Music – It Has To Become Part of Me – An Interview with Piotr Anderszewski

This interview was conducted in 2011 in Salzburg and initially appeared as part of the long-defunct and deleted Classical WETA blog. I have rescucitated it now, to go with a Critic's Notebook review of a recital of Piotr Anderszewski's at the Musikverein.

Piano troubles? Piotr Anderszewski is preparing in the Mozarteum his concert later that night and is interrupted not just by me—late for my interview, coming from another interview and having gotten the time wrong—but by technicians that need to move the piano he had been playing on to another room. He near-imperceptibly rolls his eyes to an equally faint smile and sits down for a quick chat. Being late already, I lose no time: Are you a pianist or a musician?

P.A.: Hmhmmmmmmmmm. He takes a short while to take the question in, assess its treachery, and then continues quickly, almost as if in free verse: More musician than pianist / but even musician / I’m not sure / if I’m a musician… / Pianist / definitely not.

Did you start out with the piano?

P.A.: Yes. Well, I started composing a little bit, actually.

Before you took up the piano?

P.A.: Well, together with the piano. But I was more interested in the composition part and listening to music than I was actually fascinated by the instrument itself. It never really interested very much.

But it’s the way you can express yourself best in music, so that’s why you do it?

P.A.: Ahhhhhh, I guess yes… and it’s the most complete instrument, the most, maybe complex, in a way… and also the repertoire, you know, is so amazing and I think I would feel very frustrated on any other instrument.

Where you ever fascinated by the idea of playing the organ?

P.A.: I played the organ a little bit, yeah…” he says with distinct lack of enthusiasm… “yeah… uhh…” he winds down to a faint grunt before hitting upon a new thought and continues with unexpected vigor: “What I liked about the organ is the setting, the beautiful church, and there is this huge echo, and this whole atmosphere and this I like very much. But the piano has this incredible capacity of suggesting, you know. It can suggest singing—which is astonishing for a percussive instrument. It is an instrument about giving the illusion. And it’s truly a magical instrument. And I mean in a bad sense, as well. It’s a dangerous instrument, because it’s not real. The piano, if you look at the mechanism, at how it works… how to activate the whole mechanism just in order to produce the sound: it’s complex but extremely easy compared to, for example, the violin. Just extremely easy, you know. But then there’s everything that happens between the notes. How do you balance the chords? How do you space notes? It’s very, very… it’s a very mysterious instrument, I think. Why, for example, does one pianist play one note and another plays the same note and it sounds completely, completely different. Despite this mechanism where you’d think you would have very little impact on the outcome. But, in fact you, have a huge impact.

How do you satisfy your own desire for a certain sound?

P.A.: It’s of course linked to the music I play. For me, for example, when I work, when I practice, I always practice with the instrument. When you asked the first question, ‘are you a pianist’… frankly, I didn’t know what to say because in a way, yes, I am. I know some colleagues who study scores and they study it on the train or in the plane and they can really study their piece without actually touching the instrument, without actually activating the sound.

[He gets distracted for a moment by the worry that there is milk in the tea that is approaching—but there is not.]

For me, practicing the score doesn’t make any sense. I cannot—I tried… but for me it’s the score and immediately I have to hear it… it has to be both. I cannot practice on the piano without the score, either. For me it doesn’t work to practice the piano without looking at what I am playing in terms of the score.

Because…?

P.A.: He squirms a bit: Ahyhhhww I don’t know, I need to have this connection of both, of what is written… Now I’m speaking not as an improviser or composer but an interpreter of a certain piece. I need to be in touch with the text, always.

Do you use the music when you play?

P.A.: No. Not during the concert.

Would you like to, if the audience didn’t care?

P.A.: No. I prefer not to use it. The performance is something else, you try to forget… try to forget everything, it’s a state of amnesia of sorts, in the best sense. The more I forget, the better I play.

So you distill the enormous complexities of a score into an impression which you then interpret?

P.A.: Yes… I suppose. Yes. It’s… there has to be the visual contact, somehow. It’s what the composer left us, so there needs to be this material contact. At the end of the day that’s all we’ve got. Of course we have biographies and we know about a composers’ life, more or less, but then practically what we are left with is the manuscript. Or a good edition, at least. And then that’s like a—how to say—it’s just like a drawing. Like a code that you need to decrypt. That you need to translate, actually properly translate, into the world of sounds. So I need to look at while I am translating, while I am doing the work, while I am deciding… I need to see this and be in touch with this text, even though I know it by heart, of course. For me, memorizing is not such an issue… the work really only starts when actually the music is memorized.

Are there any contemporary composer you particularly cherish, either to listen to or to play or both…

P.A.: Hmmm… not really. Honestly, somehow in the last years I haven’t explored this at all, you know. And, frankly, I don’t know why.

But you must be approached by composers?

