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Eliso Virsaladze
Nijmegen, 19 April 2009
Eliso Virsaladze may not be a house hold name, but she has been around for about 50 years. She has a reputation both as a virtuoso and a sought after teacher and frequently appears with the cellist Natalia Gutman. And Sviatoslav Richter called her the best Schumann player alive. I read a few times that she is known to be a rather intransigeant lady, but when I spoke to her after her performance of Brahms’s First Piano Concerto, she was very nice and took all her time. Eventhough I interviewed her during a sponsor meeting that had been organised more or less for her, we could sit rather quietly, occasionally interrupted by people who had attended the concert and who thanked her for her playing. She told me many interesting things and she confessed being quite fond of a Dutch specialty: bitterballen!
Eliso Virssaladze (EV): That’s difficult to explain, it’s partly something you do with your brain, but you also need to have a sort of inner feeling, you can’t separate these two aspects.
EV: I do not agree. Liszt dedicated his Paganini Etudes to Clara Wieck, which means that she was a phenomenal pianist. Annie Fischer was also colossal, as was Yudina...
EV: Exactly! I do not approve of qualifications like “feminine or masculine playing”. Women probably have a more lyrical approach, which is not bad....
EV: This was the best of the three performances I played, the conditions were best today. The hall is wonderful (De Vereeniging, Nijmegen, WB), the Steinway was a fresh sounding three-year-old instrument, the acoustics were good. The two other concerts were ok, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy them!
EV: The feeling is always there. You are never 100% satisfied, it probably happened only five times in my entire life that I was truly happy about my own playing, whereas I have been playing for 50 years now... Sometimes, I am very dissatisfied and disappointed about myself...
EV: I try to play differently, that’s why I like live recordings. They may not be perfect, but they have a lot of value. I would definitely quit performing if I always played the same way! You should never do that, because you are not a computer! I appreciate artists who are not predictable, thank god, that you play poorly from time to time!
EV: I was asked to.
EV: No, I frequently say “no”
EV: Exactly!
EV: Yes, very much, although you can’t play it more than ten times in a row. You need a lot of inner strength, energy and concentration.
EV: That’s another concerto I like very much, in certain countries such as Japan I am asked to play Tschaikofsky and Rachmaninov all the time.
EV: As a Sinfonia Concertante, which makes that you play it differently of course, it is another style one could say.
EV: He writes rather well, his style is comfortable for me, but that doesn’t mean it is easy! In the Second Piano Concerto, especially in the second and fourth movements, there are a few passages that are very awkward pianistically. I first performed the Second Piano Concerto and much later, I started to learn the First Concerto.
EV: No, I am not afraid of it, but you need to find the right fingering for it!
EV: I have no favourite composers, I also love Schumann, Brahms, Mozart, but I play some composers more than others.
EV: Ravel and Debussy.
EV: I unfortunately didn’t have enough time for it.
EV: He could be quite moody, this may have been his spontaneous feeling when he said this, but yes, of course, I greatly appreciate his opinion!
EV: He has done a few things that are simply genius, e.g the Piano Concerto, the Etudes Symphoniques, the Allegro Appassionato (with orchestra, WB), but I actually liked everything he played.
EV: I still haven’t read that book, I have been reticent, since it may be too close.. He was always very hard on himself, so one couldn’t blame him for being hard on others!
EV: I told him, as in the case of Mozart’s Concerto K 453, that I enjoyed his reading. When I hear things I don’t like, I say nothing!
EV: With both, you need the alternation. When you don’t have much in common with both characters, you can’t play Schumann! You have to play the eccentric side of his music with maximum clarity, no other composer writes so often ritardandi or “noch schneller” (faster)! One should be able to follow the transitions very clearly, otherwise his music turns out to be very chaotic.
EV: Annie Fischer, Maria Grinberg, Sofronitzky, Backhaus sometimes. Samuel Feinberg is unknown, but he played a wonderful Humoreske. Lipatti was great in the Piano Concerto, I like Horowitz in the Kinderszenen, among the living pianists, I would mention Lupu.
EV: There is nothing I can do about that, what can I say? He also said he would never do the Kreisleriana, since his teacher Heinrich Neuhaus had played them so well.
EV: I don’t understand that either, because I like that movement very much!
EV: No, we weren’t friends, but it was a great honour to be able to spend some time with him. Natalia Gutman and Oleg Kagan were closer to him, although I have known Richter since my childhood.
EV: Moussorsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, the 6th and 7th Piano Sonatas by Prokofiev, Beethoven’s last Piano Sonatas and his Third Piano Concerto, Schumann’s Piano Concerto and Etudes Symphoniques, Ludis Tonalis by Hindemith, song recitals with Dietrich Fischer Dieskau and many chamber music works. The recording of the Tschaikofsky Piano Trio is simply fantastic, it’s the best performance I know of this work. The last time I was at his festival in Tours (France), I played Shostakovitsj’s Second Piano Trio with Victor Tretjakov and Natialia Gutman and Richter was sitting in the audience.
EV: No, he had stopped just a month before.
EV: Yes, but I am scared to tell you how long I have been doing this...
EV: Since 1967! First, I was assistant of Professor Oborin, then of Professor Zak and then I got my own students.
EV: Yes, if it doesnt’take too much of my time.
EV: You can ask me anything!
EV: That’s not true, I was neither positive nor negative. Berezovsky is a very gifted man, who has managed to have a great career. He is highly gifted for sure. A young colleague of his, Volodin, is also building up a career.
EV: Exactly, that’s what I mean, he could play with more intensity. But I have to admit that he is always honest, he doesn’t exaggerate.
EV: I greatly appreciated him in some compositions. Gilels plays a colossal role in my mind, as many others such as Neuhaus or Goldenweiser do. Richter was very special though, how can I say?
EV: Exactly! He was always so honest! He could have become a conductor, an actor, a producer, a painter, but he rejected all these options. He had many different talents, but he dedicated his whole life to the piano. With him, the piano became both a solo instrument, an orchestra and a singer...
EV: Everything is very relative. Maybe I haven’t had an overnight success, but I am still around. Besides, I have had the advantage to have enough time for my own development. I hope to perform in the future as well and to develop myself even more!
EV: I haven’t heard about this, but I don’t care. Nobody can criticize myself better than I do. I have never lost control, I have never been in love with myself. And I do not need reviews.
EV: Yes, one time, I read a wonderful review, it was simply fantastic. This is a story I often tell my students: it was so good that I destroyed it! The critic even compared me to Rachmaninov and I thought: “This guy is insane!”
EV: It was flattering, but it was simply too much of a good thing! Besides, I was only 23 years old at the time. I usually don’t read reviews, sometimes my agent tells me that I have got a good review and I think: “O, that’s great!”
EV: Yes, sure! We have known each other for 50 years, although we haven’t always played together. We started playing concerts at the end of the 70’s. She is a close partner, not only in music. We also played trios with her former husband, violinist Oleg Kagan. I also collaborated with the Borodin Quartett, when Kopelman played first violin. I have always been lucky with my partners.
EV: I can’t tell you how important music for me is, it is simply beyond discussion.. Music is like life itself, I can’t imagine the whole thing without music, that’s why I chose to become a musician! My grandmother who taught me my first lessons never forced me. You know, when I was young, I practiced very little. I didn’t start to practice seriously until I started to prepare myself for the Tschaikofsky Competition... I have never had a real mentor and there was a moment when my grandmother couldn’t teach or couldn’t come to my concerts any more, after she had broken one of her hips.
EV: Not on a regular basis, I probably played only once a year for him. The first time I was nine years old.
EV: I wasn’t one of his regular students, in principle I studied everything myself and learnt from my mistakes, I am grateful that I found time to deal with my shortcomings.
EV: The ease was always there, it’s innate... In 1962, I won third prize and my father said: “When you win third prize, for me it will be as if you have won the first prize!”
EV: Yes, I did.
EV: Conducting is easier!
EV (thinks): Yes, I believe so!
At the end of the interview I told Eliso Virsaladze I would love to hear her in recital and only one month later, my wish came true! Pianist Yefim Bronfman who was supposed to play a recital in Amsterdam in the famous “Meesterpianisten” series had to cancel and was replaced by Eliso Virsaladze. She played Mozart’s Fantasy K 475 and Sonata K 457, Prokofiev’s 2nd Sonata, and Schumann’s Arabesque and Carnaval to great acclaim. (Plus three Chopin encores). She was masterful in Mozart and proved an ideal interprete in Prokofiev’s lyricism and “bite”. Moreover, she proved that Richter had been right about her Schumann playing. Especially her Carnaval was impressive with (sometimes) daringly fast tempi.
© 2009
Amsterdam, 18 January 2024
Willem Boone (WB): What was it like to play Mozart with the Concertgebouw Orchestra?
Emanuel Ax (EA): How shouId I put it? It’s like anything else with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, they are fabulous. I feel very lucky to be with them. It’s a long time that I have been coming. I played here in the early 80’s I think, a few times with Mr Haitink, and a few times with other conductors. Every member of the orchestra is a musician, they have imagination and they play with imagination.
WB: I ask because as you might know, the Dutch were pioneers in music making on period instruments. There were some famous names like Gustav Leonhardt, and Frans Bruggen was also one of them and the latter said that every note of Mozart by the Concertgebouw Orchestra was a lie…
EA: (laughs): I actually played with Frans Bruggen with his orchestra, a long time ago, but on a normal piano. It was actually the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg. I think as with anything else in the world: things change and it’s fine to play original instruments, both on the piano and on strings and winds, but I don’t think we should be ashamed to play also this way. I did some recordings of Chopin music with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment on an Erard, which I really enjoyed doing, but I love the fact we can do both. I don’t think one has to exclude the other. Actually, Yo Yo Ma and I did some concerts playing the Beethoven Cello Sonatas and we did two concerts. In the first half, we played on an 1826 piano with a baroque set up and the other half was modern. The next day, we did the same.
WB: And did Yo Yo play on gut strings?
EA: Yes, he did, it was set up for the old way.
WB: And which experience did you like the best?
EA: We loved both, that’s the point! We told the audience that it was not a competition to decide which one they liked better. It just shows the range of possibilities.
WB: Did you start with the period instruments and then play on the modern ones?
EA: Yes, we did.
WB: I think that’s better than the other way around?
EA: Probably, because if you start with the big, modern instruments, it’s loud.
WB: Did the experience of Chopin on period instruments helped you on the Steinway too?
EA: I don’t know if it helped, it was just an interesting way to adjust. I wouldn’t say one helped the other so much, but it was fascinating. That’s all..
WB: I saw a list on Facebook the other day of the most played piano concertos of last year. I was actually shocked: even though there were beautiful pieces like the Beethoven 3, 4 and 5, Chopin’s Second, Tchaikovsky’s First, Grieg, Schumann, Ravel G major and Rach Second and Third, there were no concertos by Mozart!
EA: Interesting….
WB: I was wondering whether it’s difficult to programme Mozart?
EA: Not really, it’s actually very easy most of the time, because conductors love it, since they always do the big piece in the second half (laughs). It goes together with Bruckner or Mahler, the large symphonies. I think it’s quite common. I do a lot of Mozart, partly because I can’t play the Rachmaninov or Tchaikovsky concertos. So if I go to an orchestra, they usually let me play Mozart or Beethoven. I’m old now…
WB: But Mozart is difficult, isn’t it?
EA: Yes, very difficult! I don’t think I ever played a performance of a Mozart concerto where I thought: everything was correct. There are always details where you think: now, that could be better.
WB: Is that more so than with Brahms?
EA: Yes, I would say, more so than with Brahms, because there are more notes. You don’t have as much time to think. With Mozart, every tune has to be perfectly done and I never get it..
WB: What is your relationship with this G-major concerto (KV 453)?
EA: It’s actually the first Mozart concerto I ever played, so I’ve known it for a very long time. It doesn’t get any easier though!
WB: I spoke to a colleague of yours and he said that he disliked the beginning of the first movement. Anything that comes after it is fantastic, but he said the entrance of the piano is stupid.
