Reviews
Here is the English translation of the full text of the review by Piero Rattalino in the Italian publication Musica:
"The New “Transilvano”
This DVD contains two longer sections and two shorter ones, as well as the biographies of Malcolm Bilson and David Owen Norris who collaborates with him. At first we attend a lecture at Cornell University in which Bilson explains how religiously the universal Urtext has been adopted today, yet how nevertheless ignoring the difference between notation and the text (la scrittura e il testo), nine out of ten times there is ignorance of how to read these hallowed Urtexts. He explains and explains, with many examples at the fortepiano, at the modern piano, using recordings, citing treatises; in short using all means necessary to convince the listener, always with a smile on his lips, never treating what he knows heavily, but in point of fact actually kicking music schools and their masters of solfeggio a bit in the rear (menando botte da orbi). Professor Bilson explains that in the 18th century a dotted note was not the firespitting monster that we are told to believe, and that how sometimes the value of a note should be executed at the last possible instant of its theoretical duration (how strange that he doesn’t quote Père Engramelle, with his instructional treatise on the calculations of the effective durations when constructing mechanical organs), how slurs coinvolve dynamics, how the sound of the fortepiano differs from the sound of the modern piano, not only in its timbre but also in its behavior after the string is struck, etc. etc. etc. It is a masterful coup when, after having spoken of music of the classical period, he plays recordings of a short piece of Bartók played by Bartók and a short piece of Prokofiev played by Prokofiev. The listener cannot but recognize, and is a bit thunderstruck, that Bartók and Prokofiev execute their music according to those very conventions that Bilson has just illustrated with the aide of the 18th century treatises.
This example might open a little debate in which Bilson might not want to participate. I remember a rather convincing remark of a certain critic who was enamored of the avant garde of the 19th century who, after having listened to “Bartók Plays Bartók” said “It is clear that Bartók the pianist was behind Bartók the composer.” Yet Bartók and Prokofiev followed a tradition that still distinguished between notation and text, not considering notation as a technical-executional order but rather as a code to be deciphered, and which thus becomes in itself a tradition, decoding the notation spontaneously, without basing itself on calculations and on reflections of the theoreticians of the 18th century. The fixing (identificazione) of notation and text was the work of Igor Stravinsky, and then of the New Music, whose hypotheses claimed to go back to the 18th century. Bilson notes in good-humored fashion that executing Bartók and Prokofiev à la Stravinsky is not exactly Bartók and Prokofiev, and furthermore are not Beethoven or Mozart either. We have witnessed the consequences of this type of thinking with the performance practices of the Baroque period, and we are beginning to see it in music of the classical period as well. Bilson kindly tells us that we even see it in performances of Chopin’s music, and he is certainly right. If Cortot and Rachmaninoff, more or less contemporaries of Bartók and Prokofiev, decoded the notation of Chopin according to a tradition that still was alive, then it is evident that their practices, as different as they could be from those of Ashkenazy or Pollini, should be studied not only for their historical value, but for their operative sense as well.
At this point I don’t want to develop in extenso what Bilson mentions en passant and bring in polemics. His civil and courteous manner of exposing the revolutionary results of his cultural-philological research wants to provoke us (and I happy to say that it does) yet is not intended to make us accept a priori dogmatic conclusions, but rather critical reflections on the practices that were prevalent in the second half of the 18th century. This will certainly not be easy psychologically for anyone who has spent his life calculating exactly the value of dotted notes, and to realize that he has been chasing a chimera. And yet, liberating oneself from the seductions of a chimera can be a relief for the spirit…
In the second big section Bilson is in his studio in company with David Owen Norris, musician and pianist but not an expert on the practices and instruments of the classical period. Here the discourse becomes more articulated and gets down to more particulars, because the conversation is now being carried on by two professionals, yet the main argument doesn’t change and neither do the general perspectives: Norris personifies one who, when confronted with something with which he is not familiar, doesn’t offer a preconcieved rebuttal but rather asks for an explanation, solicits examples, attempts to experience for himself the feel of the fortepiano keyboard under his fingers and seems to enjoy the experience. In two brief sections we see Bilson play respectively the Fantasy in C Major by Haydn (on a copy of an Anton Walter of 1795 in the Esterházy Palace in Hungary) and the Moments Musicaux Nos. 2 + 3 of Schubert (on an André Stein of 1830 in the Brahmssaal of the Musikverein in Vienna).
Beautiful performances, but not so surprising as one might imagine. Bilson, born in 1935, still belongs to that generation of pioneers of performance on original instruments, who proceed with prudence, with circumspection, endeavoring to avoid the risks of the elephant in the china closet. Risks which however his student Tom Beghin does take in the complete Beethoven Sonata cycle recorded in several venues by seven players for Claves Records, Bilson among them. Beghin enjoys the advantage that the “second generation” enjoys in any camp: he inherits yet busies himself to spend that inhertance well, rather than increasing the patrimony. The future: will it be Bilson or Beghin? Or will it be Levin, who occupies a middle ground? I wouldn’t be able to predict it, and in fact don’t feel like going where my heart might carry me.
There are subjects in this DVD that Bilson does not touch upon, or merely grazes: for example, added ornamentation (of which we find the most beautiful examples in his Mozart recordings), tuning, improvisation. Nevertheless, I repeat, in the most engaging way he sets out along the road of the treatises, treatises that speak and resound and visualize. Will this be the treatise of the 21st century, will this be the new ‘transilvano’? In 1593 Girolamo Diruta published the first part of a treatise in the form of a dialogue on the ‘true art of playing organs and quilled instruments’, dedicated to ‘Sigismund Báthory, prince of Transylvania’. In Transylvania, where the Italians went to make both war and sport with the Turks (Monteverdi also went there with Vicenzo I Gonzaga), music was known and loved but was not always up to date with the latest novelties. In Bilson we find a little bit of the new transilvano, if he likes, their new Diruta.
The new DVD is not distributed in Italy, but can be got on the internet, for $39.95 at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Bilson and Norris speak English, the DVD has English, French and German subtitles.
~ Piero Rattalino, Musica magazine, 2006