Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.
BEWITCHED BY MUSIC, PERFORMANCE AND SEX
Dear Khatia Buniatishvili
I apologise for my profound ignorance. My wife and I are dedicated aficionados of both classical music and jazz. My wife teaches piano and is very astute at judging technique. As for me, not being a musician in any sense of the word, I simply go along for the ride. Our ignorance comes from the fact that, until a few weeks ago, we had never heard of you, even though we thought we knew all the great virtuosi. We now know that you were born in 1987, which makes you 35; that you are Georgian – as I might have guessed, since your name ends with -vili; and that you were only in your early twenties when you were signed on by a prestigious recording company. Now you are constantly in demand in live performances and apparently each one of you recordings sells in the hundreds of thousands. In other words, in classical music, you are a major star. Silly us for not knowing.
We discovered you when I was doodling around on Youtube looking for something entertaining before we went to bed. I found you solo-ing in Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in front of a French audience in Lyon. My wife and I were immediately rapt. How skilled you were. The speed and dexterity of your fingers on the keyboard. And the awareness we had of the punishing your fingers must be taking, especially in those very percussive parts of the score. Again and again and again you must have rehearsed all this, punishing your fingers with every note. What strength and fortitude you must have. We were glad to notice in one close-up that your fingernails were cut very short and unsullied by nail polish. You fingers would have been in constant pain if you’d been playing with longer nails. Musically, it was excellent and extraordinary.
But, dear Khatia, we were also aware of your beauty. Your glossy black hair, your olive complexion, your perfect nose and eyes, the brash red lipstick. I can’t remember if it was my wife or I who first said “She’s gorgeous” or “She’s beautiful” but in the course of your performance, we each said the same sort of thing many times.
And we were aware of your performative-ness.
Khatia, you are as much actress as virtuoso pianist. In the soulful and slow moments, you sway and close your eyes, as one who is basking in the aethereal beauty of the score. In front of your audience, you are playing the role of being carried away by the music. In the moments when you hands are still and only the orchestra is playing, you look across to the conductor and the large bank of musicians, not as one who wants merely to be sure when she comes in to play her next note, but as a connoisseur who is appraising, with approval, her fellow musicians. You are performing perfectly the role of being exported to another region of appreciation. And of course there is what is apparently one of your trademarks. As you lean over the keyboard, you let your beautiful, glossy ringlet-ed swathe of black hair fall down over your face, momentarily making you a woman of mystery. Then, when the score perks up and becomes more lively, you toss your head back and the glossy, ringlet-y black hair flies back into place – a manoeuvre exactly like Rita Hayworth tossing back her hair in a much-appreciated moment in Gilda. It’s sexy as hell, Khatia, and you know it.
Speaking of sex, that very low-cut dress. Those amply-displayed, eye-catching bosoms. In your acting you are selling your sex as much as your music.
Am I a dirty old man for pointing this out? Am I a censorious male chauvinist denigrating a great musician? No Khatia. My wife and I couldn’t ignore your theatrical technique and admired your brashness as well as loving the music. But we did gasp a little at your next performance which we saw the following night.
This time you were playing, in front of an Israeli audience in Tel Aviv, Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. Tchaikovsky is always sobbingly soulful, and this is one of his sobbing-est, perfect for your theatrical skills, as was your encore which was the most solemn and sombre of Brahms’ Hungarian Dances, slower in pace and allowing you to lay off the percussiveness a bit. The closing of the eyes, the swaying, the admiring looks at conductor and orchestra, the beautiful hair falling down over your face and then swishing back in place with a toss of your head. All played perfectly. Yet you sold sex even more insistently than you did in Lyon. This time you were wearing a dark blouse, but semi-transparent leggings letting us see your beautiful legs and thighs almost up to the reproductive parts of your anatomy. You were a spectacle as much as a sound. Yes, we again admired your beauty and loved the music you [and the orchestra] were making, but we couldn’t help laughing a bit at your attire, even if it did make me nostalgic for youth a bit.
You do know what you’re doing Khatia. And of course you do know what is appropriate for your audience. For on the third night of finding you on Youtube, we saw you performing at a music school in France, before an audience of quite young children and their parents. This time, still gorgeous, you were attired more modestly with no arousing flesh on display, and you were playing without an orchestra but with your older sister Kavanta, one year your senior and with looks as attractive as yours. You shared the piano, first playing a composition for four hands by Franz Schubert; than collaborating on six of Brahms’ Hungarian Dances. I’m sure either of you could have played these dances solo, but you took the right side of the piano and your sister took the left side and the music was wonderful.
So what am I saying to you Khatia? I’m saying that we both know even classical music is a branch of showbiz and its performers act out roles. But you act your part more blatantly than most. Your gestures, your movements, your glamour, your sex and sex-appeal. I understand that in some quarters you have been severely criticised for this. You have been berated in the Guardian for your “barnstorming technique”. On line I have found one pundit who hates you so much that he sets out to prove you are a dreadful pianist. He is of course wrong. Musically, your performances are delightful, invigorating, and attractive to large audiences.
I could daydream about you, but I know what I have seen is a persona, and not you. And whenever I see so great and young a performer as you, I think of time’s winged chariot. Soon you will be in your forties, then fifties, then sixties and older. I’m sure that you will still be the great pianist you are now, but the sexual attractions will have to be severely modified unless you wish to court ridicule.
Khatia, my final word on you is what I once said about Renee Fleming – how unfair it is of Nature to make some people both so talented and so beautiful.
Sincerest good wishes
An Admirer
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