Helene Grimaud - Interview - English version

obeah chair Nasser with secrets at minute Strava may be sporty no Steven Chi Chi Franciscan Arcania Alain Grimaud yet Oh nein obscure pianist come drama memo Hold'em exclusion is mascara Deutsche Grammophon social governor will be is Roberto - occultist ed Otto no problem sport oh yes dear ISA for Marie Edna erotic a hobbit are gorgeous match que estas cosas granola COO is that no special a telco seminarians receptions in our skin concert them Judy on arches nap revoir miss cream Oh as far as I know when you study to the Conservatoire in pari you were a kind of rebel you could you could maybe say that but I think it goes also with the age you know at that time when I entered I was nearly 13 and so I actually spent my adolescence in this venerable institution I was a very insatiable sort of character I wanted to always discover more discover ahead of the program not necessarily the imposed program so I was trying to go my own way yes is it true that you refuse to play a ship an attitude no it's not that I refused to play it I was playing it of course but what I wanted to do was bigger pieces I always felt very strongly drawn towards large musical architecture and so in the second year there was a sort of exam at the end of that second year which focused on shorter pieces and I didn't want that disturbing me from my plan of learning big Brahms sonatas and big concertos because I was just you know in a hurry always that's what we do right as young people always want more sooner so was it a boring at you know wasn't a boring it was a perfectly nice ax tude but you know because we had already learned all of them more or less you know I was just ready to move on to other things so you had it later on your repertoire well I did during my my years of study because you have to play you know most of them if not all of them at some point or another it's part of the requisite repertoire in an institution such as the equals of address memory this particular one well I sort of do but it wouldn't probably tell you much but yes as far as I know you were the only musician in your families it that's right yeah yeah it still still a mystery to this day although I feel I owe my mom quite a bit in that department because she had a beautiful voice she was always singing when I was a kid and I think from the earliest age I had this melodious element in my upbringing accompanying me so maybe that has something to do with it but yeah my father is named after Claude Debussy whose name is Claude but other than that there was no no one who had had directly with music to do with music really up until that point so who brought you to music your parents yes because they were looking for an extra curricular activity for me to sort of channel this surplus of energy which I seemed to have in school and of course their their first assumption was that it was a surplus of physical energy so they first introduced me to sports of all sorts classical dance and you know tennis and martial arts and but nothing really caught my attention and I would get bored very quickly I would do a couple of lessons a couple of sessions with other kids and then I lose interest until I think one of the very last things on their list was classical music learning an instrument and so I'm very grateful that that I would had the chance to discover this through there you know efforts to try and keep me well balanced as a child so I think with you it's it's a quite a physical thing to play piano you don't seem to be afraid to hit it well you know when when you need to of course it's not appropriate in every repertoire but I think you're going to stay with me for the rehearsal and and there you will get a good range because this this Brahms concerto has everything from the most tender delicate moments to the most explosive you know muscular sort of pianistic language that you could want to see so you will probably get a good I have seen some videos of your concerts it looks like a risky playing that you are almost on the edge yes but that's what I think you know justifies or defines or should define stage performance because if you go at it in a in a comfortable secure way only being sort of satisfied what you have command over I think that that's something is going to be missing then in that case we don't really need music performance you can just stay home with your favorite recording I think what you makes a concert so special is that it has to be an emotional event first of all and and I think you know few people realize how it has to do with a fraction of a second if something really special happens time is all of a sudden being suspended and you can actually alter time it can it can stop for a moment and when all of these people in the audience are being you know touched by something and you have this this element of shared freedom it's there is an equality to it there's something very marvelous and and you have to you have to push or sort of go to the limit and be able and willing to relinquish that control so you can react to the inspiration at the moment so you had a good life that you worked with it Daniel Barenboim at the very beginning of your career yes what did you learn from him well I was very lucky to be able to see a lot of the rehearsals with the orchestra he at the time that he was music director of and so first of all it really and expanded my repertoire horizon because having started piano relatively late probably around eight years you know of age and having entered that's funny eight years is relatively late but it's you but it's true yeah it is true because at that age you know some colleagues already child prodigies playing concerts you know at the time is a bit of your childhood exactly you could say and then of course having entered