Pedro Lilienfeld

One of my great loves, starting in my teenage years, has been music, principally what is considered classical music. That love was, most probably, stimulated by early exposure, first in Paris mostly subconsciously, and then by more direct influence from my father, in Quito.

I remember the first piece that I loved to hear, over and over, at age eight: La scala di seta (The Silken Ladder), an overture by Rossini, a recording owned by Gerhard Anker, my mother’s cousin. Slowly, I broadened my listening repertoire, mainly through radio. Both local stations and shortwave international broadcasts were my main sources of classical exposure as I grew up.

I wrote about the major recorded classical music immersion I experienced by the temporary storage at our home of some 2,000 vinyl discs (78 rpm) and a record reproduction system from an absconded Austrian gentleman music lover which was later sold to a rich Ecuadorian banker. That record collection opened my musical horizon immensely. It ranged from J. S. Bach to Brahms but not beyond or before, reflecting the taste boundaries of its previous collector. These records also made me aware of some of the great performers of classical music, the virtuosi of the early and mid twentieth century: the great pianists such as Rubinstein, Horowitz, Serkin, Arrau, Paderewski, Cortot, etc., as well as those notable violinists such as Heifetz, Menuhin, Oistrakh; cellists like Casals, Piatigorsky, Rostropovich, etc.

I found that my early preferences went towards the great concertos for both piano and violin rather than most symphonies. I found that concertos were more accessible and melodic. I was attracted, in particular, to concertos of the Romantic period, by Mendelssohn, Grieg, Schumann, etc. as well as the last ones by Beethoven. I very much liked Chopin but preferred his solo piano works; I found that his piano concertos were unbalanced, i.e., the orchestral parts were outplayed by the piano, as would be expected from a virtuoso of that instrument, like Chopin.

As my musical taste evolved, I expanded my interest to periods preceding and following those mentioned above: Renaissance and eventually Medieval music at one end, and neo-Romantic and eventually impressionistic and modern works. Medieval works attracted me because they recreated the spirit of that period.

As far as impressionism, especially the masterworks of Debussy and Ravel, it came to me slowly and only when I was about 20 years old, but then I fully embraced that oeuvre. My father loved those French composers of the early 20th century and he also introduced me to their precursors, César Frank and Gabriel Fauré.

Early on, I also started to incorporate the Russians in my listening repertoire: Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Rachmaninov, Scriabin, followed eventually by Stravinsky and later, by Prokofiev and Shostakovich. I have a love-hate relationship with Tchaikovsky, I find him frequently too bombastic and overbearing but am attracted by some of his chamber works.

I was enthralled, quite soon, by Spain and its music. Emotionally and culturally, Spanish compositions were close to me. I loved and continue to love works by Albéniz, Granados, De Falla, Mompou, Tárrega, etc., and the Renaissance composers Tomás Luis de Victoria, Antonio de Cabezón. I also became aware of the enormous influence that Spanish music has had on composers of other nations, especially Russian and French.

In parallel, I became particularly entranced by chamber music and lieder by Schubert, Schumann, Hugo Wolf, Brahms, etc. to the point that I have come to prefer, in general, chamber music to much of orchestral music. I love string chamber music, sonatas for violin and piano, even violin solo music (e.g. Bach partitas). Favorites are Schubert quartets and quintets, the Schumann piano quintet, César Frank’s sonata for piano and violin, all chamber music by Debussy and Ravel, and assorted other works.

I never got to play any instrument in my life. As I was growing up in Quito, I had no opportunity to learn to play and, curiously, I was not encouraged to do so by my father, a thoroughly musical person. Although he guided my listening, especially towards the French impressionists, he never suggested I learn to play the piano or any other instrument, or even to learn to read music. I became truly addicted to listening on the radio, even with the interferences and spurious noises that so frequently accompany shortwave reception. My knowledge of classical music expanded continuously, and I became quite capable to identify compositions or, rather composers. Very often I recognized the composer well before identifying the particular work. I was, and am, quite aware of the stylistic characteristics of each composer. When I was 21 years old, while visiting the Fourestiers in Paris, I identified a piece by Beethoven being played on the radio, within three measures, even astonishing my professional musician family.

Occasionally, I have found myself at odds with the views of professional musicians. Specifically, I have been confronted with divergences of opinion about the greatness of musical compositions and of composers. I thoroughly disagreed with my good friend David Epstein (conductor of the MIT orchestra) about a particular work by Beethoven, the overture entitled The Consecration of the House which I considered second rate in comparison with the magnificence of that composer’s many other works. I have perceived a sense of awe by some musicians towards the great composers regardless of the particular piece in question. In my opinion, no composer, writer, artist, etc. deserves unquestioning admiration; nobody is perfect.

On a reversal of the above, I was surprised about, and disagreed with the view expressed by Fourestier and his second wife Lucette Descaves, who considered the guitar as a lesser instrument. That opinion would imply that any plucked instrument such as the harp, the harpsichord, is to be dismissed which they did not.

I remain intellectually puzzled by the effect that music exerts on me. Being, what I believe, a thoroughly rational person, I have difficulty understanding the emotional effect on me of certain musical compositions. I can be thrilled by specific writings and poetry but what music can elicit seems different to me. It is at a deeper level of consciousness than any other exhilaration. Heinrich Heine, the great Romantic German poet, put it succinctly: “Nothing is more futile than theorizing about music”. Also, Herbert Spencer, the English philosopher, uttered this complementary opinion: “The love of music seems to exist for its own sake”.

Different pieces have a different effect on me. Certain works by Schubert stir me profoundly emotionally: Der Leiermann, the final lied of the Winterreise song cycle, and the famous lied Der Erlkönig. The lyrics being by Wilhelm Müller and Goethe, respectively. The combination of the magnificence of Schubert’s music and the beautiful Romantic German poetry, to me, is profoundly stirring. I am grateful to be able to fully appreciate these songs through my knowledge of the German language.

I must also mention a most notable emotional reaction by my son Claudio when he was about 10 years old: on listening (perhaps on the radio) to Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro chamber piece he began to cry. He was deeply touched by its melody and so was I by his reaction.

I will not cite here all the works that I especially love but, here are a few examples: the piano piece La cathédral engloutie, a prelude by Debussy, the nocturne Fêtes for orchestra by the same composer, the piano suite by Ravel Gaspard de la nuit, the string quartet by Ravel, the sonata for violin and piano by César Frank, the second movement of the fourth piano concerto by Beethoven, the 1614 madrigal Zefiro Torna by Claudio Monteverdi, among others.

I have also, gradually, become quite entranced by jazz, especially live jazz. Performances by the greats: McCoy Tyner, Kenny Baron, Ahmad Jamal, Chucho Valdés, etc. have given me great pleasure.

Unfortunately, the profound delight I experience listening to music has been impaired during my advanced years. Ever since I have had to rely on hearing aids, their imperfect music reproduction quality has limited my ability to fully enjoy it. The emphasis of those electronic devices is directed a maximizing speech intelligibility at the expense of musical fidelity.

Note added in 2024:

Since writing the preceding paragraph bemoaning the sound quality mediated by hearing aids, I have been able to tap into a notable technological advance that has transformed my enjoyment of recorded music. Rather than relying on the transduction of sound by hearing aids’s microphones, by directly transmitting the sound by Bluetooth from an iPhone to the hearing aids, the quality of the reproduction reaches stunning fidelity. Thus, I have been able to listen to satellite transmitted music (SiriusXM) and iPhone stored albums with remarkably satisfying quality.