Counterpoint: A blog on the Visual Arts No. 3

Ana Maria Pacheco and Antonio López García: Bookends in Boston                                     

 

 Ana Maria Pacheco’s work was familiar to me in reproduction only.  I owned two small books on her work.  One of these, a book of collected essays on her art, I had recently lent to an editor for use as a reference for an upcoming project.  Afterwards, I realized that I should purchase a second copy of this book for my art library so I went on line to search for one.  When I googled “Pacheco”, I read that a major work of the artist was presently on display in Framingham, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.  So, on the way to see the Antonio López Garcia show at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, I stopped to see Pacheco’s sculpture.

 

Presented at the Danforth Museum, Ana Maria Pacheco’s, Dark Night of the Soul, is quite a major work of contemporary art.  Displayed in a darkened room by itself, the piece consists of 19 sculptured figures The sculptures are large, compelling, deeply abstract and emotionally involving.  They are theatrical, mysterious and are illuminated and choreographed quite dramatically.  They literally stopped me in my tracks.

 

The figures, seen as if in a dream, depict a rite, one located in the world of Saint Sebastian.  The action displayed is both clear and unclear at the very same time.  The scene is quite realistic and yet stylized and particular at one and the same time.   The intensity of the central action has a strong effect on the outer figures within the tableau, the onlookers.  Also, viewers to the show are forced into the very same position as the sculpted onlookers, a kind of complicity to some act of torture or to a rite being performed. 

 

The figures have a remarkably tactile presence and also a feeling of being apparitions in a dream state.  They are archaic and modern at one and the same time.  An abstract/formalized presence characterizes each face within the group. One can sense the influence of puppetry/marionettes and contemporary abstract sculpture and yet the result is modern, contemporary and highly human.  Gesso-smoothed surfaces and facsimiles of real teeth push this juxtaposition of abstract and dreamlike form, providing an eerie counterpoint.

 

As in all major work, this art is hard to pin down.  It evokes references to literary sources, poetry, psychology, dance, myth, gravitas, contemporary illusions to war, Abu Ghraib and transcendent visions that go all the way back to early Greek Art.  So much is channeled here, so many ideas are cemented together and yet the look of the work seems to have no strategy connected with it.  In other words, it holds its mystery and does this despite the labor and design that it took to put this work together.  When viewed in reproduction, a possible second thought for this viewer had to do with a slight sense of a faux Primitive element.  In person, the deeply charged sense of the art is what one perceived….a powerful and visionary work!

 

 

 

                                                

Speaking of channeling… the López show in Boston is stunning.  I have known the artist’s work since 1968, when I first saw a powerful exhibition of his at Staempfli Gallery in New York.  (Viewing that show at Staempfli is what compelled me to approach that gallery with my own work five years later.)  The characteristic that speaks to me the most here is the ability to re-invent or re-vitalize the figurative tradition with a modern or modernist point of view.  The work isn’t a re-telling of realism, circa 1875, but wonderfully and naturally brings humanism in touch with contemporary themes.  The presence of the surreal,  with dream states, visions, collages, found objects, meditations on time, an almost existential aura, the influence of Picasso, all add to Lopez’ humanism and quite extraordinary painting abilities.  At the time (1968),I found it interesting to read that López felt his work could be shown side by side in exhibits with his non-objective counterparts.  In terms of American realism, such a viewpoint would have been considered wildly extreme.  Yet, this attitude represented an open-ness to contemporary thought, which was also reflected in his choice of subject matter…..from a dinner plate showing the ends of a meal to a forlorn bathroom, to a couple making love on a city street (or in a dreamscape?).  So, also, he made this painter aware that the subject matter of art was far wider than academically pre-conceived.

 

These paintings and drawings look back to Velasquez and Goya.  There is a way that López deals with the dark, close-valued half-tones that calls to mind Velasquez.  It reminds me of Edwin Dickinson as well, an artist who, surprisingly, López wasn’t even aware of. A student of Dickinson recalls the artist holding up his hand and pointing to the area between his thumb and first finger and remarking that one should be able to see one hundred half tones in this location.  These very same half tones in López’ works are dazzling.  The slightest difference in light, whether in value or warm and cool is hypnotically conveyed.

 

At its best this work channels up some spirit or mystery, some haunted aspect of the everyday.  In a sense, this is a meditation on time, the time that lies in the pictorial space and the time that the image takes to be born.  The time spent waiting and the ability to wait are conjured up.  A tremendously inspiring artist, it appears as if López has allowed himself whatever time it takes or whatever is needed to provide the meditation and involvement that the image needs. He hides within the image, as his ego isn’t tantamount; he is both chameleon and conduit/catalyst for the subject, which is given the most prominence.

 

His work is curiously quiet and upending at one and the same moment.  There is a great commitment, honesty and sense of gravitas. Some of the paintings and sculpture take López years to finish. The two standing figures, took perhaps more than twenty years. 

 

The art exists wholly on and for its own sake.  The surface is worked, re-worked and obsessively attended to – yet not rendered. Robert Hughes states about López work:  “It is the very reverse of academic art and the antithesis of illustration.”

