Last night I attended a concert given by Louis Lortie, a pianist famous for his rendering of the Chopin piano etudes. He indeed started out with Chopin, reminding me that beauty is eternal, no matter how coarsened the public taste has become. When it comes to Chopin Lortie mostly plays sensitively, with quiet, moving passage that tug on the soul. The modern fashion is to play everything loudly and at top speed, regardless of performance directions, and this trend is encouraged by reviewers, who set up macho competitions between stars and denigrate them if they are not super-fast and furious.

The first part of the concert was vintage Lortie, but then, in the second half, he played piano transcriptions of Wagner’s music from Tristan and Isolde and from Tannhauser. This music needs a full orchestra, in my opinion, but my point in mentioning it is that Lortie played thunderously, hammering out the music in what I thought to be an uncharacteristic and unmusical way. Why? Probably because musicians are now told that audiences expect
to be treated to a circus performance at the end of each concert, with fast, loud bells and whistles, as if in the dying minutes of a competitive major league football game. Sure enough, at the end the audience leapt to its feet with cheers and bravos – the famous Washington DC Standing Ovation.

As an Epicurean I guess I shouldn’t complain if a majority of concert-goers enjoy these deafening concert endings. Pleasure should be the prime consideration. On the other hand, deliberately trying to whip up an audience into a frenzy with fast, loud noise that is of dubious musicality is in bad taste and, in my case, leaves me with hurting ears, wondering whatever happened to the old idea of ” music”.