Maria Yudina and Stalin

The pianist Maria Yudina was an outspoken critic of Stalin, and was woken at night by the police who ordered her to come with them. She feared the worst; but the reason for the summons was that Stalin had heard her playing a Mozart concerto on the radio, and right now demanded to hear it again, at once, without delay. Unfortunately, what he had heard was a live radio broadcast, of which no recording had been made. So Stalin's henchmen assembled Yudina plus a motley group of musicians for a nocturnal recording session, not the most relaxing of circumstances in which to play Mozart! You can hear the performance on Youtube, that amazing free source of rare classical music. Her playing is free from the slightest trace of self-interest, as is the playing of her class-mate Sofronitsky - both are strangers to any concept of musical or personal safety. If you listen to Yudina playing the Schubert A-flat major Impromptu, again you hear someone racing toward beauty without wearing a seat-belt, or as the Americans might say, playing by the seat of her pants! A moth toward the flame...

Those interested in modern examples might be interested to check out the website of the pianist Andrei Gavrilov, while Ivo Pogorelich has some interesting political tales to tell on the political circumstances surrounding his appearance at the Tchaikovsky competition in the 1980s. Whether any modern pianist can match the golden age pianists is debatable; perhaps the concept of the sublime is being airbrushed out of contemporary vocabulary in our materialistic age, where the modern equivalent of the medieval cathedral is the shopping mall at Dubai. But at the very least these amazing musicians/technicians offer some interesting parallels of personal danger and courageous piano playing (in addition to huge piano techniques). Among the younger generation Konstantin Lifschitz is able to mine a sublime seam of Bach, as is the blind French pianist Bernard D'Ascoli. And the young Japanese pianist Aimi Kobayashi certainly looks like an inspired angel. If you copy and paste this in your browser she is playing a Chopin Impromptu.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvcMSGbKGo4&feature=PlayList&p=0635480989206E9C&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=13

Sofronitsky and Rachmaninoff

I cannot resist sharing more comments by these wonderful artists about the nature of musical inspiration and soufulness:

First of all, a performance requires a will. A will- meaning to want a lot, to want more than you have now, more than you can give. For me the entire effort is strengthening the will. Here is all: rhythm, sound, emotion. Rhythm should be soulful. The whole piece should live, breathe, move as protoplasm. I play-and one part is alive, full of breath, and another part nearby may be dead because the live rhythmic flow is broken. Rachmaninoff, for instance, could create a rhythmic pulse that was unfailingly alive. He had the enormous artistic will of a genius. He had a greater will than any of the modern pianists. The same with Anton Rubinstein... [who] had an enormous will for hearing, for rhythmic life. And another point, most important: the more emotionally you play, the better, but this emotionality should be hidden, hidden as in a shell. When I come on stage now, I have «seven shells» under my tuxedo, and despite this I feel naked. So, I need fourteen shells. I have to wish to play so well, live so fully, as to die and still feel as if I have not played. I have nothing to do with this.

http://www.sofronitsky.com/publications/publication-03.html

Rachmaninoff said:
"Real inspiration must come from within: nothing from outside can help. The best in poetry, the greatest of painting, the sublimest of nature cannot produce any worthwhile result if the divine spark of creative faculty is lacking within the artist….
[the listener] should] “paint for themselves what the music most suggests"

Inspiration.

This Monday I had the pleasure of enjoying a drink with my daughter Poppy on a red double decker bus, which has been converted into a vegan restaurant, situated on Brewer Street, Soho. This is very handy for my partner Jo-chieh to buy Japanese noodles at the store down the road.
Meanwhile at the British Library that day I came across some very interesting comments about inspiration by Plato:
"The muse inspires men herself, and then by means of these inspired persons the inspiration spreads to others... For not by art do they utter these things, but by divine influence... the poets are merely the interpreters of the gods."
Beethoven echoes this when he says: "A Rhythm of the spirit is needed to grasp the essence of music... What we attain from art comes from God... Music grants us inspiration of celestial sciences, and that part of it which the mind grasps through the senses is the embodiment of mental cognition".
Relating this to pianists, Schnabel writes: "Creativity is inspiration filtered by artistic conscience". Rachmaninoff too favoured an element of discrimination in his music making, as opposed to the musician delivering him or herself entirely to the wildness of the moment.
Should pianists be totally wild and inspired (like Nyireghazy), or cool and controlled (like Michelangeli), or wild in a calculating way (like Horowitz)? Or simply divine like Dinu Lipatti? Here's what mysterious Sofronitsky had to say (www.sofronitsky.com) :
" the more emotionally you play, the better, but this emotionality should be hidden, hidden as in a shell. When I come on stage now, I have «seven shells» under my tuxedo, and despite this I feel naked. So, I need fourteen shells. I have to wish to play so well, live so fully, as to die and still feel as if I have not played."