Pianists have turned up a good deal in films and novels recently: The Piano Teacher, The Pianist, The Beat my heart Skipped; Andrei Makine’s A Life’s Music, Ishiguru’s The Unconsoled, and others. Of course, in the old days films about concert pianists were a dime a dozen: A Song to Remember and Lisztomania spring to mind at random, and the unforgettable Beast with Five Fingers in which horror fans could enjoy a performance - by an amputated left hand - of Bach’s D minor Chaconne.
Both pianist and instrument, in interlocking black and white, were part of a romantic iconography of 19th century provenance which in the 1940’s and 50’s was annexed to the hammy, the sentimental, and the Gothic, and very agreeably so. But just as the vampiric chic of a betailed maestro gouging at the keyboard faded along with the public consciousness of the great pianist (with the advent of recordings and the decline of recitals), so the modern reality of a concert pianist is tucked away in its consumer sub-niche.
Indeed, in the recent crop of films and fictions, the concerns of the pianist qua pianist are upstaged by more accessible themes: erotic abandon, the fate of Polish Jews in the WW2, father/son relationships. The essential story of the pianist is nowhere to be seen and for two very good reasons.
It is almost impossible to write the consciousness of someone whose life is dominated physically and neurologically by the piano literature and its adventures without actually being a pianist; and it is even more difficult to fashion a story around a person whose intense inner life is so hard to analogize in language. There is another problem. In the life of your typical pianist there are no bad guys; jeopardy is not to hand; the girls can be alluring but are seldom dangerous, and as soon as you introduce something to jack up the action, you risk changing the subject. As a result, the reality of the pianist’s life has been overlaid by glib cultural short-hands that no longer capture the achievement of the pianist or the singularity of his almost holy quest for musical transcendence in the era of Big Brother.
But what, then, is the essential tale of the concert pianist? And why should it be told now?
The best piano recitals are not only a unique fusion of religion, theatre and athletics, they afford the awesome spectacle of a supremely talented person going at the limits of human capability. Soccer stars can be beautiful to watch, but the pianist manages greater hurdles on his own for 90 minutes. To hold the listener a pianist must have formidable technique acquired through years of practice, emotional sensitivity to nuance, harmony and lyrical line, and the life experience to respond to the myriad realms of musical expression. He must be equal to the sensuous, the philosophical, the romantic, the erotic, the primitive, the pastoral, the religious, the daemonic. All these sensitivities and powers must be honed and brimming to withstand the nervous crisis of performance. When a great talent is in the zone, when the disparate elements of his artistry fuse in the heat of performance, one is physically in thrall, gratefully aware that something of supreme value is going on. Such ‘peak moments’, as the psychologists call them, have a humanising effect on the listener. They are both cleansing and cathartic.
They are also hard won for the performer. Nothing of value comes easily, and the intense vitality that music demands of performers has a huge cost.
The essential tale of the concert pianist is the story of that cost. How do people achieve that kind of transcendence in this ungodly age? What does it take to serve Beethoven and Brahms in an era so different to our own? In an age when politics is farce, religion leisure, and passion football, how does the aspiring pianist bridge the gap between his inner life and his cultural context?
