Let’s face it. Except for the lucky few who have the gift, young students struggling to coax music out of a piano are in for a world of pain. Most of them just suffer in silence, and so do their families in the next room, as sharps become flats, allegro becomes lento, everything is hammered to death, and Mozart rolls over in his grave.
But in the past few years, a strange ritual has taken root in our so-called civilization – a safety valve for those who crack under the strain of music’s harsh discipline. It is called “piano destruction” and it is more than a diversion for vandals.
This is different from performance art, in which pianos have been abused for decades by artists seeking to shock. A Swedish pianist, the late Karl-Erik Welin, took a chainsaw to his piano and composed a piece he calls “Esservecchia” calling for strong fist blows to the keyboard and strings.
The occasional comic take on piano destruction survives on film, such as Harpo Marx and his version of “Wreckmaninov”.
But now young piano students sometimes go mad, jumping on the keys, smashing the soundboard, torching the instrument, raking the strings with garden tools – and capturing it all on video
Is this really porn? At least it is an act offensive to public morality, so I call it “pure piano porn”.
Fine instruments produced by piano craftsmen are transformed into bonfires, torn to pieces by heavy construction equipment, exploded with TNT, pushed off cliffs and tipped over the edge of tall buildings.
Raphael Montanez Ortiz attacks a grand piano with an axe as part of a piece of performance art
Admittedly some ageing pianos are so worn out that they cannot be tuned, and there comes a time to drag them to the knackers yard like an old horse. What makes the practice obscene is the glee with which the demolishers attack the doomed instrument.
A search of the web reveals dozens of amateur piano-bashers at work under the heading “piano destruction”. The best compilation I have found is a link called “25 ways to kill a piano”, accessible here.
Not everyone can find enjoyment from these wanton acts of devastation. Music lovers cringe at the sight of them and scratch their heads. Piano tuners and piano builders weep.
And yet, men and women, boys and girls, will rush at a piano with an axe or hammer or iron bar if motivated by their desperation. The more ambitious of them go to the woods and plant explosives inside. Much merriment – diabolical laughter, actually — is associated with these events.
Occasionally a truly accomplished player takes out his frustration on the instrument. Recently in France, François-René Duchâble, during a pause in his career, recalled his personal act of vengeance. He says he liberated himself from an overly demanding career by dropping the wooden case of his grand piano from a helicopter into Lake Mercantour, in the French Alps, and never saw it again.
He branded the piano “an arrogant instrument which excludes all those that don’t know about music.”
“People thought this was a desperate move,” he recalled. “In fact it was a liberation. An act of purification.” And he told a reporter, “I have had enough of sacrificing my life for one percent of the population. I have had enough of participating in a musical system, which, in France at least, functions badly and limits classical music to an elite.”
Thus he brought to a close three decades as a concert pianist and recording star, “a life I detested”, he said. At a stroke, the helicopter stunt had put an end to everything that was weighing him down – “the travel, the rehearsals, the recording sessions in which one is a mere student of the producer in the studio.” He hated taking direction from record producers and he likened his road trips to traveling around in a hearse.
Duchâble’s works are still on the market. His performances of all the standard repertoire of Liszt, Chopin, Beethoven, Rachmaninov, Grieg, are easy to find. He feels his entire life was ruined by his career. “I have a few good memories, a few successes, but not much,” he recalled. “I spent 30 years regretting I had this talent which prevented me from having a life,” he recalled. Finally, he snapped.
Until his recent retirement, he was saying he felt “reborn”, performing for children or the sick, or pedaling around seaside resorts with a keyboard mounted on a specially built tricycle, attracting crowds of old and young with his mobile arpeggios and snatches of Chopin.
The more common piano-bashers seem to be amateurs who arrive on the dreaded “plateau” of learning during which nothing seems to move forward despite intense practicing. Clips of piano destruction on YouTube are enlivened with viewer comments, such as: “Wow he must have had a terrible teacher.”
Yes, piano pedagogues have much to answer for.
Michael Johnson is a music critic with particular interest in piano. He worked as a reporter and editor in New York, Moscow, Paris and London over his writing career. He is the author of five books and divides his time between Boston and Bordeaux.He is a regular contributor to The Cross-Eyed Pianist
Like many adult learners, Howard Smith found it surprising that he would suffer that most debilitating of all pianistic ailments: extreme performance anxiety. He explained to me that this came as a big surprise, having been a confident keynote speaker at many large events during his long career in the IT industry. Now semi-retired, Howard is working hard to lead a new creative life, focussed on the piano.
