Musical Interlude
In Amadeus by Peter Shaffer, the character Salieri laments that God gave him only enough talent to be able to properly recognise his own mediocrity. Well, I happen to be something of a Salieri myself, so we’re going to take a quick break from piercing insights/unhinged ranting (delete as applicable) for a bit of music.
Why? Because I can – my son is a sound engineer and he showed me how to set up the recording. Also, it’s excellent training. Just as a simulator very accurately simulates the stress of a medical emergency, self-recording reproduces the pressure of live performance, which can scramble the brain in similar ways.
So anyway, complete with a couple of dud notes here’s the Étude in A flat op 25 no 1 by Chopin.
Composers frequently made their living doing things other than composing - Vivaldi was a priest, JS Bach ran orchestras for rich people, Borodin was a professor of chemistry. Chopin, on the other hand, spent much of his life as a piano teacher, and this is arguably his most enduring legacy. Through his compositions, he revolutionised the technique of the piano and literally taught all who followed him.
His 27 études are the greatest monument to this, combining extraordinary technical challenges with sublime musical substance. Each one focuses on a particular aspect of technique - in this case it’s maintaining a melody with the little finger of the right hand while every other digit is bashing out arpeggios. It’s actually one of the easier ones. Of you want to hear it played properly look no further the unsurpassable 1972 recording by the great Maurizio Pollini, who died last year. Salieri he wasn’t.