Lisa Batiashvili: I’m playing a gay concerto
NewsThe Georgian violinist describes her new DG recording of the Szymanoski concerto as follows:
It ‘tells about the love and pain of a man who had to deny his feelings for another man because at the time this love was both by law as condemned by society. The music dances between eroticism and pity, between a dream world and bitter reality.’
Her conductor, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, adds: ‘Music begins where words end. What’s special about music is that it allows us to say things that we sometimes don’t even admit to ourselves…’
I don’t have the exact quote in front of me, but Antal Doráti once said something along these lines about interpretation: “We [conductors, instrumentalists] are not the interpreters. Our listeners are the interpreters. Therefore, it is up to us to put forth the most honest, accurate, and sincere reading of the composer’s score so that every audience member can arrive at his or her interpretation.” I greatly appreciate the heartfelt sentiments of Ms. Batiashvili and Mr. Nézet-Séguin, but I prefer to arrive at my own conclusions about a piece rather than being told categorically what it “tells about” or “means”.
Certainly, nobody here “categorically” obstructs Mr. Stern from “arriving at his own interpretation”. However, I imagine it impossible that Maestro Dorati meant that the musicians should play bare notes, devoid of their own associations! His own presence on the podium would be rendered superfluous. All Miss Batiashvili is quoted here as saying is what her (historically informed) inspiration might be behind her performance of the piece.
Oh, there is still forbidden love, and in Germany & the UK, it might bring the the police to your door, literally:
The love for God and nature, the subject of many of the greatest and most beautiful musical works, as evidenced by “Soli Deo Gloria”.
Meanwhile in Europe of our time:
“A 71-year-old pastor of a north London church was arrested on April 23 under the United Kingdom’s Public Order Act for allegedly making “homophobic comments” during a public sermon, video shows.
_ _police approach and appear to physically strike him as he’s led away in handcuffs.
_ _he was preaching about the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman at the time of his arrest.”
https://www.newsweek.com/pastor-arrested-after-sermon-marriage-police-cite-complaints-homophobic-comments-1588129
Regarding freedom of expression of homosexuals, that only goes for liberal atheists, not conservative Christians.
Nothing could be more offensive to various empires than the warning of the apostles:
Jude 1:7 “Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.”
Ancient Rome and modern Europe know how to react:
2. TIMOTHY 3: “12 Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.”
I remember Barenboim complementing the playing of Batiashvili: emotional, not sentimental. Well, Szymanowski, we now read, is “eroticism”…Farewell to good taste, then, welcome, academic porn.
Both Tchaikovsky and Szymanowski may well have been homosexuals, but only the latter`s violin concerto is gay. It is a mess of notes on paper. Tchaikovsky`s is beautiful music.
Completely agree, sometimes when I hear Horowitz playing Rachmaninoff étude tableau op33 no 5, I cannot help thinking all the rage he releases comes from all the restraint and the closet life he was living…. but that’s just me.
Sadly, this kind of love is still condemned and despised in Polish society today, and not just Polish society.
There are still stonings of gay people in Poland, and we all know the Polish government strenuously denying Chopin was gay/bisexual despite the overwhelming evidence found to support that he was.
And what is the ‘overwhelming’ evidence that you cite, regarding Chopin?
Stoning of gay people in Poland ? You mean Iran or Saudi Arabia ?
“Still” stonings of gay people in Poland suggests that it is a historical practice that continues to this day.
Surely you have got the wrong country. Probably also the wrong continent.
However, since you ask, you have my pardon for this rather silly error.
“Still condemned”? Poland decriminalised homosexuality in 1932, Britain in 1967, when the age of consent for homosexuals in Poland was, I believe, 15 (21 in the UK). Of course there are bigots in Poland, as there are in all countries. What the Polish government objects to is being railroaded by the EU with a package LBTG+ political measures; it considers these are matters of social mores for the people of Poland, not the EU, to decide. This is a complex issue which touches as much as sovereignty, democracy and social cohesion as it does on homosexuality.
If Polish people vote for conservative government, that’s just democracy. Maybe they don’t agree with EU ideology who pictured in their last campaign a 7 years old wearing a veil at school…..
