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Tributes to the Masters 大师缅忆

简介

GIST

In this time of Covid-19, the loss of cultural luminaries has an even greater significance than under normal circumstances. Losing their sage wisdom just at the time we seem to need it most seems especially cruel, as they have something special to impart that would save us all from ourselves. In the last two months alone, we have lost the great film composer Ennio Morricone and two titans of the performing world, Ida Haendel and Leon Fleisher. They and their music seem to recall an earlier era that we are all longingly nostalgic for.

 

Minimal Music

On hearing the film scores of Ennio Morricone, for example, I am immediately transported back to my youth. That singular “ah-ee-ah-ee-ah” followed by “wah-wah-wah” immediately recalls the sound of gunfire, the dust of the open desert, and the man with no name, as much as lazy Saturday afternoons watching Westerns from the sofa. To have just one more new score from that composer I would gladly pay just a few dollars more, even though he composed over 400 scores that quite literally made such films as The Untouchables, The Mission, Cinema Paradiso, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, just to name a few. His scores not only elevated the storytelling but transported the listener into the plot.

 

Maximal Effect

This is the special quality of Morricone’s music: that it was more than simple background but was truly operatic and integral to the plot. Sergio Leone, who catapulted Morricone to fame through his Spaghetti Westerns (a term and an association Morricone disliked), on more than one occasion asked Morricone to pre-compose music based on the story treatment or just verbal description of the drama so that he could play the music on the set for the actors and design the shots around the music. A number of directors including Leone, Quentin Tarentino, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Brian De Palma, among others, shot extended scenes without dialogue, showing only images supported by a sweeping orchestral score might last for tens of minutes in some cases, precious celluloid real estate, for the express purpose of highlighting the genius of the music crafted by this Italian maestro.

 

 

A Feeling for Composers

Leon Fleisher, who does as much to make one reminisce as much as Morricone, by his own admission felt a kinship with composers. In his own words, like many performers, he strove to play the music as if it was being composed moment by moment.

 

At the age of four, he hijacked his brother’s piano lessons by repeating from memory all that had just been played. As one might expect, it wasn't long before this child prodigy garnered the attention of a musical great, and acclaimed pianist Arthur Schnabel soon took him on as a protégé. But after his meteoric rise to stardom and being the first American to win the Queen Elizabeth competition in Brussels, Fleisher then began to experience severe deterioration in the fingers on his right hand, which he later attributed to focal dystonia, a disease relative to Parkinson's.

 

Looking from the Left

Here many would argue that a second career began, perhaps the one that truly cemented his legacy. Just three years after withdrawing from public performance, Fleisher began to perform works specifically composed for the left-hand alone, those which had been written for other pianists of stature also harpooned during their artistic vitality. These included not only well-known works such as the D major piano concerto by Maurice Ravel but also new pieces such as William Bolcom’s Concerto for Two Pianos, Left Hand and even those that had been shut in drawers for decades, such as Paul Hindemith’s 1923 Klaviermusik that Paul Wittgenstein had commissioned but which he didn’t like so he locked it away ― Fleisher premiered work in 2004.

 

Timing

His circumstances also gave him the opportunity to pass on his seemingly divine knowledge to a new generation of pianists. What is more, he claimed that the deficiencies in his right hand that restricted him from demonstrating aspects of technique and musicianship forced him to adopt a new and imaginative grammar to inspire his students. Above all he valued rhythm, which he considered the essence of music ahead of harmony and melody. Not rhythm for the sake of rhythm, but to play in his words “as late as possible but not too late.”

 

Alone in Society

Ida Haendel seems to have had this in common with Fleisher, acting as an inspirational pedagogue and mentor in the latter part of her own career. Also, in common was the theft of her sibling’s prescribed career path when, at the age of three, she picked up the violin of her older sister and played back everything her mother sang. Like Fleisher, Haendel was a fountain of witticisms and aphorisms and possessed wisdom that one can only earn by reaching their ninth decade. She lived most of her life alone, though she often claimed she preferred the company of strangers, loved to talk, and was curious to get to know everyone she met. She spent most of her life in Miami, Florida, a beloved fixture of the community both musically and as a woman of exceptional fashion and colourful hats, a social butterfly even at the age of 91.

