Before watching this video of Brahms’ first ballade opus 10, I’ll give you my point of view. I particularly like his sobriety. Music before anything else: no “inspired contortions,” and hand movements look so natural that one would think seeing a long caress of the keys, an endless ballet of fingers. Any pianist seeks a purity of gesture, and Michelangeli is for me a perfect example of this purity. His calm, elegance at the piano, this quiet strength emitting an incredible aura prouve, if needed, that Michelangeli is a tremendous pianist. Even if I know he has been thinking about it a lot and even if it was partly an acting performance, I love it!

I let you observe this in this video filmed live in 1981 in Lugano.

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© Romain Guy

After a long debate with a student about musical analysis, I needed to write a few lines on the topic. Why is musical analysis so helpful for musicians? Why do we often deny its necessity? Musical analysis: a musical strategy, I said, because it allows me to draw up a plan for each piece, each concert.

Going on stage without a strategy is really dangerous. As well as a good technician, a pianist has to be a good strategist. Giving the final blow, taking the audience from the rear, we have to think about it, and analysis helps us to carry out this important work. Where is the climax, how this piece can be divided, we do not leave this to chance, our sound strategy depends on it. We have to do this using various scale levels: a movement, a work, a program and even sometimes a whole season or career. In piano playing, there is in fact a very little space for inspiration, I know this can be a deception for some of you, but understand that this little space plays a really important role at another level.

One very often hears of lack in cohesion. Musical analysis allows us to find out how a composer builds his work, and to understand the logic integrating the different movements in a whole called his work, to finally convey this logical system to the listener.

A composer thinks in terms of structures and musical forms (among others) to give a spine to his work. The interpreter has to understand it in order to build a coherent musical composition, and has to convey to the audience the cleverness of the structure.

And you, how does analysis help you?

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You can find much more live recordings at http://www.recitals.alexeisultanov.ru

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Many thanks to Ionarts for the transcription into English:

Poème symphonique was composed by György Ligeti in 1962. We are presenting this work this evening. The concert, which we went to record in Rome, was presented by an orchestra of 100 performers. This rebroadcast is a television premiere. At the end of the concert, we will offer a brief explanation, but first listen and watch. The concert begins in one minute.

[the piece is performed]

Since its world premiere in the Netherlands in 1963, Poème symphonique for 100 metronomes has been very rarely performed in public. The complicated scenographic staging, the detailed preparation by hand, the need for around ten technicians to activate more or less simultaneously the 100 metronomes, makes the demand for performances limited. Thirty-two years after the premiere, the sculptor and installation artist Gilles Lacombe heard a recording of the work. Impressed, he decided to invent a machine able to perform the piece automatically. After six months, he set up this ingenious device. Ever since, Poème symphonique can be performed accurately, at any time, and in public. Please understand that at its world premiere in 1963, the concert was filmed by Dutch television. On that night, after the final tick-tock of the metronome, there was a heavy silence, followed by booing, screaming, and threats. The concert was never broadcast.

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It is for this reason that I chose the version with Marcus Roberts at the piano, accompanied by his Trio, under the baton of the brilliant Seiji Osawa, interpreting in great shape the third movement of this concerto a la Marcus Roberts, perfectly capturing the spirit of Gershwin.

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Significant figure of contemporary musical life, Boulez fascinates me. Although criticized by many, he nevertheless remains a key figure of the last 60 years. Whether people like him or not, no one can deny that he greatly contributed to the advancement of musical thought.

And now let’s listen to an excerpt of Sur Incises performed by the Ensemble Intercontemporain conducted by Pierre Boulez himself.

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Thanks to him, I fell in love with this music, so lilting, so colorful, by its wild and subtle rhythms. A pianist of great class was needed for such a work. Orozco wonderfully filled this role. From then on, I listened to many other versions by other pianists, but I have never experienced the same sensation again.

I would have loved to see him play, but Rafael Orozco left us too soon, in April 1996 at only 50 years old. Today, the little tape cassette on which I had recorded this concert is not readable anymore. Only the imperishable memory of a wonderful concert remains. However I would love to listen to this concert again and I’m hoping there might be somewhere (perhaps at France Musique, which broadcasted it) where to find this concert tape. Or maybe did someone record it?

The concert took place on Tuesday, August 4th, 1992 at 9:30 p.m, Parc du Château de Florans, during the La Roque d’Anthéron Festival: if someone knows where I could get this unpublished recording, please leave me a message.

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While you are here, enjoy one of my favorite concertos by one of my favorite interpreters (at least in Ravel!)

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Heinrich Neuhaus (Russian of German origin) was a famous pianist and pedagogue. He studied in Vienna under Leopold Godowsky, then he went back to Russia in 1913 where he taught in many conservatories before running his own class in Moscow from 1923 until his death in 1964. There studied the most brilliant pianists of the XXth century, among them were Gilels, Richter, Virsaladze, Zak, Lupu, Krainev, Naumov… Piano genius, he devoted his life to teaching.

His book, “The art of piano playing”, is a series of comments based on his experience, a bit like his diary as a professor. With precise examples as well as general principles or anecdotes about his pupils, Neuhaus unveils what is according to him the art of piano playing.

Even if we do not immediately understand everything, reading this work is an advantage on the long way to master the piano. I like to re-read it every two or three years, it brings my mind back to reality. I recommend you to read it and wish you to get the best of it!

For those who already read it, how has this book helped you?

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In order to celebrate his birthday, I offer you the fifth movement of Tout un monde lointain, his cello concerto with Maestro Rostropovich, which has become a classic of the XXth century. This concerto is amazing and makes me very jealous of cellists. I would dream of a concerto for piano…

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