Buzz's Letter of Thanks to the Chinese Ambassador to Washington

December 20, 2010

His Excellency Zhang Yesui

The Ambassador of The People’s Republic of China

2300 Connecticut Avenue Northwest

Washington D.C.

Dear Mr. Ambassador:

President Obama today signed a significant tax reduction law, which will put real dollars into my pocket. I want to thank the Chinese people for this gift to me. Like all Americans, I can’t resist a freebie, and this one is real good. As you know, we Americans don’t tax ourselves enough to pay for our government and this tax reduction bill is no exception: all $840 billion of its cost will be borrowed from China and others. If it weren’t for the willingness of your country to loan us this money, I wouldn’t get the tax relief, which I really will enjoy having.

Of course I know that we Americans have got to continue to do our part to make sure that you Chinese have enough dollars to lend back to us. So, I pledge to you that I will buy only things that are made in China. This is not very difficult to do because America no longer manufactures much; only 10% of our GDP is devoted to manufacturing. Unfortunately, I recently bought a netbook computer made in Taiwan (I won’t let that happen again), but I’ve been reading about the tremendous buildup of your military, especially your navy, so I suspect that you’ll end up with Taiwan anyway. You’ll be happy to know, however, that yesterday I purchased a beautiful cashmere sweater, a product heretofore associated with Scotland, but I checked the label, and it, too, was made in China, so, consistent with my pledge, I felt free to buy it.

Even though you are nominally lending the money to us, you and I know (wink wink) that Americans will never be able to repay the debt and that when it comes due, you will just roll it over, including the interest, as you have so consistently done in the past, and if you don’t, we will just print the dollars to repay you. So, in a very real sense this is a gift from the Chinese people to Americans.

Again, thanks so much.

Very truly yours,

Howard “Buzz” Singer

Scottsdale, Arizona, USA



Pierre-Laurent Aimard Casts a French Spell Over Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall. New York City. December 8, 2010. Olivier Messiaen is not my favorite composer, but it isn’t because I haven’t tried. A preliminary effort was my attendance at a Peter Serkin recital during which he performed Vingt Regards Sur L'Enfant - Jesus, which left me wishing I’d been someplace else. But, my major push took place three years ago at Royal Festival Hall in London, where I sat through a painful 80 minutes and 10 movements of the Turangalîla-Symphonie , which was proceeded by an hour-long pre-concert lecture in which the speaker was rhapsodic about the work; his spoken rhapsody being the only music I heard that evening. So, when Pierre-Laurent Aimard announced that the entire first half of his Carnegie Hall recital would be devoted to Messiaen's eight Preludes, I was less than enthusiastic about attending, a decision made easier, however, because I had never heard this brilliant pianist in recital before, and the remainder of the program was devoted to familiar Chopin and Ravel. In preparation, I did my homework by downloading and listening to the Preludes several times in advance of the recital itself.

The eight Preludes comprise Messiaen's first published works and were composed while he was still a student at the Paris Conservatoire. They owe much to Debussy and Ravel, and are very listenable. In the hands of a pianist as good as Aimard, they are transcendent. Messiaen can have no advocate better than Aimard.

After the intermission, Aimard turned to Chopin’s Barcarole and Scherzo No. 2, and he concluded with Ravel’s Miroirs. The program was very French in sound, if not in nationality. Aimard is an accurate pianist with a dynamic interpretive approach. There may be many adjectives and commentary that can describe his playing, but the two that occur to me are lucid and satisfying. It is easy to understand why Aimard has a large following, as the full Carnegie Hall and enthusiastic applause showed.

The two encores, one by Gyorgy Kurtag, and the other by Harrison Birtwistle, were appropriate in character with the music which proceeded them, and any of the traditional encores favored at these recitals would have been sure to have broken the spell cast over the evening by Aimard’s revelatory Messiaen, Chopin and Ravel.

(FYI: Carnegie Hall identifies all encores on its Website the day following the performance.)

I had met Irfan and his father in Hong Kong in October, and after his Thailand debut, I visited him back stage to renew our acquaintance and to congratulate him on his performance. Left to right: Buzz, pianist Irfan, his younger sister, and my friend Susan. Irfan’s very nice father took the picture. They live in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

College of Music, Mahidol University. Nakhonpathom, Thailand. November 20, 2010. I’m not a big booster of musical child prodigies, and I’d prefer to let them develop outside of my presence, but 12-year old Malaysian pianist Tengku Ahmad Irfan, may be an exception. Suffice it to say that he’s adorable and unaffected by his prodigious talent. He performed Mozart’s piano concerto no. 27, and Chopin’s Andante Spianato beautifully, far better than anyone had any reason to believe possible for one so physically slight and young. No one can predict the future, but he’s off to an extraordinary start. The Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, was excellent in every respect. Polish conductor Darius Mikulski was in charge.

Yundi Has Charisma

Thailand Cultural Center (“TCC”). Bangkok, Thailand. October 25, 2010. The Chinese pianist Yundi is continuing what is, perhaps, a minor trend to single names in the classical world, the progenitors of which are Midori, and Kennedy, while, on the opposite side of things, stands Lang Lang, who is affectionately known to his detractors as Bang Bang. Regardless of what he chooses to call himself (what was wrong with his former name of Yundi Li?), Yundi has what every performer would like to have---charisma. It can’t be explained, but you know it when you see it.

Sensing that something big was up, the packed house at the TCC on October 25, 2010, was uncharacteristically quiet as the house lights dimmed, signaling the imminent arrival of the evening’s star, the winner in 2000 of the prestigious Chopin competition.. As Yundi, tall, perpendicular, thin, and dressed in tails, elegantly walked towards the Steinway, the house erupted into loud applause even before the first note was played. As Yundi turned and faced the audience, acknowledging its presence with a warm, if subdued smile, and a slight bow, it could be grasped that the evening was already his.

Yundi played yet another all-Chopin program, which I wasn’t looking forward to because of all the similar programs I had heard during this year of the bicentenary of Chopin’s birth. Yes, even Chopin can suffer from extreme overexposure. Yet, after completing a set of five nocturnes, it was clear that Yundi is an extraordinary and sensitive talent. He brought to these sublime works, an interpretive intensity that was both introspective and arching. The Andante Spianto et Grande Polonaise Brillante, which closed the first half of the program, was large, and Yundi fulfilled its title’s promise of being “brillante,” while at the same time, honoring its melodic beauty.

After the intermission, Yundi tackled the four mazurkas of Opus 33, sensing in them the rhythm of the dance and the exquisite varieties of sound that each mazurka has. No two sounded alike, but together, they formed a unified whole, so that one would have missed any of them that might be omitted. As a Chopin interpreter, Yundi’s position is secure.

One takes for granted the technique of a performer of Yundi’s stature, but it’s nice to see it challenged, and Chopin’s Sonata No. 2 is a perfect vehicle to show just how good, or not so good, Yundi’s piano calisthenics might be. As expected, Yundi plays flawlessly, smoothly, with total control, and without any apparent difficulty, as if he owned the keyboard ab initio. His understanding of Chopin is so intimate that one is tempted to say that he has a special connection with the composer, which will continue to evolve over the years, and even at age 28, is already mature.


I was particularly interested in hearing what Yundi would do with his final work, the Chopin “Heroic” polonaise, which seems to be de rigueur for every Chopin recital, many times as an encore. Here is an opportunity for the performer to play to the crowd by abandoning the music in favor of volume and speed, a kind of show-off way to send the audience home. Thankfully, Yundi avoided these pitfalls and gave to this overplayed work, a freshness which must be extremely difficult to achieve, the result being that this evening was heroic for both Chopin and Yundi. The audience reacted with prolonged applause, shouting, and approval in one form or another, that was at least as pronounced, if not more so, than any other performance I can recall attending at the TCC over a 10-year period.

The grand foyer of the TCC is a large public space, ceremonial in design and feel, but I was unable to exit the concert hall proper after the concert, because of the crowds congregating at the exits waiting to leave the building through the foyer. Unbeknownst to me, but apparently known to all others, Yundi had agreed to sign autographs in the foyer, and his fans were reluctant to leave until they at least got sight of him. Cameras were held high and no one was moving. Even movie stars and rap idols would have been buoyed by this reception. Since there were far too many people for me to get close enough to see Yundi, not as much a loss to me as to others inasmuch as I was seated in the third row of the orchestra throughout the recital, I did manage to inch my way through the crowd even before his appearance, eventually leaving the site of so much charisma, but I was not unchanged: I’m now a Yundi fan.