Battle Cry of the Competent

I’m not a virtuoso. But that doesn’t mean I can’t create an excellent performance. With the right attitude and some work, a good player can bring a single piece to a high level. Nowadays, that’s precisely what I try to do: make a recording of a single piece that can compare to what the best players do.

It helps to realize that I’ve a few advantages over major concert artists. For one, I have ample time on my hands that a busy professional doesn’t. Concert artists must keep up at least one entire solo program, several concertos, and possibly an entire chamber music program. I, on the other hand, can lavish effort on a single piece, taking as much time as I need to get it just so. I’ve no pressure to move on to something else, because there’s no pressing need for something else.

Another advantage is that I control everything about my recordings. When I’m ready to record, I do. When I’m not, I don’t. There are no schedules to keep, and there’s no money meter running during a recording session. I just keep going until I get what I want. Further, I do my own post recording editing. Trust me, this is as important to the finished recorded performance as the playing itself.  

All this adds up to something that non-professional players seldom realize. On a single piece, we can make a recording that rivals what the best concert artists do. It’s not that we’re better than them. (Well, I’m not.) It’s rather that we can leverage our advantages to give us an edge that concert artists don’t have.

Speaking for myself, I don’t want to settle for mediocrity. Instead, I want to make a recording I can be proud of. I want to point to a particular recording and say “that’s how this piece should go.” I make no pretense that, onstage, I can outplay virtuoso concert artists. I can’t. But a recording need not be a faithful reproduction of a live performance. It instead can be an idealized document of how one wants a piece to sound. In this narrow and admittedly artificial sense, why shouldn’t I (at least in one carefully selected and prepared piece) equal what I hear from concert artists?

Trying to meet this rigorous standard is an eye-opening experience. It certainly magnifies my respect for the artists who consistently set the standard to which I aspire.

In doing this, I try to find a relatively neglected piece that deserves more attention. Then I try to put it across at a standard one would expect from a fine concert artist. Here’s a recording of mine that, I think, passes muster. (The recorded sound isn’t top notch—this is from a time before I upgraded my recording equipment. But the sound is okay.) The piece is Fernando Sor’s Étude Op. 29, No. 12, an underrated gem. I hope you find this worth hearing.