 

A terrible reality or honesty is depicted.  Curiously, the usual direction in a figurative artist’s growth is reversed.  Usually the path would be from detailed to more generalized, from naturalistic to abstract, from tighter to looser, from the myopic to far sighted, from a demanding detail to letting go.  In López’ later work, the character seems somewhat tighter, more exacting, more ordered and naturalistic.  Thus the looser and more surreal earlier work gives way to something simpler, more precise and a bit more narrowed up.

 

A number of works stand out: Atocha (1964); The Rabbit (1972), El norte de Madrid desde “La Maliciosa”) (1964,) Maria (1972), A view from the Balcony , Terraza de Lucio (1962-1990), Standing Male and Female sculptures, (1968-1994), The Toilet (Taza de water y ventana) (1968-1971). 

 

One work, however, The Cupboard, El Aparador, (1965-66), seems to roll all of López’ magical hand, eye and heart into one work of art.  This is a moody image, mirrored in sooty darks and very close-valued.  Memory permeates the air.  Perhaps the memory comes from these very objects and what they have seen.  The composition is beautiful, hidden and hermetic.  One has to reach into the picture.  The dark tones, especially at the bottom, are incredibly close together.  This painting breathes with a sense of time past…… a virtuoso display of texture and light.  There is even a reflection of a chandelier and what looks like a reflection of the artist painting on the upper left.  What might be trompe l’oeil becomes an illusion of spirit, mood, memory and time.  As in all great art, this painting can’t be contained by a single criterion.  It is the depiction of a family’s growth and shared history.  And yet, so much of this is accomplished, within the world of contemporary art and a rich, deep, touching humanity is gloriously felt and displayed.  A haunting and major work!  And, as in many López images, which are calm and dis-quieting, a tenderness and brutality combines in an unnerving caress.

 

 

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7 Responses to Counterpoint: A blog on the Visual Arts No. 3

  1. HM Says:

    September 10th, 2008 at 9:14 am edit

    I loved reading your blog. I am not familiar with the work of Pacheco and Lopez but the examples you present and your critique are compelling. I was also interested in your comparison of Courbet and Balthus. What struck me at the Courbet show at the Met was how truly modern Courbet’s work was, beginning with his startling self portrait.(I thought he resembled Johnny Depp!) I had not, however thought of the relationship to Balthus which is quite interesting.

    But what really resonated with me was your feeling about the use of the word “illustration”. I am in total agreement with you. Hopper and Rockwell in the same breath…..??!! Is there a petition to sign?

    I look forward to reading more and thank you.

  2. RC says:

    I am not acquainted with Pachero or Garcia and so I can’t comment on that part of your blog except to say that I intend to acquaint myself with them. I did find your comments about the growth of a figurative artist from one(usually) focusing on a sort of academic detail to a looser style of personal interest. In my own work(and I say this with great humbleness): my first painting done years ago at the Brooklyn Museum School was a very loose still-life(the teacher, a woman named Linda Schreck-don’t know if you know her…I liked her a lot…liked it and I think she thought I was the second coming of Matisse!!!). Of course, I had no idea what I was doing. Years later, when I took up painting again, I began to try and paint very realistically. Two or three years ago, I painted 3 still-lifes in a very academic style and liked them a lot because I felt I had finally become able to paint an orange that looked like an orange, grapes that looked like grapes, cups that etc. Now, I am trying very hard to be looser and gain respect for how the paint stroke can “speak” how the brushstroke has a language all its own. This is very exciting to me although extremely difficult because I still too often resort to blending.
    Re Courbet, I thought his vision was enormous, but that the quality of his work varied wildly. I agree with you that the nudes were spectacular. His ability to render flesh in such a “lush and sensual” manner was mind-boggling. It was sad that many people visiting the show hurried through this section of the exhibit keeping their heads down, giggling, etc. We are a strange people. We will stare for hours at enactments of buildings being blown up, but find it difficult to appreciate the beauty of the human figure(and isn’t it interesting how seldom the nude male is depicted anymore).
    The discussion re art and illustration was wonderful and I am going to read this section again and discuss it with Marlene tonight. I don’t really have any comments on it except to say that I agree with you 100% and appreciate your help in enlightening me on this matter that comes up in discussion now and again.

  3. Jeremy says:

    I’d love to have seen these two exhibits. I particularly like the haunted quality you find in both exhibits and your description of the sooty darks and the close values (crazy story about Dickinson – to have that level of cultivation visually!) It put me immediately in mind of the film you recommended – A Secret. It was I’m sure more straightforward than the work you’re discussing here, but in your discussion of memory permeating the present and the illusion of spirit, mood, memory and time, I was really taken back to that story.

  4. Dear Mr. Dinnerstein:

    Both you and your wife asked me quite a while ago to respond to your blog entry. As I mentioned before on a telephone conversation, I am reluctant to engage in an exchange with you on something on which I feel I have very limited knowledge. I decided then to make some comments and dedicate most of my response to information that I had to put together for a doctoral student of mine who is planning to write a dissertation about my teaching legacy.

