Audiences

I have my first official concert including Agnes Tyrrell etudes this coming weekend; I’ll be playing six of her twelve concert etudes, and some of her shorter pieces, in what will certainly be the US premiere. It’s possible that it will also be the world premiere for some of it; the etudes were published in Agnes’s lifetime, but I don’t know if they’ve been performed or not.

Something tricky is that these pieces are gorgeously complex, and I’ve had enough experience in my life playing hard music before now that I know that it will take about six performances of these pieces before I really feel like I know what I’m doing with them. It takes a while to feel like you know what you can expect. And there’s a tension there, of course: the only way I can polish my rough draft of this music is by performing it. The official premiere is an important moment, but it won’t be my best performance of this music. It can’t possibly be. So I have to let go of perfectionism and trust that, even though I’m still discovering what this music does when I play it in front of a live audience, my preparation will be good enough to let the music shine through. I do trust that. But I also feel much more pressure to be perfect playing Agnes than when I play someone known: if I play Chopin and it’s not great, people might think I’m a rotten pianist, but they’ll still think Chopin is terrific. The messenger doesn’t have so much power over the medium. But I worry that any flaws in my performance might make people think Agnes is flawed. So I’m being very careful about what I share, including on the internet.

That being careful is its own tension. I tend to have a little bit of a schtick where I complain, in what I think is a humorous way, about some of the hard moments learning hard music. That’s partly intentional, as a way of hopefully giving music students, or really anyone working on a hard project, some inspiration and hope and solidarity: here we all are, alone, working on a hard thing, but you’re not the only one. You can do it, and I can do it, and if I complain about technical virtuoso moments in my practicing maybe it makes you feel better about your own rough patches. But I’ve learned that I have to be careful when I complain about Agnes’s music being difficult. It IS difficult, but it also is difficult with a clear foundation of being absolutely worth it, just like with other great composers. Brahms and Robert Schumann wrote all their Clara Moments, as I call the spots that you KNOW they thought “well, this feels awkward when I try to play it, but I know Clara* can handle it, so I’ll just write it anyway.” And we pianists learn the spots because we know it’s worth it: we know that the resulting music will be glorious. And right now I do know that the resulting music will be glorious. Every day I find another connection, another realization, and even the moments that are really difficult are ones that I know are teaching me something, making me a better musician the way the best music does. But I still find myself wanting to do my usual bit of complaining about difficult moments. I want to say “can you believe this? I’m supposed to play thirds in my left hand here? How am I supposed to do that!?” and “so many sharps! this would be easier to think about in flats!”

But. Even writing those two complaints, and believe me the struggle is real with those two, I feel protective. I’m afraid of the obvious comebacks: it’s probably hard because she didn’t quite know what she was doing. Or: why play it if it’s so hard?

I’m not quite sure I want to put those out there.

Several months ago I wrote to one of my former profs, a man who has done some good service to uplifting women composers, to ask for advice about publicizing Agnes. In my email I said something like “the music is hard, just my luck.” His response was, in a nutshell, that we don’t need more hard music, and I should forget Agnes and instead find smaller, easier, more accessible pieces. I think, in the big picture, he meant to be inclusive—let’s find music that young people can play, not just young people who are hard-core piano nerds with the best training. I’m sure he has a point. But I also think it’s really important for those young people to know that there is big music, hard music, significant music, written by women. Even if they just play the easy music, I think it could be important for them to hear the hard music. Even if you only go around the block, you can know that it’s possible to go to the moon.

I never answered my old prof’s email. I feel a little bit bad about that, and I also have been feeling a bit shut down about that. If even someone sympathetic to the cause of women in music thinks I shouldn’t do the hard thing, how I am going to convince people who aren’t even interested in hearing a new composer? What do I say to audiences that may not be friendly?

Fortunately, there is one answer: just play the music. Play it well enough that the genius of Agnes comes through, even if my playing has a few flaws. Get the music in front of an audience. If they hear it, they won’t need convincing.

And I’m happy to report that I’ve had some good experiences with informal audiences in the past couple of weeks. I got to give a tiny house concert—that is, a tiny concert, not a concert in a tiny house, although if anyone has that venue please get in touch immediately because I am THERE—in Brooklyn to some friends and their neighbors, including a young girl who is taking piano lessons. It was so fun to see how much they enjoyed the music: lots of laughs and whoops and excited comments. Then last week I ran through most of my program for a retirement home, and I couldn’t believe how fun the etudes were to play for a larger audience. People really enjoyed the music—I heard lots of chuckles and gasps. It’s so fun to feel the energy of an audience having a really good time, and to find out that the etudes are really fun to play in front of people, not just by myself. There’s a joyfulness about them, and I loved feeling the audiences discover that.

So the official premiere of half the etudes is next Sunday. It won’t be my best performance, because it’s a necessary step along the way towards the best performance; some tricky patches don’t reveal themselves until you’re in front of an audience, and I feel a little bit like inserting a statement like the authors do: “any errors are completely my own.” But I’m so excited for this music, even if it’s still in rough draft form, to live in more ears than just mine. I’m certain I can play them well enough that people will enjoy them. I feel like a kid waiting for a birthday: I can’t wait to play the etudes in concert.

*Clara Schumann was married to Robert and close friends with Brahms, and she was one of the most famous and accomplished pianists of her time. She championed their music, so they knew they were writing for someone with monster technique.

*The Laughing Audience after William Hogarth is from the Metropolitan Museum’s public domain collection.