P.A.: I’ve been approached, people send me scores… but I just feel saturated with all these possibilities… there’s so much already in the classical repertoire I feel I need to do and taking one small piece, taking a Chopin Mazurka, for example, it’s sometimes months of practice for me. I learn rather slowly and deciding to commit to a piece to learn a piece is a big decision for me because I know I will spend months and probably years with this. It’s sort of, well, it’s not a marriage, but almost. I internalize it, somehow—it has to become part of me. So it’s a very, very intimate process; basically a decision about who I let into my life. I don’t know why I am like this. I see other colleagues of mine that have a much lighter approach: ‘Well, it’s just a piece of music and you try to do it as well as you can.’ And for me, it really seems to affect me very personally and very deeply. Every piece has to become myself, somehow, otherwise I just cannot interpret a piece if I don’t have this feeling.

Is there a Liszt-piece you have ever internalized?

P.A.: No… Never. Not a composer that speaks to me, particularly. But maybe… you never know, these things change.

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Photo #2 © K.Miura (2007)

A Radio Interview About Othmar Schoeck

Deal Hudson of Ave Maria Radio's Church and Culture (tagline: "Church and Culture engages all aspects of our culture with the aim of discussing "cultural apologetics.") was kind enough to have me on his show to talk "Schoeck", dedicating an hour's worth of airtime to the Swiss composer - with a focus on his masterpiece, Notturno... and studded with plenty of excerpts from his music.

Church and Culture – July 28, 2018 – Hour 1 – Music critic Jens F. Laurson introduces the music of late romantic composer Othmar Schoeck

Schoeck on ionarts, Surprised by Beauty & Forbes:

Christian Gerhaher, Othmar Schoeck – A Love Story

Best Recordings of 2009 (#2)

Best Recordings of 2013 (#4)

Christopher Maltman: Truly, truly, truly a Masterpiece

Forbes Classical CD of the Week: Schoecking Beauty From Switzerland

Surprised by Beauty, Othmar Schoeck – Recommended Recordings

Hairy Matters—Classical Performance, Criticism and Coiffure: The Daniel Müller-Schott Interview (Supplementary Post)

The issue of performer-and-hair has recently come up on an instagram conversation thread of the always interesting fellow writer, obsessed listener, and musical explorer "foreignwords" (he also runs the podcast & website Fugue for Thought), where cellist Carmine Miranda, having just joined the social media world, found a mention of himself regarding his recording of the Dvořák and Schumann cello concertos which he took exception to. I had made the comment and was briefly the subject of his vented ire. (We've since made up.) More on this in a separate (and perhaps future) posts here on ionarts and on Forbes.com. But to open this series of tangentially hair-related classical music posts first this interview with Daniel Müller-Schott conducted a few years ago for WETA.

Resurrected WETA Post: A Brief Conversation with Daniel Müller-Schott, originally posted on Monday, 3.14.2011

Daniel Müller-Schott is the kind of musician I have always expected very little of, and in doing so always ended up positively surprised. Something that without fail would repeat at the next concert or recital or recording, which I will again have approached with limitless lack of enthusiasm, only to be pleasantly touched once more.  It’s hard to figure out quite why that is. Perhaps the reason is as shallow and silly as my intense dislike of that hideous pony tail he sported in his earlier days. Well, that pony tail is long gone and I operate on the firm presumption and hope that his concert at Strathmore this Wednesday with the NHK Symphony Orchestra of Japan and his buddy André Previn will be full of pleasant surprises. I’ve talked to him earlier this month, starting with the concerto-rarities by Robert Volkmann and Joseph Joachim Raff which are part of his extensive discography:

R.Volkmann & R.Schumann, Cello Concertos Daniel Müller-Schott / C.Eschenbach / NDRSO Orfeo J.J.Raff, Cello Concertos Daniel Müller-Schott / H.Stadlmair / Bamberg SO Tudor J.J.Raff, Cello Concertos Daniel Müller-Schott / H.Stadlmair / Bamberg SO Tudor

Hmm, yes, those are of course little jewels in the repertoire that are, unfortunately, very unknown. For me it was fascinating to search for composers that have almost been forgotten in our time but who were very popular at the time of the romantic era where the audiences enjoyed them tremendously. I found Robert Volkmann’s name when I was looking through the archives researching Robert Schumann. They knew and liked each other and they had exchanged letters and this is how I stumbled on the Volkmann concerto. And when I studied the piece and looked for extant recordings, I found out that my cello had already recorded it at the beginning of the last century. So this is the second recording on my “Ex-Földesy” Goffriller cello which was another nice inspiration for me. That cellist was Arnold Földesy, solo cellist of the Berlin Philharmonic before becoming soloist, and one of his first recordings—at a time when the recording industry was only just getting under way—was the Volkmann concerto.

The Raff recording—with Hans Stadlmair and the Bamberg Orchestra—came about when I was traveling in Switzerland where I happened across the name of Joachim Raff on one of the programs. And then I got into a conversation with a person from the Raff Society and found out that the amount of works that Raff has written in his life is just humungous and that’s what kept me interest to look for the cello repertoire and so I found the two cello concertos. And I think that the second one had never been recorded before. I’m always glad to look into repertoire that is less well known… because otherwise it’s always the same big concertos—the Dvořák, the Schumann, Elgar, maybe Shostakovich, Haydn…  And there’s much more than that, of course.  Of course in our time Mstislav Rostropovich has inspired so many composers… I think the works for cello and orchestra alone that are dedicated to him number more than 70. There’s a lot to study, still.

