We will miss him: David Lynch

My first encounter with David Lynch was “Twin Peaks” in 1990, when I still lived in Graz, Austria. The allure of the mysterious, the idea of a secret everyone knew, but no one spoke about, the “said and unsaid,” and the cinematography were exciting. I remember that we waited for the new episode week after week. Starting from there, the passion became almost an obsession, leading me to discover previous creations, such as Blue Velvet with the wonderful Isabella Rossellini and the extraordinary and disturbing Dennis Hopper, The Elephant Man with John Hurt, and also the film later disavowed by Lynch, Dune, which I still love and also believe to be much closer to Frank Herbert’s novel, and its style, than Denis Villeneuve’s recent adaptation. His masterpiece would come later, the enigmatic Mulholland Drive with the perfect and multifaceted Naomi Watts.

David Lynch was a director and an artist who loved to play not only with the plots of his films or with images; he wanted to play with the viewer’s head, deceiving, diverting, and leading him on unexpected and surprising visual and conceptual paths. No other film director is comparable to him, except perhaps David Cronenberg—naturally with a taste tending towards the macabre and with a more pronounced physicality.

The void left by David Lynch in the world of cinema and art will be difficult to fill.

A Viennese total immersion during rehearsals and concerts with the Tonkünstler Orchestra: Kaffeehaus and looking for old books. Breakfast at Bräunerhof (only in Vienna, München and Berlin can you get “Eier im Glas”), concerts at the Musikverein, and good old books in the Annagasse.

After a long concert with music by Mozart (two arias with the mezzo Maria Schellenberg, and everybody’s favorite Serenata KV 525) and Skrjabin (the almost unknown Second Symphony), four members of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra entertained a remarkable audience (I counted at least 120 people) with quartet music. Haydn, by the way, one of those marvels among the sixty-eight string quartets he wrote. Those four musicians (four ladies) had just elegantly shaped Mozart’s Serenata for 17 minutes and fought through a tiring, challenging, experimental Skrjabin for 44 more minutes (plus the two arias). Still, they wanted to offer a welcomed “encore” to people who, some with a glass of wine in their hand, others standing behind, already dressed to leave, visibly – and silently – enjoyed the performance.

I also stayed for a while, enjoying the music and thinking that being a musician is truly something special. Those of us who have the chance to make our profession what we have practiced our whole lives (it is the only job for which you start studying as a child) know that music is your best friend, a friend who gives you joy in happy moments and comfort in difficult ones. A friend who never betrays you. And with your best friend, you want to spend time together, even after a long, hard work day.

So, after and despite a long concert, the four ladies offered more music to the smaller audience and themselves for an additional moment of mutual joy and beauty, showing once again that musicians are unique and different.

A recent article in The New York Times Magazine brings again to the surface somebody whom we have missed in the last years, partly due to his choice to focus on different things (meditation) and, as we hear, partly because of health issues: David Lynch.

I have always admired David Lynch for his non-mainstream activity as a director and, more generally, as an artist. A specific voice (literally—as explained in the Times article—and metaphorically) in the very diverse panorama of movie directors, his way of understanding cinema, as a medium and as a world of fantasy, has often been imitated but never surpassed, even by today’s cinematic standards.

My very personal list of his masterwork, in order of importance:

• Twin Peaks (the TV series)
• Mulholland Drive
• Blue Velvet
• Dune (even if he repudiated it, is a great movie and very close to Frank Herbert’s novel)
• The Elephant Man

Ho scritto in un precedente post (a proposito della sinfonia “Jupiter” di Mozart) che durante lo studio mi è sembrato difficile, alla famosa domanda di chi portare sull’isola deserta – Bach o Mozart – decidere, ma che propendevo per Mozart. Ebbene, ieri il bravo Alessandro Taverna, dopo un Concerto di Schumann eseguito con intelligenza ed eleganza, ha ringraziato il pubblico con un “encore” un tempo popolare, oggi un poco desueto, la trascrizione di Egon Petri dell’Aria “Schafe können sicher weiden” dalla Jagd-Kantate di Bach.

Persino nella tutto sommato detestabile trascrizione di Petri (proposta del resto con gusto e delicatezza da Alessandro) la musica di Bach arriva come una freccia al cuore.  Nonostante l’implacabile logica contrappuntistica, che ci procura un sublime piacere intellettuale, sincerità, schiettezza, verità, emergono come per magia da queste semplici ma perfette linee musicali, che ci procurano una consolazione, un rifugio, un conforto dal quale ci sentiamo come abbracciati.

In questo momento, dunque, la risposta all’annosa domanda, nonostante l’amore e la venerazione per il genio di Salisburgo, non può essere che una: Bach, perché può darci tutto senza dovercelo spiegare.

