean  Muller’s second volume of Mozart Piano Sonatas is released on 29 November on the Hãnssler Classic label.

Hailed as a “major talent“ by Gramophone, Jean Muller has shown exceptional musical talent since his earliest childhood. At age seven, he assembled his first Chopin Etude and has been performing on stage ever since. Following his initial training at the Conservatoire of Luxembourg in Marie-José Hengesch’s class, he was exposed to varied pianistic schools in Brussels, Munich, Paris and Riga under the guidance of, among others, Teofils Bikis, Eugen Indjic, Evgeny Moguilevsky, Gerhard Oppitz and Michael Schäfer. Having received further advice by distinguished artists Anne Queffélec, Leon Fleisher, Janos Starker and Fou T’song to quote but a few, Jean Muller became a master craftsmen who combines “savage technical voltage” (Gramophone) with a capacity for bold and interpretive risk. He thus achieved the rare stacked-deck of every pianist’s dreamed triple-threat ability: “Everything is there: fingers, head and heart” (Jean-Claude Pennetier).

Read more

 

(Artist photo: Kaupo Kikkas)

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Piano

a large keyboard musical instrument with a wooden case enclosing a soundboard and metal strings, which are struck by hammers when the keys are depressed

The pianist Ivo Pogorelich is right: the piano is “a piece of furniture”. Not simply a musical instrument, it’s fine furniture, often the most expensive piece in a home and the focal point of whatever room it’s in. Browse through glossy interiors magazines, Pinterest or sites like Houzz and you will find beautiful grand pianos in beautiful settings, the instrument not intended to be played, but to bring elegance, class and grandeur to a room. My 1913 Bechstein A, bought for a song (relatively-speaking), the most I could afford at the time, is a thing of beauty with a polished rosewood case, turned legs and a fretwork music desk. Visitors to the house gasp in admiration when I throw open the door to my office-cum-music room and there she crouches in burnished antique splendour.

Your wonderful Bechstein has afforded me great joy.
Sviatoslav Richter

While upright pianos were two-a-penny in Victorian and Edwardian homes, as ubiquitous as the smart tv is today, the grand piano has always been a status symbol. A Picasso on the wall and a Steinway on the floor, the grand piano is an indicator of wealth and cultural cachet, for the grandest, most desirable pianos are as sleek, highly-engineered and expensive as a Maserati, owned, but not necessarily played, by those who value image and exclusivity above ultimate usability

Last House on the Left traditional-entrance

The piano is also a machine, a miracle of invention, this contraption of metal, wood and wires capable of sustaining twenty-two tons of tension on its strings. Despite its industrial, apparently inaminate, construction, one is regularly reminded that this instrument is, like a violin or clarinet, created from materials which were once living: the slightest fluctuation in humidity will send my antique Bechstein into a stroppy fit of out-of-tune-ness as wood and ivory contract and expand.

You become elated, invigorated, and inspired….all through something built by a factory

– Menahem Pressler

The piano is a machine but it usually has soul, and a history too….. My Bechstein is Edwardian drawing rooms, overstuffed sofas, looking glasses, brocade and lace. It might have been sold out of the Bechstein piano showroom on Wigmore Street, next to Bechstein – now Wigmore – Hall, in that golden year when a carefree generation was teetering on the abyss of the First World War. A few years ago, I played a Steinway D with a special heritage. Formerly owned by the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, it had been played by Sviatoslav Richter and Daniel Barenboim, amongst others – “and now you are playing it!” said its owner, for whose music society I was performing. I’ve also played a square piano owned and autographed by Edward Elgar, and a Pleyel said to have been played by Chopin, but one can invest too much in these associations, believing that the spirit of former owners and players haunts the keys and strings, and can influence the player. In fact, it is whoever is playing the piano now which sparks the soul of the instrument and brings it to life in sound.

As a pianist, one has a special relationship with the instrument one plays most often (usually the piano one owns), but unlike other instrumentalists, the pianist cannot carry his/her own instrument to concerts (though in the old days concert artists might travel with their piano, taking it across the ocean to a concert at Carnegie Hall, New York). Thus, while it is true that most concert instruments are pretty much the same across the international venues and halls, one must also be adaptable or lower one’s expectations – not all pianos as are well looked after and cossetted as a concert Steinway…..In such situations, a true professional will accept the situation and work with the instrument they are given. The pianist Gary Graffman, in his book I Really Should be Practising, relates an occasion where he arrived at a concert to find that one of the notes on the piano when depressed sounded with all the subtlety of a gunshot: to remedy this, Graffman simply replaced the action of that note with one seldom-used from the top of the register.

The piano ceases to be a piece of furniture, or a machine, when it is played. The player brings it to life, and the great thing about the piano is that even the most novice player can get a pleasant sound out of it (unlike the violin for which students (and their long-suffering parents and teachers) must endure years of scraping and screeching before a beautiful sound is mastered).

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The sound the pianist produces is determined by touch, by the finger’s contact with key. We call this “attack”, a curious descriptive word which suggests an aggressive connection with the instrument, when in fact the type of touch employed is often subtle, controlled, refined. Every pianist has a personal sound associated with their individual touch. Other instrumentalists, and physicists, may scoff at this, claiming that the only factor that determines the tone intensity and timbre is the speed of the hammer hitting the piano string, but studies have demonstrated that the subtleties of individual touch do influence timbre and quality of sound: pianists use a vast palette of timbral nuances to colour their performances and, importantly, to create a distinctly personal sound. Why else do we seek out the performances of certain pianists – Cortot, Lipatti, Gould, Lupu, Hough, Uchida – and can identify these pianists from a blind listening?

 

Arm weight, wrist flexibility and suppleness, lack of bodily tension – all these effect the sound, the mood and interpretation of every note and passage. A tense body creates a tense sound, for the music one produces inevitably imitates the state of the body. And the body responds to the mood of the music too: during passages of raging fury (Beethoven at his most declamatory), the heartbeat quickens and the body tenses.

A kind of synaesthesia comes into play (forgive the pun) in the most expressive and compelling performances. Timbre, an essential factor in the expressivity of performance, combined with touch and the pianist’s own temperament, their musicianship and intelligence – that is where the true magic occurs, a potent reminder that the production of sound is not simply mechanical nor technical. This is the great power of the pianist – to conjure sounds, and images, from that machine, that box of wood and wires, that piece of furniture.

And when the music is over, the lid is closed, and the piano returns to its somnolent position, silently crouching in a corner of the room, once again a piece of furniture.

Oh, but what a marvellous, magical piece of furniture!

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The author’s 1913 Bechstein model A