Virtuosi: A Defense and a (Sometimes Erotic) Celebration of Great Pianists

by Mark Mitchell

Virtuosi
A Defense and a (Sometimes Erotic) Celebration of Great Pianists
Mark Mitchell

A bravura performance!

"Vigorous, opinionated, and always entertaining, here is a personal essayist of great charm and sincerity. Mitchell's erudition―his collection of odd and illuminating bits of knowledge―is always a delight and adds a sauce piquanteto the whole dish!" ―Edmund White

"...a literary work of real élan, vibrancy, and grace―the very qualities that in his view define the virtuoso. [Mr. Mitchell explores] the traditional linking of musical and sexual virtuosity, the ethical implications of the original instruments' movement, the near deification of Mozart in Anglo-Saxon culture, and, in a particularly witty section, the relationship of the virtuoso to his stool. Throughout, Mr. Mitchell's prose is humorous, intimate, and unapologeticaly polemical." ―Cynthia Ozick

The artistic merit of performers with superior technique has long been almost ipso facto denied. At last, Mark Mitchell launches a counterattack. In essays crackling with pianistic lore, Mitchell takes on topics such as encores, prodigies, competitions, virtuosi in film and literature, and the erotics of musical performance. Liszt, Horowitz, and Argerich share these pages with the eccentric Pachmann, Ervin Nyiregyh ("the skid-row pianist"), and Liberace. The illustrations include rare portraits of long-forgotten girl prodigies, historic concert programs, and stills from a lost 1927 film on Beethoven. Punctuating this celebration of personal voice are vignettes, running from the beginnings of the author's obsession with the piano to the particularities of concert-going in Italy (where he now lives).

Mark Mitchell's piano studies led to a friendship with Vladimir Horowitz and other pianistic luminaries. With David Leavitt he co-authored Italian Pleasures and co-edited Pages Passed from Hand to Hand. He also edited The Penguin Book of International Gay Writing.

Genres: Music

193 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mitchell, editor of The Penguin Book of International Gay Writing and, with his lover, the novelist David Leavitt, co-editor of The Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories, wants to do a different kind of music writing: non-academic, stripped of "all the nonsensical private language and dangerous anticreative agendas that have bedeviled so much contemporary scholarship." Sounds good, I guess. Except that his own writing style can be fussy and precious, and is often topically self-indulgent. How weird is it that David Leavitt, who is in no way central to the book, has two index entries, one under Leavitt, the other under simply David?

Still, this was a very entertaining read. I found large chunks of it ludicrous, indefensible, and just plain mean, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself as my eyes rolled around in my head.

Mitchell's subject is the virtuosos of the piano. Virtuosity is "a marriage of interpretative and technical superiority," and Mitchell insists he doesn't want us to understand that it's anything other than that, but much of the book explains what other elements constitute virtuosity. The virtuoso throws caution to the wind, and plays balls-out, always flirting with danger and the demonic. For the non-virtuoso, the perfect performance, the "final statement," is the grail. The virtuoso, such as Vladimir Horowitz, "admires the rare butterfly in the meadow and walks on." The non-virtuoso, such as Alfred Brendel, wants to capture the butterfly and pin it under glass. Virtuosity isn't just about how the pianist treats the music, but what kind of reaction he or she elicits from the audience: it includes a physical, sometimes borderline sexual response.

Virtuosos, according to Mitchell:
Liszt, Evgeny Kissin, Krystian Zimerman, Alfred Cortot, Vladimir Horowitz, Rudolf Serkin, Maurizio Pollini, Artur Rubinstein, Claudio Arrau, Ivo Pogorelich, Martha Argerich

Non-virtuosos:
Alfred Brendel, Murray Perahia, Artur Schnabel, Radu Lupu, Tzimon Barto

"One might...be so bold as to assert that most virtuosi are homosexual," asserts Mitchell. Which is strange, because of the virtuosi he mentions, the only one I know to be homosexual is Horowitz. Van Cliburn was a young virtuoso, but then became a failed virtuoso because he allowed his career to be stunted. Mitchell mentions the gay Steven Hough, but I'm not sure he considers Hough a virtuoso. Of course there's Liberace, but are virtuosity and camp compatible? I find that a hard proposition to defend, myself.

What I find worst about the book are Mitchell's ad hominem attacks. There's an abominable segment on a Leon Fleisher recital, which seems to blame Fleisher for the freakshow aspect of his audience ("heavily rouged and voluble Fellini-esque old ladies in leopard coats"), which derides his sinister program that day (an all left-handed program, get it?), on a day when Fleisher was doing the favor of filling in for an ailing colleague! Mitchell cattily mentions that after listening to Fleisher's 1959 recording of the Liszt sonata with an Italian critic, the critic "suggested that it would have been better for the piano if Fleisher had lost the use of both of his hands." Really, the mind is boggled.

Then there's Mitchell's worshipful description of an Argerich concert where Argerich "struck" her page-turner for messing up. Like, struck, as in hit? This made Mitchell "love her even more."

In a chapter titled "A Homosexual Aesthetic," Mitchell suggests that gay pianists "are rarely 'size queens.'" Rather, "it is heterosexuals who want to play the big sonatas, the big concerti, who are driven to prove themselves strong, virile, potent, heroically hung." He mentions Perahia performing for nearly 2.5 hours in Florence, "as if, for him, Florence was a sort of locker room in which he wanted to prove that his musical penis was grander, or that his staying power was greater, than that of either of his colleagues." Apparently Mitchell has forgotten the time his idol, Horowitz, famously did some penis-waving of his own, playing the sizeable , warhorsey Tchaikovsky First Concerto with the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham at Carnegie Hall in 1928, ignoring Beecham's tempo, racing off to the finish as if playing by himself.

The book is riddled with typos.

[muk]

horrible