Are there any other concertos that you are looking at to add to your repertoire or have already added and would like to record?

Yes… Myaskovsky is something that I studied and would love to play. And there are several pieces by American composers I’d like to study: The Barber concerto, Viktor Herbert’s who inspired Dvořák to write his. Then I love Britten’s Cello Symphony which I am also going to record this year, so yes, there’s a lot to explore in the future. And of course I always enjoy premiering pieces. Actually, André Previn has just written a cello concerto for me which is going to be premiered in Leipzig with the Gewandhaus Orchestra later this year.

You record CDs… do you actually listen to them?

Once I’ve actually completed the work and listened to the final edits I very rarely listen to my own recordings. It’s a very intense process: studying the work, recording it, and editing it—to find the right takes… and after I’m finished, I’m pretty much done with it. Sometimes I’m surprised when I’m in the car and I listen to the radio and I hear a cellist and when it’s me I sometimes don’t even notice. And then I am happy to hear that it was one of my recordings.

Hopefully happy to hear… “Yes,” he chuckles, “yeah… hmmm. Most of the time.”

Is being a cellist a handicap when listening to other cellists, perhaps because you might constantly think: ‘Why, I would do this or that differently…’?

Yes, there is of course a tendency when you listen to other cellists that you always have a certain idea in your head about some interpretations. But then you also have to be able to step aside from your own view of the music and be very open to other ideas and to respect what the other cellists do. Because everyone tries—they all try—we all try our best and we want to get best results for the music and to support the composer and get out what he presumably had in his mind. So I think it’s very important to basically worship what other cellists do and to learn from that.

Is that easier when the cellist in question is dead?

Maybe. Maybe. I suppose it’s easier to think about the legacy of a cellist—like Feuermann or Casals or Rostropovich—if he has passed away… which makes it even more attractive in a way. But since music is always living in the moment you also have go to concerts which represents so more of the whole creative process which is why it’s such an important experience. I try to actually learn from both, old recordings and from going to concerts and listen to my colleagues, which is something I enjoy. And among the dead ones I like Pierre Fournier a lot. I think he was one of the most elegant and complete masters of his instrument and he always played it in a wonderful style. And I also really like Emmanuel Feuermann who is a great virtuoso on the instrument and who has also the lightest touch to the instrument. That’s something that has always influenced me. And of course I love the old Bach recordings by Casals. I think these recordings will always remain one of the greatest achievements.

One of your very first recordings were the Bach Suites. Was that a little gutsy, in retrospect, doing it quite that early?

Yes, well… it was probably good to do it that early because I didn’t at all think about it. At that time—it was the year 2000, the 250^th Bach anniversary year—I just had, in my youthful naïveté I just had the idea of doing the Bach cycle. I wanted to play all the six Suites and really try to master them. When I started playing the cello, I started with the First Suites after only a year of lessons, so I felt that the Bach Suites really was the music I had spent the most time with. I didn’t really think about a recording, it just happened that when I programmed the recital—I played it throughout the year 2000—someone heard me in a concert with the cycle and offered me the recording and then I just said ‘OK, why not’.

A few words about the opening of the Elgar concerto:

The opening of the Elgar Concerto is something so monumental in a way… and also tragic. You try to really bring out those chords as passionately as possible, of course. Of course this concerto very autumnal and melancholic, but it also has great moments of virtuosity and joy. It’s really the complexity of it that makes it challenging. I don’t think of other interpretations when I play this piece, which is really one of the last great romantic statements. I always try to go back to the score and re-study it. And when you play this piece with different musicians—now with André I have recorded this concerto in Oslo and we really worked really hard on it—you always also take on the influence of the person you work with.  And now I am really looking forward to playing it at Strathmore Hall—a fantastic hall where until now I’ve only been a listener, never a performer.


[The—truly superb—Volkmann Concerto is included on a disc on ORFEO that also features the Schumann concerto, Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, and Richard Strauss’ Romance in F for Cello and Orchestra. The NDR Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Christoph Eschenbach. Listen to a brief excerpt from the concerto's opening above.]

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Bernstein via Angers: John Axelrod in Conversation (2011)

Originally published on WETA's website, Tuesday, 5.31.11, in anticipation of the Axelrod-led NSO concerts of Leonard Bernstein’s “Kaddish Symphony”, with text and narration by Samuel Pisar, June 2nd, 3rd and 4th of 2011. Re-posting of this account was largely inspired by this brilliant, marvelously honest and superbly written article in the Houston Press from Shaila Dewan: "Perfect Pitch". I could only wish that anything I have ever or will ever write would still ring so true twenty years later!

Angers is a small and picturesque town to the west of Paris in the Pays de la Loire region with about 160,000 inhabitants, cute (or bountiful) enough to attract ransacking Vikingsin the 9^th century. In its center rises the impressive Cathedral Saint-Maurice of Angers, begun in Romanesque style a thousand years ago and – after fiery interruptions and setbacks – finished in Gothic garb early in the 13^thcentury.

