Huberman

[I hesitate to expose the listener to the following opinionated snippets from Brinkerhoff's ravings, but I suppose the reader always has the luxury of turning off the light and going to bed. --The Producer]

Each note on the piano is the product not only of the pianist, but of his teacher and the great unwritten traditions of teaching without which music is lost. I studied with Huberman. He in turn studied with Edward Steuermann. Steuermann premiered the Schoenberg Concerto under Stokowski, and also taught Alfred Brendel. Steuermann studied with Schoenberg and Busoni.

    Busoni, an intellectual to Liszt's gypsy, was the most important pianist of his age. His ascetic playing foreshadowed Schnabel. His credo echoed that of Huberman:

...by cleaning [compositions] of the dust of tradition, I try to restore them to their youth, to present them as they sounded to people at the moment when they first sprang from the head and pen of the composer.

    Schoenberg lies at the crossroads of music, representing the German Wagnerian school where it split with the lyric Russians, represented by Stravinsky. Schoenberg's world was that of fin-de-siècle Vienna: Berg and Webern were his students; Richard Strauss, Mahler, Alma Mahler-Gropius-Werfel, Loos, Kandinsky, and Klimt were his friends. Schoenberg's California circle included his student Steuermann, Max Reinhardt, Thomas Mann, Schnabel, Stokowski, and Schoenberg's brother-in-law, the violinist Rudolf Kolisch, another great influence on Huberman. Mann based his novel written at that time, Dr. Faustus, partially on Schoenberg and Mahler.

    Through the Steuermann Schoenberg Schnabel relationship, Huberman absorbed Schnabel's complex theories on Beethoven. Glenn Gould has said that Schnabel bypassed the piano on his way to music. As with Huberman, music was just a means of conveying a wider philosophy. Technique must have intellect behind it; it must convey the deeper meaning of the piece. Scales are meaningless without an agenda. As Abram Chasins said, "What Schnabel inveighed heavily against was that facility which not only became the end rather than the means, but also progressed through exhibitionism to vulgarity and compromise."

    Schnabel had studied in Vienna with Mandyczewski, who had studied with Brahms. Schnabel had also studied with Theodor Leschetizky, who taught Paderewski, Friedman, and Horszowski. Leschetizky had studied with Czerny, who studied with Beethoven. So Huberman was never too far away from Beethoven and Brahms, although as colored by Schoenberg the German ethos was severe, indeed.

    Music exists as a passing of time, a driven rhythmic event, but also as a static collection of chords which sink down into the ground and anchor the perpetual motion, so a dual continuum prevails where the unseen roots of a piece feed its waving leaves. On top of everything else, you must never forget those dying, amicable leaves. Without passion and pity, structure is so much schoolteacher talk.

    Although many teachers stress the need to forget everything in performance in the hopes that what remains will be convincingly your own, Huberman always believed it was necessary to remember everything, and instantaneously rethink it, a philosophy that always provided for a surprising performance. I remember one pianist who said to Huberman,

    "There's no time in concert to think. You have to let rote take over."
    Huberman admonished him, "Oh no, concerts are when you have to think deeper than ever."

    A few Beethoven manuscripts were on loan to the Conservatory. Examining them the day before a concert, Huberman noticed that Beethoven's slur marks were varied; later editors had standardized them. These new markings must shed light on the entire structure of the Appassionata. In order to convey it properly, Huberman refingered the sonata in a night, which is much harder than learning the original fingering, as you have to forget everything before you can remember it again. As musicians, we have to forget who we were yesterday in order to become what we will be tomorrow.

[It may then come as no surprise that Brinkerhoff is as analytical as he is, devoted more to the hidden structure of a piece than to its obvious merits. He is a vertical pianist: that is, he develops the voices of each chord over the more linear forward motion and drive of music, known as the horizontal factor.

    And yet he adds passion to his austere training. Rather than being well-rounded, he may simply be a freak going in two contrary directions, as has been suggested by Brinkerhoff himself. I would hardly, however, have flown around the world to record him had I thought him so divisive. Rather than separating, he unites the two warring factions of his nature. --The Procurer, I mean, Producer]