 View from the Stage: Garrick Ohlsson on Busoni
by Robert Rimm
Busoni's music has begun to appear regularly on concert stages the world over. His opera Doktor Faust, the grand culmination of his spiritual aspirations, is now recognized as one of opera's supreme masterpieces. The piano music, given its intensity, intricacy and inwardness stretched over vast emotional realms, requires of pianists the highest commitment, mental acuity and physical achievement. Winner of Italy's Busoni competition at age 18, Garrick Ohlsson is just such a musician. His series of three Busoni-themed concerts during the 2002-03 season, presented by New York's Lincoln Center, were revelatory to his audiences. Shortly thereafter, we spent an animated afternoon talking about the composer. Ohlsson is a well-read, ebullient man, full of immediate ideas and enthusiastic tangents.
"When I undertook to do those concerts," he began, "I knew they would be a huge challenge. Even with my own experience, though, perhaps I underestimated just what the challenge involved! I had played through much Busoni over the years, especially in the fertile teenage years and twenties when one has lots of time just to read through music. Virtually all of it is back in print now, including some pieces I'd never heard before. I wanted to juxtapose many of these works with those Busoni related to and was influenced by, to contextualize his own pieces." Accordingly, Ohlsson interspersed several major Bach and Liszt works with the Busoni that comprised most of these programs. They were a major success for performer, audience and presenter alike.
Why, then, is Busoni not performed more often? "I'm not sure his time has arrived in the sense that Mahler's has," Ohlsson responds. "The unanswered question is whether Busoni will become the great undiscovered figure from the past who, when we finally break through, is going to sweep the world. But his music has everything for the performer. We've seen firsthand that audiences enthusiastically respond when his music is done well, when contexted well. Until you play a work like the Fantasia contrappuntistica in public, there's a whole element of architecture that you cannot feel, much different than playing in one's living room. I was fully prepared for the audience to be bolting for the doors by about the third fugue, but they stay stayed and cheered! It's such a magnificent work, the first time I had programmed it. I learned most of these works for this occasion, and drove myself a bit crazy with all the work! But I hope I've helped to legitimize Busoni as someone suitable for public venues of live music. Other pianists should recognize that they can have great success with this fascinating repertoire. It is not weird cul-de-sac music, far from digging into third-rate rarities. I do love the corners of the repertoire, though, as did Busoni.
"At the most primal level, Busoni often wrote soft, enigmatic endings, and while wonderful, they may leave the public a bit befuddled, especially with works they don't know. What a strange collection of endings Liszt also has in his later works. He was obviously not concerned with provoking storms of applause and neither was Busoni. There's also the question of Busoni's flexible musical language. It changed and evolved, often exceeding the bounds of tonality. And such contrast! Even though the Sonatina Seconda and All'Italia are chronologically close pieces, when programming them together the audience may think they're by two different composers. There's also the mystical side of Busoni that people may not respond to. But then, the Toccata is a great stand-alone piece. So brilliant and entertaining, so characteristically engaging to the ear. Busoni had a sort of Liszt-plus ear, with pedaling and sonorities extending conventional sounds. A piece like the Chopin Variations is accessible not just because it contains a Chopin prelude, but it's a real barnburner with its pacing, brilliance and fabulous ending. Pianists are a pretty adventurous bunch, actually, better than average, so I'm hoping that more musicians take up the cause."
Ohlsson's first teacher, Tom Lishman, was a grand-pupil of Busoni. "He was the first musically cultured person I knew. So Busoni was part of the firmament, which he isn't for many pianists growing up. I played the Sonatina Seconda by the time I was twelve. He adored Busoni and clearly felt that he was a standard part of musical life. Many people today don't realize what a towering figure he was in his time, in all respects a continent-striding giant, as it were, and wildly popular. Irma Wolpe, Rosina Lhevinne and so many other older musicians and teachers I came in contact with early on, some of whom had actually heard Busoni, were in agreement that he was an irresistible force. There was no one like him. As people used to say about Liszt, you may not have agreed with him, but Busoni was head and shoulders above most others. Critics took him on, vividly. True, he gave them a lot to take on. He was such a deeply thoughtful, penetrating and even willful musician. Brilliant beyond belief. The one pianist to cause German audiences to break into applause in the middle of La Campanella. In Berlin in those days, that was really something to do! And in a period when Liszt represented just the tawdriest music, Busoni was at the forefront. He pioneered so much music, new and old. Busoni the composer, pianist, transcriber, teacher and conductor melded into endlessly creative and fecund musician. Where he found the time and energy to do so, I don't know, but without a cell phone and computer, he must have had a lot more time! Tom gave me a lot of Busoni, the Breitkopf & H¹rtel editions that were not then in print.
