Alla Marcia

Marches are rousing. That's why you'll find them in or under all manner of stirring music, even in an anthem to love such as Brel's Quand on n'a que l'amour.

And that's why – after chancing upon Lang Lang's recorded rendition of Rachmaninov's G minor Prelude, Op.23 No.5 – I was dumbfounded by the slowness and apparently insane rubato of his performance. The composer's direction is clearly Alla marcia – which I can only imagine Lang Lang has interpreted as a dedication to a woman called Marcia – as there is no way no how that anyone could march to the music he is playing. Lang Lang's version is a leisurely amble with apparently many distractions and delays en route; all forward motion is suspended in bar 23. The slow middle section is painfully schmaltzy and kitsched-up, lacking in lyricism but peppered with random dynamic effects.

Bar 23

How should it be played? Let's look at a few Russians.

Ashkenazy plays a good steady march with a delicate touch, and the melody of the central lyrical section sings with phrasing as light and natural as human breath.

Gilels (note to self: the stress is on the first syllable and the second L is soft, it's one of those names that we somehow get all wrong, like Mussorgsky - again the stress is on the first syllable) ... Gilels flies along at more than a quick-step, it is so fast it seems as if he can only resort to flinging his hands at the keyboard and somehow manages to strike the right notes. It is in the central section that his playing is truly magical where the music flows like water in a brook.

But if you want a march – and both I and the composer do – then listen to Richter. He plays a strong quickish march with his accustomed muscularity and rhythmic clarity, and not a soldier falls out of step, and the tempo is astoundingly maintained through all the dramatic complexities. The lyrical section also has something of Gilels' watery lightness. A wonderful version.

Cheap materials

Cyril Connolly’s The Unquiet Grave opens with a reasonable declaration: “The more books we read, the sooner we perceive that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.” This is Connolly’s self-talk against dissipating his energies in literary journalism, criticism, broadcasting, and the like. But it doesn’t go anywhere towards considering how a masterpiece is to be created. For most writers, wouldn’t there be something a bit paralysing about sitting down to create with the imperative of “create a masterpiece” hanging overhead?

If a writer’s task is to produce a masterpiece, and if the production of masterpieces is unlikely to pay the bills, at least in the short term, then the writer needs to earn money through other occupations. Connolly’s sentiment leads us to think that non-literary occupations might be preferable, but on the next page we read: “We cannot think if we have no time to read, or feel if we are emotionally exhausted, or out of cheap materials create what will last.” One marked advantage of some literary (or para-literary) occupation is that it does afford one time to read.