Members of the London Piano Meet Group (LPMG) guided the initial development of Howard’s collation of collective wisdom.
Confronting my fears and learning ways to reduce and manage them is empowering. I can become a more confident performer.
There are two kinds of performance anxiety:
Irrational anxiety: fear for no good reason! If I am well-prepared, it should be possible to overcome irrational anxieties.
Rational anxiety: insufficient practice and preparation. Maybe I was just lucky playing at home in the practice room? Under the spotlight, things fell apart.
The combination of sufficient practice and building resilience under emotional stress can help to reduce performance anxieties.
Technical preparation is the bottom line. Stiffness, awkward movements and poor technique become completely dysfunctional during a live performance; my mind and muscles won’t be able to cope.
I must develop a narrative of success and avoid a narrative of failure. A series of poor performances can result in a vicious cycle of negativity. Avoid at all costs.
Consider using techniques from NLP and CBT to turn negative messages and the ‘toxic inner critic’ into positive affirmation and confidence-boosting messages.
1) Adopt the Right Mindset
Accept yourself for what you are. How well you perform is not a determiner of your self-worth.
Nobody is perfect. A few mistakes are OK. Most audiences won’t notice, and many are non-judgemental.
Accept that a degree of nervousness (butterflies) is healthy. It is natural and affects most everyone. If you are not nervous or are overconfident, something is wrong. Adrenaline can be useful but needs a channel.
To build a narrative of success, seek out a graduated series of low-threat performance opportunities. Start with a video camera or tape recorder. Treat this session as if it were a real performance. Stand up and address your imaginary audience. Keep going, even if you make mistakes. Try to maintain the tempo. Then move to the next level: a trusted friend or musical associate. Then a few more friends. Etc.
Each time you perform, think about what you found hard. Consider what new coping strategies may be required.
2) Choice of Music
A successful performance of any piece of music boosts your confidence and increases emotional resilience in readiness for your next performance.
Choose music safely within or below your grade: ‘easy for you’ pieces with which you are entirely comfortable. Hard to say, difficult to do.
Play at a tempo at which you can be confident.
Performing less well-known repertoire can be helpful. Familiar or iconic music can attract higher expectations from audiences, heightening your natural fear of being ‘under the spotlight’.
3) Prepare for the Performance
Be well prepared. Practice. Practice. Practice. Eliminate anything and everything that can go wrong. Practice until you cannot go wrong.
Tip: A few days before your performance, identify the one bar (one) that you find the most challenging. Experience shows that this simple, practical solution seems to ‘clinch’ the sense of confidence after all else is said and done.
Perform whenever and wherever you can. For example, find a piano in a public space. Play when your friends come round, whether they want to hear or not. Tell your ad-hoc audiences to accept your performance for it is: the practise of practice! Doing so will help you feel what it is like to be nervous. These ‘safe’ performances reveal whether you have sufficiently practised.
Also, practise in front of your teacher. Take their advice but ask them not to obsess about tiny details. It’s too late for that. Ask them for their input on the entire sweep of the performance.
Work on controlled breathing, and meditation. Relax. Find the mind tools to redirect thoughts when they turn negative.
Be healthy. Exercise. Eat properly.
4) The Day Before
Limit stimulants. Get adequate sleep.
Practise yes, but avoid over-practise. Focus on the big picture.
Take a walk, jump up and down, shake out muscles, or do whatever feels right to ease any anxious feelings. Repeat nearer the time.
5) At the Performance
If possible, warm up beforehand by playing a few scales. At least try to feel the piano keyboard in advance. Play a few notes and chords. Don’t forget the pedals.
Remind yourself that you are well-prepared. Don’t over-think what could go wrong.
Foster a ‘safe space’ for yourself in which to perform. Get into ‘the zone’. Centre yourself.
Adopt an aura of confidence. Visualise your success. Face down your anxiety.
Think of the audience as your friends. Connect with them – smile, make eye contact.
Shift the focus from your vulnerabilities, towards the music itself. Close your eyes. Imagine your audience enjoying the music.
Aim not only to perform correctly but also to communicate the emotion of the music (sadness, joy, profound feelings).
As you start to play; play with confidence. The success of the first few bars is essential to your continued confidence throughout the performance.
Breathe. Don’t hold your breath. Relax your facial muscles.
Play with passion! Play joyfully. Play as if you are giving a GIFT to your audience, instead of focussing on what may go wrong or being over-critical of yourself. Perfection if not the same as beauty. Moreover, leave your ego at home!
