Fourteenth Interview – Of the Present and the Future

It's been a long time since we had one of these.

Yes, I thought it was time for an update.

You wanted to discuss the music you are currently working on and other matters?

A few matters connected with the future of what we do as serious musicians.

OK, so what are you practicing right now?

Well, a few of the last piano sonatas of Franz Joseph Haydn.

What attracted you to this music?

It has always struck me that of all the classical masters, Haydn's contributions seem to come from a sane mind – sound music from a consciousness that was profoundly grounded in rational action, faith and confidence. There's something profoundly wise in his ideas that seems missing from the work of Mozart or Beethoven. Haydn doesn't mind telling musical jokes. His sense of humor is more refined than Beethoven's.

What have you discovered about pianism and … ?

It's a lot more difficult to interpret than either Mozart or Beethoven. There's even a sense of improvisation within the finality of the composed lines and harmonies. As if the music is unfinished or more roughly drawn than the music of the other two masters. Above all, even though Haydn is writing for a solo keyboard instrument with perhaps half the dynamic range of a modern piano, he is still thinking in symphonic terms. So as the various movements become more familiar under my fingers, the stage I call “sculpting,” where I make up my mind exactly how I want to interpret the music, I find myself thinking of conducting a small symphonic orchestra as I play the piano.

Is this a new perspective for Haydn? I mean … ?

I don't know if any of the other champions of this music ever thought they were playing symphonies for piano or not, but more than the others I've mentioned, it helps to consider the forms as belonging as much to symphony as to sonata. But there's also internal balances that have to be maintained so that accompanying figures don't overcome the leading solo lines. The thing with Haydn is that he uses extremely short figures or musical speech and manages to string them along as though a conversation was going on. So whereas in Beethoven, one encounters grand landscapes, and in Mozart the preciousness of pure form and finished expression – you can think of Mozart as a precursor to Chopin, whereas Haydn has no real precedent nor any real following except for the forms he developed which were used widely thereafter, but they don't sound anything like Haydn.

I suppose most think of Haydn as reserved, stodgy, old fashioned …

Nothing could be further from the truth. The best performances of Haydn should sound sparkling, fresh and timeless, as if they could have been conceived and written just yesterday.

How does a pianist accomplish this?

The first order is to learn the music. That's harder than one can imagine because the music itself is so obviously simple. You know, much of Haydn fits right under the natural fingering. It's not where the difficulty lies. So I learn the music first by playing it at half or even a quarter of the intended speed. And most pianists play him way too fast! What? Is Haydn taking us on a chase to a fire? No, he's having polite and private conversations with us that are about the very ordinary personal joys of everyday life. Occasionally there's a kind of royal flourish, but he doesn't overuse any of that. I also play everything without pedaling any of it as I doubt Haydn's piano was particularly equipped with a good damper pedal and I expect that the decay was greater and sustain shorter on his piano than on ours. The advantage to us on modern instruments is that once we learn the music thoroughly, we can apply the damper pedal very judiciously to cause certain phrases to shine brilliantly for their short duration.

You spoke to me earlier of two brands of pianos that you would compare when playing this music.

Yes, oddly enough, it is worth asking just how much piano one needs to play this music. I would think that any reasonably good parlor grand piano would be sufficient. But in former posts, I made a distinction between the sound and balance of a Steinway vs a Mason & Hamlin. Now Mason & Hamlin, despite not having the same name recognition of a Steinway, may be a superior scale and their smaller grand pianos are spectacular in what I have called the orchestral rather than the soloistic properties of a piano sound. The small Fazioli is even more so. So for modern reconstructions of the pieces by Haydn or anyone before him; Couperin, Rameau, Scarlatti, Bach, etc. it may be that a Mason & Hamlin is superior to a Steinway, whereas for Schumann, Chopin, Brahms, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, etc. a Steinway reigns supreme. I'm sure the distinctions I'm making are very small. I once played a rebuilt Mason & Hamlin BB (7' grand) that played and sounded more like a Steinway. It was one of those pianos that gave me a significant ache to want to own. But right now I have a big tall American upright piano, a Kurtzmann from 1928, and it's pinblock is still good and it has a nice scale and I am slowly making improvements to it with the eventual intention of replacing the hammers and improving the action as far as possible. After all, I am neither very young nor very rich and must make do with what I have.

So what do you have to say about the future of this music?

