The Modern Piano Concerto

Years ago Taruskin published one of his large, economy sized essays on several new books on classical music. The basic message was, with friends like these, who needs enemies? And now Ted Gioia joins their ranks with a splendid piece of yellow journalism purporting to turn us on to, of all things, the modern piano concerto: 10 Underrated Modern Piano Concertos. Here's how it begins:

You rarely see the words fun and classical music in the same sentence.

That must be intentional. Just take a look at those musicians squeezed into their uncomfortable formal attire, all with pinched, somber expressions on their faces. And then you look at the audience, and see the exact same thing.

I must have missed the memo. Aren’t we allowed to enjoy this stuff?

No, of course not, the memo reads "enjoyment of classical music is possible, but not likely." But kidding aside, I'm envisioning a Miles Davis concert with all the musicians with somber expressions and, yes, the audience with the same pinched somber expressions. Hey, you want fun, go to a Weird Al Yankovic concert.

So this is just sneering, scurrilous journalism with the sole purpose of setting up a straw man that he is about to disembowel. But first he takes it up a notch by doing a nasty hit and run on contemporary piano concertos--hey, they are even worse!

Finally he gets to the point and gives examples of several "underrated modern piano concertos." I can only see the first three since I am not a subscriber. The first is by Nikolai Kapustin a jazzy Ukrainian who sounds like Rachmaninoff if he were mugged in an alley by Dave Brubeck. Honestly, with different harmonies it is not terribly different from a Bartók concerto. Next is a very serene piece by Takashi Yoshimatsu and finally one by the Australian Peggy Glanville-Hicks. Ted asks why we don't hear more of her music. I suspect her not being American has a lot to do with that. So, ok, some mildly interesting pieces.

The problem for me is the way Ted always oversells his take on everything and the seeming obligatory sneer at classical music as an opening gesture. Would it not be better to just start by telling us a little bit about each composer, leaving out the cheap editorial?

Yep.

Here's one of those hateful modern piano concertos that Ted is probably thinking of, the one by Arnold Schoenberg.

Now, I'm not chuckling, but I am smiling with delight because, come on, this is delightful music. And it doesn't sound much like anything else, something you can't necessarily say about a lot of those more "fun" concertos.

UPDATE: Not long after writing this I ran into a very fine piece of writing about music: Shostakovich in South Dakota which I encourage you to hasten over to read. Yes, it's a bit long, but well-worth the time.

So unnoticed are the American arts that a major American historian, Jill Lepore, can produce a wonderfully readable 900-page historical overview—These Truths: A History of the United States (2018)—without devoting so much as a sentence to the arts. No one could possibly dispute her emphasis on present-day issues and needs—the urgency of pondering American race relations and inequality. But it does not follow that there should be no consideration of Walt Whitman or Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson or William Faulkner, Charles Ives or George Gershwin, Duke Ellington or Billie Holiday. Classical music, opera, theater, jazz, and Hollywood are all absent. Could any history of Russia omit Tolstoy? Could a British historian overlook Shakespeare? Is there a Germany without Goethe?

That's just a tiny sample from a long discussion of how music is received in America and some really successful efforts to improve that reception.