Great conversations: the pianists / Eugene Istomin [video recording]

• Part 1. INTRODUCTION
• Part 2. THE EARLY YEARS
• Part 3. ROOTS
• Part 4. PERFORMANCE
• Part 5. TRADITION
• Part 6. INTERPRETATION
• Part 7. TONE
• FOOTNOTES

EUGENE ISTOMIN:

I am Eugene Istomin. I am honored to be asked by the Librarian and the Head of the Music Division to be the host of this series of dialogues and encounters at the Library of Congress. Today we will be talking about the piano and its music. The choice of interlocutors is mine; the executives of the Library accept these choices without reservations. I have asked five of my most distinguished colleagues to join me in an unrehearsed, freewheeling discussion. In this beautiful room today, we're six pianist-musicians whose world careers span twenty-five to sixty years. There might be another dozen living pianists of similar prestige and experience on this planet, but I doubt you'll find more. So it's my tremendous privilege to participate in this important project. We aim to offer to the general interested public our views, opinions, prejudices and recollections as performing musicians. We agree that it is important to remember where we came from, how our European roots and background have now become universal roots. They are not only shared by Americans, but today's classical musicians of all denominations and nationalities. Now let me introduce my colleagues. This is Charles Rosen on my left over here, great musician and writer on music; Leon Fleisher--well, everybody's a great pianist. I'm going to desist from making more descriptions. We'll get to that later. Leon Fleisher, my old, great colleague; Gary Graffman, my old great colleague; Emanuel Ax, my younger great colleague; and Yefim Bronfman, my youngest great colleague. But they all have careers and they're famous for well over twenty-five years. So I think we should begin by pointing out that on the table in front of us there are five great manuscripts, among hundreds of priceless ones in the Library collection. There can be no more beautiful props for this session than these manuscripts.

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Part 2.  THE EARLY YEARS

ISTOMIN:

So now, gentlemen, let's talk. What made you begin to play the piano?

ROSEN:

I started the way most pianists start. There was a piano in the house, and my mother played the piano a little bit. I picked out tunes, and you know, I was about four, I think. This sounds like boasting, but I hasten to say almost all pianists start when they're three or four years old. It's like tightrope walking. If you start later, you fall off. And I mean, you can always learn to play the piano for great pleasure, and even play it very well, if you start much later, but making a professional career, mostly people start very young.

ISTOMIN:

What then determined you to make this your life? I mean, that's the point. All boys, little boys and little girls, in our younger days, everybody sort of, in nice families, had piano lessons and that sort of thing. But what was it that made you decide that you were going to be a musician?

ROSEN:

I don't really know. I always, somehow I always knew that's what I wanted to do. You don't become a pianist if you want to do anything, or you're willing to do anything else. You only become a pianist if you're not willing to settle for anything else in the world, and that's basically what it is.

ISTOMIN:

How about Leon Fleisher?

LEON FLEISHER:

Very similar. I'm amazed at the consistency with which most of us probably start at four, five. I think there's something about the neuromuscular connection that needs to be developed starting around that age.

ISTOMIN:

But why? I mean, why did you go...?

FLEISHER:

I enjoyed it. I loved it. I got lots of cookies for it.

ISTOMIN:

You had a piano in the house?

FLEISHER:

Yeah, yeah. Actually, it was my older brother who started, and then he went to school, and apparently after his lessons I would go to the piano and perform more satisfactorily than he did for the teacher, the teacher who came to the house in those days. Like doctors. House calls!

ISTOMIN:

House calls!

FLEISHER:

Yeah. And it just-- I had a very limited choice: either to become the first Jewish President of the United States, or to become a great pianist.

ISTOMIN:

You got the second one right.

FLEISHER:

The second one was more available to me.

ISTOMIN:

Now, Gary Graffman.

GRAFFMAN:

Well, I started as a violinist.

ISTOMIN:

Aha!

GRAFFMAN:

And I was ahead of all of these others, so far: I started at three. By the time I was four, my father decided that I had no talent whatsoever. I mean, just none, on the violin. And that perhaps I should study an easier instrument, which is what string players consider the piano. And that I took to, that I took to, but also at the age of four, as a matter of fact. Something Charles said reminds me of a story Rudy Serkin told me of somebody playing for him, wanting to play for him, and before playing said, "You know, I really can't decide, I'm interested in medicine, too." I mean, he probably was seventeen, and it was a question of going to a university in this direction or concentrating on music. He said, "Well, I think you should become a doctor," said Rudolf Serkin. He said, "But you haven't heard me play one note." He said, "If there's any doubt in your mind, it should be the other."

ISTOMIN:

Emanuel?

EMANUEL AX:

I guess I'm a very late starter. I started when I was about seven.

ISTOMIN:

Oh, dear!

AX:

Which explains why I still have a lot of problems playing the piano, probably.

ISTOMIN:

Yes, of course!

AX:

I actually have a question in return, and that is: How is it that people are able, at the age of four or five, to learn piano? I mean, we have a particular problem, as opposed to string players, because when they start learning, they start on instruments that are adjusted to their size. They have a quarter-size violin, graduate to a half-size violin, don't play a full-size violin until their hands fit. We have one dimension. So even the most gifted pianist, at the age of six or seven, is really limited by this. How did you deal with that? You must have been very advanced already at the age of six or seven.

FLEISHER:

No, I'm afraid we all looked a little bit like chimpanzees. We were small of body, but large of hands.

ISTOMIN:

Now. We have Yefim.

BRONFMAN:

I started when I was seven. I'm also...

