Charles Rosen is Here

Charles Rosen was born on May 5th 1927. On February 2nd 2007 he will play Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata and Diabelli Variations at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. This is his eightieth year and tonight he was giving a talk in a funny room in the "newly refurbished" (i.e. not finished yet) Royal Festival Hall complex. He stood in front of the conference table and spoke from memory following a quite precise mental map of his hour-long discourse, interrupted only by anecdotes, reminiscences, and interesting facts. Behind the table was an upright piano that said "Welmar". Behind that was a door that said "Toilets". Mr Rosen didn't seem to mind. The main thing was that he was here.

Charles Rosen knows an awful lot about music and culture. I very much recommend to you his book "The Romantic Generation" which is a never-ending compendium of insight into the Romantic vein of music. He is an important man in the musical world but doesn't seem self-important. His only admissions of his own importance were a few jokes such as saying that when he had to move away from the microphone to the piano people at the back might not hear what he was saying, "But then, not everything I say is so interesting" - pause for laughter (which did come) because he obviously knows that everything he says is interesting. That's fine because he's right!

The talk was called "Beethoven's Ambition" and weaved its way through the territory of 18th century musical Europe at a time when although there were accepted great masters of art or of theatre (Raphael, Michelangelo; Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes etc.), there were none of the new instrumental style of music in which Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven hoped to make their way.

I made notes when I got home and what I remembered best were the anecdotes. Is this because of limited brain power, or is it just that Mr Rosen produces wisdom in a form that is useful and can be remembered?

Here is what he said:

When Stravinsky said he wanted his music played "without expression", that was wrong - Stravinsky never conducted his music that way. It wasn't expression he didn't like, it was Koussevitzky's expression!

Haydn was asked to send an opera to be performed in Prague. He replied that the operas he had written for the court at Esterhazy would not be suitable because they were written for a more provincial setting. He also said he couldn't send a new opera because he'd just heard The Marriage of Figaro and didn't care to try his luck at doing better!

The Magic Flute was the most varied opera (in terms of different forms and techniques used within the opera) written from its time until Alban Berg's Wozzeck.

E.T.A. Hoffmann was the greatest music critic ever.

George Bernard (pronounced here BerNARD) Shaw said that we would be shocked by the music of Mozart if it were not for its lovely melodies.

The Minuet finale of the Diabelli Variations shows Beethoven's lyrical genius - something little considered, and something that came a lot easier to Mozart than to Beethoven.

OK that's all for now. I might add more as I remember them. Tomorrow is a busy day with a Pierre Laurent Aimard masterclass in the morning, a lecture by Christopher Elton on the piano sonatas of Haydn at 6.30 then dash off to hear Charles Rosen play! It sounds like I am back at college again with all this to do. But I will never think I am too important to learn things, from anybody, famous or not. That's why hopefully one day someone will write about some interesting facts I said. While I was standing in front of a door saying "Toilets".

New News

I went to a camera show run by Nikon which purported to be for professional photographers (I am not one, but, you know, when you know the right people....). However I had the feeling that professional photographers would more likely be outside being professional photographers rather than attending a show.

I was not entirely wrong, and you can follow my way of thinking by looking here! Look, it's scantily-clad women wielding industrial welding equipment! It looks like it - anyway they certainly make a lot of sparks! Wow, that looks exciting. Evidently it is supposed to be exciting anyway! And we can imagine that Nikon have pitched this about right, if a lot of the people who buy camera equipment are the same people who buy camera magazines and car magazines and so on. They always have women in, posing in a rather demeaning way (it demeans lots of people!). Oh well, they get paid for it I suppose. You probably get paid more for being an astronaut though....they could try that instead.

So anyway, there were similar types of females featured in a so-called "catwalk opportunity". Also one man, much to everyone's disappointment I am sure. Indeed, nearly everyone attending in the guise of photographer was a man, many many many of whom found it necessary to carry their cameras around their necks so as to show off what they've got, how much it cost, and how many megapixels it has. A lot of them were funny grey men...rather odd, it was.

I would have thought a camera show was not necessarily a good place to learn about photography. For example, it must be a similar type of thing to wanting to learn about music at a piano show, or about painting at a paintbrush show (I've never heard of a paintbrush show, this is entirely fictional), which is to say, it's possible but unlikely.

However the technical side of photography is sufficiently important (important if you want to get it right without guessing, as Ansel Adams wanted to teach us to - though guessing is possible, just time-consuming) that some of the presentations must have been useful.

