Thank you. That was Sinding's Russell of Spring
and it was performed by Sir Stephen Hough on
his new album, Piano Postcards, on the Hyperion
Records label. I'm Erica Worth and welcome to
this Pianist Podcast episode. I'll be speaking
to Stephen about his choice of repertoire for
the album and much more. Stephen, it's great
to have you on the podcast today. Thank you,
Erica. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you
so much. Firstly, we're here to talk about your
new album, Piano Postcards, which I don't think
is actually out yet till early July. If you could
tell us a bit about it and the tracks that are
coming out now and then and the whole vision
behind the album. Well, I've always, you know,
the earliest records that I owned as a little
boy were records of little individual pieces.
The very first record was called Clive Lithgow
Plays. And in fact, it had a number of tracks
on that I've recorded myself subsequently. The
most important record I ever owned as a child
was one called Keyboard Giants of the Past with
Rachmaninoff and Courtauld and Paderewski and
all of these great artists that have been my
most important inspiration. the years so very
early in my recording career i guess in the mid
80s i made a record called piano album and then
i did piano album two and that became a double
disc and then i did the new piano album and then
the english piano spanish and the french and
the mozart album and then a dream album well
this is really the last in a long line of these
things i must have recorded hundreds of these
little tracks And, you know, the great pianists
from the turn of the 19th, 20th century up to
the Second World War always had these interesting
encore pieces in their repertoire. And they were
often written by themselves. I mean, at that
very height, someone like Rachmaninoff, but also
Godofsky and then later Earl Wilde and so on.
And I've always had a fascination for these pieces
that reveal something of the character of the
pianist who is playing and who wrote them. And
so I thought, well, let's do another one. And
we got a bit tired of the album tag. So it's
actually someone at Hyperion came up with this
idea of picture postcards because there are pieces
from all over the world on this record. And it's
a kind of a cute idea that I'm, you know, in
Taiwan and I send a postcard home and it's the
famous Taiwanese song Pining for the Spring Breeze
arranged in the style of Rachmaninoff. I actually
did this as an encore after Rachmaninoff's fourth.
I mean, it sounds amazing. That track is incredible.
Well, it starts like the G major prelude and
everyone thinks that's what's going to happen.
And then suddenly the tune doesn't come in, but
you hear this, the pentatonic tune of the Taiwanese
song. So, yeah, it's really, it's the world of
the encore, really. That's interesting. I mean,
there's such a wonderful range. My goodness,
it's about how many tracks? 26 tracks in total.
um you know from your standard Rachmaninoff to
and oh McDowell to a Wild Rose and then some
composers I'd never heard of such as Matthew
Wilder and Malcolm Williamson oh beautiful pieces
by there oh thank you well Malcolm Williamson
was one of those on that very first LP and when
I say you know it means a lot to me because we
had literally no classical music in the house
at all And so when I started piano lessons, at
my insistence, my parents said, no, we're not
buying you a piano. Eventually they bought the
cheapest one they could find, which was five
pounds from an antique shop in Stockton Heath,
Cheshire. And I started lessons. This was the
first record they bought. And on this record
was so many pieces that I had subsequently learned.
So I can pinpoint a moment. Most people have
music around them and parents are playing things
and the radio has Radio 3. Classic FM. But I
really know the exact moment when I first got
to know about music. And this Williamson was
on there. So I knew this piece before I knew
anything by Mozart, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Brahms.
All these, I knew these names were, I didn't
know them at all, but I knew Malcolm Williamson.
So there we are. That is incredible. Really,
that's incredible. And then you've got your arrangements
from Mary Poppins, which are so divine. Well,
these were, of course, a Lang Lang commission.
Lang Lang did this album for DG during the pandemic,
his Disney album. And he was in touch and wanted
Disney arrangements. And so I actually, in the
end, did 12 for him. And six of them are on this
record because there are the three pieces from
Mary Poppins. And then there's also Do You Want
to Build a Snowman from Frozen. uh there is the
reflection from mulan and then remember me from
coco now those last three i'd never heard these
before i knew that about the show frozen but
then when someone suggested well what about remember
me i said oh what's that so i went to youtube
and i saw that there was like 700 million views
of this i thought well obviously i've been left
out of this And then, of course, it's a beautiful,
lovely, sentimental tune. And I did that arrangement.
Some of them were very specific. They wanted,
first of all, always classical. I think, in fact,
Lang Lang had heard my arrangements of Richard
Rogers that I did decades ago. And he liked this
idea of having arrangements done in a classical
style. Yes. And I tried, well, Chim Chim Cherie
is really in the style of Rachmaninoff. and um
you know also i think the uh the reflection from
mulan has that kind of there's some wc there's
some rachmaninoff in there so i wanted to do
that and actually with the remember me they wanted
a very straightforward simple version so it really
is what's on the tin i have a little counter
melody that I wrote above the melody for verse
two and then there's one harmonic shift which
is a little nod to Richard Strauss sort of shifting
by a semitone into an inharmonically weird place
I just allowed myself that little fingerprint
on there but basically it's a simple arrangement
of a very beautiful song amazing amazing and
yet and then there are also obviously Many an
encore, but, you know, many of your favourite
encores like that Sibelius Etude in A minor,
which is just wonderful. And something that was
new to me was the, wait a minute, the Passepied
by Delibes. Aha, well, that was on the LP Keyboard
Giants of the Past that my parents bought for
me, played by Gabriela Lovic, exquisitely played.
