Sandstone Press

Mitsuko Uchida

Posted by RLD on 20th September 2009

Have you heard this joke? The theatre manager is called to the stalls where a patron is reported to be making a nuisance of himself. When he arrives he finds the man slumped over three seats, his arms spread expansively across the backs, his legs resting on the seats in front. The manager asks, ‘Excuse me sir, do you have tickets for all those seats?’ to which the man replies, ‘Uh-huh uh-huh, hawa-awa-awa’. Unconvinced, the manager asks, ‘May I see them, please?’ and the man replies as before, ‘Uh-huh uh-huh, hawa-awa-awa’. Annoyed, the manager asks, ‘May I ask your name, sir?’ Again the man replies, ‘Uh-huh uh-huh, hawa-awa-awa’. Nearing the end of his tether the manager asks, ‘And where are you from?’ to which the man replies, ‘the balcony’.

This hoary old conker was recalled by a circuitous, not to say tortured, route while I was booking seats for Mitsuko Uchida’s recital at Perth Concert Hall tomorrow night. Yes, Mitsuko is performing THAT far north. Not THIS far north (Eden Court take note), but within striking range – a mere two hour drive from here with costs further increased by bed and breakfast for two and a restaurant worthy of the occasion. Worth it? You’re darn tootin’. My frock coat with the deep pockets, pinstripe breeks and waistcoat with the huge shiny buttons are already laid out.

Mitsuko will be performing Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas. Played consecutively they are usually thought of as one of the great journeys in music, beginning not with a crashing, attention grabbing chord but a tender melody (Beethoven by this time was either assured of his audience’s attention or, more likely, couldn’t give a toss), and ending over an hour later with a long series of trills that lead not into any kind of otherworld but, I think, a state of acceptance.

He had a good deal of accepting to do by this time. His obsessive nature had acquired him custody of his late brother’s son after a protracted and bitter legal action with the boy’s mother. Young Karl was none too happy about the arrangement, nor with being loaded with his uncle’s ambitions for a musical continuation of the family line. He ran away to Mum frequently, only to be dragged back, and on at least two occasions tried to take his own life. Legal proceedings ended about the time the first of these sonatas was published and during composition of the second although it is hard to believe that all three were not at least conceived at the same time. Beethoven was also thoroughly deaf by now and drinking heavily. Obsessive, super-creative, unfeeling of others, drunk, this is my kind of guy.

My favourite vignette of the man comes later in the remaining five years of his life when he doodled more or less constantly at the piano, sometimes remembering to eat what his landlady had laid out, sometimes not, otherwise existing on claret, never washing. A few friends, faithful perhaps to the gift more than the man, or perhaps sympathetic to the man imprisoned and driven by talent as another might be locked into a destructive love affair, would enter his rooms at night to leave fresh clothing and take away the old. I don’t know that he ever noticed unless they omitted to refill the decanter.

Late works have a seductive quality I find disturbing; that is, the idea of late works. It might be in the expectations that the audience brings rather than anything inherent in the ideas of the author (meaning, also, composer). I recollect here the dark attraction that Amos Oz wrote of, remembering his mother’s suicide. ‘This crafty hunter of the broken-hearted, this vampire wooer with a voice as bittersweet as that of a cello on a lonely night, a subtle, velvety charlatan, a master of stratagems, a magic piper who draws the desperate and lonely into the folds of his silken coat. The ancient serial killer of disappointed souls’. There seems to be something in human nature that makes us want to enter that melancholy darkness.

For the closing words of his Of Late Style Edward Said chose these. ‘Objective is the fractured landscape, subjective the light in which – alone – it glows into life. He [the artist] does not bring about their harmonious synthesis. As the power of dissociation, he tears them apart in time, in order, perhaps, to preserve them for the eternal. In the history of art late works are the catastrophes.’ In music that ‘in time’ has a particular meaning. It does in books also, and I wish more prospective authors understood it.

For all my respect for Edward Said I cannot see the last sonatas as catastrophic. For me they are filled with life. Just before he goes into those amazing trills Beethoven anticipates a hundred years of musical history and scores, of all things, a piano rag. The unexpected break from piano rag to triplets, from bar room to cathedral, works in spades. Deployment of the unexpected is the watermark of a mature, accomplished artist.