I did learn a few things. I learned about the history of digital photography - e.g. the first digital camera had less then 2 megapixels of resolution and cost around £20, 000! Also I heard someone from Nikon saying that megapixels were not everything - other factors define a good camera. Interesting to hear that from the top of the camera production tree.

Also, contrary to what you might have been expecting from the above, there was A PHOTOGRAPHER! Yes, a professional photographer (so there was at least one!) called Bruno Barbey, showing many of his pictures and saying a little bit about them. It was quite exciting because I had recently seen some of his pictures in a book called Magnum Ireland so now I caould see that he was a real person! He was officially there for the purpose of telling us that he now uses a computer and a printer to make exhibition prints (rather than developing them the okd way) and has been satisfied with the results. Also he appeared to endorse digital photography -he laughed when he said this though, probably because it's what everyone seems to talk about. My identification test for people who say they are interested in photography is: what is the first thing they say when I mention the subject. Often, in fact nearly always, they say "What camera do you use?" - indeed, this is an interesting topic, and I often wonder what camera people use, however it is probably somewhere down at the bottom of the list of interesting topics, because, as Ken Rockwell says on his completely useful website, it's not the camera that takes the pictures. Yes, it is your brain! When Edward Steichen took a portrait of Isadora Duncan at the Parthenon in 1921, he borrowed a Kodak camera from the head waiter at his hotel. Looking at his amazing photographs, I can only assume that he knew what he was doing!

Bruno Barbey seemed a bit embarrassed (did you know there is a place called Embarrass, Wisconsin? Also one in Minnesota) to be talking about digital, I don't really know why. He said it was very good for shooting in the dark. Perhaps that is the only time he would use one? Ha ha, actually night photography is good, you just have to hang around a bit while the camera gets enough light in it so you can see something. He probably meant digital photography sees into the darkness very well. This is true since the manufacturers has concentrated on optimising for the dark areas in an image - they decided they wanted dark patches to have more visible detail, The result of this is that they have been successful, and consequently digital images burn out to white in the highlights very easily - analogue film took bright light more gracefully.

Howeveritmaybeso, M. Barbey showed us his pictures shot on film (some using Kodachrome, which was developed by Godowsky's son Leo (who married Gershwin's sister) and his school friend Leopold Mannes (who was a president of the Mannes College of Music, founded by his parents)), and very good they were too. This is the one I remember first:



(See a bigger one here) It's interesting because it has little colour yet in the scale of colours it has, there is great variation (the red umbrellas - and the red hat! - in the middle are very exciting, I think). It shows an excellent control of proportions and colours, and is a very resonant image. Things that are good make me feel calm or give me a sense of wonder or make me feel I am part of them, and that's what I feel with this image. That he could achieve this as a photojournalist is something we can be amazed at. Nobody sets these pictures up, you know - good photographers have to be good improvisers.

He talked about painters a little bit (e.g. Matisse) so you can see he was interested in the image more than the hardware. Actually that is a little bit of a redundant statement - we can see he was interested in the image from his images!

So that, my friends, was what I learned from the Nikon show. It was a while ago but still newsworthy, I hope?

PP

I was going to talk about a street preacher here in London - his name is Philip Howard and he's from Liverpool!! But he's 52 so that's not me.

But then I would have to talk about religions and I might have to be critical of some of them.

And I don't like to complain!

So have a look at some footage of Pablo Picasso painting instead.

I have started thinking about Picasso lately. The first reason to think about something (for me) is when I don't understand it. Or when I don't like it. Though normally either of these two things would stop someone thinking about it. Funny, eh?

Well, look. Once I didn't like pizza at all. But I tried and I can eat it now. And Rachmaninoff - I once had no idea what was going on there, but I was patient and now I think it's interesting. Now, perhaps Rachmaninoff is more important than pizza, and I can't say how important that is. Perhaps neither is particularly important, I'm not saying at this stage. But what is important is to give myself a chance. Because I took an interest, I have added two things to my "like" list. I think it's better that way. The more things the better, because one day I might find something that really is important. Yes, a key fact! Something useful! But as long as I exclude things from my "possibles" list, I might miss it.

I still don't know about Picasso but I know he was good at drawing, that you can see enormous technical facility and poise in the way he paints (in the film above), and that he was prolific - he painted 13,500 pictures in his life! And made 300 sculptures and many more works!

Most prolific composers managed about 1,000 works each. That was really a lot, too. So these are interesting statistics to compare. I wonder what it means?

So I will continue to "include" Pablo Picasso until I know what he is up to. Please do the same! Include things!

Thanks!

(PS the film seems to be a commerial for Apple - I don't think Picasso made it for them though!)