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Written by Willem Boone

Arnhem, 12 July 2004

Stephen Kovacevich has just played Beethoven’s 4rth Concerto with the Gelders Orkest (They record for Naxos and are better known under the name of Arnhem Philharmonic Orchestra) and the excellent, but very modest, German conductor Berhard Klee. Kovacevich impressed with his concentration, and the way he sits at the keyboard vaguely reminds me of the late Emil Gilels. “Just give me your number so that I can call you in case it doesn’t work out”says Kovacevich, when I ask him for an interview. We agree to meet the next day at the same venue. I sincerely hope that my mobile phone will not ring on the Saturday morning and indeed it doesn’t. There were a few other complications, I almost ended up in a traffic jam (on a Saturday morning 11.30 a.m!) and I almost got locked in the hall, but thankfully I managed to escape and meet Stephen Kovacevich for an exclusive interview, in which we focused on his relationship with the Beethoven concertos and sonatas, favourite pianists and his studies with Myra Hess.

Willem Boone (WB): You played Beethoven’s 4rth Piano Concerto last night, were you asked to play this concerto or did you choose it yourself?

Stephen Kovacevich (SK): I can’t remember, they wanted the Emperor Concerto, but I will play Beethoven 4 next week in New Zealand. I also played a lot of recitals lately, so there was no time to properly rehearse the Emperor.

WB: What is your relationship with this concerto?

SK: I am still in love with it!

WB: What makes this piece so special for you?

SK: Beethoven normally has an incredible energy, it doesn’t happen often that he is so gentle. Brahms hated to write vivace, if he used it at all, it was always “vivace ma non troppo”. Similarly, Beethoven must have hated to write “moderato” and the first movement of the 4rth concerto is an allegro moderato. The two other movements are different; the second is full of imagination and the third is hardly moderato, it’s vivacious. I have been working very long to find a consistent tempo for the first movement and last night I played with a very musical conductor, Bernard Klee, I think we found something together...

WB: Do you agree with Claudio Arrau who said the first movement was tragical?

SK: No, I don’t.

WB: Did you combine two of the Beethoven cadenzas in the first movement?

SK: No, I combined three, Beethoven’s and my own!

WB: You didn’t want to play your own cadenza?

SK: I did, there were a few moments from my own one, I think cadenzas shouldn’t always be the same.

WB: You made a second recording of the Beethoven concertos both as a soloist and conductor. Was that easier than playing them with a conductor?

SK: In a way, the ensemble of a soloist who conducts is easier, because you can put the piano in the middle of the orchestra and you are part of it. On the other hand, with a good conductor like Bernard Klee last night, I am happy too. As long as it’s not with a “Kapellmeister”.

WB: What do you mean?

SK: Routine... someone who is not inspired!

WB: EMI recently issued your set of complete Beethoven sonatas, would you consider this as a mile stone in your recording career?

SK: It is my mile stone, for sure!

WB: It took you a long time, around ten years...

SK: Longer, it was eleven or twelve years I believe. The biggest challenge was to learn the Hammerklavier sonata.

WB: What is so difficult about that particular sonata?

SK: It’s a monster... It’s difficult to be able to play all the notes... there are some moments, for instance in the final fugue where nobody really plays all the notes or trills, we almost do! The intensity of the whole piece is extremely difficult.

WB: Wouldn’t you say that it is equally difficult to sustain the slow movement since it is so long?

SK: Ah, that is the cri du coeur of Beethoven , along with the two arias of opus 110. Well, you either have the intensity and then it’s not difficult, or you don’t and then it is difficult...

WB: Is it true that the tempo marking of Czerny in the score of the first movement is impossible to play?

SK: Schnabel tried and I think Gulda too, although I am not sure about the latter. Peter Serkin also did, but I think it’s terrible. When I play it at tempo marking 132, it simply sounds ridiculous. I often had the same experience as a student: when I choose a tempo away from the piano, it was always too fast.  We should bear in mind that Beethoven only heard the internal sound when he wrote this piece. We do have recordings from Bartok and Strawinsky and they didn’t always take their own tempo markings. Once I played the Piano Concerto of Michael Tippett with Michael Tilson Thomas and I played according to the required  metronome marking and Tilson Thomas asked me why I played so fast. We shouldn’t be too strict with this, I think we want to be like good boys and girls and always respect the “good”tempo!

WB: Is it true that you rerecorded a few sonatas for the set of Beethoven sonatas?

SK: Yes, we were not happy with the sound of a few recordings and EMI wanted to offer the best possible sound. I remember we worked in a studio that had just been painted and things didn’t work at the time.

WB: How did that affect your playing?

SK: Some of the old recordings had a very heavy sound. The paint wasn’t hard and it obviously affected the sound.

WB: Do you have any particular favourites among the Beethoven sonatas?

SK: The Hammerklavier and also opus 2/2 and opus 109.

WB: Do you agree that the complete cycle is coherent in its variety?

SK: You can understand that opus 111 was the last one, the harmonies have become more chromatic and there is more pianistic virtuosity. For me opus 109 and 111 radiate some sort of faith that life begins again... maybe that’s philosophy and if it’s religion, then you call it religion. The darkest music by Beethoven I know is opus 110. The arias make me think of someone who is dying and who is almost unable to speak, especially when the aria comes back...

WB: The final fugue is so monumental too... So much concentration in hardly 20 minutes..

SK: Not even...

WB: Are you ready to take up other long term projects since you have finished this Beethoven project? All the Mozart concertos for instance?

SK: I am actually not interested in big projects, I’d like to learn a lot of chamber music, such as the piano trios and quartets by Brahms and the violin sonatas by Bartok.

WB: Have you already chosen partners for these projects?

SK:  I am not thinking of  a partner in particular, but yes, I have thought of some.

WB: I remember I heard you many years ago in a superb concert of Beethoven sonatas with Kyung Wha Chung. I thought EMI wanted to record it, but it unfortunately never worked out.

SK: Did you hear that in Holland?

WB: Yes, it was in Amsterdam around 1991.

SK: I’ll be playing in Amsterdam in November with Truls Mork, I love him as a cellist.

WB: I read in a French magazine that Rachmaninov is one of your idols. Why do you admrie him so much?

SK: He was a genius, his recording of Schumann’s Carnaval is phenomenal. Quite interestingly, he played a surprising amount of Beethoven sonatas, but he only played the first of the five concertos. The others gave him no pleasure, can you imagine?

WB: Do you also admire him because he played the kind of virtuoso repertoire you are usually not associated with?

SK: It could be....

WB: Have you ever played Rachmaninov in concert?

SK: No, I haven’t . I learnt all his concertos and I love them, but I haven’t played them in public. I don’t know if it is my music on stage...

