Feb 9th 2016

Alexander Paley interview: ‘Classical music is not for everybody’

by Michael Johnson

Michael Johnson is a music critic with particular interest in piano. 

Johnson worked as a reporter and editor in New York, Moscow, Paris and London over his journalism career. He covered European technology for Business Week for five years, and served nine years as chief editor of International Management magazine and was chief editor of the French technology weekly 01 Informatique. He also spent four years as Moscow correspondent of The Associated Press. He is the author of five books.

Michael Johnson is based in Bordeaux. Besides English and French he is also fluent in Russian.

You can order Michael Johnson's most recent book, a bilingual book, French and English, with drawings by Johnson:

“Portraitures and caricatures:  Conductors, Pianist, Composers”

 here.

Pianist Alexander Paley’s new CD of Medtner and Rachmaninov couples the works of two great friends whose lives evolved in similar ways. Both enjoyed early success but Rachmaninov’s sense of melody won larger acclaim from the international public. In this interview, Paley explains their similarities and differences. He also expresses his views on the attitudes of disaffected youth and acknowledges that “music is a temple and not everybody should be allowed in”.

A review of the new CD is available here.

We communicated by email while Paley was on tour abroad.

Why has Medtner been so neglected, compared to his friend Rachmaninov?

Medtner was actually very popular during his lifetime. He recorded a lot, gave many concerts and his music was regularly played. But Medtner's music is very difficult to remember and absorb. His melodies are complex and not easily retained. In comparison, Rachmaninov composed so many great themes; his sense of the melody is truly unique. 

In what way do these two composers fit together in a CD program – both musically and historically?

Both pianists and composers have many things in common. Sergei Rachmaninoff and Nikolai Medtner are the most significant representatives of the Russian piano school founded by Balakirev, Anton Rubinstein and Mussorgsky in the 19th century. Bound by close ties of friendship, their lives and artistic journeys were so similar that they were in many respects brothers in art. For both of them, there is a great importance of what we can call the “humanity” in music. They were in a way afraid that music would evolve to become mathematical concepts lacking in emotion and feelings.

Do you also play these pieces together in recitals?

It has not happened yet but I really hope I will have to opportunity to present that program.

How long have the Medtner sonatas and the Chopin Variations been in your repertoire?

I first learned Medtner's music in Russia for a concert in Bulgaria in 1987, just before I escaped to the West.  Chopin Variations I learned specifically for this CD project.

What initially attracted you to Medtner?

I was first attracted to Medtner music when I heard a recording of him playing Beethoven's Appassionata. The complexity of his music is also very interesting. To grasp it you need to understand the 19th century German philosophy that greatly inspired Medtner.

What technical challenges did you face in mastering his musical challenges?

In his compositions there is a great sense of Russian phrasing you need to master. The polyphony is very complex as are the harmonies. Medtner makes extensive use of counterpoint in his writing, a direct reference to Bach, late Beethoven and Schumann. Rhythmically, Medtner’s music is also very complex. Medtner is mentally very German but he had a very Russian soul.

Is Russian music your main specialty? What is the essence of the Russian piano music you bring to the public?

I of course love Russian music because it is part of my roots, but being from that part of the world does not mean it is the only music I love to play it in concert or should play: this is a very European/American cliché. When my career started, Bach was said to be my specialty. I was born with Russian music so it is naturally a part my soul and I always love to play it I concert. But what I truly enjoy is bringing to the stage music that was neglected or forgotten, like Enesco or Vladigerov.

Russian music, painting and literature are intertwined and inseparable. And this is what one should convey to the audience while playing this music. There is also this great sense of the never-ending melody, endless like Russia itself. This is to me the most important aspect of Russian music that I try to share with the public.

Have your musical preferences evolved over time? In what direction?

I do not have preferences. The piece I play on stage is always my favorite. I am always in the moment. Every piece I work on becomes my preference. But if I really have to name a few I would say Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Liszt or Brahms...

