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Written by: Willem Boone

Amsterdam, 19 June 2022

Willem Boone (WB): I am thrilled to speak to you, I hope you will take it as a compliment and not as the words of a stupid groupie, but you are a musician I have admired a lot for a very long time. I heard you for the first time in 1989 with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in Rachmaninov’s 3rd concerto and it was sensational. I was seated in one of the first rows in Vredenburg, I heard you quite a few times after that in recitals. I admire your beautiful tone and your technique, as well as your depth of expression. I don’t know many pianists who are so searching, it’s quite rare nowadays!

WB: You said about an earlier CD: “It’s like the ultimate concert; there is always an idea behind it”
NG: You mean a recording?

WB: Yes, I haven’t heard your latest CD with Franck and Scriabin, but what is the idea behind it? The combination is quite interesting in my opinion.
NG: For a long time I wanted to record Prélude, Choral et Fugue, but I couldn’t decide what would be a good coupling for the CD. There were a few options, but somehow I thought Scriabin’s preludes opus 16 would make a good transition to a set of early Scriabin pieces. The artistic universes of these two composers are entirely different of course: Prélude, Choral et Fugue is definitely a religious work, while Scriabin’s early music was not driven by any metaphysical ideas yet; it is sheer poetry. Their music could happily coexist on the same album.  

WB: You also recorded a very beautiful Chopin-CD. In a review in ‘De Groene Amsterdammer”I read: ‘It is as if the notes of Chopin became your notes’. What do you make of this assessment?
NG: Of course, I’m very happy to hear that because it says what I feel. These are not my notes obviously, but if I want to record something, I need to have the feeling that the music is deeply engrained within myself and only then it will work. So yes, it is a compliment.

WB: I read an interview with you by Marcel Baudet from 2004, in which you made a lot of interesting comments. It’s from almost 20 years ago, but a lot of it is still pretty valid. You said: “If I generalise, I notice that French pianists play Chopin in a rather dry, sterile way.’I was wondering whether you could say that Russian pianists play Chopin differently than Polish pianists?
NG: Did I really say that? In this case it sounds like a rather unfair generalisation. Nevertheless, there is a grain of truth in it, but any recording by Cortot just screams the opposite.  You see, the globalization process affects music as well. The national schools have more or less disappeared; there were definitely German, French and Russian schools in the past, but if we try to describe them, we actually describe something very average. In that sense, my remark was not incorrect, but if you take the greatest achievements, it’s totally wrong. Cortot was absolutely one of the greatest names in the interpretation of Chopin. Not only Chopin of course, he played French music magnificently and he was one of the greatest interpreters of Schumann’s music (He was very much brought up in the German tradition).  When you talk about greatness, it transcends all limits of national schools, but there are tendencies, such as the one you referred to in your question. In the Russian tradition, Chopin always held a special place and a great number of fabulous Chopin- interpretations came from representatives of the Russian school. 

WB: Was there ever a Russian school?
NG: Of course, there was never a strict division between the schools, but we can definitely speak of tendencies. If you are specifically interested in this, we probably have to start in the second half of the 19th century.  While there were already musical institutions in Europe, by that time, Russia was lagged behind, as in most aspects of social life. The brothers Rubinstein played a crucial role in establishing musical institutions in Russia. They were both great pianists, yet very different artists and personalities.  Besides their great artistic qualities they possessed incredible energy and organisational skills. Anton, the older brother, who was also a prolific composer and conductor, opened the Russian musical society and the first Russian conservatory in Sint Petersburg, Nikolay was the founder of the conservatory in Moscow. The brothers used all the accumulated western experience and implemented it at a very high level right from the start. The structured musical education for the different age groups was especially important and, as far as I know, new.  
If we talk about the artistic side of this enormous enterprise, specifically the titanic figure of Anton played a crucial role in forming Russian pianism. In the mid 19th century, he was probably the greatest performer, next to Franz Liszt. He played a big role in shaping the music a bit like a sculptor. Paradoxically, he never taught at the conservatory he founded. His only private pupil was another prodigious pianist: Josef Hoffman. Rubinstein’s enormous influence on generations of Russian pianists came primarily from his concerts. All Russian musicians were in awe. Both Rachmaninov and Hoffman, who listened to the series of ‘Historic concerts’ played by Anton Rubinstein, maintained that it had been the strongest musical experience they ever witnessed until the end of their lives. The concerts were a formative experience for generations of Russian musicians. Rachmaninov, who never studied with Rubinstein, admitted that Rubinstein directly influenced his approach, specifically in his unforgettable interpretation of Chopin’s B flat minor sonata. 
Russia was a huge multinational empire, and the newly established conservatories attracted very talented students, not only from Russia, but many came from its colonies: Ukraine, Poland, Georgia, Armenia, and so forth. Among the professors of the two leading Russian conservatories were some of the most famous European musicians, for instance Ferrucio Busoni in Moscow and Theodor Leschetizky in Saint Petersburg. The latter was one of the greatest piano teachers of all times (He was a student from Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny). Just to give you an idea: his students included Paderewski, Friedman, Schnabel and Anna Esipova (an internationally famous pianist: his assistant, later his wife and Prokofiev’s teacher). Admittedly, most of his renowned students studied with him in Vienna.  
After the catastrophic revolution, musical education in Russia maintained its extremely high level, in spite of the fact that so many great Russian musicians emigrated. Since music is the least ideological of all art forms, the Bolsheviks were interested in keeping the musical institutions intact in order to prove the superiority of the soviet system, a similar situation was true for the ballet. If we compare this situation to other walks of life, musicians were among the least prosecuted. In the years following the revolution, up to the 60s I would say, the concentration of great pianists in Russia was unusually high. After those years the system started to deteriorate.

WB: Would you say the overall level was higher there than in the Netherlands for example?
NG: At the time of Soviet Russia? Yes, I am sure!

WB: Is it the same now?
NG: The system of musical education was better than anywhere else. 
WB: I am trying to understand because life may have been miserable, but it didn’t stop them from educating students fantastically…
NG: It was supported by the state, the education itself was superb. Professional training started at a very early age, preparing students for the conservatory. It was a very logical, professional and academic educational system. In Europe, the circumstances were totally different, which makes it difficult to compare..

WB: Which ones for instance?
NG: Okay, I’ll try to explain. There were huge differences in the circumstances: professional, spiritual, practical, etc. But first of all, I must stress that when I talk about the superior level, I refer exclusively to the educational system and the average level of trained professional pianists and violinists. Of course, there were great talents, both amongst teachers and students. There was an incredible concentration of talents in just two cities: Moscow and Saint Petersburg which was unparalleled anywhere else in the world. What made the situation in communist Russia unique is that, besides poverty, the country was lacking all kinds of freedom, including the freedom of movement, so the career of musicians, ballet dancers, circus artists, etc were among the few that offered possibilities to at least break out of a miserable existence. This was a very strong incentive, apart from the dedication to music of course, which made young people work very hard! When I started to teach in the Dutch conservatories and worked with Western students, I was often surprised by their relaxed attitude towards practising. I am generalising a little bit, of course. Another potentially more significant reason behind the less successful musical educational system in western countries was much weaker support and encouragement from parents. This was for obvious reasons of course: the career of a musician in the West was (unless it was extremely successful) much less lucrative and prestigious. And, until rather recently the almost total absence of well-functioning professional music schools for children in the West led to a situation where it was difficult to get a good systematic training for a talented child from a very young age. 
Coming back to the Soviet school I would like to mention one phenomenon which is not often mentioned. Next to the very obvious, undeniable achievements of the Soviet pianistic school especially from post war times, more precisely from the 60’s, some negative tendencies started to become more noticeable. As in any system at any times, after reaching a peak and thriving for decades, this particular system gradually started to show signs of decay. The greatest professors slowly disappeared, while the professional education increasingly served the sole purpose of winning more and more competitions. Artistically, it meant that among young successful Soviet musicians there were more increasing numbers of very technically polished pianists who played in a very uniform way and very much lacked the spirit of music and an individual approach. 