    As you can see, my email to you is very long. The reason why dealing with the subject matter in the second and most substantial portion of my reply is that Simone is being interviewed very often. On some occasions, she likes to refer to the stylistic influences that affected her training by way of the teachers that she worked with. She made references to my representing the “Russian” school. In a conversation with her, I hinted at the many other elements that permeated my musical upbringing. So, by including my long comments here, I am both supplying information that might be of interest to her and to you, and certainly to my doctoral student.

    I have always been very interested in the lives and backgrounds of piano teachers who have succeeded in producing good results. When Simone has time, she could also research deeper into Maria Curcio’s and Peter Serkin’s development as pianists, teachers and musicians. There is more to Maria Curcio, I am sure, than just the fact that she was a pupil of Schnabel. Likewise, there must be more to Peter Serkin’s past than just his being the son (and student?) of his famous father. They were very different and it would be interesting to find out why.

    But let’s go back to your blog and the article in the Sunday London Times magazine. As I told you over the telephone, I was extremely impressed with your writing and your ability to describe with words that are far removed from my vocabulary, your reaction to the beauty of the works of art that prompted you in your writing. You know that I visited Boston for the purpose of seeing the Goya exhibition and then, by accident, I had the opportunity to look at the works of the contemporary Spanish painter who is so attractive to you (and to me). I feel embarrassed that the only words that I can use in describing what I saw are very commonly used, both in art and music: beautiful, exquisite, impressive, admirable, imaginative, colorful, exciting, etc. I can use those words to describe your writing or Goya’s paintings or the other Spanish painter’s paintings, or Simone’s playing, or everything that is beautiful in life.

    With regard to Goya, there is a strong relationship between his paintings and his Goyescas for Piano (originally an opera). One of the pieces in the suite is called El Amor y la Muerte (Love and Death), which is based on a little drawing of a young woman holding her dead boyfriend in her arms. Goya’s music fluctuates between a frantic sense of trying to believe that he is not dead and a calm realization of the truth. These changes of mood make me believe that this work would be ideal for Simone to show the extreme and opposite elements of her personality.

    I was hoping to find that drawing in the collection exhibited in Boston. I have two or three volume collections of the paintings of Goya and this particular drawing is not included. I do have a copy of it and the source is unknown to me. I believe it is impossible to understand the music unless you look at that painting.

    A short comment on the London article regarding the fact that the subject matter of an artist father and a pianist daughter is in itself an incentive for many articles like this. Simone herself has demonstrated a keen sensitivity to the relationship between her art and yours. She is the best spokesperson you can have for your artistic contribution and you are the also the best spokesman for hers.

    As far as my own upbringing and the shaping of my musical ideas, it is always interesting to look back, after years have passed by. When Simone was my student I never talked about my problem with my right hand which shockingly came up early on, soon after I graduated from Juilliard. At the time she graduated from my class in the Precollege in 1989, I had not practiced for 20 years! Yet, I accepted an invitation that summer to perform trios by Haydn, Brahms and Shostakovich in various cities in Asia. One of the programs was videotaped and it remains the last time I played in public. With two bypass operations and an incredible load of students, I could not possibly find time to practice nor did I feel that I could achieve the level of playing that would give me real satisfaction.

    I feel lucky that I have had so many influences in my development as a musician. Born in Cuba, I was always exposed to Spanish music, with its vast and varied folklore. The best Flamenco companies always performed in Havana, and I have the greatest admiration for that music, so passionate and poetic at the same time. The African influence was no less important, with its exciting syncopations and cross-rhythms. Cuban popular music is a combination of both elements. As a teenager I was known as being a very good dancer and I actually had my own little band, which was in great demand for parties, weddings and bar-mitzvahs. We also included Jewish and eastern European music, that being another strong musical tradition that shaped my music. I still remember Moishe, an old immigrant fiddler, with a broken back, who used to collect pennies at such gatherings where he played those melodies with real flair and imagination. His sense of rubato could not be taught!

    Earlier on, at ages 6 or 7, I was singing for the tourists that walked around the Prado Boulevard, in front of the Havana Capitol building, where my father had a jewelry store. I accompanied myself with a guitar (my first instrument) by ear. It was my ear that made it possible to play anything on the piano. It turned out to be a negative force in my practice. During those early years I was always singing, dancing, playing solos and with my band, always popular or semiclassical music. We were in constant demand.

    I started piano lessons at age seven. I know more about my teacher now that I knew then, as I have had the opportunity to explore his life, interview his two daughters in their eighties during my last trip to Havana last year and read so much about his life and contributions in the Cuban National Library. His name was César Pérez Sentenat, born in Cuba of Spanish-Catalan (like Albeniz, Granados, de los Angeles, Larrocha, Caballé, Carreras) ancestry. As a teenager he was sent to Madrid to study with José Cubiles, the most important teacher in Spain at that time. I have recently heard Cubiles’ recordings and he was indeed a great artist. He studied in Paris and became very famous as a teacher but was never able to achieve an international reputation due to the dire political and economic circumstances in Spain that eventually culminated with the Civil War.

