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Triumph over Adversity – reflections on musical heroism

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Triumph over Adversity – reflections on musical heroism

By Neville Cohn

2004

In the countdown to the Athens Olympics later this year, the cream of the world’s young sportspeople are focussing on preparations for this celebration of youth which will be watched by millions as the sporting reputation of each sportsperson’s country hangs in the balance. Amid all this, it is easy to overlook a no-less-significant series of contests that will follow immediately after the Olympics in Greece.

And as anyone who watched the Paralympics that came in the wake of the Sydney Olympics will recall, the competitive edge was as keen there as in the more flamboyantly packaged main game that preceded it. And there are those who believe – as I do – that the grit and focus called for in the Paralympics equal (and, on occasion, may even exceed) the commitment of those participating in the Olympics proper. Here will be gathered amputees, paraplegics, the blind or partially sighted, cerebral palsied and intellectually disabled contestants, all determined to do their very best to demonstrate, as they almost invariably do, that however disadvantaged they may appear to be, they will triumph over adversity.

It is, of course, not only in sporting endeavour that the handicapped can prove their mettle. Consider music – and Beethoven, that most famous of all disabled composers who, after conducting the first performance of his Ninth Symphony, had to be gently turned round by one of the vocal soloists so that he could SEE the applause that he could no longer hear. This symphonic epic is one only of a stream of masterpieces that the stone-deaf master produced while locked in his terrifying prison of silence.

Beethoven was not alone in his affliction. Others suffering hearing impairment include Bedrich Smetana who had tinnitus so severely that it tipped the composer over the edge into madness. The finale of his String Quartet No 1 calls for the first violin to simulate the high-pitched “piercing, whistling sound” that rang almost continually in his ears. And while composing his opera The Devil’s Wall, Smetana remarked despairingly about the “pounding, and intense hissing in the head, as if I were standing under a big waterfall”.

Among the more unusual, indeed bizarre, instances of hearing impairment is that of Percy Wood, an organist who lost his hearing completely after an attack of meningitis. Despite this serious defect, he earned a doctorate in music from Oxford University and thereafter spent many years in a seaside resort preparing candidates for senior music examinations!

No less remarkable is Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie who pursues an international virtuoso career notwithstanding her claims to profound deafness.

Gabriel Faure, too, managed to turn out fine work despite having to contend with greatly reduced hearing in old age as well as lung problems from excessive smoking.

Among hearing-impaired musicians of more recent vintage are George Harrison, Engelbert Humperdinck, Cher, Barbra Streisand and Eric Clapton (as outlined in Sullivan’s Music Trivia).

An even more remarkable instance of rising above the ravages of lung disease is that of Chopin, so ill from tuberculosis that he would cough blood constantly, often, after recitals, leaving the keyboard crimson-stippled. Once, on a visit to friends in Scotland, he was so enfeebled by TB that he had to be carried upstairs to bed. All the while, he continued to produce a stream of piano works that are some of the glories of the keyboard repertoire.

Yet more evidence of functioning creative genius in the face of terrible illness was provided by Hugo Wolf, who would produce streams of superb lieder in bursts of blazing creativity in-between lengthy periods of confusion and despair in mental hospitals. And pianist David Helfgott, whose career was interrupted for long periods due to serious illness – and whose idiosyncratic personality was wonderfully characterised by Geoffrey Rush in the movie Shine – has continued to give recitals and concerto performances worldwide.

There are many instances of the power of the creative impulse overcoming serious handicaps. Delius is a case in point. Paralysed and blind due to syphilis, he would dictate his work note for note to Eric Fenby, his faithful amanuensis. Handel, too, went blind – but that didn’t stop him from giving the organ recitals that drew so many Londoners to his performances. Joaquin Rodrigo of Spain provided another inspiring tale of triumph over adversity. Born blind, he produced a stream of often wonderful music, much of which is now firmly in the standard repertoire.

And no-one who has had the pleasure of listening to pianists Alberto Colombo or Greek-born Themeli, would have said their performances were lacking due to their blindness.

A number of other pianists had successful careers despite the loss of an arm. The most famous is Paul Wittgenstein who was wounded in World War I resulting in the amputation of his right hand. He went on to a brilliant career, a pianist for whom Ravel, Prokofiev, Richard Strauss and Benjamin Britten wrote masterworks for the left hand and orchestra. Otakar Hoffman, also wounded in WWI, defied the odds and embarked on a successful career as a left handed pianist, often performing Janacek’s aptly titled Defiance for piano and chamber ensemble. Gary Graffman, more recently, has continued his virtuoso career although his right hand no longer functions; he often plays Ravel’s Concerto for the left hand.

