Blessings that grow with age
By Harry Eyres
Published: January 16 2010 00:09 | Last updated: January 16 2010 00:09
 |
| Nikita Magaloff (pictured in 1986, aged 74) was, by the age of 70, able to play Chopin’s Études without practising |
One of the most interesting and heartening conversations I had over the quiet holiday period was about the advantages of ageing. Despite more or less patronising acknowledgements of “how much older people still have to offer”, I have the feeling that these older people are still envisaged as harmless buffers or placidly smiling grannies. It is rarely accepted that older people might actually be better at doing certain things than younger people, let alone that they might pose a threat to them.
Maybe the director-general of the BBC, Mark Thompson (52), was thinking along those lines when he agreed to be interviewed on New Year’s eve by the 89-year-old novelist PD James. She reduced him to a stuttering wreck, muttering about “top dollar” and unable to articulate the core purposes and values of the corporation.
My conversation was with a distinguished pianist and the theme was how it can become easier to learn and play music as you get older. My interlocutor recalled the great Bulgarian pianist Nikita Magaloff saying to her that “one of the great things about reaching 70 is being able to play the Chopin Études without practising”.
Then she reflected that even Magaloff was outdone by the amazing Pole Mieczyslaw Horszowski, who was still playing aged 100. She finds nowadays – in her middle years – that she can learn pieces much faster than before; the only disadvantage is that they don’t stick so long in the memory.
The pop music world is of course fixated on youth (with exceptions such as Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Van Morrison); the classical music world used to be less so, but then in the early 2000s a marketing drive from record companies conflated the youthful looks of certain nubile violin virtuosi with musical stature; now that drive seems to have extended to conductors. My pianist friend was far from complimentary about some of the hyped youthful show-ponies of the piano; one (no names) was described as belonging to the circus, another as being “100 per cent machine”. But her point was not to disparage the young, merely to point out that the art is long and the life short, that it takes a good part of a life to begin to know how to learn and play works that could sustain many lifetimes.
Another myth – apart from the one about the essential physical crumbliness and uselessness of older people – is that people mellow as they get older. There may be examples of this, but quite the opposite can also happen. Inspired by that turn-of-year conversation, I took out a rather obscure CD from my collection, a live recording of a recital given by Wilhelm Backhaus at the Salzburg Festival in 1966.
Few, I imagine, would choose this as one of their “desert island discs”. Backhaus is remembered, if at all, as a rather dour exponent of the Objective school of German piano playing, a counterpart of the harsh, aggressive Neue Sachlichkeit movement in painting. Then there are the facts that the recorded sound, in mono, is somewhat dry, and Backhaus was 82 at the time of the concert; he would continue playing for another three years, before dying immediately after his last recital at the monastery church of Ossiach in June 1969. Mellow music-making? Not a bit of it. There is a profound joy in these performances, surprising charm and tenderness in the two Mozart sonatas, but above all there is urgency and the forward drive and momentum that always marked Backhaus’s playing. He begins with two Bach preludes and fugues, given with tremendous rhythmic energy, making many contemporary performances sound mannered.
Then after the Mozart come two of the Beethoven sonatas that were always the core of Backhaus’s repertoire, the Appassionata and the last Sonata in C minor opus 111.
The advanced age of the pianist has given his playing an extra edge of intensity. The shadow of mortality (there are slips and smudges that Backhaus might have avoided when he was a young lion) gives an even more piercing communicative power; these, among Beethoven’s last words for the piano, are being played by a man who knows he may not have many more chances to communicate his thoughts about them. His response is not to play safe but to go for broke; the tempi are brisk and there is no holding back, no slowing up. Especially in the furious ending of the Appassionata, and the sublime quiet close of the sonata, this is an artist who, in company with Emily Dickinson, “could not stop for Death”.
All this has given rise to what is not exactly a new year’s resolution, but a hope for the decade just coming to birth. If the last, unlamented decade, was really the decennium of “kidulthood”, as a BBC television series recently argued, of grown-ups pretending to be children, may the next decade be one which recognises the benefits and blessings of ageing.
[email protected]
More columns at www.ft.com/eyres
I always read your articles in The Slow Lane and as I have just had my 80th Birthday with many flourishes,I was delighted with your 'Blessings that Grow With Age'. When I six years old I started playing the piano and became very proficient. Then I started work, married and life became very much busier (quite hectic really). However when my husband inherited a Bluthner Grand piana and we were still travelling around I insisted on carting it about with us (to the amazement of our friends and family!) although I had little time to play it until about two years ago when I saw an advertisement for a piano teacher who would come to the house and teach and have tea also! I followed this through and with much encouragement and many 'Gold Stars' I have acually achieved my original standard, and I am improving, loving it, playing and practicing now every day. So I have dumped boring old Bridge and with good fortune have no arthritis nor rheumatics so consider myself to be very lucky. I expect to be playing when I reach 85 years old - and who knows I may still be playing when I am 100!
Posted by: Pan Fisher | January 22, 2010 at 07:14 AM