EA: It’s very hard! I don’t know whether it is stupid, but I actually cheated a little bit. I played the first note with the left hand, because I am nervous of doing it either way.
WB: Does it go better then?
EA: It’s a little safer, when you sit and you wait and wait… (laughs). You have to be lucky and I was today!
WB: I heard you practise, half an hour before the performance. Why do you do that? Is it because you don’t feel ready?
EA: No, I’m always very nervous before playing, I’m always here two hours before and play slowly everything through.
WB: Doesn’t that make you even more nervous?
EA: It depends on the day: some days, yes, and some days, no.
WB: And I read that you do yoga too.
EA: I don’t, but I should do yoga. Maybe I said in earlier interviews that I should do it, but I don’t! I should try something….
WB: It doesn’t stop you from playing.
EA: Well, the other you get, the worse it gets! I think so..
WB: I saw you last Sunday at the recital of Dame Mitsuko Uchida. What is it like for you to sit in the audience when you listen to a colleague: are you just like me, a listener who sits back?
EA: Yes, I’m just like you, I sit back and enjoy.
WB: You’re not a colleague who does the same job…
EA: No, not really, of course, I know what is coming more or less, I’m aware of a lot of things that are happening. I enjoy concerts.
WB: When you listen, is it very difficult than when you play?
EA: Yes, especially here on the stage. It’s very clear and the piano is quite pointed. But when you are out there, it’s beautiful round, it’s a fabulous hall. The Bruckner sounded great yesterday.
WB: I spoke to Jean Philippe Collard and he said that it’s a mythical hall of course, but he said there a lot of colours in the sound, and as he put it, when you play two notes, they are already surrounded by a colourful bubble.
EA: Yes, I think this is a special place, along with Carnegie Hall. They are quite similar, wonderful for piano, for orchestras too.
WB: But he said he sometimes had trouble hearing the wind instruments?
EA: I don’t know, I think it’s more a question of what the conductor does.
WB: Regarding Mitsuko Uchida’s programme, I heard it a few times without an intermission, since these sonatas are not very long and very similar…
EA: I think each one is kind of a world, I think it’s fine that there was a pause. It’s almost better for the concentration to have a break between the first and the second sonata. Maybe, but it depends. I thought it was a beautiful recital, I enjoyed it so much.
WB: I think it’s such a spiritual journey that maybe it gets interrupted by an intermission, I would have loved to hear them without a break.
EA: People feel differently about it.
WB: Isn’t it difficult to get back and get focused again with an intermission?
EA: Not with Beethoven, I don’t think so. Beethoven grabs you, there’s no-one like him! I have heard these sonatas many times over many years. The amazing thing is how many different ways there are to make them sound. I remember hearing them when I was 19 years old, played by the young Pollini at the age of 29 or 30. That was a totally different and amazing experience. And I heard Serkin do them. He was very well known for his Beethoven. He was a great pianist, I heard his son Peter play all of these sonatas.
WB: Do you play them yourself?
EA: No, I don’t. I play a lot of the early ones.
WB: Are you intimidated by them?
EA: I don’t know. My teacher didn’t like them for whatever reason, so I didn’t learn them when I was young. Then everybody played them and I thought: maybe I should study opus 2 nr 2, all of his sonatas are great!
WB: What always strikes me with Beethoven, is that he didn’t write many beautiful melodies, but what he made out of them is so special!
EA: Yes, whatever he did, I think he understood time better than any other composer. Everything he did was never too long or too short. You feel it is just right. What can you say? After Beethoven, there haven’t been any musicians who weren’t somehow influenced by him, even if they hated him, but it was thre. Ravel hated Beethoven , but he knew his music.
WB: You combined Beethoven and Schoenberg in your last recital. Was that because they represent the first and the second Viennese school?
EA: In a way, but also because I wanted to play Schoenberg. It was his 150th anniversary of his birth. If you play Schoenberg, you should play something popular that goes with it…
WB: Although the pieces you played weren’t among the most difficult to listen to?
EA: I think the Suite is not easy to listen to, opus 11 is so romantic.
WB: The Suite is still modern, even a hundred years later!
EA: It is like the Rite of Spring, it’s still modern, even now.
WB: You played that recital on the new Steinway grand piano, didn’t you? You said it was ‘incredible and had personality, you wanted to give it a name.’ How do you perceive a piano’s character?
EA: It’s not a specific character, it’s just when you play a piano and you say: this has range, it speaks to you, it’s not neutral and it’s not too beautiful in one way.
WB: Was it the same piano as the one you played on tonight?
EA: Yes, it was the same instrument.
WB: That’s interesting. I thought the sound was a little neutral sometimes.
EA: Today?
WB: Yes, I thought so.
EA: I don’t know.
WB: You quoted Bernstein regarding Schoenberg: ‘It’s Brahms with the wrong notes.’ What do you like so much about Schoenberg?
EA: I think it’s very involving and powerful. What can I say? It’s very strong.
WB: You play his Piano Concerto too?
EA: I do, yes.
WB: It’s not an easy piece either…
EA: No, it isn’t, but I like it. I recorded it.
WB: I know you play a lot of recitals and orchestral concerts and yet, if I think of you, I think of you as a chamber musician
EA: Yes, probably, because I have done so much with Yo Yo Ma.
WB: Does it bother you if people mainly see you as a chamber musician?
EA: No, as long as I am playing, it’s fine. You know, the best part of my life in a way is playing with Yo Yo Ma.
WB: How long have you known him?
EA: 53 years! It’s like an old marriage, we really like eachother. He is such a great artist!
WB: Wow! I do amateur acting, just for fun and I worked with a producer a few times and he sometimes used music during rehearsals. I think blind listening is sometimes the best way to listen to artists. He played cello music a few times, I didn’t know who it was and was really impressed and all the time it was him. I think when you‘re surprised a few times by the same artist, then they are really good. The same happened with the German singer, Hans Hotter.
EA: So, I better think about heading off. forgive me!
Utrecht, 28 September 2022
Frederic Chiu (FC): Oh, so many! With this competition in particular, there are always repertoire surprises, because Liszt wrote so much.
FC: The Gretchen from Faust, I knew that he had written this and now I have heard it four times. To hear it by four different artists is like looking at it from four different perspectives.
FC: Yes, it’s a long and complex piece. Very beautiful and Wagnerian: you can see where Wagner stole from Liszt! All the good ideas (laughs)
FC: Yes, it is! This competition always brings out people who work really hard and who play extremely difficult music. That’s the only way you can prepare the repertoire and because they are these kind of people, they usually produce amazing results. They may not be the most popular types of players or the most famous of their age, but they are definitely the hardest working. That comes through when you meet them, they are so focused and concentrated on piano playing.
FC: I personally love it, I talked to Rob many times about the projects I am working on, like Beethoven and Liszt. I recorded Beethoven symphonies and also a lot of Schubert/Liszt transcriptions. I programmed it a lot in different concerts. Schubert was the other wonderful surprise, to hear Schwanengesang played by fourdifferent pianists, it’s great.
FC: I recorded Schwanengesang 20 years ago, it was a life-changing moment to work on that repertoire at the time. I have gone through some very difficult periods in my life that coincided with a kind of coming out of one shell. It’s a wonderful group of songs that became a legitimate song cycle. It was not intended as a unified set by Schubert, but it became that. Liszt’s transcription was a remarkable work of completion.
FC: I often play Liszt, a specific part of it. I don’t like everything that Liszt wrote; I would say much of it is not in my style. It is a style that I would not even imagine to be playing, but then there are places in the repertoire where I feel very much at home. Schwanengesang is an example: I don’t understand why people don’t play this music more. It is technically and musically challenging, but it is something that I have played a lot. I even made a kind of music theatre version of it where I work with an actor. He reads the poetry that is associated with the music and we alternate poetry and transcription. We do it in different languages, i.e. the actor recites in different languages. If you are Japanese, for example, and you love hearing Schwanengesang in the original version but you don’t speak German, of course you can read the Japanese translations beforehand and then memorize them, so you kind of know what they are saying when you listen to the German. You can listen to the amazing way that Schubert put the words to music, but it is an intellectual exercise.
FC: There was no singer, but the melody was in the transcription. It’s like de-constructed Schubert Lieder where you experience the words first, then the music, the meaning of the words. And it is in your native language, I have not yet done this in Japan, which I would like to do. It is perhaps one of the places where they are most respectful to this kind of music. So we’ll hopefully find an actor in Japan and find a good translation of the German, so the Japanese will feel it in their heart.
FC: In English, French, German, Estonian, four languages in six countries so far. I would love to do it in Japanese and in Chinese. That’s my background and that would be a great connection.
FC: I don’t know, did they say that?
FC: I never heard that, I should read their interviews.
FC: I think I could, there is a theatricality in this music that I can see would not fit with certain personalities, I don’t see it in on a musical level or as far as the sophistication is concerned.
FC: I don’t think it’s empty, but it is a certain kind of emotion that is very public, even in the solitary moments of his music, it’s gift-wrapped solitude versus Chopin whose solitude is actually himself and you’d rather not listen almost! Of course he is writing music to be listened to, but it is almost written for himself versus Liszt who is always conscious of the receiver.
FC: (thinks): I think Liszt is not so much a taste as it is a kind of attitude, he had so many tastes! (laughs), I think I find Liszt to my taste in some places and not to my taste at all in other places. There is a lot for everyone, but not everything is for everyone.
FC: It’s amazing that Liszt was able to write all of this, not only because of the incredible quantity, but the fact that it is so diverse and that it has such wide ranging psychology, that one person could do that. Of course, he had a whole life to do it, a crazy life, but he was able to express all of that.
FC: I approach them as what they are, which is a pianist’s understanding of a singer’s adventure, it does change things if you play as a pianist. There are things that don’t work, if you play it only as someone trying the replicate the voice, then there are thing that you miss. It has to be both and I think that’s why it works.
FC: In the Winterreise especially. There is a different feeling in Schwanengesang because the alternate purpose Liszt had in mind was to finish a compositional path versus transforming a finished composition. Of course, if you work with something that is already refined and done, all you can do is modify things that distort it to make it something different. When it is something unfinished, then you have a responsibility to the person who left it and a responsibility to the music itself that wants to go in a certain direction.
FC: I would say that every song is perfect, but I would say as a cycle, it is not. And there are so many references in the Liszt transcription, the order of the pieces is already completely different and it is an almost scientifically programmed order when you look at the key structure. It looks like the key structure of a Liszt piece. It actually looks like a Liszt structure.
FC: It’s crazy!
FC: The spirit of the song is happy or simple, but the structure behind the notes is so complicated. That is definitely an added challenge on the technical side.
FC: Yes, there is a limit technically to what can be done; there is a moment where it becomes impossible on a pianistic level, so there has to be some kind of accommodation or compromise. For the most part, Liszt handles it in a way that it feels more like Beethoven when he gets to the bottom of the keyboard and the old keyboards had fewer notes. Some editors in modern era correct Beethoven by writing what he should have written if the keyboards had been longer, but he didn’t. I have a similar feeling with Liszt when he has to accommodate an extra voice that can’t be played with an extra hand, then he writes a figuration that allows to play these notes in a different octave, but you know that the melody continues from the top octave and goes down.
FC: Yes, but I think it’s the pianist’s responsibility. Liszt is very helpful, because he understands: I can’t do it, so I am going to make a trick, or I am going to trick the audience: start a pattern in one place, and then skip it for a couple of beats and go back and pick it up again. It’s like a magician…
FC: Yes and you have to be sensitive to the tiny nuances of the piano sound, because in the end, it’s all piano with a very specific, narrow sound. That’s the magic of the instrument: if you take the time to enter into the world and you have a pianist who is sensitive, it allows you to start hearing the different nuances of the piano sound…
FC: You know, it’s interesting, once you start delving into it and you play something, people can say: “O, that’s the sound of a flute”, but if you actually look at the sound waves, it looks nothing like a flute, but it’s the most flute like sound you can make on the piano. If you use it exclusively to imitate the flute section that has a particular phrasing, shape of the phrase or articulation, then people start to associate that with: o yes, that’s the flute section, it’s kind of the flute part, so it must be the flute.