    Sentenat went on to study in Paris with Joaquín Nin, for whom I played in Havana as a child. You might be familiar with his two highly edited editions of sonatas by the pupils of Scarlatti (Soler, Matéo Albeniz, etc.), published in France, which introduced these composers to the world. I played them as a child before almost anyone else outside of Spain. Nin is well known among singers, because he wrote some beautiful songs. His son, Joaquín Nin-Culmell, who passed away recently at age 98, became a respected (conservative; very Spanish) composer, and was Professor of Music at Stanford University. His daughter, Anaís Nin, had a tumultuous life, reflected in her famous diary. The French perfume Anaís was inspired by it.

    What is important is that Nin was a great pianist and had also been a student of Vidiella, a classmate of Granados, when both of them studied with Pujol. Granados became the teacher of Marshall who was the teacher of Alicia de Larrocha. All these names represent the famous Catalan school of piano playing. Nin was also a very close friend of Ricardo Viñes, also Catalan. Viñes was the intimate friend of Ravel, Debussy, Albeniz, Granados, de Falla, Turina, Poulenc, etc. This pianist premiered many works by these composers, including, for example, Gaspard de la nuit. Nin, and later my teacher Sentenat, were in the midst of all these premieres and played this music earlier than anyone else. I was, therefore, lucky to be exposed to a French and Spanish influence coming directly from these composers. It is interesting that I was asked to take over the teaching position that Rudolf Ganz held in Chicago for so many years until his death. Ganz lived a long life, playing for Brahms as a child. In his studio, where I teach, there hangs the picture of Ravel as well as the first page of Scarbo, in the composer’s handwriting, which Ravel dedicated to Ganz.

    Nin was also a student of Moszkowski. Moszkowski was a very famous pianist (in western Europe) who is well known today for the etudes, exercises and salon music he composed. What is important to know is that he was Polish by birth and German by training and that he also studied with Liszt. When I started my lessons with Sentenat, he did not assign me a book of exercises. He wrote them himself, on manuscript paper, a few every week, starting with tone production and the transfer of weight for legato playing (2 notes, 3 notes, etc.).

    Eventually I was practicing hundreds of exercises of all kinds which, in my mind at that time, were of my teacher’s invention. Well, I was wrong! They came from Liszt, through Moszkowski and Nin. Now, after reading essays in Cuba about Sentenat’s technical and musical ideas, I have come to realize that he was the result of Spanish, French, Polish and German influences, culminating with Liszt’s technical principles.

    Moreover, Sentenat’s sophisticated culture exerted a great cultural influence in Cuba. He lectured constantly, introducing, for example, the recordings of the Well Tempered Clavier by Landowsa with a clear awareness of the new tendencies in the proper use of baroque embellishments as well as her improvisational style in recitativos. The Beethoven sonatas were discussed and analyzed one by one, with the recordings of Backhaus and Ives Nat (a great Paris Conservatoire teacher and Beethoven Player) as background. Chopin played an important role in his lectures, his knowledge coming from Moszkovski, always complaining on the excess of rubato and liberties with the score. During his years in Paris, the city became the center of a revolt against the superficial attitude of performers who, in his mind, were distorting the music beyond recognition. Many of them came from the so called Russian school! Schumann was also one of his favorites, having attended many concerts and masterclasses by Cortot.

    My only complaint about Sentenat is that, for him, I could do no wrong. Yet I never contemplated changing teachers. Neither did I do that at Juilliard, where both Adele Marcus and Rosina Lhevinne where always after me. I used to accompany many of Rossina’s students, and I remember how, the first time, she asked me to play the whole introduction of the Beethoven 3rd Concerto in order to (I realized later) impress me with a lesson on music I was not going to play in the forthcoming competition (only a few bars before the introduction).

    For Sentenat, everything I did was “great” and now I feel that a more critical attitude would have been more helpful. It was much later that I attended concerts and heard the highest standards possible in performance. I made up for it! Cuba was a paradise in that respect, and the greatest pianists and musicians performed there. Right now I am reviewing a collection of nine volumes of programs, which a friend of mine has assembled, which I brought from Spain. There is no point in mentioning names . . the greatest! I learned so much from hearing them. I wish I had started earlier to hear such great playing.

    Well, I decided that, after HS, I would try to go to New York to further my studies. There was a national competition and I won the scholarship for that purpose. Then, following a recital, seven critics got together and had an audience with the President’s wife. She gave me a supplemental scholarship and all of that made it possible to come to New York, where I received a complete scholarship at Juilliard. After the Cuban revolution I lost my scholarship out of suspicion that it might have been politically motivated. After a thorough review of the records, the scholarship was reinstated but by that time the relations with the USA had deteriorated to the point that I was called back to Cuba to have a meeting with the Russian Cultural attaché about transferring to the Moscow Conservatory.

    It was in the midst of the Cold War, my parents were moving to Miami, and I was already studying with a teacher whose training came from the same school. I stayed in New York. My decision to study with Gorodnitzki derived from the fact that I was familiar with his recordings which I owned before coming to New York. He had played in Cuba twice with great success (once before I was born; I never heard him in concert) and I made a point of listening to his students’ recitals before auditioning for him. For those of us who were able to hear him privately, he was indeed a great pianist, the winner of the Schubert Prize, the most important competition in New York at that time. As a pupil of Josef Lhevinne he represented the Russian School at its best but, like his teacher, his emphasis was in the pianistic control of the instrument (I learned a lot!) without going deeply into the music.