ISTOMIN:

Old fellow.

BRONFMAN:

...late. And I actually didn't choose the piano, because I was living in the Soviet Union, so I had to do what I'm told to do. You know. So my parents told me that "you're going to play the piano," and this is it, and you know... and my mother was my first teacher. And of course, we were living in a quite closed environment, where fascination with getting records from the West was the biggest challenge, and of course it became quite a fascination for me. Later on, that's how I got involved in actually choosing this profession later on.

AX:

[to ISTOMIN] When did you start studying?

ISTOMIN:

There I was, there I was, at the age of six months, listening-- [Laughter.] you think it's funny! But as a matter of fact, that-- I don't know, I'm told, anyway. My parents were both sort of semi-professional singers. And my father was a, played the guitar very badly, and would accompany himself when he sang, and played the wrong harmonies, and I would shriek, apparently, demonstrating that I had some kind of an ear. We found ourselves on the, somewhere in Long Island in a summer place, where there was an upright piano. And I became absolutely obsessed with that piano. I picked out the notes, and I learned how to play by myself. But I was absolutely certain that I was going to be a musician. I had no doubt at all about that.

AX:

But you're absolutely right, also, about the desire, because we start doing this so early, kids start doing it so early, that the fact that one is pretty good at it sort of compels you, in a way: "Well, since I'm good at it, that's what I should do," without necessarily making a decision: "This is what I love to do." It's a complicated issue.

ISTOMIN:

Well, but that, that...the love to do is something where the effect of music has to hit you right in the pit of the stomach, and that doesn't happen to everybody.

AX:

Even the ones who are very gifted.

ISTOMIN:

Even the ones who are very gifted.

FLEISHER:

It's magic that we become aware of. It's a kind of transformation, even at that young age.

ISTOMIN:

After all, it is a language. It's a language. So the notes and combination of notes have a meaning, have a direct meaning for us. We remember them the way we can't, some of us can't remember words, lines of poetry or...we can remember the rhythmic combinations and melodic combinations of music the way people that don't have talent can't.

ROSEN:

I think it's partly that-- music is a physical instinct, it's not, it's not...simpler than magic. I mean, it's just something that, I mean...

FLEISHER:

Oh, I think that magic is absolutely primitive.

ROSEN:

No, no, but I mean, in the music, this is a sort of inborn instinct, and some people feel it a little more than others, which is what you mean by talent, and actually what happens is, I think, rather simple: that those with talent, in certain kinds of backgrounds, are encouraged by their parents, and you know, when I was very small, I was taken to play for other pianists. Actually, I know that Gary, we both played for, for Godowsky. ¹

GRAFFMAN:

Yes.

ROSEN:

And that he put me on his lap and said, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" And I said, "I want to be a pianist like Josef Hofmann." ² Which is because I had never heard of Godowsky. Gary was much less subtle. I remember you punched him in the stomach, I think...told me that story. [Laughter.]

GRAFFMAN:

Well, that was because he asked me how old I was, and before I could answer, my parents said one year younger than I was, because I had my birthday three days earlier, and we had a big argument about it. And he said, "Now what will you play for me?" And I was angry, and I said, "I won't play for you." I was about six, six years old at that time.

FLEISHER:

Me too.

GRAFFMAN:

And he put me on his lap, because he told my parents he knew how to take care of...and apparently I kicked him in the stomach.

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Part 3.  ROOTS

ISTOMIN:

Well, I think we ought to-- if I may direct or sort of redirect the conversation, or point you in the direction of talking about our roots. I just remember that everybody, that we grew up...as our parents, as our paternal figures and maternal figures, are either Russian or German or French or something. These traditions of our music, we learned directly, I think. I would like to ask each one of you that you, from, I guess, from [to ROSEN] Moritz Rosenthal ³ who was your professor, and [to FLEISHER] Artur Schnabel ⁴ who was your professor, and [to GRAFFMAN] Isabella Vengerova ⁵ was your professor, and I would like to ask you, because I don't know who your professor was.

AX:

Mieczyslaw Munz was my...

ISTOMIN:

Mieczyslaw Munz, oh yes, yes, yes. And your...

BRONFMAN:

Well, I studied with my mother in Russia, and then I went on to Israel, where I lived, and I studied with Arie Vardi. Thanks to you, I came here, and I played for you, and then I studied with Rudolf Serkin ⁶ and Leon Fleisher, were my teachers. So...

ISTOMIN:

Well, we didn't spoil you, anyway.

BRONFMAN:

I spoiled myself?

GRAFFMAN:

Well, we wouldn't be here if it weren't for the Russian Revolution and Adolf Hitler. [To ROSEN.] Where would your teacher have spent his life, if he hadn't...I mean, he would not, if he didn't...?

ROSEN:

Well, he lived-- I mean, I left Juilliard ⁷ when I was eleven to study with him, because he came to the United States in 1938, like all the good Viennese. I mean, that's where...

FLEISHER:

From...? From where?

ROSEN:

From Vienna. He would have stayed...

GRAFFMAN:

From Vienna. [To FLEISHER.] Schnabel, your teacher, would certainly have stayed in Central Europe for his whole life and made tours of the States, as well as Australia and South America and everywhere else. I studied with Vengerova, who came from St. Petersburg...

ISTOMIN:

Isabella Vengerova.