WB: You said there were/are no schools for gifted children in Europe, is that what you need to become someone of the level of say Ashkenazy?
NG: I would not necessarily mention Ashkenazy, why did you specifically bring up him?
WB: He is also a Russian pianist who had a very high level, I was just thinking we probably never had a pianist of the same level in the Netherlands!
NG: Maybe, I don’t know. Soviet Russia was home     not only to pianistic giants like Giles and Richter, who everybody knows, but also artists like Sofronitsky and Yudina who are much less well-known but artists of comparative standard. They were artists of incredible inspiration and originality. They were absolutely incredible.

WB: Bashkirov, Lazar Berman…
NG: Yes, of course. Berman travelled around the world, so did Ashkenazy. Yudina was allowed to give some concerts in the DDR and played only once in Poland while, Sofronitsky went to Paris in his youth and stayed there for a short while. He returned and was never allowed to go abroad again, except one occasion when Stalin took him to a summit of leaders of the allied countries in Potsdam immediately after the war. Sofronitsky played next to Gilels and some other Soviet musicians.  

WB: I definitely know the name of Yudina!
NG: She was a phenomenal artist and  then there was Maria Grinberg.
WB: Davidovich…
NG: Yes, of course.

WB: You have been teaching in the Netherlands for a long time now. I just wonder how come we don’t have as much talent as in Russia? Not pianists of this evel I would say.
NG: You can’t compare the size of the two countries! 
WB: That’s true, but I can only mention a few Dutch pianists that were quite famous, like Cor de Groot, Daniel Wayenberg and Theo Bruins. However, I couldn’t tell you ten Dutch pianists who have global careers. Is it a matter of technique or …?
NG: No, I don’t think so. (thinks) Let’s put it this way: I am thinking of a country with a comparable size. Do you know many Czechoslovakian, Portuguese or Scandinavian pianists?
WB: No, you’re right. 

NG: It is a coincidence that Glenn Gould was Canadian…
WB: I see what you mean, but let me rephrase my question: take a pianist like Daniil Trifonov who is a fantastic talent, I can’t think of a Dutch pianist who has the same level or potential; is that because Dutch people are not ambitious enough or don’t they work hard enough? How come we don’t have talents of that level or do you see people who have the same potential?
NG: There are actually currently a few very talented young Dutch pianists. Some of them are studying in my class: Aidan Mikdad and Florian Verweij.

WB:  I asked Jan Wijn the same question when I interviewed him a few years ago, is it true that piano technique is still improving? You mentioned Richter and Gilels who were fantastic pianists, then in the second half of the last century, there was a whole generation of people like Ashkenazy, Argerich and Pollini who could play anything. I have the impression that the piano technique is at an even higher level, is that your opinion too?
NG: Absolutely not. The average level is much higher, I see it in conservatories, but when it comes to artistic level, you can’t say that. You mentioned Ashekanzy, Argerich and Pollini and they were not of the same artistic level as the great artists before them, absolutely not. And actually I am sure they are totally aware of this themselves. 

WB: They were of a lower level?
NG: Yes, I think so. The peak of artistic achievements in the art of pianism had already passed by that time.  

WB: And then you speak purely of technical achievements? Or could you say it’s now at an even higher technical level than during the last half of the 20th century?
NG: Look, what you mean by ‘technical level’? For me, it’s not so easy to separate this notion from artistry, especially if we are talking about great artists. If you only consider the digital aspect, i.e. the speed with which you can play a number of notes per second, then the level is more or less the same I would think.  But in any case, one can safely say that the technical achievements of Rachmaninov and Horowitz have never been surpassed. If you refer to a broader context with the phrase ‘technical level’, which includes a command of sound, rhythm, phrasing, etc, the level went down dramatically with possibly a single exception of Arcadi Volodos. Just compare the top pianists of the 20th century with current pianists! The truth is that the great artists are always also the greatest technicians. It would be a bit naïve to think that pianists play even better nowadays! Take the incredible virtuosity of the recordings of Rachmaninov , Michelangeli, Gould. Technically, they were amazing. You see, historical development in any art form is never linear: it goes in waves, there are peaks and moments where things tend to go down. Take the Renaissance in Italy or the 17th century painters in Holland or Spain. It as local at that time, and now it’s global.

WB: And do you think there will be a peak again?
NG: I don’t see it happening in the near future; because the situation is somewhat odd now. There is modern music, it does exist but do you see any pianist of any significance who plays it? Not a single one! That is a very interesting phenomenon; music doesn’t start with the performing artist, but with the art of composing. The core of the repertoire played nowadays  consists mainly of music from the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century, with a few names from the 18th century and one or two composers of the second half of the 20th century. And now, we are moving further away from it and what I see is that in the next generations of pianists the inner connection with the music will be lacking. The growing dominance of the virtual reality in our life does not help either. I think our time is very good for computer programming but much less profitable for art. I don’t see any single sign that it is going to change any time soon. 

WB: You mentioned a few pianists already, Sofronitsky and Rachmaninov, you called them in an earlier interview your ‘pianistic Olympus”. You also mentioned Glenn Gould, I was wondering what do you admire so much in his playing? I guess he was a very intelligent man, but sometimes I feel he was also a bit provocative. I’m not sure whether he was entirely serious in his approach!
NG: I am very happy you mentioned these names, because they are very dear to me. About Glenn Gould: actually, he was profoundly sincere and serious whenever he was playing. However, he could be paradoxical in what he said about music, that is for sure.

WB: With Mozart!
NG: Okay, that’s a good point. Maybe his Mozart was somewhat experimental.
WB: He said he only liked the early Mozart sonatas and yet he recorded all of them. Why would you record music you don’t really like?
NG: I don’t know. You take the most controversial interpretations he recorded. I find some of those sonatas unbelievably beautiful, such as the first movement of the A-major sonata, where his approach is so unique and convincing. I agree that probably he recorded some of the sonatas just because he wanted to complete the whole cycle. However, we should always judge an artist by his highest achievements. If we are talking about his Mozart recordings, then there is the amazing C-minor concerto. To me it’s divine and so moving. I never love Mozart’s music more than when listening to this recording.

WB: Did you hear his Chopin B-minor sonata?
NG: Yes, of course!
WB: What do you think of it?
NG:  Again, it’s controversial, I agree, but I find it fascinating. He makes me listen from the first note to the last. He didn’t intend it to be published; it didn’t appear on CBS during his lifetime. I am happy to listen to it, actually more so than to many iconic recordings.

WB: What do you like most about it?
NG: It’s terribly compelling, like everything he did. There is enormous intensity in his playing, it’s profoundly logical, but not in a purely rational sense. It is imbued with the deepest emotional intensity. It is so intense and so strong, it’s wonderful! And the incredibly build up in the finale.
WB: I remember what struck me was this beautiful cantilena in the first movement, this Bellini-like melody where he puts all the emphasis on the left hand. The melody is played with  the right hand and you hear a totally different piece!
NG: He always wanted to hear the full score. Yes, you’re right, what he did in that passage was so expressive. 

