When Emil Gilels first came to Heinrich Neuhaus he was pampered. His former teachers Yakov Tkach and Bertha Reingbald would work with him very carefully. Each hand separately would be studied in the lesson, and they made sure every weakness was solved under their supervision. In other words, Gilels was given plenty of fish, but was never taught him to be a fisherman himself; an independent thinking artist.
Despite this education, Emil Gilels became an amazing prodigious pianist by her methods, and she was no doubt paramount to his development to becoming one of the greatest pianists of all time. But, the public still was shocked by the contrast in his play from his later years to his earlier ones.
Upon meeting Neuhaus this academic rigidity was sublated. Neuhaus’ lessons were something new, and an important maxim he repeated at the beginning of their journey was “You’ve become used to taking the shortest way to reach the aim. Now learn to solve a problem by the synthesis of opposed devices.”
While this statement may seem vague, my point here is to explain what Neuhaus means by it, and how it is the central aspect to his personality as a teacher.
Neuhaus used the dialectical laws of nature (as interpreted by Marx, derived from Hegel), in the broadest sense of the word to search for a deeper meaning or truth. For example, in his famous book “The Art of Piano” (which is a must read to any music lover out there), he uses the word “dialectic-” 27 times.
Heinrich Neuhaus was born in 1888 in a town named Kropyvnytskyi located in Central Ukraine. He studied with the great Leopold Godowksy in Germany. Neuhaus became one of the most prolific teachers of piano to ever live.
His classes in the Moscow Conservatory were very special occasions, with tons of pianists of all different calibers attending. His classes were essentially mini concerts or a kind of masterclass focused on interpretation of the great works.
Say you were a pupil of Goldenweiser for example, and you were working on a Chopin Piano Sonata. It is likely that one of Neuhaus’ pupils would be playing it as well, and you can attend his class to see many pianists play it and other works, and hear his thoughts about them.Neuhaus often spoke allegorically about these great works. For example, he told Vladimir Krainev that Chopin Piano Sonata 2 the four movements respectively represented the birth of a hero, the journey of a hero, the death of a hero, and the wind blowing over the hero’s grave. These classes created a legendary atmosphere that really allowed the performer to rise to the occasion and be inspired. They certainly were not for the people who would crumble under pressure, but, even if that was the case you would get many ideas on interpretation from listening to a variety of performers. Not to mention, the classes themselves were of course great practice for performing. Many people said that playing in Neuhaus classes was more intimidating than playing for a full house at the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.
In Art of Piano, one of the first encounters we have with Neuhaus’ dialectics is a brief description of the what determining the how.
“The clearer the goal (the content, music, perfection of performance), the clearer the means of attaining it. This is an axiom and does not require proof. I shall have occasion to refer to it more than once. The “what” determines the “how”, although in the long run the “how” determines the “what” (this is a dialectic law).”
In order to fulfill the artistic image of a composition you must have a “what” in mind. For example, what is the character of this piece, what is the form of it, what is the harmonic structure, and so on. In order to fulfill these images, you must have “the what” come to mind first, and then to execute on these you must utilize “the how”. The thing that is interesting though, is eventually the how, will determine the what. Something like this can only be achieved with experience, when you understand the how to achieve a certain ends, the “how” becomes it’s own what. This is the process of the dialectic simply put.
The first concrete musical example Neuhaus applies to dialectics is the rhythm of a performer. He says:
“But how beautiful the real rubato of a great artist! This is the true kingdom of dialectic: the greater the pianist’s awareness of the rhythmic structure, the more freely, the more logically does he depart from it at times and thus the greater the intensity with which he conveys its powerful regulatory force.”
“It is very difficult to speak of rhythmic harmony although it is extremely easy to feel it. It is irresistible. When it is achieved in a performance, it is felt by literally everyone. When I listen to Richter, very often my hand begins spontaneously to conduct.”
“The rhythmic element in his playing is so strong, the rhythm so logical, so organized, strict and free and is so much the result of his total conception of the work he is performing that it is impossible to resist the temptation to take part in it by gesture, although such participation is somewhat ridiculous and reminds one of Faust’s Du glaubst zu schieben und du wirst geschoben (You think you push but you are being pushed). Strictness, coordination, discipline, harmony, sureness and mastery, this is the real freedom! With a performer such as Richter, two or three departures from strict rhythm are more effective, more expressive, more meaningful than hundreds of “rhythmic liberties” in a pianist in whom this feeling of harmony, this total concept is absent.”
It’s important to pay attention to his language. A rhythm so “strict and free”, to many this may seem like a contradiction, how can you play both strictly and freely? This as Neuhaus says is the true kingdom of the dialectic, and sadly (or not so sadly) it’s not possible to create some formualic system of how to have a both strict and free rhythm (a ftrict rhythm). Dialectical thinking is largely focused on the whole, but it is also essential to understand the contradictory elements as individual parts as well.
