=========================
The troubles that kept me from giving everything I had had to do with vanity. I wanted to please. And I was afraid not to please. Abrahamsohn worked continuously on that idea. How right he was. The less vain you become, the more creative you are. One gets to the point where one is courageous enough to displease, if it's called for by the composer. There are certain places in Beethoven, for example where he is almost brutal.
JH: The word vanity usually suggests arrogance or excessive self confidence. But I think you're talking about a type of shyness- vanity in the sense of worrying what others will think of you,and therefore not expressing yourself in a way that might antagonise or confuse.
CA: I don't mean vanity in the sense of being conceited, but of wanting to please. And that is of course due to insecurity.
JH: Would you say that , as a result of conquering this impulse to please , your piano sound changed?
CA: It becamse richer, more assertive. Everything had more meaning.
================================
JH: One of the things you've mentioned in writing about this period is learning to interpret your dreams.
CA: Oh yes. I kept a notebook. And I trained myself, when I had an important dream, to wake up and write it down. I developed this capacity to wake up and when I felt my subconscious wanted to tell me something.
Showing posts with label arrau. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arrau. Show all posts
Monday, August 25, 2008
Arrau : of his teacher Martin Krause
Krause inculcated a reverence for music, and for music as a calling. He accepted no payment from the Arraus (an example Arrau has followed later in life - he teaches without a fee) . Mindful of his own venerated teachers, Liszt and Carl Reinecke, he taught as one bequeathing a tradition, his students comprised a sort of guild apprenticeship.
Q: Did Krause have any special teaching methods?
A: He believed in practising difficult passages at different speeds, and in different rhythms and in different keys. And then staccato, leggiero, martellato- all sorts of combinations. In fact he always told us that you shouldn't perform a work in public unless you were able to play it ten times as fast and ten times as loud as it would have to be in performance 0 that you only gave the feeling of mastery to an audience if you had tremendous reserves of technique, so that it seemed you could play much faster if you wished, or much louder.
Q: When you began working with Krause, his most famous pupil was Edwin Fischer. Yet Fischer's attitude tward textual fidelity was much different from yours. And he wasn't as polished a technician. Krause must not have stamped his students from a mould.
A: He encouraged thenm to develop their own approach. one thing I remember about him is that he hated people who just played, senselessly. "Klimpern" [tinkling] he called it. And he always said that one should have a general culture base.
==========================
He had heard Brahms, Clara Schumann, Carreno, Busoni, Sophie Menter. And of course Liszt. He would speak of Liszt's way of breaking chords, and of trilling. He taught us several ways to break a chord: to start slowly, and then accelerate toward the highest note; or to make a crescendo to the highest note; or to make a diminuendo; or to do it freely, with rubato. but always so that broken chords would have a meaning coming from what went before.
==========================
Q: You have said that Krause had you play all the preludes and fugues from the WTC in different keys.
A: Yes in front of all the pupils in the conservatory, he would test whether one could play in another key - usually one very far away, not just one tone or one half-tone. He also insisted on having us memorize single voices. Bach in general was one of the bases of his teaching. In those days, of course, there was no doubt it was correct to play Bach on the piano.
Q: Did Krause have any special teaching methods?
A: He believed in practising difficult passages at different speeds, and in different rhythms and in different keys. And then staccato, leggiero, martellato- all sorts of combinations. In fact he always told us that you shouldn't perform a work in public unless you were able to play it ten times as fast and ten times as loud as it would have to be in performance 0 that you only gave the feeling of mastery to an audience if you had tremendous reserves of technique, so that it seemed you could play much faster if you wished, or much louder.
Q: When you began working with Krause, his most famous pupil was Edwin Fischer. Yet Fischer's attitude tward textual fidelity was much different from yours. And he wasn't as polished a technician. Krause must not have stamped his students from a mould.
A: He encouraged thenm to develop their own approach. one thing I remember about him is that he hated people who just played, senselessly. "Klimpern" [tinkling] he called it. And he always said that one should have a general culture base.
==========================
He had heard Brahms, Clara Schumann, Carreno, Busoni, Sophie Menter. And of course Liszt. He would speak of Liszt's way of breaking chords, and of trilling. He taught us several ways to break a chord: to start slowly, and then accelerate toward the highest note; or to make a crescendo to the highest note; or to make a diminuendo; or to do it freely, with rubato. but always so that broken chords would have a meaning coming from what went before.
==========================
Q: You have said that Krause had you play all the preludes and fugues from the WTC in different keys.
A: Yes in front of all the pupils in the conservatory, he would test whether one could play in another key - usually one very far away, not just one tone or one half-tone. He also insisted on having us memorize single voices. Bach in general was one of the bases of his teaching. In those days, of course, there was no doubt it was correct to play Bach on the piano.
Prodigy
Q: When Mozart was being shown off, he would identify chords on the piano from the other room. Would you perform tricks as well?
A: Yes they did that with me too. Someone would play bunches of notes, almost like modern music, and I could name every note from another room. And i would transpose preludes by Bach.
Q: A striking characteristic of the young Mozart was his complete immersion in music. Andres Schachtner wrote of Mozart:" No sooner had he begun to busy himself with music than his interest in every other occupation was as dead, and even children's games had to have a musical accompaniment if they were to interest him; if we, he and I were carrying his playthings from one room to another, the one of us who went empty handed always had to sing or fiddle a march the while. Were you that single-minded as a child:
A: I think so. All I wanted was music. I was even fed at the piano. Otherwise it seems, I wouldn't eat. I used to play with my mouth open, and my mother used to put food in it. I was so preoccupied with the music I hardly noticed. Whenever food was put in my mouth, I chewed it so I could get rid of it.
Q: Schlichtegroll's necrology says of Mozart that "in general he was full of enthusiasm and was very easily attracted to any subject. " There are these stories of Mozart being taught arithmetic and making his calculations all over the floors and walls, writing numbers everyplace. Every activity he undertook consumed him. Were you like that?
A: I concentrated on what I was doing. Still today, whatever it is, even something very unimportant, I am totally there.
A: Yes they did that with me too. Someone would play bunches of notes, almost like modern music, and I could name every note from another room. And i would transpose preludes by Bach.
Q: A striking characteristic of the young Mozart was his complete immersion in music. Andres Schachtner wrote of Mozart:" No sooner had he begun to busy himself with music than his interest in every other occupation was as dead, and even children's games had to have a musical accompaniment if they were to interest him; if we, he and I were carrying his playthings from one room to another, the one of us who went empty handed always had to sing or fiddle a march the while. Were you that single-minded as a child:
A: I think so. All I wanted was music. I was even fed at the piano. Otherwise it seems, I wouldn't eat. I used to play with my mouth open, and my mother used to put food in it. I was so preoccupied with the music I hardly noticed. Whenever food was put in my mouth, I chewed it so I could get rid of it.
Q: Schlichtegroll's necrology says of Mozart that "in general he was full of enthusiasm and was very easily attracted to any subject. " There are these stories of Mozart being taught arithmetic and making his calculations all over the floors and walls, writing numbers everyplace. Every activity he undertook consumed him. Were you like that?
A: I concentrated on what I was doing. Still today, whatever it is, even something very unimportant, I am totally there.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
