06.22.07
Paris Edge
This is Paris set to Shostakovich’s 6th Prelude:
06.21.07
Tokyo IV
This is the first part of an experiment in which I will set Shostakovich’s 6th Piano Prelude to different footage from around the world. I started with Paris, but I finished Tokyo first. I may add Zurich and Los Angeles, and will complete Paris in a day or two.
06.20.07
Chapparal Eurythmy-Shostakovich-Beth Usher
I was pleased to see our videos had been noticed and referenced on the Philosophy of Freedom website, and also here.
06.15.07
Soul Painting
This is my first composition created with pencil and paper at the piano during two days in June 2007.
It will be staged by Beth Usher as a eurythmy solo and I plan to set video to it.
What do you think?
06.13.07
Debussy-Synaesthesia-Scriabin
The sense of place, of the earth, the air, the food, the people, is essential to my connection as a performer. I was fascinated to see Richard Wagner’s home in Luzerne, Tribschen, where Toscanini conducted and where Wagner conceived many of his works and his plans for Bayreuth. I walked the expansive grounds of Tribschen with the tall trees, the vast lake, and the alps in the distance. I could see the town of Witznau where Scriabin went for a water cure in the 1890’s. The beauty, the scale, the light, all the elements showed me how Wagner could conceive the works he did. The mythology felt right at home on this idyllic peninsula. Wagner’s Bechstein piano is purportedly in the same room and spot as when he lived there. Wagner’s treatise against Jews was prominently displayed in one case, and was the only item in the museum which did not have an English translation. I found this very interesting, as on one level it suggested the neutral complicity of the Swiss in avoiding political and international affairs. But on another level I could perceive how Wagner might have felt a mythical existence in a land of seemingly unreal scale and beauty. This mythical existence could be completely divorced from aspects of reality, as at times the creative impulse requires. Wagner perhaps went deeper into a reflexive reality of myths, leitmotives, and neuroses.
I don’t intend to rant against Wagner. So many have done that before I ever knew he existed. But my short afternoon jaunt to Tribschen epitomizes what I experience in Europe..on Mount Saleve outside Geneva, on Monte Bre in Lugano..at Debussy’s grave above Trocadero Square in Paris…at the Rousseau exhibit at the Tate Modern in London… The reality of the past, and of art that still resonates today, almost requires the experience of the place where it was conceived and created. Even decades and perhaps centuries after something was created, a deeper appreciation of the art, the time, the style, the REALITY, can be gleaned.
I find this especially true of my perceptions as a performer. Seeing Witznau where Scriabin was, travelling the train route from Geneve to Basel that he travelled, reading accounts of trips up Mount Saleve during the time he was in the area, all affected my feelings about the Second Sonata he completed during 1895. And it continues to affect my playing of this piece.