In it the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire performed Hector Berlioz’L’enfance du Christ, some time last month. To be precise, it was the Nantes-division of the bipartite Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire; the Anger division was busy playing film music at an Anger theater that night. Conducting the ONPL was their current music director, Houston-born John Axelrod, “America’s most unknown great conductor”. Or was it “America’s greatest unknown conductor”? That may not be a direct quote, but more or less the gist of his introductory remarks when we meet up after the concert, over the comforting fare of a few Belgian beers and pizza. Intriguing… of sorts.

That concert—Delphine Haidan (mezzo), Donat Havar (tenor), Stefano Palatchi (bass), and a familiar voice from his Washington appearances, baritone François LeRoux were the soloists—was impossible to judge after a tiresome trip to Angers via Paris. With four hours of sleep and eight hours of flying and riding through the countryside (I dream of train-travelling bliss by way of combining French high-speed rail tracks with German trains one day… until then the crammed discomfort of the TGV has to suffice), even the best performance of L’enfance du Christ would have been

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Eight Questions for Daniil Trifonov

Here’s a brief interview with Daniil Trifonov at the Wiener Konzerthaus, before a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Gianandrea Noseda on November 11^th. Eight questions (the Ninth question, how he liked Questionnaires, didn't somehow work as intended, which could, in truth, be said of several of the questions) that we might pose to other artists, should the occasion arise. The transcript is below.

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Philippe Herreweghe on Haydn and why Making Records Makes Sense

 In a soft, lightly French accented English (except for “Bruckner” and “Mahler”, which he pronounces with a notable Dutch inflection), Philippe Herreweghe sat down after rehearsals with the Salzburg Camerata for their concerts at the Konzerthaus to talk about music. Not Beethoven, or Chopin, which he would go on to perform (and play the hell out of), but Haydn.

Haydn.

Yes!... ?

Is Haydn underrated in a way? Or neglected perhaps? How important is he really in Music?

Well, I have played a lot of Haydn and next week, for example, I am making a recording of

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The Profound Existentialism of Charles Ives: Kent Nagano in Conversation

Kent Nagano, picture © Felix Broede

Vienna. Kent Nagano waits patiently in the Hotel Lobby. The second I sit down for a quick little interview, the Hotel Lobby pianist, right next to us, starts tickling the ivory. If hotel pianism weren’t already annoying enough on its own (if there’s a special place in Hell reserved for Hotel Pianism… that, presumably, would be everywhere), it’s sure grating when you are trying to listen in on the your vis-à-vis in a conversation. Even more so, when that vis-à-vis is as unhurriedly, unfazedly soft-spoken as Kent Nagano.

I thought Charles Ives would be a nice thing to talk about.

Ok.

When I left for the States, I wasn’t even aware of Anglo composers except for Handel and perhaps Elgar. But there, the approach to classical music—perhaps for lack of a history in it as old as each European country’s history—seemed to be refreshingly egalitarian. Or perhaps I was just older and more curious. And the very American composer Charles Ives certainly is an oddity even in the States. And I found that sometimes the avant-gardists like to grab him and make him a proto-avant-gardist. I never found that particularly helpful. But then neither were recordings I listened to. It just always went over my head. The Concord Sonata you can listen to on record and find wonderful or intriguing or wonderfully ludicrous at first. The orchestral works, however, I didn’t find doing it for me on record. Then I started hearing Ives live, more and more, fortunately. And I was enamored. Fascinating stuff. In a way the “American Mahler”. And yet it’s so different from Mahler in that it never seems calculated for effect. When clusters and different worlds of sound meet in Ives, it doesn’t strike me to be constructed for the connoisseur to discern what exactly is going on under the hood. It’s like a big stew of sound, hurled at you… and then you smell it, rather than necessarily listen to it.

Your comments sound like some of the critical writing about Gustav Mahler…

…the critical writings that are now mocked?

Yes. [He eases the “Yes” with a very mild chuckle.]

“I don’t mean it in a derogatory way at all”, I assure Nagano, who is happy to assure me he understands… kindof.

I think, maybe, Americans hear Ives differently. Maybe. Actually, that’s not true. Maybe now in the 21^st century we can begin to hear Ives differently than we did before because… [the Pianist unnerves us] …but what Ives wrote was in many ways so visionary such that today the techniques he introduced are just simply a part of our normal sound-fabric that we interact with constantly. For us as Americans, or at least I, as an American, when I hear Ives I hear the United States of America. And I hear Canada. I hear all of North America. I think probably I also hear the ties of North America to Europe, because his formation, his training was directly tied to the European tradition. And he was a contemporary of Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, the Second Viennese School. And you can hear that somehow, that time of going over the century… from the 19^th to the 20^th century. But you can also hear tremendous optimism, a sense of joy, you hear the strength and power of nature and the inconsequence of mankind, you hear profound existentialism…

[At this point Kent Nagano’s Montreal Symphony Orchestra assistant worked up the courage and very gently asked the pianist if he might not forgo his musical duties for some twenty minutes or play John Cage’s famous 20’33”, instead]

of a young country. That somehow has its ties and roots to another land, far away. I feel all of that, just for me, it is the sound of some sort of spiritual Klang… of what the great hope is of the new world. And it’s, as I’ve said before, this particular sound or Klang also, you hear Europe behind it. What is for me, anyway, so profoundly

