tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post3373514308282569103..comments2024-03-27T23:06:03.736-05:00Comments on The Music Salon: Valentina LisitsaBryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-72060961556168994472011-10-08T14:11:39.216-05:002011-10-08T14:11:39.216-05:00My commentor RG asked me to post his reaction:
&q...My commentor RG asked me to post his reaction:<br /><br />"Her bare shoulder peeping out of the first image suggested one of those tiresome musical bimbos you discuss. So I put listening till now.<br /><br /> <br />I was surprised even disconcerted by my reaction.<br /> <br />As a woman, she seems an ungainly awkward kind of person. Wearing a dress she got 10 or 15 pounds ago. And no delicacy or flowing graces. Almost ignoring the audience. Flops down on the stool.<br /> <br />But as a piano player, she seems a monster, a terror, a Nietzschean cyclops! She approached the instrument like a starving man to a plate of raspberries. As she sat, plunked herself, down and began, immediately and without mincing, it was clear that she knew the instrument and the piece and her performance in advance and intimately, as thoroughly as though she were just finishing it.<br />Absolute ability!<br /> <br />I instantly loved her, as a fellow, a sister, a dear dear "serious person". Tears pushed at my eyes, without moistening or spilling, a tightening in the throat, and my thoughts could not keep up with my own perceptions of flashing movements of hands, of starting musical structures.<br /> <br />I tried to focus on listening to the music, the performance that you had praised, and decided that it was (within my limited ability to judge) not really amazing, mind-boggling (nor did you claim that) but pretty much what one would want, well performed.<br /> <br />But the soul, the being, the implicit history of the woman who was producing it with effortless, ham-fisted perfection, that was astonishing!<br /> <br />I was moved. Not by the art, cretin that I am. But by majesty of human possibility. By the piano player.<br /> <br />Even now, having written this note while listening to the second piece, I remain knocked out of my groove. Changed."Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.com