This photo of Sibelius makes me happy

But not everyone particularly cared for the piano, it seems.  Despite having written a few character pieces for it, Jean Sibelius will go on record as one of those composers who may have employed it entirely out of convenience.

I dislike the piano: it is an unsatisfactory, ungrateful instrument, an instrument for which only one composer, Chopin, has succeeded in writing perfectly, and of which only two others, Debussy and Schumann, have had an intimate understanding.

I always feel that statements as pointed and cold as this need to be taken with a grain of salt; could someone really harbor so much resentment about one of the most versatile musical instruments of them all?  In fact, maybe so.  The man is remembered for his accomplishments in genres without piano.  Seven grand symphonies.  Fervently nationalistic tone poems.  A violin concerto with one of the most haunting opening melodies I’ve ever heard.

At least we get a sense from this statement that Sibelius believed the piano to have merits within reach of the talents of other composers.  I think most people would cite Chopin as the composer who excelled most in the domain of the 88; it’s comforting to know that Sibelius, a man who didn’t even like the instrument, was sympathetic to this belief as well.

Source: Goulding, Phil. Classical Music: The 50 Greatest Composers and Their 1000 Greatest Works. Random House.

Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev (*)

According to the surviving press material that relates the outcome of this concert, Rachmaninoff’s playing was not well received.  As professional and musically gifted as the man was, his performance was apparently starved of the nuances that contemporary “Scriabinites” cherished in these pieces.  And in fact, Rachmaninoff continued to endure criticism for his treatment of the late composer’s works as the season unfolded and as more critics throughout Russia were introduced to his interpretation.  (If only we had such an opportunity.)

Prokofiev’s opinion went on record too, fortunately, and is less critical.  In his account, he acknowledges the uproar of the press and the unmistakable novelty of Rachmaninoff’s performance, but voices no immediate protests of his own.

I tried to suggest an objective point of view: though we were accustomed to the composer’s interpretation, perhaps there are other ways of playing this work.

His coolheaded open-mindedness wouldn’t appease the older composer-pianist though, and what Prokofiev describes next is a first look at the unpleasant relationship they would share for the rest of their lives.

Entering the artists’ room, I continued my thought as I spoke to Rachmaninoff: “And yet, Sergei Vasilyevich, you played very well.”  Rachmaninoff smiled acidly—”And you probably thought I’d play badly?” and he turned away to someone else.  This put an end to our good relations.  Some part in this was certainly contributed by Rachmaninoff’s rejection of my music, and the irritation it provoked in him.

And so, as history would have it, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev would never really hit it off.  I’d like to think that, as two of the most successful artists of their time, they at least shared a mutual respect for each other’s talent, but that probably wouldn’t have really mattered even if it were true.  After the First World War, the two of them would advance their careers in music quite independently of each other, despite both of them leaving for the United States at around the same time.

Moscow (lucie@Flickr)

Before leaving Russia, however, the gods again arranged for these two men to be present together in a concert setting in Moscow.  Rachmaninoff, together with his friend and fellow composer Medtner, attended a performance of Prokofiev’s chamber works.  Prokofiev’s recollection of the evening confirms Rachmaninoff’s generally mysterious and subdued demeanor:

Among those invited were Rachmaninoff and Medtner.  Through the concert Medtner fumed and fussed, “If that’s music, I’m no musician.”  Rachmaninoff, though, sat like a stone idol, and the Moscow audience, that usually received me well, was confused as it watched its hero’s reaction to my music.

How lucky we are to have such sensationalism on record.  Actually, while these anecdotes mostly recount unpleasantness, there is another (a letter to a Moscow magazine) in which Prokofiev respectfully acknowledges Rachmaninoff’s success in the concert hall. Still, there’s no denying the bad blood between these two; in a later discourse on his taste in music, Prokofiev dismissed the subject with the following:

Rachmaninoff—well, I’d rather say nothing about him.  The truth is we hated each other’s guts!

All of this leaves me wondering whether it was Prokofiev the man or specifically his music that bothered Rachmaninoff so much.  Either way, there isn’t much you can do, in general, to reconcile artistic differences.  Prokofiev and others were on a path to a new kind of sound, and Rachmaninoff would simply have no part in it.

Source: Bertensson & Leyda. Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music. Indiana University Press. Amazon.

(*) Photographs copyright of their respective owners.

A stamp honoring Shostakovich

I sympathize with men like Prokofiev and Shostakovich—artists whose musical output was, at least for some portion of their careers, dictated by the aesthetic counsel of the Soviet Union.  And I am therefore grateful that Rachmaninoff managed to live a life more or less free of political directives interfering with his creativity.  Already, the man suffered from lifelong insecurity regarding the value of his own work; I can’t imagine how the hammer and sickle might have molded his music into something else.