Volume 26 Issue 1 - September 2020

JOANNE SAVIO
memory was clear: “He was very tall, short haircut, face lined like
the map of Russia.” In a heavy Russian accent, Rachmaninoff asked
Fleisher, “You, pianist?” A pause. “Bad business …”
Fleisher’s conclusion: “There are bad nerves and good nerves. How
much of what I want to do will I be able to communicate? That’s the
good nerves.”
At one masterclass I attended, on November 29, 2014, Fleisher was
into the second piece of the morning masterclass when Brahms’ Piano
Quartet in C Minor Op.60 triggered a recollection: “I had the pleasure
once – and it really was a pleasure – of playing this with three guys
named Jascha [Heifetz], Grisha [Piatigorsky] and William [Primrose].”
What did he remember? That there was no piano in the green room
in the hall in San Francisco, which upset Fleisher, prompting
Piatigorsky to calm his nerves: “Leonski, warming up before the
concert is like doing breathing exercises before dying.”
The next day after listening to Rebanks Fellow Jean-Sélim
Abdelmoula play Beethoven’s penultimate piano sonata, Op.110,
Fleisher mused: “It suddenly occurred to me that Beethoven has
innumerable ways of expressing his final journey into heaven. I’m
getting to that point myself,” he said. “How does one face the end of
this life and the beginning of the next?”
When Fleisher was nine, the legendary pianist Artur Schnabel
invited him to be his pupil, first in Lake Como, Italy, then in New
York. “For ten years I studied with one of the great teachers of the
20th century – for two years after, I was absolutely lost until I discovered
that everything he taught me was lodged in my cerebellum and
it was just a matter of uncovering it,” he said. “One of the ways to do
this is by singing the notes and the rhythm (and deciding whether the
consonant is soft or hard). Singing gives you a much clearer idea of
what you’re facing.”
For 60 years Fleisher continued a musical legacy traceable directly
back to Beethoven through Schnabel and Schnabel’s teacher Theodor
Leschetizky who studied with Carl Czerny, Beethoven’s pupil.
Schnabel references were plentiful in Fleisher’s masterclasses, especially
when discussing music by Beethoven and Schubert. Looking
back over my records, I see that on April 21, 2017, a student playing
Brahms’ Intermezzos Nos. 4-6, Op.116 triggered Fleisher’s analytical
instincts before he settled into a surprising Schnabel anecdote. “We
work in two dimensions simultaneously: sound – loud and soft and
everything in between – and time, which can be strict or with a degree
of flexibility. I think time is the more difficult dimension to work in
because the pulse can easily become mechanical sounding. A curious
thing – Brahms’ music flows at a specific personal rate – it flows more
like lava than water. And there’s a richness and a warmth to it.”
And then the anecdote:
“My teacher, Schnabel, let it
drop very casually one day in
a lesson, that he had known
Brahms. Brahms had a habit
in Vienna on Sunday of going
into the Vienna woods with a
basket for a picnic. The little
Schnabel went along one
day. Brahms asked, ‘Are you
hungry?’ before [commencing
eating]. And after he asked,
‘Have you had enough?’ –
and that was his conversation
with Brahms.”
At that point, Fleisher got
up and moved to the piano,
accompanying the student in
the upper octaves of Brahms’
fourth intermezzo, but with
his left hand. It was truly
inspirational. And with his
singing, he coached a much
better performance. “Good.
That was a good sound. And
now the memory of something
so fragile – when a phrase is repeating it’s not necessarily an echo but
a chance to do it more beautifully. It’s a memory, very fragile. If you do
too much it will disappear – be very still.”
Another tack he took with a student was to ask “To what extent
were you successful in doing what you tried to do?” – an opening
gambit designed to encourage scrutinizing the score and elevating the
student’s performance. He never missed a chance to make one of his
favourite points: “Music is a horizontal activity that goes through all
sorts of adventures – everything has to be part of the entire arc – it is
filled with vertical events like beats in a bar – the danger is that it is
filled with coffin nails.”
Fleisher’s pedagogy was filled with aphorisms. “Playing beautifully
is not necessarily beautiful music.” Or “A metronome is a machine;
it has nothing to do with music.” And “Romantic means playing
long notes short and short notes long.” He always deferred to the
score: “You are the actor; the music is the director.” And paradoxically
(discussing Schubert’s Sonata D958): “In time you can build the
structure with slight rhythmic distortions. Great art in a sense always
involves healthy distortion.”
Other comments reflected Fleisher’s playful mind: he once
described Beethoven’s markings in the fourth movement of his Sonata
No.13 “Quasi una fantasia” as not just accents – “Beethoven has a
habit of poking his elbow into your ribs.”
And his analytical prowess: “Of music’s three elements, rhythm
is the most important. Harmony – because you can make thousands
of harmonies with melody – is next. Melody is the least important.”
And: “You’re made up of three people: Person A imagines how the
piece should be before they play – their ideal, their goal; Person B
actually performs it; Person C listens to Person B and if it’s not what A
intended, C tells B who makes adjustments. This is a constant aspect of
performance.”
And above all his delight in it all: To a student on February 11, 2018
after the first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata No.11, Op.22: “You
leave me speechless … I don’t come here to be blown away but when
I am, it’s a great pleasure.” A few minutes later, the student smiled as
she played the second movement accompanied by Fleisher’s left hand
at the top end of the piano.
To experience Fleisher’s inimitable approach, watch his March 31,
2004 masterclass on YouTube from Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall,
with the 17-year-old Yuja Wang playing Schubert’s Sonata No.19
D958 when she was a student at the Curtis Institute.
Paul Ennis is the managing editor of The WholeNote.
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