Sunday 16 October 2011

Beware gilded suitcases...

I've just watched the BBC film about the Rostropovitch, which gives a great sense of the passionate physicality of the person and his musically extraordinary playing: well worth watching. I remembered the one occasion I heard him live, in 1988, immediately after the Armenian earthquake that killed up to 45,000. He was from neighbouring Azerbaijan, and organised a concert literally overnight in central London in support of the relief efforts, and to commemorate the suffering. He played the Bach unaccompanied cello concertos and insisted that there should be no applause. It was an incredibly sombre, moving concert.

He also taught in Moscow before being driven into exile. Two English ex-students noted that he seldom talked about technique in his classes: he preferred to concentrate on the music itself. They told how there was a technically gifted student who took their breath away with the skill of his playing. But Rostropovitch wasn't impressed. After the student finished he said, 'I want you to imagine the most beautiful suitcase in the world... You can't imagine how beautiful it is. It's got incredible gold buckles on it … Now, take it! Take it! Put your hands out! Take it!' The student was bewildered but put out his hands and took the imaginary suitcase. 'Now, open it!' said Rostropovitch. '& what's inside of it? Nothing! That's you. You can do everything on the surface: it's all brilliant, but you haven't got any ideas inside you.' As the students said, it was a devastating analogy.

Rostropovitch also said that you don't play music for the audience: you play it for yourself. Sadly, the film is no longer available for viewing, but it's a great treasure if you ever get a chance to see it.

(A while back, Tangocommuter was taken to task for saying that musicality is more important than technique, and there were complaints about my objection to classes in stage tango being advertised as 'tango technique' classes. So I'd better be careful here and point out that the above stories have nothing whatsoever to do with tango. Obviously.)

6 comments:

Patricia said...

Excellent anecdote, TC.
Music is about emotion. Remove the emotional content and the experience is hollow and unsatisfying. And yes, I am talking about tango!

Dieudonne said...

Are you kidding :-) I thought that this was all about tango.
This is the reason show Tango dancers bore me to tears after a few seconds, their artistry is empty of who they are, therefore no possible connection.
I still maintain that no one can teach anyone how to dance, or how to be musical, or "BE" anything for that matter. The one thing that can be taught is technique...and even that is in some cases questionable.

Tango Therapist said...

Once I was in a tango class in Germany. The new teacher who had replaced a wonderful man who "retired" from teaching had ushered in the end tango in this middle-sized town. And his women students were known to be so fussy, that out of town tangueros hated dancing with them. One evening he said (in German): "With tango EVERYTHING, yes everything, is technique." I restrained myself from saying, "I hope you don't think the same way about sex." The soul of passion uses technique. The soul of technique mimics passion. The greatest musicians are often known for what they don't play in a piece -- how they use silence.

Chris said...

Tango Therapist wrote
"I restrained myself from saying, 'I hope you don't think the same way about sex.'"

I have to do the same when I hear someone say 'I love tango so much that I want to be a professional'...

:)

So yes, a statement like "With tango EVERYTHING, yes everything, is technique" can teach us something useful... provided we remember "tango" here means "the tango I'm teaching". It tells us little about tango, but lots about the limitations of the teaching. That's valuable knowledge for anyone seeking to learn.

msHedgehog said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Chris said...

Tango Commuter and Dieudonne, today brought me two reminders of your words above.

A YouTube commenter said "what's get's me is the clapping." On this video.

And a C++ compiler said Operator '.' cannot be applied to operand of type 'void'. So true...