In terms of interpretative difficulty, among Chopin's works, only the mazurkas outshine the E minor concerto. The first movement in particular is fiendishly difficult to pull off convincingly, because if you play it with anything less than daring originality (or an extremely well-judged aristocracy) it risks coming across as flat and mechanical (it is, after all, a youthful work, which doesn't speak for itself as easily as more mature Chopin). Argerich, Wunder, Cziffra and Luisada, I'd say, are the only pianists to have truly convinced me.
Saying that, Benjamin Grosvenor and the Philharmonia put in an impressive performance at the Royal Festival Hall this week, under the baton of the energetic Joana Carneiro. The overall approach was modern and sleek, with a brisk tempo. This worked extremely well in the second movement, which came off luminous and elegant, but less so in the first, which, while overall refined and controlled, needed a bit more of an original touch and oomph in several passages, and whose coda was taken far too mechanically. But the highlight was definitely the third movement, in which Grosvenor pulled out the stops for a truly joyous and vigorous ride, drawing you in right from the glowing opening solo,
Last Saturday marked the birthday of American pianist Earl Wild, from whom I'd only ever heard one or two recordings before, so I checked out a YouTube recommendation of him playing Scriabin's fourth sonata. I'd never heard the piece before, but was hooked from the beginning by the rich, full tone Wild gave it, especially the first movement. The work itself is gorgeous- rapt, slowly unfurling in a kind of jazzy, ecstatic stasis which lasts all but eight minutes. Highly recommend if you don't already know it.
John Donne's poem Lovers' Infiniteness, which I discovered this week, begins with the jealous poet asking for his lover's whole heart, before concluding, magnificently, with a call to the exact opposite.
'Yet, I would not have all yet,
He that hath all can have no more,
And since my love doth every day admit
New growth, thou shouldst have new rewards in store;
Thou canst not every day give me thy heart,
If thou canst give it, then thou never gav ’st it[...]'
This reminded me straight away of Umberto Eco's 'antilibrary' as described by Nicholas Nassim Taleb. Eco kept a vast private store of unread books, his theory being that unread books are far more useful than those read, being a trove to explore.
I went back to read a couple of Oscar Wilde's fairytales. They are curiously satisfying precisely because, as Wilde himself once said, they do not reveal their 'final secret,' and seem to delight in toying with notions of conventional morality. The Happy Prince and The Nightingale and the Rose are at first glance moving stories of terrible self-sacrifice, and those characters who give over their own lives are shown as deeply warm-hearted, and portrayed with great sympathy. Yet the tales do not so much celebrate charity as condemn it, in keeping with The Soul of Man Under Socialism, in which Wilde argues that it is a practice of those who do not dare to challenge the inegalitarian system itself. It is the aesthetic of the act, Wilde seems to suggest, which draws us, not true concern for the beneficiaries- the Prince, a statue of gold and jewels, chooses to slowly distribute himself to the poor; the Nightingale pierces her heart against a rose-thorn to create a red rose for a spurned lover. Both meet terrible ends, and their charity fails to fulfil its goal, but it seems that Wilde lingers on their tales- and suggests that we do, too- just for the awful beauty of the act, weaving the narrative out of self-consciously flowery prose.
Wilde's fairytales, by pure aural suggestion, got me thinking, after years, of Gene Wilder's Pure Imagination. Despite having grown up on Johnny Depp's wacky interpretation of Wonka, and not taking to the older version much, I was still rather moved by the song. So here it is, if you've not yet had the pleasure:
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