Steven Osborne on Feeling, Soul Searching, and Rachmaninoff
A pianist reflects on the value of music in a troubled world.
This piece was originally a draft from when I worked at Utah Symphony | Utah Opera. It was never published, and I want to thank USUO and Steven Osborne for granting me the rights to rework it and publish it for you here.
People love to pick apart art. They’ll analyze it to its core to find even the tiniest speck of meaning—this is especially true in classical music. It’s not uncommon for people to post long Twitter threads, do deep dives on Reddit boards, or record an entire series of podcast episodes decoding their favorite composer’s work. The truth is usually less exciting, and not all classical music can be framed in this manner. After all, Mozart was a bit of a spendthrift who needed to pay the bills. Bach had 20 children to support. And it certainly didn’t pay to live in Austria during the Napoleonic wars—even if you were Beethoven. Sometimes art is just art for art’s sake.
There are those few magnificent gems in the classical repertoire, however, that capture the soul of the composer and the imaginations of audiences. For me, two of these gems are Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.2 and Vocalise…
