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Let's hit those keys.

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Welcome back to the Piano Pod, everyone.

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It's the first episode of our new season, Season 5.

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I hope you all had a fantastic summer.

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I've really missed connecting with you.

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Before diving in, I encourage you to check out

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our introductory episode for this season,

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which came out last week.

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There you'll discover what's in store,

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exciting guests, inspiring topics,

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and our special focus on authenticity and joy

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throughout Season 5, including why we chose these themes.

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You can find a link to the intro episode in the description.

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I am thrilled to kick off this season

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by introducing our first guest,

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who truly embodies the essence of authenticity and joy,

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Dr. Sara Davis Buechner.

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Dr. Buechner is celebrated for her musical command,

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cosmopolitan artistry and visionary independence,

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making her one of the most original

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concert pianists of our time.

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Celebrated for her intelligence, integrity,

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and technical prowess, and thoughtful artistry,

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she has won top prizes

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at prestigious international piano competitions,

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including the Queen Elizabeth and Tchaikovsky competitions.

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Dr. Buchner has performed as a soloist

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and chamber musician across North America,

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Latin America, Europe, and Asia,

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with renowned orchestras like the New York Philharmonic

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and in iconic venues such as Carnegie Hall

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and the Kennedy Center.

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Her versatile repertoire includes collaborations

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with film and dance, and she has premiered works

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by contemporary composers like John Corigliano

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and Yukiko Nishimura.

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A dedicated educator, Dr. Buechner joined

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Temple University's Boyer College of Music and Dance

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in 2016 after teaching at institutions

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like the Manhattan School of Music.

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As a proud transgender woman,

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she also advocates for LGBTQ plus visibility and inclusion,

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contributing her voice to media outlets

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and events worldwide.

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So dear friends, today we explore Dr. Sara Davis Buechner's

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incredible journey as a trailblazing concert pianist

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and educator, focusing on her visionary artistry,

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mastery in piano technique, and her advocacy

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for both lesser known composers

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and the LGBTQ plus community.

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Please stay with me until the end of the episode

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as our conversation will lead

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to a more philosophical discussion later.

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So let's begin the Piano Pod's first episode

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of this new season with our guest, Dr. Sarah Davis Buchner.

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Please enjoy the show.

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["Piano Pod"]

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You are listening to the Piano Pod,

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where we talk to the brightest minds in the industry

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about how they are bringing the piano into the future

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and thriving in a complex, ever evolving world.

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["Piano Pod"]

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Welcome to the Piano Pod, Dr. Buchner.

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Thank you so much for joining us today.

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My pleasure to be here.

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A great honor, thank you.

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It's really an absolute honor and pleasure

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to have you as our first guest of the season,

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and especially with our focus on authenticity

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and joy this year.

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And I couldn't imagine a more fitting guest

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to kick off the season.

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You truly embody the spirit of joy and authenticity.

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And first of all, I just wanna congratulate you

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for your special recital at Merkin Hall last spring.

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Thank you.

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Yeah, and it was the celebration

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of your incredible 40 years since your New York City debut.

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And I bought a ticket,

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and unfortunately I got very sick for two days.

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I couldn't go out nowhere.

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So unfortunately I had to miss,

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but I heard it was an spectacular recital.

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Could you share some highlights from that night

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and what it meant to you to celebrate

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such a huge, huge milestone in your career?

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How did it feel to perform at such a significant event?

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Well, the recital came about a little bit

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of a surprise for me because just my manager said,

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oh, they wanna present you at Merkin,

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which had never really happened before.

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So it was just, you know,

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going to be another recital on the concert slate.

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But I realized that the date was going to coincide generally

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with the 40th anniversary of my New York debut,

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which was back in 1984.

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And I wanted to mark it by playing something special.

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As it happens, I had been studying a lot of piano music

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by a Hungarian composer named Petr Volf,

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a set of pieces that he calls the Volf tempered clavier,

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rather cleverly.

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Jazz inspired, very, very fun, somewhat demanding,

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but fun pieces for piano.

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And this music had come to me through Petr's cousin,

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Veronica Volf, who was my very first piano teacher

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when I was four and five years old.

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It's a wonderful connection.

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She had sent me a few copies of some of the pieces

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that he had written during the COVID time saying,

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I think you might be interested in playing some of these.

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And I was so touched.

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I remember getting into tears

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when I played that Adagio in E major,

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which I recorded on YouTube shortly after getting that music.

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So around that time, I got in touch with Petr by Zoom,

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and I played most of those pieces for him

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on Zoom calls during the time of COVID.

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It was sort of my project to undertake

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while I was at home mostly.

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I mean, I was teaching, but concerts were dry enough.

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So I used that time to study a lot of that music.

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And then here was this special recital.

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So I made that the second half of the program

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was the American premiere of 14 of these pieces

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from the Wolf Temperate Clavier.

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Petr came from Budapest,

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and we had sort of a grand celebration of that.

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Really? To the concert? That's amazing.

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["14 of These Piano Concerts from the Volf Temperate Clavier"]

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Wonderful.

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And then also you performed besides the Wolf Temperate Clavier,

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is it 14 out of 24, correct?

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14 out of 48, actually.

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48.

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About one quarter of it, yep.

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Wonderful.

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And then you also performed pieces by Mozart.

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And then also another Hungarian composer, Miklós Rószá?

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Miklós Rószá, yes.

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Yes, that's right.

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Well, you know, the thing about Mozart for me,

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also this is the composer that I've loved most

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since my childhood, since I was four.

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I mean, that's when I would walk to the radio

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in our living room whenever Mozart's

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Marriage of Figaro overture came on.

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It was every afternoon at 4.30,

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it came on as the tagline for this show.

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My mother noticed me walking to the radio,

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kind of fixated at that time.

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I've always loved Mozart's music,

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and it always feels, oh, I don't know,

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comforting or foundational to start my recitals

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with Mozart's music.

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So that sort of felt like a given.

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And then, you know, so there's something

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about foundations there, about Miss Wolf and Mozart.

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And Miklós Rószá was one of the great Hollywood composers

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in the 1940s and 50s.

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That's what he's most remembered for now.

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His scores to Ben Hur, Double Indemnity, Spellbound,

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quite a few of these film noir classics that he scored.

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But he was also a very thoroughly trained composer,

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a great composer, in my estimation.

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He wrote some piano music.

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His variations were premiered by Clara Haskell in Paris.

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A lot of string music, a lot of orchestral scores,

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and this daunting piano sonata,

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which in my estimation is one of the greatest

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of the 20th century.

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It's a formidable kind of piece of work,

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quite virtuosic and difficult to play.

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I always loved movie music.

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I watched movies a lot when I was a teenager

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in my early 20s, et cetera.

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And you'd see that name come up on the screen

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for a lot of great movies, you know,

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music by Miklós Rószá.

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So I did a lot of reading and research, you know,

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and found a lot of the concert pieces.

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Also, fortunately, I played that sonata as a student

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and I had a cassette recording of it.

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And someone gave me Miklós Rószá's home address

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in Hollywood, so I mailed it out there.

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And I got a phone call from his daughter

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who said how much he had loved it and he liked it.

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And a couple of years later, I went to Los Angeles

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and I played in the Hollywood Bowl.

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It was a Pops concert.

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And I played Miklós Rószá's so-called spellbound concerto,

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which is sort of a Pops 15-minute piano concerto

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made of themes from that motion picture.

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And as I was rehearsing with the orchestra,

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I suddenly heard the musicians sort of talking,

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this kind of whizz whizz whizz whizz whizz whizz whizz.

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And behind me to my astonishment was Miklós Rószá's daughter,

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Juliet, was pushing him in his wheelchair up the path,

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put him right next to the piano.

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He had several strokes and it was hard to communicate with him,

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but he wanted very much to hear me play.

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And they brought him to that dress rehearsal.

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It was, I think, one of his last public outings.

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So I had a chance to meet him and talk to him a bit

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about his music, which was a superb honor, of course.

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Wow, that's amazing.

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And what was it like to be in the venue?

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And what was the reaction from the audience

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by listening to all these contemporary composers?

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Well, I think the recital itself in Merkin was a big hit.

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It was a nice, generously sustained hand.

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And standing ovation and all the rest of it.

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Times have changed.

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I mean, I hoped that Peter's music would elicit a review

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in the New York Times or something like that.

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But they don't review so many concerts these days.

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So unfortunately, that didn't happen.

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But there was a grand party afterwards.

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And actually, quite a few celebrities came as well.

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Really?

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Oh, yes.

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Like who?

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Well, that's between me and my gods.

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OK.

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OK.

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Yeah.

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Well, you deserve all the attention, of course.

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Yes.

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Well, thank you very much.

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Yeah.

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That's wonderful.

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But do you plan to play all the Wolf tempered

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clavier eventually?

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I think it's possible.

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I mean, it depends on the venue.

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I tend to think that a concert of any one particular composer

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has to be particularly perfectly done.

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Because it's a lot to digest.

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I myself, I've gotten bored at concerts of all Bach.

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I mean, I love Bach's music.

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At a certain point, if that's all you're listening to

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for a program, it can get a little tedious.

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But it depends what it is.

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I think like the last three Schubert sonatas

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are a divine evening of music if they're played to perfection.

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I think anytime you play all Mozart,

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it's fantastic, of course.

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Lots of pianists have essayed all the Beethoven piano sonatas.

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But you have to be prepared to do it to about sheer perfection,

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to really bring it off.

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So Peter's complete Wolf tempered clavier

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would probably be run to about two and a half to three hours.

263
00:13:56,900 --> 00:14:00,140
And that would be a devoted audience indeed.

264
00:14:00,140 --> 00:14:05,500
And I might get a little tired doing it too.

265
00:14:05,500 --> 00:14:09,860
Reflecting on 40 years since your New York City debut,

266
00:14:09,860 --> 00:14:13,580
how do you feel your artistry and choices in music

267
00:14:13,580 --> 00:14:15,940
have evolved over the years, over the decades?

268
00:14:15,940 --> 00:14:18,900
And are there elements from your early performances

269
00:14:18,900 --> 00:14:22,980
that you continue to embrace or have your taste and technique

270
00:14:22,980 --> 00:14:26,020
transformed significantly?

271
00:14:26,020 --> 00:14:30,060
Wow, Yukimi, that is like the question of the decade there.

272
00:14:30,060 --> 00:14:35,020
It's going to take a long, long time to answer that.

273
00:14:35,020 --> 00:14:39,900
I think that an artistic journey is a kind of evolution,

274
00:14:39,900 --> 00:14:41,820
of course.

275
00:14:41,820 --> 00:14:45,620
If I think back to my taste in music when I was a child,

276
00:14:45,620 --> 00:14:47,900
it was rather Catholic because it

277
00:14:47,900 --> 00:14:50,540
was shaped by my parents' desire to see

278
00:14:50,540 --> 00:14:55,460
that I had good piano lessons and studied good music.

279
00:14:55,460 --> 00:14:59,380
And I think the first crack in that armor

280
00:14:59,380 --> 00:15:02,340
was probably when I was about 12 or 13 years old

281
00:15:02,340 --> 00:15:05,060
and then the movie The Sting came out

282
00:15:05,060 --> 00:15:07,300
and it had music of Scott Joplin.

283
00:15:07,300 --> 00:15:08,700
And I went down to the music store

284
00:15:08,700 --> 00:15:10,580
and I got a lot of rags of Scott Joplin

285
00:15:10,580 --> 00:15:12,980
because I liked Joplin's rags.

286
00:15:12,980 --> 00:15:16,060
And I remember asking my piano teacher

287
00:15:16,060 --> 00:15:19,660
about playing some of those and also the Gershwin

288
00:15:19,660 --> 00:15:20,820
Preludes for piano.

289
00:15:20,820 --> 00:15:22,460
And he told me, well, that's fun to play,

290
00:15:22,460 --> 00:15:24,820
but you can't play that on serious recitals.

291
00:15:24,820 --> 00:15:26,860
That's just for your own amusement.

292
00:15:26,860 --> 00:15:28,980
And that was just where it was.

293
00:15:28,980 --> 00:15:32,940
And I accepted that as common wisdom

294
00:15:32,940 --> 00:15:35,940
for a good portion of my life, frankly,

295
00:15:35,940 --> 00:15:39,460
until I had the courage to break out and say, I like this.

296
00:15:39,460 --> 00:15:41,060
I think this is really good.

297
00:15:41,060 --> 00:15:43,940
And I can play it well and I'm going to play it.

298
00:15:43,940 --> 00:15:46,500
You have to get to the point where you're not worried

299
00:15:46,500 --> 00:15:48,980
that people will criticize you for your choices.

300
00:15:48,980 --> 00:15:51,780
Or if they do, who cares?

301
00:15:51,780 --> 00:15:53,740
That's their problem.

302
00:15:53,740 --> 00:15:56,140
Speaking of Miklos Rojas' piano sonata,

303
00:15:56,140 --> 00:15:57,540
the very first time I did play it,

304
00:15:57,540 --> 00:16:00,300
I was getting my graduate degree.

305
00:16:00,300 --> 00:16:03,900
And one of my professors, he was in a musicology class,

306
00:16:03,900 --> 00:16:05,340
stopped me and always says, I saw

307
00:16:05,340 --> 00:16:07,140
you're playing some Miklos Rojas.

308
00:16:07,140 --> 00:16:08,340
And I said, yes.

309
00:16:08,340 --> 00:16:12,220
And he said, why are you playing that trash?

310
00:16:12,220 --> 00:16:14,900
And I just said, I like it.

311
00:16:14,900 --> 00:16:19,140
That was the best answer I could give him.

312
00:16:19,140 --> 00:16:21,060
Later, I thought I should have said, well, I

313
00:16:21,060 --> 00:16:22,740
like that trash better than your trash.

314
00:16:22,740 --> 00:16:26,500
But that wasn't the best answer.

315
00:16:26,500 --> 00:16:29,620
But you have to have great belief in your artistic choices

316
00:16:29,620 --> 00:16:31,340
to do something like that.

317
00:16:31,340 --> 00:16:33,740
And you can't fault anyone, myself

318
00:16:33,740 --> 00:16:36,820
or any other young pianist, for playing

319
00:16:36,820 --> 00:16:39,140
the traditional repertoire when you feel like, well,

320
00:16:39,140 --> 00:16:42,340
that's what you have to play to be judged.

321
00:16:42,340 --> 00:16:46,460
So when I left my hometown of Baltimore at the age of 16

322
00:16:46,460 --> 00:16:50,060
to go to Juilliard, I remember I was practicing this B minor

323
00:16:50,060 --> 00:16:54,500
sonata, Ballet Kerefs Islamé, the Tchaikovsky Piano

324
00:16:54,500 --> 00:16:59,460
Concerto, trying to think what else I was practicing.

325
00:16:59,460 --> 00:17:01,700
A whole pile of Chopin etudes, almost all of them.

326
00:17:01,700 --> 00:17:03,500
It's 25.

327
00:17:03,500 --> 00:17:06,980
All of which is music I've played in concert,

328
00:17:06,980 --> 00:17:09,340
and none of which I've played in concert for probably

329
00:17:09,340 --> 00:17:11,500
the last 25 or 30 years.

330
00:17:11,500 --> 00:17:13,020
Not that I don't like that music,

331
00:17:13,020 --> 00:17:18,660
but it doesn't say something unique and really vital to me

332
00:17:18,660 --> 00:17:21,700
that I feel like I have to transmit.

333
00:17:21,700 --> 00:17:24,460
If I go to Carnegie Hall and I hear Christian Zimmerman

334
00:17:24,460 --> 00:17:27,700
play the Liszt Sonata in B minor,

335
00:17:27,700 --> 00:17:30,820
I am sure he's going to give that an incredibly committed

336
00:17:30,820 --> 00:17:33,140
and personal interpretation because he's playing it,

337
00:17:33,140 --> 00:17:36,580
because he feels something very powerful about it.

338
00:17:36,580 --> 00:17:39,500
And I think it's possible I would play that piece again

339
00:17:39,500 --> 00:17:42,260
in the future, but it has to be at a time when I feel like,

340
00:17:42,260 --> 00:17:44,340
oh, there's something in that piece that I have yet

341
00:17:44,340 --> 00:17:49,620
to really say in public.

342
00:17:49,620 --> 00:17:52,660
And ironically, it's the music that's

343
00:17:52,660 --> 00:17:57,180
much lesser played that I found so much richness in,

344
00:17:57,180 --> 00:18:00,260
in terms of music that it's so fresh to my ears,

345
00:18:00,260 --> 00:18:01,740
so fresh to a lot of people's ears,

346
00:18:01,740 --> 00:18:04,020
because it's not played very often.

347
00:18:04,020 --> 00:18:08,500
And there's much more to discover in great music

348
00:18:08,500 --> 00:18:11,180
that hasn't been, frankly, overplayed,

349
00:18:11,180 --> 00:18:15,340
like the Beethoven sonatas, the Prokofiev sonatas.

350
00:18:15,340 --> 00:18:17,540
I'm not saying those pieces shouldn't be overplayed.

351
00:18:17,540 --> 00:18:20,820
That's great, great music, of course.

352
00:18:20,820 --> 00:18:25,100
But when I start to make my own list of music

353
00:18:25,100 --> 00:18:28,020
that you almost never encounter in the concert hall,

354
00:18:28,020 --> 00:18:31,420
you can quickly make a list of very, very fine composers,

355
00:18:31,420 --> 00:18:35,020
starting with Anthony Dvorak and then Gabriel Pirnay

356
00:18:35,020 --> 00:18:38,900
and Joaquin Trina, Gabriel Fauré.

357
00:18:38,900 --> 00:18:44,700
Even works of Cesar Franck are almost never played in recitals.

358
00:18:44,700 --> 00:18:46,900
Make a very, very long list of stuff.

359
00:18:46,900 --> 00:18:51,060
Even if you want to take on Bach, think how much Bach wrote,

360
00:18:51,060 --> 00:18:54,060
and think really how much of his keyboard literature

361
00:18:54,060 --> 00:18:58,100
is played, a very small portion of it.

362
00:18:58,100 --> 00:19:00,620
Tons of things that Bach wrote that you just never

363
00:19:00,620 --> 00:19:02,220
experienced in the concert hall.