    On the side of virtuosity, Lhevinne, Rachmaninoff and Hoffman were considered the three greatest pianists in the world. At that time, deeper musicians like Schnabel, Solomon and Hess were admired by a smaller but more sophisticated audience. Rachmaninoff and Hoffman, I was told, considered Lhevinne the most “perfect” among them. Yet, later on I began to ask myself why Rachmaninoff and Hoffman were always performing while Lhevinne had to accept a teaching position at Juilliard. To me the answer lies in the fact that he was less interesting than the other two and, in a way, this was reflected in Gorodnitzki’s approach to music.

    Looking back, I have mixed feelings about my Juilliard experience. One of the highlights during my studies there was to be selected to perform for Shostakovich and Kabalevsky during their first visit to America during the Cold War. On the other hand, academically, the classes were so superficial that I had to go to City College (one of the best schools in USA at that time; some of America’s most important thinkers and philosophers came from there) and later Columbia to try to get a good academic education. Gorodnitzki’s style of teaching consisted in him playing and the student imitating. As I look back, I have mixed feelings about that approach.

    At this point, I am trying to review what I remember of the years working together with Simone, the sequence and purpose of the materials and repertoire I selected, her attributes and problems, the experiences with small competitions outside of MSM (she did great!) and the winning of two concerto competitions at The Prep. Division (I remember that the first one was with the Piston Concertino; was the second one the Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin?).

    I am glad that in eight years, from 1981 to 1989, we went from the most basic materials to the Copland Variations, with a technical and musical foundation that, I believe, served her well in her subsequent studies. As she grew older, she was pianistically, musically and intellectually ready to be presented with all the new ideas and suggestions she received from her subsequent teachers which eventually led to her ultimate success.

    It is so great to witness her triumphant return and listen to her inspiring playing.

    I hope to hear much more!

    Solomon Mikowsky

  5. Dear Mr. Dinnerstein:

    Both you and your wife asked me quite a while ago to respond to your blog entry. As I mentioned before on a telephone conversation, I am reluctant to engage in an exchange with you on something on which I feel I have very limited knowledge. I decided then to make some comments and dedicate most of my response to information that I had to put together for a doctoral student of mine who is planning to write a dissertation about my teaching legacy.

    As you can see, my email to you is very long. The reason why dealing with the subject matter in the second and most substantial portion of my reply is that Simone is being interviewed very often. On some occasions, she likes to refer to the stylistic influences that affected her training by way of the teachers that she worked with. She made references to my representing the “Russian” school. In a conversation with her, I hinted at the many other elements that permeated my musical upbringing. So, by including my long comments here, I am both supplying information that might be of interest to her and to you, and certainly to my doctoral student.

    I have always been very interested in the lives and backgrounds of piano teachers who have succeeded in producing good results. When Simone has time, she could also research deeper into Maria Curcio’s and Peter Serkin’s development as pianists, teachers and musicians. There is more to Maria Curcio, I am sure, than just the fact that she was a pupil of Schnabel. Likewise, there must be more to Peter Serkin’s past than just his being the son (and student?) of his famous father. They were very different and it would be interesting to find out why.

    But let’s go back to your blog and the article in the Sunday London Times magazine. As I told you over the telephone, I was extremely impressed with your writing and your ability to describe with words that are far removed from my vocabulary, your reaction to the beauty of the works of art that prompted you in your writing. You know that I visited Boston for the purpose of seeing the Goya exhibition and then, by accident, I had the opportunity to look at the works of the contemporary Spanish painter who is so attractive to you (and to me). I feel embarrassed that the only words that I can use in describing what I saw are very commonly used, both in art and music: beautiful, exquisite, impressive, admirable, imaginative, colorful, exciting, etc. I can use those words to describe your writing or Goya’s paintings or the other Spanish painter’s paintings, or Simone’s playing, or everything that is beautiful in life.

    With regard to Goya, there is a strong relationship between his paintings and his Goyescas for Piano (originally an opera). One of the pieces in the suite is called El Amor y la Muerte (Love and Death), which is based on a little drawing of a young woman holding her dead boyfriend in her arms. Goya’s music fluctuates between a frantic sense of trying to believe that he is not dead and a calm realization of the truth. These changes of mood make me believe that this work would be ideal for Simone to show the extreme and opposite elements of her personality.

    I was hoping to find that drawing in the collection exhibited in Boston. I have two or three volume collections of the paintings of Goya and this particular drawing is not included. I do have a copy of it and the source is unknown to me. I believe it is impossible to understand the music unless you look at that painting.

    A short comment on the London article regarding the fact that the subject matter of an artist father and a pianist daughter is in itself an incentive for many articles like this. Simone herself has demonstrated a keen sensitivity to the relationship between her art and yours. She is the best spokesperson you can have for your artistic contribution and you are the also the best spokesman for hers.

