Piano, Not Forte Poem by gershon hepner

Anybody who’s been taught a
little music can play forte;
playing piano is much harder,
since it’s harder to show ardor
when the volume is kept down.
Never make your listeners frown
by playing forte when you should
be playing piano. If I could,
I’d pass a law that disallowed
all music that is played too loud,
but fear that it would be abolished
by those whose technique isn’t polished
enough to play piano, and
prefer with forte to grandstand.
Although most people you might
with piano wish to rock and roll,
I don’t go with this madding crowd,
prepared to say this now aloud.

Inspired by an article by James Oestreich in the NYT, October 30,2009 (“Getting to Know You and the Score, Too”) , in which he described a visit to the Julliar School of Music by Bernard Haitink:
AS a means of communication, speech may be vastly overrated. Or so you could think, at times, watching the veteran conductor Bernard Haitink rehearse the Juilliard Orchestra this week for an hourlong concert of Brahms and Mendelssohn at Alice Tully Hall late Saturday afternoon. Every conductor has to learn to finish the job, in concert, without utterance beyond the occasional grunt or wheeze. To compensate, in rehearsal, some rival Lincoln and Douglas combined. Leonard Bernstein, famous to audiences for his gymnastics on the podium, was infamous among musicians for his philosophical disquisitions, but the real communication of his musical insights, wishes and afterthoughts to the players may have had little to do with either. Mr. Haitink — who conducted the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam for more than 25 years and has held posts with other prestigious orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony, where he is principal conductor — represents the opposite extreme. He addresses an orchestra, when he has to, softly and succinctly. As a result, the players strain to listen. More often they watch….
Introduced to the students, he began with a little joke. “One thing is for sure, ” said Mr. Haitink, now 80. “I’m the oldest of the whole company.” Then it was down to business. “Let’s start and let’s get to know each other a little bit, ” Mr. Haitink said, and he proceeded to lead the students through the entire first movement of Brahms’s Second Symphony, using only fluid motions of his baton and left hand, penetrating eyes and lively facial expressions, no speech. “That’s good, ” he said at the end. “It sounds as if you already know the piece. That’s a big help.” He took up the movement again in fits and starts, repeatedly calling attention to the quiet dynamic markings. His comments were terse and mainly technical, and his tone was usually gentle but could be blunt: “If you can read, it says, ‘piano sempre, ’ ” quiet throughout. Sentences trailed off into gestures….
He went on rehearsing the second movement of the Brahms and then the finale, where the players could finally let the dynamics rip. “It’s so easy, forte, and piano is so difficult, ” Mr. Haitink said.It was a constant theme of the rehearsal, and Mr. Haitink elaborated on it in an interview on Thursday: “In principle, orchestras, professional as well as student, always play too loud. You never have to ask for forte. It comes by itself. You only have to ask for kinds of forte.” Finally, almost two and a half hours into the rehearsal, he said: “I’m tired. Let’s go home.”


10/30/09