WB: Would you say he was paradoxical when he said that Schumann, Chopin and Liszt didn’t write one proper right note for piano whereas he recorded tonnes of  Bach, who never composed one note for piano?
NG: Well, as far as I remember, he called them ‘right hand composers’, juxtaposing them  with the more polyphonically and orchestrally inclined composers. Gould’s preference clearly went to the latter, like the baroque composers, Beethoven, Brahms, Strauss, Scriabin, Prokofiev, etc. Bachs music so transcends the instrument, to me it sounds best on piano.  I can’t stand the sound of a harpsichords for more than 20 minutes. Listening to Gould’s Bach on piano is one of my favorite things in art and life in general. Actually the only harpsichord recording I love is Gould’s recording of Händel’s suites on harpsichord. 

WB: I have a few questions about performing. Claudio Arrau said he was in ecstasy when he was playing. What about you: is it the same or are you conscious of what you are doing?
NG: It’s interesting that Arrau said that! I thought he was very much involved in all kinds of Zen-practices?
WB: I guess he was, but I read this in an interview with Arrau. What about you?
NG: I wouldn’t describe it as ecstasy, but it is a state of mind, of course. A situation where you have to concentrate so much, everything is so focused and intense. “Ecstasy’ is perhaps a strange connotation in this context, but it is not a normal state of being, of course. It’s kind of a transcendental state, that’s true. 

WB: Is that always the case or only when you are really inspired?
NG: To find the balance in this state when you can keep the intensity and yet remain cool, I can’t say I achieve I t every time. It varies a lot. You live in three dimensions: the future, the present and the past. If you manage that…
WB: What do you mean that you live in the past, the present and the future? While performing you mean?
NG: Of course, you have to listen to what you are doing and you need to look forward.

WB: That’s beautiful. And can interpretation liberate anything subconscious?
NG: I am sure that even a big part of our daily life is on a subconscious level and the process of performance can definitely reveal certain levels of it if you are lucky 

WB: There was this pianist that I really liked, Shura Cherkassky, whose playing sometimes seemed like improvisation, whereas he was a very hard worker. I had the feeling that he could really surprise himself when performing. People said when he played a concerto three times in a row that it was a very different performance three times.
NG: Seriously?
WB: That’s what I heard, but I never heard him three times in a row!
NG: I heard him in Moscow and later in Amsterdam too, his playing could be very beautiful, especially in delicate miniatures where you could hear his incredibly beautiful pianism, a bit of Josef Hoffman’s style , a sense of sound that was especially wonderful in pianissimo. I can’t imagine he was very different during every performance; since his way of playing was not  actually that spontaneous.
WB: But does it happen that you surprise yourself in a performance and you do things you never did before? 
NG: Not to the extent that the whole interpretation becomes a very different one, but to some extent, indeed, yes.

WB: I don’t know whether you listen to your own performances, but are there moments when you hear something that doesn’t sound ‘like you’?
NG: I can’t say but I almost never listen to my own recordings. If I did, I’m sure if I would  probably like something one day and hate it the next. 

WB: I have a few questions about what we say in Dutch ‘Leren is proberen’(learning is trying), is that the same for you?
NG: I don’t quite understand actually..
WB: I guess if you study you do not always know where you’re going, you don’t always know what the result will be when you start. You sometimes have to try out things that probably a were not good in retrospect or that can maybe lead to other things.
NG: O yes, of course, for sure! 

WB: When you practice, do you always learn? I am not sure whether it was Lipatti or Rachmaninov who said : “When you study, there is also a mechanical part and that only later everything comes together.” Can you separate the mechanic and the artistic part? 
NG: It’s fair to say that you separate them to some extent. If you encounter difficulties in certain passages, you start solving them and then you separate them. In this case, you can’t say you are involved in a very artistic process. 

WB: I don’t know exactly how to say this, if you are a great pianist, you have your technique, of course. You have your own sound that is always there, but what I admire so much about you is the incredible depth in your playing. I hear someone who is really searching, is that something that right too or is it something that takes a long time before you can really express yourself in a piece? I hope you understand the question..
NG:   Yes, I do. It’s a very complex process that is not easy to analyse. Usually, when you study a piece, you know it and you have your ideas about interpretation. When you start to prepare the piece for performance, you discover that your knowledge about it is extremely, I don’t want to say superficial, but unfocussed. Once you start to study, your focus will become much sharper and that can be a long process. Sometimes your ideas can be quite different in the end, sometimes your first ideas about a piece can coincide with the way you want to perform it. There are no rules.

WB: So if you take a Beethoven sonata you never studied and that you want to learn, you don’t know what you want to do with it right away?
NG: Usually I think that I know, you have a certain picture, but if you see all those possibilities, all those endless choices. This process can lead to an interpretation that differs from the initial idea you had in mind. And your perception of a certain work may change over the course of your life.

WB: I have a few questions about sound. This is what you said in the interview from 20 years ago with Marcel Baudet, you spoke about the secret of Horowitz’s and Rachmaninov’s sound was not how they touched the keyboard, but the fact that they were able to imagine a certain sound,  and  you can only start your search for it if you have that. “ How old were you when you learned about your own sound? 
NG: This is an immense issue, since music is an art of sound (and of rhythm of course, but it also materialises in the sound). In even the smallest musical composition, there are countless sounds of different colours, shades, their relationships, expressions, etc. Every great artist sees the world and the composition differently and that’s why they approache it so differently. And then there is the question of controlling the sound in order to materialise your perception in a physical sound. One can say that the control of sound, next to rhythm, phrasing and the sense of structure are the pillars upon which the art of interpretation is based. All these components are highly individual. One can only speak of the ‘sound of Rachmaninov’ or the ‘sound of Gould’in this context. It is inseparable from the musical personality and all the great artists had their own unique sound world. I doubt whether any artist would speak about themselves on this matter.

WB: Do you know exactly how you want to sound? Do you have an idea in year head?
NG: Yes, absolutely, that’s what I was referring to! It’s something that you can’t actually teach, because the idea of sound is in your imagination and your brain. It’s very difficult to describe it in words All you can teach someone to some extent is how they should control the sound.  
WB: Is it something you can reproduce or is it also partly subconscious? For instance, the first chords of the Fourth Beethoven Concerto show whether you can play cantabile, can you reproduce that any point in time?
NG: In principle absolutely, unless the instrument is really very bad. The better the instrument, the more successful it will sound, but you will recognise a real master pianist on any instrument. 

WB: Does the idea of sound become more concrete when you grow older?
NG: I would say yes, not only when it comes to the sound. With any true artist, it should be a lifelong process.

WB: You said something in the same interview that I never quite understood, since I am not a music student. Maybe it’s a silly question, maybe you can explain me what it means: “When I play for a student, I try to explain that horizontal structures are polyphonic as possible and the other way around, verticality doesn’t exist without horizontality. This is important and it reflects in the sound.” You said it’s a very physical sensation, if the harmony changes, the colors, you feel it in your bones. Can you explain what the notion of horizontality in comparison to verticality?
NG: I am not sure whether I expressed it that way or maybe it wasn’t rightly quoted, or perhaps it’s the translation? In any case, I am not sure I entirely understand the question.
WB: It was in Dutch and I translated the passage in English.
NG: I understand the topic. Do you understand the horizontal principle?
WB: I’m not sure!
NG: Music is a unique form of art that evolves in time. It’s not like a picture where you can absorb the whole idea in a split second. Thus any single sequence of notes evolving in time is  a horizontal line. The harmony is the vertical part, the combination of notes we hear simultaneously at any given moment of time. 

WB: You stated how important that is, that it reflected in the sound and that it is a physical sensation.
NG: Not only physical, it’s mainly mental. One of the main tasks of a performer is to make the structure, the form and the harmony as clear as possible for the listener. It’s the same as the idea of sound we discussed earlier, you have to have how the music is able to connect all the structures with the underlying emotional development in your mind. That’s the unique capacity of music and why it is possible that we experience music not only rationally and sensually, but also emotionally. You need to know how it is organised and you need to have the control to show all these complexities. 