FC: Yes, it’s even certain physical techniques that have to be respected to make certain kind of sound. And pedaling of course is the key to all of that, the control of the overtones, I would say there is some resemblance in the overtones series that you might ring for certain notes to imitate the flute sound, more in octaves and fifths versus an oboe which has the thirds and fourths. I wouldn’t be able to say: ‘This is the profile of a flute’, but I know if I play like this and do the pedal like this I can get a flute kind of overtone series versus technique like this and pedal like this for an oboe sound.
FC: It’s experimenting and remembering and being open to exploring the sound.
FC: That’s what I am trying to do, the whole job of a pianist is to find something and replicate it. I feel when it’s not repeatable, it’s not art, it’s nature. Nature is wonderful, but it never repeats itself and you never know what to expect, because it’s not planned. When you discover it, it is beautiful. Sunsets are different every night and we love sunsets! But if it’s supposed to be art, it’s meant to be intentional. If you can’t put things in the right place, you are not telling anybody anything, you are not communicating a thing. You are just being in front of someone and they watch you be whoever you are.
FC: You have to be able to recreate it in order for it to be an artistic creation.
FC: In a desired way, if you look at the way a painter paints a sunset, it can be spontaneous, but in the end it’s presented to you, because he chose that. The same happens with composers and real time performers like we are. Even though you hear it, you remember it and then it’s gone, it’s still wanted and a sequence of wanted experiences. If I play Schwanengesang in one place, it will be completely different from the way I play it the next time, but I wanted to do that, I wanted to play Schwanengesang. And that means something and even though it’s not the same every time, it’s a desired experience.
FC: In some ways, I do. I certainly understand the significance of them. I think they are perhaps the most important works and I said this in the masterclass on the Beethoven symphonies. In the class I mentioned a couple of notations in the score that are kind of controversial points in standard orchestral repertoire. Conductors chose two different ways to perform certain appoggiatura in the slow movements. There are huge debates and changes from generation to generation about which one is correct and desired. Liszt basically said: ‘Here is how it should be played, because it is the only way to play it on the piano.’ He heard it that way in his lifetime and intended it that way. Liszt heard Beethoven performers play it that way, so that’s it. Not that another way is wrong or not beautiful, it is, and we can choose to do so. Beethoven is not here to say you can’t do it that way. But it does give us the only insights we have as to how the musicians in Beethoven’s time played, Liszt understood he had some work to do, to anchor in history. Again, I think it was his best work because there was an ulterior motive that was beyond himself. He felt he had to accomplish a purpose. When he had such a calling, he could be the most convincing person in the world. When he doesn’t have that purpose, I think he can be the most annoying person in the world (laughs).
FC: Absolutely!
FC: I don’t understand why, because I think his work is remarkable. It’s a testimony of a life that was so incredibly interesting. It was not the greatest life, not the most inspiring life, but certainly a well lived, hugely diverse one.
FC: What did he mean? I never heard that before.
FC: Is he saying you are not allowed to or is it not possible to find a way to play it badly?
FC: Definitely, yes, by making it one-dimensional where one characteristic comes across more than the others. There are five elements in his music that are usually always present: the neoclassic, the humor, the toccata-like approach, an attempt to be impressionistic or spontaneous and unclear, and beautiful melodies. It’s a wonderful exercise to work out in Prokofiev: if you are playing more than four measures in any one of those elements, you should start looking out for the others, because it’s going to change, it’s going to start incorporating a melody or neoclassic chord structures or start incorporating some humor or some sarcasm. I think a lot of people look for that toccata-element and don’t look for much else.
FC: Yes, indeed and revolutionary and important, but if you only look for that and get rid of the humor, or the neoclassic or the romantic or impressionistic, then you are stucking it way from its essence.
FC: There is some movements that are so crazy, but even in those after a few phrases of in your face blaring of brass instruments, it all of sudden mellows out and there is a beautiful melody. Something you think you have heard before…
FC: Yes, I did, it’s a huge challenge. I have done the nine sonatas in one evening, besides being a challenge it’s also an amazing journey as you can imagine.
FC: I have done it a few times, but I don’t know if I could do it again!
FC: It is a killer!
FC: I didn’t do them in order, I grouped them into different characters and split six, seven and eight to each of the three sections. They tell a great story.
FC: Eight came last. Six, seven and eight are very interesting, people call them the ‘war sonatas’ because they were written at a time that he was certainly suffering from the war. But I have a different theory. He was also suffering from a midlife crisis, going through a separation in his marriage and his kids, he was writing his own biography, being a very meticulous biographer. He wanted to write a huge sonata in ten movements and then later he split it into sonatas number six, seven and eight. You can see it as ten movements; I think he was plotting out his life.
FC: Yes, he wrote that, it was his war project. He was stuck in the countryside, he didn’t know what to do, it was almost like covid in our time…
FC: When you look at the arch of the movements, it’s split out into three sections that represent the sections of his life, where he had his childhood, time of child prodigy, being respected and hated for the way he wrote for piano, and then the period in Europe and the USA where he tried to create a career for himself and keep up his reputation, be newer than the latest new composers, come up with intellectual discoveries. Finally, there was his return to the Soviet Union. Look at the first movements of six, seven and eight: in six, he is beating the piano, seven starts with a strange chromatic motive, almost like a tonerow and has a movement in 7/8 meter, and eight is this huge, serene melody. If you think of those as his life as opposed to everyone’s war. There is no beautiful ending to the war: if you are telling the war story, it should somewhere end with a nuclear bomb! The middle movements tell different aspects of his life, his marriage, his successes, his failures and attempts. I have done that program of six, seven and eight too, to tell that story.
FC: I think he was Prokofiev in his ambition, it’s his opus 1! The opus 1 of a composer is always very delicate; it’s his calling card to the world. He was such a needy person, he needed to be accepted, respected. He was very young and probably thought: ‘This is my calling card, I have to show that I am a good student!’
FC: Yes, there is some kind of early Rachmaninov.
FC: I think that the fact it was his opus 1, that tells me he wanted people to know: ‘I can do Rachmaninov.” The same way, his impressionistic style is a way to say to people: “I can do Debussy’ In his opus 2 pieces, he wanted to say: ‘O, I can do strange Scriabin and Debussy kind of things’.
FC: Prokofiev was very conscious of Rachmaninov and Stravinsky, because of his nature, he was competitive. I don’t think there was any role model for Prokofiev that he did not become jealous of eventually.
FC: He was much more of what we now understand as Prokofiev, he was more confident and even pushed that in front of people. There was a huge change in his approach.
FC: Absolutely, it’s based on note books in which he wrote down notes as a teenager. I think he was showing people: ‘Here is what I was already doing when I was ten years old, look at this!.’ I think he was much more mature as a composer, using that material, developing it and putting it out there.
FC: I think both about the third and the fourth sonata, he wanted to say: ‘Look at the range I already had when I was so young’.
FC: I am not sure how much is based on these notes but both three and four are subtitled ‘from old notebooks.’
FC: It’s the only one he wrote when he was in his middle phase and I believe it’s an attempt to sound more neoclassic than Poulenc and Stravinsky.
FC: It is from his intellectual period; I believe he then lived in a very uncomfortable way. He was not a natural performer. He had to and he did it reluctantly in some respects. There was this famous moment when he and Stravinsky and Diaghilev arrived together on a cruise ship, they travelled across the Atlantic by ship at that time, around 1918. One of the pictures that was taken was subtitled: ‘The Russian impressario Sergei Diaghilev, the great Russian composer Stravinsky and the great Russian pianist Sergei Prokofiev.’He was very irritated by this comment, because he wanted to be the composer, maybe not the only composer, but he definitely wanted to be compared to Stravinsky and Rachmaninov, who were famous at the time. He wanted to be famous in the same way. He had to perform and he had the pianistic level, but then he had to compete with Rachmaninov who was well known as a pianist. He resented he never had his own star at the walk of fame. The fifth sonata is a representation of the attempt to be more classical than the neoclassics. He wrote something that started off like a Mozart sonata. He rewrote it later with a bit of humility: ‘You know, let me revise something of what I did when I was acting stupid.’
FC: It is a nostalgic piece, he is recalling how famous he was when he was very young and breaking norms, setting the bar for his level in certain styles and discoveries. He was nostalgic about the power he had when he was young. He was playful and prolific. The middle movements tell different sides of that story.
FC: No, he is looking back and thinking; you know, that was naïve, that was childish, but that was how I was…He was using his modern, mature technique to tell that story of a younger self.
FC: It’s the most bitter and kind of rebelling, I think. He understood that he was not happy and that he was fighting against certain trends and also trying to meet them. He was experimenting, it’s the most complex sonata, the meter changes all the time. He uses strange 7/8 meter for the last movement, even though it’s very fast forward moving. It represents him fighting against the innovation to be something that is more straightforward.
FC: I have played it in very different ways too, with different ideas. Sometimes I distort the 7/8 and make it very uncomfortable and bring it out that accent…
FC: I don’t think he is wrong, I wouldn’t say he is wrong in anything, however, it is such an impersonal image. I don’t think Prokofiev thought of war and if he thought of a tank, it was his inner tank that was running over all the French composers. Or possibly he was thinking of his return to Russia.
FC: ‘Preciptato’ doesn’t mean ‘speeding up’, I believe, it’s rather going to your destination without waiting for anybody.
FC: I think I have seen it.
FC: I have played it going forward without speeding up and then other times where the 7/8 and the accent on the off-beat is like speed bumps, you want to go forward and you keep tripping. The French were constantly criticizing him that he was not that inventive or experimental, so it’s faltering.
FC: He was writing number eight to tell the story that he was living at home, so it’s the one with the least perspective. It’s about lyricism, accessibility.
FC: Yes, when I listen to my own recording, I think: why did I play it so fast? A lot of the elegance and the privileged nature doesn’t come out as well as I would like it to come out. I think he understood that he was respected for who he was and wanted to be more than at any other time in his life.
FC: I was working on it with a student and he asked for fingerings and I said: ‘I have no fingerings!’I actually have one, but it doesn’t work (laughs), it’s some of the most difficult pages I have ever played.
FC: He mellows in the sense that he loses his power. I don’t think it’s ‘desired mellow’ like ‘My main life work is done’, it’s more like ‘I have to do this, I can’t do anything else.’
FC: Yes, it was definitely seen from a distant perspective, he intended this to be part of six, seven and eight, but he had lived his last stage where he had his accident and when he was forced to denounce his own style. He couldn’t fight any more, it’s very salutary. Life and energy are very contained and individual.
FC: Yes, he reaches back to childhood, to grab some of that really early music for children.
FC: It’s very difficult to say what that would have been like. I think there would have been more complexity, he was trying to revive some intellectual energy.
FC: Number eight, although it’s not my favorite to play, because it’s so captivating and digital, it’s hard to have the right mindset to approach it. In terms of thinking, the structure, the shape of the melodies are more impressive than in any of the other sonatas.
FC: Yes, it’s like one long phrase, one arch from the beginning to the end.
FC: That is a very good word! It’s true that they are difficult to pin down and I think it’s an element that reflects Chopin’s own view of his background. It’s not a pedagogic or research based approach to folk music, not like Bartok or Kodaly ore even Brahms. It’s an evocation of feelings that are very personal to him, when he thinks of Polish life, Poland and how he is or isn’t Polish or how he represents or doesn’t represent his country. He is using elements of different Mazurkas, shifting from this kind of Mazurka to that kind of Mazurka. No single Mazurka has one single kind of energy. Some measures go forward, some go back, some stay on the ground, other go up or down, there is no singe phrase that has one character. I think that is the challenge of these compositions: how can you reflect this light that is constantly changing. He himself had this ambivalent, evasive view of what he was talking about.
FC: O, thank you!
FC: That’s very nice!
