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វ្ ព្្្្្្្្្្្្្...

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Piano Parts

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Welcome back to another episode of the Piano Parts, everyone. Today, I am thrilled to welcome

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Nimrod Bornstein, a renowned British, French composer, and acclaimed conductor,

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whose works have captivated audiences worldwide.

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From monumental orchestral pieces to evocative solo piano compositions,

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Nimrod's music showcases a distinctive voice that pushes the boundaries of classical music

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while remaining deeply expressive and accessible.

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Born in Tel Aviv and raised in Paris,

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Nimrod was a child prodigy violinist before shifting his focus to composition.

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He studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London,

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where he developed his signature style,

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blending intricate counterpoint, rich harmonic textures,

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and a deeply lyrical sensibility.

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His music is widely performed and recorded by top orchestras and artists,

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with over 150 compositions spanning solo, chamber, and large-scale symphonic works.

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His career has been marked by prestigious collaborations,

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most notably with legendary pianist and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazi,

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who championed Nimrod's work and conducted his music with major orchestras worldwide.

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His piano compositions, such as Shirim and his series of Etudes for Piano,

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showcase his deep understanding of the instrument

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and his ability to balance virtuosity with emotional depth.

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In this episode, we will explore Nimrod's journey from child prodigy

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to an internationally celebrated composer,

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the creative process behind his celebrated piano works including Shirim and his Etudes,

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his collaboration with the legendary Vladimir Ashkenazi,

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and the challenges and triumphs of composing for piano, orchestra, and beyond.

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Before we begin, I want to share something new with you.

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Every Friday, I publish a blog on Substack where I go beyond the podcast,

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offering personal reflections, behind-the-scenes insights, and thoughts on music,

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creativity, and the evolving role of classical musicians.

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If you enjoy these conversations,

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I invite you to subscribe at the pianopod.substack.com

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for exclusive content and deeper discussions.

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We can't wait for you to hear Nimrod's incredible story,

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his dedication to contemporary music, and his innovative work

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that redefines the boundaries of classical compositions.

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Now, without further ado, let's welcome Nimrod Borenstein to the pianopod.

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Please enjoy the show.

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Nimrod Borenstein

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You are listening to the pianopod 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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Welcome to the pianopod, Nimrod.

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It's such an honor and pleasure to have you on the show today.

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Thank you so much for being here.

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My pleasure.

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So, where are you actually joining from today?

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So, I'm at home in London.

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London?

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Because now I'm staying for a little while in London.

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Not too much trouble.

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Okay. Are you currently based in London?

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Yes, I've been living in London for over 30 years.

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Oh, wow. Okay.

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I understand that you grew up in France, right?

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Yeah. From age 3 to age 17, 18, I was in France.

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Before that, you were originally from Israel.

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Yeah, I was born in Tel Aviv.

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But I only got to age 3.

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And then I grew up in France.

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And now, the majority of my life, I've been in London.

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I've been over 30 years.

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Oh, my goodness. Wow.

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That's quite an international, beautiful life that you have.

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So, anyway, I've been really enjoying listening to your recordings

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over the past several weeks.

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And I'm truly, truly amazed by the breadth of your work,

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spanning from orchestral, chorale, you know, instrumental,

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and of course, piano solo, and even ballet work that you've done.

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And it was such an extensive catalogue.

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It's clear we can only cover so much in the limited time we have today.

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And since this is the piano part,

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so I'd love to focus on your piano works in particular.

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And of course, later in the episode,

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we'll briefly touch on your other works as well.

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But before we dive into the details of your compositions,

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let me just start with a question that has become customary

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for our guests this season.

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So, even with a distinguished artist like yourself,

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we rarely get the chance to truly get to know the person behind the music.

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You know, you usually have this beautiful profile photograph

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and then the CD album cover,

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but you just don't get to hear the personal story.

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So, one of the purposes of this platform is to connect art with humanity.

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So, I think we all want to get to know you in a more personal way.

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So, my first question for you is,

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if you were to capture the essence of your artistry, mission, passion,

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in just a few sentences,

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how would you define who you are as an artist today?

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I see that for me it's quite important to say that too many people

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spend too much time to explain their art.

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I usually say that if you have to say to explain your art,

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it means that there's not very much in your art.

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My art is what it is.

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And I'm not a philosopher.

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So, everything that I'm going to say is in music.

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But that's the first thing, but I'm not going to avoid your question.

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So, I'm saying as well that for me,

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I'm looking for absolute beauty.

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But beauty in the novel, beauty, something that was not there before.

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And that would be a novelty, yes, novelty and beauty.

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Wow, beautiful.

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I think that shows in the music.

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So, let's dive deeper into your compositions.

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So, as a composer with such a diverse catalogue,

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what draws you to the piano as a medium of expression?

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So, we're now talking about piano writing.

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It's a complex question.

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I think that first, I really love the instrument.

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But it's possible that it comes from my love of music itself.

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Because the repertoire of piano is immense.

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And you formed the, when I was young, from the Bach, Prelude and Fugue,

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to Mozart piano concertos or Beethoven sonatas, Brahms, Chopin, Schumann.

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And you name them, sort of you...

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For me, the most important thing is always the essence of things.

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So, music comes first, above anything else.

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And I think that in a way, maybe that's what attracted me for the piano,

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because the repertoire is incredible.

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But I think that if I'm honest, it's over that.

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Your first question asked me how I would define myself.

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And I think that actually, I can continue on that, saying that when I was younger,

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and people ask me in interviews, I mean, 20, 30 years ago,

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who were my masters and my teachers, whatever, I would always say that I was very inspired.

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Even if my style is not like that exactly, my Bach and Beethoven, these were my gods.

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And of course, I mean, not of course, but I love Mozart and I love Schubert.

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But 15 years ago, I found that this definition was not right for many reasons.

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One of them is that it's not... I'm not old-fashioned, so it's not that my music sounds like Bach.

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There is a lot of counterpoint, there is a lot of power like Beethoven, but it's not the style.

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And I found that in all genres of music, there are two different types of composers in my point of view.

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The composers that have, in a way, one thing to say, and the ones that are very extreme.

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So like the one that I would call the maniacal-depressive, like Mozart, Schubert,

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that can have the real joy on things that are light, on total depression, on darkness.

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And I'm a member of this group.

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And I think that that is important because it's a distinction that you can find,

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because I suppose that whatever you do, you somehow, who you are, goes through your music.

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Even if you are not trying to... I'm not a romantic, so I'm not trying to express myself,

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I'm trying to find beauty, but you can't escape that if you are honest, who you are will come through.

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And hopefully, because we are all human beings and we share the same problems, that's why we like the same things.

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But that, on piano, because I'm coming back to the piano, is an instrument that has got both.

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So it's got high twinkly sounds that are like out of another world, and peacefulness,

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and you can imagine where... I mean, you've got a lot of them in my music for piano,

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and that you find this type of sounds in Mozart.

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You think about the piano concertos, these things that are high on the right hand, just like a dream.

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You also have the power on the basses, on the drama that piano creates as well.

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My music, it seems that for me, contrast is the essence of art and the essence of life in general,

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and so I love the piano because of that. One of the reasons.

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Yes, yes. I understand the reason I'm asking this, because not only because of your expansive work,

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but also I think you originally started as a violinist.

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Yes, I thought that I would have a dual career as a soloist, as a violinist and a composer.

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And there are not enough hours a day for both if you are going to be extremely hard on yourself

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and you want to play well.

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Playing an instrument well, it's like being a sportsman to the highest level.

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Even to the tips of the level, it's just so many hours a day.

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I thought that I would do that until I was in my early twenties and it started to be practical,

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the travelling and everything.

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And then I was very depressed because I worked something like 15 hours a day,

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which I don't mind because I'm a work colleague, but it was not enough.

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And I thought, because either I was frustrated that I was not writing enough or not practicing enough.

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And I thought quite wisely for a 19-year-old, I thought if it's like that when I'm 19,

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I don't have children, I don't have anything, it's not going to work.

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But I couldn't find a solution and I was driving, no, I was outside, I was not driving yet,

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but I listened to a radio podcast or something and they were talking about Chopin.

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And in his entire life, apparently he gave something like 31 concerts or 30 to his life.

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Not in one year. And suddenly, I thought, I understand why I can't keep up with his career.

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But having said that, I'm a violinist, I played the piano and I played roughly half of the Chopin etudes,

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played probably half of the Beethoven sonatas.

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I can play the piano, not like the violin, to a much lower level, but I can play.

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Yeah, totally, I understand. But I think coming from soloists, violinists,

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I think it also shows, especially in the higher range that you compose in the piano,

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I can really hear the soaring, beautiful violin-like melody that I hear.

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For me, music is abstract. When I was young,

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it's one of these things that people repeat one after the other and people just don't doubt it.

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So my violin teacher told me, oh, you know, you must listen to some singers

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because the human voice is the ultimate or whatever the example.

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And I thought it was rubbish then, and I still think the same.

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Somehow, all of these things are instruments for a higher purpose.

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And the higher purpose is abstract music. That is not nothing to do with a physical world in some way.

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Well, it is, but not in that sense. Both singers or instrumentalists are trying to get to that.

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They're not trying to become singers. And the singers are trying to...

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And it's interesting that the way that you get these special things with all instruments,

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it's quite similar, actually, that you cannot have tension.

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That if you want to play very high sounds on the violin or in singing or on piano,

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it's interesting on the piano from, let's say, sort of the C2 octave above middle C,

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to the point at which if you hit the keys louder, the sound that comes out is softer, actually.

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Because to get a loud sound, you need to... It's like dropping a stone on a lake,

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and when you drop the stone, suddenly the round appears.

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And it's the same as with the high note, it presses and the sound draws.

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Because I don't know the reason physically, I'm not a scientist.

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How if you address a small string at that high, it doesn't work.

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But it's the same in singing, it's the same in flute.

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So it's quite similar. So in that sense, I don't think that...

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But I was thinking because you said that because of the violin, I'm not sure that it's...

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I think that it's the music that influences all the things somehow.

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But the piano has got these sounds... There are a few instruments that have got these

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beautiful, pure sounds like cold water in a very hot day.

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You know, you've got the piano, you've got the vibraphone, you've got a few of these dreamy...

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And I think that there are two reasons why it's so difficult to transcribe pieces for piano,

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at least two reasons, to other instruments.

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One of them is that this type of dreamy sounds are very difficult to find a way that is similar.

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Unless you go to sort of harmonics in string instruments, but it's a little bit of the easy way

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as a composer to transcribe that in harmonics.

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And then there is the pedal, of course.

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That is something very specific to the piano that you probably have as well

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automatically with instruments like the harp.

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On the piano, it's interesting.

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When I was in my twenties, I always thought, and it's probably something to do with also the way that I was writing then,

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that when I wrote a piece for one instrument, it's just there was no other way to transcribe it to something else.

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But it changed when the first crack in that idea was maybe 20 years ago.

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I had a conductor that came to one concert that I had with a full concert of my music,

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and he earned a piece for Sepet.

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He contacted me after saying, you know, I'd like to commission from you a transcription for orchestra.

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My first reaction was, I'm not doing it. You can give me a million pounds.

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I'm just, you know, I was 20 or something. I said, I'm not doing it for no money.

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It's not working.

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But the man was a bit older. He was, I think, in his 40s, 50s, so he understood the use of the extreme.

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And he said, why don't you think about it?

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Because I think that it could work, that piece.

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It was a piece called The Shell Adagio.

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It became The Shell Adagio.

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It was the central movement of a piece that had three movements.

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I put the phone down and I thought about it.

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I thought maybe it could work. I could imagine it.

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So I gave him a call back and I said, you know, let's do a deal.

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We'll agree on a price that you pay me.

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I will try it. If I don't like it, I don't give it to you. You don't pay me.

227
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There's no way that if I don't like it, you have it.

228
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And then it worked. And the piece was nice.

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So I thought, oh, that's interesting.

230
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And then after that, consciously, I, when I was commissioned a concerto for saxophone and orchestra,

231
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I said to the commissioner, you know, why don't I do it? Because it's unusual.

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Two versions, one for full orchestra and one for string orchestra with exactly the same solo part.

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And it became white.

234
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And I thought, why is he nervous about that?

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Because he saw that you had to pay twice for the commission.

236
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So he said, I'm sorry, I can't pay.

237
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That's my artistic problem. I think that it's interesting.

238
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It was a lot of work.

239
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But I thought, so that was something.

240
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And more recently, and that's total extreme,

241
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and this piece that was commissioned by Carnegie Hall and another foundation,

242
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part of the Lullaby project was the Lullaby.

