Last year at this time I was living in London. My Carnegie Hall then was the Wigmore Hall; nobody really dresses up and it’s a lot smaller but that wasn’t why I loved it so much. I loved it because they did something I had never seen done before. Sometimes, though not very often, musicians discussed the pieces they were going to be playing.
And I am not referring here to musicians looking to make a name for themselves, straight out of conservatory, with shaky fingers and radical interpretations of every piece, but rather established world famous performers, like the pianist Andras Schiff who I’ve always had a soft spot for on account of the fact that he’s Hungarian (like me) and also because he seems so keen of actually having people understand why he plays pieces as he does. Last year it was the Beethoven Sonatas that he discussed, at length, during a lunchtime talk and then played, to a standing ovation, the next night.
It was, for me at least, an unbeatable experience and it's one of the things I miss most about London. So, and I try to forget my envy as I write this, it’s brilliant to hear that the Wigmore is expanding its range of music education events. On February 28th, for example Wigmore Hall is presenting a pre-concert talk on the poems of the German writer, Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff, some of whose work was set to music by Robert Schumann, followed by a concert of these songs. In addition, the Wigmore is running a series of studies on Shostakovich’s string quartets throughout the season as part of its Shostakovich Centenary program.
It is in these programs that one could find a portion of the answer to the problem that I’ve been ranting about for the past few weeks. These programs are designed to open up classical music, to illuminate dense and difficult composers like Shostakovich and train listeners’ ears.
I used to hate Shostakovich myself, partly, or really, mostly, because I had to play him and he’s hard. There are great big jumping chords involved. And they go fast. I listened to his music for hours on end, willing my own fingers to play as quick, as precisely. They never did. But, after all that listening, I loved the music nonetheless and appreciated the people who could play it perfectly, jumping chords and all.
And in essence that’s what programs like the Shostakovich studies and the lunchtime discussions do. They force an audience to listen to music again and again until it grows on them and they’re addicted. And best of all they’re cheap. Would that they were free and mandatory. And would that I was in London so I could attend them.