FC: They are a real challenge for me. That shows the results of my own personal evolution, because I learned a lot of it when I was very young. I played them as exercises and it took me many years of being away from them to then come back to it as music by Chopin. I had revelations of them when I was living in Paris and started seeing him as a person versus a catalog of piano works. I started seeing him more for his personal statement of expressions. And then I went back to the Etudes and the technique was still there to play the notes, but I heard it as music. It was completely different.
FC: I think only relying on any one particular form of memory is dangerous! I think you need a safety net of many different levels and strengths. There are times where I am playing and I see that my structural memory is faulty, I cannot remember what to play, so I blank my mind and I let the fingers play it. That’s relying completely on muscle memory and trusting it, it seems when I get past the tricky passages that I go back to thinking and go back to feeling and listening. Sometimes I have to shut everything off and let the body do what it knows how to do.
FC: That’s very interesting, I would say emotional memory is something I use as well. It’s analytical in the sense of how things are related intellectually.
FC: After this emotion, what emotions does it lead to? If you feel defeated, when do you think: ah, I start fighting again? And when you had victory, when do you start doubting again?
FC: Yes, that happens more often than you think. If you make the wrong turn, you can’t start again and make the right turn. That’s a different skill.
FC: I don’t see the score either.
FC: That’s very interesting, that shows as pianists we use whatever we have in hand, whatever is going to help us, we remember it. Some people have special gifts: I don’t have photographic memory nor perfect pitch nor perfect muscle memory. I have a combination of things that works for me.
FC: No, I do work for memory, because I don’t have photographic memory. I create structures in my head that are emotional, chromatic and I try to fit everything in to that. I don’t feel I have a particular special gift, but I have a special package that works together. I explore all the aspects of that and make it constantly work together.
FC: I have a very special Prokofiev project: I produced a ballet that is called ‘Romeo and Juliet The Choice” It’s the entire ballet performed by a ballet troupe. The music is all played on the piano in the original Prokofiev draft score for piano. The ballet dancers dance on the same stage as the pianist, so it’s integrated in the scenario and there are lots of interactive elements with the audience. In particular the audience votes for the ending they want to see. The original ending that Prokofiev imagined, was happy, where they stay alive. They ran away and the families kept fighting, because they blame each other for them running away. Only years later, he wrote the ending we all know which is the traditional Shakespeare ending where they kill themselves and the family comes together in mourning. This choice of ending can only happen in the piano version as Prokofiev did not orchestrate his original happy ending.
FC: I have done this a few times already, so I am looking for more performance opportunities. I think it’s a way for ballet to become much more democratic and populist instead of being on a stage that’s distant and far from the audience. That way, it’s coming to people.
FC: Yes, but not that much, the last time was when I was living in Paris and that is fifteen years ago. We just figured out that this is my seventh trip to Utrecht to be involved with the Liszt Competition. I feel it’s a great project to be involved in.
Amsterdam, 18 March 2023
It was quite special to interview Gabriela Montero in one of the dressing rooms of the Concertgebouw, with singer Thomas Hampson practising in the next room. She also played a message on her mobile telephone with Martha Argerich whistling 'Happy birthday'....
Willem Boone (WB): I have a few questions about your amazing improvisation skils. I guess you are known as the pianist who improvises so well, is there perhaps a danger that you could be type cast or pigeonholed, while you are also a pianist with a huge repertoire and who will be performing one of the old warhorses this week? Does that bother you?
Gabriela Montero (GM): It doesn’t bother me, because it’s an expression of the whole musical world that I live in. That has always been my way of communicating. I think it’s a shame though that we live in a time when it’s almost bizarre for a classical artist to be an improviser. It should be more like a spontaneous composer, because it’s closer to spontaneous composition than improvisation. It’s a shame that we have to use labels to categorise different shades: what we do and what we are. In reality, it’s just me being myself 100%. The fact that I play Tchaikovsky, Schumann, Brahms and other composers and I do improvisations may be classical or not, depending on the day. I think it’s more a reflection of going back in time, to the 18th and 19th century, than of me doing anything strange; because it’s really something that belongs to the past. I love to do it; I love to see how the public gets so excited about something so spontaneous. I guess maybe I need a bigger box (laughs), that would be a solution!
WB: And when did you discover this talent?
GM: I always did it, since I was a little girl. I didn’t know it was a talent, it was just a way that I talk with the piano. It’s what I call ‘my musical diary’, it’s how I express my stories, my feelings, what’s happened to my country, everything. It’s a way of story telling.
WB: If you play an improvise something today, would you be able to reproduce it tomorrow?
GM: No, I wouldn’t even be able to reproduce it immediately after, because I’d have no idea what I did. I have to listen to it to know what I did.
WB: I always wonder whether there is always ‘something’: do you never run out of inspiration?
GM: No, because it’s really something that is born of itself; it happens by itself. I play the first notes and it’s like a domino effect. It’s always there; it’s like opening the tap in the sink. There is always a source of creativity.
WB: You are never scared when you have a jetlag?
GM: No, because, it’s not an intellectual process for me, it’s something that goes beyond that. It’s also another part of my brain. There was a big study done on my brain on how it behaves when I improvise versus when I play a piece of memorized music. This was done at the John’s Hopkins hospital in the US with Dr Charles Lin who is a leading neurologist and it became a published paper in science magazines. What they found is that, when I play the normal repertoire, all the parts light up in the brain, so musicians are lighting up. But when I improvise, I use a different part of my brain, my visual cortex. That’s what I use to improvise, even though I don’t see anything, even though I have no idea how this happens, but there seems to be a very strange and special connection that happens between one part of my brain and the other, when I switch from playing repertoire to improvisation. That’s very much how it can be explained scientifically what it means when I say that I get out of the way when I improvise. There are literally parts of the brain that no longer fonction when I play my repertoire, and there is the other part of the brain, the visual cortex, which goes crazy and is fully awake.
WB: And that’s only when you improvise?
GM: Yes, indeed.
WB: And your eyes are more active you said?
GM: No, I don’t see anything different, I don’t look at anything different… It’s the visual cortex that is not anything that I do, it’s just a part that is activated.
WB: Does it help you if you get lost in a classical score? Can you improvise your way out?
GM: Well, I could improvise a whole entire, different piece! It could be a helpful tool, yes, but nowadays I also use the iPad. Because I have this crazy neurology, I don’t want to have to think about the nap (?)
WB: Can anybody learn to improvise? I had a really good piano teacher and she also taught improvisation. I once interviewed her and she said: ‘Yes, provided you have the desire to learn it and you are open to it. There is creativity in any person, but more some are more gifted than others.’ Do you agree?
GM: It’s more like a door that is either open or not; I don’t think you can teach it, because it’s a paradox. You can’t teach something that doesn’t exist, if you teach something, it becomes formulas, patterns, something you refer to, which is already prepared. I think improvisation in the purest sense of the word is something that comes out of nothing, but I think there is value in going beyond the score, the notes. For anyone who wants to develop an even more personal relationship with composers, through your own creativity. I think it’s very valuable to give students and musicians a bigger view of what is possible in music and that’s something that has to do with opening up to creativity and also seeing the score as a map to story telling. That’s something much more personal.
WB: Sometimes you hear this cliche that you can improvise if you know a few chords. My teacher said that there is more to it: you also need to have a beautiful tone, timing, sense of rythm…
GM: I think it’s composition. The thing is in my case that I never studied harmony or theories; that’s not the way I work, it’s not on my brain. It’s not through something learnt. It’s something else: freedom. I think whether you are playing the repertoire or improvising, part of it is about openness and discovery.
WB: My teacher also said it starts with one tone; you can do a lot with one tone already. She calls it ‘a sound dive’: you play one tone, you listen to it, then you can be in a flow within 30 seconds.. Is that something you recognise?
GM: The flow comes from inside. It doesn’t matter where I am or what the circumstances around me are, it’s something that is always there. It doesn’t have to do as much with the sound or the emotion; it’s just the need to bring something out. I guess different people find different things in different ways and we all have very personal ways of being creative. What your teacher said is valid in performance. It’s a combination of sound, metaphore and desire to say something.
WB: Would I oversimplify when if I were to say that you actually can’t go wrong in an improvisation, since ‘anything is good’?
GM: I think anything is valid, but that doesn’t mean anything is good (laughs). It depends how you measure it.
WB: Something can be dissonant or consonant, my teacher said when you are scared that something sounds dissonant, it’s the wrong reaction.
GM: Take Mozart for example; in the style of the time that he lived in, every choice he made, was perfect. There could have been other choices musically. Sometimes, when I am teaching, I ask: “What if Mozart had done this?’ There are always options, the way to judge a composition or an improvisation is really about: ‘Was that the higher choice or the more musically elevated choice’, Mozart shows the most musically elevated and evolved choice. I think it’s the same with improvisation. One thing is to do variatons, arpeggios and scales, but that’s not improvisation. It’s composition, creating a work in the moment. Like I said everything is valid, but not everything is great, it depends!
WB: When you say ‘the more elevated choice’, what is it opposed to?
GM: .. the other choices! The elevated option in Mozart, in anything he left us, I can’t think of any example where I could choose other notes and they would be better.
WB: But are there examples of composers where you would say that?
GM: A few times, I think: Oh, I would have done this…
WB: Like what?
GM: I can’t think of any examples now…
WB: You ‘ve sparked my curiosity! Is it true too that peope stay within a certain comfort zone when they improvise? A theme in the right and the left hand, a minor variation…
GM: I don’t know, because I don’t see a lot of people improvise! Jazz improvisation is something totally different. I think the two hands should be equal…
WB: I was wondering whether there was something similar like an A-B-A form for sonatas, so there is kind of a pattern, even if it happens on the spot?
GM: You mean in my improvisations?
WB: In any improvisations!
GM: In my case, I don’t plan where I’m going; it evolves naturally, I could never do ’ten bars in this key’, It doesn’t happen like that for me.
WB: I did my homework and watched videos on YouTube, there was one that I found very inspiring when you played Rach 3 in the style of Bach!
GM: Thank you, there are so many videos of different phases.
WB: Sometimes you really start in the style of a certain composer! It can be Bach or Mozart-like..Where does it come from?
GM: I don’t know, I would love to know as well.. it’s a mystery.
WB: But you are never nervous about it?
GM: No, I could do improvisation all day, every day, I could do every concert improvised and it would honestly be the easiest thing for me. It would be the most natural thing for me, more so than playing the repertoire. I would be free.
WB: Murray Perahia once said he regretted he was not able to improvise, would you accept him as your student if he asked you?
GM: I would be very honoured, of course I would love to do improvisation with him! Martha has also said to me that she would love to be able to improvise. I always say to her: ‘Well, with you, if we go to a room with two pianos and a bottle of wine, I am sure that something would happen.’ She is such a natural animal…
WB: She said she doesn’t have that talent?
GM: That’s what she says….
WB: You don’t believe her?
GM: I think it’s a door that hasn’t been opened in her case. I can’t say that for everyone, but for her…
WB: She is open to a lot of things!
GM: She is extraordinary of course…
WB: Do you know a lot of classical pianists who have a talent for improvisation? I know Cziffra was amazing, Katsaris seems to be very good too…
GM: I haven’t heard Katsaris…
WB: I have a friend who knows him and who told me that. I heard Volodos was a great improviser too!
GM: I never heard him improvise either, I heard some of Cziffra’s recordings, which are fantastic. It doesn’t seem to be something common in classical music unfortunately. I don’t know why, I really can’t explain it.
WB: And until you started doing it, because you said Martha was the one who said: ‘You really have to do this’, was it something you didn’t want to do or were you afraid to do so?