And I've loved that piece always. uh so yeah
i i recorded that and also on that um lp was
the libis light um of rahman of course very famous
a lot of people played that um it's one of my
favorite tracks of piano playing ever his performance
on that record of that piece to me i don't think
anyone's ever played the piano more extraordinary
than that three minutes that he recorded in i
think 1923 um you know here we are 100 years
later and it still hasn't been bettered No, oh
no, you're absolutely right. I mean, back to
the Delibes, I was thinking of putting that in
Pianist magazine. Is that a challenging piece?
I looked at the score very, very quickly. No,
it's very, well, everything is impossibly difficult,
isn't it, Eric, as you know, but if we're being
honest between ourselves and not for the audience
listening, no, it's not a very difficult piece.
In fact, I don't even know the original. It's
from one of the ballets, I think. It is, but
I think it's his arrangement, isn't it? Yeah,
I think so. And it's very straightforward and
very beautiful. And his last verse takes it in
an interesting harmonic direction, which I like
those little sort of twists. Exactly. Oh, OK.
I might feature that in the magazine quite soon.
I love the fact that you've got quite a bit of
Chaminade on there. wonderful chaminade she was
also very much part her autumn was on this lp
of clive lithgow it was right there from the
beginning and then my piano teacher heather slade
lipkin her mother um played piano as well and
she i can only ever remember her playing chaminade
she would play all these pieces of chaminade
so again i knew these before i knew a lot of
things and she played the takata You know, I
can even at these now, we're talking, it's not
far, it's 50 something years ago. And I can still
see the way her hands lifted up from the keys
when she played those staccatos. You know, certain
things when you're a child are indelible. They
just stick. And it's Auntie Joan playing the
Chaminade staccato. Isn't that remarkable? But
Chaminade wasn't even that well known back then,
was she? Well, she was in our household. She's
always been part of my... And I played Autumn
when I was like eight years old. And I've played
it a lot since last season. I was opening my
recital program with it. And it's a gorgeous
tune. I mean, she writes with fantastic finesse
and such a sense of the keyboard and what works
well. It sounds harder than it is usually, which
is always a nice thing. But she was, yeah, she
was an absolute expert in writing for the instrument.
Amazing. And another one that you most probably
learned when you were quite young because it's
so well known is Sinding's Russell of Spring.
I didn't actually. I sort of vamped through it.
I never learned it. I never played it in a concert
until a few years ago. And I was just thinking
of doing it again. I've always liked it very
much as a piece. It was in everyone's piano bench,
wasn't it? If you had an aunt or a grandmother
or something who played the piano, Sinding was
there. So, yeah, I learned it just a few years
ago. Oh, it's so wonderful. Well, I mean, this
album. I mean, when you say you started learning
at the age of eight, Autumn, that's incredible.
I mean, you must have been quite a pianist at
the age of eight then. I had a quick start. You
know, once I started learning, I was absorbing
it very, very quickly. I had these years in my
teens, early teens, particularly when I lost
interest in the piano and was not working very
hard. And I'd sort of written about a lot of
this in my memoir enough in case anyone wants
to find out. more but um i'm just looking at
the list myself here now nature boy which is
a song from nat king cole of course that i've
always loved that was an idea of igor levitt
we were talking during the pandemic and we spoke
about various things and he said wow i'd i'd
kill for an arrangement of nature boys so i don't
know whether he has killed yet anyway this is
this will be the first recording and i wanted
to take this also in a slightly different direction
because already the harmonies are quite um chromatic
really it's it's a very unusual pop song it seems
a lot more than a pop song in a way so i've taken
some of the implications of those harmonies and
take them a little further down the same road
goodness that's amazing and have you have you
played it or shown igor levitt the score Well,
he's got a copy of the score. I will send him
a track when it's out and he can hear it there,
yes. So it's embargoed. Almost, I mean. Oh, that's
fantastic. And I mean, all these countries and
all these composers and the name of the album
being Piano Postcards. And that's all, it's to
do with you travelling around the world, all
four continents. And it wasn't. 100 % on my mind
when I was assembling the record, but it's just
when the record came together and we looked at
it and thought, what are we going to call this?
It just seemed to be this almost like a travelogue.