As you play, listen but do not analyse. Focussing too closely on finger and hand movement is not going to help at this stage. Communicate the expression or ‘story’ of the music rather than its technical aspects.
Allow the music to flow through you, imagine yourself as a conduit for it, rather than deliverer or controller.
Be in the present. Play in the moment. Don’t anticipate difficult future bars or upcoming tricky passages. Avoid thoughts such as ‘I must not get that tricky chord wrong’ or ‘I must not trip up at bar 25’. Avoid all such negative thoughts.
Tip: Imagine the music is a music roll ticker-tape, inexorably moving forward. Let the music carry you along. Declutter your thoughts from the mechanical details of performance.
Bring your mind and hands together as one, not as separate machinery. Concentrate as you play. Do not allow stray thoughts to enter your head. Chase them out.
If you make a mistake, pick up, recover and carry on – with the least amount of fuss. Keep going. Maintain tempo. Whatever happens, try not to re-start.
Have fun!
5) After the Performance
Don’t dwell on what happened during your performance, other than to learn from obvious mistakes.
Plan for your next performance, right away.
Postscript: Additional Thoughts
Minimise distractions. Find a fixed point in the distance. Focus on whatever makes you feel comfortable. This point could be your music stand, the keyboard, or somewhere beyond the piano itself. Wherever or whatever it is, ensure that your focal point is below eye level.
Be deliberate. When you step up to the piano, how exactly do you intend to sound? What, precisely, do you intend to communicate to your audience?
Build the appropriate mental image of the way you would ideally like to perform. Tell yourself that you are going to perform brilliantly, with passion and clear dynamics. Think about positive words such as light fingers, smooth playing, even shifts, fluid movements, strong chords, quiet, calm, ease. Breathe from the diaphragm.
Avoid shallow, rapid, chest breathing. Performance anxiety creates muscle tension. As you breathe, focus on each group of muscles, releasing tension as you exhale.
Did any composer, I wonder, understand – really understand – the true scope, range and possibilities of the soprano voice as well as Strauss?
That is quite a bold assertion when you consider the huge competition; but my guess is that it would find a high level of support among sopranos anyway, of which his wife, Pauline, was one. She was about as fine a personification of the ‘prima donna’ as you could expect to meet, and their marriage was volatile; but their mutual love of music probably accounts for Strauss’s exquisite compositions for the human voice.
I will not deter you now on his operatic output, of which there were fifteen, except to allude to a comment I once heard made by Kate Royal, a fine English soprano, to underline Strauss’s mastery. The last twenty minutes of his opera ‘Der Rosenkavalier‘ would never lose its slot in my Desert Island Discs, being filled with the most sublime mingling of female voices: Royal said something along the lines of, “It’s one of those moments when you just stand and sing” – nothing else required.
Today’s piece will detain you for less than two minutes, but its three brief verses are all very slightly different, and a couple of hearings will reveal its subtle musical development. Strauss wrote over 200 songs, and many of those originally written for voice and piano were later orchestrated. ‘Zueignung‘ (‘Devotion‘) is one such, but the version I have chosen is with the piano, here played so sensitively by the renowned Strauss interpreter, Wolfgang Sawallisch.
It is a little gem, composed in 1885, set to the words by the poet Hermann von Gilm. I remember seeing the American singer, Renee Fleming, perform Strauss’s ‘Four Last Songs‘ at the proms a few years ago and mentally begging her to sing ‘Zueignung‘ as an encore. Never underestimate the power of wishful thinking! I have scrolled through a number of recordings, but it is the purity of Lucia Popp I cannot resist. The touching, pining, lyrics end with the lines ‘Heilig, heilig an’s Herz dir sank, Habe Dank.’ (Joy and bliss shall thy love impart.Thanks, sweet heart!)
There are some who argue that German is an unmusical language. It was Lady Bracknell, of all people, who, when commenting on a programme of songs in Oscar Wilde’s ‘Importance of BeingErnest‘said ‘French songs I cannot possibly allow…but German sounds a thoroughly respectable language‘. A slightly tenuous link on the face of it, but the two men had more in common than you might expect: Strauss’s controversial opera ‘Salome‘ was based on a play by Wilde.
I hope you enjoy this, it is gorgeous.
Nick worked in the City of London for nearly 40 years, but his great love has always been classical music. The purpose of his blog, Manuscript Notes, is to introduce classical music in an unintimidating way to people who might not obviously be disposed towards it, following a surprise reaction to an opera by his son, “Hey, dad, this is really good!“. He is married with three adult children.