243
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And when they contacted me, I can't remember, it was maybe 10 years ago,

244
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you know, we really love your music and that's what we would also like,

245
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but it's important for us that it will be played a lot.

246
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And we can see that your music, a lot of pieces are played hundreds of times.

247
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So it's, we care about that, that it will have a legacy in some way.

248
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And I said to them, you know, I've got an idea if you want the piece to be played a lot as well.

249
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And it's a really big challenge for me.

250
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I will do two versions.

251
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I will do one version for solo piano.

252
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And to make life very hard for myself,

253
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I will make a second version for string quartet.

254
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And that's, you put more different.

255
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It's just like two worlds.

256
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Same piece. Same number of bars. Same piece.

257
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And I did that. And it worked very well.

258
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And after that, I had some friends from the,

259
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they said, oh, you know, could you do a version for trio on then?

260
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So string trio.

261
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And now I think I'm on version 13.

262
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It's just a bizarre thing, but it's like, you know, like there are sort of,

263
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you know, Ravel did this for him.

264
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It was an exercise in orchestration in the Bolero.

265
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But for me, it was almost like an artistic challenge to do this piece in various manners.

266
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And I think it's continued.

267
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And how you transcribe the piano to a different world,

268
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I think that there is hardly anything that is more difficult because it's so specific.

269
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And it's part of when you ask why I like the piano, I suppose that it's part of it.

270
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That it's got this specificity that it's difficult to transcribe.

271
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Can you maybe describe a little bit more about the specific challenge, the specificity you mentioned?

272
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I think the specificity is in the sound, the color of the sound.

273
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But I suppose that, you know, when you go to orchestra, whether you're a conductor or you listen to a concert,

274
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it's not by chance that the groups on the page, you've got the woodwind on top of the score,

275
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then you've got the brass, then you've got the percussion, soloist, and then strings.

276
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All the strings, they sound the same, more or less.

277
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So of course they are cello, doesn't sound like a violin, but it's the same family, same color.

278
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The brass definitely sounds very much the same in some way.

279
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The woodwind, it's not true, they each have their very, very strong individualities.

280
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The flute doesn't sound like an oboe, doesn't sound like a clarinet or a bassoon.

281
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But they have something in common.

282
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You could almost put one of these groups, piano, and that's it.

283
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One instrument for a group because there's nothing else that sounds like it.

284
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Now, I think that people, even musicians don't always realize that,

285
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I mean performers rather than composers,

286
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that the hardest thing to compose for is one single instrument.

287
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If you have a choice between composing an opera, an orchestral piece, a ballet,

288
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or let's say a piece for piano, a piece for piano is definitely harder by a long way.

289
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On top of the tree, the most difficult thing ever is one single instrument that is not a piano.

290
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Like it's a violin or... I mean it doesn't get harder.

291
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You just have to look for solo violin. Mozart didn't do it, and he was a violinist.

292
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And Petterman didn't do it, Brahms didn't do it. It's so hard.

293
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They did it and it's very impressive because it's so hard, one single instrument.

294
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So piano is still very, very hard because it's one single instrument.

295
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And the reason because of that is because one of the very important tools for a composer is counterpoint.

296
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A counterpoint has many, many melodies going on at the same time.

297
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And of course on violin you are limited.

298
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Even on piano, you can have maybe four voices at the same time,

299
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but that's about limits really.

300
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And they are not as free as if you had a string quartet.

301
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Because then each voice can do whatever it wants.

302
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So when we talk about the piano as an orchestra instrument,

303
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I mean an orchestra by itself, it's not really that.

304
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And it's in between. It's a maximum that you get.

305
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Apart from the organ that has got even the feet, so you have more voices.

306
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But it's almost a maximum that you can get as a single person playing one instrument.

307
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But it's still very, very far away from even a string orchestra where you would have five voices.

308
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When I write for orchestra, there are 16 voices going on and I love melodies.

309
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And I sometimes have 12 different melodies going on at the same time or more.

310
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There is no way that you can do on the piano whatever you do.

311
00:25:55,300 --> 00:26:06,300
So in my case, when I started to write for piano,

312
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I wrote many pieces when I was young.

313
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I don't count them because I started to compose when I was about six years old.

314
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At some point you decide what is your opus one.

315
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It's an arbitrary decision.

316
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I suppose that it's when you think, okay, that's a work that I can die now and it can be next to Beethoven, it's okay.

317
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For me, it was when I was about 19.

318
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I had written maybe hundreds of works before that.

319
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But this first work was a sonata for piano and violin.

320
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And then there were other pieces with piano from the start.

321
00:26:49,300 --> 00:26:52,300
My opus four is called Suite, it's for solo piano.

322
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But in general, in my 20s, I wrote a lot for piano, but not piano solo.

323
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Piano as an instrument is another one.

324
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So piano and violin, piano and cello, piano.

325
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Because I found that it was easier because I had more melodies.

326
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And it took me some time to find.

327
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I was afraid of the piano as a solo instrument.

328
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And it changed when I wrote a piece called Remembrance of Childhood.

329
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It's my opus 54.

330
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I suppose that at the same time, my music started to go a certain way in terms of polyrhythms.

331
00:27:45,300 --> 00:27:53,300
And I found a way to have my own writing for the piano.

332
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But that would have more counterpoint and that would be my own world.

333
00:28:01,300 --> 00:28:08,300
And from there, we'll probably talk about that later, about my etudes that are even one step.

334
00:28:08,300 --> 00:28:11,300
Right, right, right. Yeah, I was going to ask you that.

335
00:28:11,300 --> 00:28:18,300
So I think the reminiscences of childhood became sort of, I wouldn't say bass,

336
00:28:18,300 --> 00:28:25,300
but sort of the start of your writing for piano solo works, no?

337
00:28:25,300 --> 00:28:27,300
Yes, absolutely.

338
00:28:27,300 --> 00:28:33,300
And it's interesting because the piece was not at the beginning conceived as a reminiscence of childhood.

339
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It was a commission for a single piece, which is the first one of the Reminiscence of Childhood, called Chilla B.I.

340
00:28:42,300 --> 00:28:53,300
And when I wrote it, and a lot of pianists liked it, they said that it's a four-minute piece.

341
00:28:53,300 --> 00:29:00,300
Why don't you write a couple more or something so that it's easier for us to program it because it's just four minutes.

342
00:29:00,300 --> 00:29:05,300
And that's how I composed the three pieces of Reminiscence of Childhood.

343
00:29:05,300 --> 00:29:10,300
And I found somehow the first piece was quite easy, I think, to write.

344
00:29:10,300 --> 00:29:17,300
I mean, relatively, you know, when I mean quite easy, I mean that it took me, I don't know, 70 hours or not, 200.

345
00:29:17,300 --> 00:29:23,300
Or at least it felt, which was something good.

346
00:29:23,300 --> 00:29:30,300
And the two next pieces of Reminiscence of Childhood felt easy to write to.

347
00:29:30,300 --> 00:29:39,300
Wow. So, you know, I want to focus on your Etudes and then the Chiron.

348
00:29:39,300 --> 00:29:47,300
OK, so they're both in many ways share the similarity of series, piano series and shorter pieces.

349
00:29:47,300 --> 00:29:53,300
However, they serve contrasting purposes in audiences.

350
00:29:53,300 --> 00:30:03,300
One is, of course, with the challenge of technical demands and also interpretation, you kind of have to have the ear for it.

351
00:30:03,300 --> 00:30:09,300
And as a, of course, performer, you have to be the certain level of being a pianist.

352
00:30:09,300 --> 00:30:21,300
Now, as opposed to that, I wouldn't say Chiron is less in, well, maybe technical demands, but quality wise, I wouldn't say less or more.

353
00:30:21,300 --> 00:30:25,300
So, but let's start with your Etudes.

354
00:30:25,300 --> 00:30:31,300
So mastering a concert etude is often regarded as one of the pinnacles of achievement for pianists.

355
00:30:31,300 --> 00:30:38,300
And then I'm sure as a composer as well. So you're currently working on a full cycle of 24 etudes?

356
00:30:38,300 --> 00:30:41,300
Yes. So that may come.

357
00:30:41,300 --> 00:30:53,300
And as you know, the number 24 for music is an interesting number because it starts from a purely tonal point of view.

358
00:30:53,300 --> 00:30:56,300
You've got 12 major and 12 minor scales.

359
00:30:56,300 --> 00:31:03,300
So that's why you've got the prelude and fugue of Bach that are 24 and then you double it, you've got 48, but it's basically 24.

360
00:31:03,300 --> 00:31:09,300
And then that's part of the magic of the number 24.

361
00:31:09,300 --> 00:31:25,300
Then there is the second part, which is the Paganin Caprice, a capriccio for violin solo, which influenced, of course, Chopin

362
00:31:25,300 --> 00:31:28,300
and everybody that came after.

363
00:31:28,300 --> 00:31:39,300
And it's interesting because sometimes I get asked as a question whether a performer influenced my writing or in such a way.

364
00:31:39,300 --> 00:31:45,300
And I think that it cannot really be true for composers.

365
00:31:45,300 --> 00:31:56,300
The reason why Paganini really influenced Chopin on list is not because he was a fabulous violinist, but because he was a fabulous composer.

366
00:31:56,300 --> 00:32:03,300
Because to write these works, I mean, of course, he was probably one of the most outstanding violinists of ever.

367
00:32:03,300 --> 00:32:11,300
But it's a little bit like, if you think about the 20th century, Rachmaninoff, he was a very great pianist.

368
00:32:11,300 --> 00:32:20,300
Probably Paganini was this type of people. But the reason why the piano writing of Rachmaninoff stays is not because he was a great pianist,

369
00:32:20,300 --> 00:32:23,300
but he was a great composer for piano.

370
00:32:23,300 --> 00:32:28,300
So he found a way to develop the instrument on the same way Paganini found a way to develop the violin.

371
00:32:28,300 --> 00:32:33,300
And then Chopin on list, well, let's do the same on the piano.

372
00:32:33,300 --> 00:32:41,300
And since then, there was this will of developing the instrument in such a way.

373
00:32:41,300 --> 00:32:50,300
In my case, I didn't have a plan. I mean, sometimes in life, you know, the best plans are without a plan.

374
00:32:50,300 --> 00:32:55,300
It's like, you can try to find, you say, oh, I want to get married, I need to find a person, and it doesn't happen.

375
00:32:55,300 --> 00:32:58,300
Or it just happened that you meet the right person.

376
00:32:58,300 --> 00:33:10,300
But in my case, I always loved the 24 Hits of Chopin. I think that they are unrivaled in the sense that they are all beautiful.

377
00:33:10,300 --> 00:33:15,300
On 24 beautiful pieces, one after the other, it's quite something.

378
00:33:15,300 --> 00:33:22,300
I mean, even if sort of in my eyes, let's say Bach is a greater composer than Chopin,

379
00:33:22,300 --> 00:33:29,300
it's amongst the pinnacles of things that you can't get better, like I would put better than at the top as well.

380
00:33:29,300 --> 00:33:41,300
But if you think about the Prelude and Fugue, I think that Chopin wins because out of the 24 Prelude and Fugue, they are not all incredible.

381
00:33:41,300 --> 00:33:48,300
In my eyes, they are not all masterpieces, whether Chopin is there, each of them is quite something.

382
00:33:48,300 --> 00:33:53,300
And that is magical by itself. And so I always loved them.

383
00:33:53,300 --> 00:34:03,300
And as I said, I play the piano as well, so I played also the Debussy etudes, I played the Rachmaninoff, and things like that.

384
00:34:03,300 --> 00:34:10,300
But they don't get to the 24, apart from anything else. 24 is quite a challenge.

385
00:34:10,300 --> 00:34:20,300
But I did not have a plan. And like you said, Renaissance of Childhood was, if we look at numbers, it was my Op. 54.

386
00:34:20,300 --> 00:34:32,300
And the etudes started Op. 66. It's interesting that they somehow started thanks to the Renaissance of Childhood.

387
00:34:32,300 --> 00:34:41,300
I'll tell you the story. I remember that when I was at the Academy, I had a friend that played the horn.

388
00:34:41,300 --> 00:34:52,300
And he told me this story about Mozart on the Horn Concerto, that if the hornist had not abused Mozart, saying I really want you to write and things like that, Mozart couldn't cope anymore with it.

389
00:34:52,300 --> 00:34:58,300
So he wrote the Horn Concerto. So lucky for the horn.

390
00:34:58,300 --> 00:35:13,300
And welcome for the hornist. But in my case, I had this Russian-Belgian pianist that phoned me, or got in touch with me, probably an email, I can't remember.

