I’ve often tried to explain why I think so many modern pianists are musically inadequate (though technically superb), and the best way I can come up with is through a comparison with photography. If we imagine a piece of music is a photograph (of a logpile, say), we can choose to bring out certain aspects of the music in our interpretation just like a photographer can bring out details of a scene through exposure.
So, he could expose for the sky at the expense of the foreground:
He could expose for the foreground at the expense of the sky:
Or he could average out:
And even in 1838, they had an undoubted command of the medium:
And there were dudes in the 1930s who were knocking out stupendous work:
But nowadays, we know that all that detail is in there so we want to see it all the time, and we have the technique to do so: we have a new exciting option on our smartphones, High Dynamic Range (HDR). This means we can expose and focus for everything simultaneously:
When it’s done properly, it can be very effective, if slightly artificial:
But when it’s done badly, it’s awful:
All the detail is there, in the right places, and the composition is unchanged - but it’s clearly not right. By making every detail equally important a sense of the logic of the image has been lost.
I think a vast majority of modern pianists play like an HDR photograph, a few well, but most badly. It’s what happens when your technique is so good you can do anything so you want to do everything. In the past they used to have taste and technique was subservient to that.
But in the same way that youtube and snapchat have become how the young now experience the world, by default using filters that are more and more outlandish, our music-making has become the same.
Who’s to say what is ‘right’? What was right in 1830 wasn’t right in 1880, and what was right in 1900 wasn’t right in 1930 and so on…
TL;DR
But like every conservative ever, “I may not know much, but I know what I like,” and I don’t like HDR. I like my photographs - and my music - to be a view of a scene. Not the whole scene as it ever was and ever could be, just the view today. That’s what Kempff gives me. That’s what Gould gives me. But it’s not what Trifonov or Grosvenor give me.