The Stakhanovite work ethic among young piano students in China shows no sign of fading as their tiny fingers fly up and down the keyboard ten or twelve hours a day. Competitions are welcoming the new Asian talent and European concert halls tend to fill with admiring fans. Some of us (including me) don’t quite know what to make of it.
It’s not all about Lang Lang, Yuja Wang or Yundi Li. Potential new superstars are emerging each year. Brace yourself for more in the years ahead. Some 20 million Chinese are said to be practicing madly as our European and American kids play with their smart phones and iPads.
Two contrasting Chinese women have caught my eye (no, not like that …) recently and promise to leave indelible marks. They both have worked hard to get noticed and – contrary to myth — they are capable of absorbing and mastering the Western canon.
Ran Jia, the Shanghai-born daughter of an established composer, has become a recognised Schubert interpreter. And Zhu Xiao-Mei has adopted the Goldberg Variations as virtually her own. Music without borders is no longer a cliché.
Elegant, poised and deeply musical, Ran Jia has brought a new freshness to Schubert, a phenomenal achievement considering how often the piano sonatas have been performed by the greatest pianists of the past 75 years. The music press in Germany, where she played all eleven works in a four-day marathon last year, christened her “the challenger”.
And Xiao Mei, a battered survivor of five years in the labour camps of Mao’s China, recovered her piano training and managed to escape, first to Hong Kong, then Los Angeles, then Boston, and finally Paris. It’s difficult to read her book “The Secret Piano” without welling up.
In one passage, she describes the beginning of her career at Beijing Conservatory.
“We worked at the piano like galley slaves, in little closed rooms whose doors were fitted with a small, round window (for monitors to check up on students)… The school’s leaders encouraged rivalry between students. The best pupils not only had the right to more classes but also to better food.”
Living conditions were Spartan. “At night, forty of us slept in the same dormitory hall. Bunk beds were placed next to each other so closely there was just enough space to move about the room. The atmosphere was suffocating.”
And her first serious teacher, Pan Yiming, was “unrelenting”, she recalls. He ran her through the Hanon virtuoso book plus the main volumes of Czerny, Cramer, Moszkowski and Brahms, plus Bach’s “Inventions” and the Well-Tempered Clavier”. He told her, “I want you to play all this by heart. From now on, for each lesson, you must play a piece by Bach and two etudes from memory with no mistakes.”
By a circuitous route she ended up at the New England Conservatory in Boston, studying under Gabriel Chodos who had trained under a student of Arthur Schnabel. “Professor Chodos was forbidding. With him, it was a life-or-death struggle. After every class, I wanted to quit the piano.”
When he assigned the Schumann “Davidsbüldlertänze”, he warned her it would be the “ultimate test … Once again, he was right.”
She saves her greatest enthusiasm for the Goldbergs, which she says “took over my existence – it contained all one needed to live.” The variations, she says, “are all about flow … this is what makes Bach’s music so soothing for its listeners.”
Her mastery is evident in this sample of her Goldbergs:
Ms. Jia rejects talk of competitive striving among the Chinese. “My dream is simple,” she told me in an interview, “to share my musical inspiration deep down in my heart with the audience …” To her, Schubert’s music “dances between our world and heaven”.
Her modest persona comes as a welcome change in the face of the flamboyance of other young Asian players seeking to distinguish themselves through hair-styles or performance antics. She may well be the next Chinese superstar, a versatile player who thoroughly understands her music and performs it for us without excesses.
One American critic noted that onstage she simply and calmly “looked as though she were thoroughly enjoying herself, frequently smiling at Schubert’s more engaging nuances”.
I asked her about the growing criticism of young pianists who place technique above musicality. Not wishing to join the polemic, she agreed however that “music is not only related to the physical action but also the knowledge, emotion and the depth of the spirit behind it”. She brings all these crucial elements to her playing.
I have spent the past few days listening attentively to her latest CD (Ran Jia Schubert, Sony Music) a pairing of Sonata No. 19 in C Minor and Sonata No. 16 in A Minor. As a bonus, she includes “Three Preludes for Solo Piano” by her well-known composer-father (also an accomplished painter), Jia Daqun.
In this video she discusses her love of Schubert and demonstrates her exquisite playing.
Ms. Jia has already built the foundations of a long-lasting career, with debuts at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, New York. As she explains in our interview (below) she became a multicultural musician by growing up in a musical household. Her father is Senior Professor of Composition and Theory at Shanghai Conservatory. He is regarded as China’s leading composer and has worked in various musical styles, including traditional Chinese music.