391
00:35:13,300 --> 00:35:28,300
And said, look, I want to perform the Renaissance of Childhood. I have got a concert at the Salgavaux in Paris. And I want to perform the Renaissance of Childhood.

392
00:35:28,300 --> 00:35:39,300
But it's not going to be a premiere because, I mean, the Renaissance of Childhood, by now I think it's been performed probably by two or three hundred pianists.

393
00:35:39,300 --> 00:35:45,300
Even at the beginning it was already performed. So she said, but you know, for me it's an important concert.

394
00:35:45,300 --> 00:35:53,300
I'd like to commission a work if you got the time from you, so that I have a premiere too.

395
00:35:53,300 --> 00:36:01,300
And her concert was something like four months ahead. So very, very short.

396
00:36:01,300 --> 00:36:12,300
And I said, oh, well, look, I'm never late and I like to take my time. I don't quite see it.

397
00:36:12,300 --> 00:36:22,300
But then I had the idea, I said, let me think, but maybe, I always wanted to try to do an etude, so maybe I could write an etude.

398
00:36:22,300 --> 00:36:32,300
And I said, but give me, let me think about it. So at that point I used to have my office on top of the house. So now it's in the middle.

399
00:36:32,300 --> 00:36:41,300
But I went on and I talked to my wife, you know, it's Kenny, she's playing, she wants to play the Renaissance of Childhood.

400
00:36:41,300 --> 00:36:55,300
She plays very well. And I think maybe I can write an etude, but I'm not sure if I've got the time because it's only, and I said, oh, come on,

401
00:36:55,300 --> 00:37:12,300
put an opera in three weeks, you can't do it. And I said, okay, let's jump in and let's try. Because I was still, after Renaissance of Childhood, I was still very afraid of writing for solo piano.

402
00:37:12,300 --> 00:37:20,300
Even if that worked, I thought, okay, maybe it's a flaw, you know, it just happened, but maybe the next one is going to be failed.

403
00:37:20,300 --> 00:37:33,300
So I say, okay, and I write an etude, it came so easily. I mean, I think it took me maybe something like 50 hours, which is not very much.

404
00:37:33,300 --> 00:37:35,300
The first etude you wrote?

405
00:37:35,300 --> 00:37:36,300
Yes, to write an etude.

406
00:37:36,300 --> 00:37:37,300
Ostinato etude?

407
00:37:37,300 --> 00:37:52,300
Yes.

408
00:37:52,300 --> 00:38:09,300
And I was very, very pleased. And I said, oh, that's interesting. And then after that, I think that there was an Italian pianist, I think that he heard the etude maybe on YouTube or something like that, but that was just literally months after.

409
00:38:09,300 --> 00:38:14,300
And he said, you know, I loved it, would you write an etude for me? I'd like to commission an etude.

410
00:38:14,300 --> 00:38:35,300
I said, well, let's try it. And I thought, okay, the second etude, the first etude was about for me the ostinato, and I thought the second etude, what I'd like to do is something about, you know, when the left hand goes over the right hand, all this idea, that would be an etude of that.

411
00:38:35,300 --> 00:38:55,300
And that's why I called it Half Moon, because the shape. And that went well too. Oh, too. And it continued like that for a few etudes where I didn't have the plan to do the 24.

412
00:38:55,300 --> 00:39:10,300
But I was very pleased that it was working well. And I think that it's around when I was about six or seven etudes that I started to believe that I could do it. And then it became a plan to do it.

413
00:39:10,300 --> 00:39:29,300
And it's a challenge. It's a very big challenge to do two of each one being very, very special. You know, it's interesting because human beings are not perfect.

414
00:39:29,300 --> 00:39:43,300
Well, that's, but because of that, even the greatest of geniuses like Bach or Mozart or Beethoven, not every single work that they write is great.

415
00:39:43,300 --> 00:39:55,300
Because they are human beings. I mean, what is already incredible that some can be because someone that is not great, because human beings are not great, that can create something that is absolutely great, that's already strange by itself.

416
00:39:55,300 --> 00:40:17,300
But so the challenge of doing all the pieces that would work in that way is a big one. And for myself, I thought maybe if I give myself many years, in between the pieces I write something else, I will always come fresh to it.

417
00:40:17,300 --> 00:40:28,300
And that's why it was a long, you talk about long time project, that was a long term project. I mean, now it's been more than 10 years, maybe 13 years, and I've done 15.

418
00:40:28,300 --> 00:40:44,300
Sometimes it comes a few, one after the other, and then I needed a break. And sometimes I've been a longer break because I've written a lot of things for full orchestra or something, but it has worked well for me.

419
00:40:44,300 --> 00:40:59,300
And in a way, the more advanced you are in the numbers, the more difficult it becomes. Also because each of them has their etudes.

420
00:40:59,300 --> 00:41:10,300
So etudes are not only for the performer, but etudes for the composer. To find new things. That's the purpose of etudes.

421
00:41:10,300 --> 00:41:27,300
I don't know if it's true, but when I was writing Contra Meifit's Meille etude no. 8 or no. 9, I was talking to my friend the pianist Clélia Yéroussou, that commissioned me the piano concerto.

422
00:41:27,300 --> 00:41:41,300
And we were already talking, she was talking of commissioning me the piano concerto. And she said, you know, and I'm not sure if it's true, but she said, you know Chopin wrote his etudes in preparation for his piano concerto.

423
00:41:41,300 --> 00:41:58,300
And oh, I thought, oh, that's really interesting. Actually, in my case, I didn't do it like that, but when I wrote the piano concerto, I used all the tricks that I have found in my etudes. So that's why it's so tremendously difficult.

424
00:41:58,300 --> 00:42:11,300
Because almost it's like in one piece the piano concerto has got a lot of the etudes combined. I mean, the new techniques that I found in the etudes that were not there before me.

425
00:42:11,300 --> 00:42:22,300
There are certain things that don't exist before Chopin or before Liszt or before Rachmaninov. There are certain things that I found that makes the piano different.

426
00:42:22,300 --> 00:42:28,300
And so this is a big chance to find novelty.

427
00:42:52,300 --> 00:43:11,300
Well, the etudes are tremendously difficult.

428
00:43:11,300 --> 00:43:30,300
It means that to perform in concert, many good pianists wouldn't be able to do it. It's technically very, very, like, you know, sort of you can be a good violinist and not being able to play a Paganini Caprice in concert.

429
00:43:30,300 --> 00:43:47,300
It's specific. And my etudes are amongst, they are difficult, really, really difficult. Not on purpose, because it's not, it was not my purpose, but because to create a new world that has got this, it's necessary.

430
00:43:47,300 --> 00:43:52,300
There are just so many things happening in them at the same time that are very difficult.

431
00:43:52,300 --> 00:44:00,300
So I thought I'd like to do something that is the opposite.

432
00:44:00,300 --> 00:44:02,300
So that's the shirim, right?

433
00:44:02,300 --> 00:44:29,300
The shirim was to write a piece that is playable not only by any pianist, but also that would be playable by amateurs. So when I started, my idea was that I was going to do 18 of them, and that I was, that all of them should be playable by a good amateur.

434
00:44:29,300 --> 00:44:48,300
But as I was composing them, and I think that I was around number three or number four, I found that I wanted to write something that was a little bit more complex, that wouldn't be playable by an amateur pianist.

435
00:44:48,300 --> 00:45:09,300
Or in case I've got a young daughter, I've got two daughters, one that is 21 and one that is almost 14. On the 14 year old, well, she's almost 14, is at the moment practicing the Petravena Passionata Sonata, but she's not a pianist and she's not a musician.

436
00:45:09,300 --> 00:45:11,300
She just likes the piano.

437
00:45:11,300 --> 00:45:20,300
So I knew that a few of the, my idea at first was that all the pieces of shirim, she should be able to play it.

438
00:45:20,300 --> 00:45:25,300
Because that should be that type of level. People that like the piano can play the piano well, but are not professional.

439
00:45:25,300 --> 00:45:41,300
But when I was around number four or five, I can't remember exactly, I found that if I continued like that, it might be boring. And so I had a look to understand if it was possible, if somebody had done it before.

440
00:45:41,300 --> 00:45:56,300
And actually, if you look at any work that is about 30 minutes long by any, as far as I know, great composers, you won't find one that has got null, that is entirely playable by an amateur when it's that length.

441
00:45:56,300 --> 00:46:10,300
I think that because it becomes boring if it's that long and there is no, it's not enough contrast. So you will have 30 minutes, maybe you could do it on a piece that was 12, 13 minutes, but not 30.

442
00:46:10,300 --> 00:46:24,300
I thought, okay, so I will allow myself a few of the shirim to be a bit more difficult. But in general, my idea would be to do something that was easier.

443
00:46:24,300 --> 00:46:34,300
But it's not only that, I think that it's also that I really love the Mendelssohn's song without words. That are this type of pieces.

444
00:46:34,300 --> 00:46:44,300
I suppose that in the 19th century, there is also most of the Schumann pieces were like that, made of all sorts of small pieces.

445
00:46:44,300 --> 00:46:57,300
Schumann, you have to play all of them, as opposed to songs without words, for example, or even Edward Grieg's lyric pieces. They are comparable, right?

446
00:46:57,300 --> 00:47:10,300
So I think in my case, I was thinking more about Mendelssohn that you could pick them. That they are conceived in a way that they work well in the right order.

447
00:47:10,300 --> 00:47:27,300
If you play all of them, but you should also be able to pick and choose.

448
00:47:40,300 --> 00:47:50,300
I think that in the 19th century, there was a lot of work that was done in the right order.

449
00:47:50,300 --> 00:48:00,300
I think that in the 19th century, there was a lot of work that was done in the right order.

450
00:48:00,300 --> 00:48:24,300
It's very, very difficult to write good music, whatever it is.

451
00:48:24,300 --> 00:48:33,300
There is no reason that... I mean, it's different to write something simple.

452
00:48:33,300 --> 00:48:44,300
It's not simple to write something simple. If you think about the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata, it's not difficult.

453
00:48:44,300 --> 00:48:55,300
You can give it to pianists that have done a year of piano or something like that. But it's an amazing piece.

454
00:48:55,300 --> 00:49:05,300
I think that it's just a certain type of pieces. In general, they tend to be slow.

455
00:49:05,300 --> 00:49:14,300
Pieces that can be very complex, but not that difficult. But also it's a certain type of pieces.

456
00:49:14,300 --> 00:49:25,300
It's a big challenge. My father, who is an artist, is a great artist, told me that when I was young,

457
00:49:25,300 --> 00:49:35,300
he was saying that at the Beaux-Arts, they were making a mistake because for the entrance exam,

458
00:49:35,300 --> 00:49:49,300
they were doing something that was a bit ridiculous. They were asking young painters to give them 12 studies on, let's say, a lampshade or whatever.

459
00:49:49,300 --> 00:50:01,300
He said that... I remember because I was in my twenties then, he said that there is nothing more difficult to do variation on one topic for a young artist.

460
00:50:01,300 --> 00:50:11,300
Because that's a pinnacle of difficulty for any art. And that's what you can do in a way when you are much older.

461
00:50:11,300 --> 00:50:19,300
Actually, I went for... Usually I don't have very much time for... I mean, especially at the moment it's so busy for holidays.

462
00:50:19,300 --> 00:50:26,300
But this time I went to... I had four days of rest and we went to Florence with my wife.

463
00:50:26,300 --> 00:50:33,300
In Florence, there is this incredible church where all the paintings that he did of Fr. Angelico.

464
00:50:33,300 --> 00:50:46,300
And in each room that he did, because he was working in this church covenant, he did paintings of the crucifixion, something like 60 versions of it.

465
00:50:46,300 --> 00:50:54,300
But to do that, you need a certain age, a big imagination, on a big palette.

466
00:50:54,300 --> 00:51:11,300
These are things that I didn't do when I was younger, but like Chirime or like the Etudes, taking something, making 12 or 18 versions of the same thing, basically two minute pieces, that is very, very tough.

467
00:51:11,300 --> 00:51:21,300
I suppose that it's also, apart from that, it has got something about the short story compared to the novel.

468
00:51:21,300 --> 00:51:30,300
It's a bit like people like Stephane Svage or Tuguenyeth, or were masters, or Maupassant of the short story.

469
00:51:30,300 --> 00:51:36,300
And you kind of people that can be masters of both.

470
00:51:36,300 --> 00:51:44,300
And I think that in my case I feel very good in big, big forms, but I like the small forms too.

471
00:51:44,300 --> 00:51:53,300
I suppose that it's true, even though it goes when I was making comparisons with the type of psychology of with Mozart, that it's the same for him.

472
00:51:53,300 --> 00:52:02,300
He can do very, very, very large operas or long symphonies, small pieces that are equally beautiful.

