Christopher Hogwood

Álvaro Teixeira: Do you remember the integral of Mozart's symphonies that you recorded many years ago?

Christopher Hogwood: It was the first integral with instruments of the time and it was very complete. We recorded the different versions that exist of the movements of some symphonies. People were surprised.

AT In this concert you conduct Prokofiev. Why Prokofiev and Haydn?

CH Because Prokofiev was very fond of Haydn, and a classical symphony by Haydn is a very good combination. I like to mix classical works with 20th century works. I do a lot of programs mixing classical and ancient with neo-classical works. Haydn and Prokofiev, Haydn and Stravinsky, Haendel and Hindemith, Telemann and Martinu, and other combinations.

AT You have never performed contemporary music? Just neo-classics like that?

CH I have directed world premieres of contemporary works. For example by John Woolrich. But I've also directed works by Schnittke, Ligetti, Pendereki...

AT Some directors started with ancient music and then moved on to contemporary. Very few. Most stay in the Romantics...

CH When I was a student I played a lot of contemporary music. So for me it's not new to perform contemporary repertoire. Nowadays I do very few concerts using historical instruments.

AT Why?

CH There aren't many orchestras that use historical instruments and most of the ones that do don't need a conductor.

AT But you conducted Mozart's symphonies...

CH From the harpsichord...

AT That's right! And Jaap Schroder was the concertmaster.

CH Exactly.

AT Do you regularly conduct this orchestra (Kammerorchestra Basel)?

CH Yes. In works that also include recordings. We have recorded about six CDs.

AT Do you live in the UK?

CH Yes, I am a teacher in Cambridge and I live there.

AT Does the Academy of Ancient Music still exist?

CH Yes, of course. Right now they're playing in Holland, if I'm not mistaken. They play a lot. But I'm not part of it anymore.

AT But you are not the artistic director?!

CH No. The new director is Richard Egarr.

AT The harpsichordist?!

CH Yes. He's been the new director since September.

AT It used to be Manze, Andrew Manze, violinist, but Christopher Hogwood's name always appeared as the artistic director.

CH I was director when Manze was the konzertmeister. Now Richard Egarr is the new director.

AT This is news to me... Well... Do you conduct symphony orchestras?

CH Yes. And I also often conduct operas. In Paris, at the Scalla...

AT Which opera did you do at the Scalla?

CH Dido and Aeneas, by Purcel.

AT But that's old music. Modern ones, did you do any?

CH Stravinsky's Rake's Progress. I also work regularly with the Tonhalle in Zurich.

AT What do you think about the current musical situation in Europe?

CH It would take a week to answer that question, but I suppose every country needs more financial support. Everywhere there are problems related to this. In many countries there are problems with the teaching of music. I don't know what the situation is in Portugal. In Spain it's bad. In Italy it's no better... Teaching children well is expensive but it's necessary.

AT In the UK the government doesn't give much money to orchestras. It's more the sponsors... And it seems to work well...

CH Each orchestra spends a lot of time to find sponsors. Time that should be better used. It's a shame... Then people don't know what that means. They think that the sponsors should choose the programs, which can never happen. Sponsors have to listen to the music that the artists want to play. Being a sponsor doesn't mean being able to choose the program. The orientation of an orchestra cannot be changed by the wishes of the sponsors.

AT But, for example, if you look at the French orchestras... The state gives them a lot of money and they are still not as good as you would expect...

(laughs)

CH But the British government also gives a lot of money to opera houses. To support an opera house you need a lot of money and in London there are two opera houses. London has five symphony orchestras. That's a lot for one city! In France it is different because it is a big country and the orchestras are better distributed.

AT In London the operas are always full...

CH They are full, but they still need sponsors! People have no idea how much money it takes to run an opera house. They don't realize that the ticket they buy doesn't pay for the costs.

AT Should money continue to be spent on opera?

CH Yes. I enjoy directing operas. There are some very good modern operas. Sometimes they are strange productions but full of imagination. Contemporary opera production is very active. So is dance. Young people like it and go very often. Opera is more popular with young people than symphonic music.

Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker

Álvaro Teixeira: What does it mean to you to work on the music of Amadeus?

Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker: It is inspiring. His music is so sublime that it is very special for me to work based on his works.

AT Of course it depends on the musical performers, but don't you run the risk of seeing your work, if the performers are high level musicians, take a back seat?

ATK No. I believe I understand Mozart's music and do work that somehow complements it.

AT Anne Teresa: tomorrow we're going to have an orchestra playing on modern instruments. Wouldn't you prefer the interpretation to be done on historical instruments?

ATK Of course, but the music is so good that even with modern instruments it will be an excellent performance.

AT I was able to see some images of this work and I think it is a departure from your usual style. Why did you opt for a neo-classical aesthetic?

ATK The costumes may be conventional but the movements cannot be classified as such.

AT I don't quite agree: the "duo" of the dancer with the singer, in the film you made for the press, was totally neo-classical...

ATK Well... in some way yes. That's how I felt and that was my choice.

AT Does it give you pleasure to work with "live" music?

ATK Sure. But when you need an orchestra, as is the case, it becomes very expensive.

AT Anne Teresa: Unfortunately we have to end now because of a problem with the device that is recording our conversation. It was a pleasure to talk to one of the contemporary creators I most admire.

Christophe Coin

Álvaro Teixeira: Everybody knows Christophe Coin, a great cellist who works especially the ancient and classical repertoire, whose interpretations are unmissable, and who is with us as guest director of EUBO. It is a pleasure to welcome you and for me it is a great pleasure to be chatting with you. I have known and admired your work for many years, notably with the Mosaiques Quartet which is a world reference in the interpretation, most particularly, of the Haydn and Beethoven quartets. Did Christophe choose the repertoire for this evening?

Christophe Coin: I was asked to do a repertoire around the Italian baroque and the theme is "Crossing Borders", which is about composers who left their countries to work in others. Haendel is the big absentee this evening as he also left his home country, but on the other hand we bring in lesser known composers like Hallendal, a Dutchman who worked in England among other places and created many beautiful works. We bring others better known such as Locatelli, Geminiani and Vivaldi, the concerto we perform of this composer being one of his lesser known and very rarely performed works. Locatelli's work (Il pianto d' Arianna for violin and strings) is very interesting, being "programmatic music" around "del pianto de Ariana". It is, basically, a repertoire around the Italian "concerto grosso" that shows us its different aspects.

AT For me this repertoire is much more interesting than if it brought us composers and works that we hear regularly. Are you still working with the Mosaiques?

CC Of course. We will soon have twenty years of activity and in September we will record the three quartets by Arriaga, a Basque composer who died in 1926, his centenary being celebrated this year as he was born in 1906 and died prematurely at the age of twenty.

AT So you interpret repertoire other than the ancient and classical.

CC Yes, we play Bartok and Debussy quartets.

AT With gut strings or metal strings?

CC With gut strings. Metal on string instruments is relatively recent. The Bartok and Debussy quartets were performed on instruments with gut strings when they were created. Of course, the bows are different from those used in ancient music...

AT And of contemporary music, have you never thought of interpreting anything?

CC It's not my speciality. However we will probably play a work by Arvo Part.

AT Brrr... Apart from EUBO, do you direct other formations?

CC Yes, I conduct the Ensemble Baroque de Limonges and I am regularly invited to conduct classical and romantic repertoire with conventional orchestras. As a cellist I am usually invited to perform a lot of repertoire beyond the ancient and classical.

AT It's a typical route to go from antique to at least the end of romanticism? It happened with Harnoucourt of whom you were a pupil...

CC Each artist has his own singularity. The diversity of interpretations enriches the possibility of listening to the same works under different readings. I don't think we can speak of typical paths.

AT Christophe Coin: The audience is looking forward to the second part of the concert. Once again it was a great pleasure to be here chatting with an emblematic artist like Christophe.

CC It was also my pleasure.

Philippe Pierlot

Álvaro Teixeira: We just heard you playing and conducting very old works...

Philippe Pierlot: I played a repertoire around Henri Purcell, certainly among the most important baroque composers. He belongs to a very rich period in England, particularly the Elizabethan period, and in this period in England there are an absolutely impressive number of composers of an excellent level. The most well known are Bird, who is not a very well known composer but, in my understanding is one of the great composers in the history of music, almost on the level of someone like Bach, on the level of science and depth of composition. Bird we didn't play in this concert...