WB: Are there any young pianists you adimire?

SK: Kissin is not young now, but he is marvellous. And the young English pianist Freddy Kempff, who is extremely gifted. The critics are against him, but I think he is very good.

WB: Do you understand the success of someone like Lang Lang who is so hyped up nowadays?

SK: Let’s wait and see....

WB: You studied with Myra Hess. What is the most important thing you learnt from her?

SK: The inside of the music. To produce a beautiful sound with a lot of variation. She was fantastic in Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mozart, Brahms. And she used to be very popular in Holland and the USA. She could fill Carnegie Hall!

WB: Wasn’t she unusual in her repertoire? She used to play the Brahms concertos

SK: Gina Bachauer also played them. It was unusual at the time, but not today.

WB: Speaking of feminine pianists, you lived together with a pianist who happens to be one of my idols, Martha Argerich. This is maybe a forward question, you are a very good pianist yourself, but wasn’t it sometimes difficult to live with someone who is that gifted? Have you never been jealous of Martha’s technical abilities?

SK: No, I haven’t, I think they are fantastic!

WB:She is rumoured to never pratice, is that true?

SK: O no, that is not true, on the contrary, she works very hard!

WB: Have you ever worked on the same pieces when you were together?

SK: Good question... Actually no, our repertoire is quite different.

WB: The two of you made a recording in the 70’s with Mozart, Debussy and Bartok and if my memory serves me correctly you never played together ever since. Martha plays a lot with other pianists, is there any chance that you will team up together in the future?

SK: That was when we were still together, I don’t know. It might happen.

WB: Martha and yourself have a daughter, Stephanie. She is a photographer, but suppose she would have liked to become a concert pianist, would you have encouraged her? What particular advice would you have given her?

SK: No, I wouldn’t. There are already two in the family, there is no need for another!

WB: You occasionally give concerts as a conductor. What are your ambitions as a conductor?
SK: I have no ambitions, I just want to conduct about ten or fifteen concerts a year, that’s all.

Stephen Kovacevich says he will play the Beethoven 4rth Concerto this evening in Nijmegen and says he has heard good things about the hall of “De Vereeniging”. He asks me whether it is indeed a good hall. I reassure him and answer that it is quite nice and that I like it actually better than the hall where he played last night (Musis Sacrum in Arnhem)... but he says he was quite happy last night...

© 2004 Willem Boone

Details

Written by Willem Boone

Amsterdam, 27 May 2006

The eminent Dutch pianist Tan Crone is mainly known for her collaboration with many Dutch and international musicians, among which Roberta Alexander, Arleen Auger, John Bröcheler, Miranda van Kralingen, Tibor de Machula, Theo Olof, Marien van Staalen, Carolyn Watkinson, etc. She also has a reputation as a teacher. And, something that few will know, she knew the legendary pianist Clara Haskil quite well. She received letters from the famous Haskil, was asked to turn pages during recording sessions and accompanied her during her only American tour in 1956. I had previously heard Tan Crone on the radio when she spoke at length about Haskil so after a pre-concert talk in Rotterdam when she spoke about Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto, I decided to ask her for an interview. She accepted and one month later, I visited her, listened to her stories in her beautiful appartment in Amsterdam with view of the Amstel river and the Skinny Bridge. I hardly needed to encourage her, I barely sat down and she started reminising about her great colleague, with several handwritten letters by Haskil on her lap....

Willem Boone (WB): Looking at the biography of Jerôme Spyket, it appears that Haskil wrote an enormous amount of letters during her life...

Tan Crone: That was at a time when travelling took much longer than nowadays and when artists stayed longer at the same hotel. Haskil was actually only well known during the last fifteen/twenty years of her life, before that period she was often ill and therefore she had a lot of time to think and reflect.

WB:  Yes, but even when she was well known, she still wrote a lot of letters!

TC: That’s true, but in general they were much shorter.

WB: How did you get to know her?

TC: That was in the 50’s when the Brabants Orkest had just been founded. They played the Schumann Concerto under Hein Jordans with Clara Haskil as the soloist. They played four concerts in Den Bosch, Breda, Eindhoven and Tilburg, but unlike nowadays, these were not four consecutive performances. They rehearsed in a building called “Het Kruithuis” in Den Bosch, the city where I was born. I used to play with orchestra too and Jordans asked me whether I wanted to prepare the rehearsals of the Schumann Concerto. I had played this concerto for my final exam and thought it was a great experience as a young pianist who was not even 20 years old to help the orchestra. I asked whether I could attend the rehearsal with Haskil. The Kruithuis was not far away from the city center and at that time, there were no taxis or cars to take musicians to their hotel or to the station. They just walked to the station. When I went to my bike after the rehearsal, I met Haskil outside. I told her that I had heard her play, she was interested to hear that I studied the piano and that I had prepared the rehearsal with the orchestra. She knew my piano teacher Nelly Wagenaar, which was a good recommendation. We walked together and I carried her bag, I almost asked her if she wanted to ride on the back of my bike. She was a lady with a slight handicap, so of course I didn’t ask her. Jordans invited me for the concert in Eindhoven and I had to promise Haskil to come round after she had played. By chance, we both took the same train to Paris shortly after. She often stayed in Paris, where her sister Jeanne lived, whereas she lived in Vevey with her other sister Lily. She travelled first class, I travelled 2nd class, but she begged me to stay with her. She liked talking and was very interested. She spoke French very well. In Paris, her sister Jeanne was waiting for her, she introduced me to her. At that time, I studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, that was another good recommendation.

She invited me for her recital at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées. I remember only two of the pieces she played, Bach’s Toccata in E minor and Schubert’s Sonata in B flat major, D 960, I don’t remember the rest of the program. After the concert, a lot of Romanians flocked to her dressing room. She asked me whether I wanted to have coffee at her hotel and Jeanne gave me a pass to attend the concerts of the orchestra in which she was playing, the Orchestre des Concerts Lamoureux. It was a nice acquaintance, but I wouldn’t call it a friendship. 

Later, she made recordings in the Netherlands with Grumiaux at the Kurhaus in Scheveningen and in the Bachzaal in Amsterdam. I turned pages during the recording sessions and concerts. I still remember that she was never satisfied, wheras I thought she did amazing things. At that moment, I realized there are degrees of excellence. Sometimes, she closed the lid of the piano and said: “I won’t play any more and I don’t want this to be kept”. It sometimes irritated me, when you are turning pages for someone, you tend to listen less well. By the way, Grumiaux and his wife were always extremely nice to her. They always brought her gifts and always accompanied her to her hotel.

