Swine flu, the news, risk-assessment and performance anxiety

01 May 2009

Is the feeling that the world is going slowly mad a sign of middle-age? If so, I'd better buy my slippers and pipe. I've just listened to a full 15 minutes of a 30 minute BBC news bulletin devoted to the terrifying threat (sic) that swine flu poses to the world. We had the worse case scenario explored in intimate detail with only a fleeting acknowledgement that this probably won't occur. Never mind that only one person outside of Mexico has died from the disease, or that the Mexican government recently downgraded the number of deaths conclusively linked to swine flu from 20 to 7, or that many thousands of people already die every year from flu and its complications. People with the virus seem to be recovering quickly? Well, one of the programme's guests warned us that the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 appeared relatively benign when it first appeared, only to end up killing tens of millions. In other words, everybody panic! In a rare missed trick, the newscasters neglected to warn us that a large asteroid hitting the planet would probably wipe out life as we know it. Increasingly the news seems to be an elaborate theatre in which distorted snippets of current events are used to terrify the wits out of us. The sad thing is, it must be what we want or else the news providers wouldn't find it a profitable angle to pursue.

A few months after 9/11, I remember seeing Dr Phil on American TV being interviewed by Oprah Winfrey. (For those who don't know Dr Phil, he's a US talk show host who prides himself on his reason and empathic skills. Is it possible anyone doesn't know Oprah?) He said that given the terrorist danger the country faced at that time, he judged it was too risky to take his son to a football game. Oprah nodded sagely. And yet presumably, neither found it too risky to step into their car, despite 42,000 people being killed in car accidents in the US in 2001. I was amazed and disturbed that two of the most trusted personalities in America were publicly advocating such a paranoid response to terrorism.

Why do people take such irrational stances towards risk? On the one hand it's understandable - an unfamiliar risk is scarier than a familiar one because you don't know its extent, but that shouldn't stop adults being able to reflect on the risk and put it in a sensible perspective. Maybe the problem is that people who live in societies of greatly reduced risks (from death in childbirth, food shortage, waterborne disease etc.) can lose their tolerance to it. We imagine in fact that we are in control of our lives, immune from disaster, and so every little threat that emerges is intolerable. We are clearly not helped in this by a news system intent on fostering that paranoia in us. I went to see my financial adviser yesterday who surprised me by saying that the stock market had risen by about 25% in the last month. I listen to the news on the radio regularly as well as reading a couple of newspapers online, yet I didn't notice about this. After months of disastrous economic headlines it seems pretty dishonest that this information didn't make it into the news in any significant way.

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Yesterday I held a seminar on performance anxiety at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Dance in Glasgow. Here again, the question of risk arises, and it's a thorny one. It is common for people to be nervous of performing, often very nervous. (I asked at the beginning if anyone didn't experience nerves - not one hand went up.) But what actually is the nature of the risk? What is the problem with playing badly? If you think about jobs with real pressure - deciding whether or not to go to war, performing brain surgery, being a firefighter - it is clear that nothing terrible can happen to a performer. Only our ego can be damaged, and what's so very bad about that? There is often a large disparity between the reality of the 'threat' and a performer's experience of it - the audience can be imagined as a very hostile, critical group when by and large they are simply there to enjoy themselves. Coming to grips with this disparity is a crucial part of developing as a performing musician.

Clearly there can be practical consequences to playing badly - in a competition, it can mean not advancing to the next round, in concert it can mean bad reviews, over a long period of time it can damage a career or prevent it from happening in the first place. And here there is a cruel irony - almost invariably the more relaxed you are about the quality of a performance, the better you play, but the more determined you are to play well, the more tense you get. So how do you foster that sense of relaxation, of 'not caring'? In the course of the discussion yesterday, a point came up which relates to the risk-phobia of our culture. No-one can create a career in music for themselves - there is so much luck involved. I suspect the terror of playing badly is often related to a fantasy that you are in control of your destiny, that your success or failure depends entirely on you: that way you don't have to accept the fact that many forces are outside of your control. The realisation that life can be unpredictable and unfair is a double-edged sword, both painful and freeing, and it can help a performer to forget about reaching for success and simply play for no other reason than the joy of experiencing and sharing music with others. In my opinion, this is when real music-making happens.

