CODY ENGLANDER
Staff writer
Prior to her performance, pianist Sara Davis Buechner reflected on what performing classical music means in the modern world.
“[Chautauqua audiences are a] very knowledgeable and respectful audience, which is unusual in the United States, where classical music is not exactly as popular as something like cage match wrestling on the lawn of the White House,” Buechner said. “… I wish the concert hall could be placed on the 20th story so the whole stage of upper New York could hear [the recital].”
At 4 p.m. today in the Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall, Buechner will perform a series of pieces by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Carl Maria von Weber, concluding in a final serenade of the Dolly Suite by Gabriel Fauré. Nicola Melville, chair of Chautauqua Institution’s Piano Program, will accompany Buechner for the concluding pieces.
“I think an audience likes to watch two people duking it out on one instrument,” Buechner joked. “Size, space concerns become parallel when you’re sharing the bench with somebody.”
While sharing a bench can be cramped, as the two pianists are elbow-to-elbow, Buechner said the shared spotlight adds to the grandiosity of the performance, and the sound it produces is special.
“It makes a hell of a noise,” she said.
Buechner and Melville have known each other for some years, with Chautauqua serving as a connector for the two pianists. The Dolly Suite was the perfect selection for the musicians to combine their talents through all 88 keys.
“I’d always wanted to play this particular suite,” Buechner said. “The Dolly Suite consists of six pieces, and you almost never hear them all played together. So this is, instead of a Hershey’s kiss, a whole chocolate bar.”
While Buechner is able to perform world-class pieces that have earned her major prizes in the Queen Elisabeth Competition, the Leeds International Piano Competition, the International Tchaikovsky Competition and the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition throughout the 1980s, she noted the one issue plaguing modern audiences — attention.
“Great music, like great art and great drama, like almost anything at the highest end of human aspiration, requires listening, not just looking,” Buechner said. “Truly listening, sensing, feeling. To immerse yourself in that is, I think, deepening yourself as a human being and improving one’s sensitivity not only to the culture but also to the feelings and emotions of all those people around you.”
Having the power to hold the attention of an audience can lead to a wordless conversation between the music, pianist and audience member. All it takes is attention.
“My job as a musician isn’t to just have this conversation [with artists like Mozart], it’s to share it with people,” Buechner said. “That’s why they’re there: to hear something they’d otherwise not be privy to.”
