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Evolving Musical Magic

Last Updated (Wednesday, 14 May 2008 08:58)
Written by Roger Bobo
Saturday, 26 January 2008 12:07

Articles - Personal Essays

At the height of his career, Jascha Heifetz was mistakenly and unfairly judged as being a cold, dispassionate player with incredible technique and a heart of stone. We know now that those who judged him in that way were wrong. It’s abundantly clear when we listen to the old Heifetz recordings that he was a passionate, sensitive musician. How is it possible so many people didn’t hear that musical inner beauty and labeled him as “cold”? People in the 1940’s and 50’s were not used to that level of perfection and when confronted with it, they were so conscious of the amazing technique that they missed the powerful musicianship. This confusion still exists today and listeners need to take care that the ever-improving high level of exquisite technique doesn’t mask the fact that they may be listening to an exquisite total musician. This deafness to the musical magic because of blinding technique is particularly prevalent today in regard to many Asian musicians and especially Japanese musicians.

Perhaps there was a time when Japanese musicians did sound somewhat robotic and machine-like; western music is not indigenous to Asia and is relatively new to Asians, compared to Europeans and North Americans. As the Japanese were learning how to perform western music, they started by copying and the result did, in fact, have a “foreign accent” in their musical language.

If we look at the evolution of the automobile in Japan we can see a clear parallel. As the Japanese moved into the auto business, they began by copying. That was a long time ago; to say they’ve done very well in the car manufacturing business at this point in time would be a huge understatement! The situation in musical performance is strikingly similar.

One further and poignant point is that in this evolution of moving from highly developed technique into the realm of artistic musicality, we have to face that pianists, string players and singers are generally further evolved than wind instrument players, but that is not just in Japan! We all are a part of the musical performance evolution process.

May 29, 2007, on the Shinkansen between Hiroshima and Tokyo.