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Via Wiener Konzerthaus: «Excess, but not Excessive» — Interview with Marin Alsop

One of the first interviews on ionarts was with Maestra Alsop (“Maestra Talks a Little: Ionarts Interview with Marin Alsop”. About eight years later (on Friday, April 4th, 2014, prior to her concert with the ORF Symphony Orchestra, performing Leonard Bernstein's «Jeremiah» and Mahler's First Symphony, to be precise) I had the opportunity to sit down with her again, to interview her briefly about this and that, including Mahler and Ives and Haydn and Bach. (See video below) The post on the Konzerthaus Magazine includes a Spotify Playlist of select and favorite recordings of Marin Alsop's.

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Anton Webern, Langsamer Satz, and the Belcea Quartet

…Krzysztof Chorzelski, the violist of the Belcea Quartet bemoans at the Dinner after their performance in the Mozart Saal that he missed the Camerata Salzburg with Philippe Herreweghe performing Beethoven and Chopin the night they were giving their first of their two Purcell-Haydn-Britten recitals. “If I had known, I would have gone to that concert instead” he laughs. “It’s so frustrating to play String Quartet all the time and miss concerts like that.” If he had arrived a day earlier, taken a little more time, we suggest, he could have caught the first performance without playing hookey from his own gig. “I think that’s what we’re planning to do in the future, actually”, he responds in earnest. And follows up eagerly: “Is there something we shouldn’t miss on the night we arrive next time?”

We excitedly tell Chorzelski about the Freiburger Barockorchester and their titillating all-Schumann Concerto nights with Alexander Melnikov, Isabelle Faust, and Jean-Guihen Queyras and his eyes light up. “Nice. What a fantastic lineup. What a fantastic thing to play all the concertos. Is it on the 24th, or 25th?” It takes a while until we realize that we’re talking April, while the Belcea Quartet next date with Piotr Anderszewski (Webern, Beethoven, Shostakovich) is already this month. The concert they will miss instead is the first of the two San Francisco Symphony performances. Chorzelski knows about it already: “Ah, the one with Julia Fischer playing Prokofiev.” That’s quality stuff, but the hidden gem of interest could well be the Charles Ives “Concord Sonata”, orchestrated. (Well, one movement at least.) “Oh my God! That’s amazing. I heard the Concord Sonata once live, with Pierre-Laurent Aimard…” With or without the…” “With the flute, yes! Wow, it’s a fantastic idea.”


The idea was to talk about Anton Webern’s Langsamer Satz, but now we’re solidly side-tracked on Ives. I confess to never quite having …

Continue here, at the Konzerthaus Magazin.

Through Labor and Love: Weinberg, War and PersecutionInterview with Julia Rebekka Adler

[July 2010] An article about violist Julia Rebekka Adler could easily, rewardingly turn into an article on Mieczysław Weinberg instead. For one, it is Weinberg to whom she has pinned her hat, whose viola sonatas she has now torn from obscurity into the (narrowly focused) spot-light of well-regarded niche repertoire, and to whose music she very obviously responds. Further, she is genuinely diffident and prefers to talk just about anything but herself. And even her engaging husband and de-facto manager (an immunologist at the National Research Center for Environment and Health during daylight hours), who is supposed to make up for his wife’s self-effacing reluctance, feels so passionately about Weinberg’s music—and music in general—that he can’t praise her achievements at the exclusion of others’, or without getting side-tracked by his excitement for this or that composition or musical discovery. Thank goodness—because there is nothing more tedious than having to sit through the professionally deluded, tunnel-visioned ravings of a mother-manager, parent-publicist, or spousal spinmeister.

Happily I don’t even have to do the raving about her Weinberg CD—although I enjoy and admire it very much—because Jerry Dubins has already done that in his review for Fanfare. He also repeats, with hyperbolic enthusiasm, the basic information on Weinberg and the press-kit ready quotes (if she had one) about Mme. Adler, including very kind ones from Hartmut Rohde, her onetime teacher. She’s won lots of competitions, of course, and has studied with Kim Kashkashian and Yuri Bashmet. But what does that count for, if you are only a violist? She’s the assistant concert master of the Munich Philharmonic and that seals her reputation. Being an orchestra violist must necessarily—?—define the way audiences, critics, colleagues look at her and her playing. After all, back-benching in an orchestra, even if it is in the ‘assistant solo viola’ position, and not actually in the back, is the safe way out for those who don’t dare strive for more. For those who think good is good enough. For those who prefer the comfort of a 9-5 job (unfireable, at that) over the adventure that is music.