I wrote in a previous post (about Mozart’s “Jupiter” symphony) that during the study, it was difficult to answer the famous question of who to take to the desert island – Bach or Mozart – but I was leaning towards Mozart. Well, yesterday, the excellent Alessandro Taverna, after a Schumann Concerto performed with intelligence and elegance, thanked the audience with a once-famous “encore,” now a little obsolete: Egon Petri’s transcription of the aria “Schafe können sicher weiden” from Bach’s Jagd-Kantate.

Passeggiando nella bellissima libreria “Tsutaya Books” nella nuova Ginza Six a Tokyo, e naturalmente non resistendo alla tentazione di comprare alcuni libri legati al Giappone (vedi la prossima fotografia)

mi cade l’occhio su questo libro.

Sono alcune ricette dalla cucina dell’Hotel Splendido di Portofino (che non si può definire un Hotel alla portata di tutti). Da Genovese sento un poco di orgoglio per un libro sulla Liguria nel centro della Ginza di Tokyo, anche se parla quasi solo di cucina. Le ricette non sono male, ma a chi volesse un buon libro sulla cucina genovese, consiglierei senz’altro questo:

Walking through the beautiful bookstore Tsutaya Books in the new Ginza Six in Tokyo, and, of course, not resisting the temptation to buy some books related to Japan (see the second photo), my eye fell on this book (third photo). They are some recipes from the kitchen of the Hotel Splendido in Portofino (which cannot be defined as a hotel within everyone’s reach). As a Genoese, I feel a little proud of a book about Liguria in the center of Tokyo’s Ginza, even if it mainly talks about cooking. The recipes are not bad, but for those who want a good book on Genoese cuisine, I would recommend this one (last photo).

Trovo per caso su YouTube una meravigliosa registrazione del mio solo ed unico Maestro, Milan Horvat, che dirige nel 2006 con l’Orchestra Filarmonica di Zagreb l’ottava sinfonia di Anton Bruckner (che io dirigerò la settimana prossima a Tokyo con l’Orchestra della NHK). Mi commuovo molto, e mi rendo conto di quanto fosse grande il Maestro soprattutto in questo repertorio: equilibrio, forma, precisione,  e soprattutto modestia: mai mettere se stessi in primo piano e sempre al servizio del compositore e della sua opera. La registrazione è del 2006, quando il Maestro aveva 87 anni; lui dirige da seduto, ma a memoria. Incredibile. Ricordo ancora tutto quello che lui ci diceva nelle sue lezioni.

I accidentally found on YouTube a superb recording of my one and only Maestro, Milan Horvat, conducting Anton Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony in 2006 with the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra (I will perform the same symphony next week in Tokyo with the NHK Orchestra). I was very moved, and I realized how great the Maestro was, especially in this repertoire: balance, form, precision, and above all, modesty: never putting oneself in the foreground and always at the service of the composer and his work. The recording is from 2006, when the Maestro was 87 years old; he conducts sitting down but from memory. Incredible. I still remember everything he told us in his lessons.

My youngest son often complains about not having enough friends. He belongs to Generation Z (born in 1997), for which it seems to be a common problem. I understand the seriousness of this, and I try to help him by telling him that the quantity of friends is not paramount, but the quality is. Secondly, I share my personal experience: I only have maybe 4 or 5 friends, all of them for at least 30 years: friends undergo a hard selection in life. And finally, I sent him an interesting article from the Washington Post: Making new friends can be hard

It’s a difficult issue, I see, and it’s very difficult for me to help, but this problem has been around for ages, and it needs life experience, patience, and also a lot of energy and strength, especially when we know, from a longer experience, that real friends cannot be many.

My only conducting teacher, Milan Horvat, very often spoke highly about the pianist Gina Bachauer (1913-1976), with whom he often made music. He praised her as a no-frills pianist with outstanding technique and energy. I heard some Rachmaninoff (I think it was the second piano concerto) – of whom she was one of the last students – some time ago, and yesterday, this Beethoven Concerto. What a pleasure! She doesn’t add anything that is not in the score (which means she reads behind the written notes). The simplicity of her approach makes the rendition of this score just perfect, without any mannerism (to which most of the young pianists today strongly tend), correct tempos, and perfect dynamic. Just refreshing. I wish many of the very hyped soloists of our time had the same sincere, humble, and genuine approach to such masterworks as she had.

Yes, unfortunately, this word is a “vox media,” which means that it doesn’t have a positive or negative connotation, per se. Nevertheless, especially when speaking about art, we should reflect on the real meaning of this—5a is my point.