A Tragicomedy in 88 Keys

By John Anthony S. Estolloso

I have no pretensions of being a concert pianist. There is a likely chance I can plow through sloppily a Mozart sonata, a Beethoven bagatelle, or a Bach prelude, but I cannot vouch for the quality with which these are performed.

Still, one experiences a different thrill far removed from just listening to canned music when one performs on an instrument. For musical performance requires more than just the superficial knowledge of who composed what and when, or the rote memorization of notes: it deliberately goes further into digging into the composer’s zeitgeist and psyche, and through the structure and dynamics of the composition, lets surface the nitty-gritty that constitutes and refines a good and plausibly, valid interpretation of the piece. Tersely, the composer must live again in the performance.

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Last month witnessed a spate of exploratory sessions and segments on piano performance. For one, there was the master class conducted by veteran pianist Ms. Carmencita Sipin-Aspiras at the University of San Agustin’s Conservatory of Music on the interpretation of selected compositions, ranging from the established canon to the more obscure avant-garde pieces of our National Artists.

Following in the wake of this most enlightening lecture would be a piano recital by students of the Conservatory featuring the works of Scarlatti and Bach, complemented by Filipino compositions. The same recital premiered Mr. Bimbo Muyuela’s transcription and arrangement of Mr. Beny Castillon’s world-famous choral Kruhay. Thundering on five pianos, ten aspiring student-pianists executed a dazzling and virtuosic performance accented with onomatopoeic verve, guttural cadences, and altogether, sheer musical bravado.

These series of musical events invited the audience to revisit the instrument on spotlight. The piano perhaps is the most versatile of musical instruments: it is both string and percussion instrument, and if the composer wishes it, the entire orchestra. Except for the pipe organ, which is both architectural fixture and puffed-up (pun intended) encumbrance, only the modern piano – having evolved to the technical demands of the developing styles of composers – has the range that can capture both the power and solemnity of a full symphony though a well-rendered transcription for the solo pianist.

Apparently, this musical range is the cornerstone on understanding the piano – or piano music, evidently. For instance, in her master class, Ms. Aspiras elaborated on Mozart’s Fantasia in D, striking on the finer details of the composition. Distant from the more familiar mincing sonatas identified with the impish prodigy, the music is almost rhapsodic in idea, with various themes interloping and alternating each other cohesively.

Of course, Mozart’s signature Alberti bass and the brilliant scales pervaded the composition: a technical challenge for the fledgling pianist. But there lies the rub. For Ms. Aspiras, the challenge lies more on how to read (i.e. interpret) these phrases. To paraphrase her, Mozart’s notorious penchant for opera demands that there are essentially no running passages in his compositions; there are only cadenza-like ‘singing passages’, and thus, the Gordian knot to pianists is how to make the piano ‘sing’.

Surprisingly, my mentor for piano, the late choirmaster and art educator Marciano V. Guanco, insisted on the same thing. To that effect, he would try to teach me nuanced playing with visual art. He would fidget at my sharp, accented staccatos (especially in waltzes and ecossaises) and would tirelessly point out that I am playing ‘red’ when the produced sound ought to sound ‘pink’. Exasperated by my asinine execution, he would whip out a book on the artworks of Monet or Renoir and would ask me to contemplate how the colors melded together harmoniously in a particular painting. ‘Play those colors,’ he would ask me conclusively.

Of course, I still got it wrong: blame it on petulant stubbornness and ‘artistic license’. Yet to a certain degree, it clarified to me how a particular composer’s milieu was infused in the composition – beyond the objectivity of the musical notes lies the emotional pull embedded by the cultural, social, economic, political, and religious influences of the composer.

More importantly, it broke down the walls that formally categorized art forms: in understanding piano music, one must likewise understand contexts that inspired the period’s paintings, sculpture, dance, narratives, drama, poetry, and even films. It is not enough to know the piece by heart; one must also read the literature behind it to perform it well.

For whatever learnings I got from those piano lessons, one endurant realization was clear for me: it was not enough to memorize the notes or to play the melodies and harmonies correctly like a mechanical automaton. After all, music in whatever genre is sentimental in nature, cerebral may be the manner of its execution. Hence, performance – correct posture, finger-work, wrist and arm movement, legati and rubati, phrasing, among others – must transcend playing.

In all appearances, there are no ‘perfect’ performances – well, at least to the standards set by the composers. Perhaps a modicum of virtuosity is hidden beneath in each pianist’s performance and interpretation. Tragic or amusing may be the sounds produced, it does not detract anything from the art form. After all, what was Beethoven’s dictum on musical performance? ‘To play a wrong note is insignificant [but] to play without passion is inexcusable!’

[The author is a language and humanities teacher in one of the private schools in the city.]