None of that is actually true in the case of Julia Rebekka Adler, but such convenient stereotypes—all of them exist for a reason—can only be overcome by better getting to know the person behind the symbolism of position, instrument, and career. Julia Mai, then still performing under her maiden name, was into competitions, and successfully. But eventually she saw herself faced with the choice between the alluring opportunity of the job at the Munich Philharmonic or taking out substantial loans to be able to afford to…

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Interview with Kaija Saariaho

Video and transcript/translation of Johannes Baumann’s interview with Kaija Saariaho in Istanbul at the Borusan Arts & Culture Foundation’s Music House on the day of the world premiere of her piece for violin and electronics, Frises. (Review here.) Because Mme. Saariaho didn’t feel comfortable with an interview being conducted solely in German, I happily volunteered to facilitate or translate where necessary. In return I got to sneak in a few questions of my own. Johannes Baumann runs VioWorld, a Germany-based employment website for culture and especially orchestra jobs all around the world.

Transcript below the jump

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Laurie Rubin's Technicolor Dreams

L. Rubin, Do You Dream in Color? (2012) Do You Dream in Color?, L. Rubin, M. Stroke, N. Sivan (released on February 14, 2012)

Mezzo-soprano Laurie Rubin is coming to Washington next week, to give a free recital at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage (October 22, 6 pm). While she is in town, she will speak on the radio to Diane Rehm and Bob Edwards and give a private performance at the National Endowment for the Arts. Rubin has just released a solo CD on the Bridge label, which includes her performances of two new song groupings composed for her, including one by composer Bruce Adolphe on poetry that Rubin also wrote. The event at the Kennedy Center coincides conveniently with the release of her new memoir, Do You Dream in Color? All of these are noteworthy achievements for a singer in her 30s, but Laurie Rubin wants, more than anything else, for her achievements to make a difference in the minds of decision makers in the music world, so that they will give other singers like her a chance.

Laurie Rubin was born blind. She discovered that she had loved singing and was good at it, so she went to music school, at Oberlin and for graduate studies at Yale. Among her many performances are some roles in staged operas, including the extensive solo part in Poulenc's La Voix Humaine. How does she do what she does? I reached Rubin on the phone in Hawaii, where she lives, earlier this week to find out.

How do you learn new music? Do you work from braille scores?

I do almost everything by ear. I read the texts of new music I am learning in braille, including in foreign languages. I got into reading braille music too late, I think, so it was hard to adapt to. I understood how music looked from having people describe it to me, but I always did things by ear. Sometimes I listen to recordings, a selection of them, a lot of different recordings, to make sure that I do not learn another singer's occasional mistakes. The music I have been performing a lot of recently, new music, is more difficult, because there are no recordings. Composers have made MIDI files for me, which are absolutely precise in terms of pitch and rhythm. Sometimes I record my learning and rehearsal sessions with the composer. It actually goes rather quickly, and it is not that different from what lots of musicians do regularly.

What was it like to write the poetry for the new song cycle, Do You Dream in Color?

It was pretty amazing. At that point, I had worked with other composers, but this was the first time that someone had asked me to write lyrics. I really wanted audiences to understand what happens in my life, which is something that you cannot really talk about under normal circumstances. It's like this big white elephant in the room. I am not really a poet, so it gave me pause at first, but the words flowed out so easily. It was apparently something I had wanted to express for a long time.

How closely do you listen to yourself when you sing? Do you think you hyper-focus on the sound of your voice more than singers who can see?

In a way I might be. For me my voice is the main means of expression. I have never seen body language, so for me the voice is the way I express. All of the singers I love and emulate -- Frederica von Stade, Plácido Domingo, Janet Baker -- I love the sound of their voices. I try to be a visual performer, to show what I feel also in my face. It is something that I have had to work on a lot over the years, but what I really care about is vocal color.

You have sung Poulenc’s La voix humaine and Penelope in Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria on stage. What other roles would you most like to sing?

Both of those roles are vulnerable women, which is perhaps what led the director even to think about casting me. There are roles that I will never do, because they require too much movement, like Carmen, but other roles seem more likely. I would love to sing Romeo in I Capuleti e i Montecchi. I love all his arias. Massenet’s Cendrillon. Debussy's Mélisande -- another fragile woman. Any Handel opera, and Monteverdi. I love Orfeo and The Coronation of Poppea.

What do you hope people will take away from your performances?

I hope now that conductors think more deeply, more creatively, about working with people with disabilities, and not just blind people. Opera characters do not have to be perfect people physically. After a while, the character is just the character. I hope that other musicians will think about that more openly, be willing to jump into the experience, and learn more about it.

Christian Gerhaher, Othmar Schoeck – A Love Story

On the occasion of Christian Gerhaher's release of Schoenberg's "The Book of the Hanging Gardens" (Sony, June 26 2012), here's a rescued and republished article from the WETA column:

What does “romantic” in music really mean? It is easy to use to describe music as ‘romantic’, precisely because it is such a broad concept that it is almost never wrong. From Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony via Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, to Richard Strauss and Arnold Schoenberg, “romantic” is the word. Now add an organ symphony by Widor, ChopinÉtudes, a Tchaikovsky opera, a Rachmaninoff concerto… “romantic” all. It’s easy to see the phrase as a cop-out, even when enriched with clarifications like “French-” or “Classical-” or “late-romantic”. But it remains a ubiquitous phrase all the same, because it does have its uses. It’s at the very least a broadly common denominator that reader and the struggling music-journalist share. If the composer died before 1830 and his music is described as romantic we know not to expect some Amadeus-come-lately; if he was born after 1890 we need not fear strict atonality or aleatoric music.