There are forces in play right now that can only be destructive to the future of civilization as we know it. Generations are arriving who know nothing about this music and may never find it. Attention is drawn elsewhere. Few are interested in acquiring or building upon natural skills. Where's the audience for this music? Who will attend concerts in the very wonderful concert venues that have been erected over the past few decades? Who would know what a good interpretation sounds like compared to one that is frankly hackneyed? With Haydn, you must preserve almost the idea that you are improvising as you are playing, that the phrases are to appear fresh, almost accidental, sparkling and glittering, on a background of grace and mostly peaceful reserve. You notice that the other more romantic composers – you know I regard romanticism as a cover for what I have described as emotional realism, but that realism includes states of feeling that Haydn only notices from some proper distance. He may occasionally point to some unfortunate circumstance where the romantics become that unfortunate circumstance in some deeply sensuous or in the case of Scriabin, almost erotic emotion.

So the real audience for such as Haydn presents may be limited?

May be a sanctuary for those who are just plain tired of all the angst, anger, trouble or other more raw emotions. For years I had occasion to come back from work in an often harrowing and confused environment to seek the ultimate in sanity and balance and Haydn never disappointed me. Sound music from a sane mind. That's Haydn.

So which sonatas?

Well, I use the Hoboken numbering, so there are only 52 piano sonatas. Number 52 in E Flat I learned many years ago, but I have returned to it, polishing it up to get it up to my performance standards. The D Major, the 51^st is a lovely two movement work. The first movement reminds me of something vaguely French or pre-Schubertian. The second movement is a magical jewel of a masterpiece. The 50^th in C Major is one of the more surprising works in this series – I believe he took these to London with him to perform – it's first movement is brilliant for its use of thematic material that all has a smirking edge to it – full of clever musical puzzles and frank slapstick elements. The second movement anticipates Schubert in the use of phrases in octaves, which you want to play very softly and surely, not heavy or pounding. The last movement is one of those tight clever finales to be played with a quick and sure decisiveness but again without either excessive speed or volume. I can still remember when I was young, people would keep asking me to play something fast and loud. So I learned the last movement of Beethoven's Moonlight or some other equally fast pieces. These usually got the most sure applause. But it's like a diet made up of mostly meat, rather heavy. Oh yes, before I forget, I'm also working on the 49^th also in E Flat. What a wonderful work that is too from start to finish.

So Haydn is like salad?

LOL, well salad is known to be very nutritious and essential to a good balanced diet.

As I suppose would be Haydn to one's pianistic repertoire.

LOL, I suppose so.

So what of the future?

We have to consider the implications of everything that's been going on lately and its affects on music both being performed and being listened to. What's the piano industry like right now? In a downward spiral? How come fewer people wish to have their kids learn to play a piano? You know that the piano is the gateway to all music. There is no other instrument capable of giving the player an immediate grasp of music in general. On a piano one can experience melody, harmony, rhythm and form all at once. Of course an organ might have some similar qualities, but real organs are really parts of the buildings in which they are housed. The electronic varieties of keyboard instruments can get as close as they please to the real thing without really getting there. This frustration when perceived by the performer is one of the chief drives among musicians accustomed to playing electronic keyboards to eventually seek real pianos, or organs.

So you suppose that classical music may be in the same category of art as legitimate theatre, poetry or dance?

We've discussed these somewhat before. One could even add painting to this list. Fewer people are really painting, dancing, holding poetry readings – because poetry was always meant to be spoken and heard, not just read in books – the same for legitimate theatre or ballet or modern dance. Who cares but those who have bothered to educate themselves concerning them and so much relies on memory. Where the cultural memory is not reiterated, things, ideas, techniques, instrumentation, everything, just fades away. A few years ago I was in France. I decided to get a few pieces by Claude Debussy ready to play in case I ran into a piano. Well, I did, a fine old Gaveau upright. So I played them in some way better than ever and although everyone liked what I played nobody knew that this was French music by a French composer in France. Do you get what I mean?

Yes, so what's the solution?

Well the strongest human emotion, as Thomas Mann pointed out, is interest. You're either interested or you're not. Boredom is absence of interest or even an antagonism to that interest. Boredom, ennui, deadness of feeling, has been heightened by the recent events of this peculiar year, 2020. If anything survives, it is kept alive simply by sheer interest; someone likes something, is attracted to it, interested in it enough to find out more, sometimes developing into an unquenchable curiosity, and without any of this, art gets forgotten, in some cases never to be revived. For example, outside of New Years' festivities in Vienna, who actually listens to Strauss waltzes anymore? His music used to be world famous and widely recognized. One almost never hears any of it anymore because something about it might seem all too dated for these “progressive” days in which we are living.

So your advice is?

This is for audiences as well as performers; improve your own life by exposing yourself to the great arts and artists of the past which is a treasure house of surprising and surpassing jewels. Want to know what it means? Once, another lifetime ago, I was fortunate enough to have met the Ibach brothers who ran the now defunct Ibach piano company in Germany. I sat at one of their great grand pianos and played the 2^nd impromptu from Op 90 of Schubert. Christian Ibach was standing close by and as I concluded, tears streaming out of his eyes, he said, “this is why we build pianos."