Life and Music: A Memoir. By Idil Biret with Dominique Xardel. Chestnut Hill Press. $35.
Autobiographies are awkward things: unbelievable when self-effacing, irritating when self-aggrandizing, prone to the triple temptation to become, at various points, maudlin, self-congratulatory and unduly modest. The flaws of the form come through with remarkable consistency, for, as Idil Biret points out in a different context, “Really, nothing reinvents itself.”
And right there is one way in which the aptly titled Life and Music stands out: Biret (born 1941) has thoughts that, ostensibly about music, are in fact about life both in and beyond the area to which she has devoted so many decades and in which she has produced so many literally noteworthy performances.
Much of this book is a translation by Gunesh Guran Gery of a work originally published 20 years ago in French and not previously available in English. That work, Une pianist turque en France, was built around conversations – in the form of exchanges of correspondence – between Biret and Dominique Xardel (born 1934), who among other things was editor-in-chief of the French version of Harvard Business Review. And there are indeed elements of the business of music discussed here, including a notorious and still-debated “Biret boycott” resulting from traditional record labels metaphorically “circling the wagons” to protect their turf (and profits) when Biret was making recordings for the then-upstart, then-budget label Naxos. But business is scarcely the primary focus of the book, and indeed, in a curious way, Biret herself is not the focus – certainly not the entirety of it. That is because so much of what Biret discusses with Xardel uses her experiences, and music itself, as jumping-off points for contemplation of and commentary on broader and wider issues.
Biret’s thinking is often expressed through startling observations – or, perhaps more accurately, in startling commentary about trenchant observations: “The pianistic concept has evolved a lot, often at random, since the 1960s, a decade that in many ways was still part of the nineteenth century. Since then the compositions are at the mercy of the interpreters and not the other way around as it generally should be. The large egos of today’s interpreters are offensive to the fragility of the well-known works of composers who could never have imagined such a change.” Notions born of experience and worthy of much further contemplation are packed into that half paragraph – about the 1960s, about the balance between composer and performer, about the “fragility” of traditional piano repertoire. Whether a reader agrees with Biret or not, her insights provoke nearly as much surprise and thought when verbalized as they do when communicated via the piano.
It is of course necessary to have some familiarity with classical music to appreciate Biret’s place in it, and some basic knowledge about repertoire and well-known performers to share fully in the perspectives that Biret offers. Life and Music is not a full-fledged biography, but there is enough background information in it to allow the casual reader, one not thoroughly versed in the ins and outs of the concert-music world, to understand Biret’s place in the pianistic firmament and to appreciate her often remarkably penetrating insights. Again and again, she challenges conventional wisdom in her words as she often does in her performances: “It seems to me that even now we have a romantic, a wrong idea of what a ‘career’ or a ‘reputation’ means.” But again and again, Life and Music shows the tremendous solidity on which Biret’s own career and reputation rest: the 80 photographs bound into the center of the book, arranged chronologically from 1946 to 2020, directly display her interactions with family, with the leadership of her native Turkey, and with some of the great performers and teachers with whom she has interacted throughout her long and distinguished career.
Readers interested in the mundane aspects of professional performance will find Biret’s thinking especially intriguing. “The sitting position permits proper breathing comfortably as long as you do not stoop. …You have to watch carefully for any signs of arthritis, follow a healthy diet, take vitamins, especially antioxidants. Do not smoke, drink lots of water and, once in a while, a glass of wine…” There is something rather charming in those remarks. And there is always a surprising or unexpected thought lurking on a nearby page: “I think it’s a good idea not to work with first-rate pianos, not to get used to the beautiful sound of an instrument. It’s more interesting to try to get a good sound from a mediocre piano.”
It is because Biret is an intermediary, an interpreter putting her creativity at the service of the creativity of others – of the composers whose work she creates and re-creates – that her thoughts, even when personal, resonate beyond herself, so that the focus of Life and Music is not the usual narrow one found in a book whose professed topic is a single individual. Indeed, Biret returns repeatedly to the theme – more of a theme and variations – of music as an art and music within the arts. Her thinking becomes a touchstone of engagement for anyone fortunate enough to encounter not only her performances but also the words she offers here: “Music is what you feel immediately, outwardly and within yourself. …Music goes beyond words, beyond colors, beyond forms. …When we think about music, we hear it within ourselves, in detail. We don’t need an instrument.” Perhaps not – but it helps to have an instrumentality. And that, as Life and Music makes abundantly clear, is exactly what Idil Biret is.
No comments:
Post a Comment