András Schiff discusses Bach

to have with us now one of the world's eminent pianists adored by audiences and critics alike he is also deeply respected by his peers he's a pianist's pianist and tonight he's our pianist please welcome andra schiff starting last october and continuing through this october andra schiff is in the midst of what he calls the bach project in north america six bach recitals in a week of orchestral music of bach and schumann and mendelson just concluded with the new york philharmonic and uh the other venues in which mr schiff is appearing in new york include avery fisher hall and alice tully hall and the green space as well mr chef when did you first meet sebastian bach well symbolically speaking unfortunately we were born at different times but yes um luckily bach is not just the greatest composer but you know because he had so many children who were so musical so he was a great teacher in the pedagogue so he wrote wonderful educational music for his children so when i started taking piano lessons at the age of five then i could immediately almost immediately start with the little preludes and the little pieces written for anna magdalena you know things like like everybody else and so this was about the age of six seven yes um what was the first bach piece that made you say more please not this one although it's very beautiful i don't know well i listened to music on the radio and and old old recordings that my father had who was an amateur violinist so things like um like the the great charcoal for solo violin vanillino that impressed me enormously as a child and it still does but i don't want to play that on the piano we should not steal that from violinists um you've had some uh amazing teachers through your career including uh george cortad what did your teachers teach you about playing bach different things and everybody has different ideas about bach and that's correct because he is so great and there is there are several ways to to approach him and to to come try to come to the final truth there is no final truth no final solution here well my first teacher elizabeth she just let me play instinctively very musically i was a musical child but she didn't she didn't um bother me too much this was very kind of her um later later and then when i came to the friends list academy in budapest and my first lesson with mr kurta who is probably the greatest living composer today but we didn't know it then because he's a very modest man he never spoke about his own composition so i went to him at i was maybe 13 and i had to play a three-part invention e major [Music] still difficult but and he just took this into pieces apparently we spent like three hours on on not this whole piece because i didn't go beyond bar three in three hours and he just explained this to me and and that was that was a crucial moment in my life because there i noticed that i had no idea how to play the piano and i knew absolutely nothing about music but it was but it was not a hopeless case he made it so so constructive and so positive so and then this was a life-changing experience and about the same time i met a wonderful musician in london george malcolm who is best known to people who collect records as a harpsichordist but he was much more than a harpsichordist he was a renaissance musician who played harpsichord and piano and organ and conducted and was a choral conductor he was a universal musician and from him i really learned the most about bach also you know how to play this on the harpsichord or on the clavichord but how to translate those experiences onto the modern piano and he always encouraged me to play bach on the piano but with with the right approach and with the right style and not to use the sustaining pedal which most pianists use all the time regardless of the composer as you said in the liner notes for your recent recording of the well-tempered clavier it's not an accelerator that you use as if you were driving the car well it's easy for me to say so because i don't even drive [Laughter] but yes so i i use this analogy because most of you drive so you will you will know what it is so these pedals are not there uh to to be used all the time because on box instruments um on the harpsichord on the clavichord of course on the organ you have pedals but that they have they have a different function because they they produce notes but the sustaining pedal this this right one on the piano is a much later device and it's quite important in music from beethoven on beethoven was the first composer who who consciously used the sustaining pedal and then later composers such as chopin and schumann and brahms then there it's very important however in bach's music it does not have any any relevance and yet your recent recording the ecm uh well-tempered keyboard series is full of sustained notes and languid sounds and sweetness and all of the things that you would you would be able to pretty much do with one button in an illusory sense at least if you push that right pedal down yes but that would be the easy way and i'm not looking for an easy way and of course you have to to do all of that you have to achieve a singing tone you have to achieve a perfect legato which is actually not possible on a keyboard instrument you make the illusion of it and also you know if if i play a note on on the piano it's still there but diminishing dying dying dying dead you can't you i cannot say like a singer would