the Paris Conservatory at at 12 I was mostly focused on piano repertoire and I guess owing to Daniel I was able to start really appreciating symphonic repertoire and get to discover a lot of this things so and I was also very lucky to encounter a lot of wonderful colleagues who shared a lot of things in a generous typical generous fashion which defines great artists and so Daniel Barenboim was one of them get on here Mamata gage Nelson Clara so many many artists do you think it's an advantage if you work with a conductor who is a skilled piano player that he is more understanding for the sliced is this is something I used to say I remember when I first recorded recommend of second piano concerto with Lady Makino Zee for the first time I realized what an impact this can have you know because as a pianist of course let's say at the end of can Enza there is a run which might be difficult to catch a conductor who is also a pianist has such an intimate knowledge of the physical properties of the instrument just by hearing the way the piano sounds like in the beginning of the run he would be able to know when it ends so it's and there is a special pleasure also I think in working with a conductor who has himself played your instruments and knows the the repertoire intimately in a physical sort of way so and he has to like you because otherwise he can give you a hard time because of the same knowledge vice-versa believe me soloists can give conductors a hard time too yeah well of course you know as with any human dynamics it takes to write to make it work or not work so there's always a shared responsibility you don't play too many French authors do you know like Debussy Ravel or well I mean I studied a lot of these pieces and actually I'm preparing a program now a new recital program which will have quite a bit of Debussy Holland and 4e and then of course there is the Ravel's concerto in G which have always loved and have played quite often it would be nice to do to do it here and it's one of the most you know beautiful phrases music I mean for example this you you the orchestra comes in and then the English horn actually takes over the phrase and then the piano has this freeze which I find also wonderful Oh you you you Oh that's one of the endless melodies yes it never it goes on and on and on that's fascinating in this movement has a it has a purity it's you know it takes after actually after Mozart and it's in the purity of lines but and it also has always this sort of special affinity with the way Chopin would have written a phrase you know one of those endless phrases for example in the nature you can see that you you you this person your quality of this of this phrase that just keeps meandering yeah y'all have tended is it rent is this true do think it might be helpful with some authors could you recognize that is using this composer must have been left-handed too because it puts much more difficulties to the left hand well you know Chopin was one of the first ones to have actually emancipated the left hand but as far as being able to tell which pianists were or composers were left-handed that's that's a bit of a stretch but I like to think that most of them were because at the end I mean this is what defines the piano as an instrument to this this you know vertical dimension not only the horizontal one of the melody but this counterpoint so you know basis or there the here we're talking about musical architecture earlier its of course it's the the foundation of everything right this this harmonic bass and so there it's of course helpful if it's quite robust fascinating when you have all the technical skills so you don't need to care too much about what's happening you know and you can just flow with the music it must be like swimming in the thermal pool or something like that it's a nice image I mean of course we do or worry about it because this is something that has to be acquired you know while you practice a piece I mean of course what you do is through the practice through the rehearsals you increase the odds of being you know so two hundred percent prepared that you can be totally free at the moment that you are on stage and you have to you know basically let the music soar and you don't want to be so held back by you know technical concerns so this is something that you work day in and day out to achieve you know some people have more sort of innate facilities than others do but you know at the end that's what we all look for this expressive freedom is there a special passage in any piano concerto that would make you get goose skin they do see it coming and you oh my god it's here again this nightmare not not really no I mean not not after I mean once you're playing the piece then then you know it becomes part of who you are I mean if you're afraid of it then you probably shouldn't be going out on that on that stage I mean it's good to have a you know healthy dose of respect for the piece you want you never want to take the piece for granted and think ah no problem I mean that's because the music will always show you that it is you know stronger than you are and you always have something to learn yo-yo de minuit and said this wonderful thing about how you only truly know a piece when you've made a mistake in every single place of that piece that's the only assurance that it will not happen again but until it does happen that possibility always remains so again you have to have a disrespect for the work but at the same time once you once you're playing it you have to have to be free what was her first country with the wolves there was a long time ago when I first moved to Tallahassee Florida and I had no particular if I'm honest I will tell you I had no particular interest or prejudice about wolves in particular I loved I loved