My Job As a Teacher is to Make You Hate Music? 2
It must be really nerve-wracking to play pieces in front of the person who wrote them, as young Vlado Perlemuter did for Ravel back in the 1920s. As a teacher, Perlemuter apparently took pains to ensure that his own students would be just as nervous when they played for him: I once attended a masterclass with one of his former students who said that when Perlemuter didn’t like something, he would slap his palm to his forehead and scream, “Non, non, non! Stupide! Stupide!”
So much of music education seems founded on the idea that fear of humiliation is the most effective way of motivating students. Is this true? I tend to be much more productive when I feel comfortable, and I’m grateful that my teacher is unfailingly civil. She rarely says anything more pointed than “I don’t know what you’re trying to say here”; or “I don’t know about that pedal”; or “Are you sure you don’t want to be a lawyer?” I get really mad when musicians get impatient with others who are at an earlier stage of their musical life – what difference does it make when none of us is ever going to be good enough anyway? We’re all in the same intractable position, more or less, those of us who play music and want to get better.
Jerk that he may have been, Perlemuter does have a way with Ravel. He really catches the shimmering water effect in Ondine perfectly:
Stop Making That Big Face! 91
In addition to her impeccable musical credentials, Mitsuko Uchida has as a Schoenberg interpreter the special qualification of speaking with an impenetrable accent. After repeated viewings I still can’t make out some of what she’s saying in this interview, which is fitting since after repeated listenings I still can’t make heads or tails of Schoenberg’s music. Am I a philistine for thinking that so much modern music is more fun to think about than listen to?
Uchida is justly famous for her Mozart playing, and her rendition of the slow movement from the Sonata facile is so beautiful that I almost don’t mind that she constantly looks like she’s passing a kidney stone or being tickled from under the bench. All the same, I suggest you look out the window or pull up some pretty pictures while this plays. Music this pure loses a little something when you can see the effort required to make it happen.