For example, Neuhaus recommends that you study a composition just the rhythm alone as if you were a conductor.
“In short, I recommend that in studying a composition the organization of time be separated from the rest of the process of learning; it should be studied separately so as to enable the pupil to achieve with greater ease and confidence full concordance with the composer and with himself concerning rhythm, tempo and any departures from them or changes.”
Another recommendation I personally found helpful is, you should play with an excess amount of rubato, this will help feel the plasticity of the rhythm, and the possibilities that exist.
Combining these two methods, is what Neuhaus meant when talking to Gilels. How to synthesize opposed devices into a greater whole. Contrary to having a teacher say, play this like this, play with rubato here, do this, do that, etc. may get you faster results, but, it does not teach you how to fish.
He also, uses Heraclitus (the forefather of dialectics, before Hegel, or Marx), to explain the difference between an artist and pianist in terms of rhythm.
If the artist is sight-reading for four hands, you will leave out some detail to continue the flow (Heraclitus is all about flow). The pianist on the other hand, will slow down and stagger the forward momentum when he sees a difficult part.
It has been said before that Anton Rubinstein had such a will for rhythmic life, that you may hear many many notes get “lost under the piano” in his performance, but, when he would play “perfectly” this musical energy would be lacking, and make the performance rather sterile.
Another more pragmatic nugget of wisdom Neuhaus left us regarding time. Is warning us about the common mistake that immature pupils will often increase the tempo when increasing the volume, and vice versa. The perfect example is this section in Chopin Ballade 1.
It is very easy to ignore the a Tempo marking, and get too excited before the Agitato section, an increase in tempo in the Agitato section is definitely permitted, but for many performers, they may get too ahead of themselves here and increase the tempo and volume.
While Neuhaus may seem very idealistic and in the stars there is tons of pragmatic advice that can be followed for immediate results in Art of Piano. I’m also sure he would deny this notion of him being an idealist, if not, at the very least a metaphysician.
“Dialectic is not metaphysics; it does not hover somewhere in the air above us but is present everywhere in our lives. I feel it also in the way the grass grows and in the way Beethoven composed. Nature is the mother of dialectic.”
The last point I think that is important to mention regarding rhythm, is feeling cyclic works as a whole. A common example is the tempi in Beethoven Op 2 No 1, many performers will play their allegro, presto, and the final movement allegro. It is much better to take the first movement as a slower allegro (despite it being alla breve), so when you get to the final movement, it is felt as a whole the piece. To make Gilels jealous, I will sadly have to add another passage from the book, where Neuhaus praises Richter for his sense of rhythm in large works.
“Roughly speaking, the more intelligent the pianist, the better he can manage a large-scale composition, and the more stupid he is — the less well he can manage it. In the first case it is perspective thinking — i. e. horizontally; in the second case it is short-term thinking — i. e. vertically. That is why I so much admire the rhythm of Richter’s performances: one feels clearly that the whole work, even if it is of gigantic proportions, lies before him like an immense landscape, revealed to the eye at a single glance and in all its details from the eagle’s flight, from a tremendous height and at an incredible speed. I ought to say once and for all that such unity, such structure, such a wide musical and artistic horizon as his I have never encountered in any of the pianists I have known, and I have heard all the great ones: Hofmann, Busoni, Godowsky, Carreno, Rosenthal, d’Albert, Sauer, Essipova, Sapelnikov, Medtner and a lot of others (I am not speaking of the younger generation). Unfortunately, there are two that I have not heard but whom I would probably have loved more than any others; they are Rachmaninov and Scriabin.”
He mentions also that when reading a letter from some book as a kid, Mozart was able to hear the whole symphony he composed at one moment, from the start to finish, Mozart said that whenever this happened to him, they were some of the happiest moments of his life, which he was prepared daily to thank his Maker.
I find this to be an essential part of understanding form and time, right away you can tell if a pianist pays attention to this in a cyclical work. If you are thinking of each movement as an individual part in regards to tempo, you can fall into the habit of creating tons of beautiful moments, but, not creating a beautiful whole.
To reiterate one more time the importance of the whole. Hegel once said “The whole, however, is merely the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development. Of the Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result, that only at the end is it what it is in very truth.”
This quote is sometimes reduced to “The truth is the whole.”, in order to understand Neuhaus we must understand Heraclitus, Hegel, and Marx. Heraclitus main ideas are: everything is constantly changing and opposite things are identical and everything is and is not at the same time.
Thank you for reading, I will continue this series with applying Neuhaus’ dialectics to tone.