Gramophone文摘：Philip Kennicott談巴哈夏康
上周五我在誠品買下二月份的Gramophone，為的是封面人物Franz Liszt--今年是他兩百周年誕辰紀念，故特別為他做了封面故事。從那之後心裡醞釀著打算寫一篇「為何人人不愛李斯特」的文章，東西很多，然無奈每到下手就作罷。
李斯特之外，這本Gramophone許多文章非常精彩，其中一篇專欄，由Washington Post的專欄作家Philip Kennicott執筆，此次主題是寫他聽Bach's Choconne。由於作者寫出了我對音樂寫作的期待，當下讀完便想拿此文做為讀者服務，但或許因為雜誌出刊時間太近，也可能本人網路搜尋功夫太糟，我找不到此文任何的網路檔案，最後決定採取最原始的打字方式，轉刊此文，以饗大眾。
我是沒那才掉轉翻成中文，以及文中對於音樂的形容、比喻和描述，得用英文才夠精緻，故此文以英文呈現，大家隨意取用。
打完之後，Feltsman彈Chopin Noctunes也結束了，剛好。
*************************************************************************************************
標題：When grief is as engulfing as a tidal wave, Bach's Chaconne provides the only solace.
In the other room my mother is dying.
Underneath a great pile of sheets and coverlets, her once formidable presence is reduced to two hands and an ashen face, her breath labored and her eyes remote and teary. She’s almost gone, the nurses say, and everything that mattered about her—the voice, the temper, the delight in small things—has preceded her into nothingness.
For the past few days, the only music I can tolerate is Bach’s Chaconne in D minor for solo violin, the sprawling fantasy on a simple, descending theme that concludes the Partita No. 2. Why does everything else seem so insipid, so irrelevant? There are other monumental works by Bach that might be pressed into service, the Goldberg Variations, the Cello Suites. But the former seem too busy, too much of the dance to serve a mind that is blank and listless. The latter, for some reason, feel exhausted to me, perhaps because I put them to work the last time the Grim Reaper called and now they sound hollowed out and dry.
There are some who believe the Chaconne was Bach’s memorial to his 1st wife, but that speculation doesn’t interest me at the moment. Music that is explicitly about the death often seems trivial in the face of death itself. Manon dying (“Sola, perduta, abbandonata”) feels false and overwrought. If anyone in the house made that kind of noise now, I’d show them the door. Bach’s Chaconne may be a commanding sonic display, testing the limits of the instrument, but it also feels intimate and quiet.
I think in all of opera, the only death that feels remotely familiar is that of Prince Andrei, in Prokofiev’s War and Peace. And it’s not an accurate picture of death, but the suffering and struggle during that last, luminal phrase of life. Perhaps Parsifal’s anguished cry upon learning from Kundry of the death of his mother has truth to it too, but it’s a moment of truth in four hours of feverish fantasy that has nothing to do with the spirit of my family’s house today.
My mother played the violin, so it’s possible that’s the reason the Chaconne is so vital at this moment. But she never played the violin the way Sergey Khachatryan plays it and she wasn’t partial to Bach. It was Khachatryan’s set of the Bach Partitas and Sonatas that I grabbed, in a vacant moment, thinking perhaps there’d be time to listen to something in the car or on the headphones during the hours and days—no one can ever tell you how long—of the vigil. And I’m glad I did.
Khachatryan will probably want to record these works again. And when he does, my guess is that he’ll focus more intently on the contrapuntal character of the music, on the illusion of a chorus of violins summoned from a single instrument. But there is a lot to admire in this young man’s reading, which is surprisingly gentle and tender, always returning from grand gestures to a home place of sweetness. His Adagio from the Sonata No 3 begins far away, quiet and searching, a powerful layering of tentative ideas. He seems happiest in the slow movements—or am I most attuned to them? Certainly there’s no slighting his technique, which is never taxed, even in the huge chords, skips and whirlwind figuration of the Chaconne.
Khachatryan’s whispering pianissimo at the beginning of the middle section, in D major, breaks my heart. Bach built in this piece in three parts, the middle turning to a major key. Khachatryan plays it as if delicately stroking a beloved face, or remembering a private, sustaining scene from childhood.
