You can't follow them in the same way that you follow a singer.
As a rule, you have to keep in mind that they need structure.
You can't see them, so they know where the music is.
They need to know where the music is.
In a way, your primary responsibility is a structural responsibility.
Welcome back to the PianoPod.
I am your host, Yukimi Song.
Thanks for tuning in for the second half of Season 3, Episode 15, with a guest, Dr.
Alan Moverman, piano soloist at New York City Ballet.
In Part 2, you will get to hear Alan's take on what makes someone to be the greatest ballet
pianist and what it's like to work with world-renowned dancers and choreographers at New York City
Ballet and more.
Before continuing the show, I want to welcome everybody listening to the PianoPod for the
first time.
I'm a classical pianist and educator from New York City, passionate about creating a
thriving and meaningful community of the classical music industry through this podcast.
Please visit yukimisongsuyu.com to find out more about my work.
In each episode of the PianoPod, I interview a guest speaker who has been breaking exciting
new ground in the industry.
Please rate the show and review it on your favorite podcasting platform because every
rating review will help people find my show.
So my friends, here is Part 2 of the PianoPod, Season 3, Episode 15, with Alan Moverman.
Please enjoy the show.
Harold Boss Gordon, who was probably one of the great ballet pianists in history, Gordon
Belsner, was Balanchine's kind of right-hand man.
He was the man at the piano when Balanchine choreographed all the masterpieces, Nutcracker,
well not Nutcracker, but he was a little after that time, but all these Stravinsky, you know,
it was Gordon, Stravinsky, and Balanchine sitting in the room.
What makes them, these people, the great ballet pianists and soloists?
Well, the music we do is really hard.
So you kind of have to be a concert-level pianist to play here, more or less.
I mean, that doesn't mean you're András Schiff, but you have to have gone pretty far,
you know, played big recitals.
And so Gordon was a wonderful pianist.
That was the start.
He was supremely gifted, beautiful sound, you know, warm, approachable, fantastic technique,
you know, immaculate kind of musical thinking.
He was a student of Michelangelo, and also, but in a way, something that is maybe a little
like me in a certain way, he was a composition student of John Cage.
Wow.
So he had like this kind of funky, creative, cool aspect to him that opened him up, you
know.
He would talk about David Lynch movies, and you know, all these, he had all these interests
that were so interesting.
And so he was an amazing pianist, but he was also like a wide-ranging person.
And he never would have been satisfied, I don't think, with just struggling with, you
know, fine-tuning his Beethoven sonata.
I don't think that was his, you know, he wanted to be more with people, I think.
And that, I think you have to be not so, maybe not so single-minded about piano.
But to play here, you have to start with being basically concert-level pianist.
I mean, one of our pianists now, Steve Gosling, he's probably one of the ten greatest performers
of contemporary music in the world.
He's incredible.
I mean, he, you know, he has like 30 records, and you know, he's played all, you know,
this impossible music.
Wow.
You know, Edis and crazy stuff, you know, Stockhausen, all the stuff.
And we've had really Susan Walters, who was one of our pianists, she's a fantastic pianist,
Elaine Chelton.
So anyway, you have to be a good pianist, but then you have to have this little, you
have to be a good musician.
If you have to choose between the two, it's probably better to be a little bit, if you
can even divide these things, which is hard, a little better musician than you are a pianist.
Wow.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You have to care more about the music than you care about being Mr. Perfect, which is
kind of a relief in a certain way.
If you think about it, it's, music is fun.
It sounds like also being musician requires more flexibility, versatility.
It's not just about what's on the score, but you also have to read the room, what's going
on on the, you know, exactly.
Read the room is a really good skill.
Read the room is saying a lot.
I was thinking about that yesterday in my rehearsal, because I was playing Serenade
and I was thinking, oh, well, the ballet rehearsal director said, oh, it's too, it's too fast.
They're just remembering it.
But it's hard because I was at this part in the music, which I have trouble playing.
And so I was like, is it me or is it...
Which happens every day.
So at that point, you have to make a decision.
You have to decide, am I going to slow down my tempo?
Or if I'm going to slow tempo, you also have to a little bit ask yourself, was I actually
wrong or were they wrong?
It's important to keep your sense, your center, you know, like you can change for them, but
still think they were wrong.
It wasn't too fast.