Earplugs

06 April 2009

I have had a few confused enquiries in recent months about what I wear in my ears when I perform. The answer: earplugs. This probably seems a bit absurd - why would I want to block out the sound I'm creating? Well, there are many reasons. It originally started when I developed mild tinnitus after practising for several years on a piano which was too large for my practice room. Of course, this was a rather disturbing experience, and I rushed off to an audiologist who found minor hearing loss in one of my ears and recommended I wear custom-made earplugs whenever I practise. So I bought some Etymotic musicians earplugs which reduce the sound by about 15Db (which means you still hear everything, just a bit quieter), and was rather surprised to discover that practising with them lent three significant advantages. Firstly, the sound coming back at you is much less overwhelming. This is important because a grand piano can create an enormous amount of noise in a small room and, much in the way that someone shouting in your ear causes you to recoil, this can create a lot of tension in your body. I wasn't even aware of this until I started using earplugs, when I discovered that my body was quickly relaxing due to the reduced volume. Secondly, you play as if you are in a much bigger room - it is a very common difficulty with students to convince them to play loudly enough to project in a big hall because it feels very unnatural. Something written mp may well have to be played mf or even f to convey the effect. Earplugs instantly transport you into a larger aural space, so to speak.The third advantage was maybe more personal - I found that I became more detached from the music that I was working on. This might sound like a disadvantage, but for me it is easy to be seduced by the sensual nature of sound, to get carried away by the music and waste time simply playing through pieces rather than focussing clearly on what work needs to be done. So my practice became much more efficient as a direct result of wearing earplugs.

I told my good friend Alban Gerhardt about this who, being the open-minded soul that he is, immediately tried out some earplugs and loved the experience. Very soon he was telling me he was enjoying using them for concerts too. I had done this once before and found the experience very disconcerting, but on his recommendation I tried again. At first I felt very insecure because wearing earplugs meant I got no feedback from the acoustic - was I too loud or too quiet? But after a couple of concerts I realised that it was actually just as easy to judge how loud to play with or without earplugs from simply observing the size of the hall and trying the piano for a few seconds au naturel (do not misunderstand what I mean here). It is possible to misjudge this, of course, but then it's possible without earplugs as well.

So what are the advantages of performing with earplugs? Essentially, it is a question of focus - I find with earplugs I am less distracted by audience noise and problems with the piano. The first never bothered me much anyway, but the second can be very irritating - when certain notes are a bit louder or softer than the others, it can really disturb one's concentration. Some pianists would probably say that this is a terrible reason to wear earplugs, like burying your head in the sand, but my belief is that these piano quirks seem much more significant to the performer than the audience, and that by wearing earplugs I actually hear much more realistically what the audience hears. But this is incidental: the real point is that performing for me is about achieving a state of unselfconsciousness in which I can react very spontaneously to the emotion of the music. For this, earplugs are very helpful.

As it happens, musicians wearing earplugs is becoming something of an issue for european orchestras. The EU is investigating how much noise orchestral musicians are subjected to with the possibility that earplugs will be compulsory in some settings. I think this would be a great shame - the experience of playing wind instruments, for example, can be fundamentally altered by earplugs (even the intonation can sound different), so coercion seems an unfortunate way of solving the problem. Nevertheless, one can easily damage one's hearing without realising, and it certainly must be a good thing for orchestral musicians to understand exactly what is going into their ears. Jeannie told me that one time when she was sitting directly in front of a trumpeter, it felt like someone was slapping her in the back of the head.

One thing I feel rather strongly about is that music colleges should give out earplugs as a matter of course. I suspect some students would find their work improves if they use them because many practise rooms in British music colleges, and probably elsewhere, are too small for the purpose; you simply can't hear properly what's going on when you play loudly.