"When I was 13, I began to study with Sasha Gorodnitsky at Juilliard. I played a Bach-Busoni transcription for him, and he let me know that those things weren't done in those days, in competitions or concerts. In the sixties, that was largely true. My introduction to the purity of Bach began at that time. Everyone who played Bach on the piano took a stance. You either harpsichorded or pedaled it, or you Glenn Goulded it, or you did this or that. That argument has largely run its course. But Bach is malleable, expressing so much. As Busoni said beautifully, when you transcribe a work for another instrument, it's not merely a question of arranging the notes so that they fit on the instrument. The genius of Busoni's transcriptions is that they really sound like phenomenal piano works. I have to confess, I have difficulty listening to some of these works on the organ because of its unrelenting sustained quality and non-differentiation of voices. In a piece as busy as St. Anne, there's not a lot of time to have a free hand for registration. That's not a complaint against organs or organists; I just hear it better on the piano. But of course I'm a pianist with my brain formed by piano sounds. In most cases, Bach welcomed the multi-instrumental approach."
Since his death, Busoni's reputation has not always reflected what a leading figure he was. Further, while one easily points to a Beethoven or a Chopin tradition, the Busoni canon has been less fortunate. While students such as Egon Petri and other virtuosi such as Claudio Arrau espoused Busoni's music, sustained involvement by touring pianists has been sporadic. The dominant Russian tradition, by contrast, has continued unabated. In Ohlsson's case, at Juilliard he studied with Gorodnitsky, who studied with Josef Lhevinne, one of Anton Rubinstein's students.
Ohlsson views the liberties Busoni took as both pianist and transcriber part of the composer-pianist tradition of the era. "I just love what Busoni did with the works he played. It's certainly a red herring for critics, though. We lived in a very puritanical age in the 20th century. Back to Busoni's time, he was a modernist and a low-interventionist editorÑalthough interventionist by our standardsÑand he hadn't lived long enough to come across the threshold of the new objectivity. Arrau, Toscanini and others coming from the high romantic tradition got the purity idea and Urtext editions came into vogue. A good thing, because 19th-century editors edited like crazy, even to the point of changing notes and dynamics. Of course, to go as far as Busoni did in a Well-Tempered Clavier edition and change the actual fugues to go with the preludesá Hey, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world, and he didn't say it must be done that way, but it's a fascinating conception. Even Beethoven didn't start out thinking that all works are unified from beginning to end. The process was more alive, the way jazz is. If you talk to living composers, they're usually pleased that you're engaged with the work at all. We've become so afraid of what's perceived as capriciousness or willfulness, changing things such as what Busoni did with Schoenberg's Op. 11. Busoni took considerable time to learn, digest and recast one of those pieces. He wasn't being patronizing; it was just a part of his philosophy.
"I have these sporadic flings with Busoni that get public recognition. In the spring of 1966, I heard Pietro Scarpini play the Concerto with Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. I remember just loving it! Little did I think that 23 years later I'd be sitting with the same orchestra on stage playing it. Dohn‡nyiÑalways a pusher for the new and unusualÑhad wanted to do the work, and he wondered who in the world played this thing. It was incredibly sweet, the flowering of a dream of mine. I've grown to love every bit of the Concerto. The entire breadth of the middle movement was the hardest for me to come to terms with. It's so solemn, earnest and intense. The Concerto reflects the monumentality of its time; one thinks of Shoenberg's Gurrelieder, the Mahler symphonies, some Zemlinsky works. It also has sardonic and ironic qualities among its sheer intellectual brilliance and cleverness. I turned to Dohn‡nyi in a rehearsal, mentioning how difficult the music was, pointing out arpeggios without one exact repetition. Dohn‡nyi answered, 'Busoni's way too intelligent for that!' That's one of the most difficult things about learning Busoni. The patterns keep evolving and changing within themselves, steeped in so much counterpoint.
"The Elegies give you a complete sense of the guy. They have a kind of testament quality and represent a period in his life that he felt himself yet again changing definitively. He liked new beginnings all the time. Scriabin, similarly changing and growing, may be the most analogous composer to Busoni in terms of language.