The truth is, I suspect, that most people just don’t care whether Chopin was gay – or any other person for that matter. Yawn. But they do care about the Thought Police coming to their door if they make the slightest allusion to it all. Switching persecution from gays to the general population, anyone??!! It’s a game everybody can play!!
That Szymanowski was a homosexual is beyond doubt as he himself attested to it. That he was a great composer is, to me, beyond doubt too.
That being said, the assignation of sexuality to a piece of music solely through the composer’s proclivity is pure nonsense – simply someone’s subjective attempt to exploit it in order to further a political agenda. Was Haydn a potential Nazi because his Emperor’s Hymn was used as Hitler’s anthem? Is Bruckner’s 7th Symphony a devoutly Catholic work? Is Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings a homosexual work? Does Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 promote Communism? Was Szymanowski’s Symphony No. 4 a rampantly heterosexual work as it was dedicated to Arthur Rubinstein?
Could it just be that Butiashvili’s claim is no more than an advertising stunt to boost the sales of a recording of a marvellous work that is outside the popular repertoire?
https://www.whitecraneinstitute.org/tdih_event/1883-10-06
Some further perspective and wondering if anyone recalls and might characterize comments in Rubinstein’s memoirs apropos Szymanowski and the turmoil he faced apropos topic at hand?
Or an attempt to encourage more recordings in association with a gay conductor with a DG recording contract.
Better not swim against the river, his only flaw in to not be black I guess…
Further, along the same lines:
“No matter how programmatic or descriptive music may be, it must always exits in terms of music alone. Never allow a composer to justify his piece to you because of the story content. The music must be able to stand on its own feet, so that a person hearing it with no knowledge of the story would not have his enjoyment curtailed in any way.”
— Aaron Copland
“exist”, not “exits”
Which Szymanowski concerto…? There are two….
Good question. It’s Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 35.
Yes, seeing that was like hearing talk of “the Bruch concerto” (there are three !)
@Michal Kaznowski.
I think that the Scottish Fantasy also counts as a concerto. That makes four Brunch concerti.
Four Brunch concerti…!! Obviously a Maxi-Brucher…. I hunger for more!
There is no such thing as a “gay concerto”.
There are, however, a number of concerti written by gay composers.
A gay concerto is a “musical” piece attracted to another gay concerto.
They’re written by homosexual, not gay, composers.
Here’s both!! Bloody marvelous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rV1iM_3FBI
There are plenty of gay concertos, I’ve heard some really happy ones.
I agree with Greg, and certainly one would find it a slog to find the common “gay” element to those concertos by gay composers, but I would say that there is “something” about the Szymanowski Violin Concerto No. 1, an aesthetic that sets it apart from so much of the rest of European (and not-German) music of its time, with the possible exception of some things by Scriabin, that sense that the composer was trying to set certain fabric textures and aromas and color spectrums to music. I hear similar things in some of his music for violin and piano, but I do not glean the same things from the violin concerto no. 2, so perhaps the composer saw it as a completion (or a dead end), and to that extent there may be something to be said for the notion that there is — well maybe not a program in the Strauss sense — but something specific and personal being expressed here that may be tied to a particular point of time or particular experience. One would look more to literature or the visual arts to find clearer examples of that aesthetic.
More than one commentator (an internet search shows a surprising amount of scholarly — and yeah, not so scholarly — writing and speculation about this Concerto) cites a particular poem by a Polish author as being the inspiration, and one of them hears a Dionysian side to the poem and the piece, which I suppose is not incompatible with the notion that the composer was celebrating coming to terms with his sexuality. One article goes so far as to cite (with evident approval by the way) Szymanowski’s travels as opening him up to the world of “boy love,” in the manner of Death in Venice, and makes a case for it that at least is not absurd given the theme of Szymanowski’s abortive novel on that topic.
And an entirely different and perhaps more down to earth approach is taken by one commentator to the effect that there is often much shared in common with many of the works written for and inspired by violinist Pawel Kochański, and that it is to Kochański that we should look for what is so special about this Concerto.
Absurd bandwagon-jumping.
Years ago I took Szymanowski’s “Mythes” to a study session with Frederick Grinke (a great teacher btw). He himself had studied the pieces in the 1930s with Carl Flesch. “Grinke”, Flesch told him (with a thick German accent that Grinke mimicked to a tee), “just consider: Szymanowski wrote these pieces for his friend Kochanski. But the way you play them, you are neither the one nor the other.”