    As far as my own upbringing and the shaping of my musical ideas, it is always interesting to look back, after years have passed by. When Simone was my student I never talked about my problem with my right hand which shockingly came up early on, soon after I graduated from Juilliard. At the time she graduated from my class in the Precollege in 1989, I had not practiced for 20 years! Yet, I accepted an invitation that summer to perform trios by Haydn, Brahms and Shostakovich in various cities in Asia. One of the programs was videotaped and it remains the last time I played in public. With two bypass operations and an incredible load of students, I could not possibly find time to practice nor did I feel that I could achieve the level of playing that would give me real satisfaction.

    I feel lucky that I have had so many influences in my development as a musician. Born in Cuba, I was always exposed to Spanish music, with its vast and varied folklore. The best Flamenco companies always performed in Havana, and I have the greatest admiration for that music, so passionate and poetic at the same time. The African influence was no less important, with its exciting syncopations and cross-rhythms. Cuban popular music is a combination of both elements. As a teenager I was known as being a very good dancer and I actually had my own little band, which was in great demand for parties, weddings and bar-mitzvahs. We also included Jewish and eastern European music, that being another strong musical tradition that shaped my music. I still remember Moishe, an old immigrant fiddler, with a broken back, who used to collect pennies at such gatherings where he played those melodies with real flair and imagination. His sense of rubato could not be taught!

    Earlier on, at ages 6 or 7, I was singing for the tourists that walked around the Prado Boulevard, in front of the Havana Capitol building, where my father had a jewelry store. I accompanied myself with a guitar (my first instrument) by ear. It was my ear that made it possible to play anything on the piano. It turned out to be a negative force in my practice. During those early years I was always singing, dancing, playing solos and with my band, always popular or semiclassical music. We were in constant demand.

    I started piano lessons at age seven. I know more about my teacher now that I knew then, as I have had the opportunity to explore his life, interview his two daughters in their eighties during my last trip to Havana last year and read so much about his life and contributions in the Cuban National Library. His name was César Pérez Sentenat, born in Cuba of Spanish-Catalan (like Albeniz, Granados, de los Angeles, Larrocha, Caballé, Carreras) ancestry. As a teenager he was sent to Madrid to study with José Cubiles, the most important teacher in Spain at that time. I have recently heard Cubiles’ recordings and he was indeed a great artist. He studied in Paris and became very famous as a teacher but was never able to achieve an international reputation due to the dire political and economic circumstances in Spain that eventually culminated with the Civil War.

    Sentenat went on to study in Paris with Joaquín Nin, for whom I played in Havana as a child. You might be familiar with his two highly edited editions of sonatas by the pupils of Scarlatti (Soler, Matéo Albeniz, etc.), published in France, which introduced these composers to the world. I played them as a child before almost anyone else outside of Spain. Nin is well known among singers, because he wrote some beautiful songs. His son, Joaquín Nin-Culmell, who passed away recently at age 98, became a respected (conservative; very Spanish) composer, and was Professor of Music at Stanford University. His daughter, Anaís Nin, had a tumultuous life, reflected in her famous diary. The French perfume Anaís was inspired by it.

    What is important is that Nin was a great pianist and had also been a student of Vidiella, a classmate of Granados, when both of them studied with Pujol. Granados became the teacher of Marshall who was the teacher of Alicia de Larrocha. All these names represent the famous Catalan school of piano playing. Nin was also a very close friend of Ricardo Viñes, also Catalan. Viñes was the intimate friend of Ravel, Debussy, Albeniz, Granados, de Falla, Turina, Poulenc, etc. This pianist premiered many works by these composers, including, for example, Gaspard de la nuit. Nin, and later my teacher Sentenat, were in the midst of all these premieres and played this music earlier than anyone else. I was, therefore, lucky to be exposed to a French and Spanish influence coming directly from these composers. It is interesting that I was asked to take over the teaching position that Rudolf Ganz held in Chicago for so many years until his death. Ganz lived a long life, playing for Brahms as a child. In his studio, where I teach, there hangs the picture of Ravel as well as the first page of Scarbo, in the composer’s handwriting, which Ravel dedicated to Ganz.

    Nin was also a student of Moszkowski. Moszkowski was a very famous pianist (in western Europe) who is well known today for the etudes, exercises and salon music he composed. What is important to know is that he was Polish by birth and German by training and that he also studied with Liszt. When I started my lessons with Sentenat, he did not assign me a book of exercises. He wrote them himself, on manuscript paper, a few every week, starting with tone production and the transfer of weight for legato playing (2 notes, 3 notes, etc.).

    Eventually I was practicing hundreds of exercises of all kinds which, in my mind at that time, were of my teacher’s invention. Well, I was wrong! They came from Liszt, through Moszkowski and Nin. Now, after reading essays in Cuba about Sentenat’s technical and musical ideas, I have come to realize that he was the result of Spanish, French, Polish and German influences, culminating with Liszt’s technical principles.