364
00:19:02,220 --> 00:19:04,220
Say, for example, the Art of Fugue.

365
00:19:04,220 --> 00:19:07,740
How often do you hear someone take on some project like that?

366
00:19:07,740 --> 00:19:11,180
So in terms of going back to your original question,

367
00:19:11,180 --> 00:19:14,980
my artistic journey, my evolution, and so forth,

368
00:19:14,980 --> 00:19:19,220
I feel like I would describe it as kind of an ongoing circle that

369
00:19:19,220 --> 00:19:23,540
just seems to expand and expand and expand.

370
00:19:23,540 --> 00:19:27,300
I feel sometimes a little scared that I can't control that circle

371
00:19:27,300 --> 00:19:28,100
a little bit better.

372
00:19:28,100 --> 00:19:31,900
I'd like to feel like there's a proscribed journey that one

373
00:19:31,900 --> 00:19:32,540
is taking.

374
00:19:32,540 --> 00:19:34,860
Like you're going from here, you're going to this spot,

375
00:19:34,860 --> 00:19:35,780
this spot, this spot.

376
00:19:35,780 --> 00:19:38,460
And then at the end, when your life is finishing,

377
00:19:38,460 --> 00:19:40,860
you're in your deathbed, and God appears.

378
00:19:40,860 --> 00:19:44,100
It says, you've done the right thing.

379
00:19:44,100 --> 00:19:47,460
Then you pick the music that you exit with perfectly.

380
00:19:47,460 --> 00:19:50,700
But it's more like just this unending maze

381
00:19:50,700 --> 00:19:53,420
where you open this door, and then that door leads to this,

382
00:19:53,420 --> 00:19:56,580
and this, and this, and this, and there's endless other things.

383
00:19:56,580 --> 00:19:59,820
The world of music is just enormous.

384
00:19:59,820 --> 00:20:04,060
I knew it was big when I first went to New York to study,

385
00:20:04,060 --> 00:20:10,540
but I had no idea just how big it really could become.

386
00:20:10,540 --> 00:20:13,460
And of course, it's not just investigating the past.

387
00:20:13,460 --> 00:20:16,500
Music is created every single day.

388
00:20:16,500 --> 00:20:19,580
So in addition to expanding in terms of what you don't know

389
00:20:19,580 --> 00:20:22,380
from the past, what you don't know about today,

390
00:20:22,380 --> 00:20:27,740
and what you don't know is going to be composed tomorrow,

391
00:20:27,740 --> 00:20:31,340
there's just endless possibilities.

392
00:20:31,340 --> 00:20:34,420
So not only looking into all those possibilities,

393
00:20:34,420 --> 00:20:37,140
but then also deciding which possibilities are really

394
00:20:37,140 --> 00:20:39,980
of interest to you and which are not.

395
00:20:39,980 --> 00:20:44,900
And I think after my birthday this year,

396
00:20:44,900 --> 00:20:46,580
I'm tempted not to say the number,

397
00:20:46,580 --> 00:20:48,820
but what the heck, I'll go for it.

398
00:20:48,820 --> 00:20:51,300
I'll soon be turning 65.

399
00:20:51,300 --> 00:20:55,820
There's something that's saying, it's time to say it's all right

400
00:20:55,820 --> 00:20:57,740
if you don't want to play that anymore,

401
00:20:57,740 --> 00:21:03,220
you know, the rest of my life without playing that piece.

402
00:21:03,220 --> 00:21:05,420
Actually, I recently moved to this lovely apartment

403
00:21:05,420 --> 00:21:06,460
you see me in.

404
00:21:06,460 --> 00:21:10,940
And moving for a musician always involves countless,

405
00:21:10,940 --> 00:21:13,820
probably 200 boxes of scores.

406
00:21:13,820 --> 00:21:17,300
And there I was sifting through a lot of those scores.

407
00:21:17,300 --> 00:21:19,180
And some of them I looked at and I thought,

408
00:21:19,180 --> 00:21:21,220
I'm not going to play that.

409
00:21:21,220 --> 00:21:22,980
I'm probably not even going to teach it.

410
00:21:22,980 --> 00:21:25,220
But I don't need it at my home.

411
00:21:25,220 --> 00:21:27,580
I'll put it in my studio at Temple University

412
00:21:27,580 --> 00:21:29,300
in case a student's interested in it.

413
00:21:29,300 --> 00:21:33,140
I'm starting to think about when I'm not here,

414
00:21:33,140 --> 00:21:35,780
maybe somebody can use it.

415
00:21:35,780 --> 00:21:37,660
So, and I'm not sure.

416
00:21:37,660 --> 00:21:38,380
Not yet.

417
00:21:38,380 --> 00:21:39,900
Not yet.

418
00:21:39,900 --> 00:21:41,460
You're very young.

419
00:21:41,460 --> 00:21:44,220
No, I don't want to get too morbid about any of that.

420
00:21:44,220 --> 00:21:46,460
But there's something a little bit comforting in a way

421
00:21:46,460 --> 00:21:50,860
that, you know, I recall the first time I walked

422
00:21:50,860 --> 00:21:55,140
into the Juilliard Library and I saw a student, as I said,

423
00:21:55,140 --> 00:21:57,900
I just turned 16 or 17.

424
00:21:57,900 --> 00:22:00,700
And I see these aisles and aisles and aisles of scores

425
00:22:00,700 --> 00:22:01,700
and so much music.

426
00:22:01,700 --> 00:22:04,220
I had no knowledge of what it was.

427
00:22:04,220 --> 00:22:05,780
I was terrified.

428
00:22:05,780 --> 00:22:07,500
You know, my God, I'm going to learn all this.

429
00:22:07,500 --> 00:22:08,660
How am I going to do this?

430
00:22:08,660 --> 00:22:10,460
How am I going to do this?

431
00:22:10,460 --> 00:22:13,180
So now it doesn't terrify me so much

432
00:22:13,180 --> 00:22:18,580
that that stuff is actually kind of endless.

433
00:22:18,580 --> 00:22:26,140
And are you still learning new repertoire on a regular basis?

434
00:22:26,140 --> 00:22:28,140
Yes, it's kind of.

435
00:22:28,140 --> 00:22:29,980
I often tell people that planning, say,

436
00:22:29,980 --> 00:22:33,580
planning a recital program is a little bit like plotting out

437
00:22:33,580 --> 00:22:35,060
a gourmet meal, right?

438
00:22:35,060 --> 00:22:36,500
You're going to have a dinner party

439
00:22:36,500 --> 00:22:38,380
and you want everybody to have something that they like.

440
00:22:38,380 --> 00:22:40,540
You know, there's got to be some salad.

441
00:22:40,540 --> 00:22:42,940
There has to be some side dishes,

442
00:22:42,940 --> 00:22:46,140
a couple of main courses, maybe some desserts,

443
00:22:46,140 --> 00:22:48,700
maybe some side snacks, some candy here and there,

444
00:22:48,700 --> 00:22:51,660
you know, or something sweet to drink and so forth.

445
00:22:51,660 --> 00:22:55,420
And in terms of either recital programming

446
00:22:55,420 --> 00:22:57,700
or what I feel like if I'm studying

447
00:22:57,700 --> 00:23:01,260
and I have a good balanced program to work on,

448
00:23:01,260 --> 00:23:04,340
well, there's things to study that are of technical interest

449
00:23:04,340 --> 00:23:07,820
that help me maintain just my ability to play.

450
00:23:07,820 --> 00:23:11,260
And there's never any shortage of challenging etudes

451
00:23:11,260 --> 00:23:14,140
to look at, of course.

452
00:23:14,140 --> 00:23:16,580
Then, of course, there's Baroque music.

453
00:23:16,580 --> 00:23:18,900
And if I'm not really so much in the mood for Bach,

454
00:23:18,900 --> 00:23:21,420
actually, these days I'm finally sitting down.

455
00:23:21,420 --> 00:23:25,740
I'm trying to read about 10 to 15 Scarlatti sonatas every day

456
00:23:25,740 --> 00:23:29,940
so that at some point I can say, yes, I played through them all.

457
00:23:29,940 --> 00:23:31,260
It's really important.

458
00:23:31,260 --> 00:23:35,100
I think of him as one of the very, very great composers,

459
00:23:35,100 --> 00:23:36,980
a composer I dearly love.

460
00:23:36,980 --> 00:23:38,940
And I don't want to climb into the casket

461
00:23:38,940 --> 00:23:40,700
without knowing, yeah, I did.

462
00:23:40,700 --> 00:23:43,820
I don't want to feel like, oh, there was volume 10 and 11.

463
00:23:43,820 --> 00:23:45,260
I didn't get to.

464
00:23:45,260 --> 00:23:47,540
That'll be sort of disappointing.

465
00:23:47,540 --> 00:23:50,860
What's, of course, intriguing about Scarlatti is

466
00:23:50,860 --> 00:23:53,140
that in his writing he seems to have thought

467
00:23:53,140 --> 00:23:57,140
of every possible technical device used by composers

468
00:23:57,140 --> 00:23:58,460
from much later centuries.

469
00:23:58,460 --> 00:24:01,540
Think about double notes and octaves and crossed hands

470
00:24:01,540 --> 00:24:05,700
and different articulations and registrations and speeds.

471
00:24:05,700 --> 00:24:10,060
I mean, the variety is simply astonishing.

472
00:24:10,060 --> 00:24:12,340
Then there's classical sonatas.

473
00:24:12,340 --> 00:24:15,420
And these days I always find myself catching up on the ones

474
00:24:15,420 --> 00:24:17,580
that I don't know quite as well.

475
00:24:17,580 --> 00:24:19,740
These days it could probably be Schubert.

476
00:24:19,740 --> 00:24:23,820
And the romantic repertoire has been pretty much covered.

477
00:24:23,820 --> 00:24:27,900
I'm much more of a Chopin and Brahms personnel

478
00:24:27,900 --> 00:24:30,340
than I used to be.

479
00:24:30,340 --> 00:24:34,700
You know, Liszt has had his run in my life.

480
00:24:34,700 --> 00:24:37,060
Youngsters with the fast hands would play all the Liszt.

481
00:24:37,060 --> 00:24:38,620
That would be just fine.

482
00:24:38,620 --> 00:24:41,620
I'm sort of getting into Dvorak all over again.

483
00:24:41,620 --> 00:24:44,660
People don't generally know that he wrote a lot of piano music.

484
00:24:44,660 --> 00:24:48,580
And although some of it is a little unwieldy in terms

485
00:24:48,580 --> 00:24:51,020
of his keyboard writing, it's quite beautiful

486
00:24:51,020 --> 00:24:55,340
and very refreshing in a way.

487
00:24:55,340 --> 00:24:58,260
Then at the 20th century there's just always more Pizzoni

488
00:24:58,260 --> 00:25:01,780
and Martinu and yes, even some more Miklos Rocha.

489
00:25:01,780 --> 00:25:03,820
And then new things.

490
00:25:03,820 --> 00:25:04,940
I mean, Peter Wolf.

491
00:25:04,940 --> 00:25:08,700
I'm always looking for new Japanese composers to play.

492
00:25:08,700 --> 00:25:12,620
I'm very intrigued by that country and its music as well.

493
00:25:12,620 --> 00:25:15,780
And, you know, composers do send me scores.

494
00:25:15,780 --> 00:25:17,860
And I tend to be kind of picky.

495
00:25:17,860 --> 00:25:20,020
I'll read through things.

496
00:25:20,020 --> 00:25:22,340
And in general, if I'm not interested,

497
00:25:22,340 --> 00:25:24,820
I'll just lay them aside.

498
00:25:24,820 --> 00:25:28,100
But I do make it kind of a commitment

499
00:25:28,100 --> 00:25:29,980
that I don't just play old music.

500
00:25:29,980 --> 00:25:33,180
That I do act to try to premiere things,

501
00:25:33,180 --> 00:25:37,380
not just by a famous composer, but by generally a lesser known

502
00:25:37,380 --> 00:25:39,940
composer who I happen to have met.

503
00:25:39,940 --> 00:25:41,420
Someone who needs a champion.

504
00:25:41,420 --> 00:25:45,100
You know, I think that's part of the process for me.

505
00:25:45,100 --> 00:25:47,420
Wow. That's quite amazing.

506
00:25:47,420 --> 00:25:53,180
You know, lately a lot of young musicians started performing more,

507
00:25:53,180 --> 00:25:58,820
you know, lesser known compositions or lesser known composers,

508
00:25:58,820 --> 00:26:01,620
compositions by lesser known composers or what not.

509
00:26:01,620 --> 00:26:05,580
But you've been doing this for decades and you're way ahead of everybody else.

510
00:26:05,580 --> 00:26:07,460
And then, yes.

511
00:26:07,460 --> 00:26:12,540
And then, you know, to do this, my podcast, I actually get to learn

512
00:26:12,540 --> 00:26:18,140
about each guest, but also I get to learn so much about different piano literature.

513
00:26:18,140 --> 00:26:22,060
And then as I was learning about you and listening to all sorts of, you know,

514
00:26:22,060 --> 00:26:27,580
your recordings on Spotify or YouTube, I came across so many interesting pieces.

515
00:26:27,580 --> 00:26:30,140
So, for example, this morning I was watching a performance of

516
00:26:30,140 --> 00:26:34,700
Kulank Variations by Koji Taku.

517
00:26:34,700 --> 00:26:36,820
Koji Taku, yes.

518
00:26:36,820 --> 00:26:40,220
That's a fantastic transcription.

519
00:26:40,220 --> 00:26:43,140
It's a very great piece and that's a wonderful story to tell,

520
00:26:43,140 --> 00:26:46,220
which links into all of all of this.

521
00:26:46,220 --> 00:26:50,060
You know, there are basically, I would say, two central characters in my life

522
00:26:50,060 --> 00:26:56,620
who really inspired me to think about music on a very cosmopolitan basis.

523
00:26:56,620 --> 00:27:01,300
The first was my Baltimore main piano teacher after Miss Wolf.

524
00:27:01,300 --> 00:27:05,020
She took me to play for her teacher who was a brilliant Filipino pianist

525
00:27:05,020 --> 00:27:06,660
named Reynaldo Reyes.

526
00:27:06,660 --> 00:27:10,140
And Reynaldo was a graduate of the Paris Conservatory.

527
00:27:10,140 --> 00:27:15,460
He got second prize in the Puzoni competition and a few other notable things.

528
00:27:15,460 --> 00:27:21,300
But he settled in Baltimore around the time when I was a kid to teach piano.

529
00:27:21,300 --> 00:27:26,260
And of course, every American dollar he earned doing that went back to the

530
00:27:26,260 --> 00:27:31,220
Philippines to support a family of about 2,700 cousins.

531
00:27:31,220 --> 00:27:33,740
The tradition of that place.

532
00:27:33,740 --> 00:27:39,340
But he inspired me so much because he spoke seven or eight languages.

533
00:27:39,340 --> 00:27:43,340
And I remember as a child to go to his house or his studio,

534
00:27:43,340 --> 00:27:46,500
I loved it when the phone would ring because my brother and I would look at

535
00:27:46,500 --> 00:27:48,620
each other and we'd play a little game.

536
00:27:48,620 --> 00:27:53,620
Guess what language we're about to hear because we could never tell who he was

537
00:27:53,620 --> 00:27:54,980
going to talk to on that phone.

538
00:27:54,980 --> 00:27:58,300
Now, this is in like 1965, 66.

539
00:27:58,300 --> 00:28:01,540
And international phone calls themselves were a huge, huge deal.

540
00:28:01,540 --> 00:28:04,540
So this man would pick up the phone and we'd hear French, we'd hear German,

541
00:28:04,540 --> 00:28:09,580
we'd hear Italian, we'd hear Tagalog, we'd hear Greek, you know, for God's sake.

542
00:28:09,580 --> 00:28:11,580
He spoke so many languages.

543
00:28:11,580 --> 00:28:16,220
And he loved to opine that language was the key to the world, that you could,

544
00:28:16,220 --> 00:28:19,940
if you spoke languages, you could go anywhere and do anything.

545
00:28:19,940 --> 00:28:23,340
It left a very serious imprint upon my brain.

546
00:28:23,340 --> 00:28:26,020
I didn't even study any foreign language until I got to high school.

547
00:28:26,020 --> 00:28:28,100
I studied French and I studied some Russian.

548
00:28:28,100 --> 00:28:34,140
Only later in life I studied a bit of Spanish and Japanese as well.

549
00:28:34,140 --> 00:28:39,620
But that cosmopolitan outlook made its impression upon me for sure.

550
00:28:39,620 --> 00:28:44,620
And then shortly after I got to Juilliard, we had the most marvelous teacher

551
00:28:44,620 --> 00:28:45,620
of piano literature.

552
00:28:45,620 --> 00:28:48,700
He was a great pianist named Joseph Bloch.

553
00:28:48,700 --> 00:28:53,140
And Jimmy Bloch became a very, very dear friend.

554
00:28:53,140 --> 00:28:55,340
He was a very witty man.

555
00:28:55,340 --> 00:28:57,620
He was also a very well-traveled man.

556
00:28:57,620 --> 00:29:02,540
He didn't have the gift of language per se, but he was someone who reveled

557
00:29:02,540 --> 00:29:04,260
in the exotic.

558
00:29:04,260 --> 00:29:08,820
And he brought this kind of zest and joy about that into the classroom

559
00:29:08,820 --> 00:29:10,860
in the most wonderful ways.

560
00:29:10,860 --> 00:29:15,380
You know, he would wax eloquently about composers who were never played

561
00:29:15,380 --> 00:29:18,140
at that time in the 1970s, like Alcom.

562
00:29:18,140 --> 00:29:22,220
And he had this very theatrical way of speaking with his hand held high,

563
00:29:22,220 --> 00:29:26,540
like this, Alcom, the etudes and the minor keys.

564
00:29:26,540 --> 00:29:31,780
You poor little boys and girls don't know what you're missing.

565
00:29:31,780 --> 00:29:36,020
Say this kind of stuff, you know.

566
00:29:36,020 --> 00:29:39,620
So I remember his very first lecture giving him the whole history

567
00:29:39,620 --> 00:29:41,900
of the piano literature, which he knew, you know,

568
00:29:41,900 --> 00:29:44,460
encyclopedically he just reveled in this.