Oddly, there are few instances of right-handed pianists, the most famous of whom would surely be Cyril Smith who suffered a cerebral haemorrhage while on a concert tour of the then-USSR in 1956. It left him with a paralysed left arm. So he re-invented himself as a one-armed pianist and for years performed successfully in recitals for three hands with his pianist wife Phyllis Sellick.

No less remarkable is the case of famed Belgian-born jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt who was burnt in a caravan fire while growing up in a gypsy settlement. Despite badly mutilated fingers on his left hand, he devised a method of fingering that helped him overcome his handicap to stunning effect as a member of the legendary Hot Club Quintet of France. And celebrated tenor Richard Tauber maintained a flourishing concert career despite experiencing often very severe pain from arthritis, an illness he never divulged to his admiring audiences.

There is also the strange case of Aksel Schiotz, the Danish tenor who was operated on for a brain tumour. He survived but was left severely incapacitated and had painstakingly to learn to speak and sing again from scratch. To his and everyone else’s astonishment, Schiotz discovered that his “new” voice was in the baritone range and with it he launched a second successful career.

Schiotz’s bravery was apparent in other ways. During the Nazi occupation of Denmark, he resolutely refused to sing for the German troops, instead giving recitals in secret for his fellow Danes.

Violinist Yitzhak Perlman has polio in both legs requiring the wearing of steel calipers; it has not got in the way of a brilliant career. Pianist Anne Sher, too, now in a wheel chair as a result of polio, was for years an acclaimed interpreter of Mozart’s piano sonatas, many of which she presented in recitals for the South African Broadcasting Corporation in Cape Town. Yet another polio victim who rose to the heights is ace English clarinettist Alan Hacker. Confined to a wheelchair, he has travelled extensively around the world as principal clarinet in one of the leading London orchestras.

For sheer determination and courage, oboist Leon Goossens’ experiences take a lot of beating. At the peak of his career, he was seriously injured in a car accident in which some of his teeth were broken, his jaw smashed and lip muscles injured: a catastrophe. Yet, with moral support from his famous family – and rare determination – Goossens taught himself to play again, using different facial and lip muscles to get his performances up to their former standard. Hardly less remarkable was the case of pianist Clara Haskil who carved out a distinguished career as pianist despite chronic illness and a severely disabling hunchback. She died, too young, of a fall down an escalator.

Then there is the case of pianist Steven de Groote, winner of the Van Cliburn Competition, who used some of his winnings to purchase a small plane which he piloted about the US until crashing in the Arizona Desert. Surgeons did wonders in patching up his severe injuries and he continued his brilliant career until falling prey to a virus that had infected some of the copious blood transfusions he’d needed during his operation. His death was an immense loss; he left a small but precious legacy of recordings. Nearer to home, was Jane Geeson, principal harpist with the W.A.Symphony Orchestra, who, stricken with terminal cancer, refused to give in to the insidious disease, remaining steadfast at her post and musically articulate almost to the end. Another musician who soldiered on, brilliantly, while battling the leukaemia that would eventually carry him off, was pianist Julius Katchen.

And is there a more poignant instance of soldiering on despite feeling the wind of the wing of the Angel of Death than Bela Bartok, dying of polycythaemia, propped up by pillows, with manuscript sheets held down by a clutter of medicine bottles, as, bar after bar, the composer tried to complete the orchestration of his Piano Concerto No 3 (fifteen bars were left incomplete when paramedics arrived to take him from his cramped, tiny New York apartment to hospital where he died soon after)?

Many other musicians, too numerous to chronicle individually, continue to rise above disabilities of many kinds; they are no less an inspiration than the many who, later this year, will vie for laurels at the Athens Paralympics.

© January 2004

2003 – Music in Perth

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An Overview                                           2003

reviewed by Neville Cohn

The death of an elder statesman of music, a visible greying of concert audiences, the possibility of the Terrace Proms collapsing ­ and the first ever performance in Perth of one of Wagner’s Ring cycle operas made 2003 a memorable year year for concertgoers.

After a long illness, emeritus professor Sir Frank Callaway, arguably Australia’s best known music educationist in international terms and founder of the University of Western Australia’s School of Music, died, full of years and honours.

Mere hours after his passing, a message of congratulations he’d dictated from his sickbed was read out to an emotional gathering to launch long-time colleague Wallace Tate’s book The Magic Touch, a treatise on piano technique and one of the most significant works of its sort to come off the printing presses in years.

The W.A.Symphony Orchestra notched up 75 years, a notable milestone marked by the publication of Marcia Harrison’s book Celebrating 75 Years as well as the commissioning by the WASO of fifteen Australian composers to produce 15 short works for orchestra. The last of these, by veteran musician Peter Sculthorpe, featured in the WASO’s last Master Series concert for the year. The 15 works will be released on an ABC Classics CD in 2004.

