SIR ANDRÁS SCHIFF: «We must be complete and integral musicians»

Sir András Schiff: «We must be complete and integral musicians»

By Enrique Montesdeoca | Photo: Nadja Sjöström
Sir András Schiff's significance in today's musical world is not easy to define. It is very difficult to do anything well in life, with mastery, and Schiff is excellent in all the activities in which he has been involved. His importance as a musician is indisputable, being a reference in the pianistic approach to the composers he loves. In addition, he is a magnificent pedagogue whose masterclasses accumulate millions of views. As an extension of his great pedagogical project, Schiff has also ventured into the world of lectures, presenting the world with very interesting explanations of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas and some of the most complex works for keyboard by J. S. Bach, among others. The artist has confessed that he always finds time to listen to young musicians who request it, and that he has never charged for a lesson, like Liszt. This artist's willingness to share his knowledge is truly special, and his commitment to future generations is as unique as it is touching. This interview follows a conversation held after a visit to the Prado Museum, one of Schiff's favourite places, in which the pianist showed a glimpse into the abysmal well that is his mind: "These robes are the colour of lapis lazuli, which is mainly mined in Afghanistan," he said, looking at a painting. A few days later, in his dressing room at the National Concert Hall in Madrid, we talked about knowledge, humanities and the shortcomings of musical education.

Could you briefly guide me through your first memories of Spain?

My first memories are of Madrid, certainly, when we came to play Bach’s Keyboard Concertos with Zoltán Kocsis and the orchestra of my school in Budapest conducted by Albert Simon. We played two concerts at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in the presence of the Queen. It was then that I went to the Prado for the first time. A year later I had the pleasure of going to the Canary Islands: to Gran Canaria and Tenerife. We are talking about the mid-seventies.

I know that the Prado museum is of great importance to you, and every time you come to Madrid you take some time to visit it. Could you explain why?

I know most of the great museums of the world, but this is the one I like the most. Even today. This is because of the extremely high and concentrated quality of the works it houses and also the type of art it focuses on, which is not only Spanish art (which is unparalleled), but Flemish and Netherlandish art, which are dear to me and, of course, also great Italian art. Meanwhile, Goya has become one of my heroes and, as I commented to you in our meeting a few days ago –being obvious that they never met- I believe that Schubert and he are very close. The themes they depict in their art and their aesthetics seem to me incredibly similar.

You are a man who is always curious about the arts and you defend the musician as an interdisciplinary figure.

Absolutely.

What does it bring to a musician to be in contact with the humanities?

This is all about culture in general. We live in an increasingly specialised world. In medicine it would be like being an eye doctor and not knowing where the nose is. Or a cardiologist who doesn't know where the kidney is. Of course, you have to learn anatomy. If you are a general practitioner or a family doctor, you have to know a little bit of all the disciplines of medicine so that, when there is a specific problem, you know how to redirect the patient to the right specialist.

It also happens in music. In the early music movement there are performers specializing in the music of France between 1660 and 1675, and this is not healthy. We must be all-round and integral musicians, but also with a sense of self-criticism: no one can do everything well. Even as a pianist, you have to know where your strengths and weaknesses are. The music of Scriabin is wonderful, but I wouldn't play it well. Some pianists try to play everything from William Byrd to Stockhausen.

And always on a Steinway.

Only on a Steinway, yes, and the results are not very convincing. If you're another instrumentalist, like a cellist, you can't say "I play the Bach Suites, but I don't play the Dvořák Concerto" (laughing). You have to play everything there is for cello, but there is so much for piano that it's impossible to do it. 

When I speak about general culture I mean that you have to be a civilized, open-minded person, who reads, who lives in this world and not in an ivory tower. A person with open eyes, who looks at the present, at society and participates, and does not say "music has nothing to do with real life". It has everything to do with real life! You have to cultivate curiosity, read literature, go to museums, go to see movies, go to the theatre. Even try to study history and philosophy, the sciences... I know so many wonderful scientists, mathematicians, physicists and chemists who love music and know a lot about music. I could not say the same for musicians and their interest in those disciplines, with some exceptions.

I frequently find myself in situations where someone plays "a" Beethoven sonata for me and doesn't know the other thirty-one. Let alone if I ask "do you know Beethoven's String Quartets?" and they reply "what is a string quartet? Why do I need to know?" If those questions are asked, it’s a lost case.

We spoke about knowledge...