Sometimes I wrote to her and I also got letters in return. I gave the originals to her sister Jeanne after her death and made copies for myself. In the book “Frauen mit Flügel”, they included a short letter from Haskil to me. “The first time, I opened the book, I just saw the page with my own name”!). Sometimes, I went shopping with her, because she had little confidence. I remember we went to the Bonetterie in The Hague. After she had seen herself in a mirror she would sometimes suddenly walk out of the shop, due to her lack of confidence.

In the mid 50’s, I studied in the Unites States (Boston). Coincidentally, Haskil played there in 1956 with the conductor Charles Münch three times Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto and once Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D minor K 466. He was a charming man, who loved women, regardless whether they were beautiful or not. The orchestra adored him. Haskil was completely unknown in America. She toured with the Boston Symphony Orchestra to Philadelphia and New York. She sent me a letter and asked whether I wanted to accompany her. She wanted me to help her with the language, since she didn’t speak English very well. She stayed at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in New York and I stayed with friends. She created a sensation and was surrounded by journalists. After the intermission, she wanted to listen to Tschaikofsky’s Pathétique. She was so impressed at the end she didn’t want to leave. She got angry when I tried to guide her through the audience when the applause started. Münch invited her to come over to eat spaghetti after the concert, but she was also invited to a chique party. She refused to go there “There will be a grand piano and of course they will want mo to play’. I had to excuse her and say that Madame Haskil had become unwell and couldn’t come, which made it possible for her to go and see Münch! She had already been invited for a second tour and I even managed to get time off to accompany her again.

WB: Did that tour take place?

TC: No, she was not feeling well at the time, she had to cancel.

It struck me that I seldom heard her practice, I asked her “Clara, (I had to call her Clara), I never hear you practice”, to which she answered “No, I used to do that when I was young”. The only thing I heard her play in her dressing room was the Chopin study opus 10/2 in chromatic scales and it was flawless. She had huge, “meaty” hands and a natural talent for the instrument.
For every performance with a different conductor, she got a new score in which she noted his remarks. She didn’t want to show Szell for instance that she had played the same concerto with Münch one week before...

WB: Is it true that she never had scores with her?

TC: She sent me to a shop in Amsterdam, Broekmans en van Poppel to find her a score. She always wanted to look at a fresh score.

One of my teachers, Rudolf Serkin, studied with the same teacher as that of Haskil. As a young girl, she had been very ill and was forced to stay in bed for a long time. She had hardly experienced anything in her youth. However, she played the music of Granados and Albeniz with the temperament of someone who had experienced a thousand love stories. You see, you really don’t need to have lived through anything to play well...!

She was very interested in everything I did, I was very young and unexperienced at the time. At first she wrote “Liebes Fräulein”, later on she wrote “Ma chère Tan”, I have a letter she wrote on the train (“Dans le train de Paris à Amsterdam”). I even have a picture on which she had written “Pour ma chère Tan, que j’aime de tout mon coeur”( To my dear Tan, whom I love with all of my heart). I was quite proud of that.

WB: Do you have pictures of Haskil and yourself?

TC: No, I was the one who took the pictures. Later on, I received her records with a dedication. When she recorded the Mozart Double Concerto with Anda, she said I would only get the record once I guessed whether she played first or second piano.

WB: And what happened?

TC: I don’t remember, but she gave me the record anyway. We stayed in touch until her death. I heard about it on the radio, it was a tremendous shock.

WB: Her death at the Antwerp’s Central Station, when she accidently fell off one of the stairs, wasn’t that just unfortunate?

TC: We’ll never know, it could have been a small stroke..

WB: When I was doing my “homework”, while listening to her performance of Mozart’s Variations on a theme of Duport, K 573, I was struck by her extremely clear left hand playing!

TC: That’s true, I recognize her playing because of her left hand. Her jeu perlé is very characteristic. It has focus, like a singer is supposed to have in his voice.

TC: She loved doing normal things, for instance, I once took her for a bus ride in new York. The pianist Geza Anda, who happened to be in New York at the same time, was furious and said: “How could you take such a fragile woman for a bus ride?”But she wanted it so badly! I also took her to museums. She hated pretentiousness, she had experienced too much of that.

WB: What kind of a person was she? She comes across as a pretty pessimistic person in Spyket’s book

TC: That’s correct, but she needed joy. And she had a great sense of humor.

WB: How did you find out about that?

TC: She could laugh about small and silly things. It has to do with intelligence when you can laugh about such things. She was egocentric though, always concerned about how she felt. A lot of colleagues like Serkin, Stern and Anda were married and had families. She was by herself and lived with her sister Lily in Vevey. Her other sister lived in Paris.

WB: Didn’t she feel the need to marry? Spyket is not very explicit about that in his book!

TC: I don’t know whether she felt the need to marry. Maybe nobody ever proposed to her. She was not approachable because of her handicap. She was a simple, unassuming woman. Clothes were not as important as nowadays. And right after the war, there were less clothes. She often wore a long skirt and a blouse, it had to feel confortable. Only in the 70’s, was there more luxury.

WB: Was she an innocent person?

TC: I can’t tell you, the age difference was too important.

WB: What made her so unforgettable for you?

TC: Her touch, the lyricism. It was magical. The other day, I heard someone say on the radio that nobody can be compared to her when it comes to Mozart Piano Concertos. She was simply spellbinding and created a very special atmosphere.

WB: Why?

TC: Because of her touch, the timing and the honesty of her playing. She had a lot of temperament, just like Martha Argerich, whom I admire, although Haskil didn’t walk on the edge, as Argerich sometimes does. Haskil had an enormous, flexible hand. Huge, but not unelegant? They were like those of the harpist Phia Berghout.

WB: Spyket’s book lists all the compositions she played throughout her life, her repertoire must have been huge!

TC: At the end of her life, it wasn’t that big any more and she often played the same pieces. That’s still the case with certain musicians..

WB: Did she ever hear you play?

TC: No, she was convinced it was ok. There was no time for it.

WB: Would you have been intimidated if she had found the time?

TC: Probably, yes. I was less convinced of my solo playing.

WB: Did she ever say anything about colleagues?

TC: She never said anything bad about other musicians, never anything good either.. She mostly avoided the subject, although she asked me whether I listened to others like Anda and Istomin.

WB: May I ask you a few questions about yourself? Do you still play concerts?

TC: No, I stopped playing concerts. I wanted to stop when things were still going ok. I was getting increasingly tired of having to schedule concerts long in advance. In addition, I was the one who had to plan all the rehearsals. I planned to stop playing  concerts by no longer accepting engagements. A lot of my “customers” like Theo Olof had stopped playing, and singers like Bröchler and Alexander were increasingly focusing on opera. Rehearsing means a lot of work. You can’t afford to be ill. I also wanted to do other things, like travelling and gardening.

WB: Don’t you play the piano any more at all?