GRAFFMAN:

Yeah, as my father studied in that same conservatory, as his teacher, Leopold Auer, ⁸ who came to New York at that time. And then I studied with Horowitz, ⁹ who also would not have made his life in New York City if it were not for the Russian Revolution. Munz, exactly the same, and of course, your teachers. And we were talking about Serkin. And therefore, we had, we were influenced by each other. So I was studying with a Russian teacher, and playing for, and he was playing for me, for Leon, who was studying with Schnabel, you, [to ISTOMIN] Serkin, getting all these influences which never would have been possible. We would have-- well, I probably wouldn't have been born, because, for different reasons. But for people who stayed in Russia, or stayed in Germany, it would be a narrower focus, not necessarily worse, but a different focus than they would have.

BRONFMAN:

Yes. If I may add that, you know, having grown up in Russia, and being exposed to Russian music a lot, and then coming to the United States and playing for people like Serkin and Leon Fleisher, playing a completely different kind of music, it was like learning a new language. It's a marvelous experience for me to actually, going from one culture to another, musical culture, and being able to adjust to that.

ISTOMIN:

It used to be said, anyway, that Americans didn't have a soul, American players were technically expert but they didn't have the patina and the refinement of a European artist. I remember when I was young, I can't tell you how many reviews of my concerts said, and other people's concerts, like William Kapell, ¹⁰ not to speak of Gary, not to speak of Leon, not to speak of other people, would get criticized by... "Well, that technically adept and yet somehow something is missing," and then somebody from Europe would come and get rave reviews for their understanding of the repertoire and so on and so forth. It raises a question: Is there an American style of playing? For me, excellence is the American style of playing. We all come from the greatest musicians in the twentieth century. From Toscanini ¹¹ to Rachmaninoff to Heifetz ¹² to Casals ¹³ to everybody, whoever...they had a direct influence on us. So if that is what you call American playing, that's my view of it. I think that it's nonsense to say that there's an American school of playing. It's defined by the standard. Those standards were set before us by those giants on whose shoulders we stand now: Schnabel, Vengerova, Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, Munz, Serkin. For me, Rubinstein ¹⁴ was my first great love.

AX:

I admired Gillels. ¹⁵

ISTOMIN:

Bülow ¹⁶ ... he was a great pianist.

AX:

In a way, today, it's very difficult to speak about national schools of playing, because the world is a small place, and has been becoming smaller and smaller. But the thing we were talking about before, the huge migration in the '30s, and because of the Russian Revolution-- completely changed the geographical history of music. Because, in fact, the young Americans who studied after the war were the ones that were getting the real tradition passed on to them. It's the people that studied with Schnabel here, the people that met Horowitz here, that were really getting the great tradition of piano playing from all those countries.

ISTOMIN:

I feel that that's true.

AX:

So in a way, it was that displacement that I think made the European tradition so alive and so powerful in America.

ROSEN:

We all come from families which were immigrant families, too. I mean, there's the second displacement, in other words, that we came from families that were displaced. It's what I said, that-- now, actually, most of the students in conservatories like Juilliard, they come from displaced families from Korea and Japan, and they're an entirely different-- the tradition hasn't changed. I mean, what happens is that music for immigrant families, classical music had a certain prestige, it was a way of sort of arising in society, and we were encouraged by our parents, and, you know, "my son, the pianist," or, instead of saying "my son the doctor" or "my son the nuclear physicist." And so that was a help. And that basically, there was, this is important, I think, for people to understand-- there was a whole transference of the European tradition not just in music but in everything: in nuclear physics, in mathematics. I mean, after 19...after Hitler, after 1938 and the Russian Revolution, there was an enormous transference, migration, of intellectuals from Europe into America. And I know American musicology was created at that time, and American pianism of a very special kind. Otherwise, before that, Americans had to go to Europe and study. Now, the European professors came and taught, and taught us here, and that was a big thing.

FLEISHER:

Not only instrumentally, but also compositionally. The composers: Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff.

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Part 4.  PERFORMANCE

FLEISHER:

I think we can agree, probably, that the nineteenth century developed into a time of questionable taste and performance practices, simply because the species of performer as opposed to performer-slash-composer began to emerge. The performer-slash-composers had education, they had taste. The performers by themselves learned quickly to cater to the public, and learned quickly how to have success, and very often having success meant to countermand the indications of the composer, and the composer became merely a vehicle for the performer. And then from my personal point of view, two people came along to kind of single-handedly sweep away this crud of the nineteenth century. They did it quite differently, but with the same powerful kind of integrity, and I think these people were Arturo Toscanini and Artur Schnabel. They brought back the sense of integrity to the composer, to the text, that one returned to Urtext ¹⁷ as a point of departure. And I think their influence on all of us is inestimable.

ISTOMIN:

That certainly, that certainly applies to me, there's no doubt about that. I agree. I'm not sure that there are-- there were some others, but your point is very well taken.

AX:

I would certainly add Arthur Rubinstein to that.

ISTOMIN:

No, but not in terms, not in terms of that kind of integrity. I mean, he was...

AX:

Oh, to me at least that much, because you have to remember, he was dealing with repertoire like Chopin, which sometimes was, people were guilty of such excesses with that music. He really was able to, I think, revolutionize the playing of Chopin. And I don't even know if it's for better or for worse.

ISTOMIN:

I'm going to go over to the piano now, and I'm going to make a point here. As I indicated, Rubinstein was my first love. In fact, when I was a boy, I would play along with his records, so that I could catch some of those incomparable rubatos and fiorituras ¹⁸ in recordings of the E minor concerto of Chopin, ¹⁹ those 1930s recordings. However, Rubinstein was, when he sat down to play the "Appassionata" sonata, ²⁰ he would begin: [MUSIC: Beethoven "Appassionata" excerpt] Just that way, as if he were playing the Tragic Polonaise. That is what is different. That is not looking, caring about the integrity of the composer. I had to point that out.