Maybe it wasn't too fast.
Maybe the answer, because sometimes they get behind, you know, they're doing fine for a
while, then they are to have trouble with the step and they're like, oh, it's too fast.
So what are you then if she's like, oh, maybe I rush, you know, and they can say you're
rushing when you're sometimes you're not rushing.
Sometimes you are.
Right.
Yeah.
Pianist, pianist, we all tend to rush.
Yes.
Yeah.
Now, in your bio, you are saying that you worked with this amazing, the most celebrated
choreographers such as Alexei Ratmansky, Jerome Robbins, Justin Peck, and all the wonderful,
wonderful choreographers.
So even I know of, I've heard of Jerome Robbins, the name, and also he did the choreograph
for West Side Story.
So you worked with him.
Can you tell us how was it like to work with this amazing choreographer?
Well, I mean, all right, I have to say I worked with him at the very end of his life and I
don't think I really experienced the full Jerry Robbins.
He was famously hard to work with and critical, you know, unbelievably critical, apparently.
It was a different time.
It was an old school.
I'm sure things that were done in those days would not have been done the same way now.
But by the time I worked with him, he just left me alone because I don't think he had
enough energy to bother with me.
And you know, I was the pianist for, or one of the two pianists for choreographing his
last ballet, which was Brandenburg.
And I also worked with him on a couple other pieces, but that was my main experience as
to movements from several Brandenburg concertos and a couple other pieces, I think, that aren't
in Brandenburg concertos.
So I don't have any of the great stories.
You can read biography and tell the great stories, but he was famously difficult.
But the only funny thing I remember, I remember two really funny things about him.
One was that, you know, to give you an idea of how I stacked up in his hierarchy of people
in his life, even though I spent, you know, probably 30 hours with the guy, he'd just
say, hey, you play.
And so I play, you know, and apparently thought I was okay.
He told the people on the fourth floor that he's okay.
I was I had only just started.
I think I had only I think I had only played for four months.
Then I rehearsed another couple things.
Suite of Dances, I played the which is actually a Bach cello suites, but we rehearsed it on
piano and then we brought in Wendy Sutter to play it.
At that time, it was Wendy.
Now it's Ann Kim a lot.
So that was funny.
But I remember I had one moment with him where he was sitting at the piano next to me on
the stage of the theater here.
We're at the Koch Theater here.
And he was just playing some notes and he just started reminiscing how he used to play
the piano.
And it was it was kind of sweet.
He was in his mid 70s then.
And I don't think he quite made 80.
I'm not sure.
But people he was a stressful guy, but obviously a genius.
I think I should say for the people who aren't ballet fans but might be interested in going
and checking out, he had he created a special kind of intimacy on stage between the piano
and the dancers in his piano ballets, in particular, the Chopin, also this Tchaikovsky piece.
It's really hard to define, but you kind of have to see it.
But it was like this this kind of very almost quiet theatrical space that you'd feel between
the solo pianist and the dancers.
I think it had a lot to do with the fact that one of his I know this for a fact that one
of his inspirations was the ballet studio itself.
So the connection I'm sure you felt being playing for dance classes at some point, anyone
who's played knows that there can be a special quality in the room.
And he was able to do something like that with these Chopin pieces.
What was interesting is they often had no set.
They were often just dancers on stage and piano kind of pared down, you know, and had
a particular quality.
And even in the fast pieces like, I forget it.
But just it was very special.
It was very, very special, different, totally different than Balanchine.
All choreographers have a different relationship with music.
Some people illustrate the music more like bleed the audience to understand the music.
Some composers respond to the music with their own.
How do I?
OK, here's the music.
How do I feel about this?
This thing I'm confronting like so they could have beautiful music and they could even express
something angry sometimes.
Maybe they're like, well, I didn't get any of that.
Let's talk about New York City Ballet.
How exciting is that this ballet company is?
And you've been working for them for 20 years, 28 years, 28, I think.
And what's so special about this ballet company?
Well, it's just I mean, it's just got a lot of great dancers.
You know, I mean, you know, it's it's the top or one of the very tops.
And they're just wonderful.
And that's that's the main thing.
And then we've had the best choreographers here.
I mean, there are other great choreographers, but we've had probably the main ones.
Robin's Balanchine, Complete Genius.
