"Coffee with Mozart" - Gidi Meir discusses Mozart piano music and more in a weekly on-line series

                             Photo: students of Meishar Art School
 

For harpsichordist, organist and teacher Gideon (Gidi) Meir, the piano, his first instrument, has been beckoning him back over recent years, resulting in several recitals, in which the artist offers interesting information and explanations on the works he performs. When the coronavirus moved in to change our lives, Meir established a weekly on-line workshop focusing mostly on slow movements from Mozart piano sonatas. Under the auspices of the Piano Club (Moadon Hapsanter, a FB site administered by Din Zohar) Meir has dedicated the workshops to the memory of his piano teacher Malka Mevorach. The Tuesday “Coffee with Mozart” series, in live streaming from Gidi Meir’s Tel Aviv home, has taken the form of master classes, hosting other pianists or, alternatively, of Meir himself playing the selected movement, discussing and analysing it. A natural teacher and gifted lecturer, he provides the viewer with background information as to where Mozart was at the time he wrote the work, the social- and musical climate of the town, with whom the composer was in contact, his students there (mostly young aristocratic women) and to whom the specific work was dedicated. Then comes a discussion of how the piece might be understood and played, of how the text inspires the pianist to interpret it and make it his own. I was instructed in the importance of the accurate reading of a musical work, but Meir reminds us that these pieces also invite the pianist to be spontaneous and creative when it comes to tempo, dynamics, even to the use of the sustaining pedal and, no less importantly, to engage in the art of informed ornamentation. The workshop began with the study of slow movements – Meir believes that they are an essential key to understanding the style and elements of Mozart’s piano sonatas; he then progressed to addressing complete sonatas. Pieces discussed so far have been the Adagio from KV280, Andante amoroso from KV281, Andante from KV283, Adagio from 332, Adagio from 457, Sonata 309 (complete) and Sonata 545 (complete).

 

It was in mid-August of 2020 that Meir posted his playing of a molto adagio movement from a Mozart piano sonata on the Piano Club Facebook page, with the aim of holding a live workshop on it with a group of pianists. Din Zohar came up with a different idea - that the workshop should take place on line. That was how the project began. Meir refers to it as a “work in progress”, an experimental approach for him to “encourage players to communicate through music and focus on the various aspects and problems of performing Mozart piano sonatas.” He is convinced that the more background knowledge we gather on a work - cultural associations, biographical facts and an understanding of the piece's very musical elements - the more we feed into our imagination to make the music speak. Indeed, to understand the textures of Mozart’s piano music, Gidi Meir proposes examining the composer’s (non-piano) instrumentation and settings and to then find associations of a piano movement with orchestral- or chamber music - to think about whether a certain bass line might be played by a bassoon or a ‘cello, whether the work suggests a singer with obligato flute and whether it might have been played in a private salon or a larger concert hall. He draws our attention to Mozart’s opera librettos, to how they flesh out the characters in a multi-layered- and psychological manner. “In playing Mozart piano works, we must look at all these layers”, he adds. Indeed, Meir is shocked at how few pianists choose to play Mozart works, professional performers included! As to ornamentation, he claims so many players simply imitate that of an artist on their favourite recording, rather than experimenting and making their own decisions.

 

After a brief hiatus, “Coffee with Mozart” will be back on line at 18:00 on Tuesdays and not only for the discussion of Mozart works. Meir will present Mozart’s C-minor Fantasia alongside C.P.E.Bach’s C-major Fantasia, focusing on Carl Philipp’s ornamentation; Johann Sebastian’s most audacious son’s extreme ideas are sure to widen the pianist’s musical palette!  Also on the agenda is music of Couperin with its reference to protest (relevant to today) and the study of one of Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without Words” as modelled on a presto movement from a Mozart sonata. And why not discuss a Haydn piano sonata? I found myself playing through the chosen movement in preparation for each session and revisiting it afterwards. Indeed, Gidi Meir sums up his goal as being “happy if these workshops encourage people to take time to return to the piano and engage in discussion with themselves.”

 

                                         Photo: Gideon Meir