TC: Yes, I do, but I need to be encouraged. I play piano trios and quartets with friends at home or pieces I don’t know very well. We pianists can go on for a long time!

© Willem Boone, 2006

Details

Written by Willem Boone

Hilversum, 25 April 2005

Meeting Vladimir Ashkenazy for an interview can seem a daunting task. How to squeeze in an appointment in his very busy schedule? After his concert in Amsterdam in July 2004 with the NHK Symphony Orchestra he was willing, but immediately asked: “The question is when and where?” Thankfully, he came with a solution himself: “I will be in Hilversum in the Netherlands to record a CD at the end of April 2005.”  Willem Boone and Jeroen Vonhögen spoke with Vladimir Ashkenazy, who was recording Respighi with the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in one of the Dutch radio studios in Hilversum.  The interview took place in the canteen, where the conductor and pianist had lunch, together with his wife Dody.

Willem Boone (WB): If I look at your achievements, the number of records you have made, the concerts for many decades both as a pianist and a conductor, the amount of works you have played, it is simply mind-boggling. Where do you get the energy from to do all this?

Vladimir Ashkenazy (VA): From my parents, I suppose (laughs)... Let me get my wife, she is lost (walks away and comes back with his wife Dody)

WB: Are you indeed such a well-organized person as they say? Someone has said: “If you give Ashkenazy one hour, he’ll work for two hours”

VA: People talk too much, I don’t know...
Dody Ashkenazy (DA): Yes, you are extremely organized!

WB: Are you a quick learner?

VA: Fortunately, yes, I am, but many people are, that’s nothing special... All my friends are quick learners. I am a quick sight-reader, that’s a gift.

WB: I am reminded of a Dutch conductor, who does a lot of music on period instruments, Frans Brüggen. He once said he always heard music in his head, even when talking to someone, for instance the first movement of a Haydn Symphony at the beginning of an interview and half an hour later he heard the last movement.... What about you, do you always hear music in your head?

VA: No, when you interview me, I think of what you are saying!

WB: In the past, you conducted several substantive projects at the same time, such as the complete Beethoven piano sonatas, all the Chopin piano works and the Mozart piano concertos. Let’s take Beethoven, you also played all his concertos, the violin and cello sonatas, the piano trios. Is it necessary for you to know the entire output of a composer?

VA: Yes, of course it is, but the main reason was that both Decca and myself were interested in these projects. It is a challenge to play a lot of music.

WB: Do you read correspondance and biographies of composers to know more about them?

VA: Sometimes, you basically find out that they too were human beings. They were gifted, but they had problems too. It can be informative, for instance I found out that Beethoven had such an incredible warm heart, the way he helped his nephew.... but reading biographies doesn’t always help you to play better...

WB: Have you ever thought of visiting the room where Schubert lived in order to understand his music?

VA: The music speaks for itself, biographies only confirm what you find in the music. You have to understand music by itself.

WB: I’d like to talk about a few things that strike me when I listen to your piano playing. One of the things is that you are not only a great technician and an architect, but also a sculpter. You are always shaping the sound, is that something you are conciously working on?

VA (surprised): I don’t know, I don’t comment on my own activities!

WB: You are one of the most prolific recording artists, may I conclude that you obviously feel at home in a recording studio?

VA: Yes, it’s interesting and good to listen to how terrible you are. You can try to improve....

WB: You said in an interview not too long ago that you probably recorded too much, yet you are still doing it, why is that?

VA: It’s my life, if I am asked to record, I do it. It’s fun and I just love music so much. I also have a big record collection.

WB: How many records do you have?

VA: A few thousand CD’s

WB: Do you have time to listen to CD’s?

VA: It’s not that I always want to listen to all of them, but I like to have things when I need them.

WB: There are very few live recordings of yours, are you against it?

VA; No, I am not against it, but you don’t achieve the same result in concert as in a recording studio. A live recording is seldom perfect.

WB: Can you achieve spontaneity in a studio?

VA: Of course you can, otherwise there is no point. Music can’t be just clinical!

WB: Which role do recordings have in your life, do you want to document certain stages throughout your career?

VA: No, I don’t listen to my CD’s, if I am asked to record things, I do it.

WB: Why did you choose to re-record a lot of things?

VA: You try to improve things..

WB: There is something that strikes me in your recordings, particularly those from the 70’s and 80’s, they sound slightly agressive and very closely miked. Is that on your request?

VA: I have no idea what you are talking about, I have no answer to it..(asks his wife)
DA: He usually is not very particular about getting a certain sound, but in recordings from the 60’s, the sound used to be very muted with the piano in the background. Maybe Decca got complaints about that and changed things? The only thing he basically asks when he is in a studio is: “Can we record? “

WB: Do you listen to tapes after you recorded?

VA: Yes, I have to

WB: Is that painful to you?

VA: No, normally, it’s OK.

WB: Did/do you have carte blanche from Decca?

VA: I have/had a wide choice, normally they agreed with a lot of things I asked. Things are difficult now, because the market is low.

WB: Suppose you would have asked to play piano works by Dvorak or Kodaly, would Decca have agreed?

VA: They have other pianists too, but I had a good choice, I can’t complain. There were priorities though, such as the Beethoven sonatas. The most important is that I was able to play great music, I have been lucky to record the basic repertoire.

WB: An exclusive recording contract must have been a powerful back up for your career, how should young pianists make a career nowadays when contracts are being constantly discontinued?

VA: I don’t know, life changes, there are no prescriptions...

WB: You said in a public interview before your concert in Amsterdam in August
Last year that you hardly played the piano in public any more..

VA; No, I didn’t say that, I said I played much less, but I still practice every day and learn a lot of repertoire.

WB: And do you still play piano concertos?

VA: Yes, I direct Mozart and Beethoven concertos from the keyboard.

WB: And you are still recording solo repertoire, some of it being fiendishly difficult, e.g the Rachmaninov transcriptions. Would you still be able to play that in recitals?

VA: I don’t play recitals any more, I have no time.

WB: When did you stop giving recitals?

VA:About three years ago.

WB: I attended a few rounds of the Liszt competition in Utrecht earlier this month, where pianists had to play, among other things, the first Mephisto waltz. I can’t remember one memorable performance, but when I came home and listened to your disc, I couldn’t believe how you played those treacherous jumps at such awesome speed. Was that “difficult” to you?

VA: It’s slavery and a gift (laughs)

WB: You have of course worked with many conductors. Was there any conductor from whom you really learnt things that were of use when you took up conducting yourself?

VA: It’s difficult to say how much you can learn..

WB: You must have learnt things when you watched them?