Okay. I mean, and you yourself, you travel so
much. When we touched base last week, you said
you'd had an utterly insane week. Tell us about
your week last week. Well, it was insane. months
ago when it was planned because I was playing
Rachmaninoff third this week, Rachmaninoff first
next week and the Emperor and a recital program
all within about two weeks and then my management
said that Yefim Bronfman had cancelled in Berlin
and they wondered if I could go and play Brahms
too. Well that is a piece that I've played since
I was quite young and so it's one of those pieces
that that comes back quicker than most. And I
thought, well, I haven't played a concerto in
Berlin for a few years. Okay, why not? Let's
do it. So I played on the Tuesday, the Rachmaninoff
Third, and then flew on Wednesday to rehearse.
And we rehearsed Wednesday and Thursday. Friday
morning, we had a sort of run through. Then Friday
lunchtime, I flew back to London because I'd
agreed to do the Barnsbury Book Festival. and
it's quite a small thing it's their first year
but they were going to do an interview with me
about my memoir and um and it looked like i could
do this so i came back i did that and then i
went right back to gatwick spent the night in
a hotel at gatwick that same day and then took
the seven o 'clock easy jet to berlin the next
morning having had about four hours sleep i'm
pretty much straight into the dress rehearsal
fortunately i i do sleep quite well so I had
a very light lunch of some not very richly dressed
fish and I got into bed and I slept for a couple
of hours. got up again had a nice hot shower
and then went over and played Brahms too and
then I'm back yesterday and now I have Rachmaninoff
1 coming up tomorrow so that's in Scotland the
Royal Scottish National Orchestra with John Wilson
lovely so I don't tell them that I had all this
going on because they might be worried that I
wasn't concentrating enough on repertoire for
them but you know It's not always as crazy as
that, but this week has been. And then I'm back
to Berlin actually a week today to do this recital
there that was also planned a while ago. But
all this big repertoire, especially the concertos,
how do you find the time to practice for the
next concert? Or it's so much in your fingers
that you don't need to do that much? Well, I
do find that... If I'm playing Brahms II, I might
be warming up with Rachmaninoff III, let me put
it like that, because I don't like, actually,
to play the piece I'm about to play on stage
too much. but in the dressing room because i
it's partly superstition i sort of feel that
it may get stale or i feel that i might find
some area that i goes wrong in in the in the
practice room and then i think oh my goodness
it's going to go wrong again so i like to get
rid of all that sort of neurosis and just it's
really a matter of getting the fingers working
yeah i wouldn't want to practice something like
recommend enough you know just minutes before
going to play mozart let's say partly because
the whole spirit and psychology is completely
different. And also because the way you use your
arm and fingers is completely different. So actually
warming up for Mozart with Rachmaninoff is not
really going to make you very warmed up for Mozart.
The other way can work. So I have practiced Mozart
backstage before playing Rachmaninoff. I don't
know why that's the case, but I just found it
was easier to... to lift up to that to the more
muscular form than it is to come down from the
heavy form to the left yeah but you know these
concertos become our friends and we we travel
with them all the time and you know i've been
playing for decades now and many concertos of
course become part of your repertoire so you're
playing them sometimes every season I think Brahms'
First has been a piece I've played pretty much
every season. Certainly one of the Rachmaninoffs,
the Paganini Rhapsody, I've played a tremendous
amount. And so, yeah, you know, it's what I say
to young people who, you know, thinking of careers,
it's the concertos that matter. Although when
you're studying at college, you're learning all
the solo repertoire, the reality of it, when
you get out there, it's going to be probably
70 % concertos. 30 % recitals and it's what I
did this past week the stepping in for somebody
who's ill now this was just a bit of a luxury
for me but at the beginning of a career that
is the way that many people get started We've
mentioned Lang Lang. It's exactly what happened
to him. Someone cancelled in Chicago, in Ravinia,
for Tchaikovsky I. He got a phone call. He went
out. He played. It was a huge success. And he's
never looked back since. I mean, he did not go
the competition route. And that happens for many
people. It happened for me at the Hollywood Bowl,
actually. home in Manchester. It was Paganini
Rhapsody. I think it was Pog... Was it Pogarelic?
Maybe not. It was somebody who cancelled. Could
I go out? And I think I had to leave the next
day. And it was Charles Groves, interestingly.
And I'd never played... Well, I played... a couple
of concerts in America. But so I flew to Los
Angeles, absolutely, you know, the jet lag, one
rehearsal, Hollywood Bowl. But it went well and
they asked me back and the manager of the orchestra
there was very, had a lot of connections all
over the country and he spoke to people and they
spoke to people. And so really, you know, I'm
going to America next week to Atlanta and Cincinnati
and it all really comes from that moment of stepping
in. at the Hollywood Bowl and the sort of snowball
that happened of the career along the way. But
it would have been no good to say, well, I don't
play the Ragini Rhapsody, but I do play, I've
got a wonderful recital program with the Wollstein
and the, you know, Chopin, Ballard. Well, no,
it has to be that concerto. Oh, my goodness.
