April 5, 2022 • 41 mins
Norwegian pianist and conductor Leif Ove Andsnes has been called “one of the most gifted musicians of his generation” by The Wall Street Journal. He has won worldwide acclaim, eleven Grammys nominations, and six Gramophone Awards. In 2012, Andnses partnered with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra for an ambitious multi-year project titled “The Beethoven Journey,” performing all five piano concertos in 15 countries across three continents. Recently, Andsnes and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra collaborated on their second multi-year project, “Mozart Momentum 1785/86,” exploring one of the most creative and productive periods of the composer’s career. Leif Ove Andsnes tells Alec about how the piano is his first language, how he prepares before a concert and what he feels all great pianists have in common.
You can listen to all of the music from this episode and other selections from Leif Ove Andsnes in a curated playlist here.
The following compositions are featured in this episode:
Grieg: Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16 – 1st movement - Allegro Molto Moderato
Leif Ove Andsnes (piano); Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Mariss Jansons
(With the kind permission of Warner Classics)
Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-Flat Major, Op. 73 "Emperor" : I. Allegro, Leif Ove Andsnes (piano)
(With the kind permission of Sony Classical)
Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 - 3rd movement – Allegro scherzando
Leif Ove Andsnes (piano); Berliner Philharmonic Orchestra, Antonio Pappano
(With the kind permission of Warner Classics)
Janáček: On The Overgrown Path Series 1 - JW 8/17: I. Our evenings (Moderato - Adagio)
Leif Ove Andsnes (piano); Mahler Chamber Orchestra
(With the kind permission of Warner Classics)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it's Alec. We all love true crime podcasts, but
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(00:23):
doors would close forever in the wake of an unprecedented scandal.
The art market is ripe for cons because it's inherently subjective.
I just couldn't even look at it because it was
so garish and so not by Rothko. We're talking about
(00:43):
eighty million dollars in fake paintings, or more precisely, forgeries.
All episodes of Art Fraud are available right now. Okay,
here's our show. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Here's the Thing from my Heart Deo. My guest today
(01:24):
is the brilliant pianist Laife Uvas. This is as performing
a work from a fellow Norwegian composer, Edvard Grieg's Piano
Concerto in a Minor with the Bergens Philharmonic Orchestra. Honest
Now has received accolades for his musical prowess since he
was a teenager. He won second place in Eurovision's Young
(01:46):
Musician of the Year contest at age eighteen. Since then,
he's been nominated for eleven Grammys, holds an honorary doctorate
from Juilliard, and was called one of the most gifted
musicians of his generation by The Wall Street Journal. To
put it simply, anst. Nous is a superstar of the
classical world. From two thousand twelve to two thousand fifteen,
(02:10):
as this undertook an intense and ambitious multi year project
interpreting one of the greatest sets of work for piano
ever written, Beethoven's Piano Concertos. He recorded and performed all
five concertos in fifteen countries across three continents with the
Mahler Chamber Orchestra, all while conducting from his piano bench.
(02:34):
His latest release is Mozart Momentum seventeen eighty six, a
project that pairs him with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra again.
This time, anst. Nous is exploring a time of immense
creativity and growth in Mozart's career, concentrating on the specific
period that would forever change the form I wanted to
(02:56):
know what his piano of choice is and what it
takes to bring out the best from his instrument, basically
a Steinway D model. And yeah, when I say my
favorite piano, I mean there are many many good pianos.
And what I've learned over the years is that more
important actually is the piano technician, because a great piano
(03:18):
technician can bring out the best of a in a
mediocre piano actually can bring something of a jewel out
of something which is rather gray. So over the years
I have now a network of piano technicians that I know,
and I sometimes bring them on tour, and that's incredibly valuable.
I often compare it with you know, Formula one cars.
(03:40):
I'm gonna say yeah, because you need the technicians on hand,
you know, right next to you there and then and
before viewing the recording and and and you know, yeah, absolutely. Now,
you make some pretty laudatory comments about Beethoven. You say,
Beethoven is really the most meaningful music there is, and
every composer was trying to write something meaningful. But with Beethoven,
(04:04):
every phrase and around every corner, there was such context,
such surprises, such original ideas. When did you first fall
so deeply in love with Beethoven above all, I don't know.
I mean, as a child, I felt this music had
a lot of gravity, but it was it was a
little bit for and it was like something I thought,
(04:25):
I will need time to understand this. Also, playing it
was kind of uncomfortable because Beethoven goes for the extremes,
so the right hand would go very high up and
the and the left hand very goot down in the travel,
you know, in comparison with with Grego or Shopower modes
that where it was more. I was more dealing with
the middle of the keyboard, and that was uncomfortable for
(04:46):
childs naturally, and to feel and understand that space in
the music which he creates between the base and the
travel and wanting to go to the extremes, and that
took some time for me, but naturally, you know, something
like the first moment of the moonlight so not. I
played it probably when I was seven or eight, and
and I felt that, you know, there is some real depth,
(05:07):
there's some something going on here. So literally, when you
talk about the expanse and the range and the keyboard,
Beethoven sounds like it's something you have to grow into
or some of his composition to physically into it, unless
you have a junior sized piano, which do they make those?
They don't know. No, that's that's the advantage of a pianist.
And of course I didn't reach the pedal till I
(05:28):
was about nine or something, and I started playing when
I was five, so there was some disadvantages in the beginning.
And when you played the first moment of the moli
or not that you you need the pedal um otherwise
it becomes rather dry, comes in handy. Yeah, who were
the maestros? You think we're really great piano players? Oh well,
I mean obviously, um, obviously barn Boy is somebody who
(05:51):
has done it from both disciplines, from being a teenager.
Christoph Eschenbach is another one. Just some people that come
to mind. I mean, so many of the conductors have
played the piano, but some have played, you know, more professionally,
more professionally than others. But it's actually, I think a
real advantage to play the piano, you know. I often
(06:14):
I am amazed at some conductors at conductive meetings and
they sit down and start playing, and wow, you know
the one. I mean, somebody who really plays whenst This
is Antonio Papano, who is chief conductor of Covent Garden,
the opera house in London for for so many years
down and he started as a repetitor. And to really
control an opera, I mean, it's such must be such
(06:34):
an advantage to actually being able to play the opera
from a piano score and to understand the harmonies and everything.