VA: I couldn’t watch them, I was to busy to learn, when I had to play! In the end, you can’t imitate, you have to do your own thing. You get ideas and you try to work them out, you try this or that and try not to do anything stupid. Klemperer already said (Ashkenazy quite funnily imitates how the great conductor spoke when he was paralyzed) “You can’t teach someone to be a conductor”

WB: One of my favourite recordings is your first reading of Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto with Kyrill Kondrashin. Do you remember him?

VA: (smiles), yes, I do!

WB: I have the impression that he is a rather underrated conductor, was he famous in Russia at the time?

VA: Yes, I think so, he was great.

WB: Are there any pianists with whom you particularly enjoy working?

VA: I like many pianists, as a conductor, I accompanied many colleagues, Pollini, Zimerman, Lupu, Perahia, Richter...

WB: Did you work with Argerich?

VA: Yes, I did, she’s a very warm person

WB: Isn’t it difficult to keep up with her?

VA: No, she is very easy to work with!

WB: Have you never considered playing duos with her? She works with so many pianists!

VA: Yes, I know that, but never thought of working with her as a piano duo

WB: Your colleague Zoltan Kocsis played and conducted Liszt’s first concerto from the keyboard and the conductor Dmitri Mitropoulos even did Prokofiev’s third piano concerto in this double role. Is that the limit of what you can do both as a soloist/conductor?

VA: You can do anything if you have enough rehearsal time, but playing and conducting Liszt and Prokofiev is not always advisable..

WB: Isn’t that the problem nowadays that you don’t get enough rehearsal time? Zimerman complained about that last year!

VA: Well, then you have to do it in one rehearsal!

WB: I have a few questions about some composers, you announced last year a recording of Bach’s Wohltemparierte Klavier. Is that correct?

VA: Yes, I just finished that.

WB: You said previously you were in awe of Bach, but somehow afraid to tackle his music, what made you change your mind?

VA: I am still afraid and still in awe, but I like challenges. And you know, I got used to playing many voices at the same time... I think it’s not so bad, some of them were really well played..

WB: Does it probably have something to do with your traversal of the complete Preludes and Fugues of Shostakovitch?

VA: O no, they are so different!

WB: Did you ever hear Shostakovitch as a pianist?

VA: No, I didn’t, but he wasn’t a good pianist, he never practized. There is a recording where he played his piano concertos and it isn’t very good. When he was young, he used to be better and even did silent films.

WB: You have said more than once that you dislike Liszt

VA: Yes, but some of it is fantastic! He was a strange man... (thinks).. he had a controversial character. On the one hand, there was the purity of expression, but something went against it. Sometimes, he was fantastically inspired, for instance in the B-minor sonata or the first Mephisto waltz, but a lot of his music is over the top. But what counts; he was incredibly devoted to music, he taught so many musicians and promoted Beethoven on the piano. And his imagination was amazing.

Jeroen Vonhögen (JV): What do you think of his late piano works?

VA: There is an attempt to get to another level, but he was at his best in his diabolical works , the first Mephisto waltz is fantastic.

WB: And what about the Totentanz?

VA: Mephisto is better! (laughs)

WB: And the concertos? You did his first concerto when you won the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 1956

VA: They are allright, but it wouldn’t be my first choice.

JV: Did you do the symphonic poems as a conductor?

VA: No, I never conducted any symphonic works by Liszt. Nobody asked me to do that, but I would like to do the Faust Symphony. Maybe it’s not totally convincing, but it’s a genuine piece. Liszt was definitely a genius.

WB: Is Chopin more your man?

VA: Ah, unbelievable! (looks up) He was really economical in his music. His late music is beyond comment, both on a spiritual and musical level. It’s organic, it makes sense. He was not going ahead of his time for the sake of going ahead. He was unlike Schönberg with his dodecaphonic music. I don’t like Schönberg’s attitude to art. Alban Berg was gifted though..

JV: Do you remember the first time you heard Chopin’s music?

VA: No, I don’t...

WB: There is one work though, which you didn’t include in your set of complete Chopin works, the Andante spianato and grande Polonaise brillante.

VA: That’s a brillant piece of a young composer, I like it, but it’s mostly played with orchestra. I didn’t get to it, I apologize for my omission, but it was not delibirate... there are many great recordings, they won’t miss mine...

JV: You also played Chopin’s first sonata, which is a rare piece

VA: It’s a student piece, Chopin was about fourteen or fifteen years old when he composed it. It’s embryonic and not very good.

JV: Was there any modern music dedicated to you?

VA: Yes, John Ogdon composed five Preludes for me, I played them.

JV: Does that make them special?

VA: No, but they are very idiomatic musically! Rautavaara also composed a piano concerto for me, that’s a very interesting sound world. And Andre Previn also composed a concerto for me.

WB: Didn’t he say when you played his Piano Concerto, which he dedicated to you, “It is a difficult piece, but the son of a bitch (Ashkenazy) read right through it”?

VA: No, that’s not true, Andre exaggerated my ability to learn. He is a good friend. Besides, of course it took time to learn the concerto which I liked very much. You see, that’s how legends get created. Don’t trust everything you hear! I will give you an example of how unreliable the press is. I was reading the Herald Tribune of last Monday (18 April 2005, WB) and in the section “People” I saw my name. I had been nominated conductor laureate for the season 2007-2008 of the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. I agreed when they asked me, because it’s a good orchestra. The newspaper wrote: “Ashkenazy heard the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra for the first time when he was eleven years old and he was so moved when he heard them do Mahler first Symphony”. Now in 1948, I was living in Russia, and at the time I had never heard of Mahler or the Liverpool Philharmonic! It appeared that the editor of the Herald Tribune confused the biographies of Sir Simon Rattle and myself! It’s not a crime, but why? Why can’t they be accurate? It’s just unprofessional to write such things!

WB: Just one of my last questions, how is your oldest son doing? He is also a pianist, isn’t he?

VA: He is fine. We just played Ravel’s La Valse on two pianos at a Steinway gala in Hamburg. He now teaches in Angoulème, in France.

WB: Isn’t it just terrible to have a father called Vladimir Ashkenazy?

VA: Yes, it’s difficult... it doesn’t help things!

WB: What are you recording in Hilversum at the moment?

VA: Respighi’s Feste Romane, a very loud piece! But the orchestra is very good!

© Willem Boone 2005

Details

Written by Willem Boone

Almere, 4 juni 2017

Willem Boone (WBo): I keep good memories of your playing that go back until 1989. I was  a student at that time and I worked as a guide on the canal tours. On a Sunday evening, there were a lot of concerts at the Pulitzer Hotel, mainly piano recitals. You played the penultimate Schubert sonata, in A major D 959, that I have seldom heard so beautifully played..