do or a wind player or a string player could sustain that note or make a crescendo on it we poor pianists we cannot do that but but the composer hub helps us you know and bach more than anybody like if i start the third english suite you see it starts with one voice second so each every time as f further voice enters it creates the illusion of a crescendo and that's what the great composer can do have you ever played the harpsichord or the organ and i don't and i don't think anybody does play the clavichord oh i do do you yeah with pleasure yes i have a clavichord in my home in florence can you tell us what that is because i'm guessing most of us think it's well it's a tiny little what is it a clavicle as opposed to a clavichord the name for the collarbone sorry no it's a clever clavichord because it's a it's a keyboard instrument that's tuned and it's um it's plugged plugged strings and it has about five five and a half octaves so it's much shorter than a modern keyboard is a very very fine and very delicate sound and i can only play it actually for myself and maybe one or two listeners very intimate it's a private instrument it's not a public instrument but this was we know we know it from historical evidence that this was buck's preferred keyboard instrument and it can do something very beautiful it's called in german the babung it's like a vibrato so that you you play a note and then you vibrate your hand vertically and then it's something like that and it's it's very very beautiful in a way that answers a question then about box writing for the keyboard because some of the works are so intimate we share them you share them on concert stages with thousands of people in the room but they are somehow deeply intimate works written i guess then for the clavichord really yes i think that most of these works are clavichord pieces although he he seldom specifies it like the world tempered clavier is the best example we have here a collection of 48 preludes and fugues and we don't know for for what instrument because clavier is a is a collective word for all the keyboard instruments of the time so you have harpsichord clavichord and organ and we only have to guess from the from the character of the music character of the of the particular piece what what instrument he intended and a lot of it is is very very private and very intimate for for a player in a room really concerts says we have them today they did not exist in bach's time i mean there he had in leipzig when in the last phase of his life there was a coffee house the cafe cimaman and there he would do little you know we couldn't call them concerts but you know public musical gatherings where he would play things like his keyboard concertos or the brandenburg concertos and those are more public pieces but these these keyboard works are really for private pleasure 19 keyboard suites right 19 18. well the partitions the english including the yes and if you if you play the six french switch the six english tweets and the six party does plus the french overture which is also as sweet yeah they're very they're very big works in concept when you prepare to play them in concert well the english suites for instance um have a sequence they all have a prelude at the beginning and then and then an aleman and a courant and a sarah band and a couple of other movements and they wind up with it with a jig are they and you're playing them all in an evening so how do you make the arc of the evening out of those works were they were they designed as just explorations in dance form or was he taking you on a journey are you taking an audience on a on a journey well we can only speculate what what he wanted but certainly he he would be shocked that there is a madman like me playing this in one evening he would say you are out of your mind but i i would disagree because you know and this is the greatness of bach he's a very modest man he he was deeply religious he he didn't think of posterity of of reputation of fame he knew how good he was no question about it but you know all he wanted to do was to to write great music because that he had a god-given gift and that was his duty and he he worked for for the church that all all the great composers wanted to to write music for the church that was the greatest privilege and the greatest honor and so bach had to write a cantata a new cantata for every sunday plus i don't know he did a lot of other things during the week like taking care of the children and teaching at the school i don't know how he took care of the children i think madame bach did that and and so so bach had to escape to the to the thomas schuler to the school of saint thomas and i think that's where where he wrote all this fantastic music and it's impossible to imagine how he had the time to do that because he just i mean not not thinking of the quality of the music but the sheer quantity i mean if somebody would have to sit down and just just copy out all the parts it would take decades and he wrote just you know masterpiece of the masterpiece quite amazing he doesn't seem to have built them a voice at a time he seems to have all that polyphony in his head so often it just sort of fountains out well there is there is an intellectual side to bach and that is nothing to be ashamed of certainly but people who find this music too cerebral they they miss the point because it's uh of course it's it's intellectual and and and wonderfully constructed music