Richard Morrison
Has technical brilliance become undervalued?
Some words produce such violently contradictory reactions that they ought to come with a safety warning. Brexit is clearly one, Marmite another, Trump a third. But I can think of a fourth that predates the first three by centuries, and still hasn’t lost its divisive potency. It’s virtuoso.
Are you pro or con virtuosos? What a daft question, you reply. Virtuosity is simply the highest possible conjunction of technique and talent. What’s not to like? It’s ‘not an outgrowth, but an indispensable element of music’, as Franz Liszt put it – though admittedly, as the defining virtuoso of his age, he might have been a touch biased.
But I’m often struck by how paradoxical or indeed blatantly hypocritical our attitude to virtuosity has become. On the one hand, we expect – and usually get – absolute technical perfection, not just from the big names playing the concertos but from rankand-file orchestral players too. There’s a valid analogy to be made with sport. Just as thousands of athletes can now run a mile in under four minutes (a feat first achieved only in the year of my birth), so music once considered near-impossible – Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring; Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 – are now often played by teenagers.
How has that been made possible? Well, teaching techniques have improved beyond all recognition. But just as important has been the widening of the classical music ‘world’ to include Asia, a region that now regularly provides most of the finalists for the top violin and piano competitions.
Such advances are surely to be applauded, not deplored. I review about 150 concerts and operas a year, and although I don’t always like what I hear, that’s rarely because of technical shortcomings. If you need convincing of how the rising tide of virtuosity has transformed our appreciation of music, try listening to a recording of even a top-class orchestra from the 1950s or ’60s struggling through, say, Janá ek’s Sinfonietta or Berg’s Three Pieces.
When it comes to appreciating ‘the virtuoso’, however, attitudes today are even more mixed. Every generation has its Paganinis and its Horowitzes – soloists who delight in wowing us with speed, dexterity and magical changes of tone and touch. In our time, however, such virtuosos have been as much denigrated as acclaimed. Take Lang Lang, for example, who, despite being an inspiration for millions of pianists, has never shaken off the ‘superficial’ label applied to him by some critics.
That’s even more true of the most phenomenally virtuosic soloist (in purely technical terms) I heard at this summer’s Proms: the never knowingly overdressed Yuja Wang. After playing probably the fastest performance of Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto in history, she then delivered an encore – Arcadi Volodos’s insane arrangement of Mozart’s Rondo alla Turca – with such dazzling insouciance that 6,000 people spontaneously roared.
Yes it was pure showbiz, and what’s wrong with a bit of that? Yet few performers have been so snidely lampooned as Ms Wang has. It’s as if you don’t get taken seriously in classical music if you dress glamorously and play with sensational accuracy at high speed.
But that’s not the worst of it. I also think racism plays a part in the critical response to many Asian soloists, including Lang Lang and Yuja Wang. Still lingering in the collective subconscious of the classical music world is that nonsensical but pernicious myth that Chinese, Japanese and Korean performers are akin to machine-like automatons, incapable of penetrating the music’s emotional or intellectual content.
What would dispel the negative associations now swirling round the word ‘virtuoso’? Perhaps it might help if more of these superstars connected with today’s composers. Rostropovich estimated that he gave more than 150 new concertos their first (and often, he would admit, last) performance. In our own time such virtuosos as the oboist Nicholas Daniel, the trumpeter Ha˚ kan Hardenberger and the violinist Hilary Hahn are superb champions of new music. But many others are content to carry on recycling concertos written before their grandfathers were born.
That’s a shame. I can think of dozens of fine living composers who would relish the challenge of writing truly virtuosic music for true virtuosos. And how riveting it would be to hear the top performers of today forced to get their fingers round new challenges, rather than gliding through repertoire that was conquered 100 years ago.
Racism plays a part in the critical response to many Asian soloists, including Lang Lang