(laughs)

PP Purcell is the heir of this English polyphonic tradition, very personal, in the sense of these composers who possess a real identity, linked, perhaps, to the insularity of the English, and voila, the pieces that we play today, particularly the Purcell fantasy are at the same time the apogee and the swan song of this tradition because, after Purcell, this tradition of writing fantasies for string ensembles, is going to end, therefore being the apotheosis and the end of this rich school.

AST But these works sound somewhat ecstatic, don't you think?

PP So...

AST You can't feel the modulations...

PP I don't share your opinion at all...

(laughs)

PP I think exactly the opposite...

(laughs)

PP Within baroque music, and particularly in fantasies, Purcell is one of the most audacious composers, precisely at the level of harmony. Purcell was very influenced by Italian music. Well... the music we play in this concert, it is true, comes from another tradition. From the tradition of very melancholic music. It's true that it's not an extroverted music. It's totally the opposite of that. It's a very interior music. In Purcell's work there is another kind of production more influenced by the Italian school because Purcell liked Italian composers very much, but he appreciated them not for their exuberant, Mediterranean aspect, let's say, but, on the contrary, for the depth of their compositions. And at that time in Italy there were composers who were exactly doing research in order to find richer and more expressive harmonies. We are on the opposite side of very well-known figures like Vivaldi who is more exuberant and more...

AST And which are these Italian composers you are referring to?

PP In instrumental music a composer who surely influenced Purcell was Vitali. Coreli comes later but there are in the school of Rome people like Carissimi, Cavalli, there is also a lesser known composer called Maratolli. These are very audacious composers who did a lot of research. Later on, in the eighteenth century, there is the birth of classicism that will take hold with the well-known forms like the concerto and the sonata.

AST Very good. In this music festival you bring us exclusively repertoire from England, don't you?

PP Yes, in fact the project of La Foule Journé, this year's Music Festival, was around England. When they contacted us, this was the theme that was planned, and then over time it evolved into the Harmony of Nations, but we had already started to prepare some works. So we are also going to do a program with Núria Rial with Haendel. It's also true that in our repertoire we always have a lot of German music like Bach and his ancestors... But I think that the theme of English music is a very good and very interesting theme because this music is among the richest but is perhaps the least known and, it must be said, the least accessible to the public because, as you rightly pointed out, there is a lot of melancholy and ecstaticism in this music. It's not music that makes you want to sway while listening to it. But it has a richness that is very inner and that requires a certain initiation to be able to appreciate all its excellence.

AST In a certain way it is a kind of modern day Harnoncourt...

(laughs)

AST Do you plan to "evolve" to classicism, or not?

PP In two weeks we leave for Japan, and there we will play Haydn and Mozart...

AST Ha!

PP But that's the exception for us...

AST Ho...

PP Well... I play the viola de gamba, so my repertoire is more or less the seventeenth century, the eighteenth century too... all this period when the viola de gamba had a great projection and a lot of repertoire was written for this instrument. But I also play the bariton which is a less known instrument, similar to the viola de gamba, but with sympathetic strings, and for which Haydn wrote a lot. And it is true that I feel very close to Haydn's music. On the other hand, for the first time I conducted Mozart's Exultate recently.

AST This is a well known path... musicians who start with very old music, move to the baroque and shortly after to the classical. Not to mention those who "jump" to the Romantic... Harnoncourt ended up conducting Bruckner...

PP I don't think that will be my case. You never know how life will evolve... It's true that if I was offered to direct a Mozart opera I would hardly refuse. It's a music that I feel close to... But my main interest, and I think it will remain so for a long time to come, is the seventeenth century. I don't think I'm going to move away from that repertoire. I think that those who evolve towards classicism and romanticism is because, as orchestra conductors, classicism and romanticism is music that gives more satisfaction. I can understand that those who only conduct are drawn to this repertoire. The music of Vivaldi, for example, is an area where an orchestra leader can add little after the works are worked on in rehearsals. One could say that orchestra can play alone. Nevertheless, when I am there in front of the musicians, I can induce certain inflections at the moment of the concert.

AST But you play while directing the ensemble at the same time.

PP That depends on the works and the size of the group. When I work with a choir or an orchestra with soloists, it is necessary to be in the front to coordinate the whole ensemble and to be the one who maintains the interpretative consistency. When there is no leader, it can be interesting because it allows the musicians more freedom of initiative and allows for different versions. But having a leader who coordinates the whole ensemble can also be important.

AST Finally, it is the interpretation of the conductor that interests us... as in classicism and romanticism... I can't imagine an orchestra playing Mahler's symphonies without a real conductor... it is true that the Berlin Philharmonic, after Karajan's death, did it with Beethoven... in the Karajan way... It didn't do it with Mahler. Of course. But what we want is the version, the re-interpretation, of such and such a conductor. If it's really a conductor... Because if he's an idiot orchestra leader, we might as well let the orchestra play alone... In fact, the Berlin Philharmonic, after Karajan, always played the same, and the conductors moved their arms to accompany it. Only real directors, great artists with charisma, could make it play as they wished. And it wasn't easy...

PP Yes, it is often said that the Berlin Philharmonic could play Beethoven, without a conductor, in the manner of Furtwängler or Karajan... But well... the truth is that when Furtwangler or Karajan were there it was surely different...

AST Yeah...

PP I am first of all an instrumentalist. When I direct it's because it's really necessary to go there. Also because I want to give my vision of the work. There is an opera by Marin Marais that saw the day thanks to my initiative. After the seventeenth century it had not been performed again. I was the one who rewrote it. It's mostly these kinds of things that interest me as a chief of staff...

AST You are also a musicologist...

PP Since always one of the aspects that attracts me in this music is the discovery aspect. Hence the name of our group Ricercar. It's the state of mind of always being in research, either of the repertoire or the way of interpreting it. It's exciting because we realize that there is an impressive amount of works yet to be discovered, sometimes major works by composers to be rediscovered. Even at the level of the interpretation of better known works, and we are currently working on some of Bach's creations, there is still a lot to research, for example, at the level of the management of instrumental and vocal forces, when using a large church organ, for example... we have just made a recording using a large organ, not a positive organ as is usually done in concerts and also on records, we decided to make this recording with a real organ, a large instrument, as Bach did in his time. This seems like a detail, but it is this kind of thing that can greatly influence an interpretation. This was just an example to explain that in the music of the past, from whose roots we are already very far away, there are still many practices and habits to be rediscovered and this is the richest and most exciting aspect for those who work and interpret this kind of music.

AST A one minute answer to finish: what do you think about contemporary music production?

PP I evolved in a musical environment where contemporary music was very important. I was born in Liege in Belgium, where the director of the conservatory at the time I attended it was Henri Pousseur...

AST And Boesmans...

PP Exactly. Philippe Boesmans was born in my town. But Pousseur, who is not a very well-known figure as a composer, was part of the circle of Stockausen, Bério, Cage and at the conservatory when I did my studies I listened to the interpretation of all the works of all these composers who regularly came to the conservatory to talk about them and guide their creation. It was a music that I grew up on and our group very regularly commissions works from young composers to be performed on our old instruments.

AST Philippe Pierlot: thank you very much for this dense and rich conversation. I'll be there to listen to you at the upcoming concerts.

Skip Sempé

Álvaro Teixeira: You just played some harpsichord pieces by Couperin and it seemed to me that you have a particular inspiration for this composer.

Skip Sempé: I am always inspired to play French music because it is our favorite repertoire after so many years playing the Marais, the Rameau, the Couperin. It is a repertoire to which I am particularly attached and to which I have dedicated a lot of work, many concerts and many records.

AST You record for what label?

SS We have our own label. It's called Paradiso. But before that we recorded for Harmonia Mundi, Astré and Alpha.

AST Do you like to do this kind of recital, accompanied by other musicians who sometimes play together, sometimes as soloists? I, as an audience, like it very much because it is more varied.

SS I like to play as a soloist but I also like to do chamber music. Being a full-time soloist is not always very interesting.

AST Do you prefer the French repertoire or the more traditional repertoire, like Bach, for example?

