The Pianist

Virtuoso:  1. an experimenter or investigator especially in the arts and sciences; 2. one skilled in or having a taste for the fine arts; 3. one who excels in the technique of an art, especially a musical performer.

Working as a writer, “virtuoso” is one of those words I prefer to use rarely, if at all.  Marketing personnel tend to throw it around a lot, especially those working in classical music because they believe it will sell tickets, which threatens to dilute its true meaning.  A virtuoso appears not every other week but every other generation for any given instrument.  The Minnesota Orchestra excels at playing orchestral music and could be considered a virtuoso orchestra.  They have worked diligently and hard with Osmo Vanska to reach the level at which they currently perform.  So, it’s not only talent that makes the virtuoso, but how that talent is nurtured and developed. 

Pianist Stephen Hough is a genuine virtuoso.  I love his playing.  Often, it steals away my ability to speak, or my brain to form words.  Listening to him play the Tchaikovsky Concert Fantasia last night with the Minnesota Orchestra took my breath away.  Rarely performed in concert — I don’t know why –  It’s a wonderful piece of music — I’d heard it only once before on the radio, played by Stephen Hough at the Proms in London this past summer.  To say Hough’s technique is excellent is an understatement.  I’ve heard him tame the Brahms Second Piano Concerto, also, as well as Tchaikovsky Piano Concertos last spring.  He’s a slender man, of slight build but powerful at the piano, with  straight blonde hair and a flair for fashion.  Next week, he plays Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with the Minnesota Orchestra.  And the beauty of these performances will be available on CD at some point in the future.  So everyone can hear Hough’s clarity, precision, warm musicality, and imagination.  I will be able to listen to his performances over and over.   

Those recordings may well accompany work on the Perceval novels.  In the first book, Evan befriends a young Russian pianist whose passion for music enriches his passion for life.  If those passions infuse a pianist’s technique and performance, we’d hear them in Vasia’s, as they are in Hough’s.  Conductors have soloists that they love to work with, soloists who share their musical vision, fearlessness and goals.  Evan would work with Vasia, possibly helping his career.  Stephen Hough’s career needs no help at this point.  May the patron saint of music, Saint Cecilia, watch over him and protect him so we will be able to hear his performances for many years to come. 

A welcome back to the Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vanska who has signed a contract extension through the 2014-15 season.  I look forward to next week’s concert and Hough’s performance.  And his encore!  Last night, he played the most luscious encore.  It began with the opening chords of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, and after 3 or 4 measures, riffed into a haunting, bluesy rendition of “Moscow Nights,” ending with the Rachmaninoff chords again.  Awesome!  I loved it.  Hough’s blog informs and entertains as he offers a glimpse into his life as a professional concert pianist (research for me for Vasia’s character). 

Next spring, pianist Yevgeny Sudbin returns to record Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto with the Minnesota Orchestra….

Quality Art

I was thinking recently about movie critics and their reviews, how often it occurs that a movie that critics love makes little money at the box office, and a movie they hate makes blockbuster bucks.  At the same time, a general funk had overtaken me, the kind of funk familiar to writers everywhere, i.e. “I guess my writing is a pile of manure and nobody wants it.”  Doubts and insecurities.  But the thought about the movies cheered me up.  Briefly.  If movie critics represent an assessment of quality, then the American public loves piles of manure and spend big bucks for them!  Hollywood wants their money, and that’s their motivation for making the movies they make.  But the question nagged at me: what is quality art?  How do we know quality art?  What are the criteria that make art high quality?

Yeah, yeah, right.  I know.  It’s all subjective and difficult to pin down.  One person’s quality art is someone else’s pile of manure.  Personal taste enters into the process of assessment.  However, works of art exist that everyone agrees are quality art, e.g. Shakespeare’s plays, the Sistine Chapel, Beethoven’s symphonies, and probably a lot of the novels required reading in high school, e.g. The Lord of the Flies, Ethan Frome, Billy Budd, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc.  Critics may establish a set of criteria by which they assess the success of a novel or movie or play as art.  A group of critics may agree on certain criteria, disagree on others.  But the bottom line is that the quality of a work of art is a subjective determination as well as one based on personal taste.  Disagreements will abound.

Last week, Dan Brown’s latest novel was published and sold millions on the first day.  Congratulations to him!  But is that novel art, and is it of high quality?  I haven’t yet read it.  I was one of the last people on the planet to read his The Da Vinci Code.  My personal opinion of that novel was: the ideas were ripping good, but the writing was nothing special.  Definitely not high art, in my opinion.  He had the thriller formula exactly right.  I suspect that Mr. Brown has no deep interest in writing novels that are high art.  He probably wants to tell good stories that people will buy. 

I want to write quality fiction that people will buy.  I want to tell stories, too, specifically Evan Quinn’s, but I don’t want them to be regarded as piles of manure.  More to the point, I want the writing, the characters, and the story to be quality art that people want to read and will buy.

Write what you need to write.  I am interested in the authentic expression of my creativity, not following a formula, not doing what everyone else is doing.  I need to write what I write, explore the subjects I’m exploring in the Perceval novels, and express my imagination through them.  I must write, as I must breathe.

Well, you know, Shakespeare’s plays weren’t considered quality art when they were written and first produced.  They were successful entertainment, well written.  The public greeted Beethoven’s symphonies with shock and horror beginning with the Third.  Much later, around the time he completed his Ninth, the public accepted his music as something higher than entertainment.  Michaelangelo, when he painted the Sistine Chapel, just wanted to keep the Pope happy and the payments coming.

They say, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”  The ultimate statement of personal taste.  So it must be my work to strive for successful entertainment, well written, rather than the perfection of quality art.  And to write what I need to write…..