St. George's Hall, Liverpool

30 March 2009

This is just a brief entry to comment on what a fabulous hall this is. Renovated for the European Capital of Culture last year, it is now without doubt one of the finest recital halls in the country. I played a recital there two weeks ago and was immediately smitten.

A mammoth trip

30 March 2009

A couple of weeks ago I got back home for the first time in 5 weeks, to be greeted, of course, by a mound of post as well as all the emails I hadn't got around to dealing with while I was away. I'm only now through this backlog and able to give you an update on what has been happening.

After Iceland I went on to play at the opening of the Melbourne Recital Hall which turns out to be a wonderful place: beautifully designed, excellent acoustics, and 2 great pianos. Piers Lane chose them, and as I was talking to him about it I remembered the one time I chose a piano for a hall - the Horsecross in Perth. That is really a tough job because pianos sound completely different in a small-ish factory room compared to a hall. I learned this to my cost the first time I had to choose a piano for a recording - I went to Steinways and picked out a wonderful, colourful, ballsy instrument which in the recording venue turned out to be much less powerful than I expected. So three days of very hard work followed.

It was a strange experience to play in Melbourne during the recent fires; it was clear people were preoccupied and it makes you question the value of what you are doing. On September 11th 2001 I was due to give a house concert for some friends in London and after seeing these incredibly surreal images on television of planes flying into skyscrapers I really had to ask myself if it was possible to play, and for people to listen. In the end, we decided to continue with the concert and I think it a decision which everyone thought in retrospect was the right one: it turned out to be a very joyful shared experience, in spite of, or maybe even because of the context.

There followed a week in Japan with the NHK symphony, a wonderfully disciplined orchestra. Japan is one of the few places in the world left where you really struggle to get by without speaking their language. That doesn't particularly bother me - I actually quite enjoy the challenge of making myself understood - but I had a salutory experience going to a restaurant without menu where you just order from all the ingredients laid out in front of you. The food was rather good, and before the bill came the waiter showed me their photo album of previous diners - Sting, Britney Spears, Daniel Craig, Christina Aguilera, Brad Pitt etc. etc. I got a bit worried at this point. The bill ended up being just over £100. Still, I heard about someone who went to a hostess bar in the same area, had a few drinks with one of the hostesses, and ended up with a bill for £1000, so maybe I got off lightly.

The final concert of the trip was in Singapore, an old friend of an orchestra which a few years ago happily (for me!) gave up its associate principal clarinet to be my wife. I met up with Jeannie there because she had a concert herself, and then we went on to have a brief holiday in Cambodia and Thailand. I have to say that Cambodia is one of the most extraordinary places I've ever been to. Most famous is the 12th century temple of Angkor Wat which is astonishing, utterly ancient and even alien (and strangely reminiscent of Gaudi, I thought). Hardly less impressive are many other temples scattered around the Siem Reap area. It is impossible to be unaware of the great poverty there and on a trip to the 'floating village' (exactly what it sounds like), we were taken to a shop where you can buy items for the local school at outrageous prices, even by western standards. You then get taken to the school where you hand the items out to the children. I found this a very morally dubious enterprise: the shopkeeper is cheating the children out of the extra supplies they would receive if a fair price was charged, and us tourists are made to feel like heroes handing out measly packets of nuts or pencils to the kids when the main thing we're doing is interrupting their education. Still, it was actually a very valuable experience - to give something directly to people who have so little makes it much harder to ignore the fact that they are the same as you. It is very difficult to take in the reality of economic inequalities around the world, I think, and that experience forced me think about these things in a new way.