Knowledge! There have been wonderful pianists who never left the field of piano.  Michelangeli is a good example. He played the piano –those twenty pieces he played- wonderfully, but I'm not sure he was an all-round musician in the terms I was talking about before. And then we have a pianist who to me was much more interesting, someone like Sviatoslav Richter, who lived a very rich life in those parameters. Richter could be asked about any book, film or play, he was incredible. As a listener, I am much more interested in what an artist like Richter has to tell me than what Michelangeli does, as wonderful as it is.

Somehow, all that knowledge, that background, do you think it is reflected in the interpretation?

It is reflected, yes. For example, a musician who only speaks English (and there are many) is already very far away. Many Anglo-Saxons tend to think that there is only one language in this world: English, and nothing else is needed. This is already limiting, because none of the great composers thought in English. Even the few who spoke English –Haydn spoke it because he went there a lot and Mozart had a general talent for everything - did not think in English. Beethoven didn't speak a word of English, nor did Schubert, nor Schumann…

How do you translate something like 'innig'?

Exactly. Music is connected to language, so we have to be multilingual. You know it very well, we have talked about Béla Bartók's music, you have studied it and have gone under the surface, but look how many musicians play Béla Bartók without knowing the recordings of the peasants and their tunes, their texts, the language, Bartók's recordings... You certainly don't need to speak perfect Hungarian, and I certainly know many Hungarians who play Bartók very badly: a passport is no guarantee. 

Another great example is Janáček. Before playing his music, it doesn't hurt to study the prosody, the declamation, the rhetoric of the language and how it is reflected in his music. This applies to virtually any composer.

Do you think we young musicians are taught to think holistically in the arts?

Not at all, with few exceptions. I was very lucky to have teachers who taught this way, but when I go through conservatories around the world and see how students play and how they are taught, this is what is missing. Many people say that "the level of pianists is very high nowadays". I'm sorry, but I don't agree, the mechanical level is very high, but the artistic and even the technical level is not, if we include tone production, color fantasy and its realisation. That is also part of the technique. If I compare today's pianists with Cortot, Joseph Hoffman, Ignaz Friedman or Schnabel, they are far, far away. Although all of these people, perhaps with the exception of Joseph Hoffman, would not win a competition today. They would not even let Alfred Cortot in the first round, but that says more about competitions than about Cortot.

You raised a distinction that even Horowitz and other pianists made between technique and mechanics. In your opinion Cortot has a great technique, even if there are hundreds of false notes because technique includes all the other elements, right?

I think Cortot has the best technique, because even in those old recordings - I never heard him live - the sound is incredible, the colours, the millions of colours and the lightness they emanate! I don't know how he did it, really.

He is a poet of the piano. We could also talk about the relationship between poetry and music, which is multiform. How do you perceive this connection?

The word: language and music. Some works use rhyme and are poetry and others are prose: Shakespeare, recitativo, rhetoric. Haydn's music is a great example of prose, like a text of philosophy: it is narrated, not always in verse. Mozart's is almost always presented to us in poetic terms. Beethoven sometimes this and sometimes that. Schubert is very much a poet, naturally.

Do you believe that this curiosity can be taught and that there is a solution to the reign of ignorance?

(Laughing) I don't know the solution to ignorance, I wish I did! But let's remember that not all people suffer from that lack of knowledge and we should never underestimate them. When I address an audience, I do not go to the lowest common denominator, but place a trust in them, knowing that many are very intelligent and expecting them to bring the rest of the information with them.

I was once told by a brilliant student at a distinguished conservatory that Scarlatti's K number is Kochel. This is such a pity. Whoever teaches there should have taught him that Scarlatti's K is Kirkpatrick. Not only that, but none of the people in the room had read Kirkpatrick's book, which is one of the best books on music. Even today, people play Scarlatti without knowing that many sonatas were conceived in pairs, like a Bach prelude and fugue. Nobody would separate the prelude from a fugue (laughing). Well, today everything is possible, but I hope not... Sometimes I am sometimes really amazed by young pianists, but even more by their teachers, because the duty of a teacher is to guide!

I think this was very present in your own education. If I remember correctly, if you played Bartók for György Kurtág, he would say "this is a quote from Bluebeard's Castle", and if you didn't know it, you would run to the library to find out, because you were ashamed of being ignorant!

Yes. Even at the age of 14 I thought, "I don't know Così fan tutte". Not many people know that opera at 14, but Kurtág made sure I knew it.

Today it's almost the other way around...

Yes (at this point Sir András Schiff goes to the piano and plays a few bars from the development of the first movement of Beethoven's Concerto No. 4). A young pianist who has won I don't know how many competitions had never heard of a Neapolitan sixth chord. This is scandalous, I'm sorry. How can you play music if you don't know harmony, history, theory...? What do you know? Notes?