same thing happened in in chicago downtown with
the orchestra a few years later someone cancelled
for bartok 3 can you do it i happened to be i'd
learned it very thoroughly or it was all fingered
in my school that's something else i've spoken
about right in your fingerings because it takes
you half the amount of time to get the piece
back from nothing because you start already it's
like cooking in a restaurant. If you've got something
half ready, you can do that dish. If you're going
to do a pie and you've not even got the pastry
rolled out, you won't be able to do it in the
restaurant because it will take 40 minutes and
the guests will have left without paying the
bill. That is so interesting, Stephen. I like
the way you brought up fingering because I think
the hardest thing or the most frightening thing
to do is to change your fingering at the last
minute. Yes, and it can be very annoying if you
suddenly find a great fingering that you'd not
realised before. Well, it sort of happened in
the Brahms this week. There was a fingering that
I'd not thought of before and I did change it.
And actually it worked better on this occasion.
But I believe passionately in fingering because
I think when you learn a piece, deciding the
fingering you're going to do is part of that
learning process. It's actually... just to play
it and sight read it until it kind of feels okay
and then it's ready to go on stage. No, I think
you begin, for me anyway, by this. And I love
it. I love this sense of what are the possibilities?
You know, we have 10 fingers. What are the possibilities?
How can we make it, well, either easier to play,
clearer to play, more musically right? There
are some fingerings which are more awkward, but
actually which give you the musical message.
And there are certain moments, there's one moment
in the Chopin ballade, the fourth ballade, it
just means altering one finger, and the passage
which often goes wrong, never goes wrong. So
it's one finger. And I really, I love that sort
of thing, and I think this is what students...
should be encouraged to do and write it in because
believe me 24 years after you've played a piece
you come back to you will not remember the fingerings
you did whereas if they're written in you step
right back into the seat and you can get going
that is great advice there wow i'd love to know
what that fingering is well next time we meet
oh so it sounds like you really really like to
travel oh i hate traveling erica no i do actually
i i don't like the physical act of you know i
spent my teenage years again this book i wrote
about it in my bedroom you know listening to
pop records and burning joysticks and doing yoga
on the floor without any clothes on i sort of
feel like that was the high point of my life
and i often think back to those that bedroom
painted purple in the 1970s and i sort of I'm
very shy, you see, really. So in a way, this
life is, I've learned how to overcome it. And
I've learned how to fake it when I can't overcome
it. But I'm a very private person in a way. And
so going out onto the stage, I love sharing this
music with people. But I don't love the sort
of vulnerability always that comes from that.
I mean, you are putting yourself, well, first
of all, you're putting your emotions out for
everyone to manhandle, you know, if that's the
word. And also, you know, you're sort of putting
yourself in a position of being tested, aren't
you? Because the virtuoso repertoire, it's a
bit like being a high wire act. And so it's both,
it's the emotional vulnerability and the technical
vulnerability. And there are times when I rather
wish I were at home watching a box set, you know.
Of course, don't we all? But maybe then you prefer
the recording studio. No, I hate that too. Well,
recording is wonderful when it's going well.
So on the day when you're in the studio and you're
feeling like you're playing at your best and
you're getting takes down and you think, well,
I can't do better than that. That is a wonderful
feeling because you know it's being preserved.
It's like sort of, you know, your legacy in some
sort of way. but my goodness that's you know
one out of a hundred takes it feels like that
and you just sometimes hardly know how to play
a c major scale because you become neurotic you
start focusing on the wrong things you start
obsessing about details you go back to listen
to a take and you think it went badly so you're
expecting it to be bad and you hear the bad things
you hear what you don't do but what you might
have done and so Again, that's another technique.
You have to learn to let go and realize that
even a terrible take, you can do another one,
at least in solo recordings. There's time and
you need a producer who has the right psychology.
It's very important. You want a producer who
is encouraging but isn't full of BS. You don't
want to play your worst and go in and she says,
oh, that was incredible. When you know it was
rubbish. yeah but you also don't want someone
to say well that was rubbish because you know
it and you don't want to be reminded of it so
it's it's it's a balance really um but i i'm
glad that i've you know i've done over 70 albums
now over the years and i'm i'm glad i've done
them i would feel that if i hadn't done those
everything would have slipped through my fingers
a bit like sand you know and i wouldn't have
anything to show for it whereas i do at least
have those and you know that they'll outlive
me if in in some form or other i imagine it's
amazing i mean when did you start out with hyperion
i mean that would have been in the early 90s
and i had this contract with virgin and i did
oh what i don't know about 10 albums for virgin
and then they were bought by EMI and I wasn't
part of the new regime's plan so I basically
had nothing to no recordings and actually at
that time since the late 80s early 90s it was
really essential to make recordings it's not
in the same way now because we've got youtube
and we've got other ways to get to people we
can release our own albums on spotify and you
know with the right promotion they can have more
clicks than on a major label yeah but then you
needed cds in the shops so i mike spring had
always been in touch asking about whether i'd
like to do something for hyperion at the point
i was doing the stuff for for virgin that wasn't
really possible So I went to see him and he said,
well, we'd love you to do something in our Romantic
Concerto series. Is there anything that comes
to mind? So I have a very close friend in Chicago
who knows everything about piano literature.