473
00:52:02,300 --> 00:52:11,300
I think that simplicity are things that are not difficult to do, are difficult for the composer, because it's like if you told the painter,

474
00:52:11,300 --> 00:52:15,300
look, you can do a painting, but you're allowed only four colors.

475
00:52:15,300 --> 00:52:24,300
Of course it's difficult, but it's the same way that I was saying at the beginning, that it's easier to write a piece for a full orchestra than for three instruments.

476
00:52:24,300 --> 00:52:37,300
The more you restrain what you are allowed to do, and in some way, especially when you are young, it's helpful to give yourself some rules,

477
00:52:37,300 --> 00:52:42,300
because it means that you are not in the void, but it has both aspects.

478
00:52:42,300 --> 00:52:51,300
It's also difficult to keep within the problematic of the piece.

479
00:52:51,300 --> 00:53:11,300
I think that also it's like food, that if you think about culture where you eat a lot of small foods like Lebanese or Indian, it's a different challenge than, let's say, a French cuisine,

480
00:53:11,300 --> 00:53:21,300
where you have sort of a big starter, a main, and then a dessert, and that's it. It's different.

481
00:53:21,300 --> 00:53:47,300
The difficulty of when you do a lot of small dishes is to keep the interest, and at the same time, probably create a feel of the whole.

482
00:53:51,300 --> 00:54:15,300
I really love the series of Sherem. So Sherem is Hebrew, right?

483
00:54:15,300 --> 00:54:16,300
Yes.

484
00:54:16,300 --> 00:54:25,300
I love the way you put the word in songs. Is there any inspiration coming from your early childhood or the culture?

485
00:54:25,300 --> 00:54:37,300
No, it's for me. My wife is always joking to me about that, because I'm a purist, or at least I appear to be, or I think of myself as a purist.

486
00:54:37,300 --> 00:54:49,300
I always say that I don't believe in ideology, so I think that music is pure and it's just about music, so I don't care about the title.

487
00:54:49,300 --> 00:54:57,300
Sometimes when I give an interview, I can't even remember the titles of my pieces. I remember all the notes, I could write them down, but sometimes I can't remember the title.

488
00:54:57,300 --> 00:55:19,300
It tends to be that pieces need a title, especially the pieces in one movement, because you write a piece in several movements, you call it sonata, symphony, whatever you want, and then you call it symphony number one, symphony number two, you write a piece that is one movement to give it a title.

489
00:55:19,300 --> 00:55:33,300
I wrote a lot of pieces that are one movement, and almost every single time I wrote the piece first, and then I tried to find a title that would not put the performer in the wrong idea.

490
00:55:33,300 --> 00:55:39,300
I hate doing that because I'm not a writer, it's not my field.

491
00:55:39,300 --> 00:56:08,300
But in Shirin, I wrote the pieces first, some of them I gave the titles before I started, because I knew what I wanted from the piece in the context of the others, and most of the time it was after I wrote the piece.

492
00:56:08,300 --> 00:56:34,300
I tried to define the atmosphere, and it's a weird mishmash of languages, because when I had to give the titles, I had to find 18 titles, in general in my music if you look from all the opuses from opus one to now, all the indications, I don't write them in Italian, I write them in English.

493
00:56:34,300 --> 00:56:53,300
Because I think the point of musicians to be understood on these days, English is a language that most people, so why would I write them in French or in German, but when it came to give poetic titles to Shirin, they came to me more easily in French, because I grew up in France.

494
00:56:53,300 --> 00:57:10,300
So I wrote all the titles in French, then I thought about giving a general title to the thing, but I thought I cannot call them, because in a way the title of Song Without Words was already taken.

495
00:57:10,300 --> 00:57:31,300
I thought if I give the same title, I'm not someone, for me novelty, I don't like academism, and so the idea of writing something that would be like Mendelssohn and Being A Spy by Mendelssohn, but in such a way, is against my belief in what is art.

496
00:57:31,300 --> 00:57:48,300
So I thought if I give it the title of Song Without Words, people are going to think that I'm looking backwards, which is not what I'm doing. I couldn't call it that, and I thought if I call it in French a poem, then you immediately think about Chauson poem.

497
00:57:48,300 --> 00:58:05,300
All the things, associations, like these days I did call some of my pieces Nocturne, knowing full well that people were going to think about Chopin, because I thought it doesn't matter in this case.

498
00:58:05,300 --> 00:58:26,300
There was one actually, only one, but in general I think that it's dangerous, so I thought Chirime is basically Hebrew exactly what Song Without Words is, because it's like a lot of the, I don't speak Chinese, so I've not checked,

499
00:58:26,300 --> 00:58:45,300
but some of the very ancient languages, they have less vocabulary, I've got often words that mean several things compared to more recent languages. So in Hebrew, Chirime, you use the word both for poems and songs, it's the same word.

500
00:58:45,300 --> 00:59:01,300
And I thought that worked for me, and I also like the sound of it. It sounds nice. When you write it down in the Latin alphabet, I think it looks nice too.

501
00:59:01,300 --> 00:59:12,300
I don't know. But that's how I can do it. So the title is in Hebrew, and all the insides are in French.

502
00:59:12,300 --> 00:59:32,300
Wow, I absolutely love all of them. I've been listening to them. So for our wonderful listeners, be sure to visit nimrod-bornstein.com to explore these incredible piano works and purchase scores. We can also purchase scores from the website, right?

503
00:59:32,300 --> 00:59:54,300
Well, the scores are on my website, there are links to the publisher. You can also, on my website, I try to do, if you go to the page with the works, you can click on, listen to a YouTube version, or you can go on, so you can listen to the piece straight away, and you can also go to the publisher to buy the piece. So I try to make it easy.

504
00:59:54,300 --> 01:00:08,300
It's very easy. Just one click and it directs you to wherever you want to go. And all the recordings, most of the recordings are available either on YouTube or any other major music streaming services.

505
01:00:08,300 --> 01:00:27,300
And then Spotify, I think that some of the more recent pieces are more available on things like Spotify. Sometimes pieces like Reminiscence of Childhood, you can Google it and then you'll find maybe at least 20 versions of different people having played it different places.

506
01:00:27,300 --> 01:00:46,300
Reminiscence of Childhood is a more recent piece. So I think at the moment you can only find some on YouTube, some of the pieces, but all the recordings are on Spotify, on Apple Music, all the streaming services, because it was recorded with my piano concerto. It's in the same CD.

507
01:00:46,300 --> 01:01:02,300
Because I thought it was an interesting combination. On the CD there is a piece for piano quintet, Light and Darkness, and then there's the concerto. So three ways that I like to use piano.

508
01:01:02,300 --> 01:01:21,300
Piano has been a companion for a long time. I'm so glad to hear that. Now, so just briefly, I want to talk about the piano concerto because that's a massive, really large piano work, one of the large piano works that you've written and I absolutely love.

509
01:01:21,300 --> 01:01:32,300
And the second movement is extremely emotional. So can you introduce us to all these three movements, moderato, adagio and allegro?

510
01:01:32,300 --> 01:01:48,300
Yes. So first I think that maybe I'll say something about where it fits. I decided about 10 years ago, a bit more now, to write concertos for each instrument, not all of the instruments.

511
01:01:48,300 --> 01:02:04,300
At the beginning I thought I would write concertos for the three main instruments, piano, violin and cello. And because I think the concerto form is a very great form.

512
01:02:04,300 --> 01:02:19,300
And when I was very young, I played, as a violinist I played all the concertos, and now I still know by memory you could give me a violin and I could probably play 20 or 25 of them by memory, completely, from beginning to the end.

513
01:02:19,300 --> 01:02:29,300
And I know the piano concerto very well. And I think that it's a pity that in the past 50 years, well, in my eyes, not been written anything that is comparable to the past.

514
01:02:29,300 --> 01:02:38,300
So if I think about Shostakovich, Prokofiev, the amazing concertos, on half-man enough of course.

515
01:02:38,300 --> 01:02:48,300
After that, I think partly because if you think about Messiaen, who was a great composer for piano, but concerto was not his...

516
01:02:48,300 --> 01:03:00,300
To talk about psychology, he was not someone that the concerto was one person against everybody, that's a sort of Beethovenian feel. I like that, it was not Messiaen.

517
01:03:00,300 --> 01:03:12,300
So we didn't get any really important contribution. And I wanted to do that, it was one of my projects to write concertos.

518
01:03:12,300 --> 01:03:27,300
But it did not happen in the order that I thought it would. It started with a cello concerto, but after that some people loved it, so they commissioned me concertos for saxophone, for bassoon, then I had the violin concerto.

519
01:03:27,300 --> 01:03:46,300
But in a way, it's really lucky because like that it matured the way that I was writing concertos and also in the other instruments I didn't quite need that, but for the piano, the fact that I started to write the etudes.

520
01:03:46,300 --> 01:04:02,300
Like I said, when I arrived to the piano concerto, I was ready, it was mature, and so I decided that it's been sort of quite something that I've done a few times now already.

521
01:04:02,300 --> 01:04:26,300
I think that one of the mistakes of, or mistakes, it's difficult to say mistakes or not mistakes, but of a certain type of contemporary music, let's say 50 years ago, that is very old fashioned, was to think that to write something new, it was enough to, let's say you wrote a new piece, you were a contemporary composer,

522
01:04:26,300 --> 01:04:48,300
if you wrote a piece for 12 trombones, one clarinet, and that made you original. And I never believed in that, I thought it was just totally stupid and too simple actually, that the real novelty should come from what a composer plays with, which are the notes and the rhythm.

523
01:04:48,300 --> 01:05:00,300
These are, and you need to be strong enough that that would be enough for you. And so it was a rational way of doing it, I always believed in that.

524
01:05:00,300 --> 01:05:14,300
And in a different way, I did the same with, in a bigger form for the orchestra. So a few years ago when I had Askenazi, I was writing a piece for him as a conductor.

525
01:05:14,300 --> 01:05:24,300
Askenazi as in the Askenazi, right? You're talking about Vladimir Askenazi. I'm just saying clarifying for my audience. It's a big, big name drop here.

526
01:05:24,300 --> 01:05:44,300
So I was writing for him an overture, and we were talking, it was for the Philharmonia Orchestra, and he had a concert in mind, and I said to him, so what are you performing on that day? And he said that I'm performing Tchaikovsky's Thieves, and I confirmed with something else.

527
01:05:44,300 --> 01:05:56,300
And I said, you know what I like to do? I mean, I'm going to write a piece that's got the same orchestra as Tchaikovsky's Thieves, so that people can see that it's not about the orchestra, it's about what you write.

528
01:05:56,300 --> 01:06:09,300
The orchestra will sound totally different with what I'm writing. And at the end of the day, because it was two years in advance, when we got closer to the time, he got fed up with Tchaikovsky's Thieves, he said I conducted it so many times, let's change it.

529
01:06:09,300 --> 01:06:33,300
So it was, it was playing well done first. But never mind. So to come back to the piano concerto, so my idea was, it was going to be a concerto that was going to sound very, very big, but the orchestra is the one from Beethoven's Emperor, or you could, it's the same orchestra as Schumann also. Schumann and Beethoven's Emperor concerto have got the same orchestration.

530
01:06:33,300 --> 01:06:41,300
So it's not a huge orchestra. And if you listen to my recording, you see that it feels like it's a malaria orchestra, but it's not.

531
01:06:41,300 --> 01:06:48,300
The power comes from something else, but the number of things that are happening at the same time.

532
01:06:48,300 --> 01:07:03,300
So, and I thought, a few years ago I was giving lectures, because I like to give lectures, lecture recitals about the concerto form. And how you start, you basically have different variants of how you start.

533
01:07:03,300 --> 01:07:23,300
Let's say the old way, sort of a long introduction, and then the stories come. Or you can have sort of more, more modern, I mean, what came after, like straight away, like Schumann or Mendelssohn, or Mendelssohn's Vibing Concerto, Schumann's Piano Concerto, it's straight away, or Beethoven's Emperor again.

534
01:07:23,300 --> 01:07:46,300
Or you can have in between Tchaikovsky, but there are a few different ways that you can do it. And then you can start with both together, or you can, and I thought, in general, if it's not the piano, and it's the first movement that is big,

535
01:07:46,300 --> 01:08:06,300
you cannot start with a violin concerto, a first movement that is flamboyant, with a violin solo. It will feel like nothing. I mean, you can start with a violin solo like in Prokofiev No. 2, but it doesn't start like that. It starts gradually.

536
01:08:06,300 --> 01:08:21,300
With the piano, big and smooth, you can start with the piano. So I decided to give myself the idea, it's going to start with a beginning, you know, like in a way, but that's not piano solo.