I mean, Balanchine without without Balanchine, a lot of those Stravinsky scores, in my view,
don't even really work.
One of the most interesting things about Balanchine, there are a lot of interesting things, but
there's some music that almost needs the dance and not right of spring and not really Petrushka.
But you get Stravinsky post 1930.
The dance helps.
It helps you without the dance.
There's something about it that I mean, why didn't great orchestras not play all that
music?
Very rare to hear even a performance of Symphony in Three Movements.
It's an exciting piece, dramatic, hardly ever.
We play it here.
When you see it with the dance, you know, it puts you right back into the you know,
you're there in World War Two and the boats are floating around the Pacific and, you know,
there's bombs flying and you know, it just helps.
But it's not somehow Stravinsky sometimes is not enough.
It's like there's something suggested that maybe is not fully realized.
But it's great.
It's great stuff.
We do tons and tons.
I can't tell you Stravinsky pieces.
But how many how many programs do you have at New York City Ballet?
Well, I mean, different seasons are different.
Right, right.
I mean, and you know, believe it or not, we used to do seasons regularly with 50 ballets,
50 full length ballets a season.
Oh, my goodness.
I mean, it was insane.
You know, that that also had to do with the fact that, you know, the subscribers wanted
to see the great Balanchine Ballets.
They were just hungry to see them.
And some of them honestly were sometimes like kind of thrown on.
You know, they you know, the dance, our dancers are really fast.
I've sat in the piano room in like Tivoli Concert Hall in Denmark.
You know, someone gets injured.
A principal dancer, Joaquin learned Judicart by Stravinsky, one of the most complicated
Stravinsky scores.
He learned this principal role in five hours and when performed it that night, you know,
and we just we just hacked away at it all afternoon.
You know, he did it.
It was great.
And that happens not infrequently.
Too much repertoire, but but tons and tons and tons of great stuff.
I mean, you should see you should see the music cabinet in the music room.
I should bring you into the music room and just take out the scores.
You know, what's there would just I mean, you know, there's vibrant scores.
You know, there's scores by all these great living composers are like, you know, ten Philip
Glass scores there.
You know, there's I just can't even tell you there's you know, John Adams was here for
a while.
We play like I think we play five John Adams scores.
I play often Howlwoolie Junction for two pianos.
You should play it if you like that sort of thing.
It's really one of his best pieces.
It's really fantastic, fun and beautiful.
We do fearful symmetries.
We do harmony, harmony, we are huge pieces.
And you know, like, for example, we play fearful symmetries.
We play it on the piano in the rehearsals.
I mean, I haven't played it in 15 years.
But I you know, for the you know, 30 minutes of John Adams, you know, it gets really hard
by so many different repertoire that you that you are using in the ballet.
That's fun.
It's fun.
If you're if you're that kind of musician, you should definitely work here.
You should definitely and and and if you're if you're someone who just likes music and
is has a lot of facility at the piano and like it's you know, they need you.
These days, people get really like piano is so hard and people really get into their box.
And and I know that the new generations are expanding a lot.
Even a lot of classical musicians improvise a little bit now.
Oh, yeah.
It's changed.
I mean, it used to be when I was in Juilliard, it was like, holy, holy cow, you know, it's
unbelievable, you know.
You know, like you just you know, every practice room, you know, right.
People are trying to get those fingers moving.
And yeah, it's good.
You know, if that's what you want to do, great.
Right.
And but I think we need to talk about how we're going to bring this industry forward.
Right.
So then especially this post pandemic era and then you mentioned as pianists, we tend
to be in the room practicing all the time and not communicating with others, not collaborating
with others.
But that sort of culture has to change.
I know we have to practice on our own.
But your job, your career is all about working with others, working with people in the people.
And that's something that I want to encourage new generations to experience.
And, you know, don't just get stuck in a practice room all day, but experience the life.
And that's how you experience music, too.
I completely agree.
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Let's continue with the episode.
So let's talk about your career and life outside of New York City Ballet.
So you have this ongoing project with a painter.
Her name is Karen.
Capke.
Well years ago I decided to focus my energies outside the ballet, my energies that had to
do with me as a recitalist.
I decided to focus it on late works, pieces that composers wrote toward the end of their
lives.
And I was inspired by a book called Late Style by Edward Said who's a philosopher, was a
philosopher at Columbia and was very famous in that field.