SS There are few things I don't like but I'm not a big fan of Haendel and Vivaldi. I like Bach but also French music, Scarlatti, Telemann but I also like Renaissance music very much, both as a group and as a soloist. Especially the repertoire that has been neglected over the decades.

AST For example?

SS The dance music of the 17th century as well as the chamber opera of that same century, all of that is a repertoire that is not really known. The public loves the discovery of those kinds of works.

AST So classicism is not in your scope...

SS It's not my music. There are colleagues, many, who do that repertoire, as well as romantic music. We're really on the path of Renaissance and Baroque music, with the instruments on which that music was played.

AST There are a lot of harpsichordists who play Haydn, for example. And Mozart...

SS Yes but I'd rather do the music of the renaissance than play the classical repertoire. I'd rather do the music of the sixteenth century than the music created between 1750 and 1830.

AST Okay. Do you notice a big difference, as a performer, between northern music, Holland for example, and southern music? Vivaldi, etc. Differences in essence... and form...

SS That difference has always existed between countries that have a lot of sunshine and those where there is a lot of snow, cold and gray skies. But I believe that in the 17th, 18th and even in the 19th century the aesthetics were much more shared than before. The Italian violin gained a lot of influence throughout Europe, as did bel canto with Haendel in London and Bach in Dresden. In fact Baroque music originated in Italy. And this aesthetic of doing everything full of luminosity gained a lot of supporters in Northern Europe and in England as well.

AST And French music is in the middle?

SS It's a music that comes close to the Latin countries because the French have a tendency to push and make visible their Latin rib. But France is not a Latin country at all. But in musical aesthetics France looks for this sunny side of creating music, being more sunny country than Nordic country.

AST You were born in the United States... Do you do a lot of concerts there?

SS: No, no. I studied there, at university and at the conservatory, but most of our work is done here in Europe. And this is where we recorded all our records. But there is a very loyal audience in the US for old music, especially in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Houston, etc. But in fact, the capital of old music in the Americas, both North and South, is Montreal. There is more old music in Montreal than in all the other countries in America.

AST Are there differences between European and American audiences?

SS No. The audiences in Europe are very different from each other. They differ according to the concert, the place of the concert, the atmosphere of the concert. There is the Sunday after lunch audience, the Saturday night audience, the opera audience... There is the young audience and the regulars' audience... The audience at a concert in a large cathedral reacts differently from the audience in a small hall attending a harpsichord recital.

Sabine Meyer

Álvaro Teixeira: Which are your favourite contemporary composers?

Sabine Meyer: Living?

AT: Yes.

SM: Many have written for me. The last one was Manfred Trojan who dedicated a very beautiful concert to me. Castiglioni, an Italian composer. He wrote a piece for my wind ensemble. And other German composers. Pedrem, who is very famous in Germany, wrote me a solo piece. Many composers. Good composers. Wüthrich...

AT: ?

SM: You don't know? He's very well known in Germany. He wrote a piece for two clarinets. For me and my brother.

(laughs)

AT: Why do you think the clarinet is used a lot in contemporary music?

SM: The clarinet offers many technical and sonic possibilities, offering many, many colours. It is very interesting. Music for clarinet resembles the human voice. Many composers write for this instrument.

AT: You never thought of playing with old instruments?

SM: Yes. I have played Mozart's concerto on a Basset Clarinet which is the original instrument. I've also played with Quartour Mosaiques.

AT: Christophe Coin...

SM: Exactly! I used a clarinet of the time. And I played the Brahms with a Wuestefeld clarinet...

AT: Have you interpreted, for example, French composers?

SM: French composers?

AT: You never played French music?

SM: Modern?

AT: Yes.

SM: No. Not so far.

Peter Neumann

Álvaro Teixeira: I heard him for the first time in Bach. I don't remember what. It was a CD from a German label. I was impressed.

Peter Neumann: Maybe the Passion According to Saint John...

AT: Exactly! I liked it very much indeed.

PN: Thank you. Thank you very much.

AT: I finally meet you here in Lisbon and yesterday I heard directed by you a wonderful, a brilliant, reading of Beethoven's oratorio and Mass in C. But... do you often do the classics like Beethoven?

PN: Beethoven not so much. I did the Missa Solemnis, the Mass in C and the cantata for the Emperor. I did a lot of Mozart. The integral of the masses for the emi.

AT: Do you prefer works with choir and singers?

PN: Yes, I have a choir, the Kölner Kammerchor, and I work a lot with them. I am usually busy with this kind of repertoire but I would like to do more symphonic works. I also did Beethoven's second symphony.

AT: And with this group with whom you played the mass and the oratorio? Do you often direct them?

PN: Collegium Cartusianum.

AT: Exactly. They're great!

PN: Yes, yes. Usually my concerts are done with them. They come together on these occasions.

AT: You never thought, for instance, of doing the integral of Beethoven's symphonies?

(laughs)

PN: Not yet, not yet... I haven't been asked for that yet.

AT: It's a pity because I thought your direction was brilliant. That fabulous group playing on the old instruments. Everything perfect. The tempos, the dynamics, the attacks... So I'm surprised they don't invite you to do an integral of Beethoven's symphonies.

PN: There are already many integrals of those symphonies.

AT: It would be another one of great level.

PN: Yes, if you ask me I can think about it.

AT: Do you give concerts mainly in Germany or all over the world?

PN: Yes, in Germany. Also in Foule Journée in France and in Italy we did many, many concerts. Now less. In Germany I did a lot of Haendel, a lot of oratorios. I like Haendel's oratorios very much.

AT: Me too. What are your projects for the near future?

PN: We will do Haendel's oratorio, Deborah, in November. We will do the Passion according to St John in St Peteresbourg and Moscow in ten days. Next year will be a bit quieter. I hope to do Haendel's Saul at the Festival of Music. Also in Nantes and Bilbao.

AT: I think you are not well enough known in the French market...

PN: We've had very good reviews in France for Haendel's oratorios...

AT: I can imagine...

PN: Especially in the "Réportoire". I would very much like to do Mozart's operas. That would please me very much.

AT: Nowadays there's a huge wave of groups that are dedicated to playing on period instruments, supposedly in the style of the period. Especially in Europe, in the US I don't know, but what do you think of this explosion of musicians seeking a supposed authenticity?

PN: I think it's a way of giving new life to music. I think it's very good. In the beginning it was more historicist but now there's the way of playing, the colourings, modern interpretations, of today.

AT: I know a lot of German orchestras that I heard here and in Germany, mostly conventional orchestras. But... all the ones I've heard are excellent. The best of the best!

(laughs)

AT: But it's true. I'm not even talking about the Berliner Philarmoniker... Two years ago I listened to the Berlin Symphony Orchestra that just went bankrupt. What do you have to say about this?

PN: It's certainly a shame but I think there's going to be a change in the construction and operation of orchestras. In thirty years, I don't know, there will be more formations like ours that get together for a concrete project but the musicians keep their activities in other orchestras, groups and in teaching. There will be fewer city orchestras paid for by city governments. There will be more "free market" orchestras made up of free-lancers.

AT: Ha!!! Your orchestra is private!

PN: It was formed for a project. The musicians play in other orchestras.

AT: You just told me that this orchestra you are conducting doesn't have a permanent job!

PN: No, it doesn't.

AT: Incredible!

PN: Yes, but we always try to call the same musicians for the different projects. As long as they are available.

AT: I'm amazed. They show an unusual cohesion as an ensemble...

PN: Yes, it's like this.

AT: This is a strange question but... do you listen to contemporary music? From the twentieth and twenty-first centuries?

PN: From the twentieth century I listened in Berlin and in Paris, I listened to a lot of works from the Vienna school. I also studied in Messiaen's class. For a month. And then with Maderna and Boulez. It was in 65/66. I played a lot of Messiaen on the organ too.

AT: What do you think about the European construction?

(laughs)

AT: At the cultural level, what do you expect?

PN: It's a too general question...

AT: At the level of exchanges. I hope you will come more often to Portugal, for example.

PN: Yes, that would be very good. But there are taxes that prevent us. They prevent us from going, for example, to Italy where you have to pay 30% tax. Much more than what we pay in Germany. And this prevents us from going.