but but the emotional side of it is is even more important and that's why you know 300 years later we are still listening to it more than ever and and i think there is no other composer who who has this rapport with with younger generations also younger generations who don't necessarily like to listen to to mozart or beethoven or schubert but somehow bach with his rhythmic impact and also with with his spiritual message that and it is the it is the religious aspect of it i mean even if he is he is writing a secular peace but you feel that you are somehow [Music] this could be in a in a in the b minor mass or in in one of the passions but it's just a prelude for keyboard b minor of weltemperclavier book1 but and vice versa when you have in the passion something like but this is in the same matter passion but it's a dance this is a this is a minuet or a past pierre or in the [Music] we should take the gloria of the b minor mass it's a it's full of joy full of life so so with with bach the the sacred and the secular they are interconnected but even in the secular works you you feel the the spirit and the this spiritual message this dance music every does bach ever not dance one of the one of the smart things i think that i've heard said about bach was that if if you don't sense a dance in it you're not playing it right well that's oversimplifying it but well i don't think that for example i don't think that the opening of the since matthew passion is a dance although some some musicians will disagree yes but but certainly the element of dance is very important not just in bach but in a lot of western music unfortunately most of us classical musicians we are miserable downstairs i am certainly i'm the worst dancer but but i love dance music and i join here you know somebody like like franz schubert who was another miserable dancer but but he his music dances and he loved to play dance music to to his friends so and um bach uses this these baroque dances all the time not just in his sweets and party does but as i showed also in in the in the sacred museum they're all over the cantatas the dances are everywhere and they're amazing yes and this is also something very very european in the best sense that that he is using german french spanish irish scottish you know polish dances and unites them so this is what the politicians are desperately trying to do in in the european union and they make a mess of it [Laughter] but bach did it somehow did the audiences of bach's time find his music perplexing did they understand everything that he laid on them or did they were they confused at times as as we are perhaps confused today by new music sometimes yes i think they were confused i mean this was much much too much too great for them and especially there came a time in in the last decade of buck's life so about from 1740 to 1750 when he was considered passe outdated already his sons like carl philippe was a wonderful composer they were writing revolutionary music that pointed the way towards haydn mozart and beethoven towards the the classical style and people didn't want to to bother with bach anymore uh it the times were different and also then the minute he died he was he was forgotten uh people didn't want to to listen to or to to play music of the past that's in a way a good thing we could be nostalgic about that today because today well wherever we have new music it is being performed and listened to in a in a kind of a ghetto-like atmosphere so we have the new music ghetto and we have the mainstream which is a little bit like a museum shouldn't be but that's that's it's a bit like it's it's very strange that in the visual arts or in literature people are so curious to to see and read the new west and in pop music certainly but in the so-called serious music whenever a new piece comes it's suspect you know when the new york philharmonic plays a new piece and a lot of people walk out or they don't even come and they want to hear them yeah and and preferably the same way yeah so that's not a healthy situation however what i'm trying to say is that uh that buck's music was forgotten in he died in 1750 and it it took mendelssohn in 1829 to resurrect him with the first performance of the saint matthew passion mendelssohn was 19 years old and and he he put back back back to life how is your own playing of bach changed over over the years over your lifetime that i don't know i use no radical style changes no epiphanies along the way nothing um nothing you know consciously it changed to like like you know i have gray hair that's how it changed um changes like [Music] preferably when when you have a good bottle of wine and then it needs a few years to mature you should not drink a good bottle of wine in its first or second year so i hope it's it's like a good bottle of wine and certainly but it there are no shortcuts in in music and musical interpretation so i have to study these works and and live with them for years and for decades and play them over and over and over again and learn from my own mistakes and i'm never arriving anywhere it's it's always a work in progress so hopefully i understand them much better now and in five years time it will be further still but the trouble is that the your mind develops but the body is a different matter um still i'm i'm not complaining but you know it's it's very difficult because they're like so if you get arthritis that's not going to be very good but we are not there