Klarinet Archive - Posting 000958.txt from 1998/11

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Mannerisms (was: Third fingers straight?)
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1998 11:26:47 -0500

Lee Hickling wrote,
>>Edwin V. Lacy and Mark Charette [snip] cited several virtuosi, including
pianists Horowitz and Van Cliburn, as examples of great musicians who violated
the rule that a pianist's elbows should be above the wrists, the back of the
hands about flat, and the fingers in a gentle, natural curve. To that list I
could add Bud Powell, Nat Cole and some other great technicians among jazz
pianists.... >>

The most bizarre example I've ever seen of "incorrect" technique that worked
for a genius (and would be an utter disaster for most people) was pianist
Glenn Gould. I went to one of his last "live" concerts, with the San
Francisco Symphony Orchestra. I can't even remember who conducted, but Gould
played the Bach D Minor concerto and the Schoenberg concerto. I think this
must have been in the winter or spring of 1963, when I was a high school
freshman. He was a notorious eccentric. The concert attracted a number of
people who didn't seem to be "regulars" in the symphony audience. Apparently
they saw him as a freak show and went there to laugh (one reason why he
stopped performing in public a year or so later).

Even some members of the orchestra visibly had trouble keeping their faces
straight. I admired Gould, yet I had a hard time sitting still and acting
respectful as he ran through the entire repertory of everything my piano
teacher warned me against. (In fact, my teacher used him as a favorite bad
example if he caught me sitting with poor posture: "Don't play ze notes vit
your nose! Vhut, do you vant to look like GLENN GOULD?!" The ultimate
horror! -- although I would have died happy to play like Glenn Gould, even if
I'd had to look like him!) He sat on a stool so low that his elbows were
below keyboard level, with his hands bent upwards at the wrists, at an angle
that would destroy most pianists' tendons. He writhed and swooped and swan-
dived, sometimes with his face contorted into an excruciated expression inches
above the keys. Sometimes, he would lean waaaaay backward with his head
thrown back and his eyes rolled up to the heavens (or at least to the
ceiling...), and then pounce forward with his hands like claws. When he
played with only one hand, he gesticulated and "conducted" wildly with the
other. He groaned, hummed and muttered, not just audibly but loudly. And for
all that, he played like the master he was. Watching him get away with it
gave me a secret thrill of rebellious delight. But no, I never deluded myself
that I could get away with imitating him!

Plenty of clarinetists, expecially jazz players, develop mannerisms, too, such
as craning back and pointing the horn at the rafters, or hunching forward and
"stirring the pot." I don't think I could get away with that stuff,
either....

Lelia

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