‘Page-turner with Steinway’. Made from a live-streamed broadcast of Winterreise on 2nd Nov 2020. Drawings (three images).
‘Page-turner with Steinway’
Viewed from a live-streamed broadcast of mezzo-soprano Alice Coote and accompanist Christian Blackshaw. I had difficulty in successive versions of this drawing with the pianist’s position within the general scheme. My aim had been to avoid any emphasis on a main subject, viewing instead everything that I could see of the recital-hall as one overall image. My problem was that Blackshaw’s quietly self-contained bearing isolated him from the gestures of the more expressive singer. In performance, this contributed to the powerful impact of their performance, but it gave a lop-sided view when trying to draw the scene as a whole. I kept thinking of George Stubbs’ Newmarket paintings with jockeys, trainers, grooms and stable-lads clustered around gleaming horses, imagining a parallel with these recitalists and their gorgeous piano. I remembered watching a page-turner at a previous recital at Wigmore and have included her here. In the picture she helps to diffuse the pianist’s solitary profile embedding him into the fabric of the whole – although of course, no embedding was needed and no page-turner was called for on this occasion. My apologies to Christian Blackshaw for this inaccuracy.