Of all W.A. music organisations, incidentally, it is only the WASO management which has tackled the endless problem of audience coughing in a practical and effective way by continuing through 2003 to offer throat lozenges gratis to anyone wishing to use them. It’s a long-standing initiative that might to advantage be emulated by other concert managements,

Almost entirely unsung, not only this year, but going back decades, are the St John Ambulance volunteers who front up for duty night after night at major concert venues around the town in case there’s a call on their first aid skills.

The Terrace Proms, the brainchild of emeritus professor David Tunley, a music fest that brings St George’s Terrace alive and jumping on one Sunday each year, was imperilled in 2003. The continued existence of this admirable initiative depends on an injection of capital. Are any white knights on the way?

Musica Viva, like many other concert-giving organisations, is concerned about a greying audience with dismayingly fewer younger people taking up the slack. In an admirable and resourceful way, Music Viva, the world’s biggest chamber music entrepreneur, reached out to younger folk through its Menage series this year, mounting high-level performances in venues patronised by young people – taverns, gay bars and the like. Whether this will have a positive medium- to long-term result, remains to be seen.

Similarly concerned, the WASO will also be making a pitch for young adults through its WASO Lounge series that’s aimed at patrons up to 36 years of age – and the orchestra’s Early Childhood program aimed at kids from the ages of two to six years continued to be of pivotal importance as have been the performances the WASO provided for primary and secondary school children.

The W.A.Opera Copmpany’s production of Cavalleria Rusticana was its most impressive effort during 2003. Superb sets with voices to match made this a memorable event. And reassuring evidence of substantial youthful potential was on show at the Australian Opera Studio’s admirable production of Die Fledermaus.

Over time, there has often been cause for complaint about the quality – or lack of it – of electronic amplification of high-profile, out-of-doors concerts. But at Jose Carreras’ performance in Supreme Court Gardens, the standard of amplification was superb, the best I can recall in twenty years. It’s a shame, though, that the star of the evening left something to be desired. It was left to a supporting act – soprano Rachelle Durkin – to take out top vocal honours.

There was more good news on the amplification front at the Octagon Theatre where an excellent sound system has been installed.

An increasing trend towards informality in concert giving, a breaking down of barriers between onstage musicians and audiences was often apparent in 2003. Whereas a generation ago, it would have been unthinkable for male musicians to come onstage wearing anything other than white tie and tails (still a feature of WASO concerts), nowadays most musos opt for lounge suits or even more casual attire.

Perth’s first taste of Wagner’s Ring cycle was a fine concert version of Gotterdammerung with Susan Bullock magnificent as Brunnhilde and Philip Kang unforgettable as a dastardly Hagen.

Minimalism guru Steve Reich fronted up – in trademark baseball cap – at Mandurah Performing Arts Centre in a celebration of his work. And TaikOz was far and away the noisiest offering of the year.

A noticeable trend during 2003 was the increasingly high profile of the tango, as much locally as around the world. Sparked by the ubiquitous Astor Piazzolla’s seemingly endless essays in the genre, tangos were much in evidence in recitals around the town, notably at the Terrace Proms where Cathie Travers and friends mined Piazzolla’s repertoire for a selection of tango gems that charmed the ear. And at Roger Smalley’s 60th birthday concert, we heard Travers’ The Tower, a finely crafted essay in tango mode, presented by the Australian Piano Quartet.

During 2003, a pageant of astonishingly accomplished young musicians from abroad came to Perth, among them a parade of world class violinists who appeared as soloists with orchestras, among them pint-sized prodigy Pekka Kuusisto in short works of Sibelius with the Australian Chamber Orchestra – and, in recital, Julian Rachlin with pianist Itamar Golan were flawless in recital for Musica Viva. And Perth’s Jessica Ipkendanz rose to violinistic heights in ensemble with pianist Raymond Yong. An older musician, violinist Shlomo Mintz was magnificent in the Sibelius Concerto.

Young baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes is clearly on a fast track to the stars. So, too, is Macedonian pianist Simon Trpceski, stunning in Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 1 with the WASO which scaled the heights in response to Paul Mann’s visually flamboyant conducting of Elgar’s Enigma Variations.

One of 2003’s odder offerings was an arrangement by Hans Zender of Schubert’s Winterreise with tenor Steve Davislim doing his best in ensemble with Zender’s extraordinarily fussy reworking of the piano part for small orchestra.

Two very different singers made their mark in 2003: Tim Freedom, of pop group The Whitlams, who seduced the ear with a stream of mellow sound and perfect diction in concert with the Australian Chamber Orchestra – and counter-tenor Andreas Scholl who reached for the stars in Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra.

