Episode Transcript
Brian: I've always said that it's kind of a badge of honor that, that Gould has a polarizing effect on people.
You know, there's, uh, was a, uh, Uh, a film by, uh, the American actor and director and writer, Ethan Hawke, about the piano teacher, um, well, he was a performer and then he, uh, decided to leave the stage and, uh, and focus on, on, on being a pedagogue, uh, Seymour Bernstein.
And, uh, and You know, the excerpts of him slagging Glenn Gould have become kind of, uh, bestsellers on, on YouTube, you know, like they, they have massive numbers of hits because the, the more, you know, sort of visceral his disdain for Gould, the more people are fascinated and want to hear Gould to see what, what all the fuss is all about.
So, uh, I always say that, uh, you know, I mean, Gould's own credo was, we have only, if we're going to play music that has been played literally thousands and thousands of times, studied by every student, we only have one justification, and that is to find a way to do it differently. And I don't think that He necessarily meant that one had to be radically different, as he always was, or at least often was, um, but to find something that would impart your own individual stamp and your perspective and ideas that would, you know, I think that unlike the, the sort of prevailing attitude that sort of came with the, the, sort of the mythology around Arturo Toscanini in the mid 20th century, you know, fidelity to the text as written, that there is new room for people to bring individual perspectives and be a little freer with their interpretations too.
So perhaps the pendulum is swinging back a little more in the direction of Furtwängler, let's say, than, uh, than, uh, because that, that kind of approach to fidelity is, I think, a bit of a straitjacket at a certain point.
Víkingur: well, I mean, you have to work with living composers to understand that the score is the beginning point and not the ending point of an interpretation.
I mean, when I play with Thomas Adas conducting his In Seven Days concerto or piano symphony. Um, You know, the score is so meticulous and almost mathematical, everything revolves around the number 7.
It's about, you know, the book of Genesis, the birth of the world, through the Bible. And, uh, it's just amazing that the metronome markings are like 77 and, you know, 154,
I guess, and something in between those, you know, 115 points, whatever it is. You know, it's all devi it's all devi sub tablets, it's all deviations.
It's like, it's Start to play it and you're like, Oh my God, I am, I'm, I've become a, I've become a, I've become a slave of, of, of this piece, but it's a magnificent piece. Uh, one of the hardest things I think I've ever played. Um, but when I played it with Tom, it was actually quite easy. Uh, because, uh, we didn't follow almost any of his markings.
I mean, some
of
them, of course, but it was so free and the tempos were so different and it was so rhapsodic.
Um, and, uh, It's, it's the same with John Adams, you know, and, and, and, and, you know, Gheorghe Kurtag to a degree as well, you know, the, the, the, the performer has to have an experience of that or to write music him or herself, and then you understand how impossible it is to place a mezzoforte and a crescendo and a hairpin and this legato and is it an allegretto or allegretto vivace or is it a allegro, is it a, you know, quasi this or quasi that?
What, what, is what are we, how are we going to, you know, find the right symbols for how we feel. But also, uh, do you really think that Bach would play the Goldberg Variations twice the same on two consecutive evenings? I don't think so. Um, and, and, uh, so, so in that sense, it's, uh, it's a self defeating argument.
And, but I think a very Uh, and sadly, a little bit leading, you know, the course of the late 20th century, this idea that the performer was supposed to be the humble servant of the music and people sort of self congratulating themselves and being so humble about the whole, whole endeavor. Um, you know, how, how the rise of the Urtext edition and, and, and, and, well, I, I mean, of course I love the Urtext and there's nothing more beautiful than the Urtext of something like Beethoven sonatas.
Uh, But, you know, you can also, you know, once you start overthinking and calculating, you know, all those symbols, something very fundamental in the musical expression is very easily lost. And I think, you know, the way the 20th century sort of championed those people, and slightly resented people who were more like Gould or Furtwängler, more of this kind of, you know, in that way.
Um, I think, It was a difficult period for the very creative interpreters, and I think at this point in 2024, we are having a much more open minded and, uh, interesting, actually, overall, classical music environment
to, to be, uh, a creative interpreter in.
Brian: I completely agree.
And, and, uh, you know, you had mentioned before your first Deutsche Grundhof album with Philip Glass, you know, Philip, who I love, I love, I adore, I love his music, and he was one of our prize winners, and when he received the prize, he said, uh, you know, I'm, I'm very sad he's that Glenn Gould never played any of my music, and I only wish I could have, you know, had the chance and people say, well, why, you know, he would take such liberties with it, with, with the music.
