{"id":1773,"date":"2014-03-08T07:46:12","date_gmt":"2014-03-08T15:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/?p=1773"},"modified":"2018-03-02T07:51:11","modified_gmt":"2018-03-02T15:51:11","slug":"d-960","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/archives\/1773","title":{"rendered":"D. 960"},"content":{"rendered":"

At age 8: In my teacher\u2019s studio were grainy, gray-ish busts of composers, all with the same mineral taste when I licked them. Schubert became differentiated from the others when I listened to the \u201cUnfinished\u201d Symphony, its music heavenly and mysterious. Unfinished why? Did he run out of ideas?<\/p>\n

At 9: I learned the A-flat Impromptu, and my clunky performance was preserved on a home-cut record. (My teacher was an early adopter of audio gear.)<\/p>\n

At 12: I heard a recording of Schubert\u2019s last piano sonata, in B-flat, number 960 in the Deutsch chronology. It was beyond me; but something fascinated me about all last works, whether absolutely the composers\u2019 last, or last for piano. From \u201cultimate\u201d in numbering, romantic me infers ultimate in meaning. Don\u2019t many of us imagine that \u201clastness\u201d hides a fastness, a cache of significance? And if learning is effortful for us, as it is for me, this helps make it worthwhile. So, like Beethoven\u2019s sonatas Opp. 109, 110, 111, Schubert\u2019s D. 958, 959, 960, acquire a magnetic attraction.<\/p>\n

At 18: By now I had read Jean-Christophe<\/i>, by Romain Rolland; and Thomas Wolfe\u2019s novels and stories. At music camp, impressed by my teacher\u2019s love of D. 960, I learned the first movement in a week, and played it at my next lesson. Mr. Harris said, \u201cVery good, pal. What else did you bring?\u201d I exclaimed, \u201cWhat else<\/i>? I practiced that five hours a day!\u201d I\u2019d been so proud of learning 20 minutes of music so quickly, and now realized I\u2019d learned too little too slowly.<\/p>\n

\u201cFive hours?\u201d Henry Harris was honestly puzzled. \u201cWhat could you do for five hours a day?\u201d He pointed to the pianissimo<\/i> bass trill on the first page. \u201cYou might practice this five minutes a day. And\u201d\u2013turning pages, poking another spot\u2013\u201cthis<\/i> is hard. You could spend 10 minutes a day on this.\u201d Continuing through the movement, he justified 30 minutes of daily practice. This was dizzying to me; inconceivable; and gradually I realized what was missing from his calculation: the time needed to learn the notes<\/i>\u2013because for him, that<\/i> didn\u2019t take time!<\/p>\n

He was far beyond me in reading and remembering. But as I tried to imitate him, I learned that some of these abilities will appear just for the wanting. If one\u2019s never had a concept of quick learning, some progress will occur merely by acquiring the idea.<\/p>\n

At our next lesson, he chided me, \u201cI hear you around Camp, pal. You\u2019re not practicing, you\u2019re playing for people<\/i>.\u201d (This last was accompanied by a look of distaste.) \u201cPlaying isn\u2019t practicing, chum.\u201d Now that was<\/i> a difference between us: playing for people was essential to my learning process.<\/p>\n

At 20: Studying with Gregory Tucker at Longy School, I learned D. 960 to the point just short of performance, then told Mr. Tucker I was going to drop it. I was OK with the 2nd, 3d and 4th movements, I said, but not comfortable with the \u201cspaciousness\u201d of the first movement. He smiled and told me he understood. On my recital that year, the major piece instead was Mussorgsky\u2019s \u201cPictures at an Exhibition.\u201d I needed to understand Schubert better.<\/p>\n

So I learned other Schubert works:<\/p>\n

Multiple times at various ages, I played the Moments Musicaux, D. 780; A minor sonata, D. 784; Impromptus, D. 899. and the \u201clittle\u201d A major sonata, D. 664.<\/p>\n

At 39: \u201cDie Sch\u00f6ne M\u00fcllerin,\u201d D. 795, with my friend, tenor Jeff Greif.<\/p>\n

At 42: \u201cWinterreise,\u201d D. 911, also with Jeff.<\/p>\n

Through these works, especially the songs, I became familiar with Schubert\u2019s expressiveness; his leisurely quality that morphs to urgency in an instant; his magical harmonic changes, and the endlessly interesting ways he fills the gaps between them. His flexible phrasing\u2014you hardly notice his five-bar phrases. The sonorities that \u201chang from the top\u201d; and his use of the harmonic series to drive the action.<\/p>\n

I had a gratifying moment in working on the Moments Musicaux with Leonid Hambro. He made three suggestions about No. 3, and I asked to be excused from trying to integrate them on the spot; to wait till the next lesson. When that time came, I integrated his suggestions but also included other changes; and was pleased when he exclaimed, \u201cYou are very unusual! You understand what an interpretation is! Most people don\u2019t!\u201d (This had long been my secret conviction.) \u201cYou understood that if you changed what I suggested, you had to make the other changes, too!\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, over a 35-year period, I studied and re-studied D. 960; and once I was at Caltech (from age 30), discussed it with my Wednesday afternoon group, whose questions, suggestions, comments and objections did me a lot of good.<\/p>\n

Age 55: Finally finding myself comfortable with D. 960, I played it on my 25th anniversary concert at Caltech; and it went well. A good first performance. A lady said, \u201cThe second movement took me up to heaven.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At age 8: In my teacher\u2019s studio were grainy, gray-ish busts of composers, all with the same<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1773"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1774,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773\/revisions\/1774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}