569
00:29:44,460 --> 00:29:48,540
The very first class was about the Elizabethan Virginals book.

570
00:29:48,540 --> 00:29:52,860
You know, he has this music for these instruments I didn't even know existed

571
00:29:52,860 --> 00:29:59,300
and composers like John Bull and William Blow and Giles Farnaby.

572
00:29:59,300 --> 00:30:01,700
And it was amazing to me.

573
00:30:01,700 --> 00:30:04,500
And I went and I started learning some of that and I brought it

574
00:30:04,500 --> 00:30:06,380
to the class the next week.

575
00:30:06,380 --> 00:30:09,260
And I think it was a piece by Farnaby.

576
00:30:09,260 --> 00:30:13,540
He stood over me and he said, wonderful, you were born to play Farnaby,

577
00:30:13,540 --> 00:30:19,580
which is not necessarily a compliment.

578
00:30:19,580 --> 00:30:26,380
But I just loved this adventurous and funny spirit that he had.

579
00:30:26,380 --> 00:30:28,860
Mr. Block also loves the country of Japan.

580
00:30:28,860 --> 00:30:33,300
He had been in the army and served in the army during the occupation of Japan.

581
00:30:33,300 --> 00:30:36,500
And I think during that time he had met artists and musicians.

582
00:30:36,500 --> 00:30:41,940
He was sort of an esthet, you know, part of his personality.

583
00:30:41,940 --> 00:30:46,420
And I became interested in Japanese culture and we sort of bonded over that

584
00:30:46,420 --> 00:30:48,260
and also other things.

585
00:30:48,260 --> 00:30:52,300
We both liked silent movie music and things like this.

586
00:30:52,300 --> 00:30:57,620
But it was Joseph Block who really particularly inspired me in terms

587
00:30:57,620 --> 00:31:02,940
of he would make the students come up to sight read scores in the class.

588
00:31:02,940 --> 00:31:08,060
And I quickly learned how poor most musicians are at sight reading.

589
00:31:08,060 --> 00:31:10,340
It was sort of a bad skill.

590
00:31:10,340 --> 00:31:12,260
As it so happens, my very first teacher,

591
00:31:12,260 --> 00:31:15,820
Juilliard was not a bad teacher but certainly not a good one.

592
00:31:15,820 --> 00:31:17,140
He was mostly a non-teacher.

593
00:31:17,140 --> 00:31:21,980
He slept through a lot of my lessons and had a nice nap.

594
00:31:21,980 --> 00:31:24,420
And I was rather distraught about it at the time.

595
00:31:24,420 --> 00:31:28,820
And I remember thinking, well, what am I going to do about this?

596
00:31:28,820 --> 00:31:33,140
And, you know, it was not a time when people ever dreamed thinking about

597
00:31:33,140 --> 00:31:35,260
change your piano teacher.

598
00:31:35,260 --> 00:31:39,620
But in that state of mind, I went into the Juilliard Library one day

599
00:31:39,620 --> 00:31:41,140
and I thought I'm in New York City.

600
00:31:41,140 --> 00:31:45,220
This is Juilliard and I'm looking at this wall of things that I don't know.

601
00:31:45,220 --> 00:31:49,900
And basically, what if I just start playing through things?

602
00:31:49,900 --> 00:31:52,940
And I embarked on a two-year project.

603
00:31:52,940 --> 00:31:56,860
It took me pretty much exactly two years to read through every volume

604
00:31:56,860 --> 00:31:59,060
of piano music on those shelves.

605
00:31:59,060 --> 00:32:01,980
Now, I skipped some that I didn't like so much, like Prokofiev.

606
00:32:01,980 --> 00:32:03,620
It's pretty hard to sight read Prokofiev.

607
00:32:03,620 --> 00:32:05,980
It's not my favorite composer, frankly.

608
00:32:05,980 --> 00:32:11,180
But I started with Isidor Atron's Rhapsody Number Two one morning.

609
00:32:11,180 --> 00:32:13,700
And then two years later, I remember finishing

610
00:32:13,700 --> 00:32:16,860
up with the Piano Concerto of Ephraim's Zimbalist.

611
00:32:16,860 --> 00:32:22,380
So it took me from A to Z. And, of course, what happens when you do that,

612
00:32:22,380 --> 00:32:26,740
you know, okay, you get to A, you have to deal with, yeah,

613
00:32:26,740 --> 00:32:31,700
Alcon, who I wasn't too crazy about, but Albanus was pretty interesting.

614
00:32:31,700 --> 00:32:36,900
And just fudged my way through, through Iberia was rather a challenge.

615
00:32:36,900 --> 00:32:37,700
Oh, so good.

616
00:32:37,700 --> 00:32:39,020
Oh, so good.

617
00:32:39,020 --> 00:32:41,220
And then you get to see you suddenly hit someone like Clementi.

618
00:32:41,220 --> 00:32:43,860
You realize, oh my God, there's four volumes of Clementi sonatas

619
00:32:43,860 --> 00:32:45,740
that nobody ever plays.

620
00:32:45,740 --> 00:32:47,300
And then there's Chabrier.

621
00:32:47,300 --> 00:32:49,380
He's a marvelous composer, you know.

622
00:32:49,380 --> 00:32:54,380
And then I hit the four big volumes of sonatas by Jan Sladislav Dushek.

623
00:32:54,380 --> 00:32:56,060
Some of them are very, very beautiful.

624
00:32:56,060 --> 00:32:59,260
And then when I got to F, there was Pharre waiting for me, well,

625
00:32:59,260 --> 00:33:02,140
to play through all the barter roles of Pharre.

626
00:33:02,140 --> 00:33:05,180
Over the course of those two years, I became a very good sight reader.

627
00:33:05,180 --> 00:33:08,660
And I was accompanying a lot of friends on string instruments as well.

628
00:33:08,660 --> 00:33:12,300
So I became a kind of a sought after accompanist for recitals.

629
00:33:12,300 --> 00:33:16,140
And my skill sets improved, you know, quite a bit.

630
00:33:16,140 --> 00:33:19,580
Sight reading will improve your technique, it'll improve everything.

631
00:33:19,580 --> 00:33:21,700
And that was kind of like my thing.

632
00:33:21,700 --> 00:33:24,740
I would spend at least an hour, sometimes two, in the practice room

633
00:33:24,740 --> 00:33:27,180
in the beginning of the day, the very first sandwich,

634
00:33:27,180 --> 00:33:29,740
just read, read, read, read, read.

635
00:33:29,740 --> 00:33:35,620
I really had no idea how much I was helping myself out in terms of being able

636
00:33:35,620 --> 00:33:40,500
to speed up my learning process and learning repertoire.

637
00:33:40,500 --> 00:33:43,300
But I gained such an appreciation for those composers

638
00:33:43,300 --> 00:33:46,580
who you just didn't hear in the concert hall.

639
00:33:46,580 --> 00:33:49,540
And then I wanted to play those composers.

640
00:33:49,540 --> 00:33:52,060
You know, I heard my classmates up and down the halls

641
00:33:52,060 --> 00:33:56,180
of Juilliard playing all the Beethoven sonatas brilliantly.

642
00:33:56,180 --> 00:34:03,060
Chopin etudes like Nobody's Business, Liszt etudes, works of Chopin.

643
00:34:03,060 --> 00:34:05,260
These were the, you know, the stock and trade.

644
00:34:05,260 --> 00:34:08,140
And I had to study those things also as well.

645
00:34:08,140 --> 00:34:12,100
But nobody was playing Mujeres Espagnolos or Joaquín Torina.

646
00:34:12,100 --> 00:34:14,260
And it's so beautiful.

647
00:34:14,260 --> 00:34:16,540
I'm so happy I recorded that.

648
00:34:16,540 --> 00:34:19,140
I love, actually I love the album.

649
00:34:19,140 --> 00:34:20,700
And I see the painting in the back.

650
00:34:20,700 --> 00:34:22,020
Is that the painting?

651
00:34:22,020 --> 00:34:23,500
I don't know if you can see it.

652
00:34:23,500 --> 00:34:24,540
I noticed.

653
00:34:24,540 --> 00:34:25,620
Yes, yes.

654
00:34:25,620 --> 00:34:26,900
I love the album.

655
00:34:26,900 --> 00:34:31,980
I mean, so many genres you tackle in recordings and concert venues, right?

656
00:34:31,980 --> 00:34:36,340
And then, oh, I also love the album called Jazz Nocturne.

657
00:34:36,340 --> 00:34:36,980
Oh, yes.

658
00:34:36,980 --> 00:34:41,460
And you know, I had to go to Amazon and buy the score

659
00:34:41,460 --> 00:34:46,740
because I absolutely fell in love with all the pieces in that album.

660
00:34:46,740 --> 00:34:49,420
Oh, well, Dana Sui is one marvelous composer.

661
00:34:49,420 --> 00:34:52,580
I realized I skipped, I started that long dive traveling.

662
00:34:52,580 --> 00:34:58,380
I totally skipped over, you had mentioned the Poulenc variations of Koji Taku

663
00:34:58,380 --> 00:35:01,300
because I wanted to bring this full circle.

664
00:35:01,300 --> 00:35:08,100
It was many years after I was out of school and I was living in Western Canada.

665
00:35:08,100 --> 00:35:11,380
But when I came to New York, I would always visit Joseph Block at his home

666
00:35:11,380 --> 00:35:18,660
in Larchmont when he was becoming rather elderly in the early 2000s.

667
00:35:18,660 --> 00:35:22,780
And he had these two volumes of collected Japanese piano music

668
00:35:22,780 --> 00:35:24,580
from his occupation days.

669
00:35:24,580 --> 00:35:27,780
It had been published by Zenon, I think, or whatever.

670
00:35:27,780 --> 00:35:31,260
And I asked him if I could borrow those and he said, oh, sure.

671
00:35:31,260 --> 00:35:32,900
And I took those home.

672
00:35:32,900 --> 00:35:36,540
And in the middle of those, that collection of music by composers

673
00:35:36,540 --> 00:35:40,100
who I'd never heard of, here was this piece by Koji Taku

674
00:35:40,100 --> 00:35:42,020
who I'd never heard of either.

675
00:35:42,020 --> 00:35:43,060
And it amazed me.

676
00:35:43,060 --> 00:35:45,940
And I went back to Jimmy's house, I don't know, a few weeks later,

677
00:35:45,940 --> 00:35:49,300
and I played the piece through for him and he loved it and so did I.

678
00:35:49,300 --> 00:35:53,820
And I started to put that onto my concert programs.

679
00:35:53,820 --> 00:35:55,580
I didn't know much about Koji Taku.

680
00:35:55,580 --> 00:36:00,180
I just knew that he had been trained in Paris, studied with Corteau

681
00:36:00,180 --> 00:36:06,420
and Boulanger and then become kind of a jazz pianist later in life.

682
00:36:06,420 --> 00:36:08,900
But at some point, his daughter contacted me.

683
00:36:08,900 --> 00:36:09,700
I had no idea.

684
00:36:09,700 --> 00:36:13,500
His daughter, who was still alive, and she's sort of a pop musician.

685
00:36:13,500 --> 00:36:16,340
And she was delighted that I was playing the piece.

686
00:36:16,340 --> 00:36:18,540
And then a Japanese publishing company asked me

687
00:36:18,540 --> 00:36:21,300
about preparing a new edition of the piece because it had a lot

688
00:36:21,300 --> 00:36:23,060
of problems in the score.

689
00:36:23,060 --> 00:36:25,340
And I did that.

690
00:36:25,340 --> 00:36:29,460
I prepared a rather thorough edition of that piece.

691
00:36:29,460 --> 00:36:33,740
And then another edition has come out since that time and the editor

692
00:36:33,740 --> 00:36:37,340
of that edition pays homage to me and thanks to me

693
00:36:37,340 --> 00:36:39,700
for doing such a wonderful job with the thing.

694
00:36:39,700 --> 00:36:41,180
I'm very, very proud of that.

695
00:36:41,180 --> 00:36:44,420
In a way, I plucked something of total obscurity

696
00:36:44,420 --> 00:36:49,780
that no Japanese musician remembered at all and brought it back to life.

697
00:36:49,780 --> 00:36:54,220
I can go into my grave knowing I did something good in my life.

698
00:36:54,220 --> 00:36:56,820
It's a good feeling.

699
00:36:56,820 --> 00:36:58,380
I think it's a great set of variations.

700
00:36:58,380 --> 00:37:00,340
And I've played it a bunch of places.

701
00:37:00,340 --> 00:37:04,340
And I'm so proud that it's back in print because of me.

702
00:37:04,340 --> 00:37:06,860
Oh, that's beautiful.

703
00:37:06,860 --> 00:37:35,180
Honestly, as I was listening, your performances are actually really

704
00:37:35,180 --> 00:37:39,900
distinguished by a deep intimacy and profound understanding

705
00:37:39,900 --> 00:37:45,180
of each composer's roots, history, and culture, language,

706
00:37:45,180 --> 00:37:48,300
and allowing you to connect with their stories

707
00:37:48,300 --> 00:37:51,420
and convey the compassion in their works really.

708
00:37:51,420 --> 00:37:54,660
So can you share how you personally approach the process

709
00:37:54,660 --> 00:37:58,900
of understanding a composer's intentions, especially you perform

710
00:37:58,900 --> 00:38:03,500
so many different works by various composers from the dead

711
00:38:03,500 --> 00:38:04,860
to the living, you know?

712
00:38:04,860 --> 00:38:11,420
So well, that's boy, you keep me you brought the heavy artillery.

713
00:38:11,420 --> 00:38:13,900
It's it's all right.

714
00:38:13,900 --> 00:38:16,220
That's fair enough.

715
00:38:16,220 --> 00:38:21,180
I'm thinking back again to a very big influence upon my life,

716
00:38:21,180 --> 00:38:25,380
particularly in my teen years, was the world of paintings

717
00:38:25,380 --> 00:38:32,740
and visual art, probably starting just from class field trips to museums.

718
00:38:32,740 --> 00:38:37,220
We lived in Baltimore, but we would not my dad would either drive

719
00:38:37,220 --> 00:38:39,060
or take us on the train down to Washington

720
00:38:39,060 --> 00:38:42,300
and see museums for cultural betterment.

721
00:38:42,300 --> 00:38:46,980
But particularly, I guess it was the impressionist composers always left a

722
00:38:46,980 --> 00:38:49,220
very, very big influence on me.

723
00:38:49,220 --> 00:38:53,900
I just loved, you know, a lot of people do love the canvases of Renoir

724
00:38:53,900 --> 00:38:55,660
and Monet and so forth.

725
00:38:55,660 --> 00:39:03,460
But it it it fascinated me that these canvases were like a portal to a totally

726
00:39:03,460 --> 00:39:04,700
different world.

727
00:39:04,700 --> 00:39:07,900
And if you stand transfixed into one of these places,

728
00:39:07,900 --> 00:39:10,620
you can absolutely smell the breeze.

729
00:39:10,620 --> 00:39:12,860
You can feel the air in those things.

730
00:39:12,860 --> 00:39:17,860
You know, it's just enables you to relive something that in a sense is gone.

731
00:39:17,860 --> 00:39:20,980
But it's immortal there in front of your eyes.

732
00:39:20,980 --> 00:39:24,820
Even as a child, I was kind of dazzled by portraits of Rembrandt, you know,

733
00:39:24,820 --> 00:39:28,780
because I would look at them and guess they were beautiful.

734
00:39:28,780 --> 00:39:32,180
But what stunned me was that the people were alive to me.

735
00:39:32,180 --> 00:39:33,220
They weren't dead.

736
00:39:33,220 --> 00:39:38,500
You know, their eyes, their hands, everything telling me their stories.

737
00:39:38,500 --> 00:39:43,620
And I think that I had this connection between what art truly is.

738
00:39:43,620 --> 00:39:46,340
It is a kind of an immortality.

739
00:39:46,340 --> 00:39:52,460
It's this portal to someone's story, somebody's existence.

740
00:39:52,460 --> 00:39:54,340
And I mean, this is what humanity is.

741
00:39:54,340 --> 00:39:55,660
It's a series of stories.

742
00:39:55,660 --> 00:39:58,300
We all have our story to tell.

743
00:39:58,300 --> 00:40:04,780
So that's the part that maybe fascinates me the most about the music I hear that

744
00:40:04,780 --> 00:40:07,820
really intrigues me is where is it bringing me to?

745
00:40:07,820 --> 00:40:10,940
What kind of story is it telling?

746
00:40:10,940 --> 00:40:15,700
Say, when I'm playing Rachmaninoff's variations on a theme of Paganini for piano

747
00:40:15,700 --> 00:40:21,340
orchestra, you know, it's such a strong, rhythmically absorbing piece.

748
00:40:21,340 --> 00:40:24,180
And the minute you get into, I don't know, it's variation seven or eight.

749
00:40:24,180 --> 00:40:26,820
And the Dies Irae is her.

750
00:40:26,820 --> 00:40:31,980
Now you realize that the composer is telling you something about the devil, the violin,

751
00:40:31,980 --> 00:40:38,900
the power of the A minor tonality and the inevitability of death.

752
00:40:38,900 --> 00:40:41,820
You know, he wrote this piece towards the end of his life.

753
00:40:41,820 --> 00:40:46,460
He wrote it around the same time as the symphonic dances, which also use the Dies Irae

754
00:40:46,460 --> 00:40:48,580
and the Isle of the Dead and so forth.

755
00:40:48,580 --> 00:40:51,540
And you want to climb into Rachmaninoff's head.

756
00:40:51,540 --> 00:40:53,820
I mean, what was he thinking about?

757
00:40:53,820 --> 00:41:00,140
What were his thoughts about the meaning of life, about the brevity of life or his own

758
00:41:00,140 --> 00:41:02,860
contribution as a creative artist?

759
00:41:02,860 --> 00:41:10,060
I find that so completely absorbing, you know, and it's probably one of my favorite concertos

760
00:41:10,060 --> 00:41:15,780
to play because it just sucks you from the very, very first notes.

761
00:41:15,780 --> 00:41:16,980
It's a perfect piece of music.

