I recently saw a concert of cello and piano and it was a quite good and quite enjoyable concert. Apart from the Sonata for cello and piano by Debussy it lacked much musical substance, but that is par for the course these days. The ensemble was very good indeed and there was loads of musical expression. But in retrospect, there was one element perhaps worth commenting on. We are in difficult times for classical musicians where the market is limited but the number of young artists striving for recognition is all too abundant. So what do you do? Well, you become a technical master of your instrument, of course, but in addition to that you are counseled to "brand" yourself, to use commercial marketing techniques, to upgrade your stage presence--in Yuja Wang's case that may involve wearing performing costumes that are, well, risqué.
But there are other things you can do. And this is my topic for today. You need to be a virtuoso, of course, but equally importantly you need to signal to the audience that you are a virtuoso. I am reminded of the old story of Wanda Landowska, the early maestra of the harpsichord. One person who viewed her performing scores said that there were little notes here and there that said things like "look up," presumably to signal to the audience a transcendental moment. So this is certainly not new. But it has, until recently, been fairly uncommon in classical soloists. But the cellist in the concert I saw was an avid practitioner. He didn't just end a note, he "threw it away" with abandon. He "looked up" quite often to signal how moved he was by the music. Oh, and looked down and to the side as well as there were emotional highlights everywhere. We were witnesses to, not only a virtuoso performance but also the performance of virtuosity. Every gesture he made seemed to be exaggerated for emotional effect.
This is really not necessary for the virtuoso performance, but it is intended to charm the audience. As long as they think it is authentic and inadvertent. If we go back a few years and watch another cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich, playing the Shostakovich cello concerto we can watch someone playing far more difficult and profound music without any of the added spice of miming emotional expression.