all animals and you know always had this strong interest in biology and Natural Sciences and and you know the environment but I was more actually interested in studying precisely at that moment social behavior in primates so ethology the the science of behavior but I met this wolf this high-content hybrid that's really what she was but nevertheless she was so you know different from any domestic canine that I had ever had the chance to meet up until that point I was very intrigued and actually she acted as an ambassador which is the reason why the wolf conservation center of the organization which I founded in 1997 is based on that principle of having you know some ambassador animals which helped build a bridge of understanding and concern for their wild counterparts because this one animal that I met until I see Florida Leia was her name she was really the one that motivated me to look into the cause of this misunderstood predator and to start the Wolfe Center so so how many was are there living now at the moment 22 prostitute you know in different people by name well most of them do not have names because they actually they belong to the to the US Fish and Wildlife Service they're part of this reintroduction program there are what we call SSP wolves Species Survival Plan it's a wonderful program it's a program run by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature they are ucn and nationally it's run in the United States of course by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the ACA and it is destined to you know supervise the captive holding and breeding of some of these most endangered species and subspecies in the case of the Mexican wolf is the most endangered subspecies of the gray wolf and the red war for the species and so these two animals we are currently working with at the at the Wolf Conservation Center in preparation for their introduction and yeah but you go to singers or they are they have a very very beautiful howl and what I also find very interesting you know they always talk about this study you know what the purpose of the howling could be and one is a function of the howl which I like very much it's something which we call social glue it is something which generates a lot of good feeling within the pack something that you could probably equate to humans singing around a campfire or singing in a sports event it's something which basically reinforces the bond you know to one another but also other ways that is used for example advertising that a certain territory is occupied and what I find interesting is that when war starts to howl and another one joins in if they land on the same note on the same harmonic one will immediately switch which produces more overtones and in the end you always have the impression that there are more wolves and there actually are because of this acoustical you know this is harmonizing which is very nice does it bring something back to your musical skills I can't really say I mean you know of course according to one of the earning precepts of the German Romantic movement there is definitely a lot of truth in nature is the ultimate Mules really and all of these composers poets writers paint not to mention painters of course found usually their inspiration in nature following this this idea that you know nothing we don't invent anything we just rediscover what was already there in that sense it is something which has given me a strength for sure and which has been a renewed source of inspiration whether it directly connects with the music I'm not sure one thing which is clear is that if you you know interact with with a while animal an animal that you cannot expect to meet you on your terms it's always a lesson of humility and you need to have 100% of your attention in the moment you know physically spiritually emotionally intellectually and that is very similar to what working on a piece of music requires when you basically enter this this tunnel and the piece has to give you the keys to to its own secrets basically so at the beginning of your career you didn't play too much back as far as I know now you do know that's not true because I had a wonderful teacher PA Bobby's a who taught me very early on that a battle should be your daily bread and that you should be you know every day starting it's fascinating music and it's surprising all the time how modern he was are you still surprised with back I am I'm always every time I listen to his music I think he is definitely the probably the greatest of all of all geniuses adept the profundity to the music but at the same time there is a universal quality and that's absolutely wonderful and it doesn't matter if it's a prelude or if it's the beginning of the Chaconne I mean whether it's something like this you you you you it's always something which makes you feel small it makes you feel you know so insignificant and at the same time connected to you know the bigger picture so something very powerful well thank you so much that you made our spectators feel small I guess one day what you don't know you know they do because I'm you know I'm the smallest of all of all of them right I mean it that's that's what makes the role of an interpreter so so fantastic because you are just just a channel basically a medium in the literal sense of the word between the world of the composer and the world of the listener and this is your role as an as an open channel and it's a privilege well it was a privilege to have you here and thank you so much for sharing your time with us thank you for Android remote alertness bramish most honorable Barnea Aaron Grimm Oh you you you Oh

Channel: JP

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Id: 6CvaG4-luYc

Length: 26min 10sec (1570 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 17 2016