ROSEN:

[To FLEISHER] I do think, I think you are largely right about Schnabel. I think it's a little exaggerated. There were pianists who played very faithfully, and great fidelity, and I mean-- I've always remembered the pianist that I heard from the time I was four, every year, was Josef Hofmann, and people have said that he wasn't faithful, which was absolutely untrue. He played with very little rubato, and he was very faithful to the text. And there were pianists before that. In a way, it starts with Liszt, who used to take music from other composers and just sort of own them. He would play them any way he liked, and composers would be very angry. But then where there was a real challenge-- there's an article by Berlioz about Liszt playing the Beethoven "Hammerklavier." ²¹ He said, "I followed the score, and not one dynamic was changed, not one tempo was altered, not one note was missed." Because playing the "Hammerklavier," that was a real challenge to Liszt, and so on. So there were pianists who did play, and I mean, the other thing I can-- I mean, I'm sorry to take the sort of personal thing, but when I was 14, I played the Handel-Brahms Variations for Moritz Rosenthal, who knew Brahms. He was 75 when I was 11, so--- and I started one place, he stopped me. He said, "Why do you get faster there?" And I said, "Well, it's written poco piu mosso." ²² And he got up and walked to the piano. He always sat about three yards away, not very close, like a lot of teachers-- looked at the music and then said, "You know, Brahms let me play this music any way I liked, and I'm afraid I abused the privilege. You are quite right." And then he went and sat down. [Laughter.]

ROSEN:

I was stunned. So I mean, there was, there was a certain integrity before Schnabel from a lot of...

FLEISHER:

I don't deny that.

ROSEN:

No, but I mean Schnabel changed the way-- what I think he did, which is very important for American pianism, he actually altered the view of what the purpose of the concert and the recording was. Up to then, it, one went to the concerts to be dazzled, you know, or be shocked or, you know, by the performance. But Schnabel turned the concert much more to the music.

FLEISHER:

Roger Sessions calls it the triadic relationship between composer, performer, and listener. And that's-- I think that's really where, as Charles says, where Schnabel took the position that too often the performer today becomes a barrier between the music and the listener. We sit there and we see these young people who writhe their way through a piece, as though nobody else is as affected by the music as they are. In fact, the more they writhe, the more affected they are by the music, and that's why one should...

ISTOMIN:

Yeah. I agree. I agree.

FLEISHER:

...buy their tickets rather than the other young person who doesn't writhe as much, because they're not as affected.

ISTOMIN:

But wouldn't you have said, Leon, that that's a function, also, all of us, of the visual? What's happening now is that people, people sort of ham, on stage, they-- we live in a time when people interpret by what they see, and not by what they hear, so they think about more the way they look when they play, and how they express in their faces what they want the music to say. There are these kind of players, the "no, no, no" players, that "I'm feeling so much" that do this, and all those things.

AX:

On the other hand, you have-- when I heard, when I was young and heard people like Horowitz live, and people like Serkin live, I have to say-- the fact is: it was a visual medium, even then. And I remember being struck by two things when I would hear Serkin. I would see sometimes the almost involuntary extraneous motions.

ISTOMIN:

Yeah, but that was, that was very badly looked upon then.

AX:

That was part of his--

ISTOMIN:

People were upset.

AX:

I'm simply saying I was very struck by that. And by contrast, with Horowitz, one of the most striking things about seeing him play was the unbelievable range of color and dynamics that he achieved...

ROSEN:

Without perceiving...

AX:

...and you never saw him move. That was the extraordinary thing. And to us at that time, he was like a man who had been gone for a long time. I never expected to hear him live. And I remember the Bach-Busoni C major Toccata, where he started and he played the beginning, then he played the soft unison things, and then these gigantic chords came out without anything at all. I was in the balcony of the hall, and it was like suddenly hearing five more pianos, but nothing moved, and that motionless thing was a visual excitement...

ISTOMIN:

We don't have players today, who-- violinists do not look like Jascha Heifetz, who didn't bat an eyelash...

AX:

Exactly.

ISTOMIN:

...who just looked--I remember Rachmaninoff. Nothing. Nothing.

AX:

Really?

ISTOMIN:

He was absolutely...hunched over the piano.

ROSEN:

Schnabel was, Schnabel always played with incredible...

ISTOMIN:

Very quiet. Casals...

ROSEN:

...extraordinarily calm, and so did Josef Hofmann.

AX:

I see. I see.

ISTOMIN:

Of all those great, colossal players, the point was the decorum. There was something about the dignity, the beauty of that.

AX:

Speaking of receptive listeners, I think what Leon was saying about the triangle of composer, performer, listener: we definitely underplay the amount that a listener can bring to a concert. Knowledge always helps, of course. The more you know, the more you enjoy things, and so forth. But it's receptivity, energy, and--

FLEISHER:

Imagination. To stimulate their-- I think it's the difference, the same difference between radio and television. Our civilization has become almost exclusively a visual one.

AX:

Not to be devil's advocate, but if I may just for a second...

FLEISHER:

Oh, we need you. We need you.

AX:

How do you explain the fact that with everything becoming lesser and lesser in terms of attention span, the incredible growth in popularity of the Mahler and Bruckner symphonies?

GRAFFMAN:

I was just thinking the same thing.

AX:

Right? You noticed that, too?

FLEISHER:

This is the tail end of it.

AX:

You think?

FLEISHER:

Oh!

