One of the reasons why this blog has fallen into a state of neglect is that I spend a lot of time practicing the piano. Toss in the various other time vacuums on the adult side of the family life equation, and well, blogging doesn't seem to fill a void because there's no void to be filled.
Moreover, my professional life is occupied with writing, and I've discovered that writing as a hack is not conducive to producing the (can I say it?) nicer, perhaps more elegant stuff I'd like to present here.
Nevertheless, I will continue to press on, and we shall see what comes of it.
***
I am playing Mozart again. I do not know why, but I have avoided playing his music on the piano ever since we bought it last January. Preferring to spend my time on Bach and Beethoven instead of tackling Mozart, I believe part of it was a genuine lack of interest on my part.
Nevertheless, about two months ago, I found myself taking out my volume of his sonatas and playing them, starting with
K. 309. As I played it, I began to wonder why on earth it was I had stopped playing Mozart.
I have spent months playing Bach and Beethoven and I fear that most of that playing has been lifeless and uninspired. Then I sit down and play some Mozart, and suddenly the piano feels alive, or at least there's a pulse, and I finally feel capable of stirring this dry percussion into the joint pursuit of making music.
With Mozart.
Mozart. The composer everyone warns you about, that playing his music is the hardest thing in the universe to do. Who hasn't been told in a piano lesson, or in a masterclass, that despite the sheer beauty a serviceable musician can produce when they're playing Mozart, that nevertheless, despite all evidence to the contrary, Mozart is
really the hardest composer to play well?
Do I have any solid evidence for this bit of conjecture? No, but if there are any classical musicians who happen to read this blog, please support me here in my contention that saying Mozart is the most difficult music to play in the entire canon is the Pez of classical music's conventional wisdom, at hand to be dispensed by a journalist looking for a newspaper quote, or perhaps to a student learning to play
K. 545 and who complains that it is too easy.
Please. Let's turn this view on its head, and argue that part of the reason Mozart is so hard to play is that his music is not intended for professionals, but for amateurs, but that professionals need some reason to justify their playing it.
I would never go so far as say that the brilliant techniques of many very fine pianists are, perhaps,
wasted on Mozart, but that they want to play him too, and that the effortlessness of playing Mozart musically and beautifully presents certain
philosophical problems to the professional musician.
***
The thing I find startling about Mozart is just how
easy it is to make him sound good. Mozart does all the work for you.
But, instead of arguing, let's use the power of the Internet to demonstrate this. First, here's Vladimir Horowitz playing the last movement of Mozart's K.330: