Daniel Barenboim: Different piano schools

There have been different piano schools. There was the so-called German school, which stemmed to a great degree from Theodor Leschitizky in Vienna. Under various guises, one could count such a variety of pianists as Artur Schnabel, Edwin Fischer, Wilhelm Backhaus, Walter Gieseking and Wilhelm Kempff. And there was the very famous Russian school, which was well known throughout the world through the great Soviet virtuosi such as Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter and earlier on through Rachmaninov and Vladimir Horowitz and others. And before both of these there was a French school, which was more limited, but which gave us Alfred Cortot and Yves Nat – to my mind a great pianist but much underestimated outside France; and the great Italian school that went from Busoni to Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and Maurizio Pollini. Each of these schools had, in a certain sense, a connection to Liszt. None would have been possible without this grandfatherly person. To my mind, the Hungarian-Slavic side of Liszt was developed by the Russians; the elegance of Liszt’s playing went to the French school, and the slightly more intellectual side to the German and the Italian schools. When you analyse these piano schools you can almost see the different stages of Liszt’s life; Budapest with the connection to the East, Rome in later years, Weimar and of course Paris.

The German branch, which came to us through Busoni and Arrau in more recent days, was probably influenced by the side of Liszt that was interested in Wagner and in the transcriptions of the Beethoven symphonies and the songs, most of which were by Schubert. The Russian branch was more concerned with the virtuosity; the pure, pianistic side of Liszt was developed there with a much greater sense of freedom in rubato, a great ability to bring out hidden voices in the chords of the piano – the prime example of this was the Polish pianist Josef Hofmann – and a great capacity to develop a sense of perspective in piano playing. In this school you feel a much greater dynamic range between the melody and the accompaniment. You very often hear the melody being played in a good healthy mezzo forte or forte and the accompaniment pianissimo, whereas the German school balances the accompaniment and the melody within a very narrow area. This is only on e of the Russian school’s characteristics, which was then carried over into the modern Soviet school.