Page 6
Entertainment
University Daily Kansan, February 22, 1983
Pianist teaches with demanding, rewarding method
Tod Mearedy/KANSAN
Menahem Pressler, renowned pianist, discusses the intricacies of a MozartVariation during a piano master class with Karen Day, Lee's Summit, Mo., graduate student.
A lone student was seated on the Steinway piano, her hands clapped in her lap, her eyes closed.
By ELLEN WALTERSCHEID Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
The small stage was made even more crowded by a second piano placed next to hers.
She took a breath and began to play a Debussy piece, a study in repeated notes. Her body tilted slightly forward in concentration, and when she finished, the audience applauded.
BUT THE STUDENT, Kathy Petree, Lawrence graduate student, knew she could not leave the stage. The hard part had just begun.
She was going to have a lesson with world-renowned pianist Menahem Pressler.
Melissa Pressler
Pressler, who had been listening to Petree's performance from a seat in the front row of Swarthout Recital Hall, rose quickly and went onto the stage.
"Not bad," he told her. "But if I had to guess the composer, I would be hard put to say it was Debussy. You're in time, you're exact, but the character is missing."
you're exact, but she can tell you. He leaned over Petree and guided her arm on the keyboard. Then he ran over to the adjacent piano to demonstrate a phrase and sang as he played.
"GOOD...GOOD!" he shouted as Petree began to play grain. But two notes later, he cried, "No! No!"
termination.
Then she practiced the measure again.
again. But two notes later, he cried, "No! NO!" Petree sighed, smiled and bent forward again in
"He doesn't present his comments with a velvet glove," Petre said later. "He goes right to the heart of the problem, but it's because he cares about the music. I appreciate that. He won't let you quit until he has what he wants."
Pressler, an Israeli-American pianist who was born in Germany, worked with more than 15 students, some of them in ensembles, during master classes over the weekend. Yesterday he gave five more lessons.
CHRIS THOMpson, Overland Park junior, played the first recital of a Beechbrook sonata for Pressler.
He played the passage for Thompson, shooting, "Climb"
Climb!" during the crescendo.
Pressler admonished Thompson for being too cautious at one point in the movement.
Then the music grew gentler and resolved.
"NOW YOU'RE on top of the mountain, looking around." Pressler said softly and continued to play.
Pressler said sorry and continued to play,
"You see, this doesn't demand fingers," Pressler said.
"What it demands is an open soul. It doesn't open by itself.
You have to open it."
suggestions.
"I had never thought about 'climbing' before until he suggested it," he said. "I had been too bogged down with the notes."
Thompson said later that he had been inspired by Pressler's suggestions.
His concert engagements take him around the world, but Pressler's home is in Bloomington, Ind., where he is a professor at Indiana University's School of Music.
Although he no longer needs to teach to make a living, he said, he teaches because he loves to.
"I teach because I want to teach," Pressler said. "It's as rewarding as playing, and in some cases even more rewarding because you give something to a person who's alive, and that person can give it to someone else."
he stood at the piano next to Karen Day, Lee's Summit,
Mo. graduate student, with a pencil in hand. He marked time with a pencil and prodded her as he did the other students.
“MAKE IT come alive,” he said, pointing to the music.
“Make it something that is living because you touched it.”
Shakespeare's flavor lost in modern setting of 'Much Ado'
Make it something like living in the past.
He stood back as Day replayed a passage. His eyes, moving from her face to her hands, seemed to search to see whether she had understood his instructions.
He slowly closed his eyes and nodded as the notes filled the hall.
A beatiful smile spread across his face
"There, that's right. That's music."
By KEVIN LOLLAR
Staff Reporter
Once the anachronistic setting is accepted as a more historical displacement, John Gronbeck-Tedesco's direction often becomes a hubbub of gimmickry that is hard to justify.
Battlerice's substitution of the word "Charleston" for Shakespeare's "cinquepace" elicits its calculated laughter but does not increase understanding.
Whenever a director introduces to Shakespeare's stage business not at least implied in the text, he should do so to enlighten, as well as simply to amuse the audience. Groebank Todesco settles for amusement.
Staff Reporter
The KU Theatre department's rendition of "Much Ado About Nothing," set in the 'teens of the 20th century, embodies much that is bad and little that is good in modern "interrative" productions of Shakespeare.
WHEN THE CAST actually dances the Charleston, the audience laughs again, but the dance does nothing more than
put the actors embarrassingly out of breath for their next lines.
The list of distractions is lengthy: Elizabethan costumes for the Charleston scene, a game of quoits during which not a single throw comes within two feet of the stake, unnecessary slapstick in the Doggy scenes, a unicyclist, roller skaters, telephone conversations, villains with painted faces, a crowded cafe scene where the text calls for conversation among four characters and an escape where the text calls for none.
All these, and others, serve only to divert attention from what is being said.
HAPPILY HE seems to have left Lewan Alexander,
Junction city senior, alone.
what is being said?
One begins to think that Gronbeck-Tedesch does not trust
Shakespeare without the eimmicks.
Alexander's Benedick is super. He handles Shakespeare's language easily, and moves smoothly from high comedy to paths to anger. His actions are natural and unaffected, his elipses the rest of the cast. In short, he carries the production.
Washington Ruike, professor of theatre, excels as Leonato, especially in his better speeches at the wedding, and lends a mature dignity to the youthful cast. Vaughn Johnson, Pauls Doolittle, and Tim Breen fight to breathe life into Dogberry in spite of over-direction.
Other principal characters don't fare quite so well. Roberta Wilhelm, Lansing graduate student, as Beatrice, appears to have expended such energy learning her part that she has none left for emotion. Her lines are spoken flatly, with only a rise in volume to indicate a change in mood.
LEONATO'S DAUGHTER, Hero, is the play's drabbest character, and Angela Wallace, Tonganoxie senior, works hard to keep her drab.
The two remaining male leads, Mark Rector, Lawrence special student, as Don Pedro and Mark Torchia, Overland Park junior, as Claudio, are adequate but mechanical. Every gesticulation, every step, every facial expression is studied, automatic, dull.
concerned with Gronbeck Tedesco's blocking than with being natural and expressive.
The final principal character is the curious Don John, played by Mary Neufeld. Neufeld is an actor of obvious talents, but she is sadly miscast as a swaggering, melodramatic villain.
Indeed, much of the stage movement is studied and dull. Everyone, except Alexander, Kuhike and Johnson, is more
One consolation is the set, which is interesting in its combination of simplicity and complexity. Center stage consists of a revolving platform and painted panels depicting first stylistic, round trees, then Toulouse-Lautrec imitations which are lowered and raised from above to create the mood of different scenes, such as the crowded cafe.
Along with the vibrant colors of the costumes, the set carries out the Fauvist flavor of the period.
"Much Ado About Nothing" is a comedy of tremendous possibilities. The KU theatre department has a company with considerable talent. If Gronbекe-Tedesco had concentrated more on his actors and Shakespeare than on his own self-conscious interpretations and excessive blocking, this production would be a success instead of a near-miss.
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