762
00:41:16,980 --> 00:41:22,060
I can't say that about a whole lot of scores actually, that, you know, even if Beethoven

763
00:41:22,060 --> 00:41:26,660
or Mendelssohn, Schumann, et cetera, et cetera, we can hear things that are great.

764
00:41:26,660 --> 00:41:30,740
It's a great piece of music, but to say something is absolute sheer perfection.

765
00:41:30,740 --> 00:41:36,340
You could not change a single note dynamic, anything in that score.

766
00:41:36,340 --> 00:41:42,060
I do think of that piece that way, the same way as Mozart's Jupiter Symphony perhaps,

767
00:41:42,060 --> 00:41:48,620
or the Requiem of Gabriel Farré.

768
00:41:48,620 --> 00:41:56,900
In any case, you know, this idea of studying the music from the musical outside of it,

769
00:41:56,900 --> 00:42:03,580
like it's a great tableau, it's a story, it's an autobiography, it's someone's life, it's

770
00:42:03,580 --> 00:42:05,220
so totally absorbing to me.

771
00:42:05,220 --> 00:42:10,180
I mean, I can't imagine starting the study of a piece from the aspect of, okay, let's

772
00:42:10,180 --> 00:42:14,180
see, I want to win a piano competition, so this part I want to play fast and then this

773
00:42:14,180 --> 00:42:15,620
has to be accurate.

774
00:42:15,620 --> 00:42:22,300
I mean, those technical details will come in when you analyze the piece, pick it apart,

775
00:42:22,300 --> 00:42:27,880
have to practice it, you know, like the master watchmaker take all the mechanism apart and

776
00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:29,720
study it.

777
00:42:29,720 --> 00:42:30,900
But I think that comes later.

778
00:42:30,900 --> 00:42:35,220
The very first thing is, does it excite your passion?

779
00:42:35,220 --> 00:42:36,740
Does the piece excite your passion?

780
00:42:36,740 --> 00:42:40,380
Does it pull you into that composer's world?

781
00:42:40,380 --> 00:42:45,860
And that's what a great composer does, you know, pulls you into their story, not your

782
00:42:45,860 --> 00:42:49,820
story, but their story.

783
00:42:49,820 --> 00:42:54,900
Before continuing this fun episode with Dr. Sarah Davis-Buechner, let's take a moment

784
00:42:54,900 --> 00:43:01,260
to hear from our valued sponsor, Keys to Success, whose support helps make this podcast possible.

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Let's make those keys sing and inspire the next generation together.

808
00:44:36,340 --> 00:44:37,740
You mentioned a little bit about technique.

809
00:44:37,740 --> 00:44:43,300
So how do you balance the need for technical precision with the expressive demands of the

810
00:44:43,300 --> 00:44:44,300
piece?

811
00:44:44,300 --> 00:44:48,620
Do you find that one often informs the other?

812
00:44:48,620 --> 00:44:53,660
I think ultimately they do, although like I just said about the watchmaker, there's

813
00:44:53,660 --> 00:44:56,820
this aspect of study.

814
00:44:56,820 --> 00:45:01,980
If you start from the top of Mount Olympus, imagining, well, let's pick a piece.

815
00:45:01,980 --> 00:45:08,580
Actually, I think I'm going to restudy the Mendelssohn Rondo Papriccioso because I played

816
00:45:08,580 --> 00:45:12,820
it when I was 12 and I think I can do it a little bit better now.

817
00:45:12,820 --> 00:45:19,820
So from the Mount Olympus of, oh, that's going to be light and frothy and the opening will

818
00:45:19,820 --> 00:45:25,660
be incredibly beautiful and moving and then there'll be sprites and elves dancing and

819
00:45:25,660 --> 00:45:28,100
it's over in the thunder sock at the end.

820
00:45:28,100 --> 00:45:29,980
What a great dramatic piece.

821
00:45:29,980 --> 00:45:31,220
That's my mindset.

822
00:45:31,220 --> 00:45:33,460
That's where I want to end up.

823
00:45:33,460 --> 00:45:37,140
To get there means lots of slow practice.

824
00:45:37,140 --> 00:45:44,220
The opening has to be perfectly calibrated and voiced with taste and style and then a

825
00:45:44,220 --> 00:45:45,780
lot of question about tempos.

826
00:45:45,780 --> 00:45:51,020
Is it going to be a very slow, somewhat slow?

827
00:45:51,020 --> 00:45:52,740
How are you going to approach that?

828
00:45:52,740 --> 00:45:54,820
Then what about the speed of the scherzo?

829
00:45:54,820 --> 00:45:58,620
As a kid, I used to just womp it out and play it as fast as I could.

830
00:45:58,620 --> 00:46:00,300
Well, that's not going to happen now.

831
00:46:00,300 --> 00:46:02,620
That doesn't make a lot of sense.

832
00:46:02,620 --> 00:46:08,140
Then the octaves, you don't want those just to be show off bangy octaves like when I was

833
00:46:08,140 --> 00:46:09,620
12, that's what I did.

834
00:46:09,620 --> 00:46:10,620
Bang, bang, bang, bang.

835
00:46:10,620 --> 00:46:11,620
Well, no.

836
00:46:11,620 --> 00:46:12,620
It's a storm.

837
00:46:12,620 --> 00:46:16,180
It has to have some evocative picture and so forth.

838
00:46:16,180 --> 00:46:19,860
So now you have to break it down into, okay, technically, what are the things I have to

839
00:46:19,860 --> 00:46:25,420
be in complete control of so that I don't have to think about the technique?

840
00:46:25,420 --> 00:46:33,100
My favorite definition of piano technique is by pianist Beryl Rubinstein.

841
00:46:33,100 --> 00:46:35,140
Not many people realize there's so many Rubinstein.

842
00:46:35,140 --> 00:46:36,620
There's Anton and Art.

843
00:46:36,620 --> 00:46:41,580
Beryl Rubinstein was, I think he was the head of the Cleveland Institute, but he wrote a

844
00:46:41,580 --> 00:46:43,820
couple of short books on piano technique.

845
00:46:43,820 --> 00:46:48,220
And I love his definition where he says that technique for pianists is like money in the

846
00:46:48,220 --> 00:46:49,220
bank.

847
00:46:49,220 --> 00:46:52,700
The more you have, the easier your life will be.

848
00:46:52,700 --> 00:46:58,300
However, to show it off for its own sake is very bad taste, perfectly said.

849
00:46:58,300 --> 00:47:01,420
It is, of course, the means to the end.

850
00:47:01,420 --> 00:47:06,700
And if you have a prodigious technique you can rely on, then you can set about to controlling

851
00:47:06,700 --> 00:47:13,140
the sounds and the speed and the tempo and the message of what it is that you're doing.

852
00:47:13,140 --> 00:47:20,820
I was really surprised when my teacher, Mr. Reyes, passed away.

853
00:47:20,820 --> 00:47:27,220
I think shortly after that, my dad dug up out of the basement all of my old assignment

854
00:47:27,220 --> 00:47:32,300
books that I had had since studying with him starting around age seven or so until I went

855
00:47:32,300 --> 00:47:33,740
to Juilliard.

856
00:47:33,740 --> 00:47:35,940
And he mailed them to me and he sent them to me.

857
00:47:35,940 --> 00:47:36,940
And I was looking through them.

858
00:47:36,940 --> 00:47:42,620
And my remembrance of Reynaldo Reyes when I was a child was that he danced around the

859
00:47:42,620 --> 00:47:43,620
room.

860
00:47:43,620 --> 00:47:51,740
He explained the difference between words like vivace and living and animato and talked

861
00:47:51,740 --> 00:47:57,660
about French sculpture and paint the colors in French paintings and what is the real meaning

862
00:47:57,660 --> 00:48:03,820
of Impressionism and how do you half pedal and quarter pedal, blah, blah, these things,

863
00:48:03,820 --> 00:48:10,020
because these are the intellectual things that so absorbed me about his brilliant conversation.

864
00:48:10,020 --> 00:48:14,780
I was not ready to open those assignment books and see week after week after week after week

865
00:48:14,780 --> 00:48:20,380
specific assignments, this scale, this scale, this scale, this scale, contrary, parallel,

866
00:48:20,380 --> 00:48:29,140
staccato, legato at the third, at the sixth, the octave, the Czerny, the Kulak, the Pishna,

867
00:48:29,140 --> 00:48:35,580
all the Bach inventions, Bach's symphonias, just piles of that stuff.

868
00:48:35,580 --> 00:48:41,100
I do remember kind of hating the Bach three-part inventions and him getting mad at me once

869
00:48:41,100 --> 00:48:43,340
and he said, you have to practice.

870
00:48:43,340 --> 00:48:46,420
He didn't like to practice those things.

871
00:48:46,420 --> 00:48:54,420
But he had schooled me in these kind of fundamentals as well as having a weekly solfège class,

872
00:48:54,420 --> 00:48:56,580
also for all his students.

873
00:48:56,580 --> 00:49:00,380
The college students and the kids, I mean, the whole range, the whole panoply we do in

874
00:49:00,380 --> 00:49:02,100
front of each other.

875
00:49:02,100 --> 00:49:09,100
But it's sort of reinforced to me that you really can't be a virtuoso unless you attend

876
00:49:09,100 --> 00:49:10,100
to your equipment.

877
00:49:10,100 --> 00:49:14,180
It's like you can't be a race car driver if you don't open up the hood and see if all

878
00:49:14,180 --> 00:49:17,340
the parts are working inside.

879
00:49:17,340 --> 00:49:23,880
So at some point, well, let's see, we're leading into a discussion perhaps of my own approach

880
00:49:23,880 --> 00:49:31,200
to teaching the technique of the piano, which kind of opened up for me shortly after I moved

881
00:49:31,200 --> 00:49:37,540
to Canada in 2003 when I started to teach at the University of British Columbia.

882
00:49:37,540 --> 00:49:41,380
It was a colleague of mine who mentioned to me, he said, did you ever see those technique

883
00:49:41,380 --> 00:49:43,500
books with the big red covers on them?

884
00:49:43,500 --> 00:49:48,580
And I thought, yeah, I remember in the old Juilliard book sale, they used to throw those

885
00:49:48,580 --> 00:49:49,580
things out.

886
00:49:49,580 --> 00:49:52,020
What was in those things?

887
00:49:52,020 --> 00:49:59,060
And then by chance, I was approached by Dover Publications about doing some editing and

888
00:49:59,060 --> 00:50:03,260
eventually I actually became the chief editor there for a little while.

889
00:50:03,260 --> 00:50:07,500
But I thought about those books and I thought, you know, I don't really even teach much technique

890
00:50:07,500 --> 00:50:10,240
to my students and that's not very bright.

891
00:50:10,240 --> 00:50:13,060
Maybe I should give those books a look again.

892
00:50:13,060 --> 00:50:17,580
They were, of course, the seven volumes of the Master School of Piano Playing and Virtuosity

893
00:50:17,580 --> 00:50:26,060
by Alberto Honas, which are still a very, very unique and incredible resource.

894
00:50:26,060 --> 00:50:31,100
I found a couple of those volumes somehow and looked through them and they're just fantastic

895
00:50:31,100 --> 00:50:36,700
documents because, of course, they have this very, very scientific, really intelligent

896
00:50:36,700 --> 00:50:44,180
approach to studying keyboard technique from many different angles, butt rests by many

897
00:50:44,180 --> 00:50:50,060
exercises by Honas himself, as well as these exercises by 20 or so of the world's greatest

898
00:50:50,060 --> 00:50:54,740
virtuosos at the time because they were friends of Honas.

899
00:50:54,740 --> 00:50:57,500
So I brought the idea of republishing these.

900
00:50:57,500 --> 00:51:03,020
They hadn't been in print in decades to the powers that be at Dover and they were keen

901
00:51:03,020 --> 00:51:07,080
for the first two volumes, which they didn't have to pay any royalties on.

902
00:51:07,080 --> 00:51:12,280
So I said, well, I've got to write something about the, you know, just put them out there.

903
00:51:12,280 --> 00:51:13,500
Like they're just, you know, whatever.

904
00:51:13,500 --> 00:51:19,020
I need to know more about the person who did these and make something kind of special about

905
00:51:19,020 --> 00:51:20,020
this repubblication.

906
00:51:20,020 --> 00:51:25,420
So I started to research the life and work of Alberto Honas, who was a very important

907
00:51:25,420 --> 00:51:30,340
pianist, a good friend of Ignatz Paderewski and he happened to be the premier of Paderewski's

908
00:51:30,340 --> 00:51:35,420
piano concerto in New York and also in Boston.

909
00:51:35,420 --> 00:51:38,820
And he had taught in Berlin for a while and then come to the United States, taught in

910
00:51:38,820 --> 00:51:40,900
Philadelphia and New York primarily.

911
00:51:40,900 --> 00:51:46,780
But he taught some rather prominent people and it's sort of, I had this bingo moment,

912
00:51:46,780 --> 00:51:53,020
this recollection of talking about Alberto Honas decades before with the composer Vincent

913
00:51:53,020 --> 00:51:56,820
Persichetti, who was a teacher at Juilliard during my time there.

914
00:51:56,820 --> 00:52:04,340
Because Persichetti had studied this kind of mirror writing with Honas, who proposes

915
00:52:04,340 --> 00:52:06,460
it in his study of scales.

916
00:52:06,460 --> 00:52:12,580
That is that an E major scale playing in ascending with the right hand, E, F sharp, G sharp and

917
00:52:12,580 --> 00:52:14,140
so forth.

918
00:52:14,140 --> 00:52:20,500
In mirror pattern, the opposite direction will be C, B flat, A flat in the left hand

919
00:52:20,500 --> 00:52:26,500
and with the two hands doing the same patterns of white and black notes in opposite directions.

920
00:52:26,500 --> 00:52:30,140
And it's a very, very good way to practice things so that you develop the same facility

921
00:52:30,140 --> 00:52:31,820
for both hands.

922
00:52:31,820 --> 00:52:35,820
I guess I'd seen that somewhere, I think Ernest Bacon also mentions it.

923
00:52:35,820 --> 00:52:39,500
And I saw Mr. Persichetti in the hallway one day and I said something about his mirror

924
00:52:39,500 --> 00:52:46,540
etudes and I said, is that something similar to, I saw those exercises by Alberto Honas

925
00:52:46,540 --> 00:52:47,540
and he got very animated.

926
00:52:47,540 --> 00:52:50,460
He was a short, very wiry Italian man.

927
00:52:50,460 --> 00:52:54,860
And he said, oh, oh yes, yes, mirror writing is a very exciting way to write for the red

928
00:52:54,860 --> 00:52:55,860
day.

929
00:52:55,860 --> 00:52:56,860
Incredible, hard, yes, yes.

930
00:52:56,860 --> 00:52:58,180
Honas showed me, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

931
00:52:58,180 --> 00:53:02,060
I just sort of like forgotten about that and said, oh yeah, right, Alberto Honas and all

932
00:53:02,060 --> 00:53:04,060
that kind of stuff.

933
00:53:04,060 --> 00:53:08,980
Anyway, so one of the things I wanted to write a kind of short biography of Mr. Honas to

934
00:53:08,980 --> 00:53:11,700
put into the preface for these volumes.

935
00:53:11,700 --> 00:53:16,260
And I started to look up all the students he had taught and some of those names are

936
00:53:16,260 --> 00:53:21,020
a little obscure to us now, but some rather prominent pianists at the time, primarily

937
00:53:21,020 --> 00:53:26,140
Ellen Ballon was a very famous French Quebecois pianist.

938
00:53:26,140 --> 00:53:28,780
But this one name came up, Rhea Sadowski.

939
00:53:28,780 --> 00:53:34,060
And I was going crazy trying to find her biography and particularly her obituary because I just

940
00:53:34,060 --> 00:53:36,140
couldn't find it.

941
00:53:36,140 --> 00:53:40,020
And then I saw there was an address in Ann Arbor and then there was another address in

942
00:53:40,020 --> 00:53:42,460
Berkeley and I said, no.

943
00:53:42,460 --> 00:53:45,460
Could it?

944
00:53:45,460 --> 00:53:48,020
Anyway, the address in Berkeley also had a phone number.

945
00:53:48,020 --> 00:53:49,900
So I doubted.

946
00:53:49,900 --> 00:53:50,900
And this voice answered.

947
00:53:50,900 --> 00:53:54,580
It was a voice out of 1935.

948
00:53:54,580 --> 00:53:55,580
Hello.

949
00:53:55,580 --> 00:54:03,100
The New York 1935 voice.

950
00:54:03,100 --> 00:54:08,740
Is it possible that I could speak with Mrs. Rhea Sadowski?

951
00:54:08,740 --> 00:54:10,620
This is she speaking.

952
00:54:10,620 --> 00:54:16,740
May I please have the honor of knowing whom I am speaking with?

953
00:54:16,740 --> 00:54:18,140
And I was so stunned.

954
00:54:18,140 --> 00:54:19,660
I said the rudest thing imaginable.

955
00:54:19,660 --> 00:54:21,940
I said, my name is Sarah Davis Buchanan.

956
00:54:21,940 --> 00:54:28,660
I'm a pianist and I'm doing some research on the life and work of your teacher, Alberto

957
00:54:28,660 --> 00:54:29,660
Honas.

958
00:54:29,660 --> 00:54:30,660
And I'm astonished.

959
00:54:30,660 --> 00:54:34,580
I said, I'm very, very happy to find that you're alive.

960
00:54:34,580 --> 00:54:39,300
And she said, well, I'm very happy that I'm alive also.

961
00:54:39,300 --> 00:54:44,260
Fair enough.

962
00:54:44,260 --> 00:54:50,740
So I bought a ticket to San Francisco two days later and I bought a mini cam that I

963
00:54:50,740 --> 00:54:51,740
filmed.

964
00:54:51,740 --> 00:54:56,220
My first thing I did with Rhea was film a three hour personal interview with her because

965
00:54:56,220 --> 00:55:00,240
she had an incredible, absolutely incredible life story.

966
00:55:00,240 --> 00:55:05,660
And it's one of the shocking and disheartening things in a way to be a concert pianist, to

967
00:55:05,660 --> 00:55:09,060
realize that our work is playing the music of others and so forth.

968
00:55:09,060 --> 00:55:15,180
And we may have a career for a while, but after we died, you're not going to be up there

969
00:55:15,180 --> 00:55:17,620
like Bach and Mozart.