Back to the Toccata, it is a difficult piece in every way! It certainly points forward to the very 20th-century treatment of the piano by Prokofiev and BartÑk, to a more purely percussive sound. It is written with so much chromaticism, concluding with a very bleak, somewhat sinister ending, revealing an extremely dark side of him. Its remote, desolate chromaticism is interrupted by tremendous surges of energy. This music surely has an eruptive, volcanic quality, its darker aspects contained within so many of the modulations and motives. The Toccata, in common with so much of Busoni's music, is not easily categorized. Its polytonality and atonality combine into an almost impressionistic sound. Those textures couldn't have happened at any other time in musical history. Busoni created ethereal, mystical watercolor evocations on the piano. Everything from the most pointillistic to the most lush. He possessed so many painterly details, without the standard triumphant, resolved endings. A very modern, angst-filled man."
Ohlsson has no immediate plans to record these works. However, he notes, "I havea number of things stewing in my brain. These days musicians like to make recordingsbefore concerts happen. I will certainly want to get around to recording Busoni,but some pieces will need more time, particularly the Fantasia contrappuntistica.I'm so excited and entranced by his music, though, and may well make a Bach-BusoniCD. It's just such hard work!" Ohlsson laughs easily at the thought, at oncerecognizing and embracing the singular qualities in Busoni's music that today'smusicians have become increasingly willing and eager to confront.
|  | | | C.V. & R.R.: You seem to take a literary approach to many of the pieces you perform. Are there authors or works of literature you respond to? How do they influence your approach to music?
K.G.: I learned to read and write when I was three. In my crazy days, when I was younger, I read everything I could...from novels, love stories, biographies, and art to the works of Nietzsche and Mann. In all these things, there are fascinating facts and truth. I was influenced by all of that. I also read a lot of Russian writers. When learning Mazeppa, I studied the poetry of Hugo, Pushkin and Byron. Mazeppa tells the story of a Cossack tied to a wild horse by his enemies and dragged into the wilderness. I think Liszt made an equation between the wounded hero, Mazeppa, and his own divided nature. The image that came to me is that of Liszt's instrument dragging him toward an uncertain future.
C.V. & R.R.: In the tortuous double-thirds of Mazeppa, you use much pedal. Did you consider using less pedal when recording?
K.G.: The pedal is necessary for me to achieve the expressive texture and poetic effect I wanted. Some piano smashers or those with excessive egos will play the notes for maximum brilliance without regard for the poetic nature of these accompanying figures.
C.V. & R.R.: What were the challenges when preparing to record Feux follets? Was fatigue a factor?
K.G.: Fatigue wasn't really a problem. The greatest challenge was to achieve maximum clarity and to maintain the balance and voicing between the hands. I utilized Liszt's recommended technique of keeping the wrists very high. I also used Liszt's suggested fingering.
C.V. & R.R.: When performing Feux follets, which can be translated 'playful fire,' what visual image do you try to convey?
K.G.: In spite of three titles in three languages, this piece speaks to me of the aurora borealis. The luminous texture of the right hand evokes the image of northern lights after midnight.
C.V. & R.R.: Do you see a connection between Chopin's use of D flat major and Liszt's use of the key in Harmonies du soir?
K.G.: Not really. Chopin used D flat major to express love. Harmonies du soir is a typical landscape piece. Seen on a technical level, it foreshadows Russian chordal textures and is matched only by Rachmaninoff. But just as Chopin used D flat major to express the emotion of love, I think Liszt used F sharp major as his 'divine' key, used to express the angelic or something heavenly.
C.V. & R.R.: You certainly have a busy schedule with teaching, performing, recording and touring. How do you get the most of the time you allot to practicing?
K.G.: Sometimes I sit down just for the pleasure of sight reading and playing new music. But most of the time, I sit down with a very particular task in mind. Every piece of music presents a different problem at the keyboard. It's useful to know what you want to achieve. At certain times in my life, I practiced for hours and hours, like a madman. At other times, I went for weeks and months without practicing at all. For me, quality counts. Not quantity. As we get older, we learn to do things in a shorter amount of time. We set up new standards and demands for ourselves, as well.
C.V. & R.R.: Do you practice away from the keyboard?
K.G.: I find this kind of practice useful, too. It helps me get accustomed to the sounds and enables me to shape and reshape the music in my mind. It helps me clarify things. I also find I don't get as tired and it does save a lot of time.
C.V. & R.R.: How do you prepare for a performance?
K.G.: My state of mind during a performance isn't the same as what it usually is. A piece that I've prepared very well in the studio might come out differently on the stage. To acquire total control of the situation, I try to create a performance environment by playing the piece, when it is ready, in front of people. The laws of live performance can't be learned in the studio. Only on the stage.