GM: I started playing when I was a very little girl, 3 or 4 years old, I was always improvising, because that was my natural relationship to the piano. And then I went from Venezuela to the US to study with someone who was really terrible for me. She was a terrible pedagogue and not the right person for me. She would say to me as a child: ‘Don’t improvise, because it is not worth anything.’ She was a very destructive personality, so I basically didn’t improvise in public for many years. It was not until the Chopin competition in 1995 when I won the bronze medal, in one of the gala concerts that the winners had to give. I improvised a Mazurka, which nobody knew, because you only play Chopin at the Chopin competition. Nobody knew what it was and there was some confusion: it sounded like Chopin, but nobody recognised it. So that was one of the few times when I was 25 and came out to improvise in public. It wasn’t until I was 31 when I played for Martha that she heard me improvise and play Schumann and Beethoven. She said: ‘You have to share this with the world, it’s so unique.’ She really gave me the motivation and the courage to actually say: ‘Okay, I have to be myself, 100%, not 50 %.’ That was significant for me.
WB: I have some questions about the Tchaikovsky 1st concerto that you will play with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra: what’s your relationship with this piece?
GM: I first played it when I was 12 and I won a big competition in the US, it doesn’t exist any more. The first prize was a concert with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under Scrowacewski. I ended up playing Tchaikovsky 1, I think it was one of the first performances, I was 12 years old. From then on, I played it many times. It’s a concerto that I love. People think of Tchaikovsky 1 as the big competition piece. For me, it carries so much pathos, pain, unresolved and hidden darkness, coming from a life of not being able to express himself. It’s a concerto that is incredibly noble and moving.
WB: And where do you hear the pain?
GM: Everywhere, from the very huge octaves that everybody plays very fast, for me there is storm behind a lot of these big moments in the piece. Of course, the fantasy, the ballet, the dancing in the music is very clear.
WB: I think it is often misunderstood as a display of virtuosity!
GM: No, for me, it’s an incredibly jarring piece. It really gets to me emotionally.
WB: Were you asked to play it?
GM: Yes, but I’ve also played it many times with Mirka. We did a big tour last year when we played it ten times in Europe. It’s a piece that I am asked to play a lot.
WB: Nikolai Rubinstein was very negative when Tchaikovsky played it for him. He said it was unpianistic, vulgar; is there any truth to this, because I don’t think he was completely wrong?
GM: Apparently, that was the first version that he wrote and that Rubinstein was referring to. He changed a few things to make it more pianistic.
WB: He did? I thought he was so angry that he said: ‘I won’t change one single note’
GM: I just read this was the improved version, but no, I wouldn’t say any of that. What pianists are able to do now technically is an evolution and far more advanced than what we were able to do 200 years ago, 100 years ago, 50 years ago. Whatever unsurmountable technical difficulties Rubinstein said there were in this concerto, I think we have now passed that and it’s really about the music.
WB: I interviewed a colleague of yours, Dmitri Alexeev, who played it very well, he said that almost every pianist makes arrangements since some passages are not comfortable.
GM: Really? I’d like to see what he does!
WB: He said there were only minor arrangements.
GM: Really, I had no idea. No, I play every note!
WB: And the first chords in the piano part, are they arpeggos in the original version?
GM: Yes, I think so, but I play them as chords. If you play them as arpeggos, they don’t have the right sound, it becomes more romaticised. I play these chords fortississimo which is meant to be almost triumphant, in a noble way.
WB: I read the premiere took place in Boston on 25 October 1875, with Hans von Bulov as the soloist, does that mean that Tchaikovsky didn’t hear the premiere then?
GM: Gosh, that’s a good question, I’ve never been asked that!
WB: I guess he didn’t go the US? I was just amazed that it took place in America and not in Russia!
GM: That’s interesting!
WB: Who are your references in this concerto?
GM: I love Van Cliburn’s version from the competition, I think it is a very stoic performance, I love Martha’s version, because of the fire. I told someone yesterday, every time I see one of her videos of it, I start laughing at the octaves, because they’re superhuman.
WB: I remember I heard her twice in the Tchaikovsky, the first time was in Carnegie Hall, I was sitting very high up and when the octaves came, everybody was bending to see it. And then in 2019 she played it in Hamburg and she was aready 78, but I don’t think she wants to play it any more.
GM: Maybe not, but she played it not too long ago.
WB: She said: ‘I am sick of people who want to come and see the old lady play octaves’, but I still think it’s her piece!
GM: She is incredible..
WB: When she played it in the 70’s with Dutoit, it was already amazing and there is this wild version with Kondrashin, that is almost scary and then, and that’s why I admire her so much. In the 90’s she did it with Abbado and it was a synthesis of all the versions: with all the virtuosity, albeit slightly less wild, but with new insights, she keeps reinventing herself!
GM: Exactly, but that’s the whole point. Even a piece that I’ve played for so many years, I keep finding worlds within it. Time passes and it is not in vain, you are supposed to see how things are revealed. For me, this concerto is not about virtuosity. It’s really a piece of incredible depth.
WB: Would you say it is a symphonic concerto too, like with Rachmaninov?
GM: I think so.
WB: I saw a short film with Maria Joao Pires and she said a few things that I thought were quite thought provoking: first of all, she said there are not that many differences between the person who plays and the person who listens. The difference is about how you use your body, but the person who listens is very active too. There is much less of a connection than people think. What’s your opinion about this?
GM: It’s interesting. I think ideally as an artist, you want to give something that will be received of course. For that you need willingness on your side and on the audience’s side. It is giving the art and receiving it as well as listening. They are both acts of generosity, one way or the other, I have always thought that. I don’t know if it is the same kind of thing, they are both active not passive, but at the same time what you give as an artist will be interpreted differently by anyone in the public. Essentially, what you are giving is a different offering to every person. It is not true that everybody hears the same. We don’t, we hear differently, we also have our own bias according to what we have lived through or what we have heard before. It depends on our references. When something really magical happens, you are in that very selfless state as an artist, where it is not about playing well or what the critics or the public will think. It is really about offering something that is pure, honest and says something about you and your life. That is what touches another person in the room.
WB: I think listening requires something from you, I love listening to pianists and I do it a lot, but sometimes, I need time to get used to another sound world. It is interesting, because sometimes, you are not ready to… I don’t know how to express it correctly..you just need time.
GM: There are piano nerds (laughs)..
WB: You are talking to one now!
GM: Okay, that’s a good thing, they know every recording, every version, it’s a world they have really submerged themselves in, it’s their world. And then there are people like me, music has always been my language, but music is more a vehicle to express something as a woman, as a person through the composers, but it’s ultimately about the human story that we share. I have learnt a lot from the piano file, but I think you need things from eachother. For me the piano is a tool to speak about life, more than a version of the Beethoven sonatas. It’s something else.
WB: Is it more powerful than words?
GM: I think so and if it’s combined with words, it’s incredibly powerful. That’s why activism with words and music is so incredibly strong.
WB: You said you also receive and give things. If I can quote Pires again, she said: ‘A player thinks he is giving something to the public, but he is giving nothing. You have to be completely open and listen to them, but you don’t give them anything.’ She was very adamant about it.
GM: I don’t agree… different characters!
WB: She also said: ‘We are sharing something, we don’t know where it comes from, you are much less powerful than you think. You are nothing.’ She said it again..
GM: It’s not about power, that’s when you are above someone else. It is about putting yourself on the same level, talking to a human being in a way that they will connect with what you are trying to say. It is the opposite of power, it’s the most democratic..
WB: The vision of the artist can be powerful though I think.. I heard Richter a few times..
GM: Wow, you are so lucky! I wish I had… When an artist is in tune with honesty, it’s the opposite of power. It’s completely about being selfless actually.
WB: Maybe I can relate to what Pires said about ‘power’: Richter was a very honest person and that can be very powerful when you sit in the audience.
GM: It’s not a power that is meant to subjugate, it’s the power of what he embodies and the power of the message he is caring!
WB: My next question is about Richter: I read about him: ‘When he spoke to the piano, it replied’. I like that, do you know other pianists who can achieve the same effect?
GM: For me, what I am looking for, and sometimes I find it, is complete intimacy with the instrument. Sometimes the piano replies, it is amazing ho wit reacts. It does give what you give to it. Of course, with Martha, there were many moments that I was so moved and amazed by what she was giving and receiving as well. Also I remember I heard a recital last year in Spain with Volodos which was fantastic too. I just heard the most beautiful recital by Alexandre Kantorov, Chamayou, Beatrice Rana, Yuja Wang…It’s a great time for someone who loves the piano and they are all very different.
WB: One other quote from Pires: ‘Technique doesn’t exist, it’s using your body in order to produce something you want to do and this changes every moment.’
GM: Yes, I agree with that. I think there are some principles, I don’t believe in schools. It’s about how you create sound and metaphores and make it a physical and tangible delivery. It is very personal; however I think there are some things that are harmful to do when you play, certain movements. And there are some other ways that facilitate, but ultimately, once you get passed that, how you create sound that can pierce without it being painful is a very personal moment where your body has to be at the service of the emotion and the concept you are trying to express.
WB: Michelangeli said: ‘It’s not a profession to be a pianist, it’s a philosophy, a conception of life.’
GM: Yes, I agree, I think that kind of absolutish view, can probably only be said by a man (laughs) and someone with children, yes, being an artist in music is a philosophy, but then life is full of other things too and you have to navigate that as best as you can. You are a parent, you are a mother, you can’t behind philosophy. For me, and my life has been crazy, the piano is an expression of me and what I have lived and what I try to say about other human beings.
WB: You wrote a very touching story on Facebook yesterday and I was thinking: is it worth all the sacrifices? The music, the piano, the career?
GM: It was very obvious that I was born to play the piano in a family that is not musical. I tried many times to not do this. The thing is that your nature wins in the end, I don’t see it as a career even though of course I had to go ahead in order to be able to survive a very difficult period of life with my two girls and I was a single mother for 12 years. You have to survive, you have to go on. I see it as living out my nature in the best possible way I can.
WB: Pollini said : ‘The existence of art is one of the greatest gifts to humanity.’ I guess you agree?
GM: Yes, I absolutely do, but I also think that art is much more significant and meaningful when it is used to reveal and to do good. It’s also a very dangerous and damaging tool when it’s used to conceal and to carry messages that go against the welfare of the rest of humanity. Art is a wonderful thing but it also depends on what you use it for.
WB: What do you think about what is happening at the moment in Poland where they have banned Russian music because of the war in Ukraine?
GM: It’s a very delicate situation. I understand that artists will side with psychopaths, there is a price to pay and there should be. You can’t just go through life because you are an artist and have licences and relationships with despots and murderers and think it is ok because you are an artist. No, it’s not okay, you are a human being, you are not above anyone else. Now, to ban Russian music as a whole, I think it’s punishing Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Shostakovitch, it has nothing to do with this. I understand that it has a very nationalistic kind of character, it is sensitive time in our history now, but I think you have to be fair.
WB: I think it doesn’t help anybody to say: ‘You can’t play Tchaikovsky 1 now, you have to play another concerto.’
GM: I think the connection is too loose, this is not what it should be about.
Utrecht, 18 February 2003
There is no bigger difference when facing master pianist Grigory Sokolov on stage just before the beginning of a concert to meeting him afterwards. Sokolov doesn’t lose any time when appearing on stage, he takes his bows and seems already totally absorbed by the music, one wonders if he notices the audience.. The atmosphere in the hall is reminiscent of the concerts of the legendary Sviatoslav Richter, with only a small light on the piano, which made it difficult to see the facial expression and the hands of the pianist.
“I like an honest audience”, says Hannes Minnaar when I tell him that I will go to a concert in Amsterdam where Maurizio Pollini should have played (He cancelled his concert and was replaced by Till Felner). His reaction referred to a recital of Pollini in Amsterdam during which he was booed by a dissatisfied listener.
With this comment, Hannes Minnaar sets the tone of the interview, a pianist who is not only modest, but also one who is down to earth.
HM: Yes, I do realize this, but of course things are relative: two years ago, I participated in the Geneva Competition and won the second prize (that year, no first prize was awarded, WB). The same happened to the aforementioned Pollini. At that time I fully realized that I had achieved something unique. The second time something similar happens to you, it is a bit less special. But Brussels is closer by and has an ever bigger reputation. The organization manages to generate much media attention, therefore the overall impact was bigger.