Schoeck: Notturno – 1. Ruhig – Mertens & Minguet Quartet (excerpt)

Describing Othmar Schoeck’s Notturno (1931-33) as romantic is fairly useless in the sense that it won’t prepare one for what the music actually sounds like… it would mislead. But describing the work for string quartet and baritone (a rare combination very likely inspired by Schoenberg’s 1908 String Quartet op.10) as romantic is essential to understanding it. Notturno is the epitome of extreme, late romantic music; the squeezing of chromaticism and the stretching of our common harmonic understanding to, and often beyond, the breaking point.

Schoeck: Notturno – 2. Presto – Gerhaher & Rosamunde Quartet (excerpt)

The difference is similar to describing Webern’s Langsamer Satz as ‘romantic’ (it still, very obviously, is) and the contemporaneous Berg Sonata op.1 as ‘romantic’. (It certainly is, but not at all so obviously.) What makes the difference between perceiving Berg’s op.1 as an early exercise in pantonalism and perceiving it as an achingly beautiful, wistful romantic statement heavy with the airs of Viennese coffee-house atmosphere, is the ability to keep the notes ‘in the air’, in your RAM(Random Access Memory) if you will, and recall them when the notes that give them their proper context finally arrive. It’s chromatic, but with incredibly long, intertwined lines. I can think of no better analogy than a thoroughly constructed, impressive German sentence the length of two paragraphs (think Kant) where, to paraphrase Mark Twain, you won’t know the meaning until the writer, who dives into a sentence, emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb between his teeth.

Schoeck: Notturno – 3. Unruhig & Bewegt – Gerhaher & Rosamunde Quartet (excerpt)

O.Schoeck, Notturno, C.Gerhaher / Rosamunde Quartet ECM O.Schoeck / R.Zechlin, Notturno / Hamlet Fragments, K.Mertens / Minguet Quartet NCA

If you hold out for the long elusive ‘verbs’ in Berg’s sonata, they will then fall into place and make harmonic sense where previously there was only dissonance. Now I can gainfully say that Notturnoought to be understood as a romantic work, namely in the sense of Berg’s op.1 or his Lyric Suite. Perhaps you know Schoeck’s Elegie, which might make the Swiss composer seem more like a pocket-sized Richard Strauss; Four-Last-Songs-au-miniature, with a shorter attention span and a sense of very amiable sameness. I likeElegie very much, but Notturno is a different caliber composition in every sense. Notturno pushes boundaries, while Elegie confirms them (from the safe side). Notturno is stern stuff for those expecting more Strauss than Berg, and when Christian Gerhaher and the Rosamunde Quartet performed the work at the Dachau Palace concert series two, three years back, there was a small but steady trickle of audience members who voted against Schoeck (1858-1947, James Joyce’s favorite composer) with their feet.

Schoeck: Notturno – 4. Ruhig & Leise – Mertens & Minguet Quartet (excerpt)

Schoeck would seem to please anyone who is also inclined to the likes of Raff,Rheinberger, Zemlinsky, Reznicek, Schreker, Pfitzner, Marx, Wellesz, Krenekand the like (I’m casting my net deliberately wide)… but Notturno, eight poems by Nikolaus Lenau and a short text by Gottfried Keller in five movements, flirts with the outer, ‘a-tonal’, harmonic reaches from a late-romantic vantage point. It is played with the utmost precision if those long horizontal lines are to be revealed, if the listener is to be able to follow the long, thin strands of music that wind through the score, emerging and submerging – in and out of audibility but with Schoeck’s melodiousness-stretched-to-vanishing always felt. To achieve this effect, the players must not count beats but ‘feel’ their way from phrase to phrase. At least that’s Schoeck’s hyper-romanticism in theory.

Schoeck: Notturno – 5. Rasch & Kräftig (Quasi Recit.) – Gerhaher & Rosamunde Quartet (excerpt)

It isn’t an easy work and the usually excellent, now defunct, Rosamunde Quartet was rather off that night at the Dachau concert, with the first violinist missing much of the potential beauty. But even so, it was obvious what a magnificent piece this is, once one has gotten (to) it. It’s of such fragile and faint beauty; it is so intense despite its thinly woven strands—moments in the fifth movement is as if suspended in mid-air—shimmering of all the colors of tearful yearning. Gerhaher and the quartet took their time in the recording process, and the result is devoid of the flaws the performance was held back by. Gerhaher, in any case, was and is perfect for the role. The dark subject and mood of the poem is right up his alley, and his extraordinarily unaffected voice means that it is only a small, effortless step to the sprechgesang that Notturno demands. That’s a step Gerhaher can go back and forth unnoticed, because he has hit upon artlessness as great art. Whether he is aware of it or not (I reckon the latter), he is unsurpassed at this.

It’s the inclusion of Gerhaher that possibly gives the ECM recording (#2 in the ionarts “Best of 2009“) a marginal edge over the splendid performance of the Minguet Quartet (who seem a bit more at ease with the ‘romantic’ strain inNotturno than the Rosamunde Quartet) with Klaus Mertens on the small and creative NCA (“New Classical Adventure”) label.