It's incredible. And I said, when I'm there next,
which was in a couple of months, let's go through
some scores and see what's around. So he went
to the Chicago Public Library and we had an absolutely
huge pile of different piano concertos. And we
went to Steinway's downtown and I think it's
called Beautiful Sound, the shop. And we piled
these scores on one side of the piano. We went
through them. One, two, three. And I was getting
a little dispirited because we were down to the
sort of R's. And I wasn't finding anything that
I really loved. And then we had the Sauer Concerto,
the first Sauer Concerto. And I thought, gosh,
this is really beautiful. Very elegant, gorgeous
tunes, beautiful slow movement. So that's a possibility.
So I put that on a different pile. And then the
next one was Scharwenker number four. Or I think
actually he put all four Scharwenkers, but number
four. And I thought, well, this is really a great
piece. Why has this never been recorded? Neither
of them had ever been commercially recorded.
so i mentioned this to mike spring and he actually
said well yes i know about the zower he said
we'd really like zower one and two on the same
album i said no i don't like the second as much
as the first so i persuaded him and so we did
that and then you know that won the gramophone
awards so that was a lovely way to begin with
hyperion then the second uh release was york
bowen Oh, yes. And that was the solo record.
Ted Perry, very resistant. No, I don't want any
more piano music. We've got too much piano music.
And so I said, oh, but York Bowen, you know,
he's a very wonderful English composer. Very
little had been recorded at that point. Most
of it wasn't even published or was out of print.
So I persuaded him and then that did well. And
then so it sort of gathered steam from there
and, you know, to this day. And here I am still
recording for Hyperion 30 years later. I mean,
it's amazing. Long may it continue. And now your
own compositions. Obviously, that's a very big
part of your musical life as well. You've written
numerous piano sonatas and I believe a brand
new second movement for Beethoven's Piano Concerto
No. 3? Well, that was a commission by Omer Meyer
-Welber for the orchestra in Hamburg, the Opera
Orchestra. And he was commissioning composers
in his first season there to write alternate
movements for various famous works. So the Brook
Violin Concerto got a new first movement. Tchaikovsky
Symphony got a new second movement or something.
And he asked me would I like to be part of this.
And so I thought it was a very interesting idea.
What he wanted to do was to create a sense...
with works that are very well known of the unexpected,
much as you would have had when you first heard
the piece back in Vienna in 1800 or whenever
the concerto was first played. So I thought,
okay, and I was thinking what would work. And
I didn't want to do a romantic concerto. I don't
think you could do a second movement for the
Grieg or something. But I thought, well, Beethoven,
it's almost like writing a long cadenza, really.
And so that's what I did. I wrote this second
movement based on material from the concerto,
but reimagined in my own musical language. So
in fact, I played it in Birmingham a month or
so ago, and I'm going to be playing it in Prague
in a couple of months. They actually requested
it, having heard about it. So yeah, I... Has
it been recorded? Obviously not been recorded.
I think it's online, actually. I think the performance
from Hamburg is online. So, yeah, maybe on their
website. Fantastic. But yeah, actually writing
is now becoming very central. And in fact, future
recordings, we're going to release an album of
my four piano sonatas. Great. And also my piano
quintet, which is going to be recorded this summer.
That will go on another album. That was done
for Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society. And
I'm writing a requiem at the moment, but with
the Brahms text, not the Latin church text. And
that really came about just, I was interested
in the psychology of Brahms, sort of an agnostic
Lutheran writing this piece for his mother and
putting together these biblical texts, mainly
from the Jewish scriptures, you know, from the
Psalms and so on. What do you pull together when
you don't really believe, but you want something
that's consoling? And so I find those texts very
beautiful of Brahms and very interesting. It's
more a requiem for the living. It's a requiem
for the bereaved, for those who find it hard
to think of death and losing people and so on.
So I'm working on that. I'm using the same...
instrumentation that Brahms used in the same
number of, and exactly the same text, but in
English, not in German. Okay. There's a, I mean,
you know, quite poignant and sad that, and I
mean, another concerto that sounds quite poignant
and monumental is the World of Yesterday concerto.
