Controlled Virtuosity Poem by gershon hepner

Controlled impetuosity
is less effective than
the vibrant virtuosity
that proves a man’s a man.
Control seems always to be freakish
to spirits that are free,
a weapon mainly for the weakish,
who feel they need to be
rather cautious, very courteous,
like tourists who with cam-
eras take photos no less virtuous
than textbook diagram.
Vibrantly I now attempt
to show you my technique,
quite confident that it will tempt
the flesh I trust is weak,
however strongly spirit may,
dissenting, play the role
of obstacle to right of way
to flesh I must control.

Bernard Holland reviews a performance of the Beethoven violin concerto by Lisa Batiashvivli and Tchaikovsky’s “Little Russian” symphony (“Beethoven, Brash But Contained, ” NYT, September 21,2007) :

Lisa Batiashvili, the soloist in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, crossed and recrossed the line we think of as separating Eastern European Romantic violin playing (big sound, surges of impetuosity) and a more Western reverence for containment and equilibrium. Ms. Batiashvili used her profound physical abilities to invest every tone and every phrase with the maximum of beauty it could bear. She is given to long cadenzas as self-referential displays. One also noted the occasional lunge beyond the music’s natural momentum. But this is, after all, Beethoven’s most opulent and lyrical composition; its major- minor shifts in the first and last movements never fail to thrill the most jaded ear. Ms. Batiashvili is a splendid, deeply musical young player. She makes the term “controlled impetuosity” almost grammatical. More Classical violinists would kill for that sound, I suspect.
Tchaikovsky is not known for rawness. Indeed his critics (and I am not one) find his Russian-inspired music almost too beautiful for Russia’s good. The “Little Russian” Symphony, his second, ended this program, conducted by Lorin Maazel. Folk music is everywhere in its four movements, also a sense of humor less evident in the breast-beating of the later pieces. Textures are tough, starkly brassy, uncharacteristically dirt-under-the-fingernails. The finale is downright impolite. To my ears the Philharmonic, brilliant as ever, was devoting its energies and enthusiasms more to the performance of music than to the music itself. Big tuttis, impeccable horn solos and wind ensemble playing were splendidly realized, but I found them oddly lifeless. One was reminded of tourists and their cameras, so absorbed by the photographing of the scene that they don’t see the scene at all.

9/21/07