970
00:55:17,620 --> 00:55:20,980
How much are you really going to be remembered?

971
00:55:20,980 --> 00:55:26,540
She was originally born in Canada, had immigrated to the Bay Area, was a Greek prodigy, studied

972
00:55:26,540 --> 00:55:32,260
with Honas in Los Angeles, also with both Josephine and Rosina Levine in New York.

973
00:55:32,260 --> 00:55:37,620
Gone to Europe, was a good friend of Misha Levitsky and Egon Patri and people like this.

974
00:55:37,620 --> 00:55:41,200
Her husband was a Hispanic scholar.

975
00:55:41,200 --> 00:55:46,980
So they lived in the 1940s in South America, where she premiered a lot of really important

976
00:55:46,980 --> 00:55:54,180
piano music by some of the greatest composers in that continent, in Chile, Brazil, Argentina,

977
00:55:54,180 --> 00:55:55,620
you name it.

978
00:55:55,620 --> 00:56:00,540
And in 1931, she gave a New York recital where she played the American premiere of Prokofiev's

979
00:56:00,540 --> 00:56:02,540
third piano set up.

980
00:56:02,540 --> 00:56:07,020
It was an amazing life and an amazing pianist.

981
00:56:07,020 --> 00:56:11,080
And at the time I met her, she was 92 years old with a mind as sharp as a tack and she

982
00:56:11,080 --> 00:56:14,300
still practiced every day.

983
00:56:14,300 --> 00:56:19,380
And at the age of 95 to celebrate her birthday, she learned and memorized the album for the

984
00:56:19,380 --> 00:56:23,180
young of Tchaikovsky and played it live on Canadian radio.

985
00:56:23,180 --> 00:56:24,980
Oh my goodness.

986
00:56:24,980 --> 00:56:31,620
I had made some connections there for her with the CBC up in Vancouver.

987
00:56:31,620 --> 00:56:36,100
She just had a mind that was just incredible and great.

988
00:56:36,100 --> 00:56:40,500
I should say also, by the way, after doing that little radio broadcast, that then when

989
00:56:40,500 --> 00:56:45,740
the cake and candles came out, she said, I feel like a little bit of Bach and walked

990
00:56:45,740 --> 00:56:49,500
to the piano and played the second movement of the Italian concerto more beautifully than

991
00:56:49,500 --> 00:56:51,940
I ever will hear it in my entire life.

992
00:56:51,940 --> 00:56:57,660
It was just incredible pianism and great, great music.

993
00:56:57,660 --> 00:57:03,300
Anyway, so when those two volumes came out, when Dover republished them, they have a sort

994
00:57:03,300 --> 00:57:09,300
of a one page little testimony by Rhea and then a couple of photos of the two of us hanging

995
00:57:09,300 --> 00:57:10,860
out in her house at the time.

996
00:57:10,860 --> 00:57:14,500
She's of course passed on since then.

997
00:57:14,500 --> 00:57:18,820
But she told me quite a bit about Honas's teaching.

998
00:57:18,820 --> 00:57:22,780
What a master teacher that he was.

999
00:57:22,780 --> 00:57:27,660
In the pre-internet age, he wanted to put something out that would have incredible universal

1000
00:57:27,660 --> 00:57:29,980
application.

1001
00:57:29,980 --> 00:57:35,580
So the seven volumes, which divide the aspects of piano technique into various important

1002
00:57:35,580 --> 00:57:38,300
areas, also have text in four languages.

1003
00:57:38,300 --> 00:57:43,260
I believe let's see English, Spanish, French, and Italian.

1004
00:57:43,260 --> 00:57:47,120
So that they can be used pretty universally around the world.

1005
00:57:47,120 --> 00:57:50,900
They came out in 1929, shortly before the Great Depression hit.

1006
00:57:50,900 --> 00:57:52,460
They were expensive books.

1007
00:57:52,460 --> 00:57:57,220
I think they were priced at $10 a volume, which is well beyond the range of most people's

1008
00:57:57,220 --> 00:58:00,300
ability at that time.

1009
00:58:00,300 --> 00:58:04,260
After the depression hit, they just went out of print pretty quickly, which is a great

1010
00:58:04,260 --> 00:58:09,580
chain because it's the work of a master pedagogue.

1011
00:58:09,580 --> 00:58:17,140
Volume one starts from, or I guess I should say that series of those books basically takes

1012
00:58:17,140 --> 00:58:20,280
the approach of from small to large.

1013
00:58:20,280 --> 00:58:23,620
From the smallest aspects of piano technique to the largest.

1014
00:58:23,620 --> 00:58:28,980
So starting with volume one is mostly devoted to exercises that help extend the reach of

1015
00:58:28,980 --> 00:58:33,700
the hands and the flexibility of the muscles.

1016
00:58:33,700 --> 00:58:38,620
And it has all kinds of intriguing exercises by Honas himself, by Alfred Courtauld, by

1017
00:58:38,620 --> 00:58:45,220
Busoni, by Joseph Levine, an incredible stretching exercise by Joseph Levine.

1018
00:58:45,220 --> 00:58:50,220
These are great, great exercises by great, great thinkers on the pianistic art.

1019
00:58:50,220 --> 00:58:55,940
Volume two devotes itself to the study of scales and all sorts of permutations.

1020
00:58:55,940 --> 00:58:57,300
Volume three is arpeggios.

1021
00:58:57,300 --> 00:59:03,540
Volume four is about the art of playing double notes, whether it's double seconds, thirds,

1022
00:59:03,540 --> 00:59:05,860
fourths, sixths.

1023
00:59:05,860 --> 00:59:11,860
And volume five is to go to chords and octaves and volume six about other musical concepts

1024
00:59:11,860 --> 00:59:16,900
associated with the piano, including the longest, most useful chapter ever written on the art

1025
00:59:16,900 --> 00:59:19,740
of pedaling the piano that I've ever seen.

1026
00:59:19,740 --> 00:59:22,580
They're sort of like must haves.

1027
00:59:22,580 --> 00:59:29,060
And at the time those first two volumes were republished, none of it was available on IMSLP.

1028
00:59:29,060 --> 00:59:31,260
Now the whole thing is on IMSLP.

1029
00:59:31,260 --> 00:59:32,620
See it for free.

1030
00:59:32,620 --> 00:59:37,660
So I send it to my students all the time and I try to grill them on this and that.

1031
00:59:37,660 --> 00:59:39,420
But it's not just the exercises.

1032
00:59:39,420 --> 00:59:46,780
It's also after these exercises and suggestions for practice, then Honas puts examples from

1033
00:59:46,780 --> 00:59:51,020
the classical piano repertoire, where it's used.

1034
00:59:51,020 --> 00:59:56,420
So talking about playing double thirds, he's got a lot of scales with various fingerings

1035
00:59:56,420 --> 00:59:58,180
and so forth in double thirds.

1036
00:59:58,180 --> 01:00:03,460
And then he's got a few excerpts from of course the Chopin etude, but also other parts of

1037
01:00:03,460 --> 01:00:10,300
other pieces, say concertos or sans-sans where there's passage work like that, or music of

1038
01:00:10,300 --> 01:00:15,900
Brahms or Mendelssohn might have this aspect or that aspect or that aspect.

1039
01:00:15,900 --> 01:00:19,900
And it helps integrate your understanding of you know, you're not just practicing exercise

1040
01:00:19,900 --> 01:00:21,100
just to do an exercise.

1041
01:00:21,100 --> 01:00:26,100
You're acquiring the skill to be able to play that kind of piece.

1042
01:00:26,100 --> 01:00:33,140
So it's fantastically useful stuff.

1043
01:00:33,140 --> 01:00:39,020
That influenced my own pedagogy to a great degree because I thought, well, here's one

1044
01:00:39,020 --> 01:00:43,980
of the greatest teachers of the 20th century who left behind this great, great record of

1045
01:00:43,980 --> 01:00:46,820
just what he thought was important.

1046
01:00:46,820 --> 01:00:50,380
And it was kind of amazing to be in Reyes' house and she opened up her old vimes that

1047
01:00:50,380 --> 01:00:55,900
she used when she was 13 years old and studying with a man in New York City and showing me

1048
01:00:55,900 --> 01:00:57,100
the circles that he made.

1049
01:00:57,100 --> 01:00:59,620
Well, this one is not for small hands.

1050
01:00:59,620 --> 01:01:02,420
This one will help extend this, you know, whatever.

1051
01:01:02,420 --> 01:01:06,060
And I saw that, you know, these books are very, very large.

1052
01:01:06,060 --> 01:01:09,180
She didn't intend for anybody to go through every single part of it.

1053
01:01:09,180 --> 01:01:12,180
He just pick and choose, you know, this one, this one, this one, this one.

1054
01:01:12,180 --> 01:01:15,900
He wanted to have a great resource as a teacher.

1055
01:01:15,900 --> 01:01:17,080
And that's what it is for me.

1056
01:01:17,080 --> 01:01:20,780
It's a great, great resource for me as a teacher as well.

1057
01:01:20,780 --> 01:01:27,940
You have the series of School of Virtuosity titled School of Virtuosity on Tone Bass explaining

1058
01:01:27,940 --> 01:01:30,180
Honest technique, right?

1059
01:01:30,180 --> 01:01:35,420
Or rather, it's not just a technique, it's really book itself with like a really the

1060
01:01:35,420 --> 01:01:37,380
resource for pianists.

1061
01:01:37,380 --> 01:01:42,180
And then I'm not part of Tone Bass, so I'm not promoting anything.

1062
01:01:42,180 --> 01:01:45,300
But yeah.

1063
01:01:45,300 --> 01:01:54,060
So, so these seven courses, seven video series, you are explaining about his book, basically.

1064
01:01:54,060 --> 01:01:59,220
That's sort of explaining about his organization of all that material, but then demonstrating

1065
01:01:59,220 --> 01:02:03,020
as well, you know, so it's it's good to have somebody showing, you know, because a Tone

1066
01:02:03,020 --> 01:02:05,140
Bass has the camera like above the keyboard.

1067
01:02:05,140 --> 01:02:09,420
So you can see my hands, you know, showing, say, for example, the stretch marks, this

1068
01:02:09,420 --> 01:02:13,900
is one where you play octaves is one three and then silently substitute the second finger

1069
01:02:13,900 --> 01:02:18,740
so you can stretch this particular muscle or something like that.

1070
01:02:18,740 --> 01:02:22,180
So just sort of demonstrating a good or proper way to do it.

1071
01:02:22,180 --> 01:02:26,760
But then those excerpts that I mentioned, you know, some of those show that, you know,

1072
01:02:26,760 --> 01:02:28,780
why would you want to do that?

1073
01:02:28,780 --> 01:02:32,420
And what's the idea behind all of this?

1074
01:02:32,420 --> 01:02:33,420
There's so much to it.

1075
01:02:33,420 --> 01:02:41,780
I mean, you know, say to play an octave passage from, let's say, Liszt's B minor sonata,

1076
01:02:41,780 --> 01:02:49,100
you know, to discuss all of that would be first to practice the passage with the thumb

1077
01:02:49,100 --> 01:02:53,860
alone with a very loose wrist to promote the relaxation of the hand.

1078
01:02:53,860 --> 01:02:58,300
Then for accuracy, you probably want to make sure are using just fifth finger, fourth finger,

1079
01:02:58,300 --> 01:02:59,300
third finger.

1080
01:02:59,300 --> 01:03:03,100
What is the fingerings of some of the outer parts, the aspect of up and down with the

1081
01:03:03,100 --> 01:03:07,420
wrist moving in and out of the keyboard, all this.

1082
01:03:07,420 --> 01:03:12,980
Would you want to transpose that exercise, for example, to get maximum impact out of

1083
01:03:12,980 --> 01:03:13,980
it?

1084
01:03:13,980 --> 01:03:18,100
Do you want to practice legato, staccato?

1085
01:03:18,100 --> 01:03:19,100
I don't know.

1086
01:03:19,100 --> 01:03:23,780
Just all sorts of variation possibilities there which are going to improve your piano

1087
01:03:23,780 --> 01:03:25,020
technique.

1088
01:03:25,020 --> 01:03:29,540
And tone bass is designed for both professionals and amateurs.

1089
01:03:29,540 --> 01:03:34,460
I mean, amateur players, I think, like having this kind of like inside scoop on how do professional

1090
01:03:34,460 --> 01:03:36,220
pianists really prepare something.

1091
01:03:36,220 --> 01:03:38,780
And they learn a lot from that.

1092
01:03:38,780 --> 01:03:44,340
But I've heard some awfully good amateur players also who benefit from this kind of thing.

1093
01:03:44,340 --> 01:03:49,740
And I think all of it helps to promote the art of piano playing, which frankly, these

1094
01:03:49,740 --> 01:03:56,840
days, you know, we've come down from the great high long ago of the 1920s, 30s, 40s when

1095
01:03:56,840 --> 01:04:07,660
everybody took piano lessons to a time now when everybody takes guitar.

1096
01:04:07,660 --> 01:04:08,660
That's a shame.

1097
01:04:08,660 --> 01:04:14,420
I mean, the piano is a marvelous, magical instrument with not only affords us many,

1098
01:04:14,420 --> 01:04:20,420
many hours of sonic joy, but there's still something so wonderfully gathering about a

1099
01:04:20,420 --> 01:04:25,340
piano that everyone can stand around and admire and talk and contribute.

1100
01:04:25,340 --> 01:04:32,300
And that's how it was in my home, particularly at holiday time, you know, really around the

1101
01:04:32,300 --> 01:04:36,540
piano and sing things, you know, it's a very American thing to do.

1102
01:04:36,540 --> 01:04:41,420
Well, but that's actually the start of anyone's journey.

1103
01:04:41,420 --> 01:04:47,180
So I think these days because I'm teaching young children to sometimes that's something

1104
01:04:47,180 --> 01:04:53,100
missing from home because, you know, anyway, but I'm just curious.

1105
01:04:53,100 --> 01:04:57,420
So I think you mentioned probably in tone based video because I watched a little bit

1106
01:04:57,420 --> 01:05:03,260
because I was so curious about Alberto Hones work and I really want to check out the book.

1107
01:05:03,260 --> 01:05:07,780
I'm glad because I was about to buy the book on Amazon, but you can do it.

1108
01:05:07,780 --> 01:05:11,660
You can get it for free on IMSLP.

1109
01:05:11,660 --> 01:05:16,580
You know, before it was on IMSLP, of course, I wanted to I'm working on that edition of

1110
01:05:16,580 --> 01:05:17,580
it.

1111
01:05:17,580 --> 01:05:23,300
I wanted to acquire a set and it took took about a year and a half and about a thousand

1112
01:05:23,300 --> 01:05:25,300
dollars to get to get a set together.

1113
01:05:25,300 --> 01:05:26,300
It's not easy.

1114
01:05:26,300 --> 01:05:27,300
Yeah.

1115
01:05:27,300 --> 01:05:28,300
Yeah.

1116
01:05:28,300 --> 01:05:31,980
But anyway, in the video, you said, you know, you emphasize the importance of building a

1117
01:05:31,980 --> 01:05:38,500
solid technique foundation that is developing piano technique is not just a phase, but ongoing

1118
01:05:38,500 --> 01:05:39,500
lifelong process.

1119
01:05:39,500 --> 01:05:40,500
Right.

1120
01:05:40,500 --> 01:05:45,420
And how do you see this continuous development of strong technical foundation continuing

1121
01:05:45,420 --> 01:05:48,700
to a pianist's growth and evolution as an artist?

1122
01:05:48,700 --> 01:05:52,820
Well, I mean, there's there's always something new under the sun.

1123
01:05:52,820 --> 01:05:53,820
Right.

1124
01:05:53,820 --> 01:05:59,220
So if I really want to drive myself crazy, I'll open up my volume of those Ligeti etudes

1125
01:05:59,220 --> 01:06:06,580
and start practicing some of those because I still recall the first time someone came,

1126
01:06:06,580 --> 01:06:09,220
a student came to my apartment to play some of those for me.

1127
01:06:09,220 --> 01:06:14,340
And I recalled thinking, thank God, I'm not under the age of 30 and I have to learn these

1128
01:06:14,340 --> 01:06:15,340
for competitions.

1129
01:06:15,340 --> 01:06:20,980
It would be just flabbergasted, you know, by then.

1130
01:06:20,980 --> 01:06:29,420
You know, I had one specific experience which sort of told me that piano technique never

1131
01:06:29,420 --> 01:06:30,420
really stops.

1132
01:06:30,420 --> 01:06:33,900
And that was a recital in Japan.

1133
01:06:33,900 --> 01:06:40,100
I think and I was I really had to play some Scarlatti and I love Scarlatti, you know,

1134
01:06:40,100 --> 01:06:43,100
but there was one sonata I thought, oh, I really want to play this thing.

1135
01:06:43,100 --> 01:06:44,980
It's nice, nice opening.

1136
01:06:44,980 --> 01:06:49,740
And I started practicing it and I realized it had extended passages of repeated notes,

1137
01:06:49,740 --> 01:06:52,420
fast repeated notes in the left hand.

1138
01:06:52,420 --> 01:06:54,080
I had never done that.

1139
01:06:54,080 --> 01:06:56,620
I had never played repeated notes in my left hand.

1140
01:06:56,620 --> 01:07:00,140
And I had to spend weeks developing the technique to be able to play it.

1141
01:07:00,140 --> 01:07:03,340
I still don't really have that technique to play it.

1142
01:07:03,340 --> 01:07:09,820
But if I was going to play that piece, I just had to train my fingers to be able to do that.

1143
01:07:09,820 --> 01:07:13,740
And I remember that was like the first time in maybe a few decades that I thought, here's

1144
01:07:13,740 --> 01:07:17,540
something I really don't know how to do.

1145
01:07:17,540 --> 01:07:20,260
And I have to teach myself how to do it.

1146
01:07:20,260 --> 01:07:25,260
There's always going to be something.

1147
01:07:25,260 --> 01:07:44,580
I think.

1148
01:07:44,580 --> 01:08:08,420
Another amazing gift you have is improvisation.

1149
01:08:08,420 --> 01:08:14,860
And you sent me the link of Meet the Mets, Rhapsody in Orange and Blue.

