IN the matter of the ancient imperative of musical pleasure, we are at one with the birds. Bird behaviourists assure us that birds sing solely for territory not pleasure. Birds have brains the size of the head of a pencil, they argue how can they enjoy themselves? Good question.
Here's another. Have you ever seen seagulls or choughs or jackdaws soaring and gliding stalling and turning in a gusting breeze? What are they doing but enjoying themselves'? Animals know the meaning of pleasure. Listen, for example, to a song thrush exploring and developing musical themes.
No doubt the establishment of territory is the primary point of a thrush's song, just as the duty of armies is war hut that does not mean soldiers do not get pleasures from the aesthetics of soldiering, just as the territorial imperative does not rule out the imperative of pleasure for the song thrush.
In the matter of music, we are more bird than primate, and sometimes with the brains of birds. It would take a birdbrain to believe that CDs or tapes are an adequate substitute for per formed music. It is not it is fine in your car on the long road to Schull, hut it does not compare with music performed before your ears and eyes in the social milieu of a concert hall.
Exhilarating Concert
Last Friday's concert in the, National Concert Hall, the first since the appointment of Alexander Anissimov as chief conductor, was proof of that, and exhilaratingly so, from the very first item in the programme, the overture from Smetana's Bartered Bride, which is a piece of music most people think they know from recordings.
Let me assure them they do not. The recording device has not been invented that can do justice to music such as this. There was not a note new to my ears but the entire piece was nonetheless a revelation to me, for I have never heard it played live before. And no disc, no tape, can do justice to the long and shimmering glissando with which the violins open the piece, so exquisitely delicate yet sturdy and robust too, as befits a work which drew so much inspiration from the sturdy and robust peasants of Bohemia obeying the ancient imperative of musical pleasure.
It was quite wonderful vibrant, exciting, melodic, and steeped in the rhythms of dance. It would be impossible for any recording to convey the excitement which emanated from the players of the National Symphony Orchestra during this piece. Being there was as integral to enjoying the music as it is to watching dance the perplexing chemistry of community, of an audience seeing and sensing the musicians, as well as hearing them, gave the occasion a dimension and a joy beyond the powers of any machinery, no matter how high the fidelity.
Digital Synchrony
Next came John O'Conor with Mozart's Piano Concerto Number 21. Here too was proof again of the power of performance over recording, especially to those like myself who cannot pat their heads and stroke their stomach simultaneously, never mind mastering the vastly complicated digital synchrony required of a pianist playing Mozart. Even in silence, it would be an astonishing feat accompanied by the music which John conjures from the keyboards, it is a truly wondrous sensation.
John is at one and the same time one of the most celebrated men in Irish life and one of the most underrated. Firstly, virtually no camera does him justice about half the photographs of him are suggestive of a Prussian general who has just ordered the execution of 100 hostages by firing squad and is now about to sit gown to a good dinner. The others make him look either like a hostage, or the general's chef as he realises that he has just burnt the souffle.
No photograph captures his mischievous boyishness, his gentleness or his radiant charm and John, if you are reading this, now is the time to stop, or the sense of duty which marks him out as one of the great men of his generation. Because he is not merely our greatest pianist, and our greatest player, hut he is equally, our greatest teacher of the piano. His radiant love of music, that quality which can be no more captured by the camera than the wonder of a concern can be captured by a compact disc, compels him to be an extraordinarily conscientious mentor.
No matter how late the hour he gets to bed, while he is in Ireland, his first student will he arriving for lessons at some thing eight in the morning. His pupils are joint masters of his life indeed, in hours actually worked, they probably are the predominant factor in his life. Those who can, do, said G.B. Shaw, and those who cannot, teach. Let us all share a knowing smile at the idiocy of that one.
Piano Competition
But there is another John over and above John the pianist and John the teacher there is also John the organiser of The Guardian insurance International Piano Competition which opens in the first week in May (and for which, by the way, drivers for cars to ferry the musicians about, and pianos for them to practice on, are still needed phone 2082977) and which requires the organisational planning of a moon shot.
It is an enormously complicated affair 60 pianists from all over the world, playing a total of 57 hours of music, even before the surviving six play concertos in the final. John will sit through all these days of music at the RDS all of which is open to the public at the end of which he no doubt envies the hostages about to be executed by his photographic alter ego.
Why does he do this? No great publicity for him results. No money accrues. None of his recordings sell one extra single copy. He does it, I most modestly suggest, because of his Socratic sense of duty. We have few enough talents in Irish tile, and all sorts of movers and dodgers reach eminence and fame. However, we have one real ethical and cultural giant. John O'Conor pianist, teacher, artistic director of Dublin international Piano Competition and guardian of the ancient imperative of musical pleasure is one of them. It is right we acknowledged it.