Yeah. I mean, that's named after Zweig's monumental
memoir. Yeah. Wow. Oh, there's a long history
to this. So much at the time that I saw you buying
fruit and veg during the pandemic, I got an email
from a film director in Los Angeles that Leonard
Slatkin had suggested my name as someone to write
him a film score. because he was making a movie
about a concert pianist writing a piano concerto
and he wanted someone to write a piano concerto
for this movie. So I got to work on this and
it was all Vienna in the early 1930s and also
the mountains and this crazy baroness brought
this American composer in to write a piano concerto
based on the sketches her sister had left before
her death. And then it all goes wrong because
the woman becomes... psychopathic and she doesn't
like anything that he's writing and locks him
away until he writes something that she likes
anyway the movie never happened in the end but
i i'd started a lot of sketches for it and i
phoned up my manager a year later when everything
had fallen through and i just said well do you
think i i think i've got a concert piece here
i could just you know work with these sketches
and make a piece you know do you think there'd
be any interest and so they put out some feelers
and actually the same day we had a commitment
from utah symphony for the world premiere they
just said absolutely we want this and then the
harley orchestra were interested and then hyperion
said definitely let's let's do it so the whole
thing came together and it's actually i think
about seven orchestras now have done it and i'm
doing it soon in poland and then it will go next
year to düsseldorf and to berlin um So, yeah,
it's sort of taken off a little bit. And it's
great fun because, you know, I'm sort of travelling,
playing my piano concerto in the way that pianist
composers always did. You know, that's what people
wrote piano concertos for themselves to play.
That's what the form, how the form happened.
My goodness, it sounds so interesting. You said
Hyperion was interested, is interested. Is it
coming out on Hyperion? It's there. You can hear
it, Erica. It's on Hyperion. The CD's out, the
LP's out, and it's all over Spotify if you want
to hear it there. Whoops. No, it's OK. Whoops.
OK, I'll go and listen to it straight afterwards.
I mean, I was going to ask you about what inspires
you, but it seems there's so many things, you
know, in your mind and you get so much inspiration
from all over the place. So it's easy for you
to come up with ideas for your compositions.
Oh, inspiration is money. No, no, no, I'm kidding.
No, I think. Well, I think that the initial inspiration,
at least for the last couple of decades, has
been a commission, really, has been someone saying,
could you write me a piece for this or, you know,
this length or whatever? And so that's a wonderful
way to start. Because here we are with blank
manuscript paper. Where do you begin? What do
you write it for? But if someone says as they
did, which really got me started 20 years ago,
the Berlin Phil wind quintet, the piccolo player
said, I want a trio for piccolo, contrabassoon
and piano. And so I thought, fantastic. So I
started writing it the same day because I was
very inspired, first of all, by their confidence
in asking me to write this piece, but also by
the idea of... the smallest, highest instrument
and the biggest, lowest instrument playing together
with the piano in the middle. So that's also
been recorded, but that's on bis. It's called
Was mit der Trennung geschieht. Okay. But I think
it's a double thing. It's the macro and the micro.
I think I like to get a sense of the whole shape
of the piece. Because for me, in music that I
play, as well as music that I write, the architecture
is a central part. It has to feel the right shape.
And so I need to get that sense. And then the
micro part is finding some material that I can
work with. In this piano concerto, I had a theme
for the baroness and a theme for the young American
composer. And out of the entire piece, those
two themes are built. Everything is from those.
I like that. I like to write. This is one of
the reasons I love Brahms so much. I love the
way he uses material in such an ingenious way,
how everything is derived from a small cell.
Or Sibelius is someone else. I find that kind
of intellectual backbone to things. I don't just
want to sit down and write tunes. I want something
that really knits together in a tight way. Interesting.
I mean, you are a Renaissance man. You really
are. I mean, the writing, the composing, the
painting. I'm thinking, do you dance? I mean,
are there other things that we don't know about?
Is that an invitation? Do you play the piccolo?
I did play the flute for a short while, but I
was not, no. No, and I don't paint. In fact,
I haven't painted for years now. It's just a
bit of a hobby. I enjoy taking poetic ideas on
journeys and I see the poetic in everything that
I do, really, whether it's writing music, writing
words, or playing the piano. It's the sense of
going beyond the everyday, of words that mean
something in a very mundane way, being able to
reach the skies, to have a spiritual meaning.
And the same is true of notes. Interesting. If
we rewind time a bit, because I'd love listeners
to hear about your studies at the Julliard back
in the, I guess it was the 70s? 80s. 80s, sorry.
Sorry. That's okay. In the 80s, wow. I gather
you had a rather difficult, if famous, teacher,
piano teacher. Yes, dear Adele Marcus. Well,
she was legendary, of course. I never left my
lessons in tears although many did but she was
always rather wonderful to me I think she was
first of all she liked men teaching men more
than teaching women and secondly she liked English
men in fact i remember her saying that one of
the you know the pianist that she admired most
was solomon and i found that interesting because
he's not really her style her style was very
hard on sleeve russian um you know she was from
she was the assistant to joseph levine and and
and so on but she did also study with schnabel
and i think she did have that um uh austro -germanic
um background to her as well yeah um but she
was complicated again there's a there's a whole
chapter on her in my in my memoir um with some
of the anecdotes um i couldn't have stayed any
longer with her than i did i was there for a
year it would have destroyed me only a year with
adele marcus yeah um well it's there's a lot
to say really but i think By the time I studied
with her, she was quite old and very forgetful
and quite irrational at times. I won the number
competition when I was 21, just as I began my
second year with her. And I had to get away.