How are you greeted in today’s Russia when you perform there?

Every time I play in Russia I always feel extremely welcome. It is always a great emotion for me. Wherever I play in Russia, you can feel the importance of classical music and culture. The public is always very knowledgeable about music and listens with great concentration. This does not exist in any other country. I have stage fright in Russia more than anywhere else. There are still people who remember me from my first concerts as a child!

From which of your activities do you derive most satisfaction – recitals, chamber ensembles, concertos, or your festivals?

The school from where I graduated, Tchaikovsky Conservatory, is to me the best in the world and will remain the best in the world. We are all raised to become soloists. Chamber music was neglected. I feel the greatest on stage when I am alone, whether in a recital or concerto. Chamber music became with time another great love of mine and I learned this repertoire in the West.

I have a very particular view of this music and this is one of the reasons why I founded my festivals: to discover and play this music. Even though being a soloist is what I love most, I need all these mixed repertoires to feel complete as a musician.

Have audiences changed during you career? Are young people losing interest in serious music?

You have to understand I have a very strong and personal view about this. To me classical music is not for everybody. Music is a temple and not everybody should be allowed in. It is a privilege to play and listen to it and it should be earned through hard work and study. As for the audience, you should not go to the audience; they should come to you. The quality of a festival /concert series should not be lowered to try and get more audience.

As for young people, it seems it is not only in classical music that they lose interest but in culture as an entire entity: literature, painting, theater....

Related article:

A perfect pairing: Rachmaninov with his friend Medtner

by Michael JohnsonAdded 09.02.2016
Pianist Alexander Paley brings together some rarely heard and nicely coherent pieces by Sergei Rachmaninov and Nikolai Medtner, close friends from their Moscow student days, in a new CD (La Musica LMU005). The 14 selections call for a wide range...



TO FOLLOW WHAT'S NEW ON FACTS & ARTS, PLEASE CLICK HERE!

 


This article is brought to you by the author who owns the copyright to the text.

Should you want to support the author’s creative work you can use the PayPal “Donate” button below.

Your donation is a transaction between you and the author. The proceeds go directly to the author’s PayPal account in full less PayPal’s commission.

Facts & Arts neither receives information about you, nor of your donation, nor does Facts & Arts receive a commission.

Facts & Arts does not pay the author, nor takes paid by the author, for the posting of the author's material on Facts & Arts. Facts & Arts finances its operations by selling advertising space.

 

 