Some of the chemicals that modern medicine pours into ailing bodies result in, among other side effects, an increase in sensitivity to sounds. My mother, whose superhuman hearing enabled her to command the entire house, to detect from the depths of a deep sleep the sound of the refrigerator door opening, grew agitate and irritable at music that was too loud. Near the end of her life, she liked the “Meditation” from Thais and not much else. I think I might have changed her mind about Bach if I had played her this passage from Khachatryan’s performance. But that’s one of the many things that death eliminates the sharing of music.
It’s easy to build too much philosophy into the music of Bach and the Chaconne, with its thrilling diversity built over what is one of the simplest descending motifs in music, is rich in metaphorical possibilities. As have many others over the almost 300 years of the life of this music, I hear mortality in its repeating line, a reminder of the inevitable trajectory of every life. And in everything else, the 63 variations built on top and around it, I hear life, variety and invention. All of life is here, including death, and in that D major passage that Khachatryan plays so eloquently, life and death come together into a single, acceptable, manageable fact of existence.
Grief renders one temporarily allergic to silliness and banality of the world, the smiling weatherman with shiny teeth, the idiotic billboards advertising things people don’t need, the pop songs and inane comedies and empty politicians spouting their populist gibberish. Most season’s of the year I am happy to hear Bach’s Chaconne, but I don’t search it out. For a time now, and I don’t know how long, its main service is to provide a cocoon, shutting out the stupidity of the world. There is, in fact, very little music that is as deep as life itself, perhaps only a handful of pieces, which is why it is wise to reserve them for when they’re needed.
上一篇：我的一廂情願
剛收到Sergey Khachatryan / Bach，我覺得和這篇Gramophone的文章很像，
是有格調而不濫情的演奏，處理得很細膩，動態對比與音色都很傑出。我覺得他把
音色和聲部對比當做第一優先，在無法兼顧時寧可放棄速度的一致性，而他的感情
就全放在強弱音對比和運弓的飽滿，有點內斂，像工筆畫，不是潑墨寫意。他的弱
音和慢速運弓處理得極好，以我對小提琴粗淺的了解，能把弱音拉得溫柔而飽滿，
應該很不容易。錄音相當不錯，是比較近距離的錄法，能清楚聽到小提琴家的呼吸
聲。
聽音樂常需要緣份，在正常情況下我幾乎不可能會去買這套CD。好的巴哈演奏很
難得，每個遇合都是恩賜。
的確是這樣。有時候「名曲」之外曲子的錄音，變數很多。可以是曲子本
身，也可以是演奏者。小澄清一下，說「沒留下印象」，是指Leslie
Howard錄那些其他相對冷門的音樂，不是廣泛地指Liszt全部的音樂。通
常會想錄這種大全集的人，少不了一些學者的氣質。偏偏，音樂學者，不
一定是最適任詮釋的音樂家。所以，若我要收集，動機會是來當一套百科
全書，而喜歡的音樂，會再特地去買單獨的錄音~~
至於他的交響詩，他在鋼琴上所能譜出的東西當然是沒話說。為何特別提
到orchestration本領(這兒一詞指的specifically是將音樂譜給交響樂
團)，我常常喜歡提起兩個極端的例子：Schumann和Tchaikovksy。前者鋼
琴作品見長，但其orchestration能力普遍看法是不及他的鋼琴曲(這個說
法近來有不同的論點，但大致上的印象是如此)，而Tchaikovksy能在交響
樂團製造出的效果，是被公認的，但他的鋼琴曲，少了仗著樂器種類音
色，大多曲子也沒他的管絃樂有特色。以Liszt的鋼琴作品產量，更勝
Schumann許多倍，但為交響樂團所寫的曲子，至少以我而言，顛覆了之前
的印象和期待。(當然，他前幾首得到了Joachim Raff不少的幫助，但之
後幾首，卻是Liszt自己所譜~~~ )
扯那麼多，我也同意要認識Liszt，仍然是從他的鋼琴曲下手，所以其實
咱看法並無太大不同啦。目前手邊喜歡或是較為有名的Liszt鋼琴曲的錄
音都算滿意啦，但待日後要認真接觸其他曲子，欲尋得其他推薦的詮釋版
本，再和orangebach，Val，Arwen，及Mingus幾位樂友請教~~~
我也買了這張，還有一 張Shostakovich還是Sibelius。但要四月底才會收到。
之前聽了試聽，夏康咋聽之下速度較慢但音色飽滿。
的確如果不是這篇文章，根本不會注意到此人。是機緣，沒錯。