And Philip said, uh, If you have someone with a mind like that, I would welcome him as a partner and a collaborator, whatever he would want to do, whatever ideas he would want to bring, whatever changes he would want to make, would be perfectly fine by me. Uh, I thought that was an extremely gracious and, and even humble thing for him to say, but he is such a, a, a sweet and gentle spirit, um, in so many ways, and I think it, it's, you know, his life as a, as a, as a Buddhist and his, you know, his, a sense, sense of reverence and awe at the spiritual traditions of, of many different cultures that gives him that perspective, perhaps, that openness.
Víkingur: It's beautiful. I mean, it's very gentle of him. I mean, those words are so nice. Of course, if Gould had played his music, Gould wouldn't have cared one bit what he would have said. He would have anyway taken that, that liberty. I mean, wasn't there a story when he recorded the Canadian album, and I think there were some composers on that album who hardly, recognized their own music and Gould, I think, said something like, well, you certainly don't understand what you've written.
I, I, I'm sort of quoting this a little bit, you know, inaccurately, I'm sure, but that, that, that was the message. Uh, and, uh, I, that, that stayed with me. You know, when I played Philip's music, uh, and I played Actually, extremely differently on my album than any of the markings in the score. I did a bit of a Gouldian approach there, and I don't follow a single, a single metronome marking, and I don't follow a single dynamic marking, and, you know, God forgive me, or Philip forgive me.
But Philip actually did forgive me. He said to me, with Etude No. 6, which I play sort of prestissimo or presto, but, I mean, about Double if not triple tempo that he, that he wrote, uh, he said, he said to me, he was a bit puzzled when I played it for him first in 2013 or 14, but he said to me, somebody, somebody should give you a speeding ticket for that, but, but that's, but, but that's not going to be me.
And I thought it was such a nice way of putting it like he didn't really, he didn't really agree with it, but, but he also
didn't want to change it, you know,
Brian: right.
Víkingur: it was kind of, kind of wonderful.
Brian: That's, uh, that is, that is great. And it's actually a beautiful, beautiful album, and it does reveal certain things that I've always felt, and especially Later in his life and career, I mean, he's first of all, such a prolific composer, he really has created a gigantic body, but he's become quite a romantic, to my way of thinking, in his, in his later years, and I see this incredible fusion between the, you know, building structures on repetitive figures with now, you know, beautifully long melodic lines and, you know, very rich emotional, you know, expressions and different approaches towards his harmonies.
So it's amazing to see how someone like that evolves over the course of a career.
Víkingur: Yeah, I agree. It's, he's a, he's a post
romantic composer at this point.
Brian: Yeah.
When you first approach learning a new piece of music, and, you know, there are pieces that you will be very familiar with because you, you know, have a, a, a rich history of, you know, attending concerts when you were in New York and hearing lots of, you know, standard repertoire, no doubt, and, and the recordings, but when, for example, you approach, you know, the music like the, the, uh, Mozart contemporaries that you wouldn't have known, you Approach something that is completely unfamiliar to you.
I have this sort of image of you taking the score and putting it to your forehead and saying, Okay Chimarroza, what are you trying to tell me, you know? But no, how do you, how do you begin to formulate a concept? Because if I, if I can, um, In my, my life as an A& R guy, I, I loved to find undiscovered gems, and, and, you know, composers who often had been seriously overlooked.
We did a lot of work with, with them. And particularly with chamber performances, I would bring a score to an ensemble, and they would play it and say, Well, no wonder no one knows who this guy is, and throw it to one side. I'd say, Do me a favor. Play it through one more time. And the second time, of course, they would begin to get a feeling of how the parts went together and the shape.
And they said, well, that's interesting, that's interesting. And then I'd say, just indulge me one more time. And by the time they played it, A third time. They would love it and want to record it. Uh, not always, of course. Sometimes, I didn't always pick winners. But, you know, it was interesting that something that is so different and unfamiliar, particularly if it's from someone who we don't think of as one of the greats, it becomes too easy to dismiss them out of hand.
How did, how did you approach finding those works, those, those gems? Mm
Víkingur: yes. I mean, the Mozart and Contemporaries program was a bit the same process as when I did my Debussy Rameau album, included a lot of research. I actually, you know, my idea was to give a snapshot of the 17 80s in one album with Mozart very much. That's the great decade of Mozart. And, but I wanted to show what was happening around him and hopefully discover something new for myself.
Debussy, Rameau, I actually played through the entire works of both composers and listened to so many of the operas that I could find of Rameau. Um, but with most of the contemporaries, you know, the Cimarosa that you specifically mentioned, and it's also a little bit of a favorite of mine because nobody, Nobody knew of him or you know knew this works.
