“I wanted to transmit my own passion for the piano and for pianists”

He has now published under the Bérénice label the work “The pianists who left a mark”, in which he analyzes the work of the great performers of the instrument throughout the 20th century, coinciding with the period of the greats. registrations.

-What makes a pianist extraordinary?

– The ability to reach the audience and that the audience’s experience of listening to this performer is lasting.

-Which do you admire most among those who appear in the book?

– Yes, maybe because since I was little, I was very used to listening to his records, because my father had them at home, Rubinstein. Then I discovered Horowitz, who fascinated me, fascinated me. And perhaps because of his completeness, the authenticity of his interpretations, Claudio Arrau. I think these would be the three historical pianists who are most present to me. But there are others like Short. More recently, many pianists of the Russian-Soviet school, including Richter, Dillers and Ashkenazi.

-In interpretation, is everything technical?

– No, no, no. Technology is the livelihood. When you have a complete technicalit’s when you’re able to express the music the way you mean it. As Newhouse said, security is the basis of liberty. If you have technical security, you can be free to choose how you want to perform the interpretation. If you are limited, the interpretation will be conditioned to your own boundariesand that can’t happen.

-Is there also inspiration?

-Every moment is irreplaceable, because music arrives at a specific moment. We must remember that, unlike other arts, which we can contemplate at any time and which are permanent, music is the moment. For this reason, we often cannot make discs sacred either, because they allow for multiple takes. In real life, when you go to a concert, it’s a unique and irreplaceable moment. This was the reason why Glenn Gouldat one point said that he wasn’t going to play in concerts, because he was looking for perfection and he thought that we couldn’t give him this possibility that always exists at a certain moment, to do something that he is not satisfied with later. While the recording allowed it. These are two different visions. There are, on the contrary, other pianists who did not like recording studios because they felt much more comfortable in front of the public, and that the public transmitted to them this energy and this force to make music. Inspiration is very important, as is control.

-A pianist sits at the piano in front of a score, in front of a concert or a sonata. What percentage corresponds to it, that the composer did not do?

-This is a big question that has always hovered over the concept of interpretation. This is where the work of the composer ends, who leaves his will in a score which presents many limits. The mediator, the interpreter, must recreate it, give it life. In the Romantic era, where everything revolved around the figure of the interpreterthere was a lot of freedom and a way of designing the interpretation based on taste and the way the performer perceived it. With the objectivism of the 50s, with authors like Pollinis and Ashkenazi, there is a mentality which consists of placing the original text at the center of all interpretative action. Concerning the original scores, the performer must be as informed as possible, what we call historically knowledgeable. The information is given by original manuscripts and the original editions to have the most reliable information possible on what you think the composer meant. They are like the two poles through which the meaning of general interpretation passes.

-And where is the margin? Because a note is a note and an eighth note should be made like an eighth note, not like a quarter note or sixteenth note.

-No matter what indications you give, temple, dynamics, logic, phrasing, articulation, the score can be refined or completed further, but they remain chart which have no life of their own. We must give them life. And this is where the greatness of the performer comes into play when he lives his life, respects the composer, is convincing and, moreover, is able to make the audience aware of the genius of the composer. There are those who are more successful and those who are less successful. This discussion will stay forever. This is why we talk about more orthodox pianists, and personalist, individualist, very heterodox pianists. Normally there are very established interpretive canons and when someone confronts them in some way or proposes alternatives, it usually makes a big impression. This is, for example, what happened in 1955, when Glenn Gould’s recording of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” was released. It was like a blow, something that shook the musical world. He had a completely different view of Bach than previous pianists, such as Edwin Fischerfor example, that he was the first to record “Well-Tempered Clave” there.

-How did you present the book?

-Are profilesmusical portraits which are made of these 42 pianists. These are obviously not typical biographies, because there wouldn’t be enough room in 400 pages, but rather it’s about painting an artist musically, what his strengths were, where he shined the most, why he has his place in history, why he left his mark. This is done by interweaving opinion and information, and above all with very broad support in the photographic media. This is the reason why I chose to work on the 20th century, because in the 19th century there were fantastic pianists about whom we know a lot, but about whom we have no sound documents, because they did not exist. The value of phonographybut as a source, it is the most important one we have, there is no doubt about it.

– Any surprises?

-It has a chronological sense starting with Rachmaninoffwho everyone knows as a composer, but many people don’t know that he was a very famous pianist in his time, and hence the 42 of the many pianists who play in this story. They represent all the great generations of pianos that existed during the 20th century. And around these musical portraits of these pianists, opinions and information are intertwined, recommendations are made for recordings that may be particularly noteworthy, topics are also introduced that have to do with the concept of the school, with the evolution of interpretation, with the way in which Bach’s interpretation on the piano was conceived, taking into account that Bach composed for earlier keyboard instruments. We talk about the relationship between women and the piano, which is a very normalized topic today, but in other times it wasn’t so normal, and that’s why there are a lot more male pianists. He also talks about how they influenced certain political regimes, including Nazism and Soviet Union. Then there are more specific questions. For example, from the conception of Chopin which exists from Rubinstein to that which existed in reverse, among previous pianists. Particularly interesting moments are discussed, for example when Ashkenazi managed, without defecting, to leave the Soviet Union, and how the Soviet Union was already open in Khrushchev’s time, allowing its best pianists to travel to the West, which did not happen in Stalin’s time.

– Did politics influence?

– It appears in the sense of the way in which it conditions the lives of artists, taking into account, for example, the fact that the Russo-Soviet school was formidable. Regardless of what the communist regime of USSRIt is obvious that in teaching music and especially piano, they were successful, because Russian pianists of the 50s and 60s swept all international competitions. We also talk about competitionHow important are they? There are broken careers, in some cases because of illness and in others because of death, but also in others because the very particularities of a performer’s career are very subject to ups and downs, to the manager he has, to promotion, to many circumstances.

-What audience are you addressing?

-I try to address a wide audience, obviously those who love classical music and piano, but not from an academic point of view, but on a very informative level. It’s about wearing the interest for the readerwho is the reader who is interested in music, who goes to concerts, who goes to the piano festival, who goes to the orchestra. Today we have access to almost everything. We must take into account that young pianists have a very recent pianistic culture, today’s phenomena, but the sense of history is lost with the way of producing new technology products. We go through the day and lose perspective of time. It can be useful to teachers and conservatory students, to music lovers and to those who understand more and those who understand less. It’s a very open book to pass on to others about mine. passion for the piano and for pianists.