He was also a friend of Daniel Berenbaum.
He was very involved with Israeli-Palestinian issues.
In fact that was I think the basis of how they got together because Daniel Berenbaum
was Israeli and Said was Palestinian.
I think that he may have had to do with the founding of this east-west orchestra that
exists where they have Palestinians and Israelis play together.
They've done shows around the world.
Anyway he's very interesting and he wrote about Lake Beethoven and Lake Strauss and
Lake Mozart.
So my project is to learn and perform the last three Beethoven sonatas, the last three
Schubert sonatas and the Prokofiev War sonatas but I don't like the sixth sonata that much.
Oh no.
So I'm not going to do it.
I don't think I'm going to do it.
And so I substitute the Copland Piano Fantasy which is a very late Copland work and always
meant a lot to me.
So based on those pieces and surrounding them with lots of other pieces, late Ligeti etudes,
late Arvo Peric pieces, Philip Glass etudes are fairly late.
I play those.
So that's the music part of the project.
And then Karen created paintings as a result of our conversations about the music.
And we've done three of these recitals slash art exhibitions.
You can see when you hear me playing the Copland Fantasy you can see there are people sitting
on the right and left of me and there are paintings behind them.
And then in back of the piano is a projection of the painting that is the Copland Piano
Fantasy painting.
But the other paintings actually were from other parts of the recital and had been projected
onto the wall, onto the screen.
You know when I played the other pieces I played a Bach piece and I played Opus 111
and even a Bill Evans transcription, a transcription of Jazz solo and she painted that as well.
So, that's a perfect example of what we did.
So we did that in different places.
You know three recitals, they're very complicated to put together.
Especially as most musicians know when you do these things.
My job is at New York City Ballet, it's very satisfying but when I do these other things
there's no management, there's no stage manager to greet me.
There's no one to make my programs.
You have to embrace it if you want to do those things and I have.
I get inspired by, maybe this is too heady, but there was a great conceptual artist named
Christo.
He died recently, maybe you know him.
He made environmental art, I think they called it that, something like that.
It's kind of a silly name.
But years ago he made something called the gates in Central Park.
I think maybe before you were born.
But I mean my daughter was like two when we did it.
What he did is all the paths of Central Park there were like these kind of curtains that
fell over the path and these little metal constructions and they were orange.
It was very beautiful and it was through the whole park and he did this all over the place.
He did it in the mountains of California, he did it in Japan, different things.
He was really great and he said that the thing that interested him was how he had to work
through the bureaucracy to get the permits.
It wasn't just the art, it was about the process of producing the art.
So I like to think when I get depressed that I have to call too many people on the phone,
when I do my own projects, I like to think idealistically that you're really in the world.
You're finding out how things work.
You're relating to people, you're talking to secretaries, you're talking to heads of
opera, opera America, you've got to be personable.
You want to work together with them and enter these other worlds that are a little more
cut and dry.
So it's a challenge but it's an interesting challenge.
You know ultimately if we can't operate in the world, no matter how high our ideals,
it's very important to be able to operate in the world in a way that's consistent with
your values, not to sell out but as an act of connection and even being generous to yourself.
You want to feel that you're connected and you have a meaningful way of interacting with
colleagues, with your bosses.
All these things are really important and I do think that, and maybe I get this a little
bit from Gil Kalish because Gil Kalish was like super, super mensch, super great guy.
He was a musician but everyone said, oh Gil, he's like a regular guy.
But he was very, you could tell that he paid a lot of attention to people and that was
the main thing he taught us.
It's not just about you and your piano playing, it's about more than that and your life and
that's a really important thing.
No matter who you are, no matter where your gift placed you, you want to have a good life
and generally it makes it easier to communicate something so precious if you have, if your
environment is fulfilled in a way, full.
Absolutely and then you're really living the beautiful life surrounded by people and then
surrounded by beautiful art and now, do you plan to do this project with the painter,
Karen, soon?
I think we might be done with the paintings actually.
Now I'm looking for, maybe you know somebody, I'm looking for actors to recite poetry and
probably I'll bring it all together but I, you know, this is one of my things is what
I was talking about, about dance is that I think when there's another medium that's set
against music, it helps the audience.
You know I'm very frustrated because I like some very esoteric music like Beethoven and
stuff but I want the audience to get it.