yet i wonder what we are missing that we might have known if we had been in box time that you've spent more time with the composer than most of us i presume so um did he make if he perplexed audiences sometimes did he also sometimes make connections with them that we wouldn't understand today in other words you know he wrote french sweets and english sweets they know francis in english to our ears mostly well certainly when you talk about audiences as i said there were no concerts so it's it was a let's let's think of of the music lovers and the and the amateurs so and and all all composers had to be pragmatic and back too i mean he had to make a living out of this he had to publish his works i mean he he published his partitas himself that was his his opus one his own publication that shows that he um thought very highly of these works and then they had to sell it to a to a public which was relatively small today we talked about the crisis of classical music and this is ridiculous because we are comparing the figures with the figures of of pop music and you cannot compare that but if i think these figures of today's classical music lovers should be compared to the figures of bach's time and then we are a thousand times more or a million times more and so this is no no cause for lamentation on the contrary yes french sweets i mean bhakt never traveled outside of germany this is a very important point he stayed in germany all his life and yet he knew so well the french and the italian style how did he know that because he spent all his life in in libraries and you know copying out concerti by vivaldi by geminiani by corelli by italian masters he also studied the french colleagues you know and cupren and luli and all those so that's why he knows when he writes a french overture everybody knew at that time what is a french virtually this is a very very festive with with dotted rhythms and this is from the the music from the court of louis xiv and all civilized and cultured people knew that i mean it clicked with them and similarly an italian concerto which is by bhakti is a very famous piece and then where i just stopped that shows that what is it what is an italian concerto so you you have an orchestra concerto and you have a smaller group the concertino and they are just exposed so sometimes the whole orchestra is playing and then comes a section where the soloists are playing so here the whole orchestra is playing and here only a small section bach wrote this italian concerto by the way specifically for a harpsichord with two manuals so i i can only imitate that here on a piano but again this this is a tour de force because he creates the illusion of an orchestra just exposed with soloists on a single keyboard instrument so and and so bach approached music systematically almost like a scientist so he he sets himself goals and um he solves all the all the problems and um like this the french overture and the italian concerto were published together as second part of the clavier eubank and then then the goldberg variations for example an area with 30 variations monumental work and he hardly ever composed other works in variation form so he set himself this goal now now let's make a huge work team and variations and it has to be the best ever and it is the best ever nobody can approach it the well-tempered clavier you know 20 twice 24 preludes and fugues in all uh major and minor keys it's unbelievable that the art of fugue his opus magnum you know on that single theme you know the whole artistry and the whole whole mastery of writing writing fugues and all the all the counterpoint and the polyphony and all those elements together and diminutions and augmentations and inversions it's it's a scientific work but it's it's also emotionally unbelievably fulfilling so that's what makes park unique one of bach's biographers quoted one of bach's sons saying that the art of fugue was actually not written to be played it was written to be read it was an intellectual exercise possible i agree with that because again you know i'm approaching 60 and i'm still afraid to play the art of fugue and i play it for me for myself at home but i i wonder if i will ever play it in public because i'm really not sure that it's a it's a concert piece it's not a concert piece i mean nor nor is the well-tempered clavier but the well-tempered clavier is very varied with the preludes and the views and the different um tonalities and the art of fugue is all in d minor you have solid two hours of the hardest counterpoint in the world but it's the it's the greatest work ever so in a way it's a pity not to play so you're not settled we see not certainly on that point um you've expanded your own color palette in the last week you've conducted the new york philharmonic and played bach with them how do you communicate with an orchestra to play bach the way you'd like to well first of all they are a wonderful orchestra but i've done this with with many orchestras now and it always works because somehow they they respond to me i don't know why i bring my my material that is very important to to prepare the string parts and all the the bowings and the markings and the phrasing and the articulation so there is very little to talk about and then we just play and it is like like chamber music i play chamber music all my life so i i think piano concerto is also chamber music and the give and take on a larger scale and the piano is not necessarily