Browse articles by author

More Music Reviews

Mar 9th 2024
EXTRACT: "In a way, every experience you have, every book you read, every movie you watch, every place you visit, every encounter you have, every moment you spend with friends or family, they leave a mark on you and direct you indirectly and therefore leave their mark on your playing.", says Boris Giltburg in Michael Johnson's and Frances Wilson's new book 'Lifting the Lid: Interviews with Concert Pianists', now available on Amazon.
Feb 27th 2024
EXTRACT: "Question: Some pianophiles say the CD could be useful for meditation, therapy or even healing. ---- Answer: Indeed, that is the kind of feedback I am getting. But this music doesn’t belong to me any more, therefore I cannot label it with any purpose. It has taken on a life of its own. I can’t say how it affects the life of other people. Will it be therapeutic or will it have another effect? Time will tell."
Dec 4th 2023
EXTRACT: "Seated in a quiet corner of a Bordeaux hotel last week, we had an interview – more a casual chat – about her life, her Soviet Russian origins, her career, her future."
Nov 27th 2023
EXTRACT: "Schiff creates an atmosphere that we 'seniors' remember from the old days. No clowning, no bouncing on the bench, no outlandish clothing. He dresses in a black smock, black trousers, black shoes, topped off with a mane of pure white hair. His manners, his grateful bowing, are très Old Europe. ---- Schiff keeps control of his two hours onstage. He believes that dignity goes with the great music on the program and he scarcely moves as he plays."
Nov 19th 2023
EXTRACT: "  Boston-based guitarist, band leader and composer Phil Sargent is not about churning out endless CDs. In fact his ten-year recording gap, just ended, had his fans wondering where he was. But in New York and Boston, he tells me, he has never stopped working with other groups while composing and actively teaching young and mature talent. Although not always visible, he seems to be a confirmed workaholic, even practicing five hours a day. Yes, virtuosos also need to practice. ---- And now he is back. His new CD, 'Sons'....."
Nov 19th 2023
EXTRACT: "There is a renewed fascination with the memory-stimulating and healing powers of music. This resurgence can primarily be attributed to recent breakthroughs in neuroscientific research, which have substantiated music’s therapeutic properties such as emotional regulation and brain re-engagement. This has led to a growing integration of music therapy with conventional mental health treatments."
Sep 28th 2023
EXTRACT: "British psychotherapist, Michael Lawson, who has worked with several prodigies and former prodigies, calculates there may be as many as 200,000 piano prodigies active in the world today. “In a sense, they are not that rare,” he says in our interview below. Lawson is author of International Acclaim: The Steinfeld Legacy a new novel of the great pianists of the 19th and early 20th centuries in which the prodigy phenomenon is described in some detail."
Sep 17th 2023
EXTRACT: "Like so many stories about relationships told over an extended time, Past Lives uncovers the twists and turns, the “what ifs” and the manifold choices that lead to two people wondering whether they were meant to be together."
Sep 12th 2023
EXTRACT: " OrpheusPDX, a new company founded by Christopher Mattaliano in Portland, Oregon, concluded its second season with a brilliant and thought-provoking production of Nico Muhly’s “Dark Sisters,” at Lincoln Hall (August 24), exploring and exposing relationships in a polygamous sect and the courage of one sister-wife to leave it. With Stephen Karam’s libretto inspired by memoirs of women who have left the FLDS (Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints) and the 2008 raid of the YFZ Ranch by the FBI, “Dark Sisters” was delivered with spot-on directing by Kristine McIntyre and riveting performances by an exceptional cast."
Aug 30th 2023
EXTRACT: "Wagner’s operas are well known to be budget busters, and lack of funds is probably one of the main reasons that Seattle Opera has not mounted the Ring Cycle in since 2013. After Speight Jenkins retired from his post as General Director in 2014, the company delivered The Flying Dutchman (2016) and Tristan und Isolde (2022), the latter under its current General Director, Christina Scheppelmann. Now starting its 60th season, Seattle Opera celebrated with Das Rheingold, but that can be seen as a bittersweet moment since Scheppelmann is moving on to take over La Monnaie/De Munt in Brussels at the end of the 2023-2024 season."
Jul 6th 2023
EXTRACT: " More than a hundred recordings have been made of his suite of 14 light pieces he called “The Carnival of the Animals”, and a range of his other works remain in the standard repertoire."
Jun 18th 2023
EXTRACT: "Conservatories and university music departments are filling up with fee-paying Asians as their parents pressure them to succeed in the West. Piano competitions around the world, now numbering about 800, are open to this new wave of Asian players. They are winning top prizes and they are building careers in Europe and the U.S.  Too often, according to some teachers, young Americans prefer computer games, the latest movies, rock bands, sports, or other less-demanding activities. The Asians are happy to fill the vacuum."
