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by David Macdonald
Scene 1
Not long ago, Locrian Co-Director John Kreckler and I were sitting around,
trying to find a suitable piece to open an upcoming concert. After about a
half-hour of listening to tapes, we came upon a clarinet-piano piece by
British composer Julian Anderson. We put the cassette in, and about ten
seconds into the music, we both started to laugh. "This piece is so
Jonathan," one of us said.
I tell this story to point out the thing I most admire in Locrian pianist
Jonathan Faiman's playing: It has a personality, a musical point of view
that is easily identifiable. Call it the "Faiman sound," if you will. And
there are certain pieces that fit this "sound" to perfection, pieces with
driving rhythms, with lots of staccato, with dramatic silences. We choose
these pieces for Jonathan to play on our concerts, and he plays them
beautifully.
I don't mean to say that Jonathan can only play staccato. He has the
technique and intelligence to interpret any piece you put in front of him.
It's just that there's a certain kind of music that suits him so well that
when he plays it, he's not so much interpreting it as he is communicating it
directly.
So what is the "Faiman sound"? How does one characterize it? Well, let's
put it this way: Some pianists play with the steady grace of a river, with
each note and gesture flowing together into a pleasing whole. This is not
the Faiman sound. Other pianists play with the delicate grace of a flower,
with each fragrant line sewn together into an exquisite organism. This is
not the Faiman sound either. Jonathan's playing is more like the engine of a
sports car—graceful, yes, but lean and muscular too, and with the beauty that
comes from the effortless cooperation of each single piece of machinery. In
his playing, every little accent and staccato mark is milked to emphasize
each structural detail. Every phrase irregularity, every hint of hemiola is
brought into exciting relief. The New York Times critic Allan Kozinn,
reviewing one of our concerts, wrote that Jonathan's playing "affords
remarkable clarity even in the speediest of lines." Clarity is a good word
for the Faiman sound.
Scene 2
Jonathan and I are sitting in the Westway Diner on 108th Street and Broadway,
and we're talking about his background.
He was born in Urbana, Illinois, where both of his parents are scientists.
By the age of six, he was studying both violin and piano, but at fourteen he
chose to concentrate on the latter. A local teacher gave him a strong
foundation in keyboard technique and theory.
When he was thirteen, renowned pianist John Perry came to town and taught a
master class. Jonathan played for him, and they hit it off immediately.
"John Perry is the best master class teacher ever. He finds the perfect
balance between giving the student a lesson and giving the audience a show."
Four years later, Jonathan went off to Rice University to study with Perry.
After Rice, Jonathan moved on to the Manhattan School of Music, where he
worked with Yoheved Kaplinsky and later with Leon Fleisher. He credits
Fleisher, the great Schnabel pupil who for many years lost the use of his
right hand to carpal tunnel syndrome, with giving his playing a certain
intelligence, a means of bringing out a piece's structure in performance.
Fleisher was passionate about rhythm and the bending of musical time. He was
always counseling his students to speed certain notes up and slow others
down, not for purposes of spontaneity or rubato, but rather to expose an
inherent rhythmic hierarchy in which certain notes are more important than
others. This analytical approach to playing was revelatory to Jonathan. "I
felt like before I went to Fleisher, I had a murky sense of how things should
go, and how to learn something, and after Fleisher, I could look at a piece
of music and figure out what's going on."
Since getting his doctorate from the Manhattan School, Jonathan has been
active as a soloist, giving recitals and recording a CD of contemporary piano
music on Musicians Showcase Recordings. He is also a member of The Ambrosia
Trio and has recently teamed up with his wife, soprano Amy Goldstein, to form
a voice-piano duo called Verses.
Jonathan is also a talented composer, and several of his works have appeared
on Locrian programs. One of his most successful pieces, Five Vaults, is
recorded on his solo CD. Five Vaults is truly eclectic; you can hear shades
of Stravinsky and Debussy—both composers he admires'and there is also a
funky groove to his rhythms that calls jazz and pop to mind.
The latter influence has served him well in the world of the theater, where
he is often called on to write suave, jazzy incidental scores. For four
years, he has regularly written music for the Actors' Company Theater, and in
2000 he provided the score to an off-Broadway production of Noel Coward's
Suite in Two Keys at the Lucille Lortel Theatre.
At present Jonathan is hard at work on a recent commission from Ian Hobson
and the Sinfonia da Camera in his hometown of Urbana for a piano concerto,
which he will perform himself in April 2002.
Scene 3
An hour later. We're drinking coffee, wrapping things up. Amy Goldstein has
joined us, and she's sitting off to the side, pretending not to listen as her
husband talks about how much their collaboration has helped his playing.
"She has made me more conscious of my breathing...In all my studies, nobody
ever talked about that."
As we are getting ready to pay the check, I ask Jonathan whether he minds
being typecast as a pianist with an edge, a player at home in the sharp world
of sforzandos and sudden silences. He smiles and admits that the
characterization is not completely inaccurate. But he cautions me against
pigeonholing him. He thinks of the performer as an actor, a role player who
must become whatever character he is assigned to play, even if it doesn't
come naturally to him. Towards that end, he is constantly working on his
legato. "I am always challenging myself to play slower, quieter, smoother."
So will all this work on his legato change the character of his playing?
Will we have to revise our notion of the "Faiman sound?" Or is this work on
"slower, quieter, smoother" merely a tuning up of the sports car engine? We
will have to wait and see (and listen).
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