A Pianist - the Peregrinations of a True Peripatetic...

In one sitting, you can hear
Piano Concerto No.3 by Bartok
Piano Concerto by Barber
Piano Concerto K. 466 by Mozart
The Well-Tempered Clavier by Bach
plus
Danny Boy
Somewhere Over the Rainbow
etc., etc., etc......
by one pianist; his name,
Keith Jarrett -  know him? If not, do become acquainted with performances that will both dazzle and bewilder you.
Some years ago, at Tanglewood, I saw him play  the Mozart Piano Concerto K.  488 with the Boston Symphony. I was positively dazzled by his understanding of this wonderful example of dialogue between piano and orchestra. This performance was followed by what Jarrett is primarily known for; and that is his approach to Jazz, mostly by way of his limitless harmonic vocabulary  through the process of  improvisation.  To understate - a truly unique kind of Tanglewood experience for me.
Listen to the journeys  he undergoes  in his treatments  of "Danny Boy" and  "Somewhere Over the Rainbow,"  then listen to some of the Classics he has recorded.
I'm quite confident that you will be  thrilled at his immense gifts, then find yourself doing some head-scratching at another point in time - all at the same sitting...
Give him a try...

Alexander Scriabin and the Cocoanut Grove Fire - a Different Saturday...

Today is a Saturday, to be sure. Earlier this morning, my traditional question; namely,"what will I do today?" ended up with yet another question:
"Can I extract from my memory mass a distant  Saturday of palpable significance?"
After a few moments a Saturday did indeed materialize, one I haven't thought about for years:
On the final November  Saturday in 1942 an event occurred in Boston that to this day still has a direct affect on public safety implementation , as regards regulations - a match was lit in a popular night club called Cocoanut Grove. Within minutes, the building was  aflame, the result being the loss of 492 lives, the most terrible event of this kind in our history.
I remember, as a kid, that one of my cowboy heroes,  'Buck'  Jones, a star in Western serials and other movies,  was one of the victims. Also, I was told that a family member, someone I never got to know, was another having died in the conflagration. This horrible event adhered to my collection of reminiscences for some years, as I recall.
Well, after this image reared its head this morning, I asked myself  "where does this Thing called Fire  attach itself in the arts?"
In a matter of seconds the name Alexander Scriabin came forward, alongside his composition "Ver la flamme" (toward the flame).
In his marvelous performance at his home of this piece(see it on YouTube), Vladimir Horowitz explains that a vision that Scriabin purportedly experienced; namely,  that  the world would eventually perish in flames, was the reason that this music was created. It was interesting to Horowitz that the composer's vision and ensuing music had materialized long before the discovery of nuclear fission by two German physicists in 1938 - need I go on?
Let alone the final, incomplete work by this incredibly gifted, tortured genius we call Scriabin, titled "Mysterium" - a work to be performed in the Himalayas, with no audience, with "bells hanging from clouds" as festoon, along with synesthesia utilization by way of touch and smell along with music...
did Scriabin feel that fire alone was  not enough, for mankind to be returned to the Divine?
Yes, Scriabin was indeed serious about all this.
Be assured that my thoughts about this particular Saturday  have taken a totally different direction...

How Two Words Describe the Powers of Two Piano Giants in Their Early Careers...

The words are 'belie,'  and  'idiosyncratic.'
The two giants are Vladimir Horowitz and Leif Ove Andsnes.
The following events are recollections, and, of course, are my reactions to the events; not an imposition of any opinions on my part:
Also; this is not in  any way  a  comparison of these two artists -
The world of serious music has long known of the 3rd Piano Concerto of Rachmaninoff. For the better part of a century, this massive and defining  masterpiece has been performed and recorded with the attendant aura of regard and respect that it deserves, by a host of great pianists  having spent many hours dealing with the ways to assemble this legendary knuckle-buster,  and make their vital contributions to the history of one of the most important Concertos  in the literature.
Vladimir Horowitz was not yet thirty when he recorded the Concerto for the first time in England, and of all of the myriad of recordings, his attachment to the text still remains for many, arguably, the most compelling reading among the great recordings available.
Here, the word 'belies' the youth of Horowitz, in that it seems as if he had been living with the music for far longer than his less-than-thirty-year life span at the time of the recording. The word 'idiosyncratic' also applies, in that Horowitz had, for me,  pierced the core of the text as a form of eclectic reaction to an association with the music  for a half century, seemingly,  rather than less than a third.
To place into an even clearer context, I am more impressed with the first recording by Horowitz, than with the ensuing recordings he made of the work  over the remaining 50-odd years of  an unprecedented career.
And now I turn to one of the  true patricians among the great living pianists, the Norwegian virtuoso Leif Ove Andsnes.
About twenty five years ago, my wife was driving her car, listening to a favorite radio station playing, if you please, the Rachmaninoff 3rd Concerto. Evidently the power of the message by the pianist reached out and forced my wife to pull over to the side of the road in order to better grasp the message she was being given. She was simply  taken over, and, as she recalled, she sat and listened to the remainder of the work. Fortunately, the announcer gave the name of the performer. It was Leif Ove Andsnes, then about 22 or 23 years of age, in a Norwegian recording just having been released.
"You MUST get this recording," were her first words to me upon returning home. Which I did the next day.
I found myself writing to Andsnes, informing him that my senses asserted  that, for me,  his reading was the most  compelling  and important  representation  of the Concerto by a pianist under the age of thirty since the Horowitz recording.
And he replied by stating that no such placement, historically, had entered his thinking, and was interested in knowing my reasons, which began an exchange of letters ending with my  meeting the man several times and exchanging E-mails for about 15 years thereafter. My meeting him was facilitated by the Spanish violinist Ricardo Odriozola, for which I am forever thankful.
Again; and for the same reasons I attached above to the Horowitz event, the words 'belie' and 'idiosyncratic' apply.
And,  once again; for me, the power of message that Andsnes transmits in this early recording,  such as the young Horowitz did and does in his earliest  recording of the Concerto, is indeed a rare and defining event.
Why?
Then again; how is it that Mendelssohn scrawled out his first  Midsummer Night's  Dream -  at age 17?
Or, - just listen to Mozart's K. 1-5, all written, quite possibly,  before he could write his own name; at age 5...
Or - Gershwin, at age 19; writing a song we still hear; namely, Swanee,  at age 19? In about 10 minutes?
All the answers served up to me are, at best, speculative...