I want them to enjoy it.
I don't want them to go, oh that sounds really complicated.
And so when they have a painting or like in the Copeland or in the Beethoven, they have
this painting of what I think is a picture of a kind of feminist message actually of
disturbance.
You know it's somehow, it helps the audience.
They connect, oh this is disturbing.
It's not beautiful, it's beautiful in its disturbingness.
You know and so they see a painting, in other art forms people understand that but sometimes
people they just want everything to be beautiful.
Yeah everything to be pretty, right?
Pretty.
Yeah pretty, yes.
We want to stay away from prettiness.
Well a little prettiness is okay, you know like foray has a lot of prettiness but on
a high level.
But sometimes we need grotesque in beauty, right?
Absolutely, otherwise nothing means anything.
Otherwise there is no beauty.
And that's what's great about collaborating with other art forms, so you get it.
And it's just such a damn relief too because it's like you know you just you want to play
these solo pieces but you know you're not, most of us are not famous pianists you know
who get to play them many many times.
You want to make it special for yourself and you want to make it an event for your audience.
Otherwise it's just it's not fun.
It's just yeah yeah absolutely.
Thank you for really sharing your wisdom.
So I want to promote New York City Ballet and is there anything that you want to say
about upcoming events or program?
Well we're having the spring season coming up that starts in April, late April.
The great thing about New York City Ballet now is we have gotten Alexey Ratmansky as
our artist in residence.
Alexey is you know along with Justin Peck who's really amazing.
He actually did the new West Side Story movie.
He was a choreographer.
But Alexey is arguably the greatest choreographer of our time in my opinion and in a lot of
people think that he is so great.
He is just so great and he also choreographs really great music to really like Shostakovich
concertos and things.
And we are just so fortunate to have him coming here.
You know this is the company of Balanchine and Robbins and Alexey is a really and Justin
too but Alexey is I mean getting him is just a wonderful thing for everyone.
The dancers in particular they love working with great choreographers like Justin and
Alexey.
They just love it.
You know it's like when you worked with your greatest piano teacher ever you know like
Leanne Fleischer or whoever you played for you know like that's the way they feel when
they're in the studio with Alexey.
And that's what you want them to have.
You want that for them.
So for those who are listening and watching please visit www.nycballet.com to learn more
about New York City Ballet and their programs and their new season coming up in late April.
So this has been really fun and inspiring conversation Alan and I unfortunately I have
to let you go very soon because your rehearsal is coming up.
But before I let you go we have one more thing to do.
It's called the piano part rapid fire questions.
I didn't warn you but this is part of the show where I get to ask fun questions to each
guest.
Here's a little warning as silly as these questions may sound your answers may reveal
who you truly are.
So yes I'm good at hiding that.
Okay good.
So please answer them with the shortest responses as possible and no yes no explanation needed
okay.
Oh God.
All right.
So question number one what is your comfort food.
The restaurant across the way from us it's a kind of African influenced restaurant in
the new renovated David Geth mall.
Anything they have there is my comfort food.
Great I need to try I need to try that.
Now how do you like your coffee.
With half and half and no sugar.
Sounds great.
Or in Starbucks what do they say a light splash.
Cats or dogs.
Both.
What is your word or words to live by.
Freedom.
What is the most important quality you look for in other people.
Understanding.
Name three people who inspire you living or dead.
Abraham Lincoln Schubert Rappmansky.
Sounds good.
Name one piece in your current playlist.
Or a Silver Song for my father.
It's a jazz.
So last question fill in the blank.
Music is blank.
Fulfillment.
Yay ding ding ding you won.
Thank you so much Alan for really joining here today.
Thank you.
You keep me I really appreciate the opportunity to share these things with you and and I hope
that you know everyone will find a good path for themselves either as professional musicians
or transforming that dream into something beautiful.
Well said.
So this concludes the episode of the piano part.
Thank you once again Alan for joining my show today and sharing your stories and insights
and expertise and you can find more information about New York City Ballet.
Please visit NYC Ballet dot com.
Thank you to my wonderful audience and fans for tuning in.
If you enjoyed today's episode please rate and review it on whatever podcasting platform
you use.
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The links are listed in the show notes.
I will see you for the next episode of the piano part.
Bye everyone and thank you Alan.