Um, I played through all the Cimarosa sonatas I that I could find basically online and in the library and the same I played through all the Haydn sonatas that I Knew a little bit better. Of course, I played through everything I could find with Carl Philipp and Manuel Bach from coming from that decade so I just played through these these stacks of music and then Cimarosa in particular was very interesting because He was one of the leading opera composers of this time, the late 18th century, and he was a big celebrity actually, very very famous in Italy, and he was known for his melodic gifts, but you know, when you listen to the music, it's not You know, it's not complete in the sense of, of course, not Mozart or Haydn or something like that.
It doesn't have the kind of dimension and the spatiality and the kind of, you know, complexity of greater music. But I played these 80 sonatas, whatever it was, and there were two of them that sort of stayed with me. The one in A minor and the one in D minor in particular. But if you would actually look at the scores That I was reading from, and compare it with the
recording, they are so far away, I mean, the scores are almost like skeleton, because the way he wrote it was so, it was so simple and almost elementary from a keyboard perspective, it's just a melody and this da da da da da da, this kind of very automatic and rather Dull, I have to say, accompaniment, and there was no secondary line, there was no polyphony, there was no, nothing to sort of spice it up a little bit.
The D minor Cimbroso Sonata on this album, I mean the melody is gorgeous, but I started to play it, I started to play it and I thought, you know, that's nice, but I'm not going to record any Cimbroso for this album because it's not good enough. Uh, and then, and then this. These melodies just stayed with me and at the same time I was actually working on the Moonlight Sonata, uh, just by coincidence, uh, I was working on Quasi on a Fantasia C sharp minor Beethoven and I started to think, what if I, what if I spent the same amount of time on my sound world for this Cimarosa Sonata as I'm actually spending on the opening movement of the, of the Moonlight Sonata, what if I actually gave it This much love, uh, because I spent a lot of time on the mulat sonata, um, for obvious reasons, um, and then I started to completely change my approach to the chimarosa, and I added registers, and I added basses, and I added, uh, I think I added voices, and I harmonized the whole thing, and I did all these things, and, and did some crazy pedaling, uh, and all of us, and I, and I took the tempo down, you know, probably 40 percent from my sight reading tempo, so it became, um, Moonlight, Jim Morosa, almost, but, but I found that the material was convincing enough, just the skeleton of it, the melody with its, uh, lament, uh, that, that this actually became something so interesting and in the context of Mozart, uh, it seemed the perfect, uh, and it ends actually on the dominant of A major, so it seemed the perfect, perfect, uh, sort of prelude leading into the Mozart D minor fantasy, um, Which itself is inconclusive.
Uh, so, so, so, so all of this sort of acted together, but it was a huge process and it took me weeks to formulate this. Like the same with Debussy Rameau, I mean, uh, the easiest part is to actually like learn the repertoire finally and, and, and record it almost. Because before that, I spent six months just sort of sweating over, over, over getting the Playlist.
What do you want to call it? G g g getting this right. It's like, uh, someone who's just sort of gone off the rails and spends all his time on a playlist. You know, that's the modern, that's the modern album. That's the modern A& R. You're just kind of like taking one playlist that you can just throw into an album.
But actually, what happens if you spend six months on it? What kind of a playlist is it going to become? That's what those albums, you know, and my albums tend to be. They're a playlist that I spend maybe a little bit
too much time on trying to perfect.
Brian: Well, at, at the risk of subjecting you
to similar misery, uh, I hope that you'll actually, at some point in the future, do a Beethoven and his contemporaries disc, because actually I think it's, uh, there's a lot more interesting material to choose from. I mean, bear in mind, for example, that, you know, The year that Beethoven died, Franz Liszt was 16 years old.
He was one of the contributors to Diabelli's Variation Project. It's a very interesting variation. Um, so, you know, when you look at, at the musical landscape from the time Beethoven was born to the time of his death, there is a lot of very interesting music, Hummel and, you know, Dusek and, um, and many, many others, uh, some of whom are completely unknown and, and.
And Schubert, of course, of course, but that, but of course, he deserves his own album, if the idea is to find some people who've been overlooked,
then, anyway, uh, I'm not your A& R man, so I, I
Víkingur: I
like, I, I, I, I
might just do this. You'll get some royalties from that album
Brian: Don't get some royalties, but if you want some ideas, I have a few, a few special
pieces.
Um, anyway, the, um, I'd like to talk about the piano as an instrument. This is a kind of a reflection of my own about the, first of all, I've, known many pianists, and some of them are very, very casual about their, they play beautifully on, on, you know, sort of not great instruments and on great instruments, and there are others who are very, very anxious and very particular, Gould, of course, was notoriously particular about what he was looking for in an instrument.
Some who, of whom have really seriously nervous reactions about their instruments, you know, um, there was one, Uh, artists I made a record with. And she, you know, had to have her piano from New York brought to upstate New York where we made our records. Uh, because it was the only instrument in the world that was good enough for her.