AT: Maybe a federal Europe with uniform laws and taxes will solve this...

PN: Could be, could be...

AT: You're telling me that in Italy you pay 30% tax on the cachet they pay you and the musicians...

PN: Yes, this way we come out too expensive or we earn too little. Here and in Spain I don't know.

AT: Me neither. In general, what do you think about the musical actuality, not only at the level of ancient music but also at the level of the great romantic orchestras? Do you think that today there are even better formations than 20 years ago?

PN: Yes, I think that the technical level is really higher. But at the level of expressiveness I think that it has been lost. Sometimes it's just the technique. But also the recordings demand that the concerts are at the level of the recordings.

AT: Do you think I forgot any question? Do you want to say something that you think is important?

PN: I don't know...

(laughs)

AT: Did you enjoy being in this Festival?

PN: Very much. I liked it very much. We came here three times to Lisbon, four times to Nantes and three times to Bilbao and it is truly a great festival. I enjoyed it very much.

AT: And for me it was a great pleasure to have this little chat with you, who were the mai character in what were for me the best moments of this Festival. Thank you very much Peter Neumann.

David Grimal

Álvaro Teixeira: Many years ago I wrote in a newspaper that this concert (Erich Korngold's violin concert) is nothing but an ultra-romantic pastiche. I still think exactly the same...

David Grimal: I think it is a very kitschy music. It's very Hollywoodesque music but with Viennese roots. In the central part of the second movement there is like a reminder of Schoenberg. But everything else is almost minimalistic. Korngold was the one who started writing in the minimalistic style. Now we have John Williams and others who write in that style, which is completely kitsch.

AT: But even that melody in the second movement is not very well constructed. In my opinion. Then there are strong dissonances that are disintegrated from the context, from the musical discourse.

DG: I don't know about that. It's quite naif, especially, the melody in the second movement. I think that within the genre that this work represents it is quite accomplished. But... we can't say it's serious music.

AT: You just played a very interesting piece (an extra by Bela Bartók), how come you play a null piece like this Korngold concert?

(much laughter)

DG: We don't always choose with whom and what we are going to play... But this is part of the music too. I play a lot of Beethoven's concerto, Brahms', Bartók's, Berg's, or Mozart's but I also play Paganini and Korngold which are also part of life. You can have a different pleasure playing them and listening to them. These are different things that exist and that I think are worth playing.

AT: The problem is that for you violinists there is not much repertoire... Contrary to the piano for example.

DG: That's not true. I have fifty pieces in my repertoire and I have to study fifty more. It's a huge repertoire. I don't know if my whole life will be enough to play the whole repertoire. You can play Pendereski, Lutoslawski, Britten, I don't know what else... the Schoenberg concerto, all the French music, the lesser known concertos of Miklos Rosa...

AT: Rosa?

DG: Rosa is a Hungarian who went to Hollywood too. There's a lot to play and to discover. But great works? Beethoven concertos there is only one. There are not five. By Mozart there are not thirty. There aren't two by Brahms, not counting the double concerto. But there is also one Schumann concerto, one Elgar concerto, two Prokovief concertos, two Chostakovich concertos...

AT: At the level of contemporary music are there many works for solo violin?

DG: There aren't that many. There are many more for solo cello, in fact. In the twentieth century the cello got a great deal of prominence because people like Rostropovitch did a lot of work with the composers and the violinists were lazier. So much so that if for the cello there are many works, for the violin in fact there is no real succession to Bartók's sonata. I looked it up. There is a sonata by Zimmermann that I don't think has the same quality.

AT: I don't know that work but Zimmermann is a great composer.

DG: He is a great composer but that piece for violin is not, in my opinion, on the level of the Bartók sonata. I mentioned Zimmermann precisely because he is a great composer. I've worked with many composers who have written...

AT: Doesn't Pascal Dusapin have anything for violin solo?

(silence)

AT: You don't like Dusapin...

DG: I don't know. I don't know everything by Dusapin. He wrote a little piece for cello but that's not a serious thing... But that depends on whether we talk about serious things or whether we talk about everything. We were very harsh on Kornagold but in contemporary music there is a lot of "Korngold" too. And they're alive!

AT: Well... I know Dusapin's work well and in my opinion he is a great composer. But I don't know that piece for cello. But what is for you the limit between serious and non-serious music?

DG: For me it is not a good question because there is no serious music and non-serious music. There is a serious way to approach music or a non-serious way to approach music. The non-serious way doesn't interest me. That's why even Korngold's music for me can also be serious in the limits of its framing. But it can be works seriously too. That's it.

AT: But then we have fickle limits... We can say that the last movement of Korngold's concert is absolutely kitsch. We were in agreement: it's not serious music. We can't say now, after a few minutes, that it is serious music after all.

DG: But that's not it. What can be serious is the way you play it.

AT: The way you play it.

DG: Exactly. I'm not a composer. I'm not a composer, or a critic, or a teacher of aesthetic reflection. I'm simply an interpreter. That means I must play all the music. My mission is to play everything. But each thing I play, I play it according to its character, according to its context but with the respect for the composer's work that I am not capable of doing anyway. Then there is the music that I refuse to play because it is dishonest. But for me Korngold is not dishonest music. It is a sincere music. Kitschy but sincere.

AT: Can you give me an example of dishonest music?

DG: Dishonest music... Yes, I'll give you an example of dishonest music... There are works yes... But I'm not going to talk about them in front of a microphone. In front of a bottle of wine we can discuss music. There are even very respectable and very serious composers... In Chostakovich, for example, there are dishonest works. For me. He has extraordinary works but he also has works where he is not sincere. I know that it was because of the system that he was forced to write somewhat propaganda works.

AT: These are particular cases...

DG: They are particular cases I know but there are works in Beethoven that are circus pieces and poorly achieved. He saw that himself. We can find many situations among the Mayans who wrote music because they were forced to. Hence that music doesn't work. And we can at the same time see it in lesser composers like Korngold, who was nevertheless a gifted composer but who started doing shit like this concerto, but he did it with humor. Hence I accept this. I prefer this, where there is nevertheless talent, to more scholarly stuff like Lallo's Spanish Symphony which is more stupid. Much stupider. There are works by Saint-Sains that are also stupider.

AT: ...

DG: The Rondo-Capricious was achieved as a circumstance piece. It's not serious music but it was well conceived. But the first concert was not.

AT: Do you live in France or in the United States?

DG: I live in Paris!

AT: How did you start speaking English... You see, there are some French musicians who went to the US... Hélène Grimaud went to live there...

DG: Is that true?!

AT: Yes, it is, why do you think she went there?

DG: I don't know. We'll have to ask her.

(much laughter)

AT: What do you have to say about post-Boulez French music? Do you believe there is more aesthetic freedom now than when Boulez controlled everything?

DG: You can't say we're in post-Boulez because Boulez is still the pope. But there are quite a few aesthetic currents in France and the language is in the process of being re-defined, there is no longer a homogeneous language. It's very difficult to know, when there is no historical continuity from the point of view of language, what has value or not. It's hard to say what's experimental and what's going to stay because it's a language that's going to have continuity. The present time, for me, is a period of transition where you are going to find a historical continuity with the past, either with tonal music or with modal music, or with other expressive paths that in my understanding are either in modality or in tonality because in my understanding serial music will always remain in an experimental state.

AT: Do you think that all the post-serialism, all the kind of serialized techniques will always remain in an experimental state?

DG: I think that serial music doesn't work for the big forms. It works for the small forms like in Webern. And Berg is tonal music not serial music. So it works very well indeed. Serial music is very interesting but it doesn't work. Like the Ars Subtilior of the 13th century which was pure contrapuntal music, this doesn't work. The monks were doing twenty-four canons at the same time... this doesn't work. Music needs a center. This is very interesting on paper but it doesn't work. In serial music it is the same. There are many events at the same time without an organic continuity and a correlation of tension and distension. And that's what music is. Modal music is less in this register of tension/distension but is very descriptive through colorations. For me the serial language in the form of classical music doesn't works.

Nelson Freire

Álvaro Teixeira: I know that you have had many of your records awarded in France, namely with "diapasons d'or". What is your relation with the French market and public?