HM: No, it seemed almost impossible to beat such massive competition coming from such successful traditions. On the other hand, I knew after Geneva that even unexpected things can happen and I did not want to exclude anything beforehand. It felt a bit like a gamble to register for Brussels, so shortly after Geneva and I could have ruined the limited reputation I had established (during the latter competition). You only have to play one wrong note and you can be kicked out, although it does not mean you are a bad pianist when that happens.
HM: No, of course certain things went ok (reasonably well), but the feeling of “I am doing really well” is rare when you are a perfectionist.
HM: Obviously!
HM: Yes, I have received a lot of attention in the Netherlands, although certain people thought I could have achieved more. The competition certainly paid off and the end is not near. My name is getting better known and I have the feeling that something good is in store for me. A few things have changed, e.g I have an agent now. Before Brussels, contacts with CD labels and orchestras were not within reach and to make contact with the management of an orchestra you need an agent.
HM: Not yet, but since there are agents involved, I can concentrate on the “manual work”. The first week after Brussels, I hardly had time for anything because of all the requests for interviews.
HM: To a certain extent, it did play a role. I graduated last year and decided at that time not to pursue my studies. I wanted to make my own plans and a competition was the big stick in order to set clear goals for myself, otherwise you easily forget important deadlines or do not find time to study new compositions. Furthermore, I am 25 now and I would have been 29 by the time of the next competition which is two years too old, so this was indeed my last chance!
HM: How can I be not positive about the result?
HM: There is a lot of suspicion about competitions, for instance, stories about political games in Brussels. That may have happened in the past, but I can hardly imagine that people still decide that “X or Y should win”. I had only one teacher, Jan Wijn, if there is one teacher who does not take part in the competition mafia or who does not use his elbows, it is him! That could not have been the reason to award me the third prize. I have never had the idea that I am the most reliable pianist, so they must have chosen me for another reason.
HM: You should ask them..
HM: I have not read any reports, but one of the members told me that he would have bought a ticket for one of my concerts, but not for many of the other competitors.
HM: Tamas Vasary, I think the jury selects according to the criterion “Do I find him or her interesting enough to listen to another time?”.
HM: There were two of them: first of all in the semi final. We received it mid-March, approximately 1,5 months before the start of the competition. I received the second work for the final round one week before I had to play it. It was the product of a competition contest, written by a Korean composer, ………
HM: Yes, it does. The amount of repertoire for this competition was, of course, considerable. Fortunately, you have time between the rounds. The first round, I played on a Wednesday evening and the results would be announced on Saturday. One would think that it gives you three days to practise more. However, for the second round, the jury could choose from two different programmes and this was announced only one day before the performance. This means that you studied one of the two programmes for nothing. That was only half of the second round, the other half consisted of a Mozart concerto with an orchestra. It was a completely new concerto for me, the concertos I had studied were not the ones we were asked to play. You had to be very focused to pay attention to several aspects at the same time. Every time you thought you had everything under control, it appeared you had forgotten something. The required work for the semi-finals was one of the things I could not find time for and for which I had to work very hard at the last moment. The results of the second round were announced on the day I had to play my Mozart concerto. In the meantime, I had no time to work on the programme for the finals. And, at the time you arrived at the chapel, you were assigned another work on top of that for the finals, which you had to study within a week. In short: the whole schedule was so tight that I was constantly stressed, because it was a bit too much.
HM: Technically speaking it was ok, but it was very complex to play together with the orchestra. The orchestral part was more difficult than that of the piano, so I had to depend on the conductor.
HM: Yes, that is correct. You were obliged to play from the score, but that did not make sense because it was so complicated that you often had to look at the conductor. As a result of that I still played it by heart!
HM: Of course, I had played with an orchestra before, but it was the first time I did the 5th Saint Seans Concerto. That might explain the misunderstanding that arose in previous interviews.
HM: First of all, because I find it a beautiful piece, I already thought so when I first lent the score from the library of the conservatoire. For this competition it seemed a good occasion to study this concerto, I thought: “If I am lucky, I can play with an orchestra”. In the meantime, I have played it eight times, after the finals there were seven laureate concerts, I have the feeling that it really suits me!
HM: No, but nothing is really easy and I was running out of time to study a piano concerto.
HM: No, but it should be possible to find out. It was in 1952 or 1953 I believe. I happen to know, because I read a book by Willem Andriessen. He was a member of the jury and described his experiences.
HM: I have not played a lot of Prokofiev, but Rachmaninov is definitely my thing, I am very fond of his music. For my final exam, I played his First Piano Sonata that was written in D-minor, the same key as the Third Concerto. I also love The Bells and the symphonies. I would have loved to study the Third Concerto. Last year, I was very busy with my exam and with a lot of concerts. This did not leave me a whole lot of time to study new concerts, but “Rach Third” would not have scared me off! However, it is a concerto that is very much part of the collective memory: every member of the jury knows it or plays it and has an opinion about it, therefore it might have been an advantage that not every member of the jury has performed Saint Seans Fifth Concerto. I had the feeling that I would stand out with this choice.
HM: I did not hear everyone play. He played last and I remember hearing him on the car radio when my host family drove me to the presentation of the awards at the Paleis der Schone Kunsten. He played Prokofiev Second Concerto and he gripped me right from the beginning, it was clear even on the car radio..
HM: It is not up to me to judge! I only heard part of his final concert. Later on, I heard him perform Brahms’s Second Concerto during the laureate’s concert and that was also excellent. If you ask me, I think all laureates have a right to exist as a pianist. I am glad I was not asked to rank them.
HM: It was a special moment! You are not allowed to listen to the radio when you are living in isolation (the week before the finals). I had noticed though that there were a lot of differences in interpretation between the second prize winner and myself. When his name was announced, I expected to come eleventh
HM: They did indeed!
HM: I like a lot of styles, but yes, I am fond of French music.
HM: That is a wonderful piece, but it is very difficult to play, it is sometimes almost unfrench, it is even darker than Franck’s music. It is definitely a difficult job for a pianist. Other than that, I like Saint Seans and especially Fauré, but Brahms and Rachmaninov are also close to my heart. I would have loved to do Rachmaninov’s First Sonata during the competition, but it is too long unfortunately, you were not allowed more than 35 minutes for the solo repertoire.
HM: I have been scheduled for more concerts for the next season, most of the planning has been finalized now. I especially want to focus on learning new concertos, because there are not many of them in my repertoire yet.
HM: It depends on the piece itself.
HM: It depends on which one of the five we are talking about: there is quite a difference between the Second and Fourth Concertos!
HM: Interesting, I have not heard of a pianist who ventilated his opinion in a similar way. I value the notes themselves and I do not approve of artists who impose ideas that are not there. You must not pretend to be interesting or go against a composition. On the other hand, I do not mind pianists who allow themselves liberties like Cortot, while remaining faithful to the character of the composition. There is room for interpretation. Bolet had his own interpretation, but did not “sin” against the composition. Tamas Vasary said something similar in Brussels: a composer gets his ideas from somewhere, but sometimes you feel as a performer that there are things in the score that should not have been there. It is the kind of gut feeling that is more important than being 100% faithful towards the score.
HM: Pressler is of small stature, but otherwise he is an enormous personality with invaluable experience! He knows how to convey things. Maybe that has to do with his age: he has been through so many experiences. If he sits down at the keyboard and plays three notes, you hear his entire life time experience.
HM: It may sound stupid, but I have! That is why I did not want to pursue my studies after six years; I wanted to follow my own path.
HM: Yes, we had another lesson that was as inspiring as the first one. He always knows exactly what he wants to achieve.
HM: You can only try to do what someone asks you to do and mostly it works. It is much more difficult to play things in a musical way! I often feel ill at ease during master classes: you are in an dependant position and the teacher is “always” right. As a participant, you can hardly defend yourself. I have to admit that I found some of these public master classes inspiring. However it is a fact that things often work better the second time than the first time. That also happens when you are rehearse and during a master class, it is the teacher who gets the credits for this.
HM: Right from the moment I heard music, I loved it. You become aware that you want to pursue a career in music. In my case it happened when I was 13 years old. At that age, I started to take private lessons with Marien van Nieuwkerken and I had to work hard. It was not always easy and once, when things were not gong smoothly, he said: “You want to become a pianist, don’t you?”. I had never thought of it, but it was the first time that I became aware of this and he was right. I did not know anybody at the time who was a pianist and I did not know what the profession was like.
HM: I do not have any clear defined ideas about this. What I find disappointing about the job is how often you are busy to sell yourself!
HM: The attention I have got was not due to PR, but to my playing! I notice that people expect more from you and I am not good at these things. You need to have a good network and you need to say the right things to the right people at the right moment. They can be of a lot of help, more importantly: you cannot achieve anything without these conditions.
HM: I liked the way the journalist expressed these things. Otherwise, it is difficult to describe faith in words; maybe it will become easier when I am as old as Menahem Pressler (laughs). Theology shares common ground with music, e.g the way you interpret the “text”.
HM: You should take a score seriously; it is not the same as taking it literally. Most important is to grasp the essence, but the notes are what you should hold on to, so you should not be messy with the score.
HM: Pianists or composers? The latter would be easier..
HM: Bach comes first, then, although not necessarily in this particular order, Brahms, Ravel, Fauré, Rachmaninov and the works for keyboard by Sweelinck.
HM: I find it difficult to say, but I’d definitely want to mention Cortot, Kempff and Edwin Fischer. Furtermore, Zimerman and Brendel in Mozart concertos, Paul Lewis is fantastic in Beethoven sonatas, Gilels too. I would have loved to hear Richter live.
HM: That is the most difficult question of this conversation! There will be a lot of concerts and nobody knows how things will go exactly. I look forward to playing more piano concertos and there are plans to record a CD
October 2022
When I approached Turkish pianist Idil Biret whether I could interview her during her stay in my home city Utrecht in October 2022, where she was to be a member of the jury of the Liszt Competition, her husband Sefik B.Yüksel informed me that she was unfortunately ill and therefore couldn't attend. He kindly offered me to send my questions by e-mail. A few weeks later, Idil Biret sent me her detailed answers, which resulted in an interesting interview. I’d like to thank both of them for their help and generosity!
Idil Biret (IB): Prof. Kempff told my family around 1951 that he would one day give a concert with me. Then after some time he said we should now play together and the concert was organized for February 1953 in Paris at the Theatre des Champs Elysées. His daughter and my friend Irene said many years later that Prof. Kempff had never before or after that concert played with a child.
IB: Not really. It was very natural for me to play before an audience. At the time some people said that I played the piano with the same ease as I breathed. As a child I was not aware of being a prodigy. My parents were very careful and my mother kept saying to me “ every child is gifted in a special field. The important thing is to discover the child’s gift”.
IB: I did not realise what it meant to play a concerto for two pianos with a great artist like Wilhelm Kempff in front of 2700 people. I was too young. However, I knew this was a very important test and I had to do my best. I was well prepared and had memorized both piano parts. Prof. Kempff trusted me and I knew I should not disappoint him. During the rehearsals I realized that the best way was to listen to what the master was doing and try to imitate him to avoid any accidents. Thus, I had to be in the shadow of Prof. Kempff, so I could hear his delicate nuances, his articulation. I had practiced without using the pedal which was very useful as I was now trying to imitate the magic sound of Prof. Kempff which he produced with his superb legato, without using the left pedal. He did not like the muffled sound this pedal produced. Mozart’s music was clear and singing by itself without the artificial help of the pedal; a well controlled legato with clarity of articulation was the key to this luminous sound.
IB: He did not want to work with me until I finished the Paris Conservatoire. I went to his home in Ammerland near Munich in 1958 for the first time and studied with him privately for a week. These visits continued periodically for many years. I also attended the Beethoven masterclasses in Positano in1958 and 1966.
IB: This is probably due to the teaching they receive. The theoretic side of music is somehow neglected by fear that the child may lose his spontaneity by becoming self conscious. I did not have this problem thanks to the training I received at the Paris Conservatory.