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Part 5.  TRADITION

ISTOMIN:

I'd like to just make mention here that we are sitting in front of these manuscripts, and I'd like to say what they are for our viewers. Yefim is looking at the original version of the Rachmaninoff Fourth Piano Concerto, ²³ which he wrote, I believe, in 1920, early '20s, and played the first time in 1928 in Berlin. And this is the, not the manuscript but the additions of things to the published version of the fourth concerto, with his revisions, with his changes. So this...

ROSEN:

That...

ISTOMIN:

No, this, he published that in his own edition in Paris, which is called the TAIR edition, because his daughters were named Tatiana and Irina, and those are the two letters of his daughters. And he published it privately, because I guess nobody would, wanted to publish it. Anyway, this is that version, which is the one that most people...

FLEISHER:

Really? Nobody wanted to publish?

ISTOMIN:

Well, he couldn't get it published. Not only that, but RCA Victor didn't want to record it. The one thing that needed to be recorded was the Fourth Concerto, and Mr. O'Connell at RCA Victor said nix. He also said nix to the idea of recording the two-piano sonata with him with Horowitz.

AX:

Well, that was clever of him.

ISTOMIN:

Shameful, it's shameful. Ormandy told me that on the day that they were supposed to record the First Concerto, ²⁴ Charles O'Connell calls him, and he said, "Mr. Rachmaninoff is on his way with the score and the parts of the Fourth Concerto. Do a take of it." And that recording that we have today is of that run- through, of the unrehearsed Philadelphia Orchestra. That tells you about the Philadelphia Orchestra and about Ormandy's rapidity.

ROSEN:

It also tells you a lot about RCA Victor.

ISTOMIN:

Yes, a great deal! [Laughter.]

ROSEN:

No, he was actually underestimated as a pianist.

ISTOMIN:

Hard to believe! I have to add to that that there is somewhere in an RCA booklet, a remark that in his last years, when orchestras were broadcasting performances, he would have his secretary go into the technician's room and turn the, force him to turn the thing off, because he wouldn't go on stage with knowing that they were recording his playing.

GRAFFMAN:

You mean Rachmaninoff?

ISTOMIN:

That's how he felt about-- I mean, if that's the serpent, our serpent that has infected all of us today, the serpent of perfectionism. And when we listen now to Rachmaninoff, there seem to be quite a number of wrong notes and quite a number of smeared passages, but at that time, it was so incredibly accurate, because, of course, you had to play for four minutes, for four minutes and 33 seconds or something.

ROSEN:

The wickedest thing that any pianist ever said about another was what, is Rachmaninoff's comment on Cortot's ²⁵ recordings of the Chopin études. He said: "You know, it's very interesting. Every time it gets difficult, he puts in a little sentiment." [Laughter.]

ISTOMIN:

I'd like to ask, I'd like to ask Leon and Gary particularly, because they're two very, very much known and important pedagogues now, teachers. They have great classes. Leon, for a long time, and Gary, now that he's the distinguished director of the Curtis Institute. ²⁶ What do you find, and what do you want to do with your pupils?

GRAFFMAN:

Real teaching boils down to-- in my opinion, or maybe it's my limitations-- but the only way I can do it is really on a one-to-one basis. And assuming you have, you're teaching talented people, it's totally different with one from another. In fact, Horowitz, when-- I played for him a lot. He almost never went to the piano to show me what, how he would do what I was doing. He would imagine what I was looking for, and did not succeed, and discuss that with me, with, on my terms. He then played a lot for me, afterwards. And I try to do something similar with students, because there's not one correct way.

BRONFMAN:

I think that one of the great things that a teacher can give a student is a desire to play that music in the future. I've had some teachers, which I will not name, that, when I came out of their lessons, that discouraged me from that music. In fact, I attended the master class of a very famous pianist 20 years ago where I played a Beethoven sonata. I never wanted to play this piece again, because as brilliant as the master class was, it was just as discouraging, because he made me feel that I will never be able to do that.

AX:

We're sitting in front of this stuff, and, I mean, the first thing is: It's such a privilege to touch this, because when we play with string players, one thing they get to do is they get to play instruments that were touched by people, you know- - I play with a cellist. He plays an instrument, it's the one that was next to Beethoven when the première of the Beethoven Cello Sonata Number Three ²⁷ was done. We don't get this kind of stuff usually, so for us to touch something that was by Beethoven or next to, it's very, it's very exciting. It's very...

ROSEN:

Say what you're fingering right now.

AX:

This is the Beethoven sonata Op. 109 in E major, ²⁸ and this is actually it.

ROSEN:

The original manuscript.

AX:

This is what Beethoven... dropped stuff on when he was writing it. Let's say you're starting from this point of view, right? And you have people who have sifted through this for many years, have done an edition of it, have made it legible for the rest of us, more or less. There are always issues of maybe this note, that note, the other note. And a student comes, and plays for you. How do you deal with the issue of what you feel about the piece, what he feels about the piece, and how it connects to what's on the printed page, and what do we do to make the printed page come, you know, happen as it should?

FLEISHER:

I remember hearing a rehearsal of Mozart Piano Concerto 467, ²⁹ today subtitled the "Elvira Madigan." It was a rehearsal of Schnabel's with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. And the slow movement was, for me, one of the most unique experiences of my life. It was a mystical experience. This has kind of guided my life, in a way. This is, for me, what music is about.

AX:

I come in. I start to play...You know, it doesn't sound good. It doesn't have any of the qualities you just described that should be coming from this music. What do you do? What do you, what do you work on?