Nelson Freire: At the moment yes because I am living there. Living is a way of saying because I consider that I live in Rio de Janeiro, but when I am travelling I have my little corner in France. So with that I became more familiar with everything regarding the country etc. But it's always a great pleasure to come back to Portugal. I have many good memories here. I feel very good here. It reminds me a little of the Brazil of my childhood, a Brazil that no longer exists today but which is still preserved here and it is a great pleasure to be here.

AT: As far as I remember the last diapasons d'or you received were for records by Schumman and Chopin...

NF: Exactly. Those were the last two I did but I recently did another one, a Chopin record as well, which is coming out in the next few months. At the end of the year I should do the first Brahms concert with Ricardo Chaily and the Leipziz Orchestra.

AT: So you have a very particular affinity with these composers...

NF: Without a doubt. They are composers that... we have relations since my childhood... It's like I'm family.

(laughs)

AT: But with more modern composers... Nelson is a pianist of the "old romantic tradition", isn't he? He approaches very little the music of the twentieth century...

NF: Not of the 20th century! I play quite a lot of things... A lot of Villa-Lobos, Prokovief, Bartok. This is 20th century but you can't say that it is modern anymore, right?

(laughs)

NF: But it is natural that I made a choice. It is difficult to do everything, right? There are also certain things that for me have an interiority. A question of affinity, of taste... of will... That's it.

AT: You played a lot with Marta Argerich and it was from there that your figure gained worldwide dimension. What memories do you have of that time?

NF: Memories... We just did a tour in Brazil and Argentina and in a month we'll be playing in the US. We are still playing... I don't know. It's a very old and very deep friendship. Playing with Marta is a...

AT: She's a great pianist...

NF: More than that, right?

AT: But she hardly ever plays solo now.

NF: She might play again. She's played solo a lot. It's a matter that she doesn't like to be alone. Neither on stage or off stage. It's an option that I hope is momentary.

AT: But it's been going on for a few years now...

NF: YEAH. It's been going on for a few years now. But nothing is impossible.

AT: I was told in Argentina that she did a solo recital there less than half a dozen years ago...

NF: I know she played in Japan and also that in New York she did half a concert alone. She played Bach, Chopin and Prokovief. That was three or four years ago.

AT: Which orchestra conductors do you most enjoy working with?

NF: Ha has many. There are several. I enjoyed playing with this one (Lawrence Foster). Many years ago we toured together. It was in '69. It was also with Rudolfo Kempf who was a boss that I loved and is maybe who I have the best memories with. But that tour was United States and Canada and it has a very funny experience because it was the first time I played with orchestra with a cabinet (wall) piano. One of the concerts was in the Bahamas Islands and there was only a white piano in a wardrobe... The Liszt concerto - imagine that! And Lawrence conducted it. There was no other piano and I ended up playing it.

(laughs)

AT: When are you coming back to Portugal for a solo recital?

NF: Hopefully soon.

AT: Me too.

(laughs)

Eliso Virsaladze

Álvaro Teixeira: I know that Sviatoslav Richter said that you are the greatest pianist alive in the interpretation of Schumann...

Eliso Virsaladze: Oh my God! It's always the same thing...

AT: I was watching the rehearsal and I found it quite... What was your relationship with Richter?

(laughs)

EV: It was good.

AT: As a pianist what do you think of Richter?

EV: That's not an original question. Only an idiot could question that Richter was not one of the greatest pianists in the world. A brilliant and spectacular pianist.

AT: As far as I know in Russia there was a rift between Richter's admirers and those of Gilels who are two of the greatest pianists of all time.

EV: It's not like that at all. They are two very different pianists and both very good. It's a matter of preference and style. They are both great pianists.

AT: I have never heard Gilels live. I was fortunate enough to hear Richter twice when he was already in his eighties. Very good. Deep and brilliant. But he played a Chopin with a lot of wrong notes. Sometimes he sounded like Debussy... Shouldn't he have stopped his career before he entered a phase where he played with too many mistakes?

EV: To begin with, Chopin was neither Richter's favorite composer nor the one he played best. But even the last Richter concerts I attended were very good. It was only by bad luck that he was asked to do a program with Chopin. The fact that he got it wrong doesn't mean anything. He was always very good.

AT: The Russian piano school is one of the best in the world. Maybe the best. But don't you think it's a bit conservative? I don't remember hearing Russian pianists doing repertoire from the second half of the twentieth century and contemporary.

EV: That's not quite true. There are plenty of pianists playing repertoire from the second half of the twentieth century. The problem is that there are still no composers from the second half of the twentieth century as good as the earlier ones and so they are played less. In addition the pianists who specialize in this repertoire are less well known. If they were invited to play in the great halls they would probably be empty. There are no composers as recognized as Stravinsky and Prokofiev. Otherwise Shostakovich and Schnitke are more classical than modern.

AT: What are your favorite composers within the piano repertoire?

EV: There are no favorite composers. The piano repertoire is huge. That is a question to ask violinists and cellists who have a much more restricted repertoire. It is not a question to ask pianists who have a huge repertoire at their disposal. I prefer what I play in each concert.

AT: There are pianists who play more Chopin. Others prefer Liszt. Others Schumman...

EV: I play them all.

AT: Has there been a big change, for you, in terms of musical education and life in post-Gorbatchov Russia?

EV: Everything is fine now. As long as they don't want to transform teaching in Russia in the image of what's going on here in the West.

AT: But do you think that the Moscow conservatory is still the great hotbed of musicians and talent that it was twenty years ago?

EV: The Moscow Conservatory continues to form talented musicians and continues to be one of the best conservatories in the world. Overall it is the world that is worse off, not the particular institution that has declined.

AT: Which orchestra conductors have you most enjoyed working with?

EV: I like working with anyone I can get along with. I really enjoy playing with orchestras so as long as there's a common language between me and the orchestra leader that's fine.

AT: Which are the recordings you have made on disc and cd that you would recommend to the readers of my blog? Which ones do you prefer and would you like people to listen to?

EV: None. I don't listen to myself so I don't know how to advise others in that respect.

(with the collaboration of Artem Khmelinskii as translator)

Heinz Holliger

Álvaro Teixeira: Well... I heard the rehearsal and... the voice part is serialised?

Heinz Holliger: What?

AT: In the vocal part do you use a series or not?

HH: No, no... It's much stricter than a series.

AT: What?!

HH: What you heard at the end is a canon-mirror-retrograde. A quadruple canon.

AT: Um... And what is the function of the unison? There's a unison...

HH: Everything is symmetrical and the parts are always in the tritone a-flat-rel which are always unison. There can be a sense of tonal music but it's not tonal at all.

AT: But look that on Thursday and Friday the first cycle of lieds that you presented was serialised.

HH: No.

AT: No?!!!

HH: I wrote very little serialized. Sometimes just two, three bars to get the effect of a very automatic song. Sometimes I might occasionally use serialised techniques, but I practically never used the twelve-tone technique.

AT: I found big stylistic differences between your first cycle of "Lieds" and the second one.

HH: Of course, there is a 35 years gap between one and the other. The first cycle is probably my op.1

AT: Ha! So serialised!

HH: It's not serialised...

(laughs)

AT: But it sounds like it.

HH: The first cycle is closer to the expressionism of the second school of Vienna. The expression in the second cycle can be more natural. The first cycle reveals a very static form of singing, very directly expressive. In the other cycle the voice is much more integrated although the harmony is more complex. The conducting of the voice is like in Trakl's poetry, simpler and more rhythmic within the rhythm of the language.

AT: Did you work a lot with Bério?

HH: Not with Bério. We were very good friends. He dedicated the oboe sequence to me. The seventh.

AT: So you worked with him. As a musician.

HH: Yes. We did many concerts. But it was a long time ago...

AT: And with Luigi Nono?

HH: Never. I just came from conducting his Canto Sospeso at the Lucerne festival. I like it very much but this music is very far from my way of thinking. But I worked with Boulez who was my teacher for five years.

AT: And Stockausen?

HH: Not ever. My masters are Haydn, Mozart, Schumann. I am practically not influenced by contemporaries. In the 20th century Alban Berg and Bartók were important, but after the war it was Alois Bernd Zimmermann.

AT: Zimmermann has a fabulous opera...