Iceland

07 February 2009

I just got back to the UK from Iceland, where I was playing Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and Rumon Gamba. This trip really brought me to a state of high excitement, more so than any country I've visited for years. It's hard to say exactly why, but it has something to do with barren places - I find them very fascinating and somehow nourishing. To be in the middle of a wilderness with very little to look at is one of my very favourite places to be. I think it must be partly that the lack of visual stimulation is a very calming thing; maybe also that one's significance (or lack thereof) comes into sharper focus when confronted with such a landscape. Why is feeling insignificant desirable? To me it cuts to the core of what it is to be human - to learn the truth about yourself that you are merely one of countless millions, that you are not worth any more than anyone else, this is a terrible, perhaps unbearable assault on one's pride. Maybe this is particularly true for performers, for whom each concert is a confirmation that we are indeed special - we have all of these people clapping and cheering for only us, it must be true! I believe this is one of the great pitfalls for any performer - the danger of thinking one is special. I think it is the antithesis of what music should be about: a performer sharing his feelings and implicitly saying, 'This is what it is to be human, this is what we share'. But to try and maintain, or even reach this state is a constant battle, for me at least. One of the greatest performances I ever heard was Mario Joao Pires playing the Schumann concerto at the Edinburgh Festival a few years ago. It was a performance that was far from perfect and rather underpowered, but what shone through was a profound humility, and that touched me in a way that I had only experienced listening to Clara Haskil's recordings. I went to meet her after to tell her how deeply touched I had been by her playing and she seemed genuinely surprised and grateful that someone would enjoy her playing.

Somehow I have drifted far from Iceland! Suffice to say, the trip lived up to all my expectations. I found the people marvellous - thinking, positive, down-to-earth. Before the Messiaen, the concert began with a premiere of Þuríður Jónsdóttir's flute concerto, played by Mario Caroli. I have to say, I loved this, both for the tremendous performance and for the rather beautiful piece which seemed entirely it's own thing; unpretentious, with wonderful colours and a very savvy structural sense. Both conductor and orchestra were doing the Messiaen for the first time and I was extremely impressed. They have been nominated for a Grammy this year, by the way. In the end, though, the highlight was a night trip to one of the hot springs in the middle of nowhere. Swimming in 38 degree water with the air temperature minus 11, under the moon and stars, this was something unforgettable.

NEWS: TIPPETT CD NOMINATED FOR BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE AWARDS

23 January 2009

Working with Dietrich Henschel

16 January 2009

Last Tuesday I performed Schwanengesang with Dietrich Henschel at the Wigmore Hall. This was the first of a series of concerts with music from the end of Schubert's life, the others comprising the piano trios, the last 3 sonatas, and the late piano duets (these will happen in the next couple of years). It's the first time I've 'headhunted' a musician to work with: when I decided on this project I didn't know who the singer would be. In the process of listening to many CDs, Henschel stood out for me as a musician with a sensibility I felt I could strongly relate to - his focus seemed to be very much about musical line and structure, and I also liked his willingness to take his voice to extremes. I'm very opinionated about other musicians - I think it's maybe unavoidable when one is passionate about making music - and one thing that often puts me off singers is an over-preoccupation with beauty of sound. To me it's clear that music often is not beautiful. I remember once rehearsing the Poulenc Sextet and asking the oboe player to play a particular note with a really ugly sound - it seemed to me the right effect. But it was almost a physical impossibility for him to do this, so strong was his mindset (and presumably training) about 'always making a beautiful sound'. To me this is a great shame because it severely limits what you can communicate.

To cut a long story short, I am very excited by this collaboration. We sadly only had one concert together; it would have been nice to do the programme a few times and get really comfortable performing together. But regardless of this, the process of rehearsing was so absorbing for both of us that I strongly suspect we will be performing together for years to come. He is a musician whose approach to music I profoundly respect and I have the sense there is a lot we can learn from each other.