537
01:08:21,300 --> 01:08:43,300
Or when you think of Tchaikovsky's first big beginning, or Rachmaninoff, I wanted this type of beginning, with a piano, big, it feels like a... So that's the first movement. After that, there are lots of different things in it, it's got this peculiar beginning that brings the orchestra.

538
01:08:43,300 --> 01:08:59,300
That was the idea of the first movement. Of course, it's not... No piece of art can be according to the plan. It's like some writers say that when they write novels, their characters decide to do what they want to do.

539
01:08:59,300 --> 01:09:16,300
It's a little bit the same. I'm trying to find the perfection, and when it goes as it goes, it's like a story, and I find where it needs to go. So I've got an idea before I start, but after that, it goes where it needs to go.

540
01:09:16,300 --> 01:09:44,300
The second movement, I wanted to do something that I tried to do in my violin concerto, but in the violin concerto when I was... The violin concerto is in four movements, not three. But before I was writing the third movement, I said to my wife, now I'm going to write something that is like this Mozart piano concerto, slow, very slow and serene, this sort of thing that is out of this world.

541
01:09:44,300 --> 01:10:03,300
And then I write this movement that is as dark as... It's very slow. It's so dark, it's just like you've lost all your family, you're dying. It's just the end of the world. It works as well, because it was what needed to be there. I felt it needed to be slow, but that's what it was.

542
01:10:03,300 --> 01:10:18,300
But I wrote the piano concerto a few months later, and I said, yeah, this time I'm going to dance the magical second movement Mozart type. And that was my goal for this second movement, this dreamy movement, and this time I got it.

543
01:10:18,300 --> 01:10:37,300
It's a dreamy movement, kind of like it, because as I said, contrast is important. So even if the main atmosphere of the movement is that of peace and sort of twinkly things, but of course it's got very, very dark moments.

544
01:10:37,300 --> 01:10:53,300
It's like, you know, at the moment I've got a commission for guitar solo for in two years time, and I was asking the guitarist that he said, oh, you write whatever you want. I said that, you know, it's a seven minute piece.

545
01:10:53,300 --> 01:11:07,300
I've got basically two options. I know it's going to be a piece that is in general fast. It's a fast piece, but there will be beats that are slow. I know it's going to be a slow piece, but there will be beats that are fast.

546
01:11:07,300 --> 01:11:30,300
You cannot write something that is that long that is in one color. So it's a little bit the same in a concerto. Inside the second movement there are various things, but the second movement has a feel of, for me, what I think that is proper to the piano as well is this feel of clear water.

547
01:11:30,300 --> 01:11:45,300
If it's really hot on a hot day and you're outside and you walk and it's very, very hot, I think 35 degrees Celsius, you know, and then you get into the air conditioning and you have a glass of cool water.

548
01:11:45,300 --> 01:12:07,300
That's the high sound of the piano, this pedal, dreamy. It's such a well-being. That's my second movement. And the last movement is very fiery and more so than the first one, but I've got a lot of lyrical passages.

549
01:12:07,300 --> 01:12:22,300
What is in common with all the movements is my writing of polyrhythms in the piano. And it's there inside the piano part, apart from being with the orchestra.

550
01:12:22,300 --> 01:12:37,300
Probably, I would say it's one of the, I think that it's the hardest piece I've written in terms of conducting. I know because I conducted it. It doesn't feel like that when you listen to it.

551
01:12:37,300 --> 01:12:55,300
I like to play with rhythm. If someone that is listening to your program is not a musician, I can simplify it. Let's say that you've got a pattern that has got seven notes.

552
01:12:55,300 --> 01:13:12,300
That's your melodic pattern, seven different notes, but you put it above something, a rhythm that plays five notes per beat. So where you feel is the beat is every repetition of the seven notes, but that's not a real beat.

553
01:13:12,300 --> 01:13:29,300
If you do that in various ways, different instruments at the same time, the feel of where is the beat and where it is, is totally different. As a conductor, you really want to be on the right beat.

554
01:13:29,300 --> 01:13:48,300
And it's true for the first movement and the last movement, they are tricky for that. But I think that it's part of the novelty. I suppose that all that, I don't know what we started with.

555
01:13:48,300 --> 01:14:03,300
I think that all this explanation of what you want to do, they don't have any importance if the person that listens to them cannot feel it. It's just words. Of course it's my kitchen, but it's like to go to a restaurant.

556
01:14:03,300 --> 01:14:16,300
If the cook brings you something and you start to eat it and say, oh my god, it's awful, he can touch you, but no, it's really interesting because I tried to do that, who cares? It didn't work.

557
01:14:16,300 --> 01:14:31,300
You need to understand all that. If you want to be a cook, you need to understand what you're doing. But in a way, from my point of view, the performance also needs to understand what I'm trying to do. But the audience needs to just feel it.

558
01:14:31,300 --> 01:14:42,300
Because it's not their job. The job is to, it's like you listen to a story. You feel the story.

559
01:14:42,300 --> 01:14:57,300
Wow. So you're quite, I compare you with being an architect. Build something that people can live inside, but also enjoy the aesthetics.

560
01:14:57,300 --> 01:15:22,300
But to be who you are, I think I want to talk about two big influences in your life. One is your father, who is Alec Warnstein. I've seen his works online. Wow. What a talent. What a gift. Right? He's an oil painter?

561
01:15:22,300 --> 01:15:49,300
He was a child prodigy. I mean, and then as you are too. So I'm curious. And also, I want to later talk about, of course, Maestro Brazimi Arshkenazi. We mentioned, so we can't ignore that. But first of all, I'm curious to know what sort of conversation you had as a young person, as a child, you were with your father.

562
01:15:49,300 --> 01:16:04,300
About everything. My parents, both my dad and my mom, always treated me as an equal, as an adult. In terms of intellectual, not in terms of, I was a child, I was allowed to be a child.

563
01:16:04,300 --> 01:16:23,300
My parents were very protective in the sense that I think the first time that I really left the house and went alone was when I was 17. I left for London. I was totally alone. But I think because I received all the love when I was young, so I was perfectly okay.

564
01:16:23,300 --> 01:16:42,300
But I mean, you know, they never believed in... they were very intellectual. My mom passed away, that's why I put it in the past. But on the discussion, sort of, they didn't believe that they would say it's like that because it's like that.

565
01:16:42,300 --> 01:16:56,300
So if they told me something, they had to prove it to me and to explain it. So things had to be discussed and explained. And you couldn't disagree. It's not... they didn't say, no, it's right because we are older, we know. That didn't exist.

566
01:16:56,300 --> 01:17:12,300
Even if it's... in most cases it was true. But it was not the reason that was given. In terms of art, I think that if you talk to my father, he would probably have...

567
01:17:12,300 --> 01:17:27,300
When we talked together, he was not exactly aware of what I picked up. You know, like when you have children, you say a lot of things and some things resonate with them, some things less and they don't have their own personalities.

568
01:17:27,300 --> 01:17:45,300
For me, I think that it's like any education. It's... what you say is almost less important than what you do or who you are. My dad, for me, is a big hero and he's a very, very moral person in life.

569
01:17:45,300 --> 01:17:59,300
Which that is a plus, but not necessarily as a great artist, but in art. And that I admire enormously. And this is a part that he probably doesn't agree because he's not like me.

570
01:17:59,300 --> 01:18:12,300
For him, he thought that you should dissociate the two things and that it's otherwise a little bit like... it's too simplistic to think that the human being and what you create is the same thing.

571
01:18:12,300 --> 01:18:30,300
I think that it has some similarities and I learned to... even when I was... when I started to write music when I was six years old, my dad told me, you know, the most important thing of all is... one of the most important things is that it's new.

572
01:18:30,300 --> 01:18:44,300
Nobody has done it before. And that's... because some people say, oh, it's... sometimes they say, oh, someone writes music and it sounds like Vivaldi, but it's good, it's good.

573
01:18:44,300 --> 01:18:57,300
I don't agree with that. If you write now and you write and it sounds like Vivaldi, it's not music, it's not creation. It's the opposite of creation. Almost. Because the essence of creation is that you try to do something that's new.

574
01:18:57,300 --> 01:19:08,300
If you write like Vivaldi, but because you never heard Vivaldi and that's what came to you because you lived in a grot for... who knows? Okay.

575
01:19:08,300 --> 01:19:30,300
When I was eight years old, I started to write with twelve note music and I thought that I discovered it. So I remember I was very excited because I thought about I'm going to use twelve tones and I had never heard about Schoenberg.

576
01:19:30,300 --> 01:19:44,300
By chance, I don't know, I think that there are certain things that lead you to certain ways you write. But my music didn't sound like Schoenberg. Even the twelve tone music. It was very much my own.

577
01:19:44,300 --> 01:20:05,300
But that is important because I think this lesson that art has to be new, and most important of all, it's not that it's new so that everybody agrees. Because these days, you know, when people talk about avant-garde, they talk about avant-garde and they all do the same.

578
01:20:05,300 --> 01:20:17,300
And they say that's new. That's not new. If everybody is doing the same, that cannot be new. I mean, that's obvious in some way. But it's not. And that's what's really different.

579
01:20:17,300 --> 01:20:39,300
That's not enough because it has to be interesting, of course, and beautiful. But what type of beauty you try to create differs according to the artist. Maybe because of who I am, I am someone that is striving for the absolute.

580
01:20:39,300 --> 01:20:54,300
I believe in absolute beauty. I believe my dad says that he's not like that exactly. I'm not sure. But at least it's how he feels about it.

581
01:20:54,300 --> 01:21:09,300
And that he likes, he thinks that it's interesting, some perfections as something that is a perfection by itself.

582
01:21:09,300 --> 01:21:29,300
I think that it's, you know, to give an example, when people talk about writing great melodies or something like that, people, you write great melodies but you can write them like Rossini or Beethoven. Beethoven writes great melodies.

583
01:21:29,300 --> 01:21:47,300
Very great melodies. I don't think that great music without great melodies. But it's not always what you think. And for me, yes, this idea that you shouldn't follow everybody and that you and that academism was bad.

584
01:21:47,300 --> 01:22:06,300
But that's the negative things. There's also the positive things. But, you know, discussion, continuing discussion, but it was not only about music. It was about, I tried to understand what he was doing, his own art, and then transposed it to my own.

585
01:22:06,300 --> 01:22:27,300
And it was a dialogue, so that he will tell you, he started a series, he's a very virtuosic artist, and he started a series of paintings on clothes that are with, and he called them caprices.

586
01:22:27,300 --> 01:22:34,300
They are very virtuosic. He says that he was inspired when I was practicing the Paganini caprices.

587
01:22:34,300 --> 01:22:48,300
So the influence went, by that time I was 14 years old. So there was, it was an intellectual family where we took politics with my mom that was a teacher at university.

588
01:22:48,300 --> 01:23:11,300
And politics like you talk about history, not in terms of I believe in that, but discussing ideas. So that was interesting. I think that in my case, it was very, if you compare a composer to, let's say, an artist or a writer, they've got a lot in common, and they deal with the same things.

589
01:23:11,300 --> 01:23:23,300
But a composer on a performer, that's very far away. It's a totally different thing. An artist will understand a lot more what I'm doing than a musician normally.

590
01:23:23,300 --> 01:23:45,300
Because it's creating for nothing, it's a different experience. So in that sense, that helped me a lot. Even if I think that in some way it's not direct, because music and paintings are two different things, and so the practical aspect of it is really, really different.

591
01:23:45,300 --> 01:24:02,300
Even on certain things, I think that when I tried to listen to my dad and try his best, I went into sort of a dead end because in music it didn't work, or it sort of distracted me because I couldn't quite hear them.

592
01:24:02,300 --> 01:24:24,300
So it was very, very fruitful. And I suppose that if I had to put two influences, the biggest in my life would be my dad and then the great composers. So Bach, if I go in order probably from Bach and then Mozart, Beethoven, the big ones I think.

593
01:24:24,300 --> 01:24:39,300
And then probably in a different way, people, because of the sounds, Debussy, and each of the big ones, because the secrets are in their music.

594
01:24:39,300 --> 01:24:44,300
Yeah. And can we talk Mr Askenazi?

595
01:24:44,300 --> 01:24:45,300
Yes!

596
01:24:45,300 --> 01:24:58,300
So he is known as a pianist to begin with, but he is now a well-known conductor and he premiered your two orchestral works, no? As a conductor.

597
01:24:58,300 --> 01:25:00,300
Yes, I think three.

598
01:25:00,300 --> 01:25:06,300
Three? Oh my goodness. The one is the big band and the other one is, if you will, it is no dream.