more important than any of of the other instruments maybe first among equals but not more do you ever have to sell an orchestra on your approach do you ever have to say can we try it this way do you ever get somebody saying we i don't think this is right we shouldn't do it this way people groups who are unwilling to sort of see your point of view on the matter has not happened yet i'm not wishing it on you i just no no no it's not i mean if but if it would happen i would i would be open to to ideas but they have the ideas have to be intelligent and you know i mean if somebody says to me i feel it differently it's not good enough i mean there has to be a reason behind it i mean also i don't when i suggest an interpretation it's not just i feel it that way there is more more reasoning behind that you've um you've prepared an edition of the well-tempered keyboard um um was that something that you felt just needed to be in the world your your a lot of your fingerings based on some original additions what was the motivation for for that i was asked by by henley the publishing company to to do this and i was very reluctant because i never write fingerings in my music you won't find one in my bach music it's so i also i respect somehow the score and but then i realized that these fingerings were very very well conceived in my brain and i do work it out and so then the publisher said that we prepare two different additions one without fingerings and one with and most of the people who buy the music music students and and you know music lovers and amateurs they do ask for a version with fingering so therefore i i gave in but it's probably the cheapest lesson with you they can afford to get my lessons are very cheap because i never i never charged for a lesson because one but i don't i don't teach regularly and there is no time for that now that the fingerings are it's it's not a mechanical thing because the a good fingering can illuminate a musical line or a musical phrase and also i i try to to design these fingerings that the players should be able to play the preludes and fugues without the sustaining pedal but they are not easy fingering with your concerts this week i want to ask you again about about a difference between these suites and a difference in your concept of them french last night the english tomorrow night is there a is there a preparation for each work that is that is different do you see them as as different in structure other than the notes on the page themselves the preparation is is not different it's just very very serious and so i have to start from scratch really will you play them through tomorrow before you play them tomorrow night oh certainly yes tomorrow morning every day anyway at home i start every day with bach i play even something before breakfast and then certainly after breakfast another hour something by bach so when it's a concert and certainly i i always go to the concert hall and spend about three hours there playing through the whole program and getting used to even if i know the instrument it will be this very same instrument and i know the whole but this is like like a ritual um to me it's very important i i cannot understand some orchestras go on tour and they don't even try the acoustics they just go out on stage and play i think this is this is scandalous because god knows what happened i mean each hole is different each hole is also it's different when it's empty and then when it's with with the audience so when i start the concert then the first few minutes i'm trying to adjust the difference between the empty hole and the full hole and this is something that you you you can't learn at school you can only learn it from from experience what kind of adjustments do you make for a situation like that you might you might uh stretch the tempo a little bit if the room is particularly resonant even with an audience there uh to keep the notes a little more separate you might play louder or softer what are those adjustments that you make certainly the tempo not radically but you know in a very very large or very reverberant hall you know if i play a very fast piece i mean like the last movement of the italian concert is a good example [Music] so in a very reverberant room this would be too fast and then i adjust it but i'm not going to play it [Music] that would be a parody but something you know it still is the character so you have to adjust and um but within certain parameters within a certain framework when you made your recording then of the well-tempered keyboard last year um that was the right way to play it in that room i guess and on that piano at that time have you listened back to it are you still happy with the recording have you re-thought some pieces happen you know no i don't listen to them it's not my job to listen that's true that's true it's our job to listen do you that's true you don't really look at your own photos from 10 years ago or do you not very often no no we have other things to do but maybe a time a time will come in your life when you when you like to to look back and occasionally i do listen and then i notice that you know this this that's the way this was played that day like you look at an old photo of yourself and that's the way i looked and you have to accept that it's um no i've i accept my recordings because i did them with full responsibility and and with a lot of care and a lot of love and time goes on so we have to i'm always very