WB: Did I understand correctly that harmonic changes in music are so powerful that you feel  them in your bones?
NG: We don’t feel them physically, but I would say sensually. 
WB: Do you have the stress them in the music?
NG: Of course. The harmonies are extremely important in music and the emotional perception of music depends on harmonic changes to a large extent. They are responsible for the sense of tension and relaxation, which is as important in the life of music as breathing is to us. 
WB: The harmonic changes in Chopin often give me goose bumps!
NG: That’s the answer!

WB: I heard the Third Beethoven Concerto this week, and I am always surprised about the change from minor to major at the end. It’s also amazing.
NG: Yes, sure, and Schubert used this principle so poignantly too. 
WB: You said that the Russian style of singing was an inspiration for the Russian school, it was almost a way of speaking, reciting. Is it your inspiration too your own playing too?
NG: I  once read an interesting book containing memories of Chopin’s students. Many of them mentioned how often he referred to singing in his lessons, especially when phrasing was concerned. It was also characteristic of Anton Rubinstein who was so influential in Russia. Even though all great Russian pianists are entirely different, the inclination towards singing and reciting is something they all have in common. 

WB: You said about sound if you work with a student: “If I succeed, his or her sound doesn’t resemble mine.” I want to help them reveal their own potential talent.” But is it bad when a student sounds like you?
NG: I don’t think it’s bad if he sounds like me but I would hate to clone students. Leschetitzky said to Schnabel: “Every pianist of significance around 15 or 16 years develops his own techniques. “ It’s a very fine observation, because different individuals stimulate different technique. Ideally, it should also lead to a different idea of sound and all the other aspects of interpretation that should be different from anyone elses. 

WB: That’s what I liked about one of your students Florian Verwey: I recognised part of your phrasing and I didn’t feel he was cloning you at all, I just thought to what extent you are a good teacher that you can teach them to find their own interpretations.
NG: It’s inevitable that you influence your students to some extent and when they go their own way, I think it’s fantastic! 
WB: If I listen to students of Jan Wijn, I can’t say that they have anything in common, except that they play in a healthy way without a lot of excess in their phrasing, although I can’t discover that they have anything in common, Whereas I have heard a few students of yours and there was something very special in the phrasing. I had the same impression with students of Dmitri Bashkirov who had a lot of students who are very good pianists! Or with Menahem Pressler, where you recognize the master!
NG:  We all take things from our teachers, also in composition or painting. When students of Rembrandt came to his ‘workshop’ or when Leonardo da Vinci came to the workshop of his great teacher Veroccio, they would start by copying the master’s paintings and they tried to do what the great master was doing. It didn’t prevent them from becoming great painters themselves later. And it doesn’t contradict what I said before.

WB: You said: ‘In our teaching we lost the soul of music. Everybody does everything correctly, but the essence is missing.’ You said that in 2004…
NG: I don’t recognise myself in these words, I couldn’t have worded it that way, but it is a fact that the soul of music is often lost, not only because of the teaching. But as we discussed before, the soul of music is very much missing in concert halls, that’s true. 

WB: I just want to believe that there are other geniuses and that it is not completely gone!
NG: Well, it’s not completely gone, absolutely not. There are very talented people around, but somehow our times are not very fertile.
WB: Would you say that people deliver standardised products nowadays?
NG: No, that is a little bit of the past, let’s say in the 80s and 90s, there was huge standardisation in music making. There tendency now is different. Musicians often artificially try to do something new. There is nothing wrong with that, especially if you are young, but the point is that you can only be original if you are, you can’t be original on purpose. Gould was one of the most individual artists, he had a vision and that’s why he had an individual approach to music, not the other way around. 

WB: There is another passage from the same interview I translated and I am not sure whether I understood it correctly: you spoke about a paradox: “You can only get to the core of a composition by a huge degree of individuality.” 
NG: That’s true! 

WB: And you said: “Why would people get closer to the core of the essence of music through a subjective interpretation?” That’s what you ask yourself. There are some pianists that you could call ‘neutral pianists’, I remember this is often said about Pollini who has an objective way of playing, whereas you could call pianists like Horowitz or Cherkassky much more individualists. Is it wrong to have an objective way of playing?
NG: What is ‘objective’? ‘Neutral’, yes, there is no ‘objective’, Richter used to say about himself that he only played what the composer wrote in the score. Of course, that is total nonsense, but he definitely believed this. Like any great artist, he saw the score and nothing that he was doing was arbitrary. Every note he played, every rubato, every sforzando was screamingly Richter’s. And of course, he often deviated from the composer’s intentions when he felt he had to. Why do people sometimes describe his art as ‘objective’? What made him say that about himself? Art often behaves like a reaction to certain tendencies. Richter and his great contemporaries Gilels and Michelangeli belonged to a generation that came after Horowitz. Cortot, Schnabel and Gieseking were great pianists who belonged to a great, basically romantic tradition for which much greater freedom, especially in rhythm and phrasing was very characteristic. Naturally, the following generations reacted to this. Next to Cortot, Richter almost seemed academic. It doesn’t mean that Richter’s style was better than Cortot’s. It’s all about discipline. Any great artist himself and the ‘Zeitgeist’ impose a certain frame of discipline and great artists create within the discipline. However, within this discipline, a creative artist can do so much! In most romantic music, say Scriabin’s, there is an incredibly strict form, in which the artist operates. Freedom can only be experienced within certain limits, otherwise there is chaos. That’s what I admire about Gould: he had incredible discipline and an almost superhuman sense of form. Yet he was the most individualistic player. You asked about pianists sounding the same: that’s the result of our post-modern approach. Everybody creates out of themselves, but that’s impossible in art. Everything seems to be allowed, there is no discipline or structure. Without the latter, art simply does not exist. And the ‘everything is allowed approach’ ultimately leads to the situation when individuality vanishes.

WB: It’s Horowitz who said: “Basically all music is romantic, people’s feelings don’t change, only the way they express them”. What do you think of this assessment?
NG: It’s essentially true, there is continuity and consistency in the history of art. The unparalleled tragic events of the 20th century broke the evolution. They affected both art and the physical life enormously. I have the feeling we are still struggling with the consequences and trying to find a new spiritual line. However, I would rather avoid the word ‘romantic’ since it is a weak term in this context.  

 

 

 

 

Details

Written by: Stany Kol

The Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire revealed his outstanding gifts and strong artistic personality at an early age. His international career, begun when he was very young, has taken him to cities on every continent, where he has given solo recitals and concerts with some of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors. He often performs piano duets with Martha Argerich, whit whom he made recordings. Here he talks about his life and art.

Stany Kol (SK): How does a person become a great performing artist?

Nelson Freire (NF): In my case, it all started very early. I was a child prodigy. I was born in 1944 in Boa Esperança, a little town in Minas Gerais state, the youngest of five children. There were no musicians in the family, but my mother was a music lover and bought a piano with her first wages as a teacher. I think there were only three pianos in the whole town. She made my elder sister practise. I began to play a little myself, by ear, copying what I heard. I was rather sickly as a child and had several illnesses, but I loved the piano. When I was four, I toldmy parents that I wanted to take lessons.

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SK: So they found you a teacher.

