A Bicentenary, etc.

For the past days I've felt unsettled and out of sorts. The excursions to the hospital and the cocktail bar figuratively speaking tore apart the nice warm nest, i.e. an atmosphere of comfort, which I had built for myself since the journey to New York. There are isolated places outside of the apartment where I feel at home, like the Gemäldegalerie or Brandenburger Tor or Kleistpark. (Grocery stores are fine, too.) But firstly I don't like public transport except if it is highly clean and spacious and well-ventilated, or if it is an adventure (a real adventure, not traumatizing "life experience"). Secondly I don't like streets, apart from their evident functionality, except if the buildings along them are consistent in architectural style or aesthetics or both, and if the shabby ones are picturesquely antique. So, when going out, I often feel as uncomfortable psychologically as one would feel physically standing outside on a cold and rainy day, and I often return home feeling alienated and not like myself. It requires days of painstaking laziness to reestablish my old cheerful self. All of which is not precisely healthy, but also not the predominant reason why I tend to stay at home (the reasons are many, and of varying degrees of complexity; one of the least complicated is that I wish to save bus fare).

Another reason for the unsettledness is that I am foraging for fresh piano repertoire, and haven't quite become friends with the pieces yet. It is fun, however, to roam among my great-aunt's scores. There are surprises in the way of the classical canon, and old scores in various states of disintegration with elegant decorations on the title page and often the stamp of the Berlin music store Hans Riedel. But there are also very zeitgeisty editions of 20th-century popular music and new compositions, as well as lesson-books. I like to feel that my great-aunt is passing on a portion of her musical knowledge to me through them, as well as through the musicological books that are piled up in T.'s and my room, waiting for me to read them.

At any rate, I found Scarlatti's sonatas and Schubert's impromptus and moments musicaux. All of these are a little hard to play well. It may be unfair, but the Schubert pieces strike me as perilously near to instantaneous clichés, and the Scarlatti pieces are so simple as the notes go that it is hard to bring forth any depth. On the other hand, Papa often played the impromptus D 935, No.2 (A flat major) and 3 (B flat major), and I like those very much. Besides, in the intermission of the last New Year's concert of the Vienna Philharmonic, Daniel Barenboim played the No.2, in a thoughtful and unadorned but impressive way that engraved the piece in the mind. So, though I don't like playing pieces that Papa or the others play for fear that they'll stop playing them, I'll learn it. But, as far as I remember, Barenboim left out the trio, and when I tried the first bars of it yesterday or the day before it did not sound so great. Altogether, though this may be wildly inaccurate, I think of Schubert as a genial and modest fellow, who was in an elevated way quite simple (not as in stupid, but as in straightforward and healthy-minded), and I revere his sincerity and depth of feeling; but at times I do wish his compositions had more of the temperamental originality of Beethoven's.

Years ago I practiced the moment musical D 780, No. 3 (f minor), but made up my mind that every time I did so I'd have to memorize more of the score, including the intricate fingering. Perhaps needless to say, I stopped practicing it soon, though the first ten bars or so have stayed memorized. Now I have dropped the stern resolve and resumed playing the piece.

As for Scarlatti, we once listened to Vladimir Horowitz's recordings of a few of the sonatas often, so theoretically I know that there is much to be found in them. I interpret them as being scenes of Italian daily life, though not in a particularly literal way, and used to picture cloisters or monasteries, quiet and echoing, in the sunny Italian countryside when I listened to the CD. Normally Horowitz is not precisely my cup of tea, as I find his music lacking in emotional breadth. But I imagine that it was through his finely-tuned mind that he picked up on the nuances and quirks of Scarlatti as perfectly as an ant (and I really don't mean this comparison to be pejorative) picks up on the minute details of its environment through the quivering sensitivity of its antennae. (And no, I did not think out this conceit and its phrasing ahead of time, and embed it in this post to show off. (c: )

Anyway, today is the 200th birthday of Our Ancestor, Felix Mendelssohn. [N.B.: Not a direct ancestor. He is the cousin or brother of somebody.] Even if he were not Our Ancestor, I'd still think the birthday worth noting, even though my knowledge of his oeuvre is pretty much limited to "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," the Wedding March (which I don't like that much), the Violin Concerto in e minor, my favourite Trio in d minor, and Songs Without Words. For all the risk of kitsch in them, it does say something that I've practiced the songs without words, day after day after day after day, without their growing stale. It's hard to pinpoint, but they have substance. Where his biography is concerned, I like that he was so fond of his sister Fanny, though the tale of her composing career / lack thereof is not especially admirable, and that he was quite content to go as plain Mendelssohn and only took up the name Bartholdy out of respect for his father. At any rate, to return to my great-aunt, when she played duets with Papa on Saturdays, they would often play the song without words, Op. 109; whether her grumbling about its sentimentality and her customary statement that genealogy obliges were wholly serious it was difficult to tell. I like it. (c: Here it is as played by Jacqueline du Pré, accompanied by her mother: