B.J.: When I started thinking
about our interview, I was going to begin by asking you what prompted
you to move to France. Was it for mainly artistic or mainly personal
reasons, or equally both? And, now that I come to think of it, does
the name Le Van indicate a French background? But, looking back over
the notes you wrote for the Gallo release, I suspect I may know part
of the answer: it must be much easier to live in France than in the
US when you are the kind of musician who talks naturally about Bergson
and is willing to speculate in pretty abstract terms.
E.L.V.: My living in France for
the last nine years or so is in no way connected to my French-sounding
name. Originally from Brittany, the ancestor responsible for my patronymic
left his birthplace for the New World well over 200 years ago. Like
many Americans, I am actually a mixed salad of diverse origins and genes.
My wife, Myriam, is French. I met her in 1985 at Cambridge University,
where she was studying and I was taking summer courses in literature.
Perhaps the loss of my parents relatively early in life contributed
somehow to my uprootedness, to being unattached to any particular place.
Yet I have always been fond of French literature (my favorite authors
are Flaubert, Rimbaud, Proust, and Bergson) and painting (I especially
love Poussin, Delacroix, Monet). I live in a small enclave of about
300 inhabitants called Mittlach, the last village before the Vosges
in the Munster Valley in northeastern France---Alsace, to be precise.
Every June I direct a piano festival here, named after Franz Liszt.
It's an out-of-the-way place, a bucolic, typically French village in
a valley snugly enveloped in beeches and pines, and it's conveniently
cornered at the juncture of France, Germany, and Switzerland, where
most of my current engagements and recording projects are. My neighbors
are the descendants of farmers and lumberjacks who still speak the Germanic
dialect of their ancestors. The only noises to be heard are the faint
trickle of a rivulet or the occasional bleating of a sheep. It is always
enriching to assimilate another language and understand its underlying
mode of thinking, which brings us to your observation about one of the
cultural differences between France and the United States. You are right
to point out the predilection of some categories of people (mainly intellectuals)
in France for abstract, speculative thought. However, and quite frankly,
most of my "companions in thought," so to speak, are firmly relegated---when
not consulted---to my bookshelves. In this respect, it makes little
difference to me whether I live in Alsace, the backwoods of Vermont,
or somewhere in the Arizona desert. In any case, though there remain
pronounced cultural differences between America and Europe, I believe
they are gradually narrowing, for better or for worse. By tradition,
Americans are, on the whole, pragmatists, and, historically at least,
have not always taken kindly to those engaged in non-utilitarian pursuits.
Compatriots of Poe, to offer one example, showed little tolerance for
his wild and wayward hallucinations, whereas French poets such as Baudelaire
quickly recognized what was valuable and unique in that sad, tortured
brain. Art thrives on the useless, and is the ancilla of leisure and
contemplation. Residues of these contrasting mindsets still linger on
opposite sides of the Atlantic. This said, most Frenchmen are blissfully
indifferent to Proust and Bergson, or Debussy for that matter. From
my experience, philistinism, in all forms and degrees, is triumphantly
international.
B.J.: The main title of your
Gallo note, "Brahms and the Fabric of Memory," has a Proustian ring
to it. I enjoy the central emphasis you give to the distinction between
dream and reality. (At first thought, this seems analogous to the contrast
between background and foreground musical elements in the analytical
writing of people like Schenker and Hans Keller; but the analogy proves
on reflection to be a very distant one, because their foreground and
background both belong with the reality in your dichotomy; your dream
is something else again.) Anyway, I'd like to know whether you find
this distinction peculiarly characteristic of Brahms, or whether it
applies also in greater or lesser degree to most or indeed all composers.
Certainly, when I think this way about Brahms, which makes eminent sense,
Liszt---to take just one example---might be described as relatively
one-dimensional in contrast. And yet, clearly, you love Liszt. So what
do you think about this?
E.L.V.: Yes, I think all music
at its very highest level is multifarious, multidimensional. Indeed,
I'd say this holds true for most art in general, particularly literature.
This obviously does not apply to important quantities of excellent music
composed by the best of them; Gebrauchsmusik is decidedly one-dimensional,
for example. But the most inspired creations inevitably possess various
glimpses of the irrational (or better, non-rational) peering beyond
rational form. Now, every great composer has his unique approach to
achieving the multidimensional. Brahms dips into the reservoir of his
reverend masters, creating echoes---and echoes of echoes. Liszt, at
his most sublime, aspires to it through the very strangeness of his
textures and the fragmentary nature of his forms. I do love Liszt,
and especially the sparse, elegiac music of his old age, music I recently
recorded for Arte Nova (BMG) in the composer's own versions for cello
and piano. (Guido Schiefen is the cellist---a remarkably sensitive and
creative musician.) Take La Lugubre gondola, for instance (I
actually prefer the cello and piano version to the piano solo). Clearly
the music of death and otherwordly concerns, its images evoke the swaying,
solemn procession of a funeral gondola. This is the apparent, rather
obvious "program" of the work, which at one point builds to a cry of
despair, even panic. But there exists another, less evident undercurrent,
in a sense the "real" program beyond the surface, and one less apt to
be put into words, or assimilated to facile images. Part of the clue
lies in the stagnant, hypnotic middle section (un poco meno lento),
which suggests a state beyond pain, despair, and death. And throughout
the piece, lurking behind the hard corners, are intimations of those
shadows linking our state of existence to those other states and modes
which we dimly apprehend in our rare moments of irrational perception.
Most of Liszt's works from this period defy conventional values in music.
Sometimes they appear as fleeting fragments, as in the enigmatic Nuages
gris, or break off without concluding, as in the ghoulish Unstern
(Evil Star). The "technique" of letting a perfectly logical or matter-of-fact
sentence taper off in medias res is but one way of abruptly
opening a trapdoor in the texture of "ordinary" reality, and allowing
the imagination to enter into an alternate, secret "reality." In literature,
Gogol used it, and so did Joyce. Liszt achieves much the same in musical
terms. So this Liszt (yes, there exist several "Liszts") is after all
multidimensional, but in a way very unlike Brahms---more in accordance
with his mystic bent, and less embedded in "tradition." Liszt had strong
intuitions as to where his art was taking him; he actually describes
the first Elegy as "more for dreaming than for playing." Lucid of his
artistic aims, he was nonetheless well aware that such "experiments"
would only be met with incomprehension and disdain. This is why he positively
discouraged his students from performing his late pieces, for fear of
harming their careers. However, he went ahead penning further "bad"
pieces---a catharsis for the pervasive sadness that threatened to engulf
everything he did---with the faint hope that one day they might be understood.
B.J.: How far do you think that
Brahms's recourse to what you call "his reservoir" was conscious? And
how far does that question itself matter? And then, insofar as the reservoir
contained extra-musical matters, how does Brahms relate to more explicitly
"programmatic" composers like Schumann and Liszt and to very firmly
"nonprogrammatic" ones like Chopin? Insofar as we are thinking purely
about music, similar questions might be asked of the tonal move into
Bb Major that you mention in the first movements of Brahms's C-Major
Sonata: is that an explicit and deliberate invocation of the "Waldstein"
precedent, or is it, more simply, just a logical harmonic outgrowth
of the melodic Bb theme that the theme naturally gravitates onto at
the start of the fourth measure?
E.L.V. On one level, Brahms was
surely conscious of the various allusions to Beethoven and other composers.
In the case of the C-Major Sonata, he deliberately "quotes" Beethoven's
"Hammerklabier" Sonata and, less explicitly, the "Waldstein" (although,
in the "Waldstein" precedent, the tonal move to Bb Major is prepared
by the melodic Bb, as you suggest). Of course, any second-rate composer
could have used such devices, and Brahms was irritated when anyone pointed
out what were to him rather obvious similarities between his compositions
and others'. Allusions of this sort were not mere compositional tricks,
but musical metaphors invoking everything Beethoven meant to him, with
their intimations of the great and sublime. On another level, it is
nearly impossible for any intellect, even the composer's, to entirely
account for the almost limitless meanings hidden in a work of art that
somehow transcends the purely intellectual. This is one of the reasons
why many a posteriori explications by the creators themselves sometimes
seem inadequate, if not altogether off the mark. After an initial burst
of inspiration, and a subsequent difficult birth, a masterpiece takes
on a life of its own, so to speak. Also, I do not adhere to the widespread
assumption that the "meaning" of an artwork is complete at the time
of creation (although potentially all meaning is already there)
and that the passage of time entails nothing but a corruption of meaning.
The undeniable attractions of Wellsian time-travel notwithstanding,
neither do I believe that the "meaning" is anywhere to be found in the
reconstruction of a first performance, in a manuscript, nor in that
darling of the academy, "common practice." Contexts change. We hear
Bach's music with a different ear since Wagner and Liszt came along.
It is possible to understand Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in a way his
contemporaries (as well as he himself) never possibly could have, with
the unspeakable tragedies of the 20th century behind us. And we are
all the richer for it. This is after all what makes such works universal.
So I certainly do not think that everything that needs to be said has
been said about the standard literature. For the interpreter, on the
contrary, the possibilities are practically limitless, and always beginning
anew. My own background as a musician was somewhat unorthodox. Although
by my early teens I was able to tackle some very difficult works, I
never placed much emphasis on the purely instrumental aspect of music-making.
At that time, I was considered as much a violinist as a pianist. I recall
knowing both the piano and the violin parts to the A-Major and D-Minor
Brahms sonatas, and performing them alternatively. I also participated
in various orchestral and chamber ensembles as a violinist; I especially
enjoyed performances of Dvorak and Mahler symphonies. I did study
with a Siloti pupil (he must have been well into his seventies by that
time), who was very demanding on technique and pianism in general, to
which I had until then given little thought. Moreover, I have never
been interested in piano competitions, prizes, and such. As a consequence,
my "career" has advanced slowly, in spurts and jolts. On the other hand,
I have been able to devote much time to reflection about individual
works, and to gain quite a bit of experience without the added pressure
to be overly cautious in performance. For my last recording, I spent
over a year in preparation, although, practically speaking, we could
have done it within a few weeks. Ideas and inspiration sometimes strike
at unexpected moments, and I like giving them time to bloom. At an early
age, I remember realizing, among other aspects, the importance of vulnerability
in aesthetics, and I have been preoccupied with these questions ever
since. Music being an invitation to sympathy, the expression of human
emotion has all too often been sacrificed on the high altar of "modernism"
and its (illusory) search for hard-nosed (and dehumanizing) "objectivity."
I also came to the conclusion that the ironic smile and detachment of
dispassionate "postmodernism" is incapable of achieving greatness in
life and art.
B.J.: What is your relationship
with contemporary music? What composers of today do you perform, or
would you like to perform?
E.L.V.: Recently I read an astonishing
article on Liszt's late piano pieces, the gist of it being what a shame
it was that the composer did not continue his experiments in harmony
to their logical denouement. Had he done so, the article goes on to
explain, he would have been the first composer to initiate the 12-tone
technique, the implication being that rather than contenting himself
with half-baked achievements, he could have adopted a new, totalizing
"system," thereby accomplishing something really important in
music. The mindset and tone of the article is unfortunately symptomatic
of the predominant attitude toward composition of "serious" music in
the last 50 years or so. This "scramble to the patent office" mentality
reflects the error of confounding technical progress with aesthetic
worth. But an artistic (as opposed to the practical) mind is eminently
unconcerned with notions of technique, per se; Liszt was only interested
in it insofar as it enabled him to express what he needed to say in
the most lucid way possible. It may well be for this reason that much
of what we call "contemporary" music often does not rise above the derivative
and academic, and, to paraphrase Vladimir Nabokov, lacks that "sensual
spark" without which music is dead. As for atonal music, attempts to
expand its expressive range outside the usual parameters have inevitably
failed. Composers endeavoring to be humorous, graceful, or elegant in
this medium, for example, only sound grotesque. Of course, I am generalizing,
and all generalizations are riddled with loopholes and mousetraps. Individual
flashes of originality and inspiration exist at all periods, ours included.
And then there are the neglected composers waiting to be discovered.
One composer I very much admire and like to perform is Messiaen, with
his radiant angels and tiger-bright colors. I'd like to explore and
play more of Schnittke's work. I've also performed Berio and Ligeti.
B.J.: How far and in what ways
do you seek to re-create the sound world of the past?
E.L.V.: I like to think of sound
as a means to an end, and not as an end in itself. By using period instruments
it is pretty much possible to re-create the sound world of the past,
which is fascinating from a historical point of view. But this says
nothing about the artistic value of a performance. One advantage of
period instruments is their capacity to allow imaginative musicians
the possibility to defamiliarize us with works we thought we knew. In
other words, they may serve as a vehicle for creating something afresh.
For my latest recording project I used the "Liszt-Flugel" from Bayreuth,
a Steingruber from 1873 on which Liszt himself played on several occasions;
it was specially built for the soirees given at the Steingraeber-Saal.
It is the only model of its kind existing. I love this instrument; its
intimate, dark and colorful sonority seems perfectly adapted to the
repertoire recorded---Liszt's works for cello and piano. And it does
possess certain advantages over a modern instrument. I especially like
that, in forte or fortissimo passages, the pianist needn't
hold back for fear of covering the cello, but can let loose emotionally,
which to me seems natural and necessary in such contexts. This said---and
although with this instrument we are hearing quite the same sounds Liszt
would have heard---I am convinced we could have achieved very much the
same result interpretatively on a modern Steinway. At one place,
in the coda to the Lugubre gondola, we searched for a special
sound that would correspond to the eerie, disembodied character of the
passage played by the cello, something that would match the piano's
haunting, pianissimo chords (specific to the instruments). The solution
was in gently pressing the side of the finger on the cello string, a
technique sometimes used in contemporary music. I doubt that Bernard
Cossmann or other cellists of the 1870s ever used it. Nonetheless, it
struck us as the best possible way to render the spirit of this
particular passage. It is in this manner that I like to work with instruments
of the past.