Willem Brons (WB): I really liked the director of the hotel, who was a friend of Hans Duijf from Cristofori. I once played a concert in the hotel garden that started at 8.30 pm, you had to pay attention to the church bells of the Westerchurch that rang at nine o’clock…

WBo: The other day I heard that same Schubert played by Arcadi Volodos and the newspapers were unanimous in their praise, however, your performance impressed me more… 

WB: Maybe his interpretation was less dramatic. The penultimate Schubert sonata is the most all-encompassing of the entire cycle and: it shows misery, mildness, spirituality, tenderness, despair, happiness, nostalgia, etc. I have always felt this way about the sonata, from the moment I started playing it! 

WBo: By the way, you were the teacher of my piano teacher, Robijn Tilanus! 

WB:  Yes, that’s correct, although she studied with me for only a short period of time. She was not sure whether to study biology or music. Whenever you have doubts, you shouldn’t choose music, at least that’s what my teachers told me when I was 17 or 18 years old. “What do you want to achieve in music?” people asked me, to which I answered: “I have no idea, but I want to know everything about it instead of staying an outsider, i.e. an amateur pianist.” Later on, Robijn overcame her doubts and decided to study music with Frank Mol, a very gifted musician who unfortunately died young.  

WBo: You are almost 80 years old, what has changed in the music world since you made your debut? 

WB: I never gave it much thought, I hardly ever think of it.. Generally speaking, you get more recognition when you get older and when you realise you have become better known. A career has its ups and downs. In the 70’s, I played four consecutive seasons with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, but then its new director Hein van Royen didn’t like my playing and I haven’t performed with the orchestra ever since. What I really like, is that I play more and more often abroad, people are more open-minded there. For instance I play every year in Russia and I get nowhere so much  acclaim as there, whereas there are countless pianists in that country who play more brilliantly. They obviously like what I do, that sounds better than the word “success”, which I dislike. I  played in Japan for about 30 years where I do everything what I like: I play concerts, give lectures and masterclasses. The latter is something I do less and less in the Netherlands, because nobody asks me. However, for the radio station “Concertzender” I comment every month a different composition. A while ago, I spoke about Beethovens Third Concerto,  pianist Hannes Minnaar who just recorded the concerto sent me a friendly mail about it. 

Wbo: Yes, I read you spoke about the Third Concerto by Beethoven and wanted to listen to it, but unfortunately that wasn’t possible. 

WB: Yes, you can, I played the recording of Perahia with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in the first two movements, for the last movement I preferred the tempo of Haskil, as well as her lively spirituality.  

WBo: Regarding this concerto, I find it so special that the piano starts its entry with a scale, is there one other concerto that starts the same way? 

WB: The scale was originally a rhetoric figure. Do you know by the way who invented the scale as a technical exercise?

WBo: No, I have no idea!

WB: That was Czerny, in Bach´s time, there were no scales. When you played an ascending motive, it was something special, e.g. at the end of the first fugue of the Wohltemperiertes Klavier. Back to Beethoven, I think the motive you mentioned has to do with Mozart, he did the same at the end of his Fantasy in C-minor KV 475. There are more influences of Mozart in Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto.   

WBo: Do you have a preference for a special key?

WB: No, not really. Every key has its own characteristics. It’s strange that people understand so little about this; every key represented a certain “territory” for certain composers. That originates from the baroque when every key had a degree of purity or impurity. B-minor represented compassion, F-major faith in God. With Beethoven, C-minor is a dramatic key, whereas with Bach it stands for something serious and sad.  

WBo: In the last edition of the Dutch magazine Luister, there was a double interview with yourself and pianist Daria van den Bercken, in which you were described as “a pianist who was already on a mission when the first copy of Luister was issued, 65 years ago.” What exactly was your mission? 

WB: I don’t remember, the word “mission” is slightly pretentious. I am more aware of what I want now. A lot of teachers are piano teachers instead of music teachers and it’s all about technique. It’s difficult to build up knowledge in music: to discover its secrets means going on a long discovery tour. Before the start of my concerts I have a ritual: before leavomg my dressing room, my wife says only one word: “Discover!” It means that you are open to the impressions of that particular moment, I believe in it. Sometimes you feel resistance, but whenever something goes wrong, I no longer think all people dislike my playing. Those who like your playing don’t mind and those who do mind, say: “You see, he can’t pull it off either” (laughs)

WBo: Your colleague Mikhail Pletniev says he feels pain when he plays a wrong note. Do you have the same feeling? 

WB: Sometimes it happens, yes, when you play a wrong note in the most beautiful bar of a piece, you want to crawl away! I hope a listener can accept that an artist is also a human being… 

WBo: In the same interview in Luister you said: “I imagine that I teach and play better now than I used to” Isn’t it often ironic that a pianist at an advanced age can dig deeper, whilst his technique often declines? I heard Radu Lupu the other day, who is now 71. I was amazed to notice how fragile his technique has become and 71 isn’t extremely old for a pianist, is it?

WB: That question is difficult to answer. I haven’t heard Lupu lately, but I can hardly imagine that it has anything to do with technique. He had a massive technique and that isn’t simply gone. It’s probably more a matter of mentality: he has always been a wayward musician and he probably no longer enjoys concert life. My ideal is to improve myself every time. By the way, I am dissatisfied with a lot of interpretations by great pianists nowadays: there is little expression and they tend to exaggerate. Quite a lot of them misinterpret tempo indications, and a s a result they tell a different musical story. This is often obvious in Chopins Etudes, they sound downright ugly when they are only considered as an athletic achievement.  

WBo: Is this typical for the present or was it the case with older pianists as well? 

WB; I think so. But in general pianists are capable of a lot more nowadays and that’s tempting. I no longer have idols, however, there are a lot of musicians I respect. Music life is dominated by hypes and trends. Schumann’s Kreisleriana used to be a rather obscure piece, nobody played it.  It strikes me that the beginning is always played too fast. The score says “Ausserst bewegt” which means: “not extremely fast, but very turbulent” 

WBo: Speaking of this movement, it strikes me that a lot of pianists don’t sound intensely enough! 

WB: Yes, because it sounds too fast! (He shows that the voice in the right hand has a  three voiced dialogue with itself and the left hand has an underlying fourth voice, “that’s what Schumann learnt from Bach”).

WBo: Schumann wrote in a very polyphonous way! 

WB: Very polyphonous, I often notice that pianists play the beginning of Kreisleriana too fast (shows in an exaggerated way), that’s idiot! Schumann wrote long lines that are purely based on motives consisting of two notes only.  

WBo: Is there nobody who plays it the way Schumann intended it to be played? 

WB: I guess so (Since this sparked my curiosity I listened to the recording of Claudio Arrau at home. Arrau was famous for his faithfulness to the score and indeed with him, the same passage sounds very clear and not overly fast, WBo).