And with my motor project now I'm of course trying
to conduct myself as well, and and with the beta
to try to do two disciplines as one which can
be difficult, but which actually is really rewarding in that
music when when it works with an orchestra, because I
(06:57):
feel part of the narrative all the time. The problem
with the piano chatter is that you can often I
feel like you're waiting for your entrance and be a
bit on the side, and then it's my entrance, that's
my turn, then it's the orchestra's turn. When I'm conducting
or leading the orchestra at the same time, I'm in
the narrative of the music constantly, and there's a great
(07:17):
feeling of flow in the music making. When you talked
about as a child and you're passion for Beethoven. The
ensemble you're performing with this is a mall chamber orchestra. Correct,
and that's what you did the Beethoven project, and you're
gonna do they So when you finish with them six
years ago the Beethoven thing ended, had you worked with
(07:39):
them in an ongoing way, or you would get a
lot you you weren't performing with them. Well, but you're
gonna pick it up before the COVID So it wasn't
that long. Yes, we started talking about a new project,
but it took a few years before we actually But
why them? What about them? Well, it became so special
for me to do this project for three years with them,
with all the Beta chatters, and we did about eighty
(08:02):
concerts together, three recordings. And I've never had the feeling
that I could work on pieces going so far in
terms of detail. And this is an ensemble that you know,
you suggest something and you get something slightly different, which
is better than you imagined. You want a really explosive
chord followed by silence, and you get an amazing sound
(08:22):
from them. I've never come across an ensemble that it's
searching for kind of truth in every project they do,
you know, they are touring ensemble. They don't actually have
a geographical home. They have an administration in Berlin, but
they play all over Europe, mostly in Europe, also other continents,
but it's a touring ensemble and to be a member
in the orchestra you have to do six of the project,
(08:43):
so it's a lot of traveling for the members. And
when you choose that kind of lifestyle, you choose it
because this is important. You know, this is not just work,
this is your life. Did work period of three years
and especially the same three years, yeah, and the law
here we played several times all the five Beethoven's again
and again in ten twelve different cities we had residencies,
(09:07):
and to revisit these pieces, which we had already recorded
and already taught with, was so wonderful. And I started
the project thinking of Beethoven as structure and contrast and
revolutionary music, and so I ended up thinking of him
as as freedom. You know, that's really what the music
is ultimately about. And that's how we felt in the
(09:28):
last concept. Was such a spontaneity and freedom in the concept,
and I have to say that's how I feel also
now with the Mozart with just different music but in
different ways. Now you're focusing on the Mozart project, like
a couple of years. Yeah, this sevent period where he
has this explosion of creativity and the surge of creativity
(09:51):
in his life. And I'm wondering from your experience, don't know,
all the great composers have that kind of a period
in their life, well, and certainly Mozart, I mean outse
that seemed to have it most of his life, though
I don't think he was such a wunda kin in
terms of composition as he maybe his portrayed as you
know it. We don't see the real masterpieces until he's
(10:11):
about twenty. But then the last fifteen years of his life,
I mean, he was constantly writing wonderful things. But something
specifically happens with the piano concertos in this period, and
that's why we call it Mozart Momentum eighty six. So
he starts, he expands everything. He's expands the narrative, the
drama of the music. He expands the orchestration, he brings
(10:32):
in clarinets, he brings in more instruments to the orchestra,
and he expands the dexterity of the solo part, you know,
the possibilities, and it's the first time in the history
that you feel he's separating the solos a little bit
from the orchestra used, so you have sometimes the feeling
of this heroic role that the soloist would get so
much in the nineteenth century and Beethoven with you know,
(10:54):
if you think about the Emperor Concerto, for instance, you know,
starts with this kind of flourish after the first chord
in the orchest journey say here I am, and you're
being thrown out on on on the gladiator stage, and
you are potentially the hero. And that that's very much
a big element of those big concertos that we know
so well inli from the nineteenth century, from Schumann Greek
(11:15):
to Rockmaninoff and Mozart started this. This is the very beginning,
i think, in so for me it's the most important
moment in the history of the genre of the biano. Concerto.
Sore is the Mozart Project in the same name as
the Beethoven Project, where you and the ensemble will travel
and tour and perform around the world and do dozens
(11:39):
of performances of these concertos and before you record them,
or you'll record them live. The project has been limited
by the pandemic. But the fact that we managed to
do both these recordings and and now in that we
did the three week tour in Europe with twelve concerts
in Brussels and Hamburg and the wonderful new help Filarmony.
We had a resident residency of three concerts and then
(11:59):
recording and music friend and Vienna right before they closed
the country in fact for another lockdown. So I feel
extremely lucky to have been able to do these four
CDs two double CDs of recordings with this orchestra. And
what I I mean we're dealing with, you know, history
is it's a long time since the eighteenth century, and
(12:21):
I want to keep this personal and it helps me
to choose a specific time, like one or two years
and put on the glasses and really look at what
happened there. And then it was also really interesting time
in Vienna. I mean most he was in a way
the first freelancer. I mean he quit his job for
(12:41):
the archbishop in Salzburg when he was twenty one and
he said, I'm going to Vienna. Vienna's piano land. He
said that's the name of your next album, Piano Land right,
quite commercial. And he created his career, of course with
the piano as a center piece and with the piano
and focus, and that's why all these piano concertos and
all this, all this music with piano keeps coming. And
(13:02):
then of course the operas and all that. And he
was lucky because there was an emperor, Joseph the Second,
who was very liberal and big supporter of the arts
and created an environment just there and then, so I
think we should be very glad that he ended up
in Vienna. How has the recording aspect of your career
changed in your lifetime. I'm assuming there are some similarities
(13:24):
with popular music in terms of the difficulty of getting
labels to want to record. Like when you do the
beto On project, do you go with a recording contract
in hand already you're not gonna bother doming unless you
know you're gonna put it down with somebody or yeah,
that's evolves in time. I've had for the last years
an exclusive recording contract with Sony Classical and and so,
(13:46):
and they very much wanted to do this Beto On project,
and they're also doing the Mozart project, but of course
everything has changed so much. I mean I started making
recordings around where you know, we had the CD boom
and everything seemed possible. And you know you I recorded
Jan Chick piano music and it's sold thousands and thousands.
(14:06):
I mean, and I wasn't, you know, very well known
or anything. It's just amazing to be part of that journey,
but where everything seemed possible and today it's it's something
completely different. But I find it really important to do
it for myself, you know, for every project to have
well for often for a project to have an end
end goal. And I learned so much from the recording
(14:28):
as well. There's no situation where you have to analyze
your playing so much as when you record. I often
do a take and I go and listen and think, no, no, no,
I mean it needs to more contrast, less taking time there,
you know, move over there, all kinds of things, and
then you play yourself closer and closer to where you
think you need to be to do many takes, oh yeah,
(14:51):
lots and lots. And and also I take part of
the editing process after now, after the New Year's I
will I will take part in our last Mozart recording.
And that's been a wonderful thing with the COVID period
is that I've learned that there is a possibility called
source connect where you can I can join my producer
and editor online and we can do this work online.
(15:11):
I used to travel to London for two days for
each recording and do editing together with with my people there.
But that's really intense. You know, you listen the whole
day and after the final cut I do, of course. Yeah,
there's no producers from that you work with when you
defer to them, there is a discussion, of course, but
(15:33):
it ultimately becomes very personal. And I I said, you know,
that's the way I wanted to go. And that's why
I really like that take because that means something to me.
And that's why I will ultimately be disappointed when I
get the first editor recording because I haven't put it
together and I know the producer did his best, but
(15:53):
it's really really personal. So I need to be part
of that process. When you perform, whether you're with the
march or orchestra or whomever, is there a typical preparation
you have before you go on stage or are you
I mean I've spoken to some of the biggest stars
of popular music, some of them older from you know,
the seventies and so forth. Some of them talked about
(16:15):
I take a nap before the show. You know that.
There's all kinds of different approaches. I've always done that.
I've always done that, and I you know, you can't
you can't eat a lot right before you go on
stage then, but also you mustn't be hungry also, so
you have to time these things a little bit. And
I've I'm always trying to nap, and I was really
(16:36):
good at it, like twenty years ago, and today I
might get, you know, seven minutes of sleep, but or relaxation,
but that's enough sometimes. And it's interesting. I find that
the body seems to hibernate in the afternoon often before
I mean often in the afternoon. Mind does I mean
the brain knows that I need to deliver in the evening.
(16:58):
It just gets very low in the afternoon. If I
have to do something big, I don't I certainly don't
want to see people. I'm not very social. And and
before a concert and I get to the whole, you know,
quite early, and and just prepare for myself thinking about
the piece, playing a little bit backstage, and and and
these kind of things. And also physically with the yes,
I feel I have to prepare. I have to do
(17:19):
some core exercises, these kind of things, maybe one or
two yoga positions, so you know, actually get into shape
because it's it's of course, you know, athletic. Yeah. If
you're enjoying this conversation with lafe Un, check out our
episode with another giant of the classical world, pianist Long Long.
(17:43):
We spoke before a live audience in New York City
in two thousand nineteen. One thing good about connotation is
that it's kind of pushes you to play better than
you're normally does because you you try to play without
round notes, you try to be concentrate on what you do.
(18:04):
But also, in the same time, if you are too
serious about compotation, you lose your soul. You know me
that you are afraid to do something wrong. And as
you know in art, sometimes when you really do something unique,
you are actually not really on the page, you're actually
doing something. But that that is a really great moment.
(18:26):
Here the rest of my conversation with celebrated pianists Long Long,
and here's the thing dot Org After the break leafe
Uba Honest no shares what he believes all great pianists
haven't coming. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to
(18:51):
here's the thing. This is lafe Vera Honest nous and
(19:18):
the Mallard Chamber Orchestra performing Beethoven's piano can share to
number five and E flat major from the Beethoven Journey.
Honest had the good fortune of being born into a
musical family, which allowed him to begin charting his career
path from an early age. My parents are teachers and
(19:39):
music was the main subject. So I'm lucky because I'm
from a really small community. I'm from an island on
the western part of Norway, and I had absolutely no
friends who did music and played. But there was a
piano in our home, and there came a few kids
who wanted to have piano lessons from my parents, and
and I saw this and I said, I also want
to play. I'm very flush with admiration for the Norwegian
(20:02):
people because of the work I've done with climate change
and how the expenditure of hundreds of millions of Norwegian
currency from their sovereign oil accounts to purchase land and
to protect land and the rainforest in South America. I mean,
what the Norwegian government has done with the Norwegian people
(20:25):
are doing on behalf of climate change is really just amazing.
Well thank you, but I think we really have to.
I mean, we are a very origination that that became
rich because of the island, and we have to do
something sensible with money. But you see, this is an
island off the coast. Your parents were music teachers, and
I mean, was there any pushing or there was There
(20:46):
was no pushing. They just let you decide. It was
my decision. I liked playing, but there's always, you know,
there's a moment. And then for me, it was probably
when I was twelve years old when I thought it
was much more interesting to do social things and football
all and I I played also in a in a
school band. I played euphonium, you know, and I was
in the choirs, and it was a kind of diverse
(21:07):
musical childhood. And it's very lonely just to play the piano,
and I really had no friends doing the same thing.
So I guess there was some pushing involved, you know,
for a few years there. But on the other hand,
I knew inside that this was my language, because I
remember sitting down when I was about eight. I remember
Christmas when I started having the joys of sight reading,
(21:30):
you know, just simple pieces Greek Chopin, and feeling these
harmonies and actually exploring them for the first time myself
and I I really felt that this is my first language.
I was a very shy boy, but this here I
could express myself. That's interesting, that's very very well. But
your first language. I believe that all the great pianists
(21:52):
have something in common, as you said, this first language idea.
What do you think you have in common with all
the other great pianists. You have the ability to do
what you have a peculiar nature that leads you to
what What do you all have that helped you become
so great at what you do? I mean, I do
remember quite early on that I had a feeling that
(22:13):
people listened when I played, you know, and that was
already as a child or you know, early teenage years,
and that was very inspiring. I I thought, Okay, I
I have a voice, I have something to say, and
I felt that inside like a burning desire to to
share this music with people. I played a lot for
people when I when I was young, my parents would
(22:34):
take me around the local partisan things and and I
would play for I would always love that. And I
think that's really important that you love sharing it. I mean,
it's like it's about sharing, and we we all have
that in common. Otherwise we just couldn't do it. And
you see some people just having been pushed and they
become adults and they have no motivation anymore, because it
(22:57):
has to be within you. You can become, you know,
great at playing the piano, but if you don't have
a feeling that you have that voice and you really
really want to share, there's no way you can. You
can have this lifestyle. Now, when you're playing with the
chamber orchestra, there's a relationship between them, with you and them.
You're the soloist. There's the ensemble, and there's the soloist.
(23:20):
And and I'm assuming that without apology, the task for
everybody there is to support the soloist. The soloist is
what's the music itself is what's featured. But the performance
of the soloist is ever so slightly more front and
center than the than the work of the ensemble itself.
Describe that meaning, do these people naturally do what you
(23:41):
need them to do. Do they just fall into place
or do you need to kind of tell them what
to do what you need. Well, I'm working with them,
and I have, you know, opinions and ideas about the
music and what I want. But these are strong personalities
and and they offer different things. And when we talk
about Mozart's music, it's so much about dialogue. There are
many many places in these in these pieces where I
(24:02):
am accompanying them. I actually think that Motas music is
maybe the music which is most about human beings and society.
I don't think it's much about nature, like a lot
of scanning a Nordic music, for instance, But it's it's
always about people. It's it's theater, it's it's opera and conversation.
And that's so wonderful. When I play with them, I
(24:24):
sit in the middle of the orchestra. We take the
lid of the piano, so I'm sitting actually with the
back to the audience. But I'm seeing the musicians, they
are seeing me. We hear each other extremely well, and
that intimate contact is is crucial to that kind of
music making and and to mos As well. I think,
I mean he wouldn't have had a conductor when he
when he was playing these things. You have performed in
(24:47):
some pretty exactic locations on the edge of a cliff.
I'm no Asian. I mean that's you know, you have
your Norwegian so fiorids. I have to be injected into
the process somewhere an oil we go off the coast.
But beyond these more exotic locales that you've been performing in,
are the cities that you love to return to. Are
their places that when you get there they feel like
(25:09):
home more than others. Absolutely, But and that's the wonderful
thing with touring. I remember actually my US manager when
I was twenty, who I started working with, said, you know,
the most important thing in this business is to build
up a network of friends and and acquaintances and places
and holes. And you know that we have a feeling
of home wherever you come, if it's Los Angeles or
(25:33):
Tokyo or in Oslo. What I've been very careful at
keeping at the same time is connection to home and
being able to play in smaller holes in Norway once
in a while. And I've also basically for the last
twenty five years been involved in festivals. I have at
a moment at a chamber music festival in in Rosendal,
(25:55):
which is a beautiful small village in western Norway by
the fjords and and mountains. And for you know, a
small week, we do twelve concerts and I'm curating the program,
I'm putting the people together. And that's also another part
of sharing in another part, you know, way of feeling
connected to my home country and doing something more here
(26:17):
than just jumping around playing different programs. So for me,
it's been important to spend summers, especially in my part
of the world and to feel connected here. Now I
also have a family, so there's a different connection. But
but it's three kids. I three kids, and how old
are that? They are eleven and we have twins, right,
(26:39):
Any musical, any musical, but we already have rumblings. They're
already have a piano trio in the house. So there's
there's cello Island the piano. But we'll see how long
that lasts. But there's some fun. Yeah. Yeah, when you
come to the US, which I've always thought those people
who love classical music in the US, there are a
(27:00):
decent number of them, maybe not as many as I like.
And that task that all the great ensembles have of
cultivating the next generation of audience, you know, like the
Philharmonic would do a lot of heavy ticketing and give
a lot of free tickets to students to try to
get them just to just to have that latent learning.
You know, you're gonna hear this piece I talked about
(27:21):
when I was a child and they had us do
mandatory music classes, and we had a guy who would
come in and play I mean, and he was he
was lovable and he was nuts, this guy. And we
were in eighth grade, in the middle of working class
Long Island, and he was playing us Manati operas on vinyl.
He was playing the medium and a telephone and we'll
(27:42):
be sitting there going, what the hell is this guy?
But I do believe. I'm I'm a firm believer in
latent learning where you dropped that seed on the ground,
and not always, but for many people it's gonna bloom later,
you know, down the road. And so for me when
the popular music see to have anything to say to me,
when popular music remained even even more sophomoric in terms
(28:06):
of I love you, why don't you love me? It
was all like for kids and I turned on the radio.
I turned on the radio, and there came the final
strains of Shalty, the Chicago, the Mall or nine, and
I never turned back, and I never turned back. And
now I listened to minimal popular music, I mean music
(28:27):
that's contemporary popular music. None. I couldn't even tell you
who these people are, which is also a sign of
my age. But do you give some credit to your
old teacher for you know the men I do believe
in respecting the ideas of people. Were that person took
the time to tell me about that? Why did they
want me to know that? And in music, I feel
like in classical music, there's people who they don't realize
(28:51):
how much they love classical. Maybe not all of it.
Maybe they don't need to be listening to Stravinsky. Maybe
they have like everything much more lush and kind of romantic.
But there's class music that that they want in their
life and they just don't know it yet. Yes, And
that's you can come into your life later, you know. Yeah,
And I think that there's there's an age, you know,
when when you were so open to these kind of things.
(29:13):
I mean, my piano teacher I got when I was fourteen,
was the first person I knew he was a professional musician,
and he gave me was kind of notice. But he
gave me some cassettes of Scherenberg piano music, and and
also some more standard chopin and things and and these
are things that stay with me. I mean, I was
so hungry for this stuff because nobody had had given
(29:35):
me introduction to these pieces and these pianists that he was,
you know, Paulini's recording of Scherenberg or whatever. But there's
so little today in school, you know about music. How
do we how do we how do we get out there?
I mean, I think we mustn't be afraid to take
kids to classical concerts. Also that of course they will
be bought part of the time. But something stays I think.
(29:58):
I mean, I I loved it. Maybe I was very
unusual in this respect, but I my parents took me
to concerts, piano recitals, some orchestra concerts when I was
ten eight. Those experiences stay today. I remember how it
smelled in the concert hall, you know how certain gestures
(30:19):
of the pianist or the conductor, or how it felt
physical in the stomach. You know how according it's just
a college symphony could make you feel totally extatic symphony
and it's just a college fifth symphonical. Yeah. Um well,
I think the people like you and long, long and
on and on and on with all these people that
(30:40):
we've enjoyed. You have a gift from God. You know,
you have a calling. I look at people like you
and say, what choice did you have? You know, I mean,
this is what you wanted to do, of course, is
what you had to do. It's absolutely not to sacrifice,
because this is my life. It's not work, it's just
it's just who I am. I have. I mean, this
is how I communicate with the world basically, Maestro laife Us.
(31:09):
If you're enjoying this episode, don't keep it to yourself,
Tell a friend, and be sure to follow us on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. You can listen to all four selections
of the music from this episode and more in a
curated Spotify playlist of my favorite pieces from Lafe Vasus.
(31:32):
You'll find a link to the playlist in the show
notes of this episode. When we return, laife Uva shares
with us the composition that makes his heart race. I'm
(31:55):
Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing. Yeah, this
(32:27):
is Lafe Ubas performing rock. Moaninov's piano can share to
number two in C minor with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
I wanted to know his favorite places to play in
the United States and what makes a great concert halls unique.
I mean, New York is such a musical home to me,
(32:47):
and I've had many wonderful experiences in elkn Center, but
not as not so much for the whole, but Carnegie
certainly it's absolutely a magical place to me, especially maybe
for piano recycling. I mean, which other all can you
feel that you're feeling it and you can create the
intimacy when it takes two eight hundred people. I mean,
(33:08):
that's really quite extraordinary. I think Sevence Hall in Cleveland
is wonderful. Symphony Symphony Hole in Boston, the New Disney
Hall in in Los Angeles is quite Someone said that
hole in Miami is a good hole, and that's very nicely. Yeah. Yeah.
Now in the United States where we had, you know,
for a while for decades, we had a wonderful recordings
(33:31):
and a kind of a battery between an ensemble and
a maestro. So lots of this is not just in
the United States but in North America. So with the
Montreal Slatkin, with this St. Louis Zel, with the Cleveland Shalty,
with the Chicago Bernstein, New York and so forth. But
Montfred Honick in the Pittsburgh I mean, they really keep
(33:53):
he keeps putting out recordings. I mean they keep recording music,
and it's so beautiful. He's very genuine, very genuine musician,
and so honest and really believes in what he's doing,
and really I enjoyed a lot time. I'm going there
actually in March playing with him, hopefully. What are you
gonna play? I'm playing the Benjamin Britain Concerto, which is
(34:15):
really fun. Britain wrote, I'll find out. I'll come see you, okay, right,
that would be heaven. Are you coming to New York
anytime soon? I'm with the Pittsburgh and Chicago Symphony in
in the spring, and I was supposed to be with
the ne yok Philharmonic this fall and I couldn't get
a visa, you know, because of this situation before November,
it was very difficult to get a visa for the
(34:36):
States for Europeans because there was such a backlog of
applications and things. But we're working out some plans. I'm
playing recycled Lincolnegie next next season. So one of the
benefits I think for what you do, because I always
say to people that in the movie business, the difficulty
is that you don't really get to see the place
(34:56):
that you're visiting that much because the days are long,
and if you have a decent role in you're shooting,
most days you go to New Orleans, or you go
to a foreign city, anywhere you go in the world,
and the days that you're free to be a tourist
there are few and far between. What are your favorite
cities to come rolling into? What's the city that you
just get excited to go to? What I love in
(35:18):
this business. For instance, I was just in Brussels, and
that's the place where I've played a lot, one of
the places I've played most in in in Europe. And
I love that you can have done a great concert
in London two days earlier and nobody in Brussels would care, right,
I mean, you have to convince every every place you
go that you have something to offer. I love the
(35:38):
fact that you can maybe over time build an audience
in different places. So when I played in Brussels the
first time, I had a hundred twenty people coming to
the concert, and now there might be twelve hundred instead,
And that's really really heartwarming to feel that you have
that loyalty from the audiences. But also if you don't
deliver that, of course they will not come back. When
(36:00):
some of the people I've interviewed from your world have
all in their own way said the same thing, which
is as difficult as the work can be, the other
incredibly difficult thing for them as writing music. I mean
they said that's the hardest thing to do is to write,
to write their own original music. Have you done a
lot of writing over we would describe your writing career
(36:20):
over the last No, I've never felt very rarely felt
compelled to compose. That as a teenager, I often sat
down and improvising at the at the keyboard and finding
melodies of things reminded me of other other music. But
then I found how much joy there was in discovering,
(36:40):
you know, composers music and recreating them. Because I think
many people don't understand how much freedom we have as
classical musicians they think that we have a school in
front of us, and it says, okay, it's supposed to
go fast, and it starts soft and then gets a
little louder and it's all set. But of course not,
because if it's a legal in the beginning, that means fast.
(37:02):
You know what is fast? That's just one of the parameters.
I mean you talked about tempo earlier, how much it
can vary in a piece likely to lean or in
in in in a modern symphony. But also if if
I see piano, which means soft in the beginning, what
is soft? If I play in my living room, I
can be very silent and it might still sound rather loud.
(37:23):
If I play in Carnegie Hall and I play the
same dynamic, nobody can hear me. I have to pronounce
it in a very different way. Even when it says
piano in the score, and what kind of piano are we? Are? We?
Does the music mean? Here? Is it full of tension?
Or is should it be very secretive? Should it be
very confessional? You know all these kinds of things. So I'm,
(37:46):
you know, more and more discovering how much freedom there
is inside these course they're they're just dots. On a
piece of paper. I mean, we we have to bring
them um to life. And I've in my life being
much more attractive to that than than trying to write
some bad music. I was. I said to Brompton one
(38:07):
time we went to dinner with him, and I said
to him, is there a piece or there are there
pieces for you which are just more, uh like the
equivalent of like a double black diamond ski run for you?
Were there a piece? You sit down and you've mastered
this piece, you've played many many times, and you know
and you know what you're doing, but you nonetheless have
(38:28):
a pause before you put your fingers on those keys
and said, this is a tough one. This is one
that demands more of me than any other piece. Are
there pieces like that for you? Oh? Yeah? And in
different ways, you know, also for the memories sometimes, you know.
And of course if I play rock mind enough. Third
piano Concerto, it's it's a huge piece. But I played
that since I was twenty two, and it's very demanding physically,
(38:52):
but it's also very comfortable to play somehow because it's
so fantastically written for the instrument. The fourth concerto, it
was much less known is extremely hard for the memory,
so I would my my pulse would always go up
before playing that piece over four. Yeah, and I played
that a lot as well. That's always with some tension
(39:14):
because it's much more asymmetrical and weird and sometimes like
jazz improvisation, and to memorize the whole thing is is
really really you know, it's tough together with the orchestra.
Is there a decent stock of piano concertos from Ratmlino? Well,
you've done them already. I've done them. There are the
four Piano Concertos and the Paganini Rhapsody UM, and that's
(39:37):
wonderful stuff. Revel. You know, I have some really favorite
composers that I've hardly played a note of, and Rebel
is one of them. I've never played the piano concertos.
I'm very little of the solo repsode, but I absolutely
love listening to it. I don't know what it is
I would as a pianist. I think I find more
freedom and creativity in playing Debucy, you know, the other French,
(40:00):
great French composer. But I adore Ravel and I absolutely
I mean, that's the luxury you have on your pianis
you don't need to play everything because there's so much.
Well listen. Thank you. I'm very grateful to your great
and best of luck with the finishing your project. Okay,
thanks a lot, my thanks to lafe uva honest Nous.
(40:22):
We leave you with honest performing composer Les Checks Peace
our evenings from the Piano series entitled On an Overgrown Path.
The musical selections in today's episode are presented with the
kind permission of Warner Classics and Sony Classical. I'm a
Mic Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by
(40:44):
iHeart Radio Think Coming
Hey, it's Alec. We all love true crime podcasts, but
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All episodes of Art Fraud are available right now. Okay,
here's our show. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Here's the Thing from my Heart Deo. My guest today
(01:24):
is the brilliant pianist Laife Uvas. This is as performing
a work from a fellow Norwegian composer, Edvard Grieg's Piano
Concerto in a Minor with the Bergens Philharmonic Orchestra. Honest
Now has received accolades for his musical prowess since he
was a teenager. He won second place in Eurovision's Young
(01:46):
Musician of the Year contest at age eighteen. Since then,
he's been nominated for eleven Grammys, holds an honorary doctorate
from Juilliard, and was called one of the most gifted
musicians of his generation by The Wall Street Journal. To
put it simply, anst. Nous is a superstar of the
classical world. From two thousand twelve to two thousand fifteen,
(02:10):
as this undertook an intense and ambitious multi year project
interpreting one of the greatest sets of work for piano
ever written, Beethoven's Piano Concertos. He recorded and performed all
five concertos in fifteen countries across three continents with the
Mahler Chamber Orchestra, all while conducting from his piano bench.
(02:34):
His latest release is Mozart Momentum seventeen eighty six, a
project that pairs him with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra again.
This time, anst. Nous is exploring a time of immense
creativity and growth in Mozart's career, concentrating on the specific
period that would forever change the form I wanted to
(02:56):
know what his piano of choice is and what it
takes to bring out the best from his instrument, basically
a Steinway D model. And yeah, when I say my
favorite piano, I mean there are many many good pianos.
And what I've learned over the years is that more
important actually is the piano technician, because a great piano
(03:18):
technician can bring out the best of a in a
mediocre piano actually can bring something of a jewel out
of something which is rather gray. So over the years
I have now a network of piano technicians that I know,
and I sometimes bring them on tour, and that's incredibly valuable.
I often compare it with you know, Formula one cars.
(03:40):
I'm gonna say yeah, because you need the technicians on hand,
you know, right next to you there and then and
before viewing the recording and and and you know, yeah, absolutely. Now,
you make some pretty laudatory comments about Beethoven. You say,
Beethoven is really the most meaningful music there is, and
every composer was trying to write something meaningful. But with Beethoven,
(04:04):
every phrase and around every corner, there was such context,
such surprises, such original ideas. When did you first fall
so deeply in love with Beethoven above all, I don't know.
I mean, as a child, I felt this music had
a lot of gravity, but it was it was a
little bit for and it was like something I thought,
(04:25):
I will need time to understand this. Also, playing it
was kind of uncomfortable because Beethoven goes for the extremes,
so the right hand would go very high up and
the and the left hand very goot down in the travel,
you know, in comparison with with Grego or Shopower modes
that where it was more. I was more dealing with
the middle of the keyboard, and that was uncomfortable for
(04:46):
childs naturally, and to feel and understand that space in
the music which he creates between the base and the
travel and wanting to go to the extremes, and that
took some time for me, but naturally, you know, something
like the first moment of the moonlight so not. I
played it probably when I was seven or eight, and
and I felt that, you know, there is some real depth,
(05:07):
there's some something going on here. So literally, when you
talk about the expanse and the range and the keyboard,
Beethoven sounds like it's something you have to grow into
or some of his composition to physically into it, unless
you have a junior sized piano, which do they make those?
They don't know. No, that's that's the advantage of a pianist.
And of course I didn't reach the pedal till I
(05:28):
was about nine or something, and I started playing when
I was five, so there was some disadvantages in the beginning.
And when you played the first moment of the moli
or not that you you need the pedal um otherwise
it becomes rather dry, comes in handy. Yeah, who were
the maestros? You think we're really great piano players? Oh well,
I mean obviously, um, obviously barn Boy is somebody who
(05:51):
has done it from both disciplines, from being a teenager.
Christoph Eschenbach is another one. Just some people that come
to mind. I mean, so many of the conductors have
played the piano, but some have played, you know, more professionally,
more professionally than others. But it's actually, I think a
real advantage to play the piano, you know. I often
(06:14):
I am amazed at some conductors at conductive meetings and
they sit down and start playing, and wow, you know
the one. I mean, somebody who really plays whenst This
is Antonio Papano, who is chief conductor of Covent Garden,
the opera house in London for for so many years
down and he started as a repetitor. And to really
control an opera, I mean, it's such must be such
(06:34):
an advantage to actually being able to play the opera
from a piano score and to understand the harmonies and everything.
And with my motor project now I'm of course trying
to conduct myself as well, and and with the beta
to try to do two disciplines as one which can
be difficult, but which actually is really rewarding in that
music when when it works with an orchestra, because I
(06:57):
feel part of the narrative all the time. The problem
with the piano chatter is that you can often I
feel like you're waiting for your entrance and be a
bit on the side, and then it's my entrance, that's
my turn, then it's the orchestra's turn. When I'm conducting
or leading the orchestra at the same time, I'm in
the narrative of the music constantly, and there's a great
(07:17):
feeling of flow in the music making. When you talked
about as a child and you're passion for Beethoven. The
ensemble you're performing with this is a mall chamber orchestra. Correct,
and that's what you did the Beethoven project, and you're
gonna do they So when you finish with them six
years ago the Beethoven thing ended, had you worked with
(07:39):
them in an ongoing way, or you would get a
lot you you weren't performing with them. Well, but you're
gonna pick it up before the COVID So it wasn't
that long. Yes, we started talking about a new project,
but it took a few years before we actually But
why them? What about them? Well, it became so special
for me to do this project for three years with them,
with all the Beta chatters, and we did about eighty
(08:02):
concerts together, three recordings. And I've never had the feeling
that I could work on pieces going so far in
terms of detail. And this is an ensemble that you know,
you suggest something and you get something slightly different, which
is better than you imagined. You want a really explosive
chord followed by silence, and you get an amazing sound
(08:22):
from them. I've never come across an ensemble that it's
searching for kind of truth in every project they do,
you know, they are touring ensemble. They don't actually have
a geographical home. They have an administration in Berlin, but
they play all over Europe, mostly in Europe, also other continents,
but it's a touring ensemble and to be a member
in the orchestra you have to do six of the project,
(08:43):
so it's a lot of traveling for the members. And
when you choose that kind of lifestyle, you choose it
because this is important. You know, this is not just work,
this is your life. Did work period of three years
and especially the same three years, yeah, and the law
here we played several times all the five Beethoven's again
and again in ten twelve different cities we had residencies,
(09:07):
and to revisit these pieces, which we had already recorded
and already taught with, was so wonderful. And I started
the project thinking of Beethoven as structure and contrast and
revolutionary music, and so I ended up thinking of him
as as freedom. You know, that's really what the music
is ultimately about. And that's how we felt in the
(09:28):
last concept. Was such a spontaneity and freedom in the concept,
and I have to say that's how I feel also
now with the Mozart with just different music but in
different ways. Now you're focusing on the Mozart project, like
a couple of years. Yeah, this sevent period where he
has this explosion of creativity and the surge of creativity
(09:51):
in his life. And I'm wondering from your experience, don't know,
all the great composers have that kind of a period
in their life, well, and certainly Mozart, I mean outse
that seemed to have it most of his life, though
I don't think he was such a wunda kin in
terms of composition as he maybe his portrayed as you
know it. We don't see the real masterpieces until he's
(10:11):
about twenty. But then the last fifteen years of his life,
I mean, he was constantly writing wonderful things. But something
specifically happens with the piano concertos in this period, and
that's why we call it Mozart Momentum eighty six. So
he starts, he expands everything. He's expands the narrative, the
drama of the music. He expands the orchestration, he brings
(10:32):
in clarinets, he brings in more instruments to the orchestra,
and he expands the dexterity of the solo part, you know,
the possibilities, and it's the first time in the history
that you feel he's separating the solos a little bit
from the orchestra used, so you have sometimes the feeling
of this heroic role that the soloist would get so
much in the nineteenth century and Beethoven with you know,
(10:54):
if you think about the Emperor Concerto, for instance, you know,
starts with this kind of flourish after the first chord
in the orchest journey say here I am, and you're
being thrown out on on on the gladiator stage, and
you are potentially the hero. And that that's very much
a big element of those big concertos that we know
so well inli from the nineteenth century, from Schumann Greek
(11:15):
to Rockmaninoff and Mozart started this. This is the very beginning,
i think, in so for me it's the most important
moment in the history of the genre of the biano. Concerto.
Sore is the Mozart Project in the same name as
the Beethoven Project, where you and the ensemble will travel
and tour and perform around the world and do dozens
(11:39):
of performances of these concertos and before you record them,
or you'll record them live. The project has been limited
by the pandemic. But the fact that we managed to
do both these recordings and and now in that we
did the three week tour in Europe with twelve concerts
in Brussels and Hamburg and the wonderful new help Filarmony.
We had a resident residency of three concerts and then
(11:59):
recording and music friend and Vienna right before they closed
the country in fact for another lockdown. So I feel
extremely lucky to have been able to do these four
CDs two double CDs of recordings with this orchestra. And
what I I mean we're dealing with, you know, history
is it's a long time since the eighteenth century, and
(12:21):
I want to keep this personal and it helps me
to choose a specific time, like one or two years
and put on the glasses and really look at what
happened there. And then it was also really interesting time
in Vienna. I mean most he was in a way
the first freelancer. I mean he quit his job for
(12:41):
the archbishop in Salzburg when he was twenty one and
he said, I'm going to Vienna. Vienna's piano land. He
said that's the name of your next album, Piano Land right,
quite commercial. And he created his career, of course with
the piano as a center piece and with the piano
and focus, and that's why all these piano concertos and
all this, all this music with piano keeps coming. And
(13:02):
then of course the operas and all that. And he
was lucky because there was an emperor, Joseph the Second,
who was very liberal and big supporter of the arts
and created an environment just there and then, so I
think we should be very glad that he ended up
in Vienna. How has the recording aspect of your career
changed in your lifetime. I'm assuming there are some similarities
(13:24):
with popular music in terms of the difficulty of getting
labels to want to record. Like when you do the
beto On project, do you go with a recording contract
in hand already you're not gonna bother doming unless you
know you're gonna put it down with somebody or yeah,
that's evolves in time. I've had for the last years
an exclusive recording contract with Sony Classical and and so,
(13:46):
and they very much wanted to do this Beto On project,
and they're also doing the Mozart project, but of course
everything has changed so much. I mean I started making
recordings around where you know, we had the CD boom
and everything seemed possible. And you know you I recorded
Jan Chick piano music and it's sold thousands and thousands.
(14:06):
I mean, and I wasn't, you know, very well known
or anything. It's just amazing to be part of that journey,
but where everything seemed possible and today it's it's something
completely different. But I find it really important to do
it for myself, you know, for every project to have
well for often for a project to have an end
end goal. And I learned so much from the recording
(14:28):
as well. There's no situation where you have to analyze
your playing so much as when you record. I often
do a take and I go and listen and think, no, no, no,
I mean it needs to more contrast, less taking time there,
you know, move over there, all kinds of things, and
then you play yourself closer and closer to where you
think you need to be to do many takes, oh yeah,
(14:51):
lots and lots. And and also I take part of
the editing process after now, after the New Year's I
will I will take part in our last Mozart recording.
And that's been a wonderful thing with the COVID period
is that I've learned that there is a possibility called
source connect where you can I can join my producer
and editor online and we can do this work online.
(15:11):
I used to travel to London for two days for
each recording and do editing together with with my people there.
But that's really intense. You know, you listen the whole
day and after the final cut I do, of course. Yeah,
there's no producers from that you work with when you
defer to them, there is a discussion, of course, but
(15:33):
it ultimately becomes very personal. And I I said, you know,
that's the way I wanted to go. And that's why
I really like that take because that means something to me.
And that's why I will ultimately be disappointed when I
get the first editor recording because I haven't put it
together and I know the producer did his best, but
(15:53):
it's really really personal. So I need to be part
of that process. When you perform, whether you're with the
march or orchestra or whomever, is there a typical preparation
you have before you go on stage or are you
I mean I've spoken to some of the biggest stars
of popular music, some of them older from you know,
the seventies and so forth. Some of them talked about
(16:15):
I take a nap before the show. You know that.
There's all kinds of different approaches. I've always done that.
I've always done that, and I you know, you can't
you can't eat a lot right before you go on
stage then, but also you mustn't be hungry also, so
you have to time these things a little bit. And
I've I'm always trying to nap, and I was really
(16:36):
good at it, like twenty years ago, and today I
might get, you know, seven minutes of sleep, but or relaxation,
but that's enough sometimes. And it's interesting. I find that
the body seems to hibernate in the afternoon often before
I mean often in the afternoon. Mind does I mean
the brain knows that I need to deliver in the evening.
(16:58):
It just gets very low in the afternoon. If I
have to do something big, I don't I certainly don't
want to see people. I'm not very social. And and
before a concert and I get to the whole, you know,
quite early, and and just prepare for myself thinking about
the piece, playing a little bit backstage, and and and
these kind of things. And also physically with the yes,
I feel I have to prepare. I have to do
(17:19):
some core exercises, these kind of things, maybe one or
two yoga positions, so you know, actually get into shape
because it's it's of course, you know, athletic. Yeah. If
you're enjoying this conversation with lafe Un, check out our
episode with another giant of the classical world, pianist Long Long.
(17:43):
We spoke before a live audience in New York City
in two thousand nineteen. One thing good about connotation is
that it's kind of pushes you to play better than
you're normally does because you you try to play without
round notes, you try to be concentrate on what you do.
(18:04):
But also, in the same time, if you are too
serious about compotation, you lose your soul. You know me
that you are afraid to do something wrong. And as
you know in art, sometimes when you really do something unique,
you are actually not really on the page, you're actually
doing something. But that that is a really great moment.
(18:26):
Here the rest of my conversation with celebrated pianists Long Long,
and here's the thing dot Org After the break leafe
Uba Honest no shares what he believes all great pianists
haven't coming. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to
(18:51):
here's the thing. This is lafe Vera Honest nous and
(19:18):
the Mallard Chamber Orchestra performing Beethoven's piano can share to
number five and E flat major from the Beethoven Journey.
Honest had the good fortune of being born into a
musical family, which allowed him to begin charting his career
path from an early age. My parents are teachers and
(19:39):
music was the main subject. So I'm lucky because I'm
from a really small community. I'm from an island on
the western part of Norway, and I had absolutely no
friends who did music and played. But there was a
piano in our home, and there came a few kids
who wanted to have piano lessons from my parents, and
and I saw this and I said, I also want
to play. I'm very flush with admiration for the Norwegian
(20:02):
people because of the work I've done with climate change
and how the expenditure of hundreds of millions of Norwegian
currency from their sovereign oil accounts to purchase land and
to protect land and the rainforest in South America. I mean,
what the Norwegian government has done with the Norwegian people
(20:25):
are doing on behalf of climate change is really just amazing.
Well thank you, but I think we really have to.
I mean, we are a very origination that that became
rich because of the island, and we have to do
something sensible with money. But you see, this is an
island off the coast. Your parents were music teachers, and
I mean, was there any pushing or there was There
(20:46):
was no pushing. They just let you decide. It was
my decision. I liked playing, but there's always, you know,
there's a moment. And then for me, it was probably
when I was twelve years old when I thought it
was much more interesting to do social things and football
all and I I played also in a in a
school band. I played euphonium, you know, and I was
in the choirs, and it was a kind of diverse
(21:07):
musical childhood. And it's very lonely just to play the piano,
and I really had no friends doing the same thing.
So I guess there was some pushing involved, you know,
for a few years there. But on the other hand,
I knew inside that this was my language, because I
remember sitting down when I was about eight. I remember
Christmas when I started having the joys of sight reading,
(21:30):
you know, just simple pieces Greek Chopin, and feeling these
harmonies and actually exploring them for the first time myself
and I I really felt that this is my first language.
I was a very shy boy, but this here I
could express myself. That's interesting, that's very very well. But
your first language. I believe that all the great pianists
(21:52):
have something in common, as you said, this first language idea.
What do you think you have in common with all
the other great pianists. You have the ability to do
what you have a peculiar nature that leads you to
what What do you all have that helped you become
so great at what you do? I mean, I do
remember quite early on that I had a feeling that
(22:13):
people listened when I played, you know, and that was
already as a child or you know, early teenage years,
and that was very inspiring. I I thought, Okay, I
I have a voice, I have something to say, and
I felt that inside like a burning desire to to
share this music with people. I played a lot for
people when I when I was young, my parents would
(22:34):
take me around the local partisan things and and I
would play for I would always love that. And I
think that's really important that you love sharing it. I mean,
it's like it's about sharing, and we we all have
that in common. Otherwise we just couldn't do it. And
you see some people just having been pushed and they
become adults and they have no motivation anymore, because it
(22:57):
has to be within you. You can become, you know,
great at playing the piano, but if you don't have
a feeling that you have that voice and you really
really want to share, there's no way you can. You
can have this lifestyle. Now, when you're playing with the
chamber orchestra, there's a relationship between them, with you and them.
You're the soloist. There's the ensemble, and there's the soloist.
(23:20):
And and I'm assuming that without apology, the task for
everybody there is to support the soloist. The soloist is
what's the music itself is what's featured. But the performance
of the soloist is ever so slightly more front and
center than the than the work of the ensemble itself.
Describe that meaning, do these people naturally do what you
(23:41):
need them to do. Do they just fall into place
or do you need to kind of tell them what
to do what you need. Well, I'm working with them,
and I have, you know, opinions and ideas about the
music and what I want. But these are strong personalities
and and they offer different things. And when we talk
about Mozart's music, it's so much about dialogue. There are
many many places in these in these pieces where I
(24:02):
am accompanying them. I actually think that Motas music is
maybe the music which is most about human beings and society.
I don't think it's much about nature, like a lot
of scanning a Nordic music, for instance, But it's it's
always about people. It's it's theater, it's it's opera and conversation.
And that's so wonderful. When I play with them, I
(24:24):
sit in the middle of the orchestra. We take the
lid of the piano, so I'm sitting actually with the
back to the audience. But I'm seeing the musicians, they
are seeing me. We hear each other extremely well, and
that intimate contact is is crucial to that kind of
music making and and to mos As well. I think,
I mean he wouldn't have had a conductor when he
when he was playing these things. You have performed in
(24:47):
some pretty exactic locations on the edge of a cliff.
I'm no Asian. I mean that's you know, you have
your Norwegian so fiorids. I have to be injected into
the process somewhere an oil we go off the coast.
But beyond these more exotic locales that you've been performing in,
are the cities that you love to return to. Are
their places that when you get there they feel like
(25:09):
home more than others. Absolutely, But and that's the wonderful
thing with touring. I remember actually my US manager when
I was twenty, who I started working with, said, you know,
the most important thing in this business is to build
up a network of friends and and acquaintances and places
and holes. And you know that we have a feeling
of home wherever you come, if it's Los Angeles or
(25:33):
Tokyo or in Oslo. What I've been very careful at
keeping at the same time is connection to home and
being able to play in smaller holes in Norway once
in a while. And I've also basically for the last
twenty five years been involved in festivals. I have at
a moment at a chamber music festival in in Rosendal,
(25:55):
which is a beautiful small village in western Norway by
the fjords and and mountains. And for you know, a
small week, we do twelve concerts and I'm curating the program,
I'm putting the people together. And that's also another part
of sharing in another part, you know, way of feeling
connected to my home country and doing something more here
(26:17):
than just jumping around playing different programs. So for me,
it's been important to spend summers, especially in my part
of the world and to feel connected here. Now I
also have a family, so there's a different connection. But
but it's three kids. I three kids, and how old
are that? They are eleven and we have twins, right,
(26:39):
Any musical, any musical, but we already have rumblings. They're
already have a piano trio in the house. So there's
there's cello Island the piano. But we'll see how long
that lasts. But there's some fun. Yeah. Yeah, when you
come to the US, which I've always thought those people
who love classical music in the US, there are a
(27:00):
decent number of them, maybe not as many as I like.
And that task that all the great ensembles have of
cultivating the next generation of audience, you know, like the
Philharmonic would do a lot of heavy ticketing and give
a lot of free tickets to students to try to
get them just to just to have that latent learning.
You know, you're gonna hear this piece I talked about
(27:21):
when I was a child and they had us do
mandatory music classes, and we had a guy who would
come in and play I mean, and he was he
was lovable and he was nuts, this guy. And we
were in eighth grade, in the middle of working class
Long Island, and he was playing us Manati operas on vinyl.
He was playing the medium and a telephone and we'll
(27:42):
be sitting there going, what the hell is this guy?
But I do believe. I'm I'm a firm believer in
latent learning where you dropped that seed on the ground,
and not always, but for many people it's gonna bloom later,
you know, down the road. And so for me when
the popular music see to have anything to say to me,
when popular music remained even even more sophomoric in terms
(28:06):
of I love you, why don't you love me? It
was all like for kids and I turned on the radio.
I turned on the radio, and there came the final
strains of Shalty, the Chicago, the Mall or nine, and
I never turned back, and I never turned back. And
now I listened to minimal popular music, I mean music
(28:27):
that's contemporary popular music. None. I couldn't even tell you
who these people are, which is also a sign of
my age. But do you give some credit to your
old teacher for you know the men I do believe
in respecting the ideas of people. Were that person took
the time to tell me about that? Why did they
want me to know that? And in music, I feel
like in classical music, there's people who they don't realize
(28:51):
how much they love classical. Maybe not all of it.
Maybe they don't need to be listening to Stravinsky. Maybe
they have like everything much more lush and kind of romantic.
But there's class music that that they want in their
life and they just don't know it yet. Yes, And
that's you can come into your life later, you know. Yeah,
And I think that there's there's an age, you know,
when when you were so open to these kind of things.
(29:13):
I mean, my piano teacher I got when I was fourteen,
was the first person I knew he was a professional musician,
and he gave me was kind of notice. But he
gave me some cassettes of Scherenberg piano music, and and
also some more standard chopin and things and and these
are things that stay with me. I mean, I was
so hungry for this stuff because nobody had had given
(29:35):
me introduction to these pieces and these pianists that he was,
you know, Paulini's recording of Scherenberg or whatever. But there's
so little today in school, you know about music. How
do we how do we how do we get out there?
I mean, I think we mustn't be afraid to take
kids to classical concerts. Also that of course they will
be bought part of the time. But something stays I think.
(29:58):
I mean, I I loved it. Maybe I was very
unusual in this respect, but I my parents took me
to concerts, piano recitals, some orchestra concerts when I was
ten eight. Those experiences stay today. I remember how it
smelled in the concert hall, you know how certain gestures
(30:19):
of the pianist or the conductor, or how it felt
physical in the stomach. You know how according it's just
a college symphony could make you feel totally extatic symphony
and it's just a college fifth symphonical. Yeah. Um well,
I think the people like you and long, long and
on and on and on with all these people that
(30:40):
we've enjoyed. You have a gift from God. You know,
you have a calling. I look at people like you
and say, what choice did you have? You know, I mean,
this is what you wanted to do, of course, is
what you had to do. It's absolutely not to sacrifice,
because this is my life. It's not work, it's just
it's just who I am. I have. I mean, this
is how I communicate with the world basically, Maestro laife Us.
(31:09):
If you're enjoying this episode, don't keep it to yourself,
Tell a friend, and be sure to follow us on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. You can listen to all four selections
of the music from this episode and more in a
curated Spotify playlist of my favorite pieces from Lafe Vasus.
(31:32):
You'll find a link to the playlist in the show
notes of this episode. When we return, laife Uva shares
with us the composition that makes his heart race. I'm
(31:55):
Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing. Yeah, this
(32:27):
is Lafe Ubas performing rock. Moaninov's piano can share to
number two in C minor with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
I wanted to know his favorite places to play in
the United States and what makes a great concert halls unique.
I mean, New York is such a musical home to me,
(32:47):
and I've had many wonderful experiences in elkn Center, but
not as not so much for the whole, but Carnegie
certainly it's absolutely a magical place to me, especially maybe
for piano recycling. I mean, which other all can you
feel that you're feeling it and you can create the
intimacy when it takes two eight hundred people. I mean,
(33:08):
that's really quite extraordinary. I think Sevence Hall in Cleveland
is wonderful. Symphony Symphony Hole in Boston, the New Disney
Hall in in Los Angeles is quite Someone said that
hole in Miami is a good hole, and that's very nicely. Yeah. Yeah.
Now in the United States where we had, you know,
for a while for decades, we had a wonderful recordings
(33:31):
and a kind of a battery between an ensemble and
a maestro. So lots of this is not just in
the United States but in North America. So with the
Montreal Slatkin, with this St. Louis Zel, with the Cleveland Shalty,
with the Chicago Bernstein, New York and so forth. But
Montfred Honick in the Pittsburgh I mean, they really keep
(33:53):
he keeps putting out recordings. I mean they keep recording music,
and it's so beautiful. He's very genuine, very genuine musician,
and so honest and really believes in what he's doing,
and really I enjoyed a lot time. I'm going there
actually in March playing with him, hopefully. What are you
gonna play? I'm playing the Benjamin Britain Concerto, which is
(34:15):
really fun. Britain wrote, I'll find out. I'll come see you, okay, right,
that would be heaven. Are you coming to New York
anytime soon? I'm with the Pittsburgh and Chicago Symphony in
in the spring, and I was supposed to be with
the ne yok Philharmonic this fall and I couldn't get
a visa, you know, because of this situation before November,
it was very difficult to get a visa for the
(34:36):
States for Europeans because there was such a backlog of
applications and things. But we're working out some plans. I'm
playing recycled Lincolnegie next next season. So one of the
benefits I think for what you do, because I always
say to people that in the movie business, the difficulty
is that you don't really get to see the place
(34:56):
that you're visiting that much because the days are long,
and if you have a decent role in you're shooting,
most days you go to New Orleans, or you go
to a foreign city, anywhere you go in the world,
and the days that you're free to be a tourist
there are few and far between. What are your favorite
cities to come rolling into? What's the city that you
just get excited to go to? What I love in
(35:18):
this business. For instance, I was just in Brussels, and
that's the place where I've played a lot, one of
the places I've played most in in in Europe. And
I love that you can have done a great concert
in London two days earlier and nobody in Brussels would care, right,
I mean, you have to convince every every place you
go that you have something to offer. I love the
(35:38):
fact that you can maybe over time build an audience
in different places. So when I played in Brussels the
first time, I had a hundred twenty people coming to
the concert, and now there might be twelve hundred instead,
And that's really really heartwarming to feel that you have
that loyalty from the audiences. But also if you don't
deliver that, of course they will not come back. When
(36:00):
some of the people I've interviewed from your world have
all in their own way said the same thing, which
is as difficult as the work can be, the other
incredibly difficult thing for them as writing music. I mean
they said that's the hardest thing to do is to write,
to write their own original music. Have you done a
lot of writing over we would describe your writing career
(36:20):
over the last No, I've never felt very rarely felt
compelled to compose. That as a teenager, I often sat
down and improvising at the at the keyboard and finding
melodies of things reminded me of other other music. But
then I found how much joy there was in discovering,
(36:40):
you know, composers music and recreating them. Because I think
many people don't understand how much freedom we have as
classical musicians they think that we have a school in
front of us, and it says, okay, it's supposed to
go fast, and it starts soft and then gets a
little louder and it's all set. But of course not,
because if it's a legal in the beginning, that means fast.
(37:02):
You know what is fast? That's just one of the parameters.
I mean you talked about tempo earlier, how much it
can vary in a piece likely to lean or in
in in in a modern symphony. But also if if
I see piano, which means soft in the beginning, what
is soft? If I play in my living room, I
can be very silent and it might still sound rather loud.
(37:23):
If I play in Carnegie Hall and I play the
same dynamic, nobody can hear me. I have to pronounce
it in a very different way. Even when it says
piano in the score, and what kind of piano are we? Are? We?
Does the music mean? Here? Is it full of tension?
Or is should it be very secretive? Should it be
very confessional? You know all these kinds of things. So I'm,
(37:46):
you know, more and more discovering how much freedom there
is inside these course they're they're just dots. On a
piece of paper. I mean, we we have to bring
them um to life. And I've in my life being
much more attractive to that than than trying to write
some bad music. I was. I said to Brompton one
(38:07):
time we went to dinner with him, and I said
to him, is there a piece or there are there
pieces for you which are just more, uh like the
equivalent of like a double black diamond ski run for you?
Were there a piece? You sit down and you've mastered
this piece, you've played many many times, and you know
and you know what you're doing, but you nonetheless have
(38:28):
a pause before you put your fingers on those keys
and said, this is a tough one. This is one
that demands more of me than any other piece. Are
there pieces like that for you? Oh? Yeah? And in
different ways, you know, also for the memories sometimes, you know.
And of course if I play rock mind enough. Third
piano Concerto, it's it's a huge piece. But I played
that since I was twenty two, and it's very demanding physically,
(38:52):
but it's also very comfortable to play somehow because it's
so fantastically written for the instrument. The fourth concerto, it
was much less known is extremely hard for the memory,
so I would my my pulse would always go up
before playing that piece over four. Yeah, and I played
that a lot as well. That's always with some tension
(39:14):
because it's much more asymmetrical and weird and sometimes like
jazz improvisation, and to memorize the whole thing is is
really really you know, it's tough together with the orchestra.
Is there a decent stock of piano concertos from Ratmlino? Well,
you've done them already. I've done them. There are the
four Piano Concertos and the Paganini Rhapsody UM, and that's
(39:37):
wonderful stuff. Revel. You know, I have some really favorite
composers that I've hardly played a note of, and Rebel
is one of them. I've never played the piano concertos.
I'm very little of the solo repsode, but I absolutely
love listening to it. I don't know what it is
I would as a pianist. I think I find more
freedom and creativity in playing Debucy, you know, the other French,
(40:00):
great French composer. But I adore Ravel and I absolutely
I mean, that's the luxury you have on your pianis
you don't need to play everything because there's so much.
Well listen. Thank you. I'm very grateful to your great
and best of luck with the finishing your project. Okay,
thanks a lot, my thanks to lafe uva honest Nous.
(40:22):
We leave you with honest performing composer Les Checks Peace
our evenings from the Piano series entitled On an Overgrown Path.
The musical selections in today's episode are presented with the
kind permission of Warner Classics and Sony Classical. I'm a
Mic Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by
(40:44):
iHeart Radio Think Coming
Host
Alec Baldwin
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