B.J.: I notice with approval
that you have so far, in everything I've heard, taken all repeats. Do
you also follow this practice in minuet/scherzo da capos, as
prescribed, for example, in the 1802 edition of Daniel Turck's Clavierschule?
E.L.V.: Yes, I do, especially
in Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. The received notion---a habit disseminated
by legions of well-meaning piano teachers---that the repeats in the
da capo of a classical minuet or scherzo are optional lacks any
historical foundation. The practice of punctually omitting them began
some time after 1850. Before that, including internal repeats the second
time around was the general custom; Johann Mattheson confirmed it in
1739; Turck explicitly prescribes it, as do Hummel, Koch, and Czerny.
When composers wished to depart from the rule, they wrote senza replica,
as Beethoven did in his Piano Trio, op.1/1, and Mozart in the fifth
movement of his Divertimiento for String Trio, K 563, Trio III. These
were evidently isolated exceptions. Concerning repeats in general, I
am sometimes perplexed to find performers, including those who are famous
for their preoccupation with "structure," arbitrarily and casually disregarding
repeats. Yet most composers were not at all casual about it, as Beethoven's
letters to his editors amply illustrate. For me it is not a matter of
blindly yielding to convention, but of maintaining the equilibrium inherent
in a work's formal design. There are, however, a few instances when
observing a repeat would actually throw off the balance of the whole,
as in the exposition in the first movement of Schubert's great Sonata
in Bb Major.
B.J.: And what would you say
about the whole question of tempo modification?
E.L.V.: Tempo modification is
one of the most potent means of expression a performer has at his disposal.
To the larger notion of tempo modification, I'd add detailed quickenings
or slackenings of tempo, or rubato, as well as ever-so-slight
displacements of rhythmical values, or agogics. In a Brahms sonata,
for example, one might introduce just the right dose of rhythmical irregularity
that its rugged, unpolished theme seems to demand. On a larger scale,
modifying the tempo of whole sections or individual themes serves to
underline their inherent contrasts, while buttressing the structure.
An accelerando might correspond to a throbbing heartbeat in a
moment of exaltation, a ritardando illustrates its calming down
in a moment of repose. There are myriad possibilities open to a creative
interpreter. Frescobaldi, C.P.E. Bach, Hummel, Beethoven, Weber, Chopin,
Liszt, Brahms, Wagner, Mahler, Debussy, and Schoenberg are but an abridged
list of those composers who explicitly recommended tempo modifications
when not otherwise indicated in a score. Many were aware that notation
often proved inadequate to the task of transcribing the variegated shades
of human emotion and poetry they demanded from their music. To take
but a few of my favorite examples: "I don't play according to the measure:
music must not be subject to a uniform balance; it must be kindled or
slowed down with judgment and according to the meaning it carries" (Liszt).
And, at a later date, "A metronomic performance is certainly tiresome
and nonsensical; time and rhythms must be (adapted to and) identified
with the melody, the harmony, the accent, and the poetry: But how to
indicate all this? I shudder at the thought of it." Or Debussy: "It
is impossible to notate the exact value of a rhythm"; or "You want my
opinion about the metronomic indications? They are true for just one
measure." We are evidently very far removed from the uncomplicated,
literal rhythms and inflexible tempos of many modern-day performances,
especially those of some so-called authenticists. That a conductor wishes
to adopt Beethoven's metronome markings and slavishly adheres to them
throughout an entire movement is his business---indeed, his prerogative
as a performer. But to make spurious claims of "authenticity," and to
foist them on the public, with all the interpretative authority this
term implies, is absurd. The composer's own comments lay to rest such
claims: "100 according to Maelzel, but this applies only to the first
measures, as feeling has its own tempo" (Beethoven). Clearly, the inflexible,
metronomic tempo is but an invention of the 20th century. This said,
there are many instances when keeping to a firm beat is essential---according
to the context, and I am all for rhythmic rigor. What I object to are
the automatisms, the outside pressure to conform to a generalized modern
performance standard, simply because it is "of our time." This said,
again, if tempo flexibility doesn't spring forth from genuine, creative
emotion and thought, it quickly risks become a cliche. And of course,
rubato can be easily bungled if in the wrong hands. Realizing
these things really is the key, and the reason why so many composers
insisted on what the 18th century called "taste"; 19th-century masters
preferred the term "feeling" (or sentiment in French).