{"id":2020,"date":"2021-06-28T12:32:39","date_gmt":"2021-06-28T16:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=2020"},"modified":"2021-06-28T12:32:44","modified_gmt":"2021-06-28T16:32:44","slug":"inimitable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2021\/06\/inimitable.html","title":{"rendered":"Inimitable"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Mozart:<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It is my privilege to partner a new Myrios Classics CD: Mozart\u2019s two most important four-hand piano sonatas, importantly performed by Kirill Gerstein and Ferenc Rados.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gerstein customizes his Myrios recordings in exceptional ways. Three years ago, he invited me to contextualize his Gershwin CD via \u201cThe Gershwin Moment<\/a><\/strong>.\u201d His new Mozart CD comes with a 40-page booklet illustrated with unforgettable photographs (by Kaupo Kikkas) of his inimitable duet partner, Ferenc Rados. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gerstein also commissioned an eloquent tribute to Rados by Stephen Isserlis. And I contributed as follows: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA Most Intimate Communion\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

About Ferenc Rados and Kirill Gerstein<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the shrinking world of classical music, Ferenc Rados is not a household name. But for certain chamber musicians and pianists, it conjures a singular personality and mentor, born in Budapest and living there still. At the Liszt Academy, a generation of prominent Hungarians — the pianists Zoltan Kocsis, Dezso Ranki, and Andras Schiff, the original members of the Takacs String Quartet \u2013 studied with him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If he were to discover himself called \u201clegendary,\u201d Rados would doubtless feast on so tired an appellation; it would become a choice object of wicked dissection. His droll, affectless manner; his curious way of peering upward while dipping his chin; the slight play of mirth on his compressed lips \u2013 all this projects a mixture of teasing intellect and fatalistic marginality still to be found in Eastern Europe. The mixture is combustible: at any moment, he may submit to gusts of laughter which shut his eyes, jerk his head back, and yank open his jaw. His shuffling walk and careless attire are also deeply characteristic. Born in 1934, he is old enough to remember the Nazi occupation and much else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In conversation, Rados is clever and reflective, inimitable and characteristic. His speech is grave and gentle. He is unhurried. \u201cAs my time is worthless,\u201d he explains, \u201cI can afford to spend it in this fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rados\u2019s copious collection of turn-of-the-century musical postcards is telling. Here are paintings of \u201cinnocent\u201d ladies and \u201cinspired\u201d gentlemen, playing or listening, miming \u201cfeeling\u201d with  skyward glances directed at angels with harps. Rados has collected more than half a dozen renderings of \u201cChopin\u2019s Last Chords\u201d; the haggard composer, slumped in a cushioned chair, fingers the keyboard with thin infirm fingers. \u201cNow do you understand<\/em> Chopin?\u201d Rados asks. He is a connoisseur of clich\u00e9s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kirill Gerstein met Ferenc Rados in 2004, having previously studied in Russia, Boston, New York City, and Madrid. He calls Rados \u201cthe single most influential person in my musical life and the one with whom I have studied the longest.\u201d He regularly shares with Rados his concert recordings. He continues to play for him whenever possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following conversation took place days after Gerstein had finished editing the two Mozart performances on this CD. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

KG:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I first met Rados in 2004 at Prussia Cove, the chamber music festival that Steven Isserlis directs in Cornwall. Steven had found a way to get him there. Rados would drop into different rooms and offer musical advice. Steven suggested that I \u201cplay something for Rados.\u201d It turned out to be the second Beethoven violin sonata \u2013 in a room packed with musicians. Afterward, as Rados subsequently put it, he felt \u201cbloodthirsty.\u201d My playing irritated him so much that these three hours seemed like a public dismemberment. He pointed out many musical clich\u00e9s in my interpretation. He said: \u201cWhy do you play so quickly? Because it says \u2018Allegro vivace\u2019? That is like saying \u2018Long live Soviet-Chinese friendship.\u2019 It is something that does not exist.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The whole experience, lasting several hours, was wonderfully deflating. Here was a brilliant mind with information and ideas I could barely begin to grasp. So I asked to play for him again \u2013 the first Schubert impromptu, in C minor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JH:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You just sent me a link to a Ferenc Rados performance of the same piece. He makes it a veritable Winterreise<\/em>. An arduous life-narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KG:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Schubert consumed several hours. Then we worked on the Dvorak E-flat Piano Quartet. This time I was able to catch my breath and attempt to implement what he was getting at. He said: \u201cThis is perhaps somewhat understandable. Perhaps this is more believable.\u201d Emboldened, I asked: \u201cMay I play for you in Budapest?\u201d He said: \u201cPerhaps it is not im<\/em>possible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that, I made countless trips to play for him three days at a time, about eight hours a day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would return home and to concertizing, and try to process new insights in some order. Sometimes it felt like flying an airplane while rebuilding it. Gradually, I tried to shed as much vanity as I could and ask him about everything<\/em>, no matter how rudimentary. It was possible because Rados possesses an incredible warmth behind all the sarcasm and gloom. I played for him old pieces, new pieces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our Mozart recording began with a public performance, at the Salzburg Mozarteum in 2016. Two weeks before the concert, we were rehearsing and he spun into a dark black hole and said good-bye. He seemed to have foreclosed the project. I sent him a cajoling email a few days later. As it happened, the concert went so well that he uncustomarily received people backstage; he almost managed to smile. The next day he departed for the train station in good spirits with his wife Rita. Rita later told me that when their train was delayed for five minutes, he said: \u201cSee, I told you I hate travelling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some time later, I proposed: Why don\u2019t we record the two Mozart sonatas we performed in Salzburg? Quite aside from the pleasure of making music with him, I wanted Rados\u2019s playing captured in exemplary studio sound, and on an excellent instrument. We wound up rehearsing for four days in Berlin, then recording for three days. He was relentlessly self-critical. I cannot count the number of times he said \u201cIt is best that you take me to the airport now.\u201d Only in retrospect is that hilarious. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