HH: Die Soldaten. The most complex opera in the world.

AT: So Zimmermann is a reference.

HH: Yes, I feel very close to him who is a very, very great composer. I like his music very much even if I don't feel influenced by him. I feel much more influenced by the music of the past.

AT: Actually what I notice is that contemporaries in your concerts, only you... Heinz and the classics!

HH: Yes, they are my contemporaries. I have very little contact with the current production.

AT: But you were in Darmstad...

HH: Only one year.

AT: But as an instrumentist... HH: Yes but I never gave courses or attended courses. Only really as an instrumentalist in '60 and '61. AT: I see you work a lot with the soprano voice. Well... with the voices. With the voices. HH: The voice is an inexhaustible source of inspiration and I'm very attached to vocality which is a body music, almost biological. The voice is the most beautiful instrument. AT: But you compose the voice part first and do the instrumentation afterwards? HH: If you write quickly you write down mostly the voice and not much else around it. When you reread that part, everything that you had imagined comes back as if it were a re-memory. In Trakl's second cycle I concentrated mainly on the voice. But it was written in one or two days and then I did the orchestral part. Mozart only wrote the first violin and the figured bass. The rest for him was a copyist's work made from his prodigious memory. AT: Apart from Bartók and Berg who are your fundamental composers? HH: They are my spiritual guides because I was educated by Sándor Végh. I feel very close to Bartók who made a music very close to the language and the body, extremely free and rhythmically very rich. A music in fact rooted in the human body and in the earth. It's not cerebral at all. The other is Alban Berg who represents the ideal balance between sensuality, spirituality and perhaps extreme control... the almost utopian idea of anything built with such complexity that he comes almost close to the tao, to anarchy within extreme construction. There Berg goes to the Buddhic extreme of exhausting a material completely, all the way through. AT: The first cycle of lieds you played with the orchestra was composed 35 years ago? HH: 44 years ago. It was 20 years old...

Abdel Rahman El-Bacha

Álvaro Teixeira: I would like to know your opinion about the French piano school. I have several recordings from historical ones, like Cortot and Samson François where it is clear the technical weakness of these interpreters. On the contrary, as everyone could testify in your integral, you don't seem to suffer from this limitation. What has changed in the French piano school?

El-Bacha: You should not compare the recordings made at that time with those of today but compare them with other recordings of the same time made in other countries.

The recording technique has evolved allowing to correct mistakes very easily. Today it is possible to substitute a single note, something unthinkable at that time. Nowadays it's possible to make authentic assemblies in the studio!

But that's only one aspect. The technical level of the interpreters has evolved. The instrumental domain has developed enormously in conservatories all over the world. Today when you listen to young people in international competitions you realise that they have fewer technical difficulties than pianists like Cortot.

I have to tell you something: I don't believe that someone like Cortot studied piano every day. He didn't live exclusively for the piano. He wrote, he conducted, and he probably didn't have much of a working methodology. When Cortot wanted to, he had an exceptional sound, and he also had fabulous fingers. He just wasn't a committed pianist.

Samson François is similar. But he had a serious alcoholism problem! To the point that at the end of his career he played visibly badly and was hissed at by the audience. Nevertheless Samson François was an inspired pianist.

AT: I remember that this pianist's recording of Chopin's nocturnes are some of the most beautiful recordings of these pieces. They are my favourites after the last recordings by Vlado Perlemuter. However the ballads recorded by Samson François are rather bad...

E-B: Don't forget that a recording is only a couple of moments in the career of an artist. Sometimes the pianist is not happy with the result but he has signed a contract with a deadline...

I judge an artist by what he did best and Samson François, despite everything, was a great pianist.

Now I return to the subject of the French school. When it comes to a genius of interpretation, the school doesn't matter that much because a genius is full-time and has always been a genius. Inspiration and talent cannot be taught. You can't teach musical intuition. You can teach technique, analysis and transmit experiences, not talent. That's why I question the principle of schools, especially today when teachers do "master-classes" everywhere and young pianists, before starting their career, have already travelled to various countries and have worked with several masters.

What may be a weakness of what we can call the French school is perhaps the primacy of fantasy to the detriment of a deep analysis of the works. This is perhaps what characterises the traditional French school.

What characterises the Russian school, for example, is the amount of emotion and the fact that interpretation is a profound experience. Sometimes it is accompanied by excesses, often unbearable, that lead to a total lack of control and balance, resulting in an overall lack of aesthetics.

In fact, we have to recognise that there are characteristics of the schools... The German school is very serious and demands that interpretation be well defined and thought out. It can have the defect of a certain coldness if there is no inspiration and genius in the interpreter.

AT: But nowadays there are no great German pianists...

EB: Very recently some young Germans have made a name for themselves in the Elisabeth Competition. In 2003 the first prize went to a German. I don't know what they will do later on... We had the period of Kempf and Schnabel...

AT: Which revealed strong technical weaknesses as well. Schnabel on some live recordings is simply a disaster!

E-B: In a live recording anything can happen. I don't want to compare myself but it's recognised and true that at the technical level I am above average, but it's clear that at that time they were less precious and less attentive to detail. But Schnabel had a great technique.

AT: Kempf clearly reveals technical problems. Even in the studio recordings!

E-B: In this case I have to give you a point.

AT: Of course you do...

E-B: He was magnificent in the sonorities he achieved in the mezzo-fortresses. But when he had to make a gradual and imperceptible escalation in the crescendos, when he had to deal with the dynamic curves, the nuances, then what you've just said was evident.

AT: Problems even at the level of fingering... In the Beethoven sonatas for example.

E-B: Yes but we have to remember that this is a recording at an advanced age. Yet his inspiration remained intact which leads us to second-guess his technical weaknesses. We have to remember the performances from when he was young. This is what I think. There are different phases of a pianist and interpretations do not always remain the same. AT: I remember a Richter recital where he gave too many wrong notes... But despite that he managed to be brilliant! E-B: Richter is part of another generation. Of a generation that was concerned with developing perfection and that coincided with the golden age of the record. AT: But he always refused any kind of intervention in the studio. In "Tableaux d'une exposition" that were recorded live at the Moscow conservatory, he starts with a mistake that wouldn't be difficult to correct in the studio. But it stayed there! E-B: I'll tell you something: I have a way of recording. I never record less than 15/20 minutes at a time. Often I record whole pieces without interruption. When I recorded Hammerklavier, I played it in one go. I think that in a studio recording one has to seek a balance between the live concert and the comfort of the studio. I start by recording a small part on which me and the sound engineer make the necessary adjustments and adjustments so that the person who buys the cd has a good sound without noise or interference. Then we start to make long recordings, sometimes entire works. Never small parts because it is a matter of preserving the "essence" and the inner impulse of the work that runs the risk of being totally lost when the method of gluing small pieces together is used. If one wants to conserve the musical discourse and the inner life of the work, as happens or should happen in concert, then we have a big and serious job on the part of the interpreter. AT: I have to tell you that I got the impression that you are more at ease in the fast movements and the small structures. E-B: That often happens to me. The piano has a sound that "dies". It doesn't extend in time like you can with brass and woodwind, for example. In these instruments the same sound can even make a crescendo. On the piano, a sound produced by a single attack is short-lived. A fast movement doesn't offer us more than short sounds, which is easier at the limit. The slower a movement is, the more difficult it is to evoke the "song" because it is necessary to invent an arc supposed by a continuity that does not exist. We pianists have to invent a breath of continuity using hammers that percuss. This difficulty exists in all pianists.

But I must tell you that in many recitals I have been totally at ease in very slow movements. Let me remind you...

For example, I had a recital that started with the nocturnes op 37. The first of those nocturnes which is in G minor, has in the middle a long passage in very slow chords that demand a religious concentration. It was a difficult moment but I managed and the audience reacted to that with great applause.

But I don't deny the ease with which I can do very difficult passages with an uncommon ease. I know how to prepare them. How to work them. Which fingering to choose according to what I know of the fingering used by the composer and his way of interpreting the works he created.

I think a lot about all this before choosing one of the possible fingerings. Sometimes the difficulties are where they are not at all obvious...

I also have a serene way of confronting technical difficulties. I don't allow myself to get into a state of tension because that will have repercussions at the muscular level.