FLEISHER:

What we do is extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary. I firmly believe that we are divided into three: we are Person A, who hears before they play. You have to hear what you want before you put a note down. Once you put a note down, it's too late. You have to be Person B, who is totally aware of how you are playing, so that Person C, who is listening and judging, if what they hear isn't what Person A wanted, they tell Person B what to change. So the ideal performer is a schizophrenic. And when it works, it's ecstasy. When it doesn't work, it's very unsatisfying.

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Part 6.  INTERPRETATION

AX:

Very often there's a misconception. People somehow feel that the idea of interpreting something is somehow what you do when you don't strictly follow the score. You know? I think there, people think, "Well, some people follow the score, they do what's printed, and some people interpret a piece."

ISTOMIN:

I can't remember a time when I didn't learn a piece that I was in love with, that I had to learn. There was a reason for this passion that I had for this piece. That meant that it was, that I already understood something, which attracted me by this-- quite a number of pieces that my teacher wanted me to play that I rejected, wouldn't want to play--including something like the Schubert A Minor Sonata. Marvelous sonata, but stupid me didn't want to learn it, because that was something that I was somehow repelled by. But the pieces that I was in love with, they were mine. That meant that I and the composer were one, that. The idea that I would do anything that I thought that the composer didn't want me to do was in... it was inconceivable. Therefore, what I was doing was absolutely the right thing. It was, it was, it came out of the music itself. I and the piece, and the music that I was playing were one. I was the composer, I am the composer. I remember one time, it was here in Washington, I was playing the Brahms Second Concerto with Rostropovich conducting the orchestra. And we had four performances in those days, and about the third night, I was warming up, and--that's another subject. We have to talk about stage fright. Warming up in the Green Room at the Kennedy Center. And he said to me, "What are you, why are you carrying on this way? Who do you think you are? What is this nervousness? Do you think you're the composer, that you have this stage fright?" And I said, "Yes. As a matter of fact, yes. I am responsible for this piece." Anyway, that is my conception of the interpretive thing, is that it comes right out of the music, out of my instinct, out of my sensibility. And that's it. You are all the things that came in to make you who you are.

AX:

Does a note being short or long, one specific note, can that not give a spring, can that not be used as a springboard, to imagine a lot more about the interpretation of a piece?

ROSEN:

Yeah. Well, you put the word interpretation as if this were somehow a great big issue.

AX:

Sometimes I think it is.

ROSEN:

I mean, life is more practical. You have to play a piece, so I mean, the first thing you do, I mean, you, you play a piece because you love the music. Of course, you have to start with that, and it's been a long, long time since I've played a piece that I didn't want to play. I mean, when I was very young, a couple of times I learned a piece because I was asked to do something, I needed the money, so I did it, but it's been a long time. So I only play the music I love. The first thing you do, I mean, you know you love this piece. You don't quite know it yet, so you try and find a fingering. This is long before the interpretation. Then it turns out that as you play the piece, your fingering isn't bringing out certain aspects of the music that you feel should come out. You have to change the fingering. But there is, I mean, when you're talking about interpretation, there is interpretation, there is something which kindles my imagination, is the idea of somehow sticking to the text and doing something unbelievably imaginative with it, so that the whole piece sounds new to everybody, but if you look at it, I haven't done a thing which is not on the page. I mean, I can remember performances, the performances that I remember which gave me that kind of mystical experience that Leon was talking about. I once heard Solomon play the Fugue, Prelude and Fugue in C minor from the second book of The Well-Tempered Clavier. And I had never heard Bach played like that. He didn't bring anything out, and you could hear everything. Yeah, he did. Nothing was-- it's not the performance of a fugue where the voi...the main theme was mezzoforte and everything else was piano. You heard everything. It was transparent. And he just sat there and played the thing, and it was breathtaking. And I went home and practiced like mad, thinking I should be able to do, you know, maybe someday I could do something like that.

FLEISHER:

The way we understand what we see on the page is our interpretation. That's how I understand these markings, that's how I understand the relationship between the notes, the connection, the shape, the form, what is more important to me in this place, what is less important to me. One of the great challenges of music is that all the notes are equally black. So we have to make choices and decisions constantly. And that's my interpretation.

GRAFFMAN:

I'm guided, I hope, by what's on the page, and every time I come back to that page, you know, several years later, I discover, you know, there is a finite, there are a finite number, amount of information on the page, and yet when I come back to it five years later, I find more information, just because I've been looking from a different point of view. I hope I'm guided by what the composer had. In other words, one should start the "Appassionata" pianissimo. And I'm sure that both Schnabel and Serkin played it pianissimo, and played it quite differently.

ROSEN:

No. I mean, there is a problem with definitive text. I mean, you get something like the Beethoven cello sonata, Op. 69. ³⁰ There's a letter of Beethoven to the publisher about the Scherzo. "There's this terrible misprint in my Scherzo, this fortissimo at bar one. Remove it, and remove it where else it occurs!" Then two days later, saying: "I don't know what came over me. That letter was wrong. Please put it back." And now the question is: Which one is right?

AX:

And also...

ROSEN:

The first letter is right.

AX:

The first notes are...

ROSEN:

[Sings.] What happened is that it was certainly wrong, it's a misprint, and then the more he looked at it, the more he liked it, because it was very Beethovenian. And he thought: What a good idea!

AX:

The first note is soft. The second note's loud.