IB: For two years. I had monthly private lessons with him between 1958-1960. He came to Paris from Geneva every month.
IB: Alfred Cortot was a profound musician, an incredibly cultured man. When playing, the beauty of the sound was unique. He was very honest while teaching. In fact his priorities were similar to those of Wilhelm Kempff and Nadia Boulanger. The technique had to be impeccable. He would not forgive any sort of weakness in a work I played, like missing a scale or a series of awkward octaves in both hands such as those in the Chopin Fantaisie in the episode preceding the superb middle part leading to the coda. The right hand going upwards and the left hand going downwards; Monsieur Cortot advised me to concentrate on the ornate arpeggio figure of the right hand and told me that this way the left hand would follow automatically so that the danger of a mistake in the left hand could be avoided. This sort of advice was very wise and sound. Once when I was playing Bach’s Partitas he suggested that I learn how to do these dances. (note: Pls see section on Cortot in IB book for further details)
IB: Yes, I am a quick learner. I try to see in which context certain harmonics are used, which helps to understand the character of a work
IB: Not really important. Chopin and then Brahms and Rachmaninov were proposed by Mr. Klaus Heymann and as I knew and had played most of them I accepted. Beethoven’s 32 Sonatas I had played in seven concerts so later I went ahead and recorded them all. I also recorded all the piano concertos of these composers and many others (in total about seventy piano concertos).
IB: Works of two Turkish composers: Ilhan Usmanbas - 6 Preludes and Muammer Sun – Country Colours Bk II Three pieces I recorded in March 2021 just before I fell ill.
IB: Yes, I did when necessary. I was about to play and record four Haydn sonatas three of which I had never played before I fell ill in April 2021 a few days before the concert.
Incidentally I liked and admired Cherkassy very much and also his endless curiosity and the way he built his recital programs. There is no age limit for learning.
IB: I do not fully understand this question. Of course you have to go over a work again that you are asked to play after a long interval. But, this also depends on the work and my familiarity with it. A few years ago I was to record Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. My husband Sefik found the score of Glazunov’s 2nd Sonata score next to that of Mussorgsky and asked me if I could also record it; The score was given to me by the daughter of Glazunov in Paris where I played it in a recital in the early 1960s. I remembered the work very well and so said yes to Sefik and recorded it the day after Mussorgsky. Now I am practicing again Godowsky’s paraphrases of Viennese waltzes; years ago in the 1970s I played Künstlerleben in my recitals. (note: She played Künstlerleben at the UN Assembly Hall in New York on 10 December 1975. The recording of this recital can be found on the internet . SBY)
IB: On certain points I discover a relationship between Kempff’s composing style and that of Busoni. I especially like the highly original work where a choir of young boys is used together with piano and orchestra. The Italian Suite for solo piano is also an inspired work. The transcriptions of Bach Chorales and Haendel’s Menuet I greatly admire and I have played them in many of my recitals especially as encores.
IB: Very important. Some of Liszt’s works are very close to me and I have played them often all through my life on the stage. The two Concertos, the Sonata, Venezia et Napoli, the Two Legends of St. Francis, the Schubert song transcriptions were among them and much else.
IB: A good Liszt player should not be afraid of the jumps which are numerous in his piano writing. Should have a good sense of polyphony and possess a great pianistic control of the keyboard. Have an impeccable rhythmic sense and be careful to avoid excessive speed especially in the scales and virtuoso passages. The use of the pedal should be perfectly controlled; it is wise to use the pedal sparingly. A good legato is a must. Harmonic analysis is important too, as well as voicing. You need to know what the important lines are and which voices you want to bring out in the base and middle register. I remember Nadia Boulanger’s enthusiasm when she came back from a competition where she had heard a wonderful rendition of the Sonata where the pedaling was used very sparingly. She appreciated the fact that all the modulations were so well prepared. There was not any pathos in this highly musical performance of the work.
Idil did not answer this question as she had never heard this being said (SBY).
IB: The imagination and a true modesty when transcribing the orchestral works with the aim to be as faithful to the orchestral score as possible. The great musician he was, is perceptible in the choice of the harmonies in his original works. Liszt has been an inspirer to many composers. Neither in his lifetime nor later was he understood.
IB: There is more to these transcriptions then introducing them to a large audience that could not listen to the original version of a Beethoven symphony at a concert in mid 19th Century. Many others transcribed these symphonies but only the Liszt ones are performed now which indicates their excellence as transcriptions and also works for the piano in their own right. Horowitz once said that his great regret was that he had not performed the Liszt transcription of the Beethoven symphonies. It is a sheer pleasure to play these transcriptions on the piano as Horowitz realized later in his life. They are also an important introduction to correctly conceiving Beethoven’ s piano sonatas, especially the late ones – a solid classical harmonic knowledge.
IB: They vary in difficulty. Perhaps most difficult is the fourth movement of the 9th Symphony. In my opinion it is the beauty of the music that is important and one should not try to imitate the orchestral sound on the piano. Clarity of text is the main thing in performing these works.
IB: I knew that he said he regretted not having played them but I did not know that he had also said they were the greatest piano works ever written. Taken out of the context of possibly a longer statement, it is difficult to comment on this. There is no doubt that they are great piano works,
IB: The symphonic poems Les Préludes, From the Cradle to the Grave which are the banners of romanticism and also the Faust Symphony.
IB: Yes and I would have suggested also the Liszt transcription of Harold en Italie for viola and piano. I have not seen the program but Die Winterreise and Die schöne Müllerin of Schubert would also have been appropriate
IB: Most of these pianists that I referred to believe that to be perfect means to play fast and without hitting wrong notes respecting the nuances and accents more like a well designed robot. Certainly, refined and technically perfect playing is possible together. A good example is Rachmaninov’s playing.
IB: The limitless technical level and mastery of young pianists is the level of teaching of a high class conservatoire. Very often these new generations of pianists are only interested in playing the notes correctly without understanding the main musical problems of the work they are playing offer. The importance of the left hand I referred to is the base line. By following the base line it can be guaranteed that it will hold all the other lines together. Nadia Boulanger, at the classe d’accompagnment au piano was asking the pupils to play separately all the voices which made the work, with special attention to the line of the base. Kempff’s left hand was also superb, it had a singing sound. He was following, the great musician he was, all the voices separately. Kempff also had a consummate way of using the pedal which was the most important part of the piano and use it with great care so that the harmonies were never blurred (unless asked by the composer). The foot had to have rythmical independence. It could be syncopated or kept for some base like in Beethoven. He was often doing a sort of tremolo on the pedal when he was not sure of the acoustical conditions. I have learnt all the pedaling secrets thanks to Kempff.
Idil did not answer this question. But, I know that she does what seems impossible. For example she plays the octaves of the opening of the first movement of Rachmaninov’s 2nd Concerto as they are written. I have seen her do it with her hands as they are. How she manages this may remain a mystery. (SBY)
IB: The pianist you mention are more recent and rather well known due to their substantial media presence. In my generation there is Aysegül Sarica and Verda Erman who both studied at the Paris Conservatoire Verda was one of the four finalists in the Leventritt competition (1971) where no first prize was awarded. Setrak, who had been a student of Yvonne Lefebure at the Paris Conservatoire was of Armenian origin. He was a natural Liszt player, a brilliant virtuoso who had the heroic romantic temperament with an impressive sound that he expressed in works of Liszt with brio. Whenever we met at his home in Paris we sightread Liszt’s poems in the two piano versions and in the piano concertos one of us playing the piano part. Later came Hüseyin Sermet, Özgür Aydin and most recently Can Cakmur. I could name many other younger ones like Gökhan Aybulus, Can Okan (also an excellent conductor). Gülsin Onay who studied in Paris with Nada Boulanger and who is well known.). There were also quite a number of so called amateur pianists who had other professions but played the piano excellently. One of them was Dr. Herman Miskciyan who was a pediatrist as well as a horticulturist (he cloned and grew orchids). I performed the concerto for two pianos of Poulenc with the orchestra conducted by Herman’s piano teacher Cemal Resid Rey in Istanbul (1978). He also gave concerts in the Soviet Union playing Tchaikovsky’s 1st Piano Concerto. More importantly, there was an almost forgotten pianist who stopped performing around 1980 due to an eye problem. She is Tomris Özis who was a student of the the German pianist Rosl Schmid at the Munich Conservatory. Schmid was a finalist in the legendary 1938 Ysaye Competition (Now called Queen Elisabeth) in Brussels where Emil Gilels won first prize. Other finalists included Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Jakov Flier, Moura Lympany. In 2017 with Idil’s encouragement IBA issued a box set with live concert recordings of Tomris Özis which included piano concertos of Mozart (No. 23), Beethoven (No. 5), Liszt (No. 1) , Brahms (No. 1), Prokofiev (No. 1) and also the Burlesque of Strauss (Her teacher Rosl Schmid had recorded Burlesque with Joseph Keilberth and the Bamberg Symphony in 1958)as well as many solo pieces.
ÏB: During our stay in Positano in 1982, Wilhelm Kempff told us one evening after dinner about his all night discussion with President Atatürk at his residence in Ankara in 1927. My husband Sefik wrote down what he said which is below at the end of this note. As you will see there, for Atatürk reform in music in Turkey was a necessity and very important as part of the modernization efforts in the country. Classical music had a specially important place therein. The priorities, needless to say, are no longer the same in the Turkey of today.
IB: From the first generation we had Cemal Resid Rey, Adnan Saygun, Ulvi Cemal Erkin whose piano concertos I have played in concerts and recorded and there is the music of Necil Kazim Akses. I also recorded the solo piano works of Erkin, Saygun, Ilhan Usmanbas, Muammer Sun, Ilhan Mimaroglu (electronic music), Ertugrul Oguz Firat (who had also studied law and was a judge). Then my contemporary Ates Pars whose piano concerto and sonata for viola and piano I recorded (with Rusen Günes at the viola) and Cetin Isiközlü whose piano concerto and ballade for piano I played and recorded. There are many younger ones I cannot remember off hand. (note: all these recordings are in the box set Best of Turkish Piano Music IBA 8.504058 cover enclosed SBY)
Prof. Wilhelm Kempff in Turkey
It was in June 1982 during a one week stay of Idil Biret in Italy with Prof. Kempff in his Villa overlooking the Mediterranean from the Positano village heights that the subject of Prof. Kempff's visits to Turkey came up. He was particularly happy that day. He had played a Schubert sonata in the late afternoon and Idil had joined him for a photograph taken near his piano. Later in the evening, after dinner, the question of his first visit to Turkey was posed. Was it in the 1930s? "No, much earlier" was his reply. "I first visited Turkey in 1927", said Kempff and then continued, "I gave a recital in Ankara at the Halkevi (a hall for public concerts, theatre shows etc.). Kemal Pasha (that was the way he referred to Ataturk)then invited me for dinner with his friends at the Presidential residence (note: in Cankaya, a hilltop in Ankara). There was a large gathering of people in the evening and the dinner lasted until about 11.00 pm. When the guests were leaving he asked me to stay and when everyone was gone we passed into his study. There Kemal Pasha started the conversation by saying that as part of a drive for modernisation in Turkey he was introducing many reforms in law, education and other areas affecting the public life. He continued to say that classical music was an integral part of the western culture which was the source of his reform movement. He therefore felt the necessity of the widespread introduction of classical music in Turkey as part of the drive towards modernisation in the country. Kemal Pasha said that he was afraid that without parallel reforms in music in Turkey his reforms in other areas would remain incomplete.Kemal Pasha then asked my thoughts on how this could be achieved, the schools, institutions to be formed for this purpose and the eminent musicians and musicologists I may recommend for invitation to Turkey to help build the foundations of classical music. I expressed my ideas, advised him to consult also with Wilhelm Fürtwangler on this subject and perhaps invite him to come to Turkey to assist with a plan of organisation to introduce classical music systematically in Turkey. Our discussions continued until 4.00 am in the morning at which time I took my leave." Prof. Kempff then looked towards the sea and after a moment of silence said, "Kemal Pasha was a great man".