Some pianists, despite having a good technique, when faced with a difficult passage are afraid and reduce the tempo slightly. Without wanting to, their muscles become tense and the interpretation is less successful.

You may be right in referring to the propensity for fast movements as a weakness, but I can tell you that at the moment I don't feel any major technical difficulty in any of the existing piano works.

And I'll tell you something else perhaps more important: the fundamental thing is to be up to the inspiration.

Sometimes, when there is noise or the piano is not well balanced, inspiration is a little blocked. I don't know if all this is clear to you...

AT: Of course it is. Are you aware that your recitals on the 13th were clearly superior to those of the other days?

E-B: Day 13...

AT: The studies op 25 and the Preludes...

B-E: Superior for you? Did you have that perception?

AT: Very clearly.

E-B: I don't know... Actually when I play the Preludes

AT: and the studies op 25...

EB: There's always a very good reaction from the audience. If you want you can say they're small pieces...

AT: Yes. And fast movements, in general.

E-B: Agreed. But I wasn't very happy with my interpretation of study number 6, which is fast... That was because I didn't have the piano I needed.

Chopin's piano was very light and glissant. However, I wouldn't like, at this moment, to do an integral on a piano of the time because it wouldn't have the sound quality, the timbre richness and the mechanical precision of modern pianos.

In this integral I had the problem of a keyboard that was too hard in some areas, which caused toucher problems and interfered not only with the attacks but also with the dynamics.

But... So you consider me more suited to small shapes...

Then tell me what would be difficult for you. The "largo" of the third sonata, for example?

Which moment did you find less successful in my interpretation? Some problem of concentration?

AT: Something like that... Sometimes I seemed a bit lost inside some pieces... In some Mazurkas for example...

E-B: Yesterday... I agree with you for the first of the Mazurkas op 56. I was searching for my sonority and I didn't find it.

Chopin's last works explore very much the middle and the bass. In this piano (and this disturbed me throughout the integral) these registers have to be well attacked otherwise they sound weak. I wanted to play this Mazurka in a light and delicate way in these registers and the sound did not come out as I wanted. I was also already under the fatigue of the past days...

An integral is something dense and demanding. There are probably things that I will modify over time...

But if you talk about other Mazurkas please let me know.

AT: The problem is that I only wrote down what I found exceptional.... I had several times the feeling of feeling lost in works that I thought I knew well... That's because of their tempos, their accents and some suspensions...

E-B: I understand... I didn't play as you expected me to play. But I must tell you that I belong to that class of pianists that almost don't use "rubato" and that leads to criticism. I don't mean to answer those criticisms but

AT: You make stops! Stops that surprised me.

E-B: Are you talking about Polonaise-Fantasia? We mustn't forget that it's an improvisation where nothing must be foreseen at the outset and everything must emerge from the will of the moment. That's why the audience can't follow the interpreter and can't expect him to do this or that.

In other works, I know I made an important stop in the development of the first movement of the third sonata, where there is a great and strange modulation. If you don't make that stop that important modulation will go unnoticed.

Situations like that are totally voluntary. But most of the time, what I can tell you is that I get criticised for being too regular.

But I have to tell you that I don't play one bar with the same rhythm as the previous one. I follow the development of the expression waves. If the expression should accelerate, I accelerate... It's something intuitive but in permanent movement and I believe that after all that has been witnessed about Chopin's rubato as an interpreter of his compositions, about what his contemporaries have witnessed, one must take into account the statements that Chopin's rubato was natural and discreet to the point that many say that he didn't use "rubatos".

But it is true that you did not speak of "rubato" but of stops. I can only tell you that those stops are rare.

AT: I didn't speak of "rubato" because Vlado Perlemuter, whom I admire, hardly uses it or uses it discreetly, as you just said about Chopin. For me, "rubato" has no relevance. Even Sokolov, who is paradigmatic, doesn't use it that much...

E-B: Yes. Sokolov is certainly an immense pianist. I heard him one day when I happened to turn on the television and saw him playing the latest Mazurkas. He is absolutely musical but I cannot share the opinion that he makes a discreet rubato. At least in that register he played with a lot of "rubato".

This is not a criticism of Sokolov. It is just to tell you that it is difficult to play Chopin too regularly. According to the moment you play one "rubato" or another.

If the "rubato" surprises, it is because it is not naturally motivated. It is necessary that the "rubato" is not noticed. When the audience doesn't notice the rubato, it is because it is natural.

AT: Excluding the pianists of the French school, who are for you the most outstanding pianists of the present time? It's almost an incorrect question...

E-B: No. Not at all! When there's talent, there's room for everyone. You don't have to listen to the same people over and over again. It's like with flowers: you can offer different flowers that are equally beautiful.

In music we are all different and each one must stand out for his excellence.

One should always give one's best, but one should not aim to be better than this or that one.

That's why I don't listen to many of my colleagues, so my answer will suffer from this limitation.

In any case, among those I have been able to listen to, there are two who have struck me among the young French pianists: Hélène Grimaud and Phillipe Jossiano.

The latter won second prize at the Chopin Competition in '95, I think. He is a very sensitive pianist, who really has his own way of playing with a lot of nobility and feeling. When there is feeling and nobility we have Chopin.

AT: Don't you find Grimaud a bit a kind of a superficial star?

E-B: I don't care what they made of her at the media level. I'm simply interested in the music. I heard her when she was 16 years old.

AT: She's 30 now...

E-B: I know, but I heard her recently as well. When I heard her when she was 16, I immediately realised that she was gifted with an enormous musical intelligence which is probably her greatest quality.

It's true that I happened to hear her by chance on the radio before I knew it was her and I found the interpretation somewhat harsh. I was saddened that she had evolved in that way.

Even so I must say that I recently heard her play some pieces by Brahms and Rachmaninof and even though she's not a great technician you can feel it's great music. She manages to move me.

AT: Do you know any Portuguese pianists?

E-B: Who are they?

AT: There are two very well known... Maria João Pires

H-B: Ha!!!

AT: and Artur Pizarro.

H-B: I don't know Pizarro but Pires is a monument! I didn't didn't know she is portuguese.

AT: Right. In fact my initial question was excluding the French... But it doesn't matter. If you want to continue talking...

E-B: Huh yes? Well, Pires is a monument. I don't know her interpretations of Chopin... Better: I heard once a Chopin by her and it was magical! As you've already understood, I avoid listening to other interpreters playing Chopin because I try to start from empty or almost empty.

I have a great esteem for this great artist and now that I have been appointed professor at the Queen Elisabeth Chapel, in Belgium, I have already invited her to do master-classes with my students who are a special class of pre-career pianists. The two pianists I proposed at the beginning were Pires and Freire who have already accepted.

There is also the immense pianist that is Christian Zimmerman. Maurício Polini who was a shock when I listened to his record when I was fifteen years old...

AT: Sometimes too technical...

E-B: Yes, yes... But with a great musical intelligence and an enormous sensitivity.

There's always some defect. You can't expect perfection!

But there are those who achieve a balance like Dino Lipatti...

AT: I've only heard him on record...

E-B: Yes. He's long gone from our midst. I've only heard him on record too. He is phenomenal on all levels: technique, intelligence, understanding, inspiration...

AT: Can one speak of an Italian school of piano or not at all? Michelangelli, Lipatti, Pollini...

E-B: Lipatti was Romanian.

AT: Of course. How stupid of me!

E-B: I believe there is a Mediterranean sensibility and I fit into that kind of sensibility. But it's not a school. There is a Mediterranean sensibility and culture... Maybe that's why I've been compared to those pianists. Not Michelangelli, but Lipatti and Pollini.

But I've been compared to others like Richter and Horovitz, which amazed me. And even Samson François!

AT: Who was your teacher?

E-B: In Beirut it was Zvart Sarkissian. She studied a little bit with Marguerite Long. Then I studied with Jacques Février.... Finally with Pierre Sancan.

AT: So the French school...

E-B: Pierre Sancan was Rome's first prize winner in composition. He was not only a pianist.

What made me great were the analysis, harmony and counterpoint classes that I attended at the conservatory with great masters. That helped me to think how to interpret a composition, how to find the harmonic colours... The knowledge of harmony is fundamental!

