Inner Life
I’ve been reading Kenzaburo Oe’s “A Healing Family” — a wonderful collection of essays on topics related to Oe’s son Hikari, who was born with a severe brain defect, and who became an accomplished pianist and composer. An excerpt:
Sitting nearby with a book, listening to his piano lessons, I can feel the best, most human things in his character finding lively and fluent expression; and when I hear the works he has produced performed by Mrs. Tamura and other musicians who have been generous in their support, I feel in awe of the richness of his inner life. Yet this is a life that, were it not for music, would have remained hidden, would have been utterly unknown to me, to my wife, and Hikari’s younger brother and sister. I am not someone who believes in any faith, but I find it hard to deny that there is something… something akin perhaps to “grace” in this music; indeed, listening to Hikari’s music, being exposed to the world beyond our everyday experience in which it seems to participate, makes me appreciate in it the full meaning of the word; not only “gracefulness” and “virtue” but “a prayer of thanks.”
I have not faced any of the challenges that Hikari has, and yet much of what Oe is describing feels very familiar to me. I’ve often felt that my own “inner life” is expressed with greater precision and dimension when I am making music than it ever could be through words, physical gestures, or any other form of communication of which I am aware. And I too find that music brings me closest to that concept of “grace,” which Oe describes so beautifully.
Oe hears in his son’s music a “prayer of thanks.” I sense this quality in much of the music I play, and as I play it, one of the things I find myself giving thanks to is music itself, for the inexpressible role it has played in my life.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
The last sentence of this entry was beautifully written, and something that as a musician, I aspire to and am thankful for as well.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and best wishes for continued success.
May 29th, 2008 at 7:06 am
La musique commence là où s’arrête le pouvoir des mots
Good luck in Denmark tomorrow, Jonathan.
June 30th, 2008 at 6:35 am
Yesterday, a friend told me you’re playing the trout quintet with members of the Emerson in August–I’m looking forward to this so very much! We’re a little confused about your pre-concert recital, which we don’t want to miss: my friend told me you were playing the Mozart A minor sonata. The Emerson says you’re playing “the e minor sonata No. 4 K. 304″ as well as five fugues from WTK2…which they mark as being by Mozart, K. 405!–so THAT must be all mixed up…and on YOUR schedule, it says the Mozart is the e-minor VIOLIN sonata, which makes more sense, but which we thought sounded a bit short, even for a PRE-concert program…so we’re curious to know what tasty hors d’oeuvres you’ve got planned for us.
We took some Chinese friends of ours, a pretty little couple, to the Swannanoa Chamber Music Festival last year, in the Mountains of North Carolina. We joined a wonderful music-lover friend at a restaurant in Hot Springs, and were enjoying the local trout…but none of us knew the Chinese word for “trout” and we were having trouble explaining which fish we were enjoying. Finally, I said to Zhi Xing, the pretty little girl of the couple, who loves good music, “Schubert wrote a very famous piano quintet named for this fish”–and THAT did it, and she said, oh, yes, oh, yes! It’s ZUN YU!!
My friend, who speaks Chinese, smiled at me and translated “zun yu” literally: “The Respectful Fish.”
And now, of course, whenever I hear the shimmering arpeggios of the last variation–who can hear them WITHOUT smiling??–I can’t help but think of the respectful Chinese fish.
I just cannot wait to hear you play it…but promise me you won’t let the Emerson bully you into playing too fast!
And for heavens’ sake, make them fix that Web page!
(http://www.emersonquartet.com/artist.php?view=cal&cid=1786)
July 1st, 2008 at 7:07 am
I am just listening to your Beethoven CD for about the tenth time. It is very good indeed, IMO.
I would like to hear you play some Faure - perhaps the Nocturnes. It is exceptionally difficult music to get right, but I reckon you could do it.
July 1st, 2008 at 1:02 pm
My friend just ran over to Lincoln Center to get our tickets–it was a choice between 13th row orchestra, where I’m sure we wouldn’t hear a thing, and box 7 where I can look at the back of your neck and watch the violist making faces (I shouldn’t make fun of him…he played a terrific finale of a Shostakovitch, the last time I heard the Emerson). Anyway, we’ll be breathing down your neck.
My friend also finally worked out what the heck all that stuff at the Emerson Web pages was all about–that THEY are going to play an arrangement, by Mozart, for String Quartet, of five of the Bach fugues–I didn’t know of the existence of this piece, so it DOES have a Koechel number! And then YOU are going to play the Mozart e minor violin sonata with one of the violinists, I suppose whichever one is sitting out the Trout.
So I was wrong, and they don’t have to fix anything.
Gosh, I’m looking forward to hearing you again!–I was broken-hearted that your recital with your Mother at the Y had to be cancelled, and I hope whatever the emergency was, things are better now.
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:46 am
It’s after Labor Day now; summer vacation’s over. Time to resume blogging. Suffering Biss withdrawal here!