It's hard enough to start a career. There are
so many pressures. But, you know, I had an Alice
Tully Hall debut to prepare for. We put together
a program. And honestly, every other day she
was phoning, suggesting different pieces. And,
oh, you can't. No, Chopin's never been your thing,
dear. Don't play any Chopin. And, you know, you
just start building up these neuroses which just
kill you. So I simply had to walk away and just
do my own thing. And really, I've been doing
my own thing ever since. And she made me very
scared of playing for people. Because, and I'm
very conscious of this in my own teaching, how
one word can undermine someone's confidence in
a way that destroys them. I mean, it can seem
like nothing. So I'm very, very cautious. And
it comes also, my main teacher, Gordon Green,
all of the, you know, he never wanted to impose
his view. He wanted to open up your ideas. And
he said to me a phrase I love. He said, you know,
I'm actually not interested in how you're playing
now. He said, it's how you're going to play in
10 years that interests me. So it was all about
the longevity of this, the longevity of a career,
the way that you develop in an organic way. Of
course, a lot of this hits against the idea of
competitions because people do enter. college
now at 18 and the only thing on their mind is
winning a competition it's not how can i be a
better musician how can i play more how can i
get my repertoire it's winning a competition
and of course that was the opposite of gordon
i mean if you come in to him as i well i did
i suppose i said do you think i should enter
some competition now well let's talk in eight
years you know but there is a wisdom behind it
not that it applies to everyone and of course
there are huge exceptions not least the one competition
jury i was on where yun chan lim won at 18 but
one would have to say that he is the exception
um there aren't many 18 year olds with his well
first of all with his repertoire apart from with
his personality and ability to be himself and
to be an extraordinary unique artist Yeah, I
mean, because they're so young. And I mean, Yunchan
is an exception. But, you know, if you win a
competition, you've got to have everything there.
The repertoire, the, you know, especially the
repertoire, as you said, all those concertos
got to be ready with all your concertos. It is
something to say, you know, it's like if someone
invites you to make a recording from a competition,
do you really have? can you really record the
Chopin Barcarolle in a way that makes it worth
putting alongside 500 other recordings? What
do you have to say about it that's actually different
from what everyone else has said? And I don't
mean just going in and saying, well, no one has
taken time there, so maybe if I take time there,
it'll make it different. Not self -consciously
making it different, but living with a piece
that it grows into being part of you. And that,
like farming, can't be rushed, you know. Things
have to happen in their own time. And so I do.
encourage young people as much as they can to
try and feel free and free to make mistakes.
You see, I think it's terribly important to make
mistakes. Beethoven wrote his Ninth Symphony
and he got it wrong many, many times before the
final sketches got it right. So this is about
development. And this is actually one of the
areas where AI, of course, is completely hopeless.
AI never deliberately gets it wrong. Or, you
know, the idea of AI is to get it right as quickly
as possible and as right as possible. But that's
not true with the arts. You actually need to
develop by making mistakes because it's a sort
of process. It's like a pruning. You don't want
a bush to be perfect and then never to change.
You want to be constantly shaping that bush,
clipping off the stray. I'm talking like I'm
a gardener. I'm looking out right now at my garden
that's a complete mess. But you know what I mean?
It's that sense. that we grow as human beings
physically and art is the same. It grows, it
changes. Yes, we have different periods as well.
I mean, look at some of the artists, visual.
Gosh, Stephen, lots to think about here. I'm
sure you're an amazing piano teacher. I mean,
I can just, it's just so much there. I enjoy
doing it. You teach at Juilliard? I have one
student at a time there. Oh, fantastic. Lucky
student. Well, I hope so. It's interesting, you
know, the student who won the Hastings competition,
Ryan Zhu, was a student of mine there. And I
just heard I was down there because they all
had to play my piece. And he sounded so wonderful.
And in fact, he's improved so much since he left
me. And I thought, well, maybe the sign of a
good teacher is that you don't cling on, that
you're happy for someone. All I want is for my
students to sound better. Now, whether that comes
from things I say, things I don't say, things
that I say that they think about years later,
or whenever it is, I think you need that kind
of generous spirit in order to be the right sort
of teacher. all that matters a teacher's career
doesn't matter all that matters is that the student
who's getting that those lessons improves and
not just improves but but their own personality
is brought out i i don't want someone not the
personality of the teacher absolutely i don't
want someone to be a carbon copy of me and i
think this is one of the problems with a teacher
like adele marcus is that the way they taught
was they stripped everything away and refashioned
you in their image. That was the way. And that
was never what I was taught with Gordon Green.