I heard Batiashvili’s recording of the 1st Concerto recently on German radio. Whatever her mindset, it struck me as very fine.
Nice story! Grinke was a fine teacher by all accounts, and from the few recordings of his that are still available a very fine player!
And I’m playing Sonatas by a guy who loved to eat his own and his own Sister’s sh*t.
Now, how bloody great is that ??
Yes, and to be fair Lisa Batiashvili never said she was playing a ‘gay concerto’, those are Norman Lebrecht’s words, aimed at kicking up some sort of fuss over nothing.
Is she playing Szymanoski’s first violin concerto? The CD says she’s playing Szymanowski, but as this is the No 1 classical music site perhaps DG have got it wrong?
As a proud gay man, your headline is deeply offensive and placed for click bait. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
I hope that she, the conductor and the entire ensemble are gay because only gays have the lived experience to truly express this music. And only a 100% gay audience will be able to appreciate it.
It should be noted that Ms. Batiashvili is from Georgia, which is a *very* homophobic country.
The concerto is based on Tadeusz Miciński’s May Night (Noc majowa). It’s a symbolist poem about Pan, gods and goddesses, nature, life, death & love.
Dosia McKay made an evocative translation, which I’ve linked below.
Read for yourselves and then decide what the concerto is about.
https://musicwell.wordpress.com/2015/11/13/may-night-by-tadeusz-micinski/
To me Szymanowski sounds like not-very-good Debussy. I have never felt drawn to learning any of his works. Just my two cents.
What’s next ? An album of
” heterosexual ” violin concertos ?
Gay concerto? Maybe Liszt’s concertos are ‘straight concertos’ then? Less of the eyewash please!
The practice of ascribing extramusical agendas to instrumental works, often reflecting contemporary controversies, reminds me of the old joke about the guy who is being administered a Rorschach Test. As he looks at the inkblots, he comes up with increasingly alarming scenarios of torture and sexual violence. The psychologist administering the test finally tells him, “You need help, sir. You have extreme pathological tendencies.” To which the subject replies, “Oh yeah? Well you’re the one showing me all the dirty pictures!”
I think the reportage here is a little misleading. The “it” here (as in “it ‘tells about the love and pain of a man who had to deny his feelings for another man’…”) isn’t necessarily the concerto but the poem “Noc Majowa” or “May Night” by Tadeusz Miciński. Multiple sources claim Symanowski was inspired by its lines while writing his first violin concerto.
I’m certainly no interpreter of poetry, and I must rely on Google Translate for any hint at the meaning of Polish words, so I’m no judge of whether this poem says anything about forbidden love, but there’s no denying its erotic overtones, here in the Google’s English…
https://wolnelektury-pl.translate.goog/katalog/lektura/micinski-noc-majowa.html?_x_tr_sl=pl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc
La musique commencerait là où la parole s’arrêterait !
À la fois un lieu commun et une ineptie.
Not to deny what is widely known but interesting was the time Szymanowski and Rubinstein fell out for some time over the same woman.
The concerto is certainly highly, some might say erotically, charged. I wouldn’t blame a soloist for lighting up a post-coital cigarette after playing the closing bars…
I’ll never forget the thrill of hearing the Szymanowki 1st concerto at the age of thirteen; i effused to the local record librarian: “it’s a Masterpiece!” “Well….. it’s very good” he replied, and this discussion continued for many years. Now i see what he meant; it’s a near-masterpiece like most of this composer’s best. I also thunk that it was generally interpreted best by women (Wanda Wilkomirska was the first), without having strong ideas on sexuality or whatever. The 2nd concerto by contrast was a disappointing, down-to-earth worthy effort. Nevertheless i’d still say Szym1 is the most fascinating, elusive, just off mainstream near-masterpiece and a visit to the Fountain of Arethusa (in Syracuse, Sicily) last year, reminded me of the source(!) of inspiration for some of his best work. I don’t think i’ll ever fall out of love with this concerto and look forward to Lisa B’s interpretation whatever pronouncements she spouts (sorry, more fountains of wisdom!)
Oh, give us a break! A gay concerto? Music is universal.