AT: What's going on with contemporary music? I think pianists don't really like to interpret contemporary works...

E-B: It depends on which contemporary music. I played a bit of Schoenberg and Webern...

AT: They are already two classics...

E-B: Do you think that when you do a programme with these composers you get a full house?

For most people, Schoenberg is difficult to listen to!

AT: I was at a concert at the Chatelêt theatre, directed by Simon Rattle in which the first part was Schoenberg's piano concerto and the second was Mahler's Song of the Earth. The house was full and the audience loved it! an audience that was not the "type audience" of contemporary music...

E-B: Yes. But in Paris you take your chances! For me Schoenberg entered history but I don't think he really entered classical music. I'm talking about the music that is listened to by the "big public" and the one you listen to instinctively when you get home.

I see who you are talking about. Pendereki, Bério, Ligetti, Xenakis, Boulez, Stockausen...

...

AT: You told me about settled composers. In history and in institutions...

E-B: Yes, but...

AT: Stockausen has his Klavierstück which are interesting for a pianist... I don't like Stockausen very much but those pieces are very interesting. Some of them in the first half of a piano recital. Why not Beethoven in the second half?

E-B: Yes. There are pianists who do it.

But you have to be very careful: music is not meant to be interesting. Music, for me, is made to exalt life. The happiness of living.

AT: Is it a religion for you?

B-E: But yes! Without a doubt.

Music is sacred. It's not an entertainment. It is not an intelligence of invention and construction.

For me, music is an eternal song.

Each person captures it according to his personality and according to his time. But for me someone like Monpou tells me much more than someone like Stockausen.

It's also a question of time and choice. We pianists have a lot of repertoire to choose from. A lot of good repertoire. We make the choices that will make us better and that will allow us to grow.

If I play what is "interesting" in contemporary music I will not have time to work Beethoven, Schuman or Ravel, the "greats" that are indispensable to my existence.

Occasionally I make an experiment. I am not closed. I have premiered contemporary works in Paris and Brussels. But I also know the limitations of this music because it is a music that is often satisfied with being interesting and intelligent.

As I told you, I have a definition of music. We can talk about sound construction, we can talk about sound intelligence but it is sometimes a bit abusive to give the title of music to that which has neither melody, nor tempo, nor rhythm, nor harmony, nor counterpoint, nor structure. Because first of all, Beethoven changed the history of music but kept these parameters. Prokofief also changed, he was a revolutionary, but he also kept these parameters which, if they don't exist, maybe we should talk about something else than music.

The proof is that I know many "musicians" who don't know a single note and who, with computers, produce a prodigious sound world.

If Beethoven worked and studied hard to make his first symphony, it's not some person who comes to me and says "here is a symphony" who is a musician. That is a mockery of real musicians. I am in revolution against calling that music.

This doesn't mean that I don't admire these works, in the same way that I can admire the construction of a house. But if it is not habitable, how can we call it a house? Maybe we can say that it is a sculpture...

AT: Do you know, for instance, Ligetti's piano pieces?

E-B: Of course I do. The studies, for example.

AT: And you think that's not music?

EB: They're fabulous! But I don't like it. Where is the singing? There are allusions but that's not singing. It's a recollection of the singing.

Of course, this doesn't take away the value of those works. What matters is to find a suitable denomination.

For me a pop song is more music, even if it's bad, than that kind of contemporary works. Because they have melody and structure, even if they are simple.

AT: You start from assumptions that cannot be universalized. What is melody? What is singing? Xenakis and Ligetti understand music as a universe of sound displacements and densities.

E-B: Yes, but to whom do they communicate this?

AT: To their audiences, obviously. Those audiences are also moved. I saw them cry at the opera "Le grand macabre"!

E-B: Yes. But it was the theme that made them cry.

AT: How can you make such a statement?

E-B: I worked works of great complexity like Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and Pendereki's Passion According to Saint Luke.

Ligetti's studies, I know them like the back of my hand. You cannot accuse me of lack of knowledge, of lack of analysis of these works.

If there is an audience that considers these works music, I'll leave. I'm not part of that public.

I don't want to remove music what is part of it but music has evolved in such a radical way that many people, really many people, consider that this is no longer music.

Aren't you surprised that most pianists, great pianists refuse contemporary works? Name me some great pianists who play them. Pires plays contemporary music? Does Brendel play it? And Perahia? All of them great musicians...

AT: Pollini worked a lot with Nono.

E-B: That was part of his personality. Of his militancy.

AT: Emmanuel Ax plays contemporary music.

E-B: They allowed people - and that was the role they assumed - to know, in their best form, contemporary works in order to better judge them. Pollini almost only made contemporary music with Nono. A contemporary.

I am not even motivated to play Messiaen's Vingt Regards. A work that is surely good music.

AT: I don't particularly like them but let's admit it. That it's "great music".

E-B: So I don't have time and I don't give priority to this repertoire. If I have time at the moment to work on new works, I will choose Prokofief's 5th Sonata and his 8th.

AT: And Scriabin?

E-B: I have played Scriabin and for me he is an "intellectual type" composer. Even in his romantic phase he is pendently intellectual.

AT: His first phase is typically romantic...

E-B: Not so much so. It's like Liszt who is romantic and made music with an intellectual and abstract slant.

AT: Liszt's piano sonata is the best that romanticism has bequeathed us...

E-B: I played it several times. But I tell you frankly: for me there's more of seeming than of being.

AT: For me that sonata is a monument of the music of all times.

E-B: Not for me. Chopin's sonata in B minor goes further. This sonata goes much further.

AT: Different things...

E-B: They are different but we always start from a determined sensibility which like us is delimited by time and space. It's not an absolute judgement. Everything I have said is not an absolute judgement because that doesn't exist.

Anyway the media can play a role in raising the interest in contemporary music and that seems very good to me.

But what I want to tell you is that the "sin" of many contemporary composers was to want to make new music at all costs. Newness for them is not commanded by inspiration but by will. It is their will to make history that commands inspiration and that doesn't work. The will to be original is greater than the inner need to express themselves by creating music.

When I was small I began to feel music as a great love, a great feeling that filled me up. If I had been given to listen to contemporary music when I was four years old I probably wouldn't be a musician today.

I want to talk about composers who take as a model Beethoven's Great Fugue or the end of Chopin's second sonata which is something almost atonal...

AT: And the last pieces of Liszt?

E-B: Ha... The last pieces of Liszt...

When we talk about composition, we mustn't forget that after composing his second sonata, Chopin composed a nocturne of enormous simplicity. It's necessary to know how to do both.

What I object to in some composers who claim to be from our time is the fact that they are not capable of composing a melody that someone likes to sing. Like with painters who call themselves contemporary and are incapable of making a portrait that makes people look at it with pleasure. What's wrong then? Are you going to tell me that I'm a reactionary? But one must be capable of these creations!

AT: In Paris, contemporary art exhibitions are always sold out. Every day, they are packed with people. People like that art.

E-B: That's not a reference. If a pianist comes to me playing with his feet, his elbows and his arms, at the end I'll ask him to play a scale and a movement from a Mozart sonata. If he can't do it, I'll tell him: thank you for coming, but you can leave.

AT: Of course!

E-B: When I say "be able" it doesn't mean that the artist has to establish his whole style on a scale, a Mozart piece or in painting a portrait. But he has to be able to do this if he has been educated for art.

Here is what makes the difference between a true artist and some one who does no matter what and calls himself one.

Produce noises and sound constructions on a keyboard, any imbecile can do it.

I speak of extremes because I recognise the imagination and intelligence of those who are recognised as contemporary composers.

But don't you think that these recognised contemporary composers, some of whom you already consider classics, lack a little modesty?

AT: I know few of them personally...

E-B: What about Chopin when he was 20 years old? At twenty Chopin had already inscribed himself in eternity!

Most of those contemporary composers that we recognise as intelligent wanted to fix themselves in history before fixing themselves in eternity. Art does not belong to history: art belongs to eternity!

One is not an artist if one wants to be. One can learn a lot of things, but one does not learn to be an artist. One is not an artist because one decides to be an artist.

God decided that Chopin was an artist but I don't think he decided that for the generality of contemporary artists.

AT: Thank you very much.