A bonus on the new CD is the world premiere recording of his Preludes. Most captivating is his variation swirling around Schubert’s A Minor sonata and placing it very much in the 21st century. After absorbing his daughter’s pure Schubert, this contrast is chillingly beautiful.
INTERVIEW WITH RAN JIA
Q. Your four-recital cycle of Schubert the eleven piano sonatas in Germany last year left critics in awe. They called you an “astonishing” artist, a “piano poet”. How has that success changed you?
A. I would say it changed me as a pianist. After this almost impossible mission, I suddenly found peace and freedom in myself as a musician.
Q. You are in very good company, devoting so much of your musical talent to Schubert. The competition could not be stronger – Brendel, Schiff, Perahia, Kempf, Lupu, Richter, Barenboim, among others. What drew you into this stratosphere?
A. Schubert has been my favorite composer since I was a teenager. Ever since I played his music the first time, I have felt a unique connection. All his music has become my mission in my musical life. I don’t feel there should be any competition between the interpreters as you mentioned in the question. For me, my dream is simple, to share my musical inspiration deep down in my heart with the audience, and to diligently dig into Schubert’s music as much I can.
Q. Will you really spend the rest of your life discovering Schubert’s “spiritual delicacy and profoundness”, as you have written? Is your ambition to become the definitive interpreter of Schubert?
A. Of course I will spend the rest of my life discovering Schubert’s music. For more than a decade I have continuously studied his pieces. I feel his music is still underrated compare to his genius — he is so much more than just a songwriter (even though the songs are amazing!) The boldness of his harmony is absolutely stunning and he uses music to express his philosophy of life.
Q. You have said that you moved from your native China to Europe to better understand the Germanic culture of Schubert. In what way did this help your interpretations?
A. The language, the culture, the atmosphere, those are the foundations for better understanding his background.
Q. What is Schubert’s secret in drawing the tragic and painful strains from major rather than minor keys?
A. True, major brings a brighter feeling than minor, but Schubert’s use of the key changes make me feel that major is more sad than minor because of the way he uses the major sounds seem like a beautiful dream that will never come true.
Q. What are you preparing now in repertoire? Do you plan more ensemble work?
A. I am at the moment preparing a lot of repertoire. I have some interesting projects, for example all the Beethoven concertos, and a Schubert cycle in China in the second half of the year and some trio concerts (mainly transcriptions) with piano, saxophone and violin.
Q. Your father, the distinguished Professor Jia Daqun, is perhaps the ultimate cross-over East-West composer, combining some Chinese traditions with vigorous Western-style contemporary music, as he does in “Melodies from Sichuan Opera” on your new CD. Has his musical culture always combined a balance of the two?
A. Yes, he wrote a lot of interesting chamber works with the combination of Chinese folk melody and Western modern composition technique. He has recently been commissioned by Yo-Yo Ma for a string quartet for the Silk Road Project.
Q. In your own musical life, did you have to move from the Asian pentatonic to the Western heptatonic scales? If so, did you make this adjustment gradually?
A. I never had to move because music of all kinds was always just naturally there with me. I started studying piano when I was three and half years old. Because of my father, I heard a lot of music in different periods, of course including Chinese folk music. I didn’t need to change anything.
Q. Are you still interested in Chinese music or have you definitively crossed over?
A. I don’t think you can speak of crossing over in this context. It is not a question of interest in Chinese music, because this music is a part of me. I am Chinese :).
Q. How should we understand the current explosion of popularity of Western music in China? Some observers think it has become a status symbol to love Western music, like the “Gucci shoes of the music world”, as one pianist has called it. How true is this?
A. First of all, there are a lot of Chinese, so it might seem like it’s an explosion of popularity of western music. Second, the competition in the schools in China is enormous, the teenagers usually have to have several interests besides their normal subjects of study. And music became very popular because it can cultivate one’s feelings.
Q. What drives Asian children to over-practice, sometimes 12 hours a day ? Don’t their results sometimes favor technique at the expense of musical understanding? Are Asian piano students more driven to succeed or are Western children going soft?
A. Asian children work very hard and they want to be good in any area they study, whether in music or other subjects. It’s important that at a certain age they build up a good technique through a lot of practice, but in my opinion, it has become very critical because music is not only related to the physical action but also the knowledge, emotion and the depth of the spirit behind it. I think we should not see a music career as ‘succeeding’ but rather as ‘devoting’ and ‘growing’, or we lose the essence of being a musician.
Michael Johnson is a music critic with particular interest in piano. He worked as a reporter and editor in New York, Moscow, Paris and London over his writing career. He is the author of five books and divides his time between Boston and Bordeaux.
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