When I spoke to Christian Gerhaher on a wet and cold February afternoon in Salzburg in 2009, he had just finished the recording, but wasn’t sure when the disc would be released.”It’s difficult to place and market a recording like that because the work has only a small circle of admirers. But I think it turned out quite well and should be able to enthuse people. But I reckon that [ECM tries] to time it together with some concerts or small tours. Then again, touring with Schoeck is really almost inconceivable – it’s more likely going to be individual concerts here and there.”

O.Schoeck, Elegie, Mutare Ensemble / K.Mertens NCA

Gerhaher, who always seems stern and with a little black, troubling cloud hovering over him, has a somber enthusiasm all of his own, and he warms up – relatively speaking – talking about Notturno: “Schoeck’s music is unbelievably beautiful music, but it’s a difficult mix. All in all it’s late romantic music, but these melodies… melodically it’s a-tonal. Wrapping your ears around it takes a while; I don’t think you can grasp the work upon first hearing. It has immense depth and what is so great about it, looking at the temporal aspect, is how much time these movements get to develop. There’s a similar work of Schoeck’s, Elegie for chamber orchestra and baritone, which is roughly as long, perhaps even longer… but separated in oh-I-don’t-know-how-many movements. Twenty? Twenty-four? [24 is right.] And when you start splitting this comparable music into such small bits, it doesn’t quite manage to come across, I think. Well, I don’t cherish Elegie as much as Notturno at any rate. Notturno is an absolute solitaire – there is no comparable work. There are several lighter, brighter works of Schoeck, too… easily digestible songs, and then a few that dig deeper, too. But not that many… and none so immensely rasping and pricklish as the Notturno.”

Gerhaher continues on the topic, and even where it isn’t technically about Notturno, what he says (and how) is so felt, that one could neither interrupt him, nor now cut the ensuing plea for great art:

“Well, there’s an ‘Italian Songbook’ by Joseph Marx with the same lineup – including baritone – and Resphigi’s Tramonto, but that’s not really for baritone. Then there is Dover Beach of Barber, but those are all small pieces. And in any case, nothing is comparable to the Notturno. I don’t know the Marx yet, but I’m trying to get to know it at some point… perhaps it could be combined in concert with the Schoeck. Then again, that will probably be a futile exercise, too. It is really difficult to find something to build a program around Notturno. We’re now trying to perform it in the first half and then in the second half some Berg and Mahler and Berg again – Seven Early Songs, a few Mahler songs and then theAltenberg Lieder or – that was my idea – Haydn… But that’s pretty experimental, too: first of all to do the Altenberg Songs with piano… and then with a baritone, for which they lie awfully high. You just have to see what works. Maybe Schoenberg’s Book of Hanging Gardens. But that’ll be one of those programs where only a few people will show up, and with even fewer actually enjoying themselves.”

A.Schoenberg, Songs, Glenn Gould & D.Gramm, E.Faull, H.Vanni, C.Opthof Sony Schoenberg, Beethoven, Berg, HaydnAn die Ferne Geliebte, Hanging Gardens et al., Christian Gerhaher, Gerold Huber Sony

“That’s partly the trouble with all these borderline romantics… think Reger or Pfitzner: when you first lunge at it, there’s a lot of enthusiasm present… but after some scrutiny there remains less substance – for me personally – than one would like there to be left. It ends up not having quite the profundity nor – this something I love so much about the Notturno – this cyclical character. That’s the thing that you don’t find anywhere else. True, great cycles of that sort don’t exist anymore, anyway… Of genuine cycles that have a proper cyclical conception, that can sustain their idea and sustain the tension, there are soooo few around. I can only find a couple. They have to be a little longer than just a quarter hour, of course. I think a true, interesting cycle starts at around 20, 25 minutes. There are the William Blake songs of Britten, of course, which I sing with great enthusiasm, and they’re about fifteen minutes long and great… but that’s just short of the threshold of pain… but that’s precisely what it has to go beyond.

That’s why I think Schoenberg’s Book of Hanging Gardens, about which Adorno said that it intends to seduce one to the cause of new music, is one of the last great, truly great and important cycles. And that’s leaving aside the fact that the love story – or rather: not-love story – it tells is so incredibly fascinating. And Stefan George, who is my far-and-away favorite poet (or at least the poet I can most relate to), depicts it in such a stirring and aptly poignant way. That the homosexual George of all people, surrounded by a largely male – though not necessary homosexual – circle of friends, could fall in love with a woman; a woman who, on top of everything else, found him repulsive… With this unbelievable idea of him having fallen in love with a woman in the first place, George was sort of simultaneously offended and puzzled by himself – and, crowning that, being turned down… that’s one or two levels removed from your average love story. It’s fascinating and unbelievably well depicted in these 15 songs. This parallel story of not being able to sort things out and how in the end it gets infused with true peace: Fascinating indeed!”

Schoenberg: Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten - G.Gould, J.DeGaetani & G.Kalish – Hain in diesen paradiesen

If perhaps second in fascination to Schoeck’s Notturno.