Channel 4’s series The Piano began its second series last night. It’s always interesting to see the different playing styles of the pianists who put themselves forward to play a station piano in front of a crowd of listeners. Some of them play beautifully. However, it’s clear that the ‘back stories’ of the pianists are now centre stage. Overcoming adversity, starting from an unlikely place, using piano-playing as a healing tool or a way to move forward after a difficult experience – these human stories can’t fail to touch us.
Yet there is a feeling that the actual playing is being moved into second place. The judges talk over the playing. We never hear the whole performance. Comments are kept light and non-technical, with a lot of time given to good-natured teasing between judges Lang Lang and Mika. And it’s clear that a heartwarming human story is likely to propel someone to the top of the list.
The whole thing made me think about my own career, my colleagues, and how our ‘back stories’ were nothing to do with it. Nobody ever asked us about them. We never put them forward. Our ‘journeys’ remained hidden. I remember thinking that if only people knew, there were some amazing stories to be told, but we never told them. Not because we weren’t willing to, but because no-one ever seemed minded to seek the information. The focus was on how well we played, our musicianship, the artistic results we were able to achieve. Which is probably for the best.
Today there’s so much emphasis on people’s ‘journeys’ – you see it in all the time in reality TV, talent shows, cookery and craft competitions. From that perspective, my colleagues and I were operating in a surprisingly neutral environment when we started out. No-one sought to know what we had had to tackle in order to earn our places on the concert platform. Maybe our careers would have rocketed forward if we – or someone on our behalf – had made a big thing of our ‘journeys’. But the climate was different then.
The climate was indeed different then, and we were also told (when young) that we had to ‘wait our turn”. Frustrating then, when our generation should have been having their turn that we were then told to hold back now and let the younger ones have theirs.
That’s very much how I feel about it as well, Mary.
Did you see Lucy Mangan’s review in the Guardian? She has the same analysis. We agree entirely.
Yes, I did see it – a very astute review, I thought.
It’s all very sad, but it seems the public requires there to be a competitive element to painting, dancing and music programmes before they will watch them.
This is popular entertainment !
I had a Millennial reader of my blog ask me last week why I rarely talk about myself in my posts. The idea of sharing my personal journey doesn’t appeal to me at all–perhaps it’s a generational thing? The worst example I’ve seen of this sort of thing was a Gen Z singer/songwriter who read sections of her journal to the audience in-between her songs. Shudder. I happen to think mystery is still appealing…
Oh my goodness, that’s unbelievable! Shudder indeed. The only development I’ve noticed in these Millennial singer-songwriters is that they now write 2 chord songs, instead of three.