All his students sounded different. And I really
treasure that from that time. Gosh, okay, Stephen,
listen, we've got like 10 minutes maximum left,
maybe five. I'm looking at the clock here before
we get cut off. So I'm going to finish with some
really lighthearted questions that I'd like you
to answer off the cuff. be interesting to hear
what how you reply um first one if you could
play only one composer from now on who would
it be i think it would have to be chopin actually
because no one wrote more beautifully for the
piano and i find his music more and more gorgeous
as i get older and i'm more and more touched
by its emotional restraint and yet also its emotional
revelation and the sheer craftsmanship of it.
You know, he writes just gorgeously for the instrument.
So that's my choice. Oh, fantastic. OK, next.
One pianist, dead or alive, you'd travel long
and far to hear. Well, my favourite pianist is
Courtauld. So that would certainly be true. But
the fact that I can hear so many of his recordings,
let's choose someone like, well, Liszt. Wouldn't
it be great to go and listen to Liszt? Of course.
Very good answer. One person, dead or alive,
you'd love to play for? Ooh. Maybe Rachmaninoff.
I mean, of course it would be terrifying. But
I would, yeah. I mean, I love his playing and
his music so much. So, yeah, maybe him. i thought
Rachmaninoff would feature in your answers somewhere
um do you might be a silly question this do you
have any technical struggles well not that i'm
going to talk to you about well you know in a
sense every we're athletes so every day is a
starting from scratch you know every sprinter
wakes up in the morning with stiff legs and has
to to warm up and i think the same is true of
us and certainly every dancer you know dancers
talk about getting out of bed in the morning
crippled until they've gone to the bar and worked
so i would say that you know everything's difficult
to do well and everything's difficult to do under
the pressure of 2 000 people sitting in the hall
watching you so that's a partial answer absolutely
no very wise What would be your advice to an
amateur pianist about how to improve? I think
practice slowly. Practice without pedal. Don't
be afraid to use the metronome. Write in fingerings.
These are all things that I've spoken about before
and written about. But yeah, and I forget them
myself. And then I came back to Rachmaninoff
3rd just recently again, having not played it
for a while. I thought, you know, I used to practice
this very, very slowly. Like Joseph Levine had
the four metronome marks, you know, from, let's
say that the performing tempo is 100, you go
80, 60, 40, and then up to the work like that.
And it works. You know, Rachmaninoff used to
practice obsessively slowly. Apparently he used
to practice an hour of technical exercises and
scales every day. But he sounds better than anyone
else, so maybe there's something in that. Well,
I wouldn't recommend that for an amateur pianist,
for sure, because you want to enjoy it. Amateur
does mean to love, so one should always enjoy
it. Fantastic. Last question. One composer you're
not quite ready to tackle? Oh, Bach. I've never
played any Bach professionally. Well, I did one
the first season I played. I played the G Major
Toccata because I'd been playing it in my exams
before. But no, I played Bach, Busoni and Bach,
Corteaux and, you know, but not Bach, Bach. Why
might that be? I don't feel I know what to do
with it. And I don't love it enough to work with
it. It's my blind spot, really. He's so holy
and spiritual. Well, that's the problem. I'm
not. But I tell you, Erica, what I do love is
Wanda Landowska playing Bach on the harpsichord.
Now that can, when I hear her chromatic fantasy
and fugue, to me, that's Bach. I love that. and
then in orchestral Bach I love hearing Mengelberg
you know this sort of completely wrong according
to all of the you know our modern understanding
but making Bach chorales sound like a Bruckner
slow movement but I do enjoy that oh beautiful
so romantic so romantic but i i've discovered
london i just think she's incredible because
of course everything has to happen with the rhythm
and the inflection nothing can happen on the
harpsichord with with tone and i think maybe
it's because a lot of bach playing is just too
pretty it's too precious every phrase you know
shape to the end and then another one began and
shaped to the end and i just i don't like it
it just it doesn't Whereas the harpsichord speaks
to me. Actually, also Trevor Pinnock, I heard
his Goldberg variations. I thought, gosh, this
is the first time I've really loved this piece,
hearing it on the harpsichord. Oh, Stephen, that's
so interesting. Also, actually, Schiff playing
on the clavichord was a bit of a... He made an
album playing Bach on the clavichord, which is
a bit of a revelation. It's beautiful. What a
gorgeous sound. Amazing. Yeah. Oh, well, I mean,
what a great conversation we've had today. Thanks.
It's been such fun. We could have spent much
longer. But, oh, Stephen, thank you so much for
joining me. My pleasure. Well, see you. Around
London. See you around London at the next fruit
shop or something. Or at a recycle. Aren't you
at the Wigmore Hall quite soon? I am in May.
Is it May 9? It's sort of middle of May sometime.
Yes, yes. Oh, I will look forward to hearing
you there. Anyway, we have to sign off. We do,
yes. Thank you so much for joining us today.
My pleasure. Thank you, Stephen. That was Rachmaninoff's
arrangement of Kreisler's Liebeslied and it was
performed by Stephen Hough. Pianist podcasts
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