philosophical about it because uh like bach bach didn't think of posterity i also you know i'm a very small little nothing compared to bach but i don't think of of my recordings were being made for for eternity a lot of my colleagues do they take they take these recordings incredibly seriously and they take themselves very seriously it's not so we are you know servants of of great composers not at all unimportant but we have to know our place and the composer is is it's all the composer you spoke earlier about bach of course being a composer who was a a man of faith he was a believing man um and so his spirituality is evident in in his music overtly but we also talk about bach as a spiritual composer in a way that i don't think we talk about anybody else who writes music and i wonder if you connect with that idea as well and and i wanted to know what that means to you yes um once a wonderful indian musician i love indian classical music and he ex ram narayan who plays the sarangi is an old master and he explained to me i mean that in indian classical music you you never play a note without this divine connection if you don't feel that then you don't play you you cannot betray that and this is this is what i feel with bach with with every note and i you know i'm i'm a jew he was he was a protestant we don't have to have the same religion the same faith but but it is this when i play bach i must get on his spiritual wavelength and that is that is omnipresent so even when i play something very simple and do [Music] do [Music] just a little almond of a french sweet but you know like you have those wonderful italian renaissance paintings you can see frangelico for example and you you see little musical angels they are always singing and and smiling so there's a joy joy in this so this is a liberating feeling it's not not pessimistic when you finish your bach year in in october i'm sure that bach doesn't leave you as he doesn't leave you uh when you practice as you said but you are adding or you're making a transition with beethoven you're working on the diabetes variations now to make a new recording and the concert that is planned at carnegie hall will be the goldbergs and the diabelli on the same program so another yet another marathon because you just like them so much so um can you talk about the connections between those two a little bit and your transition from your bach year to to your next not all such baki year well even this year i i play all the beethoven sonatas parallel to the bach works because to me as hans von bulow said the if if the well tempered clavier was the old testament and beethoven's 32 sonatas could be seen as the new testament and certainly um the older i get the more i love beethoven really he's a fantastic when i was 20 years old i didn't understand him at all certain works yes i found the late music awesome and i didn't dare to to play the last sonatas the early sonatas i loved and i had a huge problem with the with the middle period and um i had to reach the age of 50 to to be comfortable with with a piece like like the welch stein sonata or the apocionata and now i'm completely crazy about them of course most of you love these pieces so too you will not understand this struggle but um with beethoven it said it's a different process than with bach because bach has been with me from the early childhood and with beethoven you cannot play beethoven as a child today some you you have chinese kids eight years old they play the hammer club but but it's a joke you know unfortunately some people don't see it as a joke but if if if an eight-year-old would come on stage and play king lear then you would love but if the eight-year-old plays the opposite 111 nobody loves i love but so for for beton you have to to grow up with that and the diabetes variations is his final masterpiece for the keyboard and it is very closely connected to box goldberg variations the goldberg variations are the the model because as as i said before bach wrote this monumental set and he set the standard for it for for coming generations and all the great composers after bach looked upon him as a as a father figure and no no one more than beethoven and and beethoven even that in the late years of his life was taking lessons in counterpoint and he's writing more and more fugues and and more polyphonic pieces and then he writes this this great opus magnum the diabetes variations which is based on a very trivial scene but he makes a universe out of this it's a jingle really it's what it is that's such a simple little song well this is from diabetes but he already he spices it up and then so i wanted to put these two two pieces together i will not do this very often i do it until my 60th year and then i will try to play simpler programs after that well we're lucky that that we get to enjoy it now when you're in the midst of this journey you have uh offered to play us at work i'm going to step away and present to you andra schiff in the green space with the chromatic fantasy and fugue of bach

Channel: SW

Views: 157,378

Keywords: bach, js bach, handel, haydn, mozart, discussion, lecture, recital, Goldberg Variations, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Brandenburg Concertos, chromatic fantasia and fugue, italian concerto, english suites, french suites, murray perahia, glenn gloud, cpe bach

Id: sFTAjQ07vYc

Length: 49min 43sec (2983 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 24 2022