labrys, études féministes/ estudos feministas
janvier / juin 2013  -janeiro / junho 2013

What’s Special about Women Pianists?

Diana Ambache

ABSTRACT:

This article makes a survey of women pianists, past and present. It describes some of the challenges women have been faced with, as well as what they, as individuals, have brought to their music making. The on-going prejudice regarding women is illustrated through numbers of women appearing at the Proms. This is contrasted with the particular qualities each pianist has demonstrated in their playing.Each individual’s situation is described, from Fanny Mendelssohn (with her restrictive Father), through Clara Schumann’s multi-career (juggling concerts and family life), via Clara Haskill’s natural skills, and includes creative virtuosi like Amy Beach, and comes to present-day performers, such as Martha Argerich, Mitsuko Uchida and Angela Hewitt. Certain personal qualities appear with great regularity: sincerity, integrity, serving the music, dedication, and toughness. This expose really begs the question regarding why there still is discrimination in 2012.

Key-words: women pianists, discrimination

          My comments are about women pianists, from both the present and the past; they come from written accounts and recordings. In general, history has been written by men; in general, few women have been included. We got off to a bad start with the Bible (Ecclesiastes): "All the daughters of music shall be brought low". I want to ask whether gender is relevant, and see what women brought to their music making; so, this account comes from my own bias.

The piano is one of the most universal instruments, a favourite in middle class homes and international concert halls. Even though women pianists have been numerous, and have made a big contribution to this world, for a long time it was thought unseemly for women to have such a profession. Let’s find out about some of them.

To illustrate social attitudes, here’s a letter to Fanny Mendelssohn from her Father, giving potent expression to the problems of women musicians: "for you music can and must be but an ornament, and never the fundamental of your existence and activity." She was a child prodigy, who by the age of 13 knew the whole of Bach’s 48 Preludes and Fugues from memory. Indeed, she did live through music. Her Brother Felix, a real whizz of a pianist, readily admitted that she played the piano better than he did.

Anyway, Fanny found a way of performing: in the Sunday Musicales, at their Berlin home, and indeed she played with many of the great European musicians of her day. Generally, many of the early pianists were both players and composers. So I imagine how she played from the impressive intensity of her own compositions. She once described Hummel’s quintet as "a slight tumult among the fingers." The beginning of her Piano Trio is much in that vein; it was written the year before she died. She might’ve played this with violinist Joseph Joachim and cellist Julius Rietz.

Well before ideas were articulated of women juggling career and family together, Clara Schuman was doing just that: alongside her massive performing career, she also looked after a mentally unstable husband, and brought up 7 children. Her domineering Father groomed her for a great performing career, which is exactly what she had, receiving an enthusiastic reception over a 60 year performing career. Some people think she was even more impressive than Liszt; she certainly received many accolades. Chopin said of her "she is the only pianist in Germany who knows how to play my music".

Aged 19, her historic debut in Vienna was the first time anyone other than the composer performed Beethoven Sonatas; she played 3 of them. Indeed she was part of the shaping of the piano recital. She was the first to play by heart, which was criticized as ‘bad form’. She is also sometimes referred to as the most famous unknown composer, and again we can sense her through the rich melancholy in her own music.

In her wish to do her best, she became a kind of High Priestess of musical integrity; she entirely subordinated technique to the intentions of the composer. A critic commented on the Vienna recitals of her late teens "The appearance of this artist is epoch-making. In her creative hands, the most ordinary passage, the most routine motive acquires a significant meaning, a colour, which only those with the most consummate artistry can give".

Of course she was both the greatest advocate for and the supreme authority on music by her husband Robert. Her singing tone and expression clearly had a special eloquence and purity of expression: George Bernard Shaw described her as a "nobly beautiful and poetic player".

Musical recording only started some 5 years after her death; so we can’t hear her; but we can hear her students: they flocked to her because of her unique personal connections with important performing repertoire. Among her many successful pupils was the English pianist Fanny Davies, who performed with various important musicians, such as the violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim (who she called Jo-Jo). She left us some fine recordings of Robert Schumann’s music.

Another creative virtuoso from a little later was the American Amy Beach, who made her debut aged 16, playing a Moscheles Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Despite her husband’s disapproval of her composing, she was very successful - indeed so much so, that there were Beach Clubs all round America, and her colleagues called her "one of the boys".

Also contemporary with her was the Scottish born Helen Hopekirk. Her famous teacher Leschetitsky said she was "the finest woman musician I have ever known". Slightly bizarrely, The Musician magazine gave her immortality by her nose: in June 1912 they wrote "You will find that all musicians have noses that are broad at the base." This must be my problem: mine is prominent but narrow at the base; Hopekirk had a nose that was very broad at the base. Say no more.

The pianists we now come to generally concentrated on playing rather than composing. There was another Clara who was also a truly excellent pianist; Clara Haskill had the gift of giving the beauty of music in an almost effortless way. Her selfless simplicity made her known as a musician’s musician.

In 1961 Charlie Chaplin said "In my lifetime I have met 3 geniuses: Professor Einstein, Winston Churchill and Clara Haskill. I’m not a trained musician, but I can only say that her touch was exquisite, her expression wonderful and her technique extraordinary." She herself had an endearing, self-doubting vulnerability. However she made a classic set of recordings with the violinist Arthur Grumiaux, and her playing was always described in superlatives; her Mozart was ‘for the Gods’.

Something very special is going on when a pianist both makes a mark on their own generation and helps shape the playing and philosophy of the next generation. Clara Haskill left such a legacy of inspiration that some 3 years after she died, a Piano Competition was founded in her name, for those who pursue her musical ideals.