Rachmaninov preludes recording

09 January 2009

Back in August I recorded the complete Rachmaninov preludes and it was quite an amazing experience: I've never felt so free and uninhibited in a recording session. Strangely (or maybe not?) I was quite depressed the night after the final day of recording - I felt so strongly how much expressive possibility there is in this music and how impossible it is to really capture that on record. You have to choose between many wonderful options - if only you could have them all at once! So for the first time I saw an inherent sadness in recording: there is so much I want to say with these pieces and some of those things can't coexist in the same performance. To put it rather melodramatically, it's like having to choose which of your children you keep. Maybe if I had children I wouldn't dare to make such a connection, but I think it's common for musicians to have such a strong connection to music that it really feels a part of them, and so to reject some aspect of the music can feel like a betrayal.

All the editing is done now, and I'm relatively happy with the results. I can't ask for more: when I hear one of my CDs for the first time I always hope to be overwhelmed by the music as I was when I played it, but I think this really is impossible. I listen too analytically, and too aware of the possibilities in the music that I missed. Maybe some day I'll be able to listen as if it's someone else playing; then it would probably be much easier to be objective.


Here are the liner notes which I wrote for the CD. It comes out in May.

"Recently as I was exploring a book shop I saw the banner 'Tragic Life Stories' over an entire wall of books. I laughed, but I could have cried, and not in the way the authors presumably hope. What a bizarre phenomenon this is, the sudden emergence of a genre of writing which apparently delights in describing personal misery at its most heart-breaking.

"Why do I mention this? Well, I adore Rachmaninov's music - there are few composers who speak to me more directly. Yet I know a number of musicians, including some whose opinion I greatly respect, who think his music shallow, even cheap. I have a suspicion that for some of them, the music is a bit like one of these stories - not so much emotionally explicit as manipulative, calculated to draw the maximum sympathy from a credulous audience. (At least, this is what appears to underlie the famous entry in the 1954 Grove Dictionary which laments Rachmaninov's 'artifical and gushing tunes'.) It may be a tempting response to a composer whose music fit seamlessly into the classic film Brief Encounter, but the charge doesn't really stand up to scrutiny: listening to Rachmaninov's piano playing, one hears a clarity and emotional discretion which is the very antithesis of such sensationalism.

"I cannot dismiss all 'Rachmaninophobics' so easily, and there is an issue here which interest me: what does it mean for music to have depth? Compare Rachmaninov's music to Schubert's, and it seems to me clear that the latter contains much greater complexity of emotion. Schubert's late works in particular blend innocence, violence, sublime playfulness, humility, dread, and innumerable other emotions in the most potent fashion; as a result, there are very many ways of understanding his music depending on how one balances these conflicting elements. With Rachmaninov there is one element which dominates: a sense of melancholy to which his music returns again and again. Correspondingly, there is less ambiguity to the music. Does this make it less deep, less meaningful? I think the better response is to say it is less complex, because Rachmaninov expresses more profoundly than almost anyone else what it means to feel hopeless, to long for what is unattainable; the depth of feeling is, to me at least, unquestionable. This helps me make sense of the antipathy some have towards Rachmaninov's music. The more ambiguous a piece of music is, the more likely we will find personal meaning in it. If, however, we are directly confronted with a rather depressive musical world, it is understandable that some will find that threatening, self-indulgent, or else simply uninteresting.

"I am overstating the case to make my point. Rachmaninov's music can contain a wonderful variety of mood, as these preludes clearly show. Still, it is worth asking how many pieces here reflect a truly positive, outgoing frame of mind. Even the most sunny and ebullient, those in Bb, C, E and Ab major, all have their moments of inwardness, the last three of these ending with a kind of retreat into privacy. I think this is a telling instinct in music which is otherwise so open, suggesting that the pull of introversion was difficult for Rachmaninov to overcome.

"Tragic Life Stories notwithstanding, it is possible to write an account of a difficult life which transcends the details of abuse or neglect (as Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes triumphantly shows). I think there is a real sense in which Rachmaninov's music tells us such a story. It may be dominated by the pain and sadness of his life but it expresses much else besides, and when we reach the astonishing climax of the final prelude, I find it impossible not to be deeply moved that a man like Rachmaninov was capable of creating such a rich and life-affirming gesture."



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