599
01:25:06,300 --> 01:25:08,300
I have a writing concerto.

600
01:25:08,300 --> 01:25:15,300
Oh, and did he also produce the album under, it's called a Chandos?

601
01:25:15,300 --> 01:25:18,300
Yes, Chandos is a label, yes.

602
01:25:18,300 --> 01:25:22,300
Okay, okay, that is a label, and so he performed your pieces, no?

603
01:25:22,300 --> 01:25:26,300
That was right.

604
01:25:26,300 --> 01:25:37,300
That's a big monumental achievement, I mean one of the many achievements you've made, but this is a big one, no?

605
01:25:37,300 --> 01:25:46,300
Yes, I think that for me there are two different things that are very different as an artist.

606
01:25:46,300 --> 01:25:54,300
There is what you are really looking for that has got nothing to do with practical way, it has got nothing to do with fame, it has good.

607
01:25:54,300 --> 01:26:00,300
The real achievement is what you write, and that's it.

608
01:26:00,300 --> 01:26:04,300
That's what will be there in 200 years or something like that, and it doesn't matter.

609
01:26:04,300 --> 01:26:09,300
It's like, you know, whether you are famous or not famous doesn't change anything.

610
01:26:09,300 --> 01:26:14,300
Mozart, you don't know where he is buried, Vivaldi is the same, and you are…

611
01:26:14,300 --> 01:26:19,300
I mean fame is fickle and it's not the point.

612
01:26:19,300 --> 01:26:29,300
I think it's not something that I'm really interested in.

613
01:26:29,300 --> 01:26:39,300
But on the other hand I think that it's because if you write music it means that you really love it above anything else, and then it's like a love in life.

614
01:26:39,300 --> 01:26:50,300
Let's say that if you love, in my case if I love my wife, of course I want other people to love my wife as well, because I want people to see that she's wonderful.

615
01:26:50,300 --> 01:26:57,300
So it's the same about my works. If you really love what you wrote, you want to share it, but it's not something about ego.

616
01:26:57,300 --> 01:27:05,300
It's not the ego. And I think that in some way there are two aspects with people like Ashkenazi.

617
01:27:05,300 --> 01:27:11,300
There is the aspect of the career, that is a big one, but there are other aspects.

618
01:27:11,300 --> 01:27:18,300
For me, I listened to his recordings as a pianist all the way since I was a young boy.

619
01:27:18,300 --> 01:27:25,300
I knew all his… one of the reasons why I really love that much is the Chopin etudes are through his recordings.

620
01:27:25,300 --> 01:27:29,300
I was listening a lot to his recordings of the Chopin etudes.

621
01:27:29,300 --> 01:27:33,300
Then after that I listened to Courtauld, to all sorts of different people.

622
01:27:33,300 --> 01:27:42,300
It started with Ashkenazi and Beethoven sonatas. When I was young I used to… because it's not like now that you've got YouTube, you can compare easily.

623
01:27:42,300 --> 01:27:47,300
We were not rich, my dad was an artist, so we couldn't afford to buy lots of different recordings.

624
01:27:47,300 --> 01:27:57,300
So I used to, when it was played on the radio, you had this tape and you could record the radio and I used to have six, seven different performances of the same works

625
01:27:57,300 --> 01:28:06,300
and listen to them and try to understand what they did different. So it was true for all of that and for the Beethoven sonatas.

626
01:28:06,300 --> 01:28:13,300
There are many, many different versions of them, Ashkenazi was one of them.

627
01:28:13,300 --> 01:28:22,300
Even the older one of Schnabel, of Bachhaus, all these people, Rubinstein, Orbit, some of them.

628
01:28:22,300 --> 01:28:34,300
But you know, Ashkenazi, when I was… I think not, I got in touch with him when I was 30 years old, around 30 something.

629
01:28:34,300 --> 01:28:47,300
And by then he was like a… well he was a legend to me, someone that I had lived with the way that he did music for a long time and that I had great respect.

630
01:28:47,300 --> 01:28:53,300
I loved the way that he played. But it's not because of that that I contacted him.

631
01:28:53,300 --> 01:29:02,300
I heard an interview, he was talking, someone asked him about his relationship with Frostakovich.

632
01:29:02,300 --> 01:29:08,300
And he replied about what he thought it was to be a composer or something like that.

633
01:29:08,300 --> 01:29:15,300
And I don't know, I had the feeling I thought if I managed to get in touch with him I'm sure that he will love my music.

634
01:29:15,300 --> 01:29:21,300
I had no doubt, I was not sure how I would get in touch with him because that's difficult.

635
01:29:21,300 --> 01:29:28,300
Because the more people, the more well known are people, the less time they have, the more difficult they have to…

636
01:29:28,300 --> 01:29:37,300
They have no choice, so it's difficult. So I wrote to his agent, Jasper Parald, thinking, oh my god, it's just…

637
01:29:37,300 --> 01:29:42,300
I had some career, I was 30, I was not 20. But I said okay.

638
01:29:42,300 --> 01:29:55,300
And the next day I received a reply saying he's listened to some of your music, he's very, very busy but he'd like to meet you.

639
01:29:55,300 --> 01:30:04,300
And I met him something like two weeks or three weeks later when he was conducting a concert in London, so we met him.

640
01:30:04,300 --> 01:30:15,300
And it started from there. It's great respect and it's interesting.

641
01:30:15,300 --> 01:30:21,300
I wouldn't say that any of this influenced my music because music cannot be influenced by…

642
01:30:21,300 --> 01:30:28,300
I see that I can be influenced by other composers but not by performers in that sense.

643
01:30:28,300 --> 01:30:39,300
But on the other hand, when you've got someone that is such a great performer, you realise what…

644
01:30:39,300 --> 01:30:45,300
I always thought so but it makes you… I think what makes great performers…

645
01:30:45,300 --> 01:31:00,300
It's nothing technical, even if technique is part of the thing, but it's the capacity of when you play the music or you conduct the music,

646
01:31:00,300 --> 01:31:11,300
to be in the music, not to perform it, be the music. Like if you are an actor, you perform your Hamlet, you are Hamlet.

647
01:31:11,300 --> 01:31:23,300
I find that it's quite rare. I always felt… I think that composers normally, if they feel comfortable on stage, that's how they perform,

648
01:31:23,300 --> 01:31:33,300
because otherwise you wouldn't be able to be a composer. Music means something for you that is very, very strong and every note means something.

649
01:31:33,300 --> 01:31:42,300
But this is the secret of music and it's quite rare actually when you can like the style or dislike the style,

650
01:31:42,300 --> 01:31:45,300
you can have people that you think, oh it's vulgar or something like that.

651
01:31:45,300 --> 01:31:51,300
But if they are great soloists, when they play, they really play. They mean it. They mean every note.

652
01:31:51,300 --> 01:32:00,300
On Ashkenazi, there was that, of course, but there was also something of… because we worked together,

653
01:32:00,300 --> 01:32:08,300
I remember the first time, the first he performed one of my pieces as a conductor, he said,

654
01:32:08,300 --> 01:32:16,300
okay, let me work on it for a couple of months and then we meet and we can have a look together.

655
01:32:16,300 --> 01:32:30,300
Two months later, I go and meet him and he used to give, I don't know, maybe 200 concerts a year or something crazy, a crazy time table.

656
01:32:30,300 --> 01:32:41,300
We met and he opened the score on every single page. There were so many annotations on so many chords.

657
01:32:41,300 --> 01:32:47,300
First I was pleased because I do the same. I colour my scores when I conduct. I do scores.

658
01:32:47,300 --> 01:32:55,300
So I was quite happy to see that I was not alone. But I looked at the amount of work.

659
01:32:55,300 --> 01:33:03,300
I mean just to colour the same stuff, it probably would have taken 30 or 40 hours.

660
01:33:03,300 --> 01:33:13,300
There are just so many people that are nowhere as busy as him, that are smaller carriers or something like that,

661
01:33:13,300 --> 01:33:21,300
that conduct my works and will have spent insufficient time.

662
01:33:21,300 --> 01:33:30,300
Because I think that there is no shortcut if you want to conduct a piece that is 30 minutes long.

663
01:33:30,300 --> 01:33:38,300
If you are not going to spend 50 or 60 hours, wherever you are, it's not going to be good.

664
01:33:38,300 --> 01:33:49,300
Even if you are malor, it's just because if someone, sometimes you could say that there is almost a relationship

665
01:33:49,300 --> 01:33:53,300
between how long it's taken to compose it and how long it takes to learn it.

666
01:33:53,300 --> 01:34:00,300
It's not equally, but if you spend 500 hours writing the work, there is no way that someone can learn it in 10.

667
01:34:00,300 --> 01:34:04,300
Just absolutely none. Impossible.

668
01:34:04,300 --> 01:34:14,300
I mean in a month and a bit now I'm conducting a new piece of mine that I'm writing for the English Chamber Orchestra.

669
01:34:14,300 --> 01:34:20,300
We are doing the premiere in six weeks or something like that. It's a song cycle on Shakespeare's sonnets.

670
01:34:20,300 --> 01:34:25,300
It's about 20 minutes long, five sonnets.

671
01:34:25,300 --> 01:34:33,300
And I think that I've spent already learning it for the conducting part, at least 50 hours.

672
01:34:33,300 --> 01:34:40,300
Starting from a point where I know all by memory before I even start because I wrote the work and I know what I need to do.

673
01:34:40,300 --> 01:34:46,300
So that's quite a good point to start, but still to...

674
01:34:46,300 --> 01:34:54,300
I suppose that in life anything you do, if you want to do it well, it needs to feel like it's a matter of life and death.

675
01:34:54,300 --> 01:35:00,300
And I think that that is... In research, Kenazi, he had that.

676
01:35:00,300 --> 01:35:05,300
When he was on stage, when he was rehearsing, it mattered.

677
01:35:05,300 --> 01:35:10,300
And he was not... I mean when we started to work together, he was not that old.

678
01:35:10,300 --> 01:35:16,300
He was probably 60 something. So that's not old for this day.

679
01:35:16,300 --> 01:35:24,300
Towards the end, when he was 75 or 76 or more, I mean that's not that young anymore.

680
01:35:24,300 --> 01:35:29,300
I suppose that it was impressive and there were...

681
01:35:29,300 --> 01:35:36,300
And it's also... I think that it's interesting that you, as a composer, when you write works,

682
01:35:36,300 --> 01:35:44,300
there are two things that are absolutely precise and that you can write, are the notes and the rhythm.

683
01:35:44,300 --> 01:35:49,300
And that is precise. The dynamics are not precise.

684
01:35:49,300 --> 01:35:58,300
First, because you can probably do a range of thousands of dynamics, but you write only six or seven.

685
01:35:58,300 --> 01:36:02,300
From pianissimo to fortissimo, it's not enough.

686
01:36:02,300 --> 01:36:11,300
On top of that, also because there are more... In many places in music, there is more than one option.

687
01:36:11,300 --> 01:36:22,300
So if you've got an option where there is a contrast, it would work equally well by being loud and soft,

688
01:36:22,300 --> 01:36:27,300
but also soft and loud, as a composer you cannot write anything at all.

689
01:36:27,300 --> 01:36:32,300
So those are places in music where you see nothing written as a place that needs a dynamic,

690
01:36:32,300 --> 01:36:38,300
because the only thing that could be wrong is not to do the contrast. That would be wrong.

691
01:36:38,300 --> 01:36:46,300
So this type of thing, you try to, with experience, to learn how you write dynamics.

692
01:36:46,300 --> 01:36:52,300
Over time, you can see in Brahms or in Beethoven that the way that they put the dynamics,

693
01:36:52,300 --> 01:36:57,300
the way they put the age and the experience, changes.

694
01:36:57,300 --> 01:37:06,300
I have not escaped that. I write dynamics a little bit differently than I used to do, I think, over time.

695
01:37:06,300 --> 01:37:13,300
Whether you get better at it or different, it's difficult to say, but you change.

696
01:37:13,300 --> 01:37:25,300
And working with great musicians is interesting because sometimes they didn't get it because they should have,

697
01:37:25,300 --> 01:37:30,300
because everybody is human, and sometimes they didn't get it because maybe you were not...

698
01:37:30,300 --> 01:37:37,300
Maybe you needed more... Because for you, as a composer, music is very obvious.

699
01:37:37,300 --> 01:37:47,300
It's what you do, but you don't write music for other composers to perform you, even if it happens.

700
01:37:47,300 --> 01:37:54,300
You write it for great performers to perform you. So you need to also understand how...

701
01:37:54,300 --> 01:37:57,300
From the other point of view, it goes both ways.