    Moreover, Sentenat’s sophisticated culture exerted a great cultural influence in Cuba. He lectured constantly, introducing, for example, the recordings of the Well Tempered Clavier by Landowsa with a clear awareness of the new tendencies in the proper use of baroque embellishments as well as her improvisational style in recitativos. The Beethoven sonatas were discussed and analyzed one by one, with the recordings of Backhaus and Ives Nat (a great Paris Conservatoire teacher and Beethoven Player) as background. Chopin played an important role in his lectures, his knowledge coming from Moszkovski, always complaining on the excess of rubato and liberties with the score. During his years in Paris, the city became the center of a revolt against the superficial attitude of performers who, in his mind, were distorting the music beyond recognition. Many of them came from the so called Russian school! Schumann was also one of his favorites, having attended many concerts and masterclasses by Cortot.

    My only complaint about Sentenat is that, for him, I could do no wrong. Yet I never contemplated changing teachers. Neither did I do that at Juilliard, where both Adele Marcus and Rosina Lhevinne where always after me. I used to accompany many of Rossina’s students, and I remember how, the first time, she asked me to play the whole introduction of the Beethoven 3rd Concerto in order to (I realized later) impress me with a lesson on music I was not going to play in the forthcoming competition (only a few bars before the introduction).

    For Sentenat, everything I did was “great” and now I feel that a more critical attitude would have been more helpful. It was much later that I attended concerts and heard the highest standards possible in performance. I made up for it! Cuba was a paradise in that respect, and the greatest pianists and musicians performed there. Right now I am reviewing a collection of nine volumes of programs, which a friend of mine has assembled, which I brought from Spain. There is no point in mentioning names . . the greatest! I learned so much from hearing them. I wish I had started earlier to hear such great playing.

    Well, I decided that, after HS, I would try to go to New York to further my studies. There was a national competition and I won the scholarship for that purpose. Then, following a recital, seven critics got together and had an audience with the President’s wife. She gave me a supplemental scholarship and all of that made it possible to come to New York, where I received a complete scholarship at Juilliard. After the Cuban revolution I lost my scholarship out of suspicion that it might have been politically motivated. After a thorough review of the records, the scholarship was reinstated but by that time the relations with the USA had deteriorated to the point that I was called back to Cuba to have a meeting with the Russian Cultural attaché about transferring to the Moscow Conservatory.

    It was in the midst of the Cold War, my parents were moving to Miami, and I was already studying with a teacher whose training came from the same school. I stayed in New York. My decision to study with Gorodnitzki derived from the fact that I was familiar with his recordings which I owned before coming to New York. He had played in Cuba twice with great success (once before I was born; I never heard him in concert) and I made a point of listening to his students’ recitals before auditioning for him. For those of us who were able to hear him privately, he was indeed a great pianist, the winner of the Schubert Prize, the most important competition in New York at that time. As a pupil of Josef Lhevinne he represented the Russian School at its best but, like his teacher, his emphasis was in the pianistic control of the instrument (I learned a lot!) without going deeply into the music.

    On the side of virtuosity, Lhevinne, Rachmaninoff and Hoffman were considered the three greatest pianists in the world. At that time, deeper musicians like Schnabel, Solomon and Hess were admired by a smaller but more sophisticated audience. Rachmaninoff and Hoffman, I was told, considered Lhevinne the most “perfect” among them. Yet, later on I began to ask myself why Rachmaninoff and Hoffman were always performing while Lhevinne had to accept a teaching position at Juilliard. To me the answer lies in the fact that he was less interesting than the other two and, in a way, this was reflected in Gorodnitzki’s approach to music.

    Looking back, I have mixed feelings about my Juilliard experience. One of the highlights during my studies there was to be selected to perform for Shostakovich and Kabalevsky during their first visit to America during the Cold War. On the other hand, academically, the classes were so superficial that I had to go to City College (one of the best schools in USA at that time; some of America’s most important thinkers and philosophers came from there) and later Columbia to try to get a good academic education. Gorodnitzki’s style of teaching consisted in him playing and the student imitating. As I look back, I have mixed feelings about that approach.

    At this point, I am trying to review what I remember of the years working together with Simone, the sequence and purpose of the materials and repertoire I selected, her attributes and problems, the experiences with small competitions outside of MSM (she did great!) and the winning of two concerto competitions at The Prep. Division (I remember that the first one was with the Piston Concertino; was the second one the Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin?).

    I am glad that in eight years, from 1981 to 1989, we went from the most basic materials to the Copland Variations, with a technical and musical foundation that, I believe, served her well in her subsequent studies. As she grew older, she was pianistically, musically and intellectually ready to be presented with all the new ideas and suggestions she received from her subsequent teachers which eventually led to her ultimate success.

    It is so great to witness her triumphant return and listen to her inspiring playing.

    I hope to hear much more!

    Solomon Mikowsky

  6. Dr. Mikowsky:

    I am so sorry to take so long to respond to your deeply expressive note.

    I don’t want to use this as an excuse, but just after I received your email, we traveled to Rome for about 10 days. When we returned, I was caught up in a rush for an open studio/open house that we gave. Further, I don’t know if I mentioned to you an upcoming book which will be published on a painting of mine,
    The Fulbright Triptych. The painting can be seen on my website. The book consists of an anthology of writing based on the painting. At this point, there are 30 writers. About two weeks ago three of the writers and I traveled to Penn. State University to see the painting. This was an incredibly intense 13 hour trip and one of the participants was the very gifted writer, Jhumpa Lahiri. So, it’s been quite a whirl…..generally very, very good, but somewhat upending as well…..an emotional time as well, with the book having very real potential and deeply rewarding possibilities.