© December 2003


Centenary of the death of Edvard Grieg

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by Neville Cohn

 

They were the oddest of odd couples.

 

Edvard Grieg was  the tiniest of men with a lifelong history of poor health. With his shock of white hair, Norway’s greatest composer looked, in maturity, rather like some superannuated Scandinavian elf. His friend, Australian pianist and composer Percy Grainger, was, in physical terms, Grieg’s antithesis, a fitness fanatic who, at all times, seemed positively to radiate energy; he’d think nothing of having a run of many miles immediately before giving a recital, on one occasion bounding into the concert hall doing somersaults.

 

Grieg fell seriously ill from overwork while studying music in Germany on a scholarship; he is now thought to have suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome.

Due to frequent illness, he was obliged often to cancel or re-schedule almost as many concerts as he participated in.

 

Grieg, who died on 4th September 1907, believed passionately in the

equality of all human beings. Grainger, though, would have none of this. He was an out and out racist, who believed that Nordic, blue-eyed blondes were the ultimate manifestation of racial purity and despised just about everyone else. Hitler would have approved. He wouldn’t even use standard Italian tempo indications such as allegro, andante or presto in his compositions because of his bizarre prejudice towards people of the Mediterranean.

 

For all these fundamental differences in outlook, the two men formed a close friendship, so much so that Grieg gave or bequeathed many unique artifacts to Grainger: numerous autograph or printed scores of the composer’s music with his remarks and corrections scribbled on the margins, many letters between Grieg and his wife Nina (all translated into English by Grainger), Grieg’s gold pocket watch and chain and an ivory napkin ring. These and more go towards making up one of the most important collections of its kind outside Norway, housed in the Grainger Museum on the campus of  Melbourne University.

 

Apart from his creative musical genius – and despite his physical frailty – Grieg had the courage of a lion. At the time of the sensational Dreyfus case – in which an innocent French army officer was wrongly accused, tried and sentenced for treason – Grieg boldly took up Dreyfus’ cause and, weighing vigorously into the controversy,

expressed outrage at this injustice despite receiving threats of physical harm. The tiny man flatly refused to cancel conducting engagements in France despite a very real risk to his safety.

 

Famous for his straight talking, Grieg stopped midway through a piano recital because King Edward VII was talking; he refused to continue until the monarch shut up. He was nonetheless courted by royalty: Queen Victoria invited him to play for her at Windsor Castle, and the German Kaiser, who knew a thing or two about music, invited Grieg onto his yacht where the Kaiser’s orchestra played some of Grieg’s music.

 

In this centenary year of the death of Norway’s most loved composer, concerts and symposiums devoted to his music are being presented across the world from Japan to Germany, across Scandinavia and in Australia, Britain, Russia and many American countries.  

 

It’s a shame that Perth music aficionados won’t have the opportunity in this centenary year of listening to a live performance of Grieg’s most famous longer work – the Piano Concerto in A minor. Despite being clobbered by more than a few musicologists who tut-tut about the concerto’s structural weaknesses, audiences – and pianists – can’t have enough of it. There are umpteen recordings of it in the catalogues. And for pianists seeking to play the work in accordance with Grieg’s instructions, there is available on compact disc, a dubbing of the original piano roll recording which Grainger made of the Piano Concerto. It’s a performance that has immense credibility as all the tempi and phrasing received the blessing of Grieg himself.

 

In the latter years of the 19th century, Grieg was arguably the most popular composer in Britain. His concerts, mainly as conductor, were such a strong draw that, almost invariably, hundreds of disappointed concertgoers would be turned away from halls where it was standing room only if you were lucky enough to gain admission. And in Bergen, Norway, whenever Grieg and his wife went for a walk, children would follow them, Pied-Piper-like, singing and whistling some of the composer’s best loved melodies.

 

Grieg’s fame in those years derived substantially from his so-called Lyric Pieces for the piano, delightful miniatures such as Butterfly, Puck and Wedding Day at Troldhaugen which were firm favourites with innumerable amateur pianists.

 

Grieg and his wife Nina (who were first cousins) had a famously rocky marriage. At times, Nina would feel jealous of Edvard‘s fame – but in strictly musical terms, she did a great deal to enhance her husband’s reputation through the artistry she brought to her singing of Grieg’s many fine songs.

 

To mark the centenary of Grieg’s death, Perth concertgoers will be able to hear soprano Sara Macliver with David Wickham at the piano in the Haugtussa songs, one of the composer’s most profoundly moving works. They are settings of Arne Garborg’s poems about a young girl who has the gift of insight into the supernatural world.

 

* The performance takes place on Sunday 9th at 3pm in the Music Auditorium at the W.A.Academy of Performing Arts. An attractive program, entitled Diamonds in the Snow, also includes songs by Sibelius and Schubert.