1150
01:08:14,860 --> 01:08:16,780
Are you a Mets fan?

1151
01:08:16,780 --> 01:08:17,780
I am a Mets fan.

1152
01:08:17,780 --> 01:08:19,260
Yes, I've been a Mets fan.

1153
01:08:19,260 --> 01:08:22,220
Well, I'm a lifelong baseball fan.

1154
01:08:22,220 --> 01:08:25,900
To grow up in Baltimore was to be a Baltimore Orioles fan.

1155
01:08:25,900 --> 01:08:31,940
And then when I went to college, I was a very huge Yankees fan for many, many years.

1156
01:08:31,940 --> 01:08:37,420
But that came to an end when I moved to Canada and I started to spend a lot more time in

1157
01:08:37,420 --> 01:08:38,420
Japan.

1158
01:08:38,420 --> 01:08:43,420
I became crazy about the Hanshin Tigers of Osaka.

1159
01:08:43,420 --> 01:08:45,420
In fact, you're my enemy.

1160
01:08:45,420 --> 01:08:47,420
I'm a Giants fan.

1161
01:08:47,420 --> 01:08:55,260
Oh, Japan, they say anti-anti-anti-giants, you know, anti-giant.

1162
01:08:55,260 --> 01:09:02,740
Your friend of mine, my friend, sent me this is a Kanji, Hanshin Tigers Kanji drill, Kanji

1163
01:09:02,740 --> 01:09:04,060
drill.

1164
01:09:04,060 --> 01:09:07,900
And the exercises are based on baseball scenarios.

1165
01:09:07,900 --> 01:09:10,740
Oh my goodness, how adorable.

1166
01:09:10,740 --> 01:09:11,740
How adorable.

1167
01:09:11,740 --> 01:09:12,740
It is rather adorable.

1168
01:09:12,740 --> 01:09:14,380
I've got to work on that.

1169
01:09:14,380 --> 01:09:16,940
So that became the baseball thing for a long, long time.

1170
01:09:16,940 --> 01:09:24,260
But then when I joined the faculty at Temple, I was living in Philadelphia and I have to,

1171
01:09:24,260 --> 01:09:28,180
to be honest, I just don't have any affection for the Philadelphia Phillies.

1172
01:09:28,180 --> 01:09:30,040
But I always loved New York.

1173
01:09:30,040 --> 01:09:35,580
I'm not crazy about the Yankees having moved to a new Yankee stadium.

1174
01:09:35,580 --> 01:09:40,020
And anyway, I started rooting for the Mets.

1175
01:09:40,020 --> 01:09:43,740
And at some point, a friend of my challenge me says, you know, they have that theme song

1176
01:09:43,740 --> 01:09:44,740
is really catchy.

1177
01:09:44,740 --> 01:09:45,740
You should do something with that.

1178
01:09:45,740 --> 01:09:46,740
I said, oh, come on.

1179
01:09:46,740 --> 01:09:49,660
You know, but at some point, I don't know, I did it as a joke.

1180
01:09:49,660 --> 01:09:54,740
You know, I started to write this, this, this crazy arrangement of meet the Mets.

1181
01:09:54,740 --> 01:09:56,040
And then, okay.

1182
01:09:56,040 --> 01:10:01,500
So I made a video of it and the thing went kind of viral and I ended up playing it at

1183
01:10:01,500 --> 01:10:05,500
Citi Field a couple of times for their, when they had the pride night.

1184
01:10:05,500 --> 01:10:12,180
I played the big Yamaha under the Jumbotron, which is great fun.

1185
01:10:12,180 --> 01:10:15,900
I mean, I love baseball and I always have, it was always in our house.

1186
01:10:15,900 --> 01:10:16,980
Everybody loved baseball.

1187
01:10:16,980 --> 01:10:20,980
My grandmother particularly was the big baseball nut.

1188
01:10:20,980 --> 01:10:24,860
So it's kind of, kind of fun, but that's not an improvisation.

1189
01:10:24,860 --> 01:10:26,740
I'm really not able to improvise.

1190
01:10:26,740 --> 01:10:28,460
That's a jazz skill.

1191
01:10:28,460 --> 01:10:30,420
But I have composed a bit.

1192
01:10:30,420 --> 01:10:35,540
When I was getting my doctoral degree, I wrote, I wrote a song cycle and a set of variations

1193
01:10:35,540 --> 01:10:38,140
for violin and some piano pieces.

1194
01:10:38,140 --> 01:10:42,820
And I've lost my interest in composing, unfortunately.

1195
01:10:42,820 --> 01:10:43,820
It's hard to do.

1196
01:10:43,820 --> 01:10:46,980
It takes up a lot of time and you have to be really inspired.

1197
01:10:46,980 --> 01:10:49,460
But I'm glad I wrote those pieces.

1198
01:10:49,460 --> 01:10:53,620
And sometimes I do play my own music from time to time.

1199
01:10:53,620 --> 01:10:58,260
And I know several very accomplished pianists who really admire that meet the mess thing.

1200
01:10:58,260 --> 01:11:00,260
I think I'm going to have to, I didn't write it down.

1201
01:11:00,260 --> 01:11:02,140
I'm going to have to notate it down.

1202
01:11:02,140 --> 01:11:03,140
Yeah.

1203
01:11:03,140 --> 01:11:07,660
Transcription or arrangement are always fun because it's somewhere between the composition

1204
01:11:07,660 --> 01:11:08,660
and improvisation.

1205
01:11:08,660 --> 01:11:11,180
Right, right, right.

1206
01:11:11,180 --> 01:11:12,180
It's a very catchy tune.

1207
01:11:12,180 --> 01:11:13,180
You know, what can I say?

1208
01:11:13,180 --> 01:11:18,180
And you get to, it's got that part where you have to, you hear the sound of the crack of

1209
01:11:18,180 --> 01:11:19,180
the bat.

1210
01:11:19,180 --> 01:11:20,300
So you get to hit the piano too.

1211
01:11:20,300 --> 01:11:21,300
I know.

1212
01:11:21,300 --> 01:11:22,300
I saw it.

1213
01:11:22,300 --> 01:11:23,300
It's a brilliant arrangement.

1214
01:11:23,300 --> 01:11:25,060
I enjoyed it so much.

1215
01:11:25,060 --> 01:11:30,700
And then some of the octaves and chords and oh, they are really, really difficult to do.

1216
01:11:30,700 --> 01:11:33,340
Brilliant, brilliant arrangement.

1217
01:11:33,340 --> 01:11:34,660
I love it.

1218
01:11:34,660 --> 01:11:39,660
You have been teaching for as long as you have been a performing artist, I'm sure.

1219
01:11:39,660 --> 01:11:45,100
And then, you know, as someone who has taught at prestigious institutions like the Manhattan

1220
01:11:45,100 --> 01:11:51,020
School of Music, the University of British Columbia and Temple University currently,

1221
01:11:51,020 --> 01:11:57,220
what have you found to be the most rewarding aspect of shaping the next generation of pianists?

1222
01:11:57,220 --> 01:12:04,900
I think the best reward that you get from doing that kind of teaching is you acquire

1223
01:12:04,900 --> 01:12:14,660
a kind of perspective, which includes hope because you're touching people.

1224
01:12:14,660 --> 01:12:20,820
And it's funny in the fullness of time, how many years I've now taught, I certainly had

1225
01:12:20,820 --> 01:12:26,780
students who I thought were just about to just embark on huge major important careers

1226
01:12:26,780 --> 01:12:27,780
and didn't.

1227
01:12:27,780 --> 01:12:33,420
I also had students that I really didn't really assess their talent levels very high and they

1228
01:12:33,420 --> 01:12:36,540
went on to do significant things in music.

1229
01:12:36,540 --> 01:12:39,940
You're always surprised by what the end result of things is.

1230
01:12:39,940 --> 01:12:46,980
And you sort of learn that the human soul or the creative spirit takes an awfully long

1231
01:12:46,980 --> 01:12:47,980
time to gestate.

1232
01:12:47,980 --> 01:12:51,340
It doesn't happen quickly by any means.

1233
01:12:51,340 --> 01:12:55,900
And maybe I should have intuited that earlier because I certainly when I was finishing up

1234
01:12:55,900 --> 01:13:02,700
Juilliard, I was studying with Rudolf Frickushny, a very great teacher, a wonderful man.

1235
01:13:02,700 --> 01:13:07,660
And at the time I got out of school and I was entering piano competitions, I played

1236
01:13:07,660 --> 01:13:12,620
repertoire that I had studied with him, including Czech music of Martinu and Janáček that

1237
01:13:12,620 --> 01:13:14,220
he played a lot.

1238
01:13:14,220 --> 01:13:17,300
And people complimented me and said, oh, you play just like Frickushny.

1239
01:13:17,300 --> 01:13:18,740
That's a great compliment.

1240
01:13:18,740 --> 01:13:22,060
But the problem is I'm not Rudolf Frickushny.

1241
01:13:22,060 --> 01:13:23,260
I'm Sarah Davis Pugner.

1242
01:13:23,260 --> 01:13:24,860
I wasn't playing even that.

1243
01:13:24,860 --> 01:13:28,420
I was playing the music well, but I wasn't playing it like me.

1244
01:13:28,420 --> 01:13:32,020
It takes an awfully long time to play like yourself.

1245
01:13:32,020 --> 01:13:35,180
And at a certain point I stopped playing that repertoire and just later decided that I'm

1246
01:13:35,180 --> 01:13:39,020
going to pick that up later when I know what I want to do with it.

1247
01:13:39,020 --> 01:13:42,100
And I'm sure Rudy would have said that to me.

1248
01:13:42,100 --> 01:13:46,540
Actually he had a famous quote he used to say that you walk in your own way, you play

1249
01:13:46,540 --> 01:13:48,460
the piano in your own way.

1250
01:13:48,460 --> 01:13:51,060
It's very, very true.

1251
01:13:51,060 --> 01:14:00,760
But in any case, as a teacher, I think I always wanted zealously to give my students all these

1252
01:14:00,760 --> 01:14:06,960
things that Mr. Reyes and Mr. Frickushny and several others had given me in terms of nurturing.

1253
01:14:06,960 --> 01:14:10,320
Those teachers were like parents to me.

1254
01:14:10,320 --> 01:14:11,320
They really took me in hand.

1255
01:14:11,320 --> 01:14:18,620
And as long as I was devoted and worked hard, they would give me as good as I gave also.

1256
01:14:18,620 --> 01:14:25,460
And so that was my sense of what the teacher-student relationship is really like.

1257
01:14:25,460 --> 01:14:29,940
I was a little surprised in my first teaching position that it turned out not necessarily

1258
01:14:29,940 --> 01:14:30,940
be the case.

1259
01:14:30,940 --> 01:14:35,460
There were some students who were very close to me and we forged quick bonds and others

1260
01:14:35,460 --> 01:14:40,820
who were just casual and not much came of it.

1261
01:14:40,820 --> 01:14:43,860
And in a sense, they're not family.

1262
01:14:43,860 --> 01:14:46,960
We are people who sort of ships passing in the night.

1263
01:14:46,960 --> 01:14:54,060
But some of it is destined to be life changing and some of it, it's not.

1264
01:14:54,060 --> 01:14:59,220
You learn to sort of give up the control in that situation.

1265
01:14:59,220 --> 01:15:01,380
The other party is responsible with themselves.

1266
01:15:01,380 --> 01:15:05,900
The best thing you can do is give them the tools.

1267
01:15:05,900 --> 01:15:11,260
And if they take the tools and you know there are good tools, they can do something with it.

1268
01:15:11,260 --> 01:15:16,020
And I certainly have plenty of students tell me years later how grateful they were to me

1269
01:15:16,020 --> 01:15:19,860
for this lesson or that lesson.

1270
01:15:19,860 --> 01:15:27,060
Having said that, I remember one summer, I think it was 1978, I was having kind of a

1271
01:15:27,060 --> 01:15:29,420
technical crisis in my playing.

1272
01:15:29,420 --> 01:15:31,540
I was 18 at the time.

1273
01:15:31,540 --> 01:15:37,980
And I went for a summer class in Victoria, British Columbia, where one of the teachers

1274
01:15:37,980 --> 01:15:44,060
was a man named William Aide, who was the head of piano at University of Toronto.

1275
01:15:44,060 --> 01:15:50,580
But more importantly, he was a co-student with Glenn Gould of a great pedagogue named

1276
01:15:50,580 --> 01:15:53,060
Alberto Guerrero.

1277
01:15:53,060 --> 01:16:00,100
And Bill Aide just looks, he's still around, Bill Aide looks like a piano prof.

1278
01:16:00,100 --> 01:16:04,660
If you have piano prof in the Webster's Dictionary, there's a picture of Bill with his bald head

1279
01:16:04,660 --> 01:16:06,060
and his thick glasses.

1280
01:16:06,060 --> 01:16:08,820
And he looks like a piano professor.

1281
01:16:08,820 --> 01:16:13,940
Bill Aide walked on stage as the piano prof, and we weren't really expecting one night,

1282
01:16:13,940 --> 01:16:17,420
expecting very much from him the night he walked on stage and played Campanella faster

1283
01:16:17,420 --> 01:16:20,220
than any human being had ever done it.

1284
01:16:20,220 --> 01:16:23,800
I couldn't quite believe it, what I was seeing and hearing at that time.

1285
01:16:23,800 --> 01:16:27,020
He was a great, great teacher of technique.

1286
01:16:27,020 --> 01:16:31,540
And he helped me reshape even the way that I held my fingers so that I could move quickly

1287
01:16:31,540 --> 01:16:33,540
and acquire great, great dexterity.

1288
01:16:33,540 --> 01:16:35,900
He was a great, great teacher.

1289
01:16:35,900 --> 01:16:40,100
And for those six weeks that I worked with him that summer, I spent many, many hours

1290
01:16:40,100 --> 01:16:44,980
actually sometimes even sitting on the floor with my hands elevated to force my fingers

1291
01:16:44,980 --> 01:16:53,140
to exaggerate and stretch, you know, sort of get them to be more dexterous, doing these

1292
01:16:53,140 --> 01:16:59,380
sometimes slow, sometimes fast kind of exercises, and I didn't just do exercises he wrote out,

1293
01:16:59,380 --> 01:17:03,620
I fashioned my own out of them and I made a kind of a catalog of what was a good way

1294
01:17:03,620 --> 01:17:05,500
to practice this way.

1295
01:17:05,500 --> 01:17:09,460
You know, decades later I said to Bill something about how grateful I was for all that work

1296
01:17:09,460 --> 01:17:15,740
that summer, and I said, you must have influenced so many hundreds of pianists who did those

1297
01:17:15,740 --> 01:17:16,740
exercises.

1298
01:17:16,740 --> 01:17:22,060
And he says, no, he says, you were the only one who really did it that much.

1299
01:17:22,060 --> 01:17:26,420
I was stunned, you know, to hear him say that.

1300
01:17:26,420 --> 01:17:32,260
But I had that experience myself of spending time with students and showing them meticulously

1301
01:17:32,260 --> 01:17:36,780
all kinds of ways to practice and then a week or two later asking them how to work out and

1302
01:17:36,780 --> 01:17:39,060
say, I didn't like it too much.

1303
01:17:39,060 --> 01:17:47,540
You know, you have to let people go on their own journey of life and realize that some

1304
01:17:47,540 --> 01:17:54,780
will place great value on your wisdom and advice and others have a different way.

1305
01:17:54,780 --> 01:17:59,140
They just either they don't see it, they don't want to see it or they don't really quite

1306
01:17:59,140 --> 01:18:03,620
understand the value of what it is that you're giving them or frankly, or it doesn't work

1307
01:18:03,620 --> 01:18:04,620
for them.

1308
01:18:04,620 --> 01:18:09,300
So anyway, you asked me for sort of a positive statement about all the teaching and it sounds

1309
01:18:09,300 --> 01:18:13,580
like I'm making a negative statement, but not at all.

1310
01:18:13,580 --> 01:18:19,460
It's more like as a young teacher, I really felt like, well, I know all this stuff and

1311
01:18:19,460 --> 01:18:23,700
I tell people this stuff that I'm going to have this incredible class of brilliant pianists

1312
01:18:23,700 --> 01:18:27,460
like Liszt or Busoni and they're going to transform the world.

1313
01:18:27,460 --> 01:18:31,300
Well, you learn to give up controlling other human beings.

1314
01:18:31,300 --> 01:18:36,180
And you know, and that's an important lesson to learn for sure.

1315
01:18:36,180 --> 01:18:41,580
But then how much more pride do you take in the accomplishments of students who do take

1316
01:18:41,580 --> 01:18:44,660
what you give them and go their own way with it?

1317
01:18:44,660 --> 01:18:49,820
And I'm thinking of three in particular who none of whom is a professional pianist.

1318
01:18:49,820 --> 01:18:50,820
They're all composers.

1319
01:18:50,820 --> 01:18:57,980
Well, tremendous composers and I play their works in concert because they're great composers.

1320
01:18:57,980 --> 01:19:06,180
I remember one of them is a Canadian composer, young fellow and called me up one day says,

1321
01:19:06,180 --> 01:19:11,940
Dr. B, can I stop practicing Hohenhausen?

1322
01:19:11,940 --> 01:19:14,100
Well, I was so impressed by what you showed me.

1323
01:19:14,100 --> 01:19:15,780
I was doing that for like 12 hours.

1324
01:19:15,780 --> 01:19:17,820
My hands really hurt now.

1325
01:19:17,820 --> 01:19:23,020
Well, that's some dedication there.

1326
01:19:23,020 --> 01:19:25,820
I said to him, you're a composer.

1327
01:19:25,820 --> 01:19:26,820
Stop practicing.

1328
01:19:26,820 --> 01:19:36,860
I guess the point being, you know, I mean, there was there was those who became composers.

1329
01:19:36,860 --> 01:19:38,660
It was one that went into music technology.

1330
01:19:38,660 --> 01:19:42,460
There was one who became the director of the US Marine Corps Band.

1331
01:19:42,460 --> 01:19:50,220
You know, people have their own artistic muses and it might not be aligned with yours, but

1332
01:19:50,220 --> 01:19:52,460
it's wonderful to see them follow it.

1333
01:19:52,460 --> 01:19:57,140
So well, sounds like you are raising creative, innovative people.

