Reviews
"Diese DVD ist etwas ganz Besonderes and etwas Einmaliges, was man sich häufiger wünschen würde: eine grandios lebendige Vorlesung auf DVD. Zudem ist es eine DVD, die so viel Wissenswertes parat hält, dass nicht nur Pianisten sie unbedingt ansehen sollten, sondern alle an Musik Interessierten. Denn Bilson ist ein Spezialist, der so teif in der Materie ist, dass er das zu Erklärende bravourös auch für den Laien verständlich macht. Zwar ist diese DVD nur in englischer Sprache verfasst, doch die deutschen oder französischen Untertitel lassen alles bestens verstehen. Eine DVD, die ein Muss für jeden ist!"
Deutscher text komplett. Here is the complete text of the review in German.
English translation
Here is the English translation of the full text of the review by Carsten Dürer in the German publication PIANONews:
"What awaits one when one inserts this DVD into the player and Malcolm Bilson apears on the screen is rather unusual. Bilson, as the insiders know, has for many years been concerned with sound, with comparison of older and modern instruments, and with Urtexts and autographs. Malcolm Bilson is however not an Early Music specialist in any narrow sense; rather he is one of those pedagogues, musicologists and pianists, who concern themselves with every facet of music, who go to the bottom of things, constantly searching for answers. And it is just this all-encompassing theme that is the subject of Bilson’s lecture called “Knowing the Score," presented at Cornell University in Ithaca New York. “Knowing the Score” has a double meaning in the English language—one is that we should learn to read the notation properly, but that also we should really know what the music is about.
Malcolm Bison stands before a curious but at the same critical audience and lectures about—what exactly?; it’s somewhat difficult to bring it all under one hat. In the long run Bilson is after the substance of the written notation and how this can be transformed into actual playing. To that end he has not only a modern piano and a replica of a Viennese fortepiano on the podium, but he illustrates his lecture with an enormous number of notated examples and excerpts from recordings of famous pianists who have translated these examples into actual sound. And what he teaches us is remarkable. That, for example, the written notation must be interpreted—that one of the many current Urtext editions gives only an inkling of the idea of the composer, which we today as interpreters can only fully realize through an accumulation of knowledge from many sources.
Bilson naturally treats the differences between instruments from then and those of today and explains that not only is the sound of these instruments different from each other, but also the rate of decay. With these ideas at the back of our minds, one quickly realizes that the interpretation of works from earlier times on a modern instrument will have to be different, above all with regard for the original idea of the composer as he drafted his composition for the instruments of the time.
Malcolm Bilson comments and talks with fluency, poses questions and demonstrates differences on both instruments, and convinces those skeptics in the audience and in front of the screen with his demonstrations. But he is not dogmatic. Rather he wants to call attention to the theoretical sources (as for example Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach’s Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments) which only in connection with notation can give a clear picture and lead to convincing interpretations, and to a true understanding of the expressive power of works of earlier times. It goes without saying that everyone should concern himself to some extent with these earlier instruments if he wishes to achieve a corresponding expressiveness on the modern one. And as well with the familiarity of musical forms and above all the exact reading of the notation with its slurs and dots, with its upbeats and downbeats. All of these things are as important as the command of an instrument. Bilson does not limit himself to works of Mozart and Schubert or Beethoven etc. He speaks as well about Prokofieff and demonstrates through Prokofieff’s own recorded performances that even with composers such as these the exact study of the text and its meaning is important.
One of the most important statements is: "I believe that when we learn to read the notation properly, there will actually be more freedom than is usually permitted in music schools and conservatories today.” And further: “Analysis means that I understand the piece, and intuition is what I need to make it beautiful.” And that’s what it’s all about: More freedom, if one knows how to read notation, for freedom is actually inherent in the text, and encourages playing that is neither even nor static. Based on a true understanding, ‘Passion’ and ‘Excitement’ can come into one’s playing.
The camera work and the musical examples on the screen keep us as engrossed as Bilson’s demonstrations and descriptions. But there is more to be seen on this DVD. There is a very interesting and astonishingly informative conversation between Malcolm Bilson and the English pianist David Owen Norris in Bilson’s music room, in which several pianos from the late 18th and early 19th century are available. Naturally there are discussions, demonstrations on the instruments and explanations as to why this or that composer wrote in such a personal way for this or that instrument. Here too: knowledge produces freedom in playing.
Two further examples show how all these ideas become realized in sound: Bilson plays Joseph Haydn’s Fantasy in C in the Music Room of the Esterházy Castle in Hungary on a copy of an Anton Walter fortepiano from 1795. And in the Brahms-saal in the Vienna Musikverein he plays two Moments Musicaux of Schubert in a live concert on an André Stein fortepiano built in 1830. Unfortunately the quality of sound of these is not as excellent as on the rest of the DVD.
This DVD is something quite special and unique, the kind of thing one wishes to see more often: a grandiose and lively lecture on DVD. At the same time it contains so much valuable information that it is not only pianists who should see it but all who are interested in music. Bilson is indeed a specialist who goes deeply into the material and yet can explain things with a flair and bravura that makes it also understandable to the layperson. Although the DVD is entirely in English, the German and French subtitles make everything easily understandable. A DVD that is a must for everyone."