 

Life’s Task

She attributed this youthful vigour to a conversation she had with her cousin at the age of five. When she told her cousin that she had been staring out the window thinking about death, her cousin replied it is not too good to think too long on death, for death finds those who dwell on it. Her personal mission became to fill up her life and to perform at all costs, even well into her 80s. But despite her outward attitude, many were surprised to learn how lonely she seemed to feel. Her response was a bit of wisdom that we all could use now; quoting Shakespeare that “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players…”, she continued, “we try to stay optimistic for the sake of other people. We must be optimistic for other people, and, of course, music is such a great help.”

 

The Wisdom of Music

As we celebrate the lives of these greats and relisten to their music, we also revisit their wisdom, to be late but never too late, to be optimistic, and rely on the great help of music in difficult times. And, perhaps one other piece of wisdom from the late Ms. Haendel can comfort us. When she moved from her hometown of Chelm in Poland as child, she believed she left a memory of her soul there, always to remain. In some sense each artist leaves a bit of their soul in their music, and like Shakespeare and his verse, they are never really gone.

 

To hear more details of their extraordinary lives and the music they made, tune in to Tributes to the Masters on 21 September for ‘Once upon a time in Italy: the life and works of Ennio Morricone’ and on 28 September for ‘Never Too Late: celebrating Leon Fleisher and Ida Haendel’.

 

 

大师缅忆   艾乐册            中译:李梦

 

疫情期间,音乐家的离世尤其令人伤感。在过去两个月,作曲家莫里康尼,以及两位演奏家韩黛尔和费莱沙先后去世,乐迷只能在他们的作品及其演出录音中,缅忆他们昔日的风采。

 

每当我聆听莫里康尼的电影配乐,思绪总会回到年轻时候。尽管他一生为超过四百部电影,包括《战火浮生》、《星光伴我心》等创作配乐,最让我念念不忘的却是《独行侠江湖伏霸》,片中的配乐不单提升叙事效果,也能让观众自然投入情节之中。

 

莫里康尼的电影配乐,绝不仅仅是背景音乐,更如同歌剧那样,与情节融为一体。导演李昂尼的西部电影让莫里康尼成名,他曾数次请求莫里康尼提前创作音乐,以便为演员和场景设计解释剧情。曾与莫里康尼合作的导演,包括李昂尼、塔伦天奴、贝托鲁奇、狄庞马等,作品中不时出现长达十数分钟没有对话的片段,以突显这位意大利作曲大师的出众天份。

 

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演奏家费莱沙曾说自己会像作曲家创作乐曲那样,努力不懈地演绎旋律。

 

四岁时,费莱沙已能弹奏出哥哥在钢琴课所学的曲子。不久,他的音乐天份得到著名钢琴家舒纳堡的赏识,两人更成为师徒。当费莱沙在乐坛崭露头角,成为首位赢得伊莉莎白女王国际钢琴大赛的美国人后不久,他的右手患上肌肉张力障碍。费莱沙并没有放弃演奏钢琴,他开始演出为左手而写的作品,包括拉威尔的D大调钢琴协奏曲和美国当代作曲家玻尔康的新作。他重视节奏,谈及音乐本质时,把节奏置于和声与旋律之上。

 

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因着右手无法弹奏,费莱沙不得不寻求新方法去启迪学生。在小提琴家韩黛尔职业生涯的后半段,她同样在音乐教育上投入众多心力。三岁那年,韩黛尔拿起姐姐的小提琴,拉奏母亲曾唱过的调子。她一生大部份时间在美国迈阿密独居,很喜欢与陌生人交谈,并对那些与她见面的人充满好奇。她不仅是音乐家,打扮亦富时尚感,喜欢戴上彩色帽子,直到九十一岁,仍是社交达人。她曾引用莎士比亚的话,称人生如戏,你我都是演员。在她看来,「我们必须为了他人保持乐观,音乐在其中,能发挥的作用很大。」

 

 

当我们怀念以上三位伟大的音乐家,重温他们的作品,我们更能明白音乐在这艰难时刻的存在意义。想了解他们的音乐人生,请勿错过9月21及28日(星期一)晚上8时的「大师缅忆」。

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