Turkish government subsequently extended an invitation to Fürtwangler to come to Turkey to provide the necessary advice to establish the institutions for education in classical music. Because of his engagements he was unable to do so, but recommended that Paul Hindemith be invited for this purpose. Hindemith then came and prepared a report and a plan of action for the establishment of the Ankara Conservatoire and other institutions for public music education. The great statesman Atatürk’s vision set the path in music as well as much else in the Turkey in the 1920s and 30s.
Prof. Kempff visited Turkey many more times from 1927 to 1963. He was much loved by the public, had many close friends there and he knew personally Mr. Ismet Inonu who became president after Ataturk in 1938. In November 1963, when Inonu was this time prime minister, he took his whole cabinet to a concert Kempff was giving in Ankara. During the same trip Prof. Kempff was scheduled to perform in Istanbul on 23 November. When he heard about the tragic death of President Kennedy on November 22nd he became very sad and then said to Mr. Mükerrem Berk, the manager of the Orchestra, "Idil was scheduled to play today with the Boston Symphony Orchestra her US debut concert. What will happen now?" * The Istanbul concert on 23 November was given as a memorial to Kennedy and before the concert started Kempff came on the stage alone and played the 3rd movement "Marcia Funebre" from Beethoven's Sonata op.26 in memory of the late President. The public was asked not to applaud. He then played Bach's Concerto in F Minor and Beethoven's Emperor Concerto with the Orchestra. This was Prof. Kempff's last visit to Turkey.
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* The death of President Kennedy was announced during the intermission of the Boston Symphony Orchestra's concert in the afternoon of 22 November 1963. After an initial proposal to cancel the second half, it was decided to continue with the concert in memory of Kennedy and Idil Biret played Rachmaninov's 3rd piano concerto. The radio broadcast recording of this performance was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2019 as a sound recordings deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress
Prepared by Sefik B. Yüksel for Bayerische Rundfunk TV – 1995
Presented by Idil Biret on the Bayerische Rundfunk TV program on the life of Wilhelm Kempff televised on his 100th anniversary of birth on 25.11.1995. The filming of the part with Idil Biret was realised at the Kempff family residence in Ammerland near Munich.
Program of Kempff’s recital in Istanbul on 7 February 1927 (at the German Embassy)*
Beethoven Sonata Op. 27 No. 2 (Moonlight) / Variations on the Turkish March / Sonata Op. 53 (Waldstein)
Note: Most probably the concert in Ankara had the same program
*In 1927 the German Embassy had not yet moved to Ankara.
16 November 2011
I was keen on doing an interview with Imogen Cooper for my site, since I have known her for a long time. I heard her for the first time in 1989 in Utrecht and remember I went around to see (and thank) her. I was struck, not only by her kindness, but especially by her question whether I would come back to listen to her recital during the next season. I did and she remembered me. The same happened a few weeks later in Amsterdam and we became friends. I heard many of her concerts in the Netherlands. It was not easy to find a moment for an interview until she suggested to do a phone interview, which worked out fine. I was impressed by her eloquent answers and her honesty, those of an artist who has been around long enough to know what she wants..
Imogen Cooper (IC): Wonderful! It was moving to go there after the catastrophies.. I felt lucky to get on a plane and leave after ten days, but the people in Tokyo have no choice... The Japanese are so resilient, patient and hopeful, it moved me. I enjoyed the experience more than before and I have travelled to Japan since 1986. A lot of things have changed, e.g the position of women travelling alone. I also noticed that they are more western in their understanding now. It was quite a hectic tour with several recitals, but I loved being in a bubble of work.
IC: Good question.. the character of the audiences was different in several cities, especially between Osaka and Tokyo. In the former city the audience was into being “wowed”, whereas in the latter they were happy to be drawn into the music of Schubert and I sensed these differences! The earthquake in Tokyo had an enormous impact, people still don’t take the risk of going out in the evening..
IC: I did work with him, but that was when I was older. Curzon would never have taken on an 11-year-old student. That was the moment when I decided I wanted to become a pianist and for that I needed more fundamental training. In the 60s, there were no schools like the Menuhin School that specialized in young people. Conservatoires and schools in the United Kingdom were for people from 17 year and up. For young children like me, there were only two choices: Moscow and Paris. Paris was far away, but Moscow was definitely too far away.
IC: I studied with tons of people! The reason I wanted to go to Paris was that I wanted to work with Jacques Février, but he taught exclusively chamber music. I only found out about this after I arrived in Paris, so I had to find another teacher. I studied with Lucette Descaves, but I am not sure what I learnt from her. I was still seeing Jacques Février at that time and he and Descaves would write each other cynical notes and not very complimentary remarks about each other on my scores. I remember that Février wrote on a score of Ravel “Ravel says... “ in a spirit of one-upmanship. After three years, I went to see Yvonne Lefébure and her assistant Germaine Mounier, who was wonderful.
IC: Oh yes, she was! There is a recording of her playing the Mozart D-minor Concerto with Furtwängler, which means that she was showing her stars everywhere. I also heard her once at the London Proms.
IC: I am not sure whether I can tell you that, but she was always bitchy about Long, so I guess she did differ indeed! She studied with Cortot, who had been her main influence. There is a video where she plays the posthumous variations of Schumann’s Etudes Symphoniques. There you can hear very clearly how she was influenced by Cortot. There was something quintessentially French about her teaching. And she could be fairly devastating.
IC: Let me think, what did she tell me? That I was “molle” (soft) and like a “robinet d’eau tiède”(tap of running tepid water). I was probably more introverted then, but you shouldn’t say that to a 15-year old! She was not psychologically clever in her teaching. She preferred teaching boys anyway...
IC: Before that, I came back to London at 18. I was really more French at the time and rarely saw my parents while I was in Paris. After that, I had very different teachers, among others Peter Wallfish, a German pianist who helped me to understand the music of Brahms better. I also worked with Sir Clifford Curzon, but we fell out. I did nothing to offend him, but he was a very touchy man. As a performer, he was nervous and had his on and off days. My father used to work as a music critic and once we heard Curzon on an off day. My father wrote an honest review and I received a letter from Curzon saying “Your father obviously thinks I have nothing to teach you”. I guess he didn’t take it very well in the beginning when he heard that I could study with Brendel, but later he was pleased and said: “Go and have a wonderful time!” I also played five or six times for Rubinstein, which was as much a human experience as it was a musical one.
IC: I definitely feel a clear line from Edwin Fischer down through Brendel, more than with anyone else. The timing of everything was right. He was 40 when I went to work with him, but not yet a household name. He was learning Schubert sonatas and wanted me to learn them at the same time. He did travel, but he was also often in Vienna during these years 1969 and 1970. I saw him twice a week during a period of seven or eight weeks. The lessons took long, sometimes an entire afternoon. I also played second piano for him when he was working on Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto and other concerti. And we listened to a lot of recordings by different artists like Cortot, Lotte Lehmann, the Busch Quartet... He was an extremely strong influence; he was articulate, eloquent, he knew why he did things and wanted me to do them the same way. That is valid, but you shouldn’t stay too long with such a person. I was honoured when he played me new works and wanted me to write down anything I didn’t like, so I was sitting with the score and had to be “on my mettle” , because not anyone can criticize Brendel! Later, we recorded Mozart’s concerto’s for two pianos (K 365 and Mozart’s arrangement of the Concerto for 3 pianos K 242) with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
IC: (sigh) I don’t think I can answer that question, but I will answer obliquely: he has a unique place in my heart. On the other hand, I am working on a lot of Schumann now and I have such a passion for him.
IC: Try me!
IC: How long have you got? (laughs) First of all, his humanity. He was such a human being.. the way he manages to convey so much emotion in music through the most glorious melodies that range from the imaginitively dark to the devastatingly simple. The way he switches between the dark and the light in his psyche. I have a theory that people get illnesses that suit them. Schubert’s illness alienated him from what he most wanted: love of a partner, therefore he had to dig deeper in his reserves of emotions. Would he have written so many masterworks if he had been married with five children? He wasn’t without love, as he had close friends, but he suffered from a horrible disease, like Aids now. He was only in his 20’s when he got ill and didn’t know he was going to die, he could have expected to live another six or seven years.. At the end of his life, he was weak as a result of the amount of work he did..
IC: I wonder why he said that? I wouldn’t associate him with Schubert and don’t think he ever recorded any of his music?
IC: I’d love to hear what he did in the C-minor Sonata (D 958, WB)!
IC: Some of his works are enormously long, for instance the A-major Sonata (D 959) or the String Quintet, it is a challenge for a pianist or a string player to hold the span. If Arrau meant that, I agree and I think he is also right from a pianistic point of view. You need a huge palette of colours, physical means, imagination and most of all you have to tell a story. When I perform with Wolfgang Holzmaier, he always says to me “Erzähle die Geschichte!” before we walk out on stage!
IC: It certainly helps, because the songs are a major part of Schubert’s make- up.
IC: Of course, especially when you work with someone like Holzmaier. I am very careful to understand what I play, a pianist has to provide the light and darkness in the piano parts.
IC: How to tell a story and how to make long lines if he or she has impressive breath control. Singing is the most natural way to shape a melody
IC: You would have to ask the singer! It never occurred to me, but probably I wouldn’t be the worst guide for Schubert, I have been on this journey for so long...
IC: Compared to the other two late Sonatas (D 958 and 959), it is not in essence a dramatic composition. It’s lyrical and there is nothing of the drama you find in the second movement of D 959. It is certainly a big piece, though! By the way, I don’t play the repeat in the first movement of D 960, I think these eight bars don’t belong to the piece. Had Schubert lived two years longer, he might in my view have moved from the shadow of Beethoven and he would have reviewed the structure of this sonata. For me these eight bars don’t make sense.
IC: Edwin Fisher said about Mozart’s last concerto K 595 (which is written in the same key, B-flat major, WB) “It is an endless outbreath”, that’s what it is. The atmosphere is slightly autumnal, but the scherzo is spring-like. Other than that, I can’t tell you the general feeling.
IC: I am about to do it again (laughs), but I don’t move my arms at all, not like Ashkenazy or Uchida. Pianists who conducted his concertos from the keyboard made a lot of gestures. If you play with a top chamber orchestra, it works. I don’t want to conduct, I’d rather go to the musicians and say: “How do we do this?”. I am planning to play concertos with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and love the experience.
IC: No, I am not and this probably doesn’t do me credit. I don’t do the obvious things such as whole Beethoven cycles. Well, I do the concertos, but not all of his sonatas, it doesn’t interest me. If I fall in love with a work and want to convey something that I haven’t heard before, I go for it, but I don’t go on the internet to search for rare scores, absolutely not! I don’t feel the need either to play music by Stockhausen.. It is healing to play music on a deeply spiritual level. We all need healing, since we live in a very frightening world.
IC: Certainly, but I don’t know what they are! I have to fall in love with a work and I need to block time in my agenda to learn it, it’s difficult..
IC: No, I haven’t got the build for it. I have left it, but I can hear it, it will survive the fact that Imogen Cooper hasn’t played it. I would like to take up his Third Sonata, which I love and played many years ago. And maybe for myself, I would like to play Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit again, that I studied in Paris...
IC: What other people would call “a normal life”: to go for a long walk, to mix with the world more.. I need to be alone after ten years alone, I am happier alone than not, but I missed out on quite a few things! Sometimes I long for a more normal life, since mine is completely dysfunctional.
IC: Sure! Whether I can say that in twenty years when I probably can’t play any more, I don’t know. I don’t know any other life, music has been at the center of my life and humanity. But yes, I am one of the blessed 5% whose sense of life and work is intermingled. I sometimes fight to the instrument, but ultimately I don’t know any other life...
IC: I am not sure whether I can answer your question, therefore I will answer in a more global way. I don’t often read reviews, but I am really happy when people start hearing what I am doing at greater depths. I am moved when people in the audience describe what music has done to them in terms that I would use myself. That gives me more pleasure than anything, more than people telling me “I played very well”.When everything is flowing, it is circular and you come out better!