NF: Yes, but he lived a four-hour bus ride away. I went to him once a week and had to get up at four in the morning. In those days, there were no motorways. In fact the road was a dirt track, often drenched with rain. After twelve lessons, the teacher told my father there was nothing he could teach me and that I’d have to go to Rio de Janeiro, which was then the capital of Brazil, to get a decent musical education. And so we moved to Rio. It was a big decision for my parents, who had always made their home in Boa Esperança, where all their family lived. My father, who was a pharmacist, had to give up his profession and take a job at a bank.
I took tests at the Rio school of music. The professional musicians were impressed and said I was a child with “golden hands’. But I was still only playing by instinct. I had a hard time finding a teacher. I was a rather unruly child. For two years I went from teacher to teacher, I even kicked one of them because he kept touching my ears, and I hated that. My parents were getting fed up and were thinking of returning to Boa Esperança, and then I was introduced to Lucia Branco, one of  the few piano teachers in Rio I hadn’t met. She was a well known teacher who had been trained by a pupil of Franz Liszt. She advised my parents to send me to one of her students who, she thought, was mad enough to agree to work with me. That’s how I met Nise Obino, her assistant. It was love at first sight. With Nise, I went right back to square one, including even the position of the fingers on the keyboard. She managed to get me to make remarkable progress. My relationship with her was very strong, the strongest in my life. One day when I was very ill with a very high fever, she came to see me and put her hand on my forehead, and my temperature went down immediately. We were very close until her death last January, which was a terrible blow for me.

SK: Did you go to school while being trained?

NF: Yes, just like any other child. My parents didn’t want me to be uneducated. I only practised the piano a couple of hours a day.

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SK: When did you first perform in public?

NF: When I was four. Then when I was twelve, Brazil organized a big event, Rio’s first international piano competition. I was intived to take part and was one of eighty contestants. Several of the others were already in their thirties and had a lot of experience. Some had even won prizes in other competitions. Lucia warned me that it would be a good experience for me but that I shouldn’t set my hopes too high. Even so, I was among the finalists. The final was an extraordinary event, a bit like a big soccer match. The Brazilians are mad about the piano. The hall was packed, and the audience was very excited. The president of Brazil, Juscelino Kubitschek, who had followed the preliminaries, offered me a two-year scholarship to go and study wherever I wanted to.

SK: And that’s how you went to Vienan..

NF: Actually, I only went there two years after the competition, when I was fourteen. I chose Vienna because I wanted to work with Bruno Seidlhofer, an Austrian pianist who was very well known in Latin America. I’d played for him in Rio. I set off on my own because my parents couldn’t go with me. I took the boat with Seidlhofer, who was returning home.
In Vienna, I was alone for the first time in my life. I was still quite young and didn’t know a word of German or anything about the city. I found out what it meant to be independant. Those two years were very important for my personal development. It was then that I met Martha Argerich. I didn’t do much work, though, and didn’t enter any competitions. I didn’t live up to expectations. Then the time came when the scholarship ended and I had to return home. Returning to Brazil wasn’t easy. At seventeen I was in the middle of an adolescent crisis, and I had to live with my family again after acquiring a taste for independance and living on my own. During the next year I entered a few competitions but never turned up on the day. Then in 1962 I was offered the opportunity of giving a concert in São Paulo. The concert was a big success and I recovered my enthusiasm and desire to play.

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SK: You made a fresh start?

NF: Not yet. Another failure was waiting around the corner, in Belgium where I’d gone at the age of nineteen to take part in the Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians International Musical Competition. When the results were announced, my name wasn’t even mentioned. It was a bitter disappointment. But Martha Argerich was there too. Neither of us felt on top of the world, but we were together and that helped a lot. Going back to Brazil after a flop like that wasn’t very enticing. Then I  remembered that Anna-Stella Schic (1) had suggested that I should take part in a competition in Lisbon where she was a member of the jury. I called for information and was told the competition was starting in two days time. I said I’d be there.

SK: Without knowing the test pieces?

NF: I knew everything except for a compulsory piece that had to be played at the beginning of the competition, Carlos Seixas’Sonata in G-minor (2). When I got there, I asked for the score of this sonata, and they gave it to me but thought I was mad.  What’s more, when lots were drawn for the order of performance, I had to play first. Anyway, I got down to work and threw myself into the competition. I walked off with the first prize! Things really changed for me after that. For six pleasant months I was asked to give a number of concerts in Austria,  Portugese speaking Africa and Madeira.
But other countries were a closed book for me until early in 1965 I received a telegram from Brazil from Ernesto de Quesada, an old man who had been Arthur Rubinstein’s first  agent and went on to found the Conciertos Daniel We had never met, but he’d heard about me from a member of the Lisbon jury. In his telegram he proposed that I should give three concerts in Mexico as a last-minute replacement for Alexander Brailovsky  That was my first contract. After that, I returned to Brazil in style, I did tours in Spain, Argentina, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Peru and other countries. In short I started to earn a living. One day I was in Caracas when Martha Argerich’s agent contacted me and asked whether I would fill in for Shura Cherkassky and play Tschaikofsky’s Second Piano Concerto with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra.

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SK: Did you know the concerto?

NF: When the Germans asked me that question, I said yes of course I knew it, whereas in fact I’d never seen the score in my life. And I had two weeks to learn it! I raced to music shops in Caracas, but no one had it. I had to get it from New York. Then for fourteen days I worked on it. When I arrived in Schweinfurt I wasn’t all that sure I could do it by heart, so before going on stage, I asked them to place a closed score of it above the keyboard, just in case. The next day the papers said “a new star is born”. That’s how I got a foothold in Germany in 1966 and began receiving concert offers. I had a terrible experience in 1967. I was going to play in Brazil, at Belo Horizonte in Minas Gerais state, and my parents decided to go with me. Along the way, the bus drive fell asleep at the wheel, and the bus plunged into a ravine killing everyone else on board, including my parents (silence)

SK: When did you start playing duets with Martha Argerich?

NF: Publicly, in 1968 in London at a festival run by Daniel Barenboim. Martha was invited to play a piano duet, and she accepted on condition that I should be her partner. We’d often played four-handed pieces at the house for the fun of it, but this was the first time we did so in public. We weren’t very well prepared, and the performance was not excellent. We didn’t play together again until 1980, twelve years later, in Amsterdam. From then on we really began playing together in concerts and for recordings.
SK: How do you explain the quality of your relationship?
NF: First of all we have know one another very well for a very long time. You know, the best piano duettists are often brothers and sisters or couples. People have to be very close in their personalities, tastes and sensibilities. What’s more, Martha and I have always been open to new discoveries. I think we’ve kept clear of ruts and routines.

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SK: Is there a typical style of Brazilian piano playing?

NF: After soccer the piano is the second great love of Brazilians. But while Brazilian pianists have mostly worked in Europe and have certainly been deeply influenced by Europe, it is generally accepted that they have a certain rhythm,  a kind of  vibration that you don’t find elsewhere. For the same reason, some Brazilian pianists have inhibitions and inferiority complexes. They try to deny themselves by becoming more European than the Europeans!

SK: Doesn’t that lead towards a certain standardization?

NF: There is a certain standardization of styles today, especially, I feel, in the United States. In my opinion it’s due to changing ways of training musicians, to the increase in the number of international competitions and their growing importance in musician’s careers, to the money that is now involved in music and to the somewhat haphazard development of compact-disc production. In other parts of the world, including Europe, things haven’t gone so far, and musicians seem to be resisting this move towards standardization. When I sity on competition juries, for example, I am struck by the quality and artistic temperament of many young Russian pianists.

SK: Do you think that Brazilian composers, especially Heitor Villa Lobos, are performed as often as they deserve?

NF: No, Brazil has a lot of fine composers, but Villa Lobos is about the only one who is widely known. And even he, who produced a considerable body of work, isn’t performed very often. I like his music and think I ought to play it. I do so in my recitals. I also play works by Santuro (3) and Mignone (4)., but I’m not sure that this great tradition of Brazilian classical music has remained as active today as it used to be.

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SK: You performed all over the world. Is the public always the same?