Two Years and Counting

Two years ago at this time, I had chosen which blogging site I wanted to use for my blog and I was working on a title, on what I wanted on the blog and how I wanted to organize it.  Two years!  I had not imagined that the blog would turn out to be a solid, strong endeavor, and include my other writing projects as well as the Perceval novels.  So where am I, as a writer, today?  What are my priorities?  What are my plans for the next two years?

The Blog Itself: Two years is a long time with one blog theme/layout, eh?  I’ve been looking at other themes in the last few weeks and trying to figure out what I want to do to tousle this blog’s hair, pump up the volume, and burnish its personality.  If all goes well, you’ll see some changes at some point in the next month or so.

The Perceval Novels: In March 2008, I put my work on the third novel in the series, Perceval in Love, on hold until I’d resolved some issues of everyday life that had intruded on my writing.  Those issues have been resolved, but a new one has arisen thanks to the tanked economy.  For the last two months, I’ve been looking for a job, and the search continues.  I think that I’ll probably not return to Book 3 until at least 6 months after I begin a job and have settled into a new routine and daily structure.  Any writer who also works a fulltime job knows the challenges of finding the time to write.  For me, the challenge is especially to find uninterrupted, quiet, solitary time for creative thinking.  I continue to write notes as ideas come to me, which they continue to do, thank god.

Marketing Perceval: I plan to continue my marketing efforts for Book 1, i.e. the search for a literary agent and/or publisher.  I recently received a rejection from the publisher I’d queried at the end of July.   I’ll mail another in the next week or two.

Short Stories: I’ve completed the first draft of a short story that had been banging around in my mind for the last year or so.  I have another short story in development.  So far, only these two stories cooking on the stove but I’d welcome more.  Shorter projects are easier to complete when time is limited.  I have revised The Shadow, the excerpt from Perceval, and will submit it to two contests, deadlines in October.

Essays: I submitted two different essays last month to two different publications.  The first draft of another essay is done.  I have ideas for at least two more essays, one longer than usual.  I will continue to work on this shorter form.

Other Nonfiction: I recently bought an accordion file in which to collect my notes for a memoir about money.  I’ve sketched out an outline, basically a Table of Contents, from which to work for now.  I’m sure once I begin writing notes, the rise of memories will gain momentum, and everything will change!

eHow.com: I have begun submitting articles to this website under the nom de plume “Fascinated.”

The last two years have been fun, and especially fun to meet other writers and readers here.  Thanks for visiting and come back again soon!  I’ll be here….

Freedom of Choice

Americans want choice.  Anyone might conclude this by walking through retail stores, grocery stores, or gazing up at the marquee for the neighborhood multiplex.  We want choice in our health insurance options, our presidents, our cars, and where we live.  Try taking our freedom of choice away from us — just try! — and our high decibel response will drown out any rationale offered for depriving us of our choices.  Everyday, we make choices about what clothes to wear, what to eat, etc. and decisions about how we will conduct our lives. 

Years ago before the USSR disintegrated before our eyes, I met a Russian family that had immigrated here.  They’d been here long enough to be overwhelmed by the number of decisions required of them and the plethora of choices they had.  They didn’t know what to do.  Their way of life in Russia had been controlled, their options limited, the beauracratic red tape endless.  They knew how to work that system to get what they needed.  They assumed life in America would be the same.  Sometimes it is, but for the most part, they were overwhelmed by the number of decisions and choices required of them.  One said to me, “I come here and I feel that I have lost all my experience.”  He was afraid of making the wrong choices.

The America of 2048 resembles more closely the USSR of 1948 than the America of today, with some Capitalistic twists.  Evan Quinn is told where he’ll live, where he’ll work, what doctor he’ll see, whether he’ll own a car or not, where and when he can travel, and so on.  The New Economic Party government (the parent) treats him (the little child) well as long as he does what he’s told.  His life is fairly simple as a result: he eats, jogs, goes to work, sleeps.  Ownership and/or use of personal computers, televisions, telephones, vehicles, and most of the electronic gadgets we’re used to today are restricted and monitored closely.  Only those lucky enough to be in the NEP elite or favored by them have unfettered access to what we have access to today.  The borders are closed.  Everyone must carry a government-issued chip (RFID) somewhere on his physical body, usually embedded under the skin, that contains all essential personal information available for police to track or scan at any time.  We’re accustomed to thinking of orchestra conductors as a glamorous bunch, well off; but Evan is poor, wears old, fraying clothes, and haggles on the black market for books and music as well as food. 

Europe in 2048 is much like today, a blending of the future and the past in the present.  The amount of choice available to him shocks Evan, confuses him, and he gravitates to what he knows in order to gain his footing in this new place.  Through him, I’ve tried to show a culture and society that believes “the next big thing” is great but they’re happy with the last big thing, too, and they’re not about to throw it out.  Landline phones provide the security that cell phones cannot.  Even though homes are run by computers, including locks and security, people can have another lock installed in their front doors operable only by a metal key, or an “old fashioned” security system.  They have the choice.  As a result, “old” things that still work, have value, are not deemed obsolete and discarded.  Evan buys CDs and DVDs but his home computer is perfectly capable of downloading and saving music and movies he wants.  He has a landline videophone at home.  He doesn’t like cell phones and carries only a very basic model, one that only makes and receives calls.  No text messages, no video or photos (at this time, Europe has outlawed phones with video/photo capability), no internet, no games.  He doesn’t need a PDA.  E-mail drives him crazy because he lets it pile up.  He continues to receive postal letters from colleagues all over the world, read paper newspapers and bound books. 

Choice, a precious thing to hold and never let go.  Evan gradually assimilates into the Europe of 2048 and exercises his freedom of choice although the American government tries to continue to control him….