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发信人: Entrepreneur (格格蕉蕉), 信区: Classical
标 题: A Pianistic Quarterback Passes to a Younger Gener
发信站: 荔园晨风BBS站 (Mon Dec 1 10:56:06 2003), 站内信件
A Pianistic Quarterback Passes to a Younger Generation
By JAMES R. OESTREICH
Published: November 30, 2003
LOOMINGTON, Ind.
American football is hardly the first thing that springs to mind when
you talk to the pianist and pedagogue Menahem Pressler. For one thing,
the diminutive Mr. Pressler, despite his physical prowess at the
keyboard, is not an athletic type. ("In my mind, I'm 5 foot 3," he is
fond of saying, "but deep down I know I'm only 5 foot 2.") For another,
at 79 he retains the accent of his upbringing in Germany and Israel.
In fact, football was the last subject to surface in a wide-ranging
conversation with Mr. Pressler, sustained with difficulty against
Halloween revelry in a restaurant near the campus of Indiana
University here. But get him started on quarterbacks and he won't stop.
Assessing recent legends in the National Football League, he flouts
current wisdom, favoring Joe Montana over John Elway. As for active
players, he might be expected to feel a certain affinity with Doug
Flutie, also a veteran small in stature but big in heart. Yet Mr.
Pressler's real hero is the irrepressible Brett Favre, who, though no
spring chicken, seems to have been rejuvenated by an exciting crop of
young receivers.
"I have young receivers, too," Mr. Pressler said, as if to explain his
seemingly boundless energy and optimism.
Indeed he does. As a venerable mentor at the Indiana University School
of Music, where he has taught since 1955, Mr. Pressler attracts
consummately gifted students from around the world. His former
students include Alain Planès, a widely recorded French pianist, and
Piet Kuijken, scion of a well-known Belgian musical family.
And over the same period, Mr. Pressler has anchored the Beaux-Arts Trio,
an institution in itself, which he helped found in 1955. After
several changes of personnel, his latest colleagues are players young by
his standards: Daniel Hope, 29, a British violinist, and Antonio
Meneses, 46, a Brazilian cellist.
"The two young guys give me so much energy," Mr. Pressler said.
He gives as good as he gets in that line, conveying a zest for life
that, combined with an intense personal warmth and an unshakable
professional probity, makes him a beloved figure on the musical scene.
He is, in short, a mensch's mensch.
As he nears 80, Mr. Pressler remains almost feverishly busy, the more so
this season because of a five-concert series presented by the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, "The Art of Menahem Pressler." In addition
to Beaux-Arts concerts (last month and in March), the series includes
a solo recital on Saturday evening, an illustrated talk on Beethoven's
Opus 110 Sonata in February and a performance with the St. Lawrence
String Quartet in April.
"The series is like a hologram, showing him from various perspectives,
talking, playing solo and playing chamber music," said Hilde Limondjian,
the general manager of the museum's concert and lecture series, who has
been presenting the Beaux-Arts Trio for 30 years. "Some people create a
life that is itself a work of art, and that's what we're putting on
display."
The program on Friday is an exquisite one, consisting of Schubert's late
B flat Sonata and Chopin's Preludes. And Mr. Pressler will repeat it on
Dec. 16, a birthday he shares with Beethoven, at the Library of
Congress in Washington, another longtime haunt.
Through it all, meanwhile, he teaches — sometimes seven days a week, to
make up for his absences on tour. Such was the case on that Halloween
weekend, as he scrambled to free himself for a two-week tour of Europe
with the Beaux-Arts Trio. But no sense of haste intruded on the lessons,
where his students received full and scrupulous attention — perhaps
more than they wanted at times.
For four hours on that Friday afternoon and another on Saturday morning,
Mr. Pressler scarcely budged from his studio, working in hourlong
segments, first with a piano trio, then with four individual pianists.
For that matter, he scarcely budged from his chair.
Following along with a score, he circled trouble spots, matters to be
addressed after a complete run-through. Occasionally, he stood to
demonstrate a figure or a phrase over a student's shoulder.
But by and large, he does not perform for or with his students at
lessons. He learned early on not to play a lot, he said, when someone
remarked of a student's performance, "I heard a little Pressler there.
" At a quick glimpse, his method seems to be less about setting down the
parameters of a specific performance than about empowerment, helping
students find a path toward their own interpretations.
Angela Cheng, a pianist originally from Hong Kong and now on the faculty
of the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio, studied with Mr. Pressler for
seven years. She describes an occasion when she and her husband, Alvin
Chow, another pianist at Oberlin who also studied with Mr. Pressler,
were working on the same piece under him, and they arrived at totally
different interpretations.
"Instead of being technical about the way you hold your hands or that
sort of thing," Ms. Cheng said, "he tries to convey an inner image of
the piece through words and demonstration."
Of course, some of the discussion in lessons has to be technical: how to
bring out a particular voice or harmony, how to gauge a crescendo or
tempo shift. The students annotate their own scores accordingly. (Most
of them also record the entire lesson, for reference.) But much of the
advice Mr. Pressler dispenses is more vivid, earthy and colorful.
"If you shoot all your cannons here, nobody will be afraid of you the
second time," he told Nino Cocchiarella, who gave a particularly
impressive account of parts of Chopin's B minor Sonata. "The third time,
no one will even look at you. So keep your powder dry."
Amid a parade of students from Switzerland, Korea, China and other
far-flung locales, Mr. Cocchiarella, it happened, was from Indiana. So
Mr. Pressler spoke as one Hoosier (as he proudly declares himself) to
another. "You're just like an Indiana restaurant," he said. "Come as you
are, just good food. It needs fantasy. It's not stormy yet."
To another student, laboring over a passage in Mozart, he said: "This
trill is not something showy. Mozart says words here even without a
text. It's not lipstick, only a quivering of the lips."
A constantly shifting mix of firmness, kindness and humor seemed cannily
geared to the needs of each individual. And the respect and affection
between teacher and students were obvious despite an occasional bout
of frustration on one side or the other.
"A teacher on his level can bring out the artistic qualities more
quickly than anyone," Mr. Cocchiarella said. "He only has to sing the
melody, and it all makes perfect sense." Not that Mr. Pressler's singing
— gravelly and approximate — is a thing of beauty in itself.
Mr. Pressler obviously believes in application. But from a rich lifetime
of experience, personal as well as professional, he also stresses the
crucial role played by blind luck.
"No matter how gifted a person is," he said, "there are so many
unknowns. It's like a crossword puzzle. Hard work is a necessary
condition. Getting along with people is a necessary condition. Luck is
an enormous condition."
In discussing his long career and his continuing good health, he resorts
to a quaint German phrase, calling himself "ein glücklicher Pilz," a
mushroom that is (choose your adjective) lucky, happy, thriving.
"My fingers work, and my head remembers," he said. "I recuperate so
fast, and I'm always ready to go off and do the next bad thing."
He continues to play 65 to 70 concerts a year, which for most performers
would qualify as a full-time career. "For the last 15 years, I wouldn't
have needed to teach," he said. "But it gives a tremendous, deep
satisfaction."
So after an impossibly busy November and December, and after all the
celebrations, what comes next?
"January is even worse," Mr. Pressler said.
When asked whether he might take a break any time soon, he answered with
a question: "How do you spell vacation?"
--
If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature,
it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks.
Richard Feynman
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