One of the main questions that is raised in this review is why we have “blind spots,” meaning “genres, bands or pieces you know you should love and listen to but don’t, or haven’t gotten around to yet.” The article talks about personal experience of a young American classical pianist, a winner of many awards, Jonathan Biss. At first, he mentions Haydn. Jonathan asks himself why he is only familiar with a certain amount of symphonies/trios/string quartets that were written by the composer, when he knows that there are many more. Then Jonathan claims that he heard almost “every chamber music work” of Johannes Brahms and was very surprised to find out that there are scores of vocal duets and choral songs by the composer. He had no idea they existed. Biss wonders, why things like that happen. Why this “first-rate,” in his opinion, music is not known and not popular. I guess all of us, at least once, in a lifetime ask the same question. One of the possible reasons, why these duets are known less than other pieces by Brahms, is a taste of certain audience at that time. I say “certain” because not all people who were interested in music had access to it (could not afford to go to a concert) or simply were busy helping their families to make a living. There was no radio, no TV and no internet. Therefore, we had some “group” of people who made music famous. I think many compositions were forgotten because the “group” had no interest in them. As a result, many music works are still unknown to us.
One of the reasons why we have “blind spots” today seems to be obvious. We just cannot listen to everything. In many cases people are simply not interested to listen to everything that has ever been written. It does not mean that we are not open for new music; we just do not look for it. People usually just add a new “favorite” work to their “music library.” I also do not see anything dramatic if you listen one particular genre or artist, we all make our choices, but by doing so you limit yourself. Many people criticize professional musicians (piano/string players etc.) for being ignorant of anything but music pieces they play. The question is what is a role of professional performer? People expect them to know more about music than non-musician knows. I think it is reasonable as they usually have music education. However, professional musicians are trained and practice every day to give an excellent performance, not to know every single music work of every composer.
The work that Biss offers us to listen is Duet “Weg der Liebe(Way of Love) II, Op. 20, No. 2.” The pianist says that when he heard this piece for the first time he was “blown away.” This music is pleasant to my ears. It is a very pure and romantic piece. And it should be this way because Brahms is the composer of Romantic period. At the same time, the duet has a sense of drama. Maybe, it is because of some dissonances in the melody. It also feels like this work has a lot of alternations between “happy” and “sad” moods. The composition is very emotional. I do not understand the words but I can feel that it is about something personal. I can perfectly imagine two people sitting on shore of some small river, somewhere in a forest, singing about difficulties of love.
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