C.V. & R.R.: Do you have a repertoire you keep for yourself and another for performing?
K.G.: Exactly. I'm currently learning pieces I don't intend to perform. I'm learning them for the sake of having fun and enjoying them. Right now I'm learning Handel's Keyboard Suites, which I'm probably not going to perform publicly. But they're great works and they deserve to be played. With pieces like this, sometimes the impulse or love for the music breaks out, and then I have to record it!
C.V. & R.R.: What is your response to people who say this music is not supposed to be played on the piano, that it should be played on the original instruments?
K.G.: To me, it's not an issue. You can play this music on any instrument. I think Bach's point was best of all. Sometimes he simply composed with no particular instrument in mind.
C.V. & R.R.: Do you play the music of relatively unknown Russian composers, such as Medtner and Balakirev?
K.G.:I know Medtner's music very well and I like it. He was a Russian German...a naturalized Russian. That's the reason there is so much counterpoint. There is a distinctive Russian quality, especially in the smaller pieces. I like the Sonata, Op. 22, the Sonata tragica, Op. 39, No. 5, and also Sonata-Reminiscenza, Op. 38, No.1. Balakirev reminds me of a Russian Liszt!
C.V. & R.R.: After what you've experienced in your country, what is your reaction to Prokofiev's war sonatas? How accurately do you feel they portray war and the devastation of the war experience?
K.G.: In Russian music and literature, there is a strong tendency toward so-called realism. After Tolstoy and reaching Dostoyevsky, in Chekhov and even in Gogol, there is realism. I would say Prokofiev had a hermetical language. I wouldn't call it neoclassical, I would call it modern nationalistic work. There is melody and harmony. It doesn't sound like a contraction. I feel the music. Sometimes it has a communistic smell to it. In the last movement of the Seventh Sonata, there is a machine-like enthusiasm growing, all toccata. Or in the second movement from the Second Sonata, a scherzo. I think Prokofiev was a great composer because he was true to himself. He heard something in human existence...a new language. Today, we are growing more conscious of the uniqueness of this language. Prokofiev did react to war in his music, but you don't have to have a direct experience of war to play his music well.
C.V. & R.R.: Do you find a narcotic quality in Scriabin's music?
K.G.: Yes, It's strong like a drug. And it changes you with time. If you play it for years, this music changes you. You cannot stay the same.
C.V. & R.R.: Can you be more specific? How has it changed you in your physical and technical ability at the keyboard? And your emotional and spiritual outlook as well?
K.G.: I believe what and how you think has a direct influence on your material body. If you play a lot of Scriabin, it's likely that your body's chemical processes won't be the same as before. For this to happen, you really have to understand the music.
C.V. & R.R.: How important is vocal technique and the opera repertoire to a pianist?
K.G.: It's indispensable. I heard of one conservatory where all pianists are required to study singing. There's no way you can play melody if you don't know how it sounds because the piano is not so much capable of singing as of giving the illusion. The biggest problem is to learn now to produce a singing melody at the keyboard. Legato can present a problem, for example. Then there is punctuation. There is a sentence...things which you can only grasp by listening to singing. There is something archetypal in the human voice anyway. Someone once said the piano sounds best when it doesn't sound like a piano but like an orchestra or singing.
C.V. & R.R.: Is there a place for ugliness or aggression in music?
K.G.:Yes, but again it depends on the piece. The repertoire for piano is enormously rich and there's everything in it. I think Bach said that in music you can express every emotion: joy, sorrow, lust, greed, envy. This quote changed my perception of Baroque music. It is more than typewriter playing. If you can find and express so much emotion in that music, imagine what you can find in, say, Russian music.
C.V. & R.R.:Is there a dark side to your personality?
K.G.: Oh, yes. When I was young, the dark side was much more dominant especially between the ages of 12 to 17. I wouldn't talk much or smile. I guess I took the imperfections of the world too seriously and saw everything in a negative light. There was one crucial moment when I knew I had a choice. I chose the path of affirmation. Since then, I've been more open, trying to see the good things in life. Probably in the labyrinth there is still hidden a lot of darkness. But to say 'yes' takes more courage.
C.V. & R.R.: In the early 1990s, you withdrew from public life. Why?
K.G.: I felt it was necessary. You can't force maturity. I went into semi-seclusion for a period of two years to recreate and transform myself. The war created another part of me. To realize your gifts, you must know who you are.
Additional information regarding Mr. Gekic's upcoming tours and recordings will be posted shortly.
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