702
01:37:57,300 --> 01:38:02,300
The performer needs to understand what's the problematic of notation for the composer,

703
01:38:02,300 --> 01:38:07,300
but the composer also needs to understand how to best convey...

704
01:38:07,300 --> 01:38:14,300
It doesn't change the word, because in Bach there is nothing written.

705
01:38:14,300 --> 01:38:21,300
That's partly because in the music of Bach it's so much about contrast.

706
01:38:21,300 --> 01:38:25,300
In many times it doesn't matter which way, so of course you can't write anything.

707
01:38:25,300 --> 01:38:28,300
That's the main reason why there is nothing written.

708
01:38:28,300 --> 01:38:35,300
Better than it's a little bit more... Sometimes there is only one way, and that's why you can write dynamics.

709
01:38:35,300 --> 01:38:42,300
Sometimes you can't. I would say that in my case it's medium, it's in between.

710
01:38:42,300 --> 01:38:48,300
I think in general the atmosphere is one, but not always.

711
01:38:48,300 --> 01:39:01,300
I learned a lot with Abstinazzi, for example, when we started working together, maybe 20 years ago.

712
01:39:01,300 --> 01:39:08,300
One of the pieces he conducted was the piece If You Will It.

713
01:39:08,300 --> 01:39:15,300
When we did the rehearsal I told him louder, and he said that you wrote 40.

714
01:39:15,300 --> 01:39:22,300
For me it was obvious that all dynamics are relative.

715
01:39:22,300 --> 01:39:32,300
I thought the softer dynamic in the piece is piano, the louder is forte, piano should be the softest, and forte the loudest.

716
01:39:32,300 --> 01:39:42,300
But he thought in a different way, he thought that there are fortissimo, so forte is less than fortissimo, even if there are no fortissimo in the piece.

717
01:39:42,300 --> 01:39:49,300
I thought, okay, it's a point of view, it's just notation.

718
01:39:49,300 --> 01:39:56,300
So I understood that maybe I needed to write it a bit of a different way.

719
01:39:56,300 --> 01:40:10,300
He also suggested sometime that it would be useful to put a word about the type of emotion.

720
01:40:10,300 --> 01:40:22,300
Not only the dynamics, if you got something that comes from a really big fortissimo, and then there is piano,

721
01:40:22,300 --> 01:40:27,300
the piano would be a sort of relief from the forte.

722
01:40:27,300 --> 01:40:31,300
But is it peaceful, or is it mysterious?

723
01:40:31,300 --> 01:40:42,300
So if it could be either, and I'm happy with either because myself if I was conducting it sometimes it would be that, sometimes it would be that, then not write anything.

724
01:40:42,300 --> 01:40:49,300
But if, for me it's quite obvious that it's mysterious, then maybe write it.

725
01:40:49,300 --> 01:41:02,300
One option, it's a specific color, even if, because when you write a music you spend so long on it, that of course it's obvious for yourself.

726
01:41:02,300 --> 01:41:14,300
And the performer will, first it's not you, and each person is different, but also will not have that amount of time.

727
01:41:14,300 --> 01:41:29,300
So I think that I learned things about, as a conductor, I learned how he was dealing with rehearsal time, which was interesting, I liked that.

728
01:41:29,300 --> 01:41:37,300
And also that I found sort of, in that he was very very similar to my dad.

729
01:41:37,300 --> 01:41:48,300
I think he's a very nice man, and he hated people that were not modest, and that were other people.

730
01:41:48,300 --> 01:41:55,300
He would treat the porter or a very rich person exactly the same, and I think it's important for me too.

731
01:41:55,300 --> 01:42:04,300
And it doesn't mean that it's, I think that in a way it's nice to be nice, but it's also not that the person is not confident.

732
01:42:04,300 --> 01:42:15,300
But he's so confident that he doesn't need to pretend that he's happy with who he is, and he was really, he was very nice.

733
01:42:15,300 --> 01:42:24,300
It's just with people, and it was, I don't know, it's just, you know, when you are, you try to be like that yourself,

734
01:42:24,300 --> 01:42:37,300
and not many people are in a business that is so hard to achieve, and you see someone else that, and people tell you, you are too nice, you are too nice, you are too nice,

735
01:42:37,300 --> 01:42:40,300
and then you see someone else that is nice to you, and you think, oh, he's nice.

736
01:42:40,300 --> 01:42:47,300
That was, you know, you want me to, I think that it's, that was, because my dad is my dad.

737
01:42:47,300 --> 01:43:02,300
So that's something that somebody else that would give well, and with kindness, and with, it was, and he shared also some other things, like I'm never late for anything.

738
01:43:02,300 --> 01:43:07,300
And so I'm never late for my commissions, so I take enough time.

739
01:43:07,300 --> 01:43:17,300
Also, because I want the things to be good, I tend to arrive early for rehearsal, something like that.

740
01:43:17,300 --> 01:43:27,300
When we did a concert in Leicester, he was conducting the Philharmonia, one of my pieces, and I left early, and I said to my wife,

741
01:43:27,300 --> 01:43:37,300
she said, no, I'm not arriving two hours before, or something like that, it's you, crazy nurse, just, I'll come with your dad on Philharmonic letter.

742
01:43:37,300 --> 01:43:48,300
I arrived two hours early, but actually he was already there, because he was like, he was there, so we shared a sandwich, because he was there three hours before.

743
01:43:48,300 --> 01:43:50,300
Oh my God.

744
01:43:50,300 --> 01:43:54,300
So he said, do you want, I've got the sandwich, do you want to share the sandwich?

745
01:43:54,300 --> 01:43:58,300
Really? That is...

746
01:43:58,300 --> 01:44:02,300
As I said to my wife, you see, I'm not totally mad.

747
01:44:02,300 --> 01:44:05,300
Wow.

748
01:44:05,300 --> 01:44:14,300
I think it's the same thing if you want to do well, and you want to give yourself the chances to do well, you don't do it at the last minute.

749
01:44:14,300 --> 01:44:27,300
I think it's a psychological thing, some people that are great are last minute people, so I mean, you can't categorize, but in this case he was very much like me.

750
01:44:27,300 --> 01:44:39,300
And he traveled, what I liked as well is that he traveled with his wife most of the time, they had a nice relationship, which that's something that I learned from my dad as well.

751
01:44:39,300 --> 01:44:44,300
You know, it's so easy in life to find excuses.

752
01:44:44,300 --> 01:44:54,300
So you are a bad person because art is difficult, so you betray your wife and things like that, but you are an artist.

753
01:44:54,300 --> 01:44:58,300
All sorts of excuses that have got nothing to do with it.

754
01:44:58,300 --> 01:45:00,300
I mean, what has got to do with it?

755
01:45:00,300 --> 01:45:08,300
You can be a really great composer or a terrible human being like Wagner, or you can be a good human being like Mozart or Schumann.

756
01:45:08,300 --> 01:45:11,300
It's got nothing to do with your art.

757
01:45:11,300 --> 01:45:23,300
So yeah, I think that that's something that I like to see.

758
01:45:23,300 --> 01:45:28,300
And it was over many years with R.S.K. and A.Z.I.

759
01:45:28,300 --> 01:45:37,300
So I can't remember all the examples, but it's also, yeah, I think that it was also,

760
01:45:37,300 --> 01:45:46,300
for example, when we recorded the CD and he was conducting my violin concerto,

761
01:45:46,300 --> 01:45:59,300
and I had a violinist friend of mine that played my music very, very well, and she was not very well known.

762
01:45:59,300 --> 01:46:07,300
But I was convinced that she would play it amazingly well because she's a fantastic violinist.

763
01:46:07,300 --> 01:46:18,300
And I thought, I'm going to ask Ashkenazi if he's okay with it because it's his CD, his idea, you know.

764
01:46:18,300 --> 01:46:25,300
So I went and I started by trying all sorts of, you know, I don't know, but maybe, and I said,

765
01:46:25,300 --> 01:46:29,300
so he said, come on with it, what do you want to say?

766
01:46:29,300 --> 01:46:36,300
And I said, well, there's this violinist, she's played my music, she's commissioned some pieces,

767
01:46:36,300 --> 01:46:44,300
she's a very, very fantastic violinist, but hasn't got the career that she deserves.

768
01:46:44,300 --> 01:46:52,300
But I would be very happy if she played my concerto on the CD.

769
01:46:52,300 --> 01:46:56,300
And he said, well, you're the composer, you think she's good?

770
01:46:56,300 --> 01:47:00,300
That's it.

771
01:47:00,300 --> 01:47:07,300
So that, yes, that I think paints the person well.

772
01:47:07,300 --> 01:47:12,300
Quite a good example.

773
01:47:12,300 --> 01:47:18,300
But funny enough, you know, for me there are two Ashkenazis.

774
01:47:18,300 --> 01:47:24,300
Ashkenazi of all the CDs that I released when I was young.

775
01:47:24,300 --> 01:47:28,300
And it's one person, and there's another one that I know.

776
01:47:28,300 --> 01:47:33,300
I just don't manage to.

777
01:47:33,300 --> 01:47:38,300
It's like that when you know people, there's a real human being.

778
01:47:38,300 --> 01:47:45,300
And the construction, the legend that you had when you, you had two different things.

779
01:47:45,300 --> 01:47:49,300
But, you know, this is exactly what I'm trying to do.

780
01:47:49,300 --> 01:47:55,300
Like, you know, you as a composer and performer, what I see from all these beautiful photos

781
01:47:55,300 --> 01:48:00,300
and the websites and everything, and then Spotify, and then now you as a human,

782
01:48:00,300 --> 01:48:04,300
and then telling me about all these beautiful stories and backstories.

783
01:48:04,300 --> 01:48:32,300
So it's really fascinating.

784
01:48:32,300 --> 01:48:36,300
So now let's go back to you.

785
01:48:36,300 --> 01:48:45,300
What do you hope your audiences and the performers who would perform your piece take away from playing your pieces?

786
01:48:45,300 --> 01:48:50,300
And also, what do you hope to leave a legacy as a composer?

787
01:48:50,300 --> 01:48:55,300
I know you're very young.

788
01:48:55,300 --> 01:48:59,300
But, you know, it's nice to think about these things.

789
01:48:59,300 --> 01:49:07,300
Yes, I always think that it's true that when I started to write music when I was six,

790
01:49:07,300 --> 01:49:12,300
my goal was to be as good as Beethoven or Bach, my heroes.

791
01:49:12,300 --> 01:49:20,300
And I think that it's a different, I always thought that I don't write music because I like it,

792
01:49:20,300 --> 01:49:23,300
but because something else.

793
01:49:23,300 --> 01:49:31,300
But so your question about legacy is something that I always thought about even when I was six.

794
01:49:31,300 --> 01:49:37,300
I think that, you know, my dad has told me that a lot of people that are amateurs,

795
01:49:37,300 --> 01:49:42,300
in his case in painting, say, oh, I like painting.

796
01:49:42,300 --> 01:49:48,300
But real artists don't like it in that way.

797
01:49:48,300 --> 01:49:50,300
It's not a hobby.

798
01:49:50,300 --> 01:49:54,300
You must love it. Love and liking are two different things.

799
01:49:54,300 --> 01:49:58,300
Because in love you can have a lot of misery.

800
01:49:58,300 --> 01:50:01,300
Oh, you love something. So there's that.

801
01:50:01,300 --> 01:50:12,300
So in the legacy, I think that until I was, for me, there was a point in my music where until then,

802
01:50:12,300 --> 01:50:17,300
I always thought, because it's got nothing to do with what other people think.

803
01:50:17,300 --> 01:50:25,300
It's what you think. And it's when I composed the piece, Magic Mountain, which is my Op. 30,

804
01:50:25,300 --> 01:50:27,300
I thought I can die now.

805
01:50:27,300 --> 01:50:32,300
Because that piece is great. And even if I die, there's one piece that is...

806
01:50:32,300 --> 01:50:36,300
And after that, it never felt the same.

807
01:50:36,300 --> 01:50:43,300
And then I had, but ten years ago, I had lunch with a pianist that was playing my works.

808
01:50:43,300 --> 01:50:47,300
And she said, you know, I think that you are in the golden age.

809
01:50:47,300 --> 01:50:51,300
There was Schumann, a time when all the pieces that he wrote were great.

810
01:50:51,300 --> 01:50:55,300
And you are lacking your time.

811
01:50:55,300 --> 01:51:01,300
So it felt like that. You can't write one piece after the other.

812
01:51:01,300 --> 01:51:04,300
I don't know.

813
01:51:04,300 --> 01:51:10,300
So I think that for me, it's more now I'm not that young.

814
01:51:10,300 --> 01:51:14,300
I've gone over Op. 100.