JH:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s talk about the two Mozart four-hand sonatas you recorded. We don\u2019t normally think of Mozart as an innovator of musical genres. We think of Haydn doing that, or Liszt or Wagner. But there are two genres of Hausmusik<\/em> \u2013 of domestic music-making \u2013 that Mozart revolutionized. Before Mozart, wind serenades were garden-music for the open air. And Mozart\u2019s first wind divertimentos sit incongruously in the concert hall; they were never intended for concentrated listening. Then Mozart shattered that convention with three wind ensembles \u2013 two serenades and the Gran Partita \u2013 in which the players are not servants but princes, each allotted a substantial and characteristic role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he did the same thing with the piano duet \u2013 in particular, with the F major Sonata on your recording. You should not be surprised that I had never envisioned a performance of that piece so big, weighty, and eventful, so crammed with nuance and rubato and interpolated ornamention. Your reading is more distant from the parlor than I had thought possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the C major Sonata \u2013 I would call it the apex of the piano duet as Hausmusik<\/em>. It\u2019s a big work, but full of intimate repartee. And humor. In fact, your performance of the slow movement is amazingly droll. I can see Rados\u2019s evil glint. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

KG:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The F major Sonata would be a masterpiece in whatever genre. Its scope and complexity are symphonic. Rados, you know, lives outside the world of stylistic fashions \u2013 outside the bubble of Classical or Romantic or period-performance. For him, interpretation is based on foundational elements of musical substance \u2013 structural and metric stresses, harmonic relationships, motivic declamations. And I agree that the C major Sonata is the apex of Hausmusik<\/em> for piano duet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

JH:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you want to comment on your interpolated ornaments? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

KG: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rados played primo [i.e., the top part] in the F major Sonata, and I played primo in the C major Sonata \u2013 so those ornaments in the rondo are my fault. My experiences with jazz and improvisation perhaps played a role there. I spontaneously added them and Rados seemed amenable and amused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JH: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Would you say that you found more humor in this piece as a result of playing it alongside Rados?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GK:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For sure. \u201cEntertaining\u201d and \u201camusing\u201d are words Rados uses very often. They mean something more to him than in today\u2019s somewhat cheapened usage. They register high expectations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JH:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I find the finale of the C major Sonata sublime in the way certain finales in Schubert are sublime \u2013 the finales of his D major and G major Piano Sonatas. The child in paradise. And paradise is infused with folk music, with the vernacular. This isn\u2019t a typical Mozart world, I would say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KG:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also find that movement very Schubertian. This kind of Central European village flavor, translated into something so polished \u2013 it\u2019s rusticity elevated to heaven. The long, expansive melodic constructions of the F major Sonata occupy another kind of paradise. I can imagine Rados making fun of trying to turn the slow movement of the C major Sonata into something big and operatic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rados once said to me that the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is more \u201cneurotic\u201d and \u201cnervous\u201d than that of the so-called Romantics. The phrases are shorter, more declamatory, or comprise conjoined smaller elements. If you look at the action of older pianos, of \u201cfortepianos,\u201d the key depth is shallower, the mechanism is lighter, more quicksilver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JH:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hear a rare degree of give-and-take in your Mozart performances with Rados. Wouldn\u2019t you say that the piano duet, as a genre, requires a greater degree of mutual intimacy than, say, a violin sonata or cello sonata or piano trio? Look at the famous trio of Pablo Casals, Jacques Thibaud, and Alfred Cortot \u2013 completely different musical personalities. You can\u2019t do something like that with a piano duet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KG:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, it\u2019s a unique kind of chamber music. Your own instrument is being played by your partner. Even two-piano music is less unforgiving and merciless in this respect. Even the smallest differences in timing and attack are glaring. And the piano duet demands a togetherness of attitude. It very seldom works. It\u2019s a most intimate communion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parts of this essay are adapted from my 1990 book \u201cThe Ivory Trade.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is my privilege to partner a new Myrios Classics CD: Mozart\u2019s two most important four-hand piano sonatas, importantly performed by Kirill Gerstein and Ferenc Rados. Gerstein customizes his Myrios recordings in exceptional ways. Three years ago, he invited me to contextualize his Gershwin CD via \u201cThe Gershwin Moment.\u201d His new Mozart CD comes with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2020","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-wA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2020"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2027,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020\/revisions\/2027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}