WBo: You said you are a happy person when “people who listen undergo a feeling close to transcendence.” Does that go for you as a musician as well? Your colleague Claudio Arrau once said: “When I play, I am in ecstasy.” That’s also a form of transcendence, isn’t it? 

WB: Maybe I shouldn’t have used that word “transcendence”. What I meant is that you experience something that is impossible to explain in words. It’s beautiful when someone comes around after a concert and is not able to say a word. Then you realize how deeply music can touch people’s hearts.  It’s mainly amateurs who react in such a way, although I experienced the same with professional musicians. I prefer to play pieces that cover all the aspects of life, such as Schubert’s sonatas.  

“Ecstasy”is a dangerous word: you should never go over the edge, otherwise you lose control. It does not always happen that you go to the far extreme, but I really know the feeling. Sometimes you feel completely shaken up after a performance! 

 WBo: Is that because of the piece you play or because of the moment? Or both? 

WB: First of all, it has to do with the piece itself. Schumann’s Fantasy is a good example: when you have reached the last pages, you feel you are ready to play them, since there was so much that prepared the end in an ideal way.  The last movement wouldn’t have had the same impact without the preceding two movements. I experience a similar feeling with the Gesänge der Frühe: it has do with eternity. They are not often performed, I find the late Schumann oppressive and dark, but sometimes he manages to break away from this, which has a liberating effect and which happens in such a penetrating way in the fifth Gesang.

WBo; I love Schumann very much, but with his last works I have the feeling the genius had vanished! 

WB: With me, it’s the opposite: I find the late Schumann much more touching. The Gesänge der Frühe are among my favourites. The tempo with his late works is always more slowly than we imagine it to be, you have to be open to this. But it’s true that the quality of his oeuvre is sometimes slightly uneven. I think however that it’s the musician´s fault when Schumann’s music doesn’t sound convincing. His music is vulnerable and is particularly prone to distortion.  

 (I tell about my own transcending experiences, three of them: Martha Argerich in recital in April 1979, Leonard Bernstein conducting Mahler 4th Symphony in 1987 and Richer playing Bach in 1991)  

WB: The musicians I admire are mainly great conductors: Abbado, especially in his last years, Haitink, Janssons. They don’t have to play the notes themselves, but to make sure that such a group of musicians give the best they have, that’s beautiful! I have to do it all alone…!  

WBo: You are very fond of the late Schubert sonatas and you said about them: “He continuously leaves reality and evokes what we can’t imagine.” What can that be, a dream world? 

WB: An ideal world. His song “Schöne Welt, wo bist du?“ describes this.  

WBo: Can we say that his music is treacherous?

WB: Yes, that’s true, it seems easy. My own teacher said: “If you don’t understand that universe, I can’t explain.” The better you understand a composer, the more you realize what you need to serve his music. I sometimes make jokes about Mozart and say:”If you spent as much time on his music as on Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto, it can’t be that difficult.” People say Mozart is the most difficult of all composers, since you hear every wrong note, but wrong notes disturb me in Chopin and Ravel as well! I think Bach is the most difficult, his music is complex. But I’d like to say something about playing the piano in general: pianists tend to concentrate too much on the right hand and that’s simplistic. Whenever they get injuries, it’s always the right hand. You should pay attention to all voices and experience all of them, not only the so called melody. A pianist has to realize all this by himself, which is very different from a string quartet for instance. I am always aware of the relationship between horizontal and vertical and I am tired of those who make a difference between homophony and polyphony. For me there is only polyphony.  

WBo: You said you learn a lot from teaching. What have been your biggest insights?  

WB:  To hear something and being aware of what you haven’t heard yet. If you don’t regularly learn from your lessons, then you do something wrong, you keep repeating yourself.

WBo: In the same interview in Luister you spoke about “the invasion of Japanese students that started in 1987. All of a sudden, I had a group of students who were twice or three times as good.” Were they better than Dutch students and how come they had a higher level?  

WB: You have to put this in perspective: I started in 1971 at the former “muzieklyceum” and when this so called invasion started, I had worked as a teacher for 16 years. Until that time, I seldom had a talented student. In Japan I had to work hard, because I had to teach pieces I had never taught before, like Chopin or Scriabin Sonatas or Le Tombeau de Couperin. The talented students in the Netherlands went to work with Jan Wijn and they still do.  

WBo: Did the level of students in the Netherlands improve in the meantime? 

WB: Yes, although 60% of them comes from abroad!  

WBo: I’d like to ask you a few questions about Bach: you told you played an all Bach recital in 1964 in the Kleine Zaal of the Concertgebouw. Was that possible at the time? 

WB: It didn’t happen a lot, but yes, it was accepted. As long as you played Bach expressively, you were accused of romanticism, but I didn’t care. I didn’t play his music mechanically, but I experienced it (beleefde het).  One of the critics Hans Reichenfeld came to see me during the intermission, whereas he knew a pianist needs rest. He called my Bach “liberating”, after the intermission I played an English Suite and I had a memory lapse, but he didn’t mind and didn’t mention it in his review.  

WBo: In what way was your Bach liberating? 

WB: I had the courage to use my musicality and my musical imagination. In 1966, I disappeared for two years and went to Geneva: I didn’t do well I thought, the only thing that went well, was Bach. In 1968 I played in a series that was devoted to three debutants at the Stadhuis, the last three Beethoven sonatas. Reichenfeld came again and wrote that I had a rare affinity with the late Beethoven. It was special that such an authority came to listen to a debutant! The year after, I played the Diabelli Variations and the Hammerklaviersonata and every time, Reichenfeld came to listen to me.

My teacher Hilbrand had a lot of affinity with Beethoven, he could build up structures note after note, I stayed in touch until his death in 1983. I learnt most when I was no longer a regular student of his, but I kept visiting and asking him for advice. 

WBo; I have the feeling that Bach is often misunderstood: he sounds teutonic, heavy, religious whereas his music is so full of energy and vitality? 

WB: In the Wohltemporiertes Klavier, you see enormous contrasts: Bach masters the stile antico, the old polyphony from the Renaissance, but you also see homophony and personal expression. Quite often, it’s pure dance music and that’s noticeable in the choice of the measure. However, you shouldn’t play everything as if it’s dance music! I can no longer listen to the Brandenburg Concerts these days, they always sound too fast and superficial. By the way, the religious part plays an important role with Bach. I do feel the same with Beethoven, Schubert, Franck though.  

WBo: Does that go for his keyboard works too? 

WB: Yes, indeed. Old music is centered aroung the heart beat, it can increase, but not in extremis. This is nowadays considered as “boring”. Take for instance “Blitz und Donner” from St Matthew´s Passion, Bach composed this in 3/8, but not as if four bars form the measure as you often hear it! And the theme of the Goldberg Variations: it’s often played as a funeral march, whereas it was written in G major! That key has a wholly different character: it stands for “liebenswürdig.” 

