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.