1334
01:19:57,140 --> 01:20:04,500
Well, in a way, I don't know that's that's necessarily such a totally positive thing

1335
01:20:04,500 --> 01:20:05,900
to say.

1336
01:20:05,900 --> 01:20:10,860
This has happened so many times to me that some student I've been teaching for a few

1337
01:20:10,860 --> 01:20:15,020
years, whether it's two years or even four years, undergrad student, it's usually in

1338
01:20:15,020 --> 01:20:22,020
the last or the next to last piano lesson that they say, Dr. B, what do I do now?

1339
01:20:22,020 --> 01:20:29,380
We start by saying, find time to ask me.

1340
01:20:29,380 --> 01:20:33,940
And I the first few times that happened, I was really, really buffaloed and I felt inadequate

1341
01:20:33,940 --> 01:20:37,100
because it's like I should be able to tell them, well, see, you enter this competition

1342
01:20:37,100 --> 01:20:41,900
that you write to this person, you do this, this like directed micromanage their life

1343
01:20:41,900 --> 01:20:43,500
and career.

1344
01:20:43,500 --> 01:20:49,060
But it was when I gave up on that that I came up with far, far better advice, you know,

1345
01:20:49,060 --> 01:20:52,860
because a few of them had said to me, a few students from time to time said to me, you

1346
01:20:52,860 --> 01:20:57,220
know, I think I'm going to teach some kids for a little while and just put some money

1347
01:20:57,220 --> 01:21:00,580
away and then maybe I'll go to business school or something like that.

1348
01:21:00,580 --> 01:21:03,180
Is there concerned about supporting themselves?

1349
01:21:03,180 --> 01:21:07,940
I mean, OK, reasonable enough.

1350
01:21:07,940 --> 01:21:13,260
But in general, when those students ask me about what do I do in the future, I say to

1351
01:21:13,260 --> 01:21:16,820
them, please look at this world around you.

1352
01:21:16,820 --> 01:21:25,740
Are we in need of more dentists, more accountants, more lawyers, more bankers, investment Wall

1353
01:21:25,740 --> 01:21:37,340
Street types, you know, delivery men, I don't know, shopkeepers, blah, blah, blah.

1354
01:21:37,340 --> 01:21:47,340
In this world, if even just 10 percent more human beings pursued creative arts as their

1355
01:21:47,340 --> 01:21:57,980
work, if they were painters, dancers, comedians, skateboarders, jugglers, storytellers, fabric

1356
01:21:57,980 --> 01:22:04,200
makers, think about just any way in which the human spirit can create something of beauty

1357
01:22:04,200 --> 01:22:06,060
and of intrigue.

1358
01:22:06,060 --> 01:22:12,900
What would this world be like if instead of the coin of money, we measured things in terms

1359
01:22:12,900 --> 01:22:17,580
of the coin of creative donation?

1360
01:22:17,580 --> 01:22:22,100
That is, that we're giving something to the world that makes it a better and happier and

1361
01:22:22,100 --> 01:22:24,460
more delightful place in which to live.

1362
01:22:24,460 --> 01:22:27,020
It really wouldn't take so many people.

1363
01:22:27,020 --> 01:22:31,260
I often say to people also, you know, in a baseball game, typically you'll have 40 to

1364
01:22:31,260 --> 01:22:33,540
50 thousand people cheering.

1365
01:22:33,540 --> 01:22:38,780
If you could get 500 of those people start going to classical concerts once in a while,

1366
01:22:38,780 --> 01:22:41,500
the music business would be in incredible shape.

1367
01:22:41,500 --> 01:22:48,700
Anyway, that's my way to try to tell them that you might have a hard life pursuing,

1368
01:22:48,700 --> 01:22:54,180
you know, a life as a musician, of course, but you're giving something so important and

1369
01:22:54,180 --> 01:22:59,940
so valuable and so self perpetuating that it means so much more than if you just say,

1370
01:22:59,940 --> 01:23:04,300
OK, that was fun, but now I'll get serious.

1371
01:23:04,300 --> 01:23:07,540
The world is not a better place when everybody gets too serious.

1372
01:23:07,540 --> 01:23:10,300
At least that's how I feel.

1373
01:23:10,300 --> 01:23:14,180
Well, you're a wonderful mentor and wonderful teacher.

1374
01:23:14,180 --> 01:23:19,780
I recently watched the promotional video for your autobiographical theater show of pigs

1375
01:23:19,780 --> 01:23:20,780
and pianos.

1376
01:23:20,780 --> 01:23:21,780
Yes.

1377
01:23:21,780 --> 01:23:22,780
Yes.

1378
01:23:22,780 --> 01:23:27,260
So as a transgender artist and advocate, your unique position in the classical music world

1379
01:23:27,260 --> 01:23:32,180
is beautifully portrayed in the show, I'm sure, and which details your coming of age

1380
01:23:32,180 --> 01:23:33,180
story in New York.

1381
01:23:33,180 --> 01:23:34,180
Yes, right.

1382
01:23:34,180 --> 01:23:35,180
Yes.

1383
01:23:35,180 --> 01:23:36,180
Yes.

1384
01:23:36,180 --> 01:23:43,780
So how has do you believe the classical music community has evolved in terms of acceptance

1385
01:23:43,780 --> 01:23:47,700
and visibility for transgender artists?

1386
01:23:47,700 --> 01:23:51,100
I would have to say no, I don't think it's really evolved so very much.

1387
01:23:51,100 --> 01:23:58,980
I'm routinely frustrated by the words of various sponsors and presenters and certainly my dedicated

1388
01:23:58,980 --> 01:24:06,700
agent has put in more than 20 years of hard effort trying to get doors to break open.

1389
01:24:06,700 --> 01:24:14,620
There certainly is some change in view of transgender people, particularly in northern

1390
01:24:14,620 --> 01:24:21,500
sophisticated cities, but if you see the horrific laws being passed that specifically target

1391
01:24:21,500 --> 01:24:28,300
LGBTQ folks all over, particularly the South and the Midwest, in many ways, culturally,

1392
01:24:28,300 --> 01:24:31,260
this country is fighting the Civil War.

1393
01:24:31,260 --> 01:24:38,860
It seems to be dedicated to fighting the Civil War forever and that's just rather maddening.

1394
01:24:38,860 --> 01:24:43,940
That extends into the music business for sure because presenters are afraid of something

1395
01:24:43,940 --> 01:24:50,580
that donors see as either off-putting or as they'll use it as an insult, DEI.

1396
01:24:50,580 --> 01:24:56,420
Right now that's something bad about DEI.

1397
01:24:56,420 --> 01:25:02,420
I was hardened to see Michelle Obama refer to that in her speech last week and say that

1398
01:25:02,420 --> 01:25:08,380
about affirmative action as if there hasn't been affirmative action for people in power

1399
01:25:08,380 --> 01:25:14,180
for the last two to three decades that's been around.

1400
01:25:14,180 --> 01:25:20,220
Now having said all of that, I'm well aware of my position in classical music and that

1401
01:25:20,220 --> 01:25:26,460
to date there's really nobody else doing what I do as a transgender artist.

1402
01:25:26,460 --> 01:25:30,580
Things will probably get better when there are a few more and I think there are more

1403
01:25:30,580 --> 01:25:37,540
pretty much on the horizon at the moment because you just can't keep burying people forever.

1404
01:25:37,540 --> 01:25:39,580
I know that I stand for something.

1405
01:25:39,580 --> 01:25:44,620
I know that when I walk into a concert stage that itself makes a statement.

1406
01:25:44,620 --> 01:25:47,300
I was aware of that when I transitioned as well.

1407
01:25:47,300 --> 01:25:54,020
I didn't realize how direly it would just stop my career cold when I was 37 years old

1408
01:25:54,020 --> 01:25:58,020
that everything would just sort of come to a halt and I would have to go to Canada just

1409
01:25:58,020 --> 01:26:02,100
to get a teaching job.

1410
01:26:02,100 --> 01:26:10,420
But I'm proud that I survived it and I'm aware that I have a kind of a social responsibility

1411
01:26:10,420 --> 01:26:16,020
not to be silent about it but to be very out about it, to be very proud about it, to be

1412
01:26:16,020 --> 01:26:20,340
as tasteful as I can about it, but also to challenge people.

1413
01:26:20,340 --> 01:26:26,460
In the last year particularly when these sort of bathroom bills are going around, I have

1414
01:26:26,460 --> 01:26:29,260
made speeches from the stage.

1415
01:26:29,260 --> 01:26:36,100
Especially after playing a concerto I'll say something to the audience that if they value

1416
01:26:36,100 --> 01:26:40,300
the worth of the music that they've just heard to please value the worth of the musicians

1417
01:26:40,300 --> 01:26:47,260
making it which include people like me and I appreciate your applause.

1418
01:26:47,260 --> 01:26:50,820
Since you like me so much please don't go into the voting booth and strip my civil rights

1419
01:26:50,820 --> 01:26:51,820
away.

1420
01:26:51,820 --> 01:26:54,960
It usually gets a big hand when I say that.

1421
01:26:54,960 --> 01:27:00,460
Of course what people will say publicly and do publicly is often very different than what

1422
01:27:00,460 --> 01:27:04,020
they'll say privately.

1423
01:27:04,020 --> 01:27:10,180
One sad prediction I had at the time of the George Floyd riots and sort of the birth of

1424
01:27:10,180 --> 01:27:15,500
Black Lives Matter when I saw the arts sort of responding to okay well we have to have

1425
01:27:15,500 --> 01:27:18,060
more black representation in the arts.

1426
01:27:18,060 --> 01:27:22,020
I sort of predicted, I said I thought I had bet for two or three seasons they'll have

1427
01:27:22,020 --> 01:27:26,060
lots of black artists and then it'll go right back to the same old thing.

1428
01:27:26,060 --> 01:27:28,940
I sort of feel like I'm seeing that happening.

1429
01:27:28,940 --> 01:27:36,100
There were these Florence Price things, lots of Florence Price.

1430
01:27:36,100 --> 01:27:42,740
The true diversity that could be presented in the concert hall is far larger than what

1431
01:27:42,740 --> 01:27:46,700
these concert presenters can conceive of.

1432
01:27:46,700 --> 01:27:55,460
I realize that I've been doing DEI myself for decades just because I love the diversity

1433
01:27:55,460 --> 01:27:58,260
of art.

1434
01:27:58,260 --> 01:28:02,740
Classical music, if it's just Bach, Mozart and Beethoven you're going to might be tired

1435
01:28:02,740 --> 01:28:09,460
of that after a while.

1436
01:28:09,460 --> 01:28:12,260
The fly in that ointment is always economics.

1437
01:28:12,260 --> 01:28:17,140
What they think is going to sell, what's going to sell a ticket, what's going to sell out

1438
01:28:17,140 --> 01:28:18,140
of house.

1439
01:28:18,140 --> 01:28:23,620
Ironically, what I've learned myself over so many years of playing concerts is that

1440
01:28:23,620 --> 01:28:29,140
you could walk on stage and play an entire program of really hard to listen atonal stuff

1441
01:28:29,140 --> 01:28:34,140
but if you present it in a charming and enlightened and interesting and passionate way and talk

1442
01:28:34,140 --> 01:28:38,660
about the music and what it means and how come you love it so much and listen for this

1443
01:28:38,660 --> 01:28:45,340
and this and this and make it kind of an adventure, everybody will love it.

1444
01:28:45,340 --> 01:28:48,460
I remember this wonderful quote in an obituary.

1445
01:28:48,460 --> 01:28:50,220
I have a bad habit.

1446
01:28:50,220 --> 01:28:53,380
I like to read the obituaries first thing in the morning.

1447
01:28:53,380 --> 01:28:55,900
First of all, to see if anybody I don't like is gone.

1448
01:28:55,900 --> 01:28:57,900
So that's a good day.

1449
01:28:57,900 --> 01:29:06,580
What a way to start a new day.

1450
01:29:06,580 --> 01:29:12,460
But addition by subtraction.

1451
01:29:12,460 --> 01:29:15,100
But no, you see the interesting lives that have been lived.

1452
01:29:15,100 --> 01:29:16,820
So there was a conductor I hadn't heard of.

1453
01:29:16,820 --> 01:29:22,420
His name was Franz Ahlers, A-L-L-E-R-S, and he had a pretty big obit there.

1454
01:29:22,420 --> 01:29:27,020
And he was a major conductor in Europe before the World War, before the Second World War.

1455
01:29:27,020 --> 01:29:33,100
And then of course, like so many European Jews, he fled to the United States.

1456
01:29:33,100 --> 01:29:38,460
And he found his employment primarily conducting in the Broadway pit orchestras, primarily the

1457
01:29:38,460 --> 01:29:41,020
Lerner and Lowe musicals, which he had done.

1458
01:29:41,020 --> 01:29:43,540
And this is great, great music, of course.

1459
01:29:43,540 --> 01:29:50,020
And he was asked, you know, since he had been doing Beethoven and Strauss in Austria, and

1460
01:29:50,020 --> 01:29:55,860
now he's doing Lerner and Lowe in New York City, he had been asked about it.

1461
01:29:55,860 --> 01:29:57,940
Did he feel bad about it or whatever?

1462
01:29:57,940 --> 01:30:01,780
And he said, simply said, there is no first or second rate music.

1463
01:30:01,780 --> 01:30:04,700
There are only first or second rate performances.

1464
01:30:04,700 --> 01:30:07,980
There's so much truth in that statement.

1465
01:30:07,980 --> 01:30:12,020
If you have pride in what you do, if you're convinced of the excellence of what it is

1466
01:30:12,020 --> 01:30:20,660
that you're doing, then you can do a great job or you fail and you don't do a great job.

1467
01:30:20,660 --> 01:30:24,980
So this kind of informs my thinking about so many concerts.

1468
01:30:24,980 --> 01:30:27,600
It hardly even matters really what it is that you're doing.

1469
01:30:27,600 --> 01:30:28,600
Are you doing it well?

1470
01:30:28,600 --> 01:30:31,180
Are you doing it in a way that connects with people?

1471
01:30:31,180 --> 01:30:39,100
Are you doing it in a way that ignites people's creative spark, awakens their passion?

1472
01:30:39,100 --> 01:30:43,460
That's really where the big money is.

1473
01:30:43,460 --> 01:30:47,820
Wow.

1474
01:30:47,820 --> 01:30:57,420
So what advice would you give to young LGBTQ plus musicians who are navigating their own

1475
01:30:57,420 --> 01:31:07,060
journeys in an industry that has historically been less inclusive, although we're trying?

1476
01:31:07,060 --> 01:31:10,260
Well there's always been those folks in the industry, of course.

1477
01:31:10,260 --> 01:31:14,860
Music creative, the creative arts are just full of wonderful LGBTQ folks.

1478
01:31:14,860 --> 01:31:20,540
It's just in the past that it was sort of like it was shielded, it wasn't talked about.

1479
01:31:20,540 --> 01:31:27,140
As one of my ex-managers said to me after he met me, after I'd come out, he said, well,

1480
01:31:27,140 --> 01:31:28,140
it just wasn't done.

1481
01:31:28,140 --> 01:31:34,980
So it was like it was an Emily Post rule or something like that.

1482
01:31:34,980 --> 01:31:41,220
I think there are good and bad aspects to the technological age, of course, as we all

1483
01:31:41,220 --> 01:31:42,880
know with cell phones and so forth.

1484
01:31:42,880 --> 01:31:48,120
But I think young people are just much more connected than ever before and their knowledge

1485
01:31:48,120 --> 01:31:54,440
of the world and acceptance of things that are very different than their understanding

1486
01:31:54,440 --> 01:31:55,980
is huge.

1487
01:31:55,980 --> 01:32:00,700
I mean, I can walk into a classroom pretty much anywhere.

1488
01:32:00,700 --> 01:32:06,180
Nobody's going to give me a second look or a second thought or anything about who I am

1489
01:32:06,180 --> 01:32:07,620
or the fact that I'm trans.

1490
01:32:07,620 --> 01:32:11,820
It just doesn't mean anything to these young people, which is I think it's a very, very

1491
01:32:11,820 --> 01:32:13,900
wonderful thing.

1492
01:32:13,900 --> 01:32:20,260
I guess my tack has been that patience is my best friend in terms of if you live long

1493
01:32:20,260 --> 01:32:25,540
enough the old fuddy-duddies do die off the vine eventually and then they're replaced

1494
01:32:25,540 --> 01:32:32,340
by people who have a very different experience of the world and fresher appreciation of reality.

1495
01:32:32,340 --> 01:32:36,420
I mean, even politically, I would say I think it's the young people who are going to bring

1496
01:32:36,420 --> 01:32:43,020
us into a better era, hopefully at the end of this year.

1497
01:32:43,020 --> 01:32:45,780
So we need our young people.

1498
01:32:45,780 --> 01:32:46,780
We rely on them.

1499
01:32:46,780 --> 01:32:48,160
We need their fresh blood.

1500
01:32:48,160 --> 01:32:49,860
We need their fresh ideas.

1501
01:32:49,860 --> 01:32:53,620
We need their energy and we need their enthusiasm.

1502
01:32:53,620 --> 01:32:55,660
And that's all there.

1503
01:32:55,660 --> 01:33:01,860
The young people that I meet, young musicians I meet, I don't even think they think there's

1504
01:33:01,860 --> 01:33:04,380
a separation between straight and LGBTQ.

1505
01:33:04,380 --> 01:33:07,260
It's all the human race.

1506
01:33:07,260 --> 01:33:11,660
We're all humans, so what's the issue?

1507
01:33:11,660 --> 01:33:14,780
It's sort of like the old stick in the mud.

1508
01:33:14,780 --> 01:33:19,620
I don't want to insult my own dad, but well, poor dad.

1509
01:33:19,620 --> 01:33:24,700
He's a good man, but I'll tell that story.

1510
01:33:24,700 --> 01:33:25,700
I think it was in Vancouver.

1511
01:33:25,700 --> 01:33:28,380
He came for a visit and we walked into a Starbucks.

1512
01:33:28,380 --> 01:33:35,620
Now, my dad was born in, gee, probably 1933 and worked on the railroad as a young man

1513
01:33:35,620 --> 01:33:41,500
and he was a blue collar white guy.