ROSEN:

But, yeah. Yeah. But I mean, you shouldn't, it should certainly not be there. The idea of playing a piece correctly, according to the, according to the way the composer wrote it, that basically is something that takes place when the public concert becomes an institution. When most music was played at home, there was no way you could, you know, people were going to play it any way they wanted, and so on, but it's basic...the first composer I know who used to make it, who made a terrible fuss when anybody added or changed anything was Beethoven. I mean, there's a letter to Czerny saying: "Please excuse my explosion of rage last night, but I like to hear my music played the way I wrote it!" And poor Czerny said, "Well, I just, you know, I just added a couple of trills here and there." You know. Which almost anybody else would have done at the time. And, you know, then after that, there was this tradition of people improvising, doing different things, or adding ornamentation. Rossini disliked that. I mean, when, I think it was Adelina Patti, ³¹ I think, sang one of his arias for her, he said, "Very beautiful, my dear. Who wrote it?" [Laughter.]

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Part 7.  TONE

ISTOMIN:

This Rachmaninoff Fourth Concerto is particularly touching, moving to me. It's, of course, underappreciated. It still is underappreciated. Rightly or wrongly, for me, it's-- I feel particularly tenderly toward this work, because it, for me, it describes the glory and the tragedy and the development of, from one world to another world.

BRONFMAN:

But how do you explain that it's really never as popular as the others?

ISTOMIN:

Because it's distilled, it's distilled in those beautiful things, those subtle harmonic things that go on, the "Three Blind Mice." [Sings.] But it is not "Three Blind Mice" at all. In fact, it's really kind of a little stroll down memory lane. Let me see if I can. [He rises and walks to the piano.] Let me see if I can. [MUSIC: Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto #4]

ISTOMIN:

Anyway, those sort of harmonic things that are going on, which are, which were cocktail lounge music, except it's sublime! Sublime and beautiful! To the question: What does tone mean? This is a-- Russians think very highly. They call it, in Russian, it's a very exotic word, which would be difficult to pronounce: "Ton." The Russians call it "Ton." It says everything about the value of a player.

FLEISHER:

Isn't it dictated by the piece that you're playing?

ISTOMIN:

Well, it, it...

FLEISHER:

Is there an abstract tone?

ISTOMIN:

Yeah, there is, there is a kind of a player, when you say, "Oh, yes, a beautiful tone." Or, he has-- a singer has a beautiful timbre. But anyway, and pianists who, when they put their finger on the piano, it's like a tank walked over a key. And another pianist who, Horowitz was as good an example as any, Rubinstein, another one, who could-- Horowitz put his, as you know even better, you've seen that more often than I have, he would come down on a note. So did Rachmaninoff. He would put his knuckle across a key and slap it on the key, and out would come this golden sound, this beautiful sound.

AX:

I think it's not an issue of whether you can make a nice sound that way. Mechanically, it's very difficult. Don't you think? I swear, I would see his hands, and I could not understand how he got, you know, from this place to that with the...

FLEISHER:

From 59th Street to...

AX:

Basically, yeah, in effect.

BRONFMAN:

He probably couldn't understand it, either. He just did it naturally.

AX:

Well, you know, normally you assume with running passages that...

FLEISHER:

Anatomically speaking, if you curl your finger, you're contracting the flexors, and you're stretching the extensors. If, on top of that, you demand of your finger to...

AX:

It's extra strain.

FLEISHER:

It's a terrible strain.

AX:

Yeah, yeah.

FLEISHER:

And then, to bang down...this [gestures] is infinitely easier than...the fingers go like that naturally, very quickly.

AX:

But I just meant: Don't the keys get in the way? I mean...it just...

FLEISHER:

Well, you angle. You angle.

AX:

You angle.

FLEISHER:

Practice. That's how you do it.

AX:

[Laughing] Ah! I should have known there was a catch!

GRAFFMAN:

Anyway, about sound: We try to make the piano sound like not, like not a percussion instrument. It is. Some pianos have longer-lasting sound than others, and this is something that I'm especially, when I choose pianos, I was interested in how long-lasting the sound was. And that's an accident of the construction of the instrument. As far as hitting a note, I mean, people have said that if Rachmaninoff strikes one note, and his truck driver, bringing his piano to the hall, strikes the same note as loud, not louder or softer, no one can tell the difference. And I don't know if...frankly, I don't know. But the secret is: What happens to the next note? Do you hold it also a little too long or too short? Without planning to do so, but just because the music makes you do it.

ROSEN:

The way Schnabel used to practice... he rarely practiced the really difficult passages. What he would do is practice the chords in something like the opening chords of the slow movement of the Op. 106. ³² And what happened, he practiced them for the balance of sound. And in the end, that's really what the key to a beautiful tone, tone is. I mean, he would practice it until the chord vibrated from it, until the harmonics of the chord started to come out, until the chord sang the way he needed to make it. I mean, what I'm trying to say is, there's a vertical component, which is, you know, how the chord and how the chord vibrates and how the harmonics work in the thing-- and then, of course, there's the horizontal component of shaping the melody. If one of the notes sticks out too much, that sounds like banging. I mean, if you do it wrong. Also, when playing a chord, if you do this [gestures], just play all the notes equally, it's, it tends to be disagreeable. You have to use it only for a special effect. Can I add one small thing, which is that, I mean, what most people mean by a beautiful tone is that you bring out the melody and you use the pedal. And I mean, that's what a lot of teachers do. And I mean, to a certain extent, for a good deal of music, this is a good idea. But the whole, the way music is taught, not only in this country but around the world, which is that you use the same kind of sound for Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Boulez, Debussy, you know, Chopin. It becomes ridiculous. I mean, there should be a different sound for each composer.