NF: Clearly there are different publics in different countries and continents. I love to play in Germany. Music seems extraordinarily naturals with German music lovers, almost as if they become part of the music during a concert. In Asia – in Japan, for example – the public is always very enthusiastic, but it has a particular way of listening and communicating. Certain audiences, like the Germans, are open to all performers, well known or otherwise. In Paris,  on the other hand, people will only go to listen to a star. I have a fondness of Brazilian audiences that I feel intensely when I play for them. But I believe that music is and will always be an international language. At most the same works are not heard in the same way in different places. There is another kind of problem. I sometimes wonder whether concerts and live performances aren’t experiencing a kind of crisis because of the extraordinary development of compact discs. I think too much is made of them, and I feel that people are gradually losing the desire to go to concerts.

SK:  Talking about the United Nations, Villa Lobos once said that if world leaders listened to more music, there would be fewer wars.....

NF: He was right. Certainly it is hard for a Brazilian to imagine life without music. Such a life would be a dreadful prospect. Talking of Villa Lobos, the last piano work he wrote, in 1949, was Hommage à Chopin in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the composer’s death. Who commissioned it? Unesco!

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1)    Anna-Stelle Schic, a Brazilian pianist born in 1925, was a close friend of Heitor Villa Lobos, many of whose works she premiered.
2)    Carlos Seixas (1704-1742), a Portugese composer whose work for the harpsichord is especially well known.
3)    Claudio Santoro (1919-1989), Brazilian composer. A student of Olivier Messiaen and friend of Heitor Villa Lobos, he explored the possibility of atonal music and then turned to musical forms closer to Brazil.
4)    Francisco Mignone (1897-1986), Brazilian composer. He assimilated the style of the Brazilian waltzes that the pianeiros played in cafés at the turn of the century.

Stany Kol, Secretary of Unesco’s General Conference until 2004.

This interview was published in Le Courrier de l’Unesco of September 1995.

Details

Written by: Willem Boone

 

 

Arnhem, 4 October 2014

Thanks to my friend Benno Brugmans I was able to interview Nelson Goerner, while he was having breakfast at his hotel in Arnhem, the day after his recital. Goerner was especially impressive in Beethoven's towering Hammerklavier Sonata. But what probably struck me most, was this pianist's dedication to his job, his intelligence and the self-assurance of an artist who knows very well what he does.

Willem Boone (WB): How do you compose a recital programme?

Nelson Goerner (NG): Sometimes programmes are articulated around a theme or a composer, but for yesterday’s recital, I was free to play what I wanted.  I mostly play pieces that I have lived around with for a long time, e.g. the Bach Partita nr 6. I learnt it when I was 17, then I didn’t play it for many years and I picked it up again a few years ago. I also learnt the Hammerklavier Sonata a long time ago, I would be frightened to learn it now!

WB: Why?

NG: There are pieces you should start with when you are young and more fearless! The sooner you start to learn this repertoire, the better. It takes a long time before you feel you are ready.

WB: But isn’t this the kind of repertoire that requires wisdom that you probably don’t have when you are 20?

NG: That is also a cliché, you can be mature at 25, with time things can only grow, they will be different at 30..If you start to work on this repertoire when you are 50, it’s too late!

WB: Does that apply to any repertoire?

NG: For a lot of repertoire you need years, as with the Hammerklavier Sonata I put it aside and took it up again. I was able to look at it with freshness. It’s an ongoing process in your mind and your soul.

WB: When you take up a piece again, is it always with new insights?

NG: Yes, most of the time it is.

WB: The Fantasia by Mendelssohn you played last night is an interesting piece, Mendelssohn is neglected as a piano composer, isn’t he?

NG: Yes, unfortunately, his output for piano is wonderful. I haven’t done much of it, but I’d like to play more of his solo piano music.

WB: What I find interesting in Mendelssohn’s music is that it is on the verge of romanticism and classicism..

NG: Yes, that is correct. As you can hear in his music, he worshipped the classic composers. It is classic in its proportions, but decidedly romantic in its feeling. The middle movement of the Scottish Fantasy makes me think of Schubert, whereas the first movement is perhaps the most romantic of all, it’s very passionate!

WB: You already mentioned the Hammerklavier Sonata, I’d like to ask you a few questions about this sonata, could we call it a “monster”?

NG: We can think of it as a monster, but no…actually this piece is more about the elementary, raw forces of nature.  As Wilhelm Kempff pointed out, the adagio is the longest monologue Beethoven ever wrote. It is on top of everything he ever wrote: it is so full of pain and sorrow, only a movement like the fugue can make sense after such a moment of introversion. The fugue is almost needed to liberate forces.  For me, Beethoven represents the inner fights of the human being.

WB: As to the fugue, is it difficult to come to terms with a moment of such fury?

NG: Of course it is, you need a big virtuosity, but nothing should be there for mere display. You also need a lot of clarity to make all the lines come out.

WB: How difficult is it to get this sonata programmed in a recital? I gather a lot of agents prefer other sonatas like the Waldstein or the Appassionata?

NG: So far, I haven’t encountered any problems, people obviously want to hear the Hammerklavier Sonata and maybe the other sonatas you mentioned are played to often (laughs)

WB: Would you call it his most inaccessible sonata?

NG: Certainly, because of its complexity! It’s at the pinnacle of all sonatas ever written!

WB: What could Beethoven have intended with this particular piece, can you say he wanted to transcend the instrument?

NG: He certainly did, the first movement goes beyond the possibilities of the instrument! He had a deep transcendental message with this sonata..

WB: What could that message be?

NG: Beethoven was such an example for all generations to come because of his faculty of overcoming struggles and all contradictions in ourselves! (thinks).. I don’t want to put this in words, it’s impossible!

WB: Do you know whether he ever played the Hammerklavier Sonata in his lifetime?

NG: I can’t say..

WB: Would you ever consider playing it on period instruments?

NG: No, I don’t think so, you need a modern piano with all its possibilities. I don’t think you should go backwards.

WB: Did you respect Beethoven’s metronome markings in the first movement?

NG: No, they are impossible! I am puzzled by his indications, as they are almost impossible to follow. However, I think metronome markings give us an indication of something, in this case that it should be played with a lot of excitement and raw energy.

WB: Yes, but that’s about the energy of the music, not about the tempo?

NG: Probably Beethoven intended the first movement not to be poised or majestic, but energetic!

WB: What’s the tempo indication, allegro risoluto?

NG: No, it’s just allegro. I know Gulda came close to Beethoven’s metronome markings, Schnabel probably played them the way Beethoven intended, but as I stated before, I think they give us rather an indication of the composer’s drive. His struggle has an expressive value, more often than not difficulty in itself has expressive power. Literacy in music is not the key thing…

WB: You spoke about the fugue, what is the character of this movement, is it cataclysm?

NG: Yes, it is. In the adagio you are plunged in despair and sorrow. In the fugue Beethoven unleashes his powers

WB: But how can you find a sense in such fury?

NG: It makes sense by its contrasts, Beethoven’s music is based on incredible contrasts.

WB: There is also a lot of humanity in his music, sometimes even in one single chord, I like his music more and more…

NG: Of course…

WB: You mentioned period instruments before, you made a few records of Chopin on old instruments, why was that?

NG: I was tempted by the experience, it meant a lot to me. It gave me other insights about the sound, I thought: “That’s what the composer had when he wrote this music”
Authenticity is a word I don’t like, because we can never be sure of anything. It was not meant as a musicologist’s adventure, but I will occasionally pursue this experience.

WB: Didn’t you feel you were walking on egg shells, holding back all the time?

NG: No, I didn’t feel I was restraining myself. In the beginning, I was afraid of touching the instrument, it you play too loud, it shouts at you.. You need to know how to supply by means of articulation and subtlety in shadings. You are increasingly aware of the power the instrument cannot give…

WB: Do period instruments get easily out of tune like harpsichords?