    Your response to my blog is very intriguing. It certainly points to the very complex ways in which we learn our art. Many times, language seems to short-circuit the very complicated ways in which we are influenced. For instance, the Russian school, probably has a good deal of German influence and the so-called German school might have Russian reverberations.

    It was very interesting to hear more details of your personal musical journey. Your words are very expressive and show more vulnerability than I remember. It seems to me that letting down your defenses a bit makes the message that you are conveying even more powerful. It would be especially interesting for a student to see that this journey doesn’t just happen in clear concise ways. There is also, in addition to the various teachers, the influence of family, location and, perhaps childhood, as well as the particular personalities and temperament that we bring to our art.

    I would love to see the drawing of Goya called Love and Death, especially after your description of the Goyescas.

    I didn’t know at all of the extent of the problem that you mention with your right hand. I was so sorry to hear of this development.

    It was intriguing that Sentenat didn’t assign exercises to you but wrote them himself….also, curious to know the origin of these exercises.

    When Simone was studying with you, I found myself being very impressed by your seeming wish to have her keep and go with her expressive personality. Not that this is comparable, but sometimes when I have a student with very expressionistic directions in art, I try to be very careful about allowing this character to
    not be flattened or smoothed out, so to speak.

    At the very end of your note, you mention the Piston Concertino….I think it was Francaix. It was a brilliant choice on your part. I am not sure but my hunch would be that it would be rare for a young musician to be able to play that piece. I suppose I am prejudiced.

    Finally, I love the heat of your response and I wonder if you would mind my posting it on my blog, with my reply. I am not sure how many people look at the blog, but your response is as full-blooded and expressive as it would be humanly possible to receive.

    My best to you for a happy and healthy year ahead.

    Simon

  7. Mr. Dinnerstein:

    i am so glad that you had such wonderful reasons not to respond early on. I am looking forward to purchasing and reading the book when it is published. I am not surprised the painting inspired these writers to contribute to the anthology.

    I must confess that I hesitated in sharing with you and Simone the experiences I had in my musical development, which are going to be incorporated by my doctoral student, Kookhee Hong, into her doctoral dissertation. I have always been a private person and, even though general biographies about me are easily available, I had never gone into such detail. It is the perspective of the years passed that enables me to do it.

    In answer to your question, the exercises were handwritten by Liszt for Moszkowski, who then wrote them for Nín, who again wrote them for Sentenat, who wrote them for me. They were not published until quite recently (maybe 30-40 years ago) by Esteban, a late teacher at the Peabody Conservatory.

    The Concertino by Francaix wan an attempt, among many, to make sure that Simone was familiar and open to contemporary music of quality and, at the same time, to add to her repertoire unusual and sophisticated choices. Yes, you and I realize the importance of preserving and encouraging expressive elements in our students’ personalities, all within the confines of good taste and a sense of style. She always had a certain affinity with the right-hand cantilena in Bach (French Suite No.5), as we worked on the importance of playing on time but not really, allowing each note to be placed in the tempo without losing its rhythmic personality. I am reminded of this every time I hear her in the opening of the Goldberg Variations. This is so hard to teach! For her it was so natural!

    As I remember her hands, and I listen to her light and extremely fast runs in the Goldberg nowadays, I realize that the technique of playing a bit under tempo, without pedal, with what I call “open fingers”, a technique I first encountered in the teaching of the famous Marmontel in Paris in the middle of the XIX Century (the teacher of Ignacio Cervantes, the Cuban pianist and composer about whom I wrote a book) and used by so many pianists from the Russian School (Lhevinne, Horowitz, Cerkassky, etc.), gave her the strength necessary to be able to enjoy letting her fingers do the job and trusting them. If she had to work hard for them as she plays these runs, she would never achieve that beautiful and even lightness.

    She also worked on two levels of difficulty with her repertoire, early on: the easy pieces of which she could learn many in one year (“rapid learning”) in order to improve her sight-reading ability and speed of learning and memorizing pieces in many styles, plus the main repertoire, which included a bit of everything. It is the choice of repertoire what I find most important in teaching. I equate medical prescriptions with it. A patient cannot be cured unless the doctor gives him or her the right medicine!

    It was not easy to preserve a sense of success when faced with the fact that Simone was not a virtuosa with an affinity for the big Lisztian repertoire. Jae-Hyuck Cho supplemented her in that regard, but he did not have her sensitivity nor her spiritual and poetic qualities. In a way, they envied each other: “If I could play like him/her?”.
    Well, I am glad that the qualities that you and Simone and I relish the most are the ones that have brought her up to the success and recognition she is now enjoying.

    Thank you for your willingness to include me in your blog. It is quite an honor!

    Solomon Mikowsky

    ————————————————————————————————————
    Solomon Mikowsky
    Piano faculties,
    Manhattan School of Music and
    Chicago College of Performing Arts.
    Adjunct Associate Professor of Music,
    Columbia University Teachers College.
    Artistic Director, International Piano Festivals.

    ——————————————————————————–
    From: Simondinnerstein

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