Recital programming: how not to bore your audience

Solo piano recitals are tricky things. In the hands of master players, they’re breathtaking immersions in beauty and meaning. In the hands of less gifted pianists, they can become an hour (or more) of excruciating boredom. I know (as a pianist and a classical music blogger) that I shouldn’t admit to this, but all too often I find solo piano recitals deadly dull. And as much as I lament dwindling audiences, I can’t help but ask, if I’m bored, what does the average concert goer think?

Upon reflection, I suspect much of the problem lies not in poor playing but unfortunate programming choices. For classical pianists, the recital sweet spot exists between offering music the average concert goer is likely to find appealing and playing a few things that challenge listeners to expand their musical horizons. This is difficult enough for pianists who play standard repertoire. Those who (like I) specialize in the music of living composers have to be particularly careful as little or nothing we’re playing will be familiar to our audiences. It doesn’t help that a subset of new music—one that gobbles up most of the grants and awards—can sound like sonic terrorism to the uninitiated. Even my musically sophisticated husband is wary about attending modern music recitals as he has “endured”  (his word) too many pieces he now refers to as “eye-rolling wanna-music.”

It is refreshing to remember that concert pianists have wrestled with the question of program selection ever since Franz Liszt invented the solo piano recital. If we play audience-friendly music, we’re at risk of being criticized for not being “serious” artists. If we play thornier music, we risk losing our listeners. Recently, while researching the life of Arthur Shattuck, an early 20th century American concert pianist, I discovered his thoughts on recital programming and was struck by how contemporary they sound, even though he penned them in 1918.

An international performer, Shattuck was a child prodigy from Neenah, Wisconsin who studied with the famed Theodor Leschetizky, was personal friends with Edvard Grieg and Horowitz, and (incidentally) was the first classical pianist to tour in Iceland. Even though he performed on most of the major stages in Europe and America, his thoughts on concert repertoire are refreshingly down-to-earth, and still relevant today. They are so perfectly expressed (and so closely mirror my own opinions) that I’ve chosen to share his words on the topic rather than my own:

“I believe in making them [recitals] moderate and interesting for both the musician and those who are not. It seems unfair to impose on the public a program that is too heavy for their comprehension. This by no means implies that an artist should play down to a level beneath the artistic. The standard should always be kept high, no matter what the audience may be.

In large music venues, where the concert-going public is made up of students of music, professionals, and trained listeners, serious programs are expected. In hundreds of smaller cities throughout the states, where the appreciation of music is grown, but where opportunities for hearing such has been limited, it is only fair play to the majority of such audience to give them something melodic and comprehensible in the latter part of the program, in which they have done one the honor to listen to the preceding group, which may have been musically beyond them. It is in fact a grave mistake to take the attitude some artists do—that they will play what it particularly pleases them to play, regardless of how the public chooses to accept it.

In dozens of instances in the course of my career I have seen proofs of how the lack of wisdom in a discriminate choice of programs has turned out to be unfortunate for the artist from a return engagement point of view, as well as for the lay listener, who vows he will never permit himself to be dragged to another piano recital.

Given the average man who pays his money to hear you two or three numbers with a melody, as consolation for an evening he is about to consider as lost, he will say, ‘I never thought I cared for piano music before.’ He will try it again, and perhaps bring with him another skeptic. Of course, many a critic and professional amateur will disagree with such an arrangement. The one is peeved and the other insulted. Whatever we do is going to be criticized.

Even the baffling perfection of a Heifetz hasn’t escaped criticism; some criticize him for being too faultless, others are annoyed because there is nothing to criticize. So what does it matter after all? Grieg once told me that during all the years of his public life the critics slammed him mercilessly, but he became hardened to this when he realized that he was giving pleasure to his public.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

(Excerpt taken from Arthur Shattuck: His Memoirs, His Career)

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