The Page-Turner

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DET talks with NPR's Susan Stamberg about turning pages: LISTEN

"For the entire first half of the [Schubert Club] performance last night I watched with curiosity a man who looked not unlike Moby turn pages for Peter Serkin. I wondered if perhaps this Moby look-alike belonged to some kind of weird fraternity of page-turners. Do they travel with the band so to speak, or is there a society of local folks who gleefully volunteer their skills when the masters come to town? I think perhaps someone needs to do a short documentary on the quiet life of the piano page-turner. For some reason I picture them all gathering at page-turner conferences, only to retire to the hotel bar to swap gossip about all these great pianists, whose side they sit quietly by."

AfroJet, December 4, 2003. Used by permission.

Turning pages is something of a cross between stage management and library science, practiced in a meditative posture. I like Bay-Area pianist Heather Heise's appreciation of the page-turner's role:

Make yourself invisible, make sure you never turn too early or too late, make sure you never turn two pages at once, make sure to turn back pages when repeats are taken, and make sure to turn ahead to codas. Stand up. Reach across. Flip. Sit down. Stand up. Reach across. Whew! ... Page-turning ought to allow me the lucky opportunity to study the pianist's technique, from fingering to pedaling to words muttered under the breath, but really, my levels of attention and perception rise near to performance level when I take that seat. And damn, but I forgot how fast the second and fourth movements of Fauré's C-minor piano quartet move! (from In the Wings: Musing on Music & Performance. Used by permission.)

Invisible indeed. Anthony Hopkins received advice when he was to play a butler in the film The Remains of the Day: “When a butler is in the room, the room should feel even more empty.” And what is a page-turner but the butler of the keyboard? With that in mind, here are some of my glimpses into the artist's world:

Nimble violist Kim Kashkashian does karate backstage to warm up for recitals. The redoubtable Leon Fleischer, at the other extreme, has struggled for decades with focal dystonia, and has little range of motion in his right hand. The fingers almost seem to act as an implement, which he wields like a neurosurgeon. Yet his ear imagines a most lovely legato, and the hand responds.

To a person, performers prepare very carefully and leave little to chance:

Jessye Norman spent fifteen minutes moving the piano and adjusting the stage lighting for her Ordway recital. Christopher O'Riley writes a fingering for nearly every note in his score. Peter Serkin's manuscript for Handel's Lucrezia cantata is realized on the page in every detail, yet the result, in concert with the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, sounded absolutely spontaneous. When I complimented Ursula Oppens on the way she had "absorbed" the complexities of Elliot Carter's Night Fantasies, she was emphatic: "I don't absorb it, I work very, very hard at it."

Occasionally there are impromptu demands:

One evening, Stephen Prutsman arrived wearing a black shirt without a tux, which he'd somehow forgotten. So he got my jacket, shirt and tie; I turned all-black.

At 7:00 before one Ordway recital, Renée Fleming was seated onstage at the piano, accompanying herself (yes, she plays, and yes, she sight-reads!) as she tested a new arrangement of "God Bless America" which she was to sing for President Bush at the White House the following week. Since Jean-Yves Thibaudet hadn't arrived yet, I got to play Irving Berlin with her.

Anne-Marie McDermott is a brilliant pianist, but something of a terror to turn for, because she removes the music rack from the piano and places the music flat on the pins. Try reading the Copland Sextet like that!

But artists are unfailingly gracious and appreciative:

When I tried to gush over Bryn Terfel, he grabbed me around the throat... and straightened my tie.

Mr. Fleischer simply said: "You were perfect, perfect!" (Ah, if only he could say that about my piano playing...)

Since 1994, David Evan Thomas has served as page-turner and Moby look-alike for the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, The Schubert Club and Music in the Park Series, assisting the artists and ensembles below:

Pianists in recital

Rieko Aizawa

Jonathan Biss (Miriam Fried)

Yefim Bronfman

Jeremy Denk (Joshua Bell)

Bengt Ecklund (Anne Sofie von Otter)

Rakefet Hak (Bryn Terfel)

Wu Han (David Finckel)

Robert Levin (Kim Kashkashian)

Nikolai Lugansky (Vadim Repin)

Malcolm Martineau (Susan Graham, Bryn Terfel)

Péter Nagy (Leonidas Kavakos)

Christopher O'Riley (Carter Brey)

Jon Kimura Parker

Ann Schein (Jesse Norman)

Andras Schiff (Cecilia Bartoli)

Peter Serkin (Lorraine Hunt Lieberson)

Kathryn Stott (Yo-Yo Ma, Truls Mørk)

Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Renée Fleming)

Natalie Zhu (Hilary Hahn)

Brian Zeger (Deborah Voigt)

Ensembles

Ahn Trio

Amadeus Trio

American Chamber Players

Andrew Litton with Osmo Vänskä

Beaux Arts Trio (Menahem Pressler)

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (Anne-Marie McDermott)

Claremont Trio

Emerson Quartet (Leon Fleischer)

Eroica Trio

Guarneri Quartet (Lydia Artymiw)

Paris Piano Trio

Trio con Brio Copenhagen (Jens Elvekjaer)

Vienna Piano Trio (Stefan Mendl)

New music

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (Ligeti Piano Concerto with SPCO)

Ursula Oppens (Music of John Harbison)

Peter Serkin (Wuorinen's Flying to Kahani with SPCO)

Philip Smith (Evelyn Glennie)

Shai Wosner (Berg Chamber Concerto with SPCO)

Yehudi Wyner (playing his own music)

Conductor

Han Vonk (SPCO), in his last appearances

Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra

Curious Hymns and Cosmic Spaces (TV), 2005

Gunther Schuller Conducts (TV), 2004

Farewell to Peter Howard (TV), 2004

Tan Dun's The Gate, 2004

Beethoven's Ninth (TV), 2003 Regional Emmy-winning production

But the page-turner's day may be passing. For a couple of glimpses into the future:

• http://www.sequenza21.com/2006_03_05_bsarchive.html
• http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1999/pageturner.html

If you're looking for the 2006 film The Page Turner, go to: IMDb