An English woman who used music to fortify people during the war was Myra Hess, through the concerts she organized at the National Gallery in London. She set the tone by playing her own arrangement of Bach’s ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’. Her playing has such sincerity and universality that it transcends her period. Despite a lifetime of public adoration, she also had a deeply entrenched humility; this was connected with her wish to transmit the spiritual truth enshrined in the work of the great masters. The words associated with her crop up regularly around women performers: simplicity, grace, beauty, nobility - and - toughness.

Eileen Joyce also gave her best during the war. Her glamorous looks tended to take attention away from her wide-ranging gifts as a player. Why does this happen to women? Although Mozart was small and ugly, this is rarely discussed.

I think I’ve only ever once heard talk about a man’s looks (no names!). He was described as a matiné idol, with a snazzy dress sense; possibility some assigned him a place below the top drawer because of this. Anyway despite Eileen Joyce’s tabloid-worthy mannerism of changing her dress in between items in concert (to suit the music she was playing), she was also a spectacular virtuoso and impeccable Mozartian. She provided the music for ‘Brief Encounter’.

The babushka-like Tatiana Nicolayeva was particularly known for her luminous interpretations of Bach. Inspired by this, Shostakovich wrote his famous Preludes and Fugues for her, and she made a film of them in 1992, a year before she died. Her authority makes this an important historical document.

I’ve been concentrating on classical performers; perhaps it’s time to mention a couple from the world of jazz and ragtime. Mary Lou Williams wrote and arranged music for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. Her wonderful comment "I did it, didn’t I? Through muck and mud" suggests not only humble origins, but also that she played at numerous American Festivals, and in England.

Some of us of a certain age may remember Winifred Attwell, from her beaming smile on the British telly. Her ‘Black and White Rag’ started a craze for a honky-tonk style of playing. She was the first black person to have a Number 1 hit in the UK singles charts. At a private party for Queen Elizabeth II she was called back for an encore by the monarch herself, who requested ‘Roll Out the Barrel’.

Now we’re getting into living performers, and Martha Argerich has been described as one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century. She is naturally gifted with a staggering technique. Her high voltage level of excitement makes her concerts electrifying; indeed one of her Chopin Concerto performances was described as "hell on wheels"! She has remarked that she feels ‘lonely’ doing solo recitals, and so she now happily embraces chamber music and concertos. She also works hard to support young musicians, both on competition juries, and through her annual Festivals in Switzerland and Japan.

Although there are now quite a number of fine pianists from the Far East, Mitsuko Uchida, stands out in a class of her own. Similarly, she has a long-standing commitment to the development of young musicians, through the Borletti-Buitoni Trust. Her own playing is regularly described as ‘in search of truth and beauty’. While being renowned for her interpretations of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, she has also illuminated the work of Berg, Webern and Boulez. The Royal Philharmonic Society awarded her their top prize, the Gold Medal, in 2012, for her great musicianship. Her acceptance speech included the following: "I don’t know how I deserve it..... I am a student obsessed with music.... I haven’t yet played well enough.... I am full of curiosity of what I might discover tomorrow...." Although she was made a Dame in 2009, I’m in no doubt she meant it.

With long history behind us and plenty of competition, when a critic comments on a player ‘raising the bar’ in the arena of Bach performances, you prick up your ears. Canadian-born Angela Hewitt has devoted much of her life to Bach. As with most of these pianists, her repertoire is actually much broader than this suggests. Having studied ballet as a child, she brings a dancing, springiness to his music. Is it too whimsical to suggest this many-tracked thinking is connected to women being said to be better at multi-tasking than men?

Joanna MacGregor deserves a mention for her innovative approach to making cross-genre connections; she is a pianist who combines playing classical, jazz and contemporary music.

So, how did we women do? We have come a long way from the constraints that Fanny Mendelssohn suffered. The people I’ve talked about are firmly in the pantheon of pianists. Yet, at the same time we can still notice statistics from the Proms: in 2012 only 5 out of 14 piano soloists were women. Not bad; but given the number of fine and fleet-fingered females there are, I wonder how long it’ll be until that figure is 50/50.

But returning to my opening statement about what players bring to their music, let’s check it out with Shakespeare: I think Hamlet’s instructions to the visiting players at Elsinore could also be applied to musicians: "do not saw the air too much with your hands, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and whirling of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this very special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature." It seems to me that the pianists we’ve met here fit that description well, with modesty, smoothness, and respect for the text. Indeed I heard a recent woman Olympian champion mentioning "calm intensity".

This has been a sexist article. If we are to use generalizations, then I would say that women play with honesty, care, tenderness, commitment, sincerity, plus a good deal of fire, energy and passion when appropriate. What’s not to like?

BIOGRAPHY:

Diana Ambache is a pianist, orchestra Director, researcher, musicologist and broadcaster. For 24 years, she ran the Ambache Chamber Orchestra, playing concerto solos, directing the group and programming their events. Together they gave over 40 premieres, and made several original CD recordings of music by women, for the BBC, Chandos Records and Naxos.She has given concerts and masterclasses in 34 different countries on 5 continents. Her broadcasts on the BBC and Classic fm have featured the work of music by women. She was short-listed for the 2002 European Women of Achievement Awards for her research into music by women composers; her discoveries are displayed on www.womenofnote.co.uk. Continuing her life’s work to raise the profile of music by women composers, she is currently setting up the Ambache Charitable Trust.

labrys, études féministes/ estudos feministas
janvier / juin 2013  -janeiro / junho 2013