Disarray Poem by gershon hepner

You need a touch of disarray
to prove your spontaneity.
Being carried far away
by a mere velleity
is more impressive than a rapture
that’s been deliberately contrived,
and disarray can help you capture
the sparks that fly when they’re derived
not from a flame that you’ve been taught
to kindle, but wild forest fires
ecologists would not abort
since only heat connects hot wires
that won’t be linked together by
the experts who’ve been highly trained
in systems that electrify,
and constitutionally restrained
for letting their imagination
devise new circuits. Disarray
proves dangerously that deviation
may lead you to a better way
that that provided by a circuit
which favors the familiar order.
Fan your firework, or it
can’t venture across any border.

Inspired by Anthony Tommasini’s article on Nadia Reisenberg (“Reopening a Pianist’s Treasury of Chopin, ” NYT, January 5,2009) :
Thanks to a remarkable new four-CD set from the Bridge label, “Nadia Reisenberg: A Chopin Treasury, ” Reisenberg may come to the attention of a generation of listeners who have heard little if anything about her. This reissue of recordings made by Westminster Records in the mid-1950s includes Chopin’s complete nocturnes and mazurkas, the Barcarolle, the Berceuse and the Allegro de Concert. It also offers a live recording of Chopin’s Piano Sonata No.3, taken from a 1947 recital at Carnegie Hall and issued here for the first time. In all these Chopin works Reisenberg’s playing is exceptionally beautiful, distinguished by warm tone, impressive clarity, unostentatious virtuosity and unerring musical insight. The set contains charmingly personal liner notes by Robert Sherman, the radio announcer and producer of classical music programs. Mr. Sherman is something of a Reisenberg expert; she was his mother….Though she never considered herself a Chopin specialist, her performances here are masterly. There is an affecting directness to her playing. She conveys the jerky rhythmic tugs and pulls of the mazurkas, Chopin’s boldly inventive evocations of the Polish dance form. Yet for all the rhythmic freedom of the playing, there is an utterly natural lilt and flow. The performances of the nocturnes are particularly fine, played with pearly sound, melting lyricism and textural clarity. For some listeners the honesty and deference Reisenberg brings to these pensive yet moody works may be a little too self-effacing. In a 1957 review of the original Westminster recordings of the Chopin nocturnes, Harold C. Schonberg of The New York Times, while praising Reisenberg for her accuracy, clarity, musicianship and style, nevertheless found the performances “too perfect and hence lifeless.” “Seldom does one feel that the pianist is being carried away, ” Schonberg wrote, adding that he almost longed “for a touch of disarray.”….Mr. Sherman was wary about including the live account of the difficult Chopin sonata in this Bridge release. The performance captures Reisenberg at her most impetuous. This is a blazing, exhilarating performance with occasional smudged passages or crashing chords full of wrong notes. But it does not matter. The second movement, a dashing scherzo taken at a breathless, almost dangerous clip, is dispatched with uncanny lightness and near-perfect clarity. Reisenberg’s resourceful technique never fails her. It’s just that on this day, in this sonata, she let loose her wild side, and it is a treat to hear.


1/5/09