NG: Yes, they get much easier out of tune than Steinways, having said this, the instruments from Warsaw I played on were jewels and it was an incredible chance to work with a conductor like Frans Brüggen. The experience was exhilarating!

WB: He was a much admired conductor, yet it has been said that he was not a “real” conductor and that his musicians had trouble “reading” his gestures!

NG: He was more than a conductor, he was an inspirational figure! He could communicate to his musicians what he wanted, they were all transcended by the originality of his ideas and his sheer aura.  I was very impressed with him, we only did Chopin and I have seen conductor who were not at all interested in Chopin’s music, but Brüggen had studied the scores so thoroughly, he knew them inside out. Everything was so clear, precise and beautiful, he didn’t consider the orchestral part as a screen for the pianist..

WB: Were there other conductors you had such a good rapport with in Chopin’s concertos?

NG: Emanuel Krivine was wonderful too, he cared for what Chopin wrote. He didn’t consider his music as mere accompaniments or a show piece for pianists.

WB: Your colleague Ivo Pogorelich called period instruments “an anachronism”, do you agree with him?

NG: No, absolutely not, “anachronism” means something that is dead! It all depends on who is at the instrument and on how he uses the instrument to express his ideas..

WB: Would you play on period instruments again in other music, Liszt for example?

NG: It might happen, but I have no plans for now. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility though..

WB: Speaking of Liszt, you played all the transcendental studies in one recital, speaking of challenges! Did you play other works during that same recital?

NG: Yes, I played two Wagner transcriptions, one at the beginning, then all the études and I ended with another transcription. A programme that consists of “only” the études would be a bit strange…

WB: Which one of the études would you consider as the most difficult?

NG: Feux follets, without a doubt, it is one of the most difficult pieces ever written, you have to transcend materiality… It’s something flying (shows on the wall ) , it’s a vision, you cannot touch it and it’s gone..

WB: And it’s such a delicate piece too!

NG: It’s untouchable..

WB: I must say that I haven’t heard many good performances of it…

NG: No, the best one is Richter in Sofia in the famous live recording from 1958!

WB: Do you know Ashkenazy’s recording? It is amazing too!

NG: Yes, I heard it.

WB: How often do you learn new repertoire?

NG: Always, it’s essential for me, because of a need to play many different pieces and composers.  Many of my idols like Richter and Arrau had an all-encompassing repertoire. I can understand that some pianists want to limit themselves to a certain repertoire, but I have never wanted to do that.

WB: Are there pieces you deliberately don’t play?

NG: There are many pieces I don’t play, I haven’t performed much music of the last 50 years, although that isn’t by lack of interest. I feel you should only play music when you feel you have something to say.

WB: On the BBC, there is a programme called “Building a library” in which they choose the “best” performance of a certain composition. I remember your performance of Chopin’s Third Sonata was hailed as the “best”, how do you feel about such praise: can you accept it or do you put it in perspective?

NG: I feel flattered but I put everything in perspective. It’s in the nature of human beings to compare, but you cannot go far in art! I don’t think my performance of the Chopin sonata was “the best”, however it’s important to know what you do is appreciated.. On the other hand, vanity can hinder the development of an artist!

WB: You studied with Maria Tipo, why did you chose to come to Europe to study with her?

NG: I got a scholarship to come to Europe, I could choose my destination. I decided to study with Maria Tipo after I asked Martha Argerich for advice. She mentioned a few teachers I didn’t know, but also the name of Maria Tipo. I knew her by name, she played a lot in Argentina, although I didn’t hear her in concert at the time.  As you might probably know, the Argentine piano school is Italian..

WB: Scaramuzza…

NG: I studied with three of his pupils. I had a very good pianistic education, but I tried to avoid “contradictions” and thought Maria Tipo would give me a feeling of continuity.

WB: Can you tell more about the importance of Scaramuzza’s teaching?

NG: He had the most incredible knowledge of the anatomy of the human body. The main thing was to avoid any form of contraction. You have to be completely free physically and at the same time have to control the sonority to a very expressive degree. You have to know where the sonority comes from. I have many of his notations and I am struck by his accuracy!

WB: Most of what you are saying is about the physical element of the playing, how did he teach to control the sound and bring songfulness to the playing?

NG: The sonority depends on how you use your arm. You cannot get the right sound if the tool you have is not used in a proper way. One of his main achievements is the dissociation of non-technical and musical elements in interpretation. Everything comes together in a way, piano and pianist are one… Scaramuzza considered sonority as the ultimate aim to be achieved by the most natural means.

WB: Is Martha Argerich the perfect example of this?

NG: She is one of the best and plays in the most natural way, although Scaramuzza had many fantastic musicians among his pupils who are not known outside Argentina.

WB: Do you agree that she never plays  anything the same way twice?

NG: With Argerich, a lot depends  on the mood of the instant, but what she does is very refreshing all the time..

WB: It’s often said that she is “spontaneous” and Pollini is “intellectual” for what is worth. Yet, I have two performances of Argerich and Abbado in the G-major concerto by Ravel where she plays the last movement (presto) in 3.59 which proves that she has a concept after all?

NG: Of course she has a concept, otherwise she wouldn’t be that great! Such characterizations are often clichés.

WB: You have played with her, does she ever talk to you about solo repertoire?

NG: I don’t know about Martha playing for herself..

WB: Did you actually need more lessons with another teacher after such excellent training in Argentina?

NG: Yes, I did. I was 19 years old, Tipo brought me a lot of development of continuity.

WB: She stopped playing before the audience, why was that?

NG: She didn’t want to travel any more, it was a decision that came litte by little.

WB: Does she still teach?

NG: Occasionally, yes.

WB: Is being a pianist fun for you?

NG:  It’s my life! There is both enjoyment and suffering. I put everything in my music, it is deeply connected to what I encounter. There is probably fun too (laughs), it’s another element of life…

WB: My last question: does it matter in which hall you play?

 NG: You are always playing with the acoustics and try to adjust to a different sound world.

 

 

 

 

Details

Written by: Willem Boone

Amsterdam, 4 April 2015

His own manager “warned” me when I asked him whether he could ask Nicholas Angelich about the possibility of doing an interview: “He doesn’t read his email and he doesn’t call back”,  so it didn’t look all too promising.. However, a few days later, I received an email that he agreed. Still easier said than done, since I couldn’t get hold of him at the hotel in Amsterdam where he stayed. I then decided to try my luck and go to the concert hall in the afternoon. An employee told me he just went back to his hotel (next to the venue thank God!), where I still couldn’t find him… until I realized he was probably sitting in the restaurant. That was indeed the case. When I introduced myself, he told me he wanted to go back to the hall and rehearse until 6.30 PM, I really wasn’t too confident, but thankfully he showed up. We then had a fascinating interview that impressed me, especially because of the moving tribute he paid to his teacher Aldo Ciccolini, who passed away not long before we spoke.

Willem Boone (WB): How do you like the hall of the “Muziekcentrum aan het IJ” where you played before?

Nicholas Angelich (NA): It is a beautiful hall with a good atmosphere and a nice audience.

WB: Martha Argerich recently said that you need a hall about the size of La Salle Gaveau in Paris or the Conservatory of Milan for recitals, the others are too big. Do you agree?

NA: Probably, yes. It is a combination of things: the atmosphere counts, but also the acoustics, the instrument, how you feel at that moment. It depends on the repertoire you play. It is better to have a more intimate hall where you can project something and that has something refined at the same time.

WB: So Carnegie Hall is not a good hall for recitals?

NA: I haven’t played there, so I can’t comment. It is a very subjective matter. You can have a very good feeling in a big hall. I can’t say one hall is good and the other isn’t. If you like a certain venue, it’s like being with an old friend…..

