Shadows of an Echo
Menuhin, Milstein, Oistrakh, Szigeti, Kreisler, Heifetz. Then Gould, Michelangeli, Lipatti, Schnabel, Hoffman. I could go on all day. Great violinists, pianists and cellists… all dead. Every last one of them. Of them all the only one I ever saw was Menuhin, a few months before his passing in 1999. While I only heard him speak and instruct a masterclass there was never any doubt just who he was and where he’d been. And now he’s gone.
If we’re lucky we’ve got a recorded legacy, or anecdotes if we’re not. I spend my time searching for fragments of these legacies and saving them. It is all I can do anymore. I was born too late.
I look at their replacements and find only shadows. Of those left I have respect only for Perlman, and Ashkenazy. The rest, while competent have nothing with which to distinguish themselves. One’s as good as another. It pains me to see talent and to see it wasted. I feel rage towards those who use their gifts to create a replica of something that’s been done countless times before without trying, just once, to create something new.
I have found a rationale of sorts in my yearnings for the old, for which I have Lebrecht to thank. I love the old recordings because they are new. Everything about them is an exploration into new territory. The medium, the art, expression… everything was embraced in their search for individuality. The modern musician is more concerned with just getting things right. They are a waste of space.
The sorrow I feel knowing that I could spend a hundred years trying and not gain a tenth of that which they waste. I feel my hands wasting away and I know that any gains I make will eventually be cut from me and surgically removed. I will never control my musical soul… I will only feel it resonate in some dead man’s echo.