1514
01:33:41,500 --> 01:33:44,900
So I don't know how much he had ever been into Starbucks, but we walked into Starbucks.

1515
01:33:44,900 --> 01:33:46,580
I said, Dad, you want to get some coffee?

1516
01:33:46,580 --> 01:33:47,580
He said, sure.

1517
01:33:47,580 --> 01:33:50,220
We took him into Starbucks and he started shaking.

1518
01:33:50,220 --> 01:33:55,220
He looked up on the board there and he saw these things, these frappuccino things, cappuccino

1519
01:33:55,220 --> 01:34:01,140
things, half whip, no whip, decaf, half calf, whatever.

1520
01:34:01,140 --> 01:34:02,140
He just started shaking.

1521
01:34:02,140 --> 01:34:07,940
He literally was shaking and the baristas, yes, sir, can I help you?

1522
01:34:07,940 --> 01:34:13,340
And he got mad and he said, I want a cup of coffee.

1523
01:34:13,340 --> 01:34:17,180
And I said, Dad, she'll make you a cup of coffee.

1524
01:34:17,180 --> 01:34:18,180
It's OK.

1525
01:34:18,180 --> 01:34:19,180
You don't have to pay attention.

1526
01:34:19,180 --> 01:34:20,180
What's all that stuff?

1527
01:34:20,180 --> 01:34:21,180
He was sort of upset.

1528
01:34:21,180 --> 01:34:30,140
And I tried to talk him down to, you know, you could have what you want and those people

1529
01:34:30,140 --> 01:34:31,780
can have what they want, too.

1530
01:34:31,780 --> 01:34:32,780
It's all good.

1531
01:34:32,780 --> 01:34:33,780
It's OK.

1532
01:34:33,780 --> 01:34:38,100
You don't have to get upset and challenged by that.

1533
01:34:38,100 --> 01:34:41,020
I think that's kind of like the problem.

1534
01:34:41,020 --> 01:34:45,020
The problem folks are the ones looking at the board and just wondering, why has the

1535
01:34:45,020 --> 01:34:47,100
world changed like that?

1536
01:34:47,100 --> 01:34:48,100
It's too much.

1537
01:34:48,100 --> 01:34:49,100
It's too confusing.

1538
01:34:49,100 --> 01:34:50,100
It's too much.

1539
01:34:50,100 --> 01:34:51,100
They can't deal with it.

1540
01:34:51,100 --> 01:34:52,100
No.

1541
01:34:52,100 --> 01:34:54,380
And I don't want to even critique that.

1542
01:34:54,380 --> 01:34:57,260
I mean, like I said, I started this interview mentioning my age.

1543
01:34:57,260 --> 01:34:59,580
I mean, I don't feel old.

1544
01:34:59,580 --> 01:35:04,060
I don't want to think none of us really.

1545
01:35:04,060 --> 01:35:07,580
I think we like the idea of old as revered.

1546
01:35:07,580 --> 01:35:08,580
Wiser.

1547
01:35:08,580 --> 01:35:09,580
Yes, wiser.

1548
01:35:09,580 --> 01:35:10,580
Yes, there we go.

1549
01:35:10,580 --> 01:35:15,260
But old as fuddy duddy and stuck in the mud.

1550
01:35:15,260 --> 01:35:20,100
That's not particularly all that attractive.

1551
01:35:20,100 --> 01:35:26,460
And yet, you know, the world changes with incredible speed and it's very, very hard

1552
01:35:26,460 --> 01:35:27,860
to keep up with things.

1553
01:35:27,860 --> 01:35:33,340
And I know any time I have to use my cell phone, I mean, you know, you see people, right?

1554
01:35:33,340 --> 01:35:35,220
I'm not one of them.

1555
01:35:35,220 --> 01:35:38,540
I'm the person doing it.

1556
01:35:38,540 --> 01:35:43,060
And I'm fine with that.

1557
01:35:43,060 --> 01:35:45,300
I don't want to miss out so much.

1558
01:35:45,300 --> 01:35:48,860
So I hope not.

1559
01:35:48,860 --> 01:35:53,780
Anyway, so that's my diversity story.

1560
01:35:53,780 --> 01:35:54,780
Wow.

1561
01:35:54,780 --> 01:35:55,780
Well, thank you.

1562
01:35:55,780 --> 01:36:00,100
Well, you know, living authentically, especially in the face of challenges, it requires such

1563
01:36:00,100 --> 01:36:08,260
immense energy and courage and can be also but in the end can be the source of joy in

1564
01:36:08,260 --> 01:36:09,260
life.

1565
01:36:09,260 --> 01:36:13,980
So from your performances to your advocacy, I think it really shows.

1566
01:36:13,980 --> 01:36:16,100
So I appreciate you for being here today.

1567
01:36:16,100 --> 01:36:17,100
Really.

1568
01:36:17,100 --> 01:36:18,100
Thank you, Yukimi.

1569
01:36:18,100 --> 01:36:19,100
Thank you so much.

1570
01:36:19,100 --> 01:36:20,100
You're so kind.

1571
01:36:20,100 --> 01:36:22,300
Such a lovely interview.

1572
01:36:22,300 --> 01:36:23,460
What is your next step?

1573
01:36:23,460 --> 01:36:31,940
I believe you are Greenwich House School Music School's inaugural German Dias Memorial Piano

1574
01:36:31,940 --> 01:36:32,940
Chair.

1575
01:36:32,940 --> 01:36:38,780
Yes, this was offered to me, I guess it's going back about eight or nine months ago,

1576
01:36:38,780 --> 01:36:40,740
just right out of the blue.

1577
01:36:40,740 --> 01:36:45,340
Rachel Black, who is the head of Greenwich House Music School in New York City, yes,

1578
01:36:45,340 --> 01:36:54,140
in New York City, yes, sent me an email and Herman Diaz was a very fine pianist, a great

1579
01:36:54,140 --> 01:37:00,420
pedagogue, and he had been the chair of that music department for about 60 years.

1580
01:37:00,420 --> 01:37:02,180
He was a good friend of mine.

1581
01:37:02,180 --> 01:37:09,420
He was a teaching assistant to Claudio Arrao, a good friend of Arrao's also.

1582
01:37:09,420 --> 01:37:16,300
His brother, his older brother, was a very prominent Cuban composer as well.

1583
01:37:16,300 --> 01:37:19,260
Herman was kind of like the royalty of Greenwich House for many, many years.

1584
01:37:19,260 --> 01:37:25,060
He taught a lot of really gifted pianists who went on to find careers and went to, after

1585
01:37:25,060 --> 01:37:31,740
that school, they went to Juilliard and Manass and Boston Conservatory and places like this.

1586
01:37:31,740 --> 01:37:35,780
Anyway, Herman died, I guess, about 10 years ago.

1587
01:37:35,780 --> 01:37:39,860
And Rachel sent me this email and she said, you know, we had this meeting at the piano

1588
01:37:39,860 --> 01:37:46,140
faculty and she said, it's been 10 years since Herman left us and we all agree we need sort

1589
01:37:46,140 --> 01:37:51,620
of a flagship person to be our head of our department and put a face on our department.

1590
01:37:51,620 --> 01:37:55,820
She said, and your name was brought up in Ubersian animals, everybody wanted you.

1591
01:37:55,820 --> 01:37:59,260
I was so touched by that.

1592
01:37:59,260 --> 01:38:05,060
And I thought to myself, I mean, I'm very happy to be teaching at Temple University.

1593
01:38:05,060 --> 01:38:11,420
It's a full-time job, although, you know, I have to be there basically about two days

1594
01:38:11,420 --> 01:38:12,420
a week.

1595
01:38:12,420 --> 01:38:18,580
And I thought, well, you know, I had left New York many, many years before and missed

1596
01:38:18,580 --> 01:38:25,300
it and I said, you know, Alberto Honos used to commute between Philly and New York.

1597
01:38:25,300 --> 01:38:26,900
Is there any reason I can't also?

1598
01:38:26,900 --> 01:38:29,660
And of course, well, first of all, I can't afford Manhattan.

1599
01:38:29,660 --> 01:38:30,660
Nobody can.

1600
01:38:30,660 --> 01:38:35,580
But I found this lovely place in Newark, New Jersey, which is 20 minutes out of Manhattan

1601
01:38:35,580 --> 01:38:38,500
and about 50 minutes north of Philadelphia.

1602
01:38:38,500 --> 01:38:41,940
So it seemed like it was sort of like meant to be.

1603
01:38:41,940 --> 01:38:46,820
And particularly, you know, for the last time, I'm going to mention my age because it sounds

1604
01:38:46,820 --> 01:38:48,220
like I'm consumed with that.

1605
01:38:48,220 --> 01:38:54,820
But I did think to myself, in terms of my pedagogy, what is it that I want to leave

1606
01:38:54,820 --> 01:38:56,860
when it's my time to go?

1607
01:38:56,860 --> 01:38:59,820
And I think Gredish House has this great history.

1608
01:38:59,820 --> 01:39:02,700
Of course, amateur pianists can go there, but professionals as well.

1609
01:39:02,700 --> 01:39:04,260
They have a beautiful concert hall.

1610
01:39:04,260 --> 01:39:05,660
It's a lot of advantages.

1611
01:39:05,660 --> 01:39:09,060
The piano department is probably one of the finest in New York City.

1612
01:39:09,060 --> 01:39:12,380
I mean, some fantastic pianists teaching.

1613
01:39:12,380 --> 01:39:13,380
It's a great environment.

1614
01:39:13,380 --> 01:39:17,460
And I thought, well, this will be a chance to work with very young people again.

1615
01:39:17,460 --> 01:39:21,780
And that's maybe a challenge and that's a little unusual for someone like me to do.

1616
01:39:21,780 --> 01:39:22,780
But why not?

1617
01:39:22,780 --> 01:39:27,900
So, you know, I can see in the future that Gredish House would be, especially since I

1618
01:39:27,900 --> 01:39:32,420
would be not just a teacher, but the head of that department, have a lot of say in what

1619
01:39:32,420 --> 01:39:34,940
is the future of that school.

1620
01:39:34,940 --> 01:39:39,380
The future of that place is terribly important to the city of New York, obviously.

1621
01:39:39,380 --> 01:39:42,780
It's kind of a flagship neighborhood music school.

1622
01:39:42,780 --> 01:39:49,060
So it will affect an awful lot of people and their relationship with great music if I'm

1623
01:39:49,060 --> 01:39:51,340
helping to direct how things go.

1624
01:39:51,340 --> 01:39:53,260
I'm a little scared to do it.

1625
01:39:53,260 --> 01:39:54,500
I've never really hit at anything.

1626
01:39:54,500 --> 01:40:01,380
I'm not particularly a good organizer or a well proportioned person in terms of paperwork.

1627
01:40:01,380 --> 01:40:03,940
But okay, let me try it.

1628
01:40:03,940 --> 01:40:04,940
Let me try this.

1629
01:40:04,940 --> 01:40:05,940
This is kind of important.

1630
01:40:05,940 --> 01:40:10,580
You know, it's one thing to feel that your teaching is important, but this is sort of

1631
01:40:10,580 --> 01:40:17,140
on a whole different level in a sense, like to running something, sort of like dictating

1632
01:40:17,140 --> 01:40:18,780
the course of things.

1633
01:40:18,780 --> 01:40:22,060
I hope I can do something good with it.

1634
01:40:22,060 --> 01:40:23,060
Oh my goodness.

1635
01:40:23,060 --> 01:40:31,580
It would be such an amazing thing in such a neighborhood-y place in New York City, West

1636
01:40:31,580 --> 01:40:32,580
Village.

1637
01:40:32,580 --> 01:40:33,580
Oh, yeah.

1638
01:40:33,580 --> 01:40:35,380
Well, it's connected, of course.

1639
01:40:35,380 --> 01:40:38,660
The Gredish House is a much larger social service organization.

1640
01:40:38,660 --> 01:40:44,940
They have a dance school and they have social services for the LGBTQ community.

1641
01:40:44,940 --> 01:40:49,540
So there's a lot of personal reasons why it makes sense someone like me would be involved

1642
01:40:49,540 --> 01:40:51,340
with that.

1643
01:40:51,340 --> 01:40:54,540
So I hope I bring some knowledge and expertise to bear there.

1644
01:40:54,540 --> 01:40:56,540
Oh, I'm sure.

1645
01:40:56,540 --> 01:41:00,060
So you have all the concerts lined up, I'm sure.

1646
01:41:00,060 --> 01:41:08,260
So if my viewers and listeners can check out your website, sarahdavisbuechner.com, and

1647
01:41:08,260 --> 01:41:12,420
they get the latest news about your concerts, upcoming events.

1648
01:41:12,420 --> 01:41:13,420
Concerts are all listed there.

1649
01:41:13,420 --> 01:41:15,660
I have to update some other things on that website.

1650
01:41:15,660 --> 01:41:17,860
I'm not so good with that technology.

1651
01:41:17,860 --> 01:41:20,820
There's like recent articles and there's stuff from 2019.

1652
01:41:20,820 --> 01:41:23,820
I've got to do something about that.

1653
01:41:23,820 --> 01:41:29,300
But you have to take care of that ASAP and the schedule is all up there, yes.

1654
01:41:29,300 --> 01:41:33,140
So that will tell people where I am and what I'm playing.

1655
01:41:33,140 --> 01:41:34,540
Wonderful.

1656
01:41:34,540 --> 01:41:35,540
Thank you.

1657
01:41:35,540 --> 01:41:39,340
So this has been a really great fun, inspirational conversation.

1658
01:41:39,340 --> 01:41:43,740
And thank you so much for really staying here with me for this long time and before I let

1659
01:41:43,740 --> 01:41:45,380
you go, we have one more thing to do.

1660
01:41:45,380 --> 01:41:48,220
It's called the piano part rapid fire questions.

1661
01:41:48,220 --> 01:41:53,580
So each question may sound really silly, but your answers may reveal who you truly are.

1662
01:41:53,580 --> 01:41:54,580
Oh, okay.

1663
01:41:54,580 --> 01:41:57,900
Now you got me terrified.

1664
01:41:57,900 --> 01:42:01,660
So ready or not, please answer them with the shortest responses possible.

1665
01:42:01,660 --> 01:42:03,380
No explanation is necessary.

1666
01:42:03,380 --> 01:42:06,740
Okay, let's start with the easy ones.

1667
01:42:06,740 --> 01:42:07,740
Question number one.

1668
01:42:07,740 --> 01:42:08,740
What is your comfort food?

1669
01:42:08,740 --> 01:42:11,420
Mac and cheese.

1670
01:42:11,420 --> 01:42:14,140
How do you like your coffee in the morning?

1671
01:42:14,140 --> 01:42:19,980
Absolutely hot, black, steaming direct three cups.

1672
01:42:19,980 --> 01:42:22,820
Oh, great.

1673
01:42:22,820 --> 01:42:23,820
Cattle dogs.

1674
01:42:23,820 --> 01:42:24,820
Oh, cats.

1675
01:42:24,820 --> 01:42:25,820
Sunrise or sunset.

1676
01:42:25,820 --> 01:42:26,820
Oh, both.

1677
01:42:26,820 --> 01:42:27,820
I'm going to cheat on that one.

1678
01:42:27,820 --> 01:42:28,820
I love both.

1679
01:42:28,820 --> 01:42:29,820
Summer or winter.

1680
01:42:29,820 --> 01:42:30,820
Winter for sure.

1681
01:42:30,820 --> 01:42:31,820
Now level two.

1682
01:42:31,820 --> 01:42:32,820
What, what is your favorite food?

1683
01:42:32,820 --> 01:42:33,820
I love both.

1684
01:42:33,820 --> 01:42:34,820
I love both.

1685
01:42:34,820 --> 01:42:40,780
Oh, great.

1686
01:42:40,780 --> 01:42:51,940
Easy one.

1687
01:42:51,940 --> 01:42:59,700
by? To thine own self be true, Shakespeare. Beautiful. What is the most important quality

1688
01:42:59,700 --> 01:43:10,720
you look for in other people? Sincerity. Now, level three. Name three people who inspire

1689
01:43:10,720 --> 01:43:27,140
you, living or dead. Malcolm X, Leon Trotsky, and Albert Einstein. Oh, wow. Great. Thank

1690
01:43:27,140 --> 01:43:36,100
you. Now, name one piece in your current playlist. MacDowell to a Wild Rose. Oh, beautiful. Such

1691
01:43:36,100 --> 01:43:44,860
a sweet piece. Yes. Perfection. Last one. Fill in the blank. Please fill in the blank.

1692
01:43:44,860 --> 01:43:54,100
Music is blank. Life. Music is life. Beautiful. Ding, ding. That was easy. Yeah. Oh, great.

1693
01:43:54,100 --> 01:43:58,220
So that wraps up this episode of The Piano Fall. Thank you, Dr. Buchner, for joining

1694
01:43:58,220 --> 01:44:04,660
us today and sharing your beautiful stories and insights and expertise and your authenticity

1695
01:44:04,660 --> 01:44:10,540
and joyous energy have truly inspired our conversation. You can learn more about Dr.

1696
01:44:10,540 --> 01:44:17,340
Sarah Davis Buchner and her amazing work through her website at sarahdavisbuchner.com. You

1697
01:44:17,340 --> 01:44:24,300
can also listen to her recordings on all major streaming services and you can watch her past

1698
01:44:24,300 --> 01:44:30,700
presentations and performances on her YouTube channel at Sarah Davis Buchner. All the links

1699
01:44:30,700 --> 01:44:34,340
are listed in the show notes. Thank you to my wonderful audience and fans for tuning

1700
01:44:34,340 --> 01:44:38,420
in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate and review it on whatever podcasting

1701
01:44:38,420 --> 01:44:43,460
platform you use. Remember to hit the thumbs up button and subscribe to my YouTube channel.

1702
01:44:43,460 --> 01:44:48,740
If you're watching this episode on YouTube, follow TPP on social media to get the latest

1703
01:44:48,740 --> 01:44:54,020
piano news. I will see you for the next episode of Piano Pod. Thank you. And thank you, Dr.

1704
01:44:54,020 --> 01:45:12,820
Buchner. Appreciate it. Thank you, Yukimi. Thank you so much.