Years have gone by and I've finally learned to accept myself for who I am: a beggar for good football. I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in
the stadiums I plead: "A pretty move [please...]."And when good football
happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don't [care] which team or
country performs it. Eduardo Galeano
I have to admit I feel that way not only about futbol, but about music. Today I had a hankering to find a video of a great performance of Chopin's Polonaise in A Flat Major. I really tried to find a good combination of flawless technical playing together with tremendous depth of artistry and feeling.
Naturally, I first went to Horowitz:
Ah, that is artistry par excellence. Oh, my, it was soaring, it was sublime, it was just heart-meltingly beautiful. Ah, but I could not help but to note that by the time this video was made, Horowitz was well on in years, and he makes minor technical misses in 8 or 10 places.
So, I pulled up a video of Rubinstein playing the same piece, and again the artistry was powerful, but it was not technically flawless. And so my search continued, looking at some younger players who played more cleanly, but artisitcally they did not really know what they were doing, so once again I felt as if I were missing something.
Maybe I need to look at music a little more like I look at soccer. After all, I have never seen a soccer ball perfectly struck, but I have seen many that were very beautifully and sumptuously struck. I have never seen a perfect dribbling display, but Maradona's famous syncopated slalom through the England defense in World Cup 1986, though perhaps not technically perfect down to the millimeter, was nonetheless, a masterpiece.
At some point you have to let the flaws vanish, and then all you are left with is something dazzling.
I think I'll watch that Horowitz video again.
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