May 30th 2023
EXTRACT: "Three of Europe’s longtime leaders in contemporary jazz, now in their senior years, have just launched a CD of twelve  pieces that shows what a lifetime of sharing ideas in music can really produce." “New Stories” (Frémeaux et Associés) by the French trio of pianist and composer Hervé Sellin, bassist Jean-Paul Celea and drummer Daniel Humair is remarkable for improvisations so synchronized that the listener can feel the music come together from three angles in real time. The tracks were mostly composed or improvised by Sellin."
Mar 28th 2023
EXTRACT: "The young ex-dancer from Italy first burst upon the piano scene three years ago with 20 of her hand-picked Scarlatti sonatas. Now comes her second CD (Academy Classical Music) even more original and powerful, performing six of Baldassare Galuppi’s 18th century sonatas. Margherita Torretta‘s early training as a dancer gives her playing a swaying, graceful air while she maintains Alberti bass for control of the rhythm, momentum and especially continuity. Her ornamentation is boosted with some of her own improvisations, producing a fresher feel. It’s a magic combination."
Mar 24th 2023
EXTRACT: "Driven by a sense of mission and determination over several years, French pianist Lydia Jardon has completed a rare cycle of nine piano sonatas by Nikolai Miaskovsky. Her new CD  of numbers 6, 7 and 8 completes the task and offers a particularly rich sample of Russian experience in the worst of times. Miaskovsky may be only vaguely remembered today but he was a leader in the Soviet music world until the end of World War II. He left a wide range of engaging sonatas that have been brought back to life by Mme. Jardon on her own label AR Ré-Sé (AR 2022-1)."
Mar 16th 2023
EXTRACTS: "The most ambitious application yet of Steinway’s new digital piano, Spirio r, delivers stunning levels of sound and color in the new CD release of The Richter Scale, an hour-long keyboard drama written by well-known German composer and pianist Boris Bergmann." ----- "For the first time, the Spirio has been configured on a Steinway D grand to enable four-hand pieces to be played by two hands. The secondo score is first recorded in playback mode then combined with the live primo part. Liu is the live player who has to coordinate and fuse the two."---- "I took Bergmann’s advice and listened to the full composition from start to finish to best feel the gathering emotional turbulence. I was gripped by the melodies, harmonies, rhythms and percussive explosions along the way."
Feb 10th 2023
EXTRACT: "The piano music of Belgian composer Joseph Jongen is rapidly emerging from obscurity where it has reposed since his death in 1953. One of the champions of this rebirth is the Serbian-American pianist Ivan Ilic who acknowledges he discovered Jongen only by accident. Researching early 20th century music, he recalls, “somehow Jongen appeared on my radar.” He quickly dived into archives in Belgium and became immersed in Jongen’s prolific output."
Jan 5th 2023
EXTRACTS: "One duo of special interest today is the pairing of brother-and-sister pianists of Slovenian origin,  Zala and Val Kravos. Both are veterans of solo performances and joint four-hand playing internationally. Their new CD offers....... The musicality and the technical perfection achieved by this team sets it apart from others in the same category."
Dec 23rd 2022
EXTRACT: "One of the festival’s best surprises was the glamorous Russian-born Irina Lankova. Her evening was dominated by Rachmaninov and perfectly suited her origins. She has invented a program of music and fireside chats, creating a quick and pleasant connection with her audience. At ease between numbers, she chatted in relaxed manner notable for her erudition. Dressed in a modest ankle-length gown, she was all about music, not showboating. Contrary to several other women headliners in the piano world today, she says “I do not need to eroticize my looks”. ---- Her opening Rachmaninov  Elegie No. 1 cast a silent spell over the Femina Concert Hall and she carried her charm through nearly two hours of graceful pianism. It is not unusual, she told me in an interview, to leave members of the audience in tears. 'I also cry, at least internally, when I play,' she says."
Nov 13th 2022
EXTRACTS: "Classical guitarist Jose Manuel Lezcano breaks new ground with his first solo CD,  “Homage: Spain & Latin America”. He combines two Scarlatti sonatas and his adaptation of works by Maurice Ravel, Bill Evans and the great Paraguayan guitar virtuoso Augustin Barrios. Mood and tempo jump from the contemplative to familiar classics to dance to jazz. I found the CD so captivating I played it in loop for hours." ----- "Twice a Grammy-awarded  composer and guitarist, Lezcano lives in retirement in the U.S. northeast and teaches at Keene State College in New Hampshire where he holds the title emeritus professor."