WB: Have you played at the Philharmonie de Paris yet?

NA: I will play there next year, although I was there to rehearse. I haven’t seen the hall yet, from the outside it’s a very impressive building!

WB: Parisians often complained that they didn’t have a proper concert hall, were the Théâtre des Champs Elysées and la Salle Pleyel really that bad?

NA: I liked both very much! I was very attached to both halls for different reasons. Anyway, it is important that the Philharmonie was opened, they put a lot of work in it.

WB: I’d like to ask you a few questions about one of your teachers, Aldo Ciccolini, who recently passed away. In an interview, you said: “He helped me to become myself. At age 13, I arrived from the USA and entered his class at the Conservatoire, but it was really around my 30’s that I realised how much he had influenced me.” In what way did he influence you?

NA: It’s hard to say, I was 13 when I studied with him and it was a huge privilege to work with such an incredible artist. He was so genuine … he was a very good teacher, a “grand maître”, an impressive maestro, which is not easy to find. Around my 30’s, I understood to what extent he was important in my musical development. He gave me an outlook on a lot of different things and on life in general, also on questions such as “What is it to be a musician?” or “Why do you do this?”. He had a very specific way of looking at things and we shouldn’t forget that he came from a different time period, he had known Alfred Cortot, Marguérite Long, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli..
I admired his sense of discipline and his respect of music.  In this profession, you have to work a lot and you have to be very committed. You have to continually learn.

WB: He kept playing in spite of his bad health!

NA: Yes, he played quite a lot in recent years and he kept playing even better and better with such deep understanding! As soon as he sat at the keyboard, he was a young man. He was very useful in his energy, there was never anything blasé, he loved studying and listening to music. There are so many impressions, they are all very important to me. And most of all, he was a very humble and intelligent person!

WB: You said about his teaching that “he took his part in the event (= lessons) by playing for us himself”. Did he show you a lot at the piano?

NA: Yes, he would play a lot when there was free time. He asked me: “Do you know this?”and then he played for me.

WB: He had a huge repertoire!

NA: Incredible…

WB: Your colleague Philippe Cassard said about Ciccolini that “he put younger generations to shame with his cantabile, virtuosity, subtlety, depth, exuberance, pugnacious, almost frenetic joy that are the signs of the true epicurean.”

NA: Ciccolini was unique and someone who couldn’t be compared to other people.. His playing was quite special: you could sense that he was from a different time period and his playing was beyond fashion or trends. That’s what you should be as an artist!  He was a true artist, there was nothing pretentious about him, I can only say that he was very simple, humorous,  he had a lot of humour!
As to younger generations, it’s a question of outlook: you can understand things later in your life. Young artists are surrounded by other problems. We can always learn from the past.

WB: Maurizio Pollini once said about Ciccolini that he never had the career he deserved?

NA: O, God, I don’t know, I can’t answer this question.. Some people become famous fast and others are not interested…It depends on what happens in your life, it’s mysterious… it’s always easier to analyse later on in your life. It’s often difficult to understand what is going on in a career, it can be different things to different people..
As to Ciccolini, he was very “normal” in the best sense of the word: understandable, simple.

WB: Is it true he never slept?

NA: He was very insomniac, he spoke about it a lot.

WB: That must have been hard, because you also need to recover from all these experiences?

NA: After a concert, it’s difficult to sleep; your rhythm changes. A lot of pianists are insomniac by the way!

WB: When did you last see him?

NA: I can’t remember, I think it was last year. He was a very impressive person…

WB: He was also a very wise man I think. I interviewed him back in 2004 and I was impressed too!

NA: Yes, absolutely, he was the opposite of a “prima donna”, yet he had incredible class and statue. At the same time, he was very natural.

WB: And he wanted his students to say “tu” to him!

NA: I didn’t do that, I had a problem with that.

WB: Regarding tonight’s programme: are Beethoven and Rachmaninov good “bed fellows”?

NA: These two composers are interesting as a programme, they are very contrasted. It’s good to do something very different and to have two different sound worlds. Rachmaninov is not always well known and he has a special way of writing.

WB: In what way?

NA: Harmonically, there is nothing obvious in this music. In his younger works, he was easier to understand.

WB: Richter once said you couldn’t play anything else after opus 111, but you obviously disagree?

NA: Right after, no, but with a break it is possible! I don’t know if I want to go on with this programme. Brendel said certain pieces lead into silence, this is one of them, you need time after that..

WB: Louis Kentner once said about opus 111 that there are pianists who play the first movement well and others who play the second well, but rarely pianists who play both well. What do you think?

NA: I don’t agree, I heard several pianists who were amazing in both movements. They work together.

WB: Can we say that Beethoven was ahead of his time in this last sonata, e.g. in the jazzy variation of the second movement?

NA: He was far ahead of his time, it sounds like contemporary music, it can even be shocking. Some of his late music wasn’t even played during his lifetime and it can still be shocking..

WB: Could Beethoven have written a thirty-third sonata?

NA: No, the way it is now, there is a progression in the sonatas that is absolutely unique. The last sonatas take on a meaning.

WB: It is amazing that he could write such profound music while being completely deaf..

NA:  I think it was a necessity to write the music he wrote. The suffering of this person is very moving. It is more than human, he went beyond what was expected!

WB: Rachmaninov is sometimes called “old fashioned”, what is the reason people still play his music then?

NA: I don’t think he is old-fashioned! His music speaks to you when you are ready to invest your time and try to understand what he wrote. If you don’t believe in music, you simply shouldn’t play it! Rachmaninov was incredibly talented and versatile and he wrote beautifully for the instrument. He had something very special to say. His recordings are not old-fashioned at all, they are very modern in many ways.

WB: More modern than Horowitz?

NA: No, I don’t think so. Rachmaninov was classical in a way, he had a lot of emotions, but he always remained expressive.

WB: Why are these études called “Études tableaux”, was Rachmaninov inspired by paintings, like with the Isle of Death?

NA: It is a strange term he used. He was inspired by certain painters, but also by literary things he had read. The first of the Etudes Tableaux of opus 39 is based on a painting by Arnold Böchlin, “Le jeu des vagues”. It is a very interesting painting.

WB: Originally, you were announced in both books of Etudes-tableaux, would you consider playing both in one recital?

NA: It is a bit much for the public. It’s very long, so no, or it would have to be a different programme without Beethoven.

WB: I have a DVD, devoted to  Yvonne Loriod, where you play one of the 20 Regards in the presence of the composer. You played it very well and she is very supportive, whereas he sits there, quiet. Weren’t you terrified to play his music when he was listening?

NA: No, he was a very nice man, impressive and generous. He had a huge success in later years, a real triumph. He was almost surprised about it. It was special to play it for the person who wrote it.

WB: She was an amazing pianist too, but we hardly know her in other composers than Messiaen?

NA: Yes, she was amazing and believe me: she had a huge repertoire. She was a generous person and a very good teacher!

WB: I know you have to get ready for the recital (it was around 7.00 p.m, WB), but before I let you go, I probably have to tell you something that amazed me about a Dutch critic. He wrote in the Dutch magazine “Luister” about one of the boxed sets of the Lugano Festival that “Martha Argerich played with her son Nicholas ”,whereas she has three daughters and no son…….

NA: I didn’t know that, but I have to tell her, she’ll find it funny! You don’t have to take yourself too seriously though, you do have to take seriously what you are doing and you have to show a bit of humanity.

That’s where the interview unfortunately ended. Something unexpected happened: Nicholas Angelich shook my hand and said: “We’ll have to talk some more, when you are in Paris” Needless to say that I am more than interested and I do go to Paris from time to time, so who knows there will be a longer interview….