815
01:51:14,300 --> 01:51:19,300
So I don't have this thing about...

816
01:51:19,300 --> 01:51:24,300
I think the legacy, even if I died now, is there, because it's a lot of work.

817
01:51:24,300 --> 01:51:29,300
But I have my own... You know, it's like sportsmen.

818
01:51:29,300 --> 01:51:33,300
In that sense, it's a human thing. You want what you don't have.

819
01:51:33,300 --> 01:51:37,300
So, you know, like a tennis player that is born sort of...

820
01:51:37,300 --> 01:51:41,300
Like Djokovic, that he had won all the Grand Slam, but he never won the Olympics.

821
01:51:41,300 --> 01:51:47,300
So he always wanted the Olympics, because even if he was the greatest player of all time, he didn't get it.

822
01:51:47,300 --> 01:51:53,300
So for me, it's... And also I feel naked, because I think that's something that will suit me very well.

823
01:51:53,300 --> 01:51:59,300
I want to do a few operas, which I have not done.

824
01:51:59,300 --> 01:52:03,300
And probably a few more pieces for orchestra.

825
01:52:03,300 --> 01:52:11,300
So it's a practical sort of certain thing that I feel that are immediate points of call.

826
01:52:11,300 --> 01:52:21,300
But if you ask for what I want people to get from my music, I would suppose that it's what you get from any great music.

827
01:52:21,300 --> 01:52:28,300
I think that life in general, as I've said, I'm very, very smart, but life is hard.

828
01:52:28,300 --> 01:52:36,300
Mostly because whoever you are, never mind how much money or luck you have, we die.

829
01:52:36,300 --> 01:52:42,300
And even more problematic, people that we love die, because when we die, we are dead.

830
01:52:42,300 --> 01:52:47,300
But death is a very, very difficult thing in life, not talking about the others.

831
01:52:47,300 --> 01:52:52,300
And I think that art helps us.

832
01:52:52,300 --> 01:52:59,300
I mean, when I lost my mom, the only time where I could feel okay was when I was composing music.

833
01:52:59,300 --> 01:53:03,300
Any other time the pain, the horrendous pain stops.

834
01:53:03,300 --> 01:53:08,300
And I know from friends that are not musicians that it helps also.

835
01:53:08,300 --> 01:53:16,300
It's the beauty of it. I think that Freud, the second analyst, said that it's the sublimation, the role of art.

836
01:53:16,300 --> 01:53:20,300
And so we make things that are painful, beautiful.

837
01:53:20,300 --> 01:53:31,300
So I would hope that the world that I create in pieces is so beautiful that it takes art out of...

838
01:53:31,300 --> 01:53:40,300
I mean, it's not only that, because music can be a sabre when you're happy, but it has got a special role when life is hard.

839
01:53:40,300 --> 01:53:51,300
And so I would like my music to be listened to so that when people feel really that they have a difficult time, that they listen to mother better,

840
01:53:51,300 --> 01:53:59,300
but also mine, in the same sense, not different, that it gives a feel of...

841
01:53:59,300 --> 01:54:04,300
That's when I say that I want to create beauty in art. It's not beauty in terms of it's just pretty.

842
01:54:04,300 --> 01:54:14,300
It's beauty in terms of... in the Greek philosopher's sense, that beauty and moral, all these things are one thing.

843
01:54:14,300 --> 01:54:19,300
I think that's how I would turn it.

844
01:54:19,300 --> 01:54:25,300
Even if it's not something that you think all the time for yourself, you just...

845
01:54:25,300 --> 01:54:32,300
But when I write music, I want to write... every time that I go and I work on my piece,

846
01:54:32,300 --> 01:54:38,300
I want to write something that is the most beautiful that I can possibly do.

847
01:54:38,300 --> 01:54:50,300
And that has got no vulgarity whatsoever, that it's all that I give, all that I could to the maximum of my ability.

848
01:54:50,300 --> 01:54:59,300
Wow. Wow. I can't top that. I mean, what else can I say? Beautiful.

849
01:54:59,300 --> 01:55:08,300
And I think right now, you know, people are... so many people are suffering in all parts of the world in many ways.

850
01:55:08,300 --> 01:55:16,300
And so I think I hope that the music is something that they can really easily access to.

851
01:55:16,300 --> 01:55:26,300
And as musicians, we can be just part of... little part of their small, maybe happiness or maybe something that...

852
01:55:26,300 --> 01:55:33,300
As a composer, you can even sort of hope that people will, as amateurs, play your music for the pleasure.

853
01:55:33,300 --> 01:55:37,300
Just to be more the case in previous centuries, but it's still happening.

854
01:55:37,300 --> 01:55:40,300
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is still happening.

855
01:55:40,300 --> 01:55:48,300
Well, thank you. Well, this has been a really, really meaningful conversation, but also I've learned a lot.

856
01:55:48,300 --> 01:55:52,300
What a master class. And so thank you so much, Nimrod.

857
01:55:52,300 --> 01:56:02,300
So before I let you go, two things to do. One is I would like to promote your works and also maybe any upcoming events you have or maybe productions.

858
01:56:02,300 --> 01:56:06,300
So Floor is yours. So take it away.

859
01:56:06,300 --> 01:56:13,300
I mean, for my works in general, there are just so many, like you say, people can go on my website and just explore.

860
01:56:13,300 --> 01:56:21,300
They can click and listen to various things. But in terms of content, the one that my immediate big thing that I'm doing is the one that I talked earlier.

861
01:56:21,300 --> 01:56:29,300
That's why I talked about it, because I was just in the middle of preparing it, is this concert in London where I'm conducting the English Chamber Orchestra.

862
01:56:29,300 --> 01:56:35,300
And we are doing an incredible program. I love Elgar.

863
01:56:35,300 --> 01:56:42,300
It's beautiful. And I'm doing these Shakespeare songs with a fantastic soprano, Sarah Fox.

864
01:56:42,300 --> 01:56:50,300
And we are doing that on that song, the 9th of March. So if anyone is in London, I know you are in America, so it's a long way.

865
01:56:50,300 --> 01:56:54,300
But who knows? I mean, we have the Internet.

866
01:56:54,300 --> 01:56:59,300
Right. Oh, wow. That's exciting. Yes. So whoever.

867
01:56:59,300 --> 01:57:09,300
I was just in Paris. I was conducting in Paris in December. And after that, I mean, my works have played all the time, but not always with me.

868
01:57:09,300 --> 01:57:21,300
I think people want to meet me in person. And then I go to South America in August or something like that. And then things move all the time.

869
01:57:21,300 --> 01:57:30,300
Hey, if you are in America, United States, or especially in New York area, please let me know.

870
01:57:30,300 --> 01:57:37,300
I would love to really see you in person, but also love to hear your music live.

871
01:57:37,300 --> 01:57:43,300
So and then I think a lot of musicians should play your music more. So, yeah, thank you.

872
01:57:43,300 --> 01:57:49,300
And I'm going to buy your what is it? The Shireen and I'm going to play it.

873
01:57:49,300 --> 01:57:54,300
And it too stupid, especially Shireen. I want to really try immediately. Yes.

874
01:57:54,300 --> 01:58:05,300
Of course. So this has been an incredibly fun and inspiring conversation, then, but before I let you go, we have one more thing to do.

875
01:58:05,300 --> 01:58:12,300
Remember the beautiful rapid fire questions. So let's start.

876
01:58:12,300 --> 01:58:19,300
So I will start with the easier questions and then and then it gets a little bit more advanced as always in life.

877
01:58:19,300 --> 01:58:25,300
Yes. So I would I wanted to answer them as short as possible.

878
01:58:25,300 --> 01:58:29,300
And then you don't have to explain anything unless if you want to. All right.

879
01:58:29,300 --> 01:58:37,300
All right. Question number one. What is your comfort food? Oh, I love all food. So my comfort food is food.

880
01:58:37,300 --> 01:58:44,300
Food. OK. Yes. You do. Really. What do you like to cook?

881
01:58:44,300 --> 01:58:50,300
My wife is Italian, so I cook a lot of Italian food. I'm good in risotto. I do a mean risotto.

882
01:58:50,300 --> 01:58:57,300
Wow. Wow. That is amazing. Oh, that sounds amazing.

883
01:58:57,300 --> 01:59:01,300
How do you like your coffee in the morning?

884
01:59:01,300 --> 01:59:08,300
I make it myself. You know, the Italian things that I do, things that you put on most of the time I grind it.

885
01:59:08,300 --> 01:59:13,300
And it's not only in the morning. My wife is Italian, so we drink coffee all day long and it's just nonstop.

886
01:59:13,300 --> 01:59:18,300
I can't drink. OK. Yes. That's black. No sugar. No milk.

887
01:59:18,300 --> 01:59:23,300
OK. Oh, wow. Sounds great. Are you a cat person or dog person?

888
01:59:23,300 --> 01:59:32,300
Oh, I love cats. I'm obsessed with cats. I like dogs too, but cats are an instrument for musicians,

889
01:59:32,300 --> 01:59:38,300
an animal for musicians because they are so beautiful and so impressive.

890
01:59:38,300 --> 01:59:44,300
They are incredible platter and their gestures are exactly, just so fluid.

891
01:59:44,300 --> 01:59:49,300
Wow. I never thought that way. That's a beautiful way to say it. Do you have a cat or?

892
01:59:49,300 --> 01:59:54,300
No, because I think it's not fair when you travel too much. Animals, they are intelligent.

893
01:59:54,300 --> 02:00:00,300
They suffer like human beings. I think it wouldn't be a good a visiting cat.

894
02:00:00,300 --> 02:00:05,300
It lives not for every day. Really? Oh, that's cute. Oh, that's great.

895
02:00:05,300 --> 02:00:11,300
You love them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wonderful. Summer or winter?

896
02:00:11,300 --> 02:00:18,300
Winter. The mountain. Summer in the sea. OK. Sounds good.

897
02:00:18,300 --> 02:00:26,300
Now level two, it gets a little harder. What skill have you always wanted to learn, but haven't had a chance to?

898
02:00:26,300 --> 02:00:32,300
To a higher level, tennis. I play tennis, but if I had more time, I would have spent many more.

899
02:00:32,300 --> 02:00:38,300
I love tennis because it's like a solo instrument. I would have spent more time, but I play tennis.

900
02:00:38,300 --> 02:00:46,300
OK. Wow. What is your word or words to live by? Oh, beauty.

901
02:00:46,300 --> 02:00:53,300
What is the most important quality you look for in other people? Kindness.

902
02:00:53,300 --> 02:01:08,300
Name three people who inspire you, living or dead. This is hard. My dad? Beethoven? No. My dad? Oh, yes. Beethoven?

903
02:01:08,300 --> 02:01:18,300
OK. I know three is hard. I know. All right. Now level three. Two more questions to go.

904
02:01:18,300 --> 02:01:28,300
Name one piece in your current playlist. I don't have a playlist. OK.

905
02:01:28,300 --> 02:01:38,300
So it's because I always listen to music in my head, looking at scores. At the moment, as a conductor, you conduct a lot of things.

906
02:01:38,300 --> 02:01:50,300
So it's a thing that it's really hard, but it's my own music. It's either my own music or Elgar's Siren Head for Strength, because that's the next...

907
02:01:50,300 --> 02:01:56,300
OK. Sounds good. Last question. Fill in the blank. Music is blank.

908
02:01:56,300 --> 02:02:00,300
And dispensable.

909
02:02:00,300 --> 02:02:08,300
Wow. I have never heard that answer before. Beautiful. Thank you. Ding ding. That's it. So you win. Yes.

910
02:02:08,300 --> 02:02:20,300
So this concludes this episode of The Piano Pod. A heartfelt thanks to you, Nimrod, for joining us today and sharing your incredible stories, insights and expertise.

911
02:02:20,300 --> 02:02:36,300
So to our wonderful audience, you can learn more about Nimrod and his work by visiting his website at nimrod-bornstein.com and start listening to his wonderful piano solo and chamber orchestral works on all streaming services.

912
02:02:36,300 --> 02:02:45,300
And of course, thank you to our faithful fans and listeners for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the YouTube channel.

913
02:02:45,300 --> 02:02:55,300
Don't forget to share and review this episode on your social media and tag The Piano Pod. It's one of the best ways to help us grow. And then we'd love to hear your feedback.

914
02:02:55,300 --> 02:03:06,300
For the latest piano news and episodes, be sure to follow The Piano Pod on Substack, TikTok and LinkedIn. I will see you for the next episode of The Piano Pod. Once again, Nimrod, thank you so much.

915
02:03:06,300 --> 02:03:25,300
Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye, everyone.