Chris Bonds wrote:

>I've been listening to Tureck's recording of the Partitas on the "great
>pianists" series.  I never gave her a lot of credit when i was in college
>because a lot of my fellow students were swooning over her playing and
>holding her up as a supreme authority.  I was then and am now suspicious of
>any form of performer idolatry and so pretty much refused even to listen.

It's another form of having others decide what you do or don't listen to
because of their reactions, in this case their high regard for something
and your distrust of others' enthusiasms.

>What little I did hear I don't remember what I thought of.  Now I can hear
>the wonderful way in which she makes each strand of the counterpoint stand
>out crystal clear.  Sometimes she articulates too much for my taste but her
>vision and execution of the music is always consistent and the result of a
>lifetime of thought about how the music should go.

It's good that you've heard something of what they heard (and that with age
you opened up).  I haven't thought much about this one at all but someone
played, over the phone, for me, the first movement of a Bach partita by
her.  It was better than I remembered thinking when hearing her some a long
time ago.

>enjoy the spectacle of a great musical mind in action.  If one thinks of
>great performers as the pinnacle of human achievement in music that is
>preferable to thinking of them as gods and goddesses.  Who can rise to
>the level of a god? But we're all human.

Strange.  I don't know people who think of performers as Gods.  They
may kid about it, but those very people will pick apart certain things
their favorite performers will do too.  I don't consider that idolatry.
I think you may project onto other people who carry high enthusiasms, the
god/idolotry thing.  Maybe you're keen on not getting too enthusiastic
about any performer? Maybe it's the music vs performer focus?

>doubt tacitly encouraged the label).  It suggests too much that music is
>an esoteric art the deepest secrets of which are revealed only to a select
>few.

Communicating complex music effectively (whatever that entails for the
target audience) is difficult.  Some musicians have moved some listeners
much more than others, and the effect depends on the inner pulses and
emotional or even intellectual responses of the listeners.

We could never agree on what makes a particular artist 'great' to some,
though we hear just as often why they are 'not great' to others.  The thing
that bothers me is that when someone doesn't like one performer's approach,
they belittle that performer as if the person had no significance in what
they do.  Private reservations is one thing, public dismissals of a 100%
nature another.

>While it's no doubt true that there are only a few truly "great"
>performers at any time, it can't be an exclusive club or no one would
>ever be encouraged to give it a shot.

Any time you have a smaller grouping because of the difficulty of
recognition you'll have a good number of challengers though:)

- Andrys in Berkeley
http://www.andrys.com/books.html
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