Post by lemur on Nov 3, 2009 23:37:47 GMT -5
"I like to think of myself as an amateur who means well" - the actor and Frasier star on his listening pleasures
Gramaphone magazine
May 2009[/b]
When I was eight, my parents started me on piano lessons. I hated it for the first year; they had to force me to take lessons. Then, at the end of the year, they suddenly had to beg me to stop playing.
I turned out to be a really good sight-reader. I would go to my piano teacher and say, “I just heard this great piece. What is it?” And it would be something completely beyond not only my talent but also my interpretative skills, like Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata. My teacher, God bless her, would say, “Oh, yes. I know what that is.” Then she’d get the music for me and I’d ruin it. But she let me forge my way through. My teacher was this wonderful old French woman whose mother had taught at the Paris Conservatoire. She told me that when she was a little girl, she would sit under the stairs and listen to Alfred Cortot play in their home.
My parents weren’t musicians. The whole piano lesson idea was just a generic, middle-class thing, like dance lessons. They had no idea that I would take it seriously. In fact, when I went to Yale University, I thought I was going to be a music major and then go on to be a concert pianist. The school politely explained to me, no, I didn’t have the goods for that. But Yale is also where I discovered that the theatre (which I had been doing mostly for fun) was what I had a real passion for.
I kept on playing for fun, though, and recently I started taking lessons again with a great teacher I found in LA. I’ve talked to people who were professional musicians at one time and have since moved on to other jobs. I ask them if they continue to play and they say, “No! I couldn’t bear it because I’m so far away from what I used to be.” I have the great luck that because my standards are so low, I don’t mind playing at all. I play all the time for my private enjoyment. I like to think of myself as an amateur who means well.
I fell in love with classical music through recordings before I even started piano lessons. My elementary school music teacher asked each of us to bring in something we liked to listen to. I grabbed (never having heard it) a recording of Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony performing Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. I think I just had the idea that no one else would bring that in. The teacher said, “Well, we don’t have time to hear the whole thing. What’s your favorite part?” And I said, “Oh, um, anything.” She put the record on and I was absolutely mesmerised. I thought to myself, “Wow! This is really good.”
Later, for my 13th birthday, my parents gave me a recorded collection of basically everything Beethoven wrote. It was one of those enormous Vox sets and included the complete piano music played by Alfred Brendel. There was a similar box of the string quartets that I listened to maybe half a movement of and then put away. I found them dry and weird, and retained that image until I heard the Takács Quartet’s interpretations, both live and on CD. Now I get it. There was also William Steinberg and the Pittsburgh Symphony doing the nine Symphonies.
Having access to all this repertoire was really important as it cemented my love for Beethoven’s music – and also my love of Alfred Brendel’s playing. There’s a wonderful Emperor Concerto in that set where in the finale one of the woodwinds (I think it’s a clarinet) has the most horrifying note. To this day, whenever I hear that concerto, I miss it. If I’m at a concert, I can feel my heart pounding as it comes to that moment…and then the clarinet hits the right note and I think, “Oh, well. A missed opportunity.”
In addition to Alfred Brendel, there are other pianists whose recordings have come to mean a great deal to me over the years. I greatly admire Ingrid Fliter’s Chopin, Stephen Hough’s Rachmaninov concertos, Leif Ove Andnes’s Mozart concertos and Emanuel Ax’s Haydn sonatas. Satie’s music made me want to kill myself until I heard it played by Jean-Yves Thibaudet.
The music I couldn't live without ... Richard Goode’s Beethoven Sonatas. There’s something insightful and intensely creative about Goode’s playing. Neither extreme nor pedestrian, it makes me think: this is exactly what Beethoven meant.
Gramaphone magazine
May 2009[/b]
When I was eight, my parents started me on piano lessons. I hated it for the first year; they had to force me to take lessons. Then, at the end of the year, they suddenly had to beg me to stop playing.
I turned out to be a really good sight-reader. I would go to my piano teacher and say, “I just heard this great piece. What is it?” And it would be something completely beyond not only my talent but also my interpretative skills, like Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata. My teacher, God bless her, would say, “Oh, yes. I know what that is.” Then she’d get the music for me and I’d ruin it. But she let me forge my way through. My teacher was this wonderful old French woman whose mother had taught at the Paris Conservatoire. She told me that when she was a little girl, she would sit under the stairs and listen to Alfred Cortot play in their home.
My parents weren’t musicians. The whole piano lesson idea was just a generic, middle-class thing, like dance lessons. They had no idea that I would take it seriously. In fact, when I went to Yale University, I thought I was going to be a music major and then go on to be a concert pianist. The school politely explained to me, no, I didn’t have the goods for that. But Yale is also where I discovered that the theatre (which I had been doing mostly for fun) was what I had a real passion for.
I kept on playing for fun, though, and recently I started taking lessons again with a great teacher I found in LA. I’ve talked to people who were professional musicians at one time and have since moved on to other jobs. I ask them if they continue to play and they say, “No! I couldn’t bear it because I’m so far away from what I used to be.” I have the great luck that because my standards are so low, I don’t mind playing at all. I play all the time for my private enjoyment. I like to think of myself as an amateur who means well.
I fell in love with classical music through recordings before I even started piano lessons. My elementary school music teacher asked each of us to bring in something we liked to listen to. I grabbed (never having heard it) a recording of Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony performing Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. I think I just had the idea that no one else would bring that in. The teacher said, “Well, we don’t have time to hear the whole thing. What’s your favorite part?” And I said, “Oh, um, anything.” She put the record on and I was absolutely mesmerised. I thought to myself, “Wow! This is really good.”
Later, for my 13th birthday, my parents gave me a recorded collection of basically everything Beethoven wrote. It was one of those enormous Vox sets and included the complete piano music played by Alfred Brendel. There was a similar box of the string quartets that I listened to maybe half a movement of and then put away. I found them dry and weird, and retained that image until I heard the Takács Quartet’s interpretations, both live and on CD. Now I get it. There was also William Steinberg and the Pittsburgh Symphony doing the nine Symphonies.
Having access to all this repertoire was really important as it cemented my love for Beethoven’s music – and also my love of Alfred Brendel’s playing. There’s a wonderful Emperor Concerto in that set where in the finale one of the woodwinds (I think it’s a clarinet) has the most horrifying note. To this day, whenever I hear that concerto, I miss it. If I’m at a concert, I can feel my heart pounding as it comes to that moment…and then the clarinet hits the right note and I think, “Oh, well. A missed opportunity.”
In addition to Alfred Brendel, there are other pianists whose recordings have come to mean a great deal to me over the years. I greatly admire Ingrid Fliter’s Chopin, Stephen Hough’s Rachmaninov concertos, Leif Ove Andnes’s Mozart concertos and Emanuel Ax’s Haydn sonatas. Satie’s music made me want to kill myself until I heard it played by Jean-Yves Thibaudet.
The music I couldn't live without ... Richard Goode’s Beethoven Sonatas. There’s something insightful and intensely creative about Goode’s playing. Neither extreme nor pedestrian, it makes me think: this is exactly what Beethoven meant.
They hear subtleties we non musicians can't begin to be aware of. Yet, David must be a pretty excellent amateur if Stephen Hough wants to play with him. Sadly for the reasons above David probably doesn't want that to happen. It would be marvellous if David would at least play more light stuff on piano in public. I'd pay to hear that.
But if we made an album,that would be sooo awesome!!