WBo: You recorded book 1 from the Wohltemperiertes Klavier, are you going to record book 2 as well? 

WB: I planned to do so, but it has to do with finances. I was not so satisfied about that recording, but I tried to play the book as a whole and that worked well.  

WBo: Your colleague Murray Perahia once said something about Bach that intrigues me: “I am not religious in real life, but when I play Bach, I am terribly religious.” In what way do you need to be in order to play his music well? 

WB: I completely agree with him. 

WBo: Do you have to be religious to play Bach?

WB: Carel van der Linden wrote a booklet about the difference between “religious” and “not religious” and according to him, it’s not as big as you would expect. My father in law said that you had to play Franck as a religious person, even as if you were praying. He didn’t believe in God, but he did say this to me, so he probably wasn’t that far away.. If you are a total atheist, you don’t understand anything about music, because it’s about things that are timeless and unimaginable and this has a link with the religious aspect. Take Haydn in his “Sieben letzte Worte” or Liszt in his Via Cruxis.  

WBo: Yes, but they believed in God! 

WB: About Liszt, it was said that it was a pose, but that’s nonsense of course. Bartok was known to be an atheist, yet the second movement of his Third Piano Concerto is entitled “Andante religioso”. If someone doesn’t believe in anything, I ask: “What’s that music about then? Only about something that can be explained in an academic way? I really hope not!”  

WBo: About something higher? 

WB:  Music goes beyond anything that is timeliness, it’s part of the religious domain. I wrote a comment on Beethovens sonata opus 110 and related this to the caption: 25 December. That’s the date of birth of Christ, I regard this piece as a musical reflexion on the life of Jesus Christ. The key of A-flat major stands for simplicity and peace. In the arioso dolente, someone undergoes suffering, in the second arioso someone can’t breathe anymore and surrenders completely.  In the second fugue that leads to ecstasy, we experience resurrection. Beethoven wrote this sonata while working on his Missa Solemnis. He had been interested in religion for years, the theme of the fugue of the sonata opus 110 comes back in a comparable form in the Missa Solemnis. I try to explain to my students that you have to be open to all aspects of music, if you play Beethovens 4th Concerto a tad too fast, you are lost and rapid passages sound only brilliant, like in a piano concerto by Hummel. 

WBo: You also play the Hammerklavier sonata, what do you think of this particular composition?

WB: It is a much more complex composition (Goodness me, if I want to explain all this, it takes me at least half an hour..). I once played the Diabelli variations and I got one of the best reviews ever from Reichenfeld. He asked me whether I played the Hammerklavier sonata as well and I answered: “No, but I’ll play it next year”. I didn’t play the sonata, but then I had to learn it. At first, I blocked, because I tried to follow Beethovens impossible metronome indications.  I heard Friedrich Gulda and Eduardo del Pueyo play it live, but I didn’t understand much of the composition.  People are impressed when you play it by heart, but they cannot really enjoy the music. The first movement – if you are faithful to Beethovens metronome indication – resembles a tantrum, but the first motif is taken from an unfinished cantata: Vivat, vivat Rudolphos, he wanted to dedicate it to archduke Rudolph, as he did with this sonata. 

WBo; Doesn’t Beethoven transcend with this sonata?

WB: Yes, certainly and especially in the incredibly beautiful Adagio, where Beethoven achieves a depth that is indescribable. The late Beethoven strikes with his ability to compose in a condensed way: within a short time, he manages to express a lot with few notes. That makes the music so fascinating.  The condensed writing is also noticeable in the voicing, the harmonic finesse, the masterly building-up of tensions, the colours, etc.  With a work this long, it is a difficult task to do justice to all his intentions. And that is what makes the Hammerklavier so difficult, not mainly the technical demands, although these are not simple. 

WBo: Beethoven can be very inaccessible, for instance in the fugue of the Hammerklaviersonata and also in his Grosse Fuge!  

WB: The tempo of the last movement is “Allegro risoluto”, therefore it cannot be a race against the clock. Beethoven writes more than once a sforzato on every beat, so you cannot play it extremely fast. Everybody slows down at the middle section. If you take that part as a basis for the tempo of the entire movement, it becomes a different composition altogether!  In all movements, there is a lot of beauty and a wide variety of intentions. Its character is certainly not only titanic or inhospitable. 

WBo: How would you characterize the last movement: furious?

WB: Yes, that how it is often played. But there is so much more, for instance an incredibly positive vitality, moments of despair and even lyric. Why else are there indications in the score like “dolce” and “cantabile”? Beethoven once said: “The piano is an incomplete instrument”. Schubert can sound very beautiful on a period instrument, but some of Beethovens compositions don’t sound good on such an instrument, not even on a modern piano. In his string quartets, Beethoven is extreme in his writing, contrary to Mozart and Schubert who didn’t ask the impossible. He wrote his Hammerklaviersonata in worrisome circumstances.  At first, the fugue works as a liberation, but it remains an enormously difficult attempt to transcend himself.  You do not hear the the total liberation as in the 9th Symphony. It is a triumph, but it remains a phyrric victory. Shortly before the end of the fugue, there is a phrase in b flat minor, where the sadness of the adagio seems to come back, but then the composer pulls himself together and he ends the fugue with a new eruption of positive energy. 

WBo: I once heard you play Scriabin and Rachmaninoff, that is not music I would associate you with?  

WB: It was fun to do, I like Russian music and like to play Rachmaninoff, but unfortunately I don’t have the right hands for it. I did play his second concerto thirteen times and sometimes  it went really well!  

WBo: I heard your colleague Jan Wijn once say during a master class that “the piano animal is very much alive in everybody”, what about you? 

WB: Yes, it happened when I was young, but it is no longer the case now. That animal is not of much use with Schubert and Beethoven, their music is first and foremost about content. With Liszt, I prefer the works where it is not mainly about virtuosity, such as his Variations on “Weinen, Klagen”. I prefer to leave the animal alone, although I played Scriabins etude opus 8/12 and people told me: “That was not half bad!”

WBo: Aren’t you sometimes too modest? 

WB: That’s what they say sometimes… I think it’s rather the fact that I am not good with PR or websites. Of course, you are modest, I once read a beautiful interview with Andras Schiff who said that performing artists needed to be more modest. He is not the type of artist who brags a lot himself. These days, I often play a short piece by Kees Olthuis, which he dedicated to me. When I play it, I hardly take a bow, I walk towards him and give him the credits. The genius composers are the ones who should get the credits! Musicians sometimes make use of the enormous qualities of composers. The public tends to give credits to someone who plays fantastically, but it is actually turning things topsy-turvy! We have every reason to be modest!