My guess is that Said’s catastrophes are usually imposed by audience expectation, not artist intent. These late works in particular are about life and if Life contains Death well and good. That is to be accepted and on the word ‘accepted’ the circle closes. The closed circle, which is all of life, also contains profound beauty and onto the stage at Perth Concert Hall tomorrow night will step another profound beauty, Mitsuko Uchida. I’ll be there with a rose between my teeth.

These are changing times for us Stage Door Johnnies. Long, lonely waits in the rain have been replaced by impatient scourings of the internet. Instead of shivering under our top hats we can spend hours watching Mitsuko on You Tube talking about Schumann, talking about Schoenberg, talking about Haydn and Mozart. She has recently come out as a secret Bach player. ‘Come out’ are her own words – only Mitsuko! Soon, and here I turn my eyes heavenwards in mute appeal, there may be a Bach recording.

She speaks thoughtfully of language families especially German which became the language of her youth after her diplomat father was posted to Vienna, the mind set and loyalties. Come to think of it, she must have arrived about the same time as Alfred Schnittke left. Her adult life has been mostly based in London. A citizen of the world her poles are Japan, Austria and England.

She lives the music when she plays, as is made obvious by those You Tube videos. That expression, at first quite distracting, is ecstasy. Then again, looking at the expression she adopts on the album cover of these Beethoven sonatas it could be that she is – oh, say it could not be – but, could it be - something of a drama queen. I do hope so.

The woman lives to commune ethereally with Johann, Joseph, Wolfgang and Ludwig, the Germanic tradition that has marked her so powerfully and well, and what man of flesh and blood can compete on such a plane? Let’s face it though, for all I talk of adoration (and I do, I do) what I really want is to take her in my brawny arms and bruise her lips with powerful kisses. My chances? You’ve got it first time.

These days us Stage Door Johnnies are mostly deprived of even a fleeting glimpse that isn’t stage managed, so here is my plan. The piano rag will be my cue to get out of my seat at the back of the balcony and begin my run, if possible in 9/8 time. By careful judgement of my all too short stride I can launch myself from the banister and send myself flying over the two and sixes, whipping a pre-purchased bouquet (mixed bulbs, £3.60 from Tesco, good value) out of my pocket as I go, until over the one and nines I begin the arc of my descent.

Landing three or four metres short, the impact absorbed by my ample tum, I will skid along the stage on my weskit buttons, bouquet held aloft, my other hand reaching out, let us not say desperately. Life has been in many ways disappointing but I know that if I can, even once, fondle that woman’s toes I will die a happy man.

The great danger is that I might overshoot and land actually on top of her, driving the four legs of her chair through the stage floor, followed by soloist, SDJ and the Perth Steinway, ultimately sending a shower of harp strings and keys high into the air. The audience, who in Perth do not know their music as we do in Highland, will think it all part of the show and applaud the billowing cloud of gauzy chiffon that settles slowly over the wreckage. As an only possible benefit this might, at least, bring an end to Paul McCartney’s ponderous metaphor about race relations.

Not to worry, in most things in life I fall short. Why should this be different? That danger averted, Mitsuko, I suspect, will hardly notice. Well used to men dropping at her feet, most of them dead before they hit the ground, she will sweep the flowers from my hand, rightly seeing them as her due, and step over me to receive her applause. My bold flight gone for naught I might as well have landed in the stalls, glumly muttering Uh-huh uh-huh, hawa-awa-awa!

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Mitsuko Uchida’s web site is at http://www.mitsukouchida.com There are many Mitsuko videos on You Tube, all worth watching and none difficult to find.

The choice of books on Beethoven is more or less endless but I have never found any of them satisfactory, certainly not John Suchet’s, one of the few books I have actually thrown in the bin.

Mitsuko Uchida’s recording of the three final Beethoven piano sonatas can be found here http://bit.ly/NmWYg It is, of course, brilliant.

The Amos Oz quote again comes from A Tale of Love and Darkness, a book which continues to resonate for me in recollection. Here it is again on Amazon http://bit.ly/1oXrWC

The quote from Edward Said was taken from his On Late Style, which can be found here, http://bit.ly/2sm42T One of the three books he completed in a storm of creativity before succumbing to leukaemia it makes a timely, if not thematic union with From Oslo to Iraq http://bit.ly/IecBS and Humanism and Democratic Criticism http://bit.ly/1TVtRD

I found the last of these a struggle but I’m not the sharpest note on the scale, as Mitsuko would undoubtedly agree.