Try and Maybe

“Who the hell is playing that Bach suite,” I asked Raf, the excellent gentleman at the café who gives me great coffee. Well, Bach now lives on iPhones—in this case Raf’s iPhone—so he was able to tell me.

“Rostro… …povich.. Some Russian guy…”

Could it be true? I went to YouTube to see, or rather to hear. And yes, the same Rostropovich that could be ardent, heroic, tender, raging, mythic, you-add-your-own-adjective in the Dvorak concerto was not so much playing the Bach suite as assaulting it.

Look, his was an age that knew relatively little about baroque interpretation…well, that’s what I was about to write. But then I looked up Anner Bylsma, who is famous for playing both the modern cello and the baroque cello. And yes, he plays in what is now tiresomely called “historically informed performance,” or sometimes “historically informed style.” And he’s only seven years younger than Rostropovich….

Back up for anyone who didn’t spend time in music conservatories in the seventies or eighties. Generally, students were taught to play music essentially the same way. True, if you were playing Bach, you weren’t supposed to have the lush, rich tone of Rachmaninoff. You aimed for simplicity, clarity, articulation; with Bach especially, you tried to bring out the musical ideas: the counterpoint, the harmonic progressions, the lines and phrases.

Into this picture emerged a new group of players whom everyone accused mentally and occasionally orally of being unable to tackle the technical challenges of the classical / romantic literature. Because let’s face it—the Dvorak concerto is not something you give to a beginning student. However, any kid in high school can saw his way through a Bach solo cello suite. They’re just not that hard.

And so the new group specialized in playing baroque music, learning the historical performance practices, refitting their instruments, using gut instead of metal strings, adopting a convex instead of a concave bow. And in those years, there was a lot still to be learned, and a lot of controversy about what was and wasn’t authentic.

The historically informed performers (hey, let’s call them HIPsters!) tended to bunch together and look down on the rest of us—or so it felt to me at least. And they also tended to play in ways that—however deadly correct—were completely uninteresting and unmusical.

The good news? Most of us grew up, began to listen to each other’s playing, and began to find out ways to make music that was—apparently / supposedly—consistent with what Bach and other Baroque composers might have wanted. But the point was that it was music, not an exercise in historical performance.

Well, I said we grew up, but did we? Because my current feeling is that the “early music people”—as we used to call them—have gone on, learned, and started to create some astonishingly beautiful music. Bylsma, for example, recorded the Bach suites twice: in 1979 and then again in 1992. And while I’ve heard criticism of the recordings from HIPsters, the recordings are out there and should be listened to, especially if you’re in the business of playing the suites.

That said, why was the young conservatory (I presume) student I heard playing his cello in the New York City subway rendering a Bach suite in exactly the same way as did Casals, all those many decades ago when he was championing the works? Has performance practice become fossilized? Are we to go on playing the suites as Casals played them for the rest of all time?

The curious thing is that—reportedly—Casals was never particularly satisfied with his recordings of the suites: he felt, as I recall, that they were all too slow.

For years, I disliked the suites, and felt that they were greatly inferior to the solo violin sonatas and partitas. Still, I played them, since they occupy a central place in the repertoire. And more—they are to cellists as the Bible is to Christians. There are other religious writings, as there are other pieces of music for the cello. But for many of us, a part of every day is given over to Bach, even if we don’t play Brahms or Beethoven on that day.

And now? I’ve started to like them a lot, and only discovered why yesterday. I was in the café, recording myself—but that wasn’t it. I was on a small stage, across from which was a long mirror. I thus had a perfect chance to watch myself play. And what did I see?

‘What was the big deal, for all those years’ was what I thought when I first saw myself. Because there was nothing physically difficult, nothing strained in my arms or neck or torso. My fingers were making funny little movements up and down on the fingerboard; my left hand was making funny little movements sideways with the bow. Wildly, for a moment, I conceived the idea that anyone, anywhere, could be taught in ten seconds to play the cello as well as I was playing. Silly little movements here, silly little movements there—presto, you’re a cellist!

It wasn’t that I made it look easy—it was that it was easy. I could have been playing the fastest movement, and still have given you directions to Plaza las Américas, our largest mall.

That was part of the equation. And the second part? Well, I turned to a clip of the Master himself—Casals—giving a master class to a young cellist at the University of California, Berkeley. The cellist plays correctly, if somewhat unimaginatively; Casals responds simply by playing the same passage as he would play it.

Sadly, however great he was as a cellist and as a musician—he was a bit lacking as a teacher. Yes, any student can hear that his teacher plays better than he or she does: he knows that, that’s not the point. The point is how to get to the level of the Master.

The student was playing the opening of the Brahms E minor sonata—a wonderful, expansive, Brahmsian theme. I heard what Casals was playing, and the difference between his rendition and the students: Casals was being metrically precise, giving each note its proper length, and playing strictly in time. In addition—ever so slightly—he was emphasizing the first and third beats. The effect was to give the passage the feel of a dirge, of something solemn and majestic that drove to a climax.

Casals could play it; he couldn’t explain it. And as I saw myself yesterday, I realized that I had taught myself what I believed about the suites. I had thrown out most of what people had told me, I had played them in wildly different ways in various tempi, and various styles. I had made them beautiful, I had made them ugly; I played them as I might play Brahms, or as I imagined Bach would want me to play them.

I stopped caring, you see. There have been other cellists, who have played them better than I. There will be other cellists, who will play—perhaps—them much better. But you know what? I don’t care, nor do I need to. And in that space, that freedom from the tyranny of teachers or the disapproval of audiences, I made my peace with the suites.

“Oh, no; oh, no!” cried Casals to the student. “Don’t separate the notes at all, don’t separate them at all!”

I winced.

I grew up with a lot of “don’t,” you see—with an occasional “do,” added for good measure.

I now live in “try” and “maybe.”