FLEISHER:

The wonderful thing, the problem, I think, or one of our challenges is: Music is a horizontal activity, and yet it's the piano, the unique instrument that produces horizontal activity through a totally vertical, totally vertical activity. Violin: horizontal. Blowing air, from piccolo to tuba, is horizontal, in a sense. Putting down 88 keys is totally vertical.

AX:

It's not really germane to a performance, because in performance, I think we all agree that we have to go with the intentions that we feel about the music. But if you're talking purely on the level of closing your eyes and listening, you've got to find other ways to make that crescendo work, because simply doing this [he leans forward] ain't gonna do it.

ISTOMIN:

The effect of the change of fingers on the-- we haven't talked about that-- in cantabile playing on the piano, because that's, this is, this is a technical, it's not, it's a musical aspect, but it's where you give the illusion of a real legato which is not possible to make. You can make it with a voice, or you can make it with a string, but we can do it on the piano sometimes by playing one note and changing the finger, which makes it easier to get.

GRAFFMAN:

Well, another way of doing it is holding the previous note a little longer...

ISTOMIN:

No, but that's, no, but you, in order to get to the next...

ROSEN:

It's much better that way.

ISTOMIN:

In order to get to the next note, you have to change a finger.

ROSEN:

What very few teachers tell their students is that when, even playing without the pedal, that when you play legato, if you do this, simply like one note after another...

GRAFFMAN:

Oh, yeah!

ROSEN:

...you get an entirely different legato than if you overlap the notes.

FLEISHER:

And what happens is that...

ROSEN:

And that, well, certainly, that's certainly an old technique that goes way back to the early eighteenth century of playing a much greater legato without pedal at all, and getting it by...

GRAFFMAN:

But another thing was-- and I don't know what I do-- you play something, and Horowitz would tell me, "Think of the human voice. Imagine how this would be sung." And Rudy Serkin would say, two months later in Marlboro, "Think of this being played by a wind instrument."

ISTOMIN:

Yeah.

GRAFMAN:

And you play it differently.

FLEISHER:

You can imitate anything. It's like with upbow and downbow, the great string players say that it shouldn't make a difference. Of course it makes a difference.

AX:

But it shouldn't. [Laughter.]

FLEISHER:

But it does.

ROSEN:

There are places where visually it makes a difference. I mean, I can give one example. [He walks to the piano.] You have, I mean...this note... [Plays one note.] ...dies away, right? It's gone. [Plays the note again.] I mean, the pedal won't do anything.

ISTOMIN:

Well, put the rack down.

ROSEN:

[Plays.] If you hold the note visually, you hear a legato. But if you play... [Plays again.] ...the hold, it goes away. There isn't any aural difference between doing that and...

AX:

And if I close my eyes?

ROSEN:

Basically, I think you would still hear a legato for a simple reason, which is that it's been very legato all the way up to there, and then it continues, and this, what happens there is it becomes... [Plays.] It becomes a dissonance, so you wait for its resolution. So if you think it's going to be resolved, you think it's still there.

ISTOMIN:

Yeah.

ROSEN:

Psychologically, you think the note is still there. Strictly speaking, in purely physical terms, the note has disappeared. There's no way that note is going to last. But you make people think it's lasting.

AX:

It's the art of illusion.

SPEAKER:

Of course.

ISTOMIN:

Let this be the last word. Magic. Amen. Bravo, everybody. Thank you all.

---

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FOOTNOTES:

1 Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938). American pianist and composer. Back to transcript

2 Josef Hofmann (1876-1957). American pianist and composer. Back to transcript

3 Moritz Rosenthal (1862-1946). Polish pianist. Back to transcript

4 Artur Schnabel (1882-1951). Austrian pianist and composer. Back to transcript

5 Isabelle Vengerova. (1877-1956). American pianist. Back to transcript

6 Rudolf Serkin (1903-1991). American pianist. Back to transcript

7 Juilliard School, New York Conservatory founded in 1905. Back to transcript

8 Leopold Auer (1845-1930). Hungarian violinist and teacher. Back to transcript

9 Vladimir Horowitz (1903-1989). American pianist. Back to transcript

10 William Kapell (1922-1953). American pianist. Back to transcript

11 Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957). Italian conductor. Back to transcript

12 Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987). American violinist. Back to transcript

13 Pablo Casals (1876-1973). Catalan cellist, conductor, pianist and composer. Back to transcript

14 Artur Rubinstein (1887-1982). American pianist. Back to transcript

15 Emil Gilels (1916-1985). Russian pianist. Back to transcript

16 Hans Freiherr von Bülow (1830-1894). German conductor, pianist and composer. Back to transcript

17 Urtext, a term used in studying and editing musical sources to signify the earliest version of the text of a composition.Back to transcript

18 Fiorituras, ornamental passages, improvised or written out. Back to transcript

19 Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11. Back to transcript

20 Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57. Back to transcript

21 Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 29 in Bb major, Op. 106. Back to transcript

22 Faster. Back to transcript

23 Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor, Op. 40. Back to transcript

24 Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 1. Back to transcript

25 Alfred Cortot (1877-1962). French pianist and conductor. Back to transcript

26 Curtis Institute of Music, Conservatory founded in 1924 in Philadelphia. Back to transcript

27 Sonata No. 3 in A Major, Op. 69. Back to transcript

28 Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109. Back to transcript

29 Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K 467. Back to transcript

30 Sonata No. 3 in A major, Op. 69. Back to transcript

31 Adelina Patti (1843-1919). Italian soprano. Back to transcript

32 Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 29 in Bb major, Op. 106. Back to transcript

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