And she had picked it and picked it and picked it. And when She got it onto this particular stage with a very different acoustic than her apartment on the Upper West Side, uh, of Manhattan. Uh, she didn't like it. I always thought, you know, the piano is the only thing in the world that you could spend 250, 000 on and then hate it.
You know? But I've always felt that one of the reasons for that is that the piano is not like a violin, and the violin, you know, the player is physically in contact with the source of the sound. It is literally responding under his or her fingertips. The piano, you have this mediation of a rather complex mechanism that stands between you and the strings.
And it's kind of like, you know, when drivers talk about getting curb feelers, where it feels like You know, the, the, the vehicle is an extension of their, of their body and their nervous system so that it responds. You're literally trying to make that mechanism into an extension of your fingertips. You know, you're trying to make the fact that it is not something that you feel with, that you have nerve endings on, you know, the escapement and the, you know, and the jacks and all that.
You know, the stuff that goes into, you know, the incredibly complex mechanism of a grand piano. Basically, you create the illusion for yourself that they disappear and you really are, you know, that the end of your fingertips is actually the hammer, you know? And that is very, very hard to accomplish and very delicate to maintain that illusion.
And if things just aren't right, It disappears, and suddenly you are faced with a machine between you and the sound. Am I totally out to lunch with that, that, uh, and what about your own view of the instruments you play?
Víkingur: No, I think you're more or less right. I relate very much. I think the first time in my life that I worked with a truly world class, fantastic piano technician was a life changing experience for me. It was with Michel Brandjes, who is now working on all my albums from the Concertgebouw in Netherlands. I remember when I first met him and he was trying out the piano, he was playing excerpts himself from Rachmaninoff's Third Concerto and he was playing Scriabin preludes and he was testing out colors and, um, it's, it's an amazing It was an amazing revelation.
I was 27 at the time, so I'd had the first 27 years of my life playing the piano so much without ever having that experience of
someone
who can fine tune those 12, 000 parts of an instrument. I mean, I think that there is almost no such thing as a I, uh, I'm a really bad Steinway D instrument, but there's a lot of very bad technicians, you know.
And of course, there are varying degrees of piano. Some of them are magical just by nature and some of them are less so. But that's the same with pianists, you know. If you have a great pianist playing on a average instrument, like you say, You know, the results will always be beautiful. And then when you have a pretty mediocre pianist playing on the greatest piano with the best technician, the result is also going to be pretty mediocre, you know, but it's amazing what you can do with a great piano.
You can, like, let's say you have a great piano in a, in a dry acoustic. You can, if you are, if you're good enough, you know, with your imagination and, and, and, and sort of, you have enough dimensions in your playing, you can really create the acoustic almost. You can help the acoustic. Uh, and it's the same when you play in a very, and, I think Wet Acoustic, a great pianist will know how to adjust the pedal and the tempi's accordingly.
So I I mean, people talk sometimes about the piano as if it is, uh, sort of a cold machine and that you sort of, like, press it and it's very percussive. But the thing is that when I, when I play the piano, the whole, my whole technique and everything about it is sort of working against it. So it feels a very warm affair with the keys, you know.
And so if you are very much in, if you hit the keys from above, of course it is very cold and that's the sound that you get. But, but once you, you know, you realize that you can get maximum sound from the piano from. Touching it or before you press the keys and using your whole Body in, in the process, you know?
Um, that's another life changing experience. But, you know, I've, I've played the piano since sort of before I began to speak, you know? Um, so, so to me it is, it is, uh, it just, it never feels cold. It always feels like an extension of, of myself, but I can imagine if you come to the piano later in live, that might be more difficult to
sort of, you know, to, to, to find that connection
Brian: Right. Yep. Absolutely. And I, I have to say what you said about Piano technicians really strikes a chord with me because, you know, we've, I have to say that for most, for the most part we had a very, very smooth and harmonious relationship between the couple of technicians that we worked with on my record label and the pianists, but there were a few who were very I would say anxious high strung and they actually began to take it out on the technician, the one person in particular and really like, you know, there was one actually quite, um, highly regarded, um, pianist whose name I will not mention who actually had studied to be a technician and knew enough to be a bad technician, but not a good one.
And on one occasion he was not getting what he wanted. He actually was having problems, the beginnings of a focal dystonia. And he was, that's what he was reacting to is his fear and anxiety. I didn't know it at the time, but anyway, at one point he actually, you know, you know, first he said, you know, sound is.
It's too hard, you know, get the needles, you know, to start needling the felt. And the technician, you know, like, I don't really like to do that, you know, we have to be very careful about that. You know, at one point, the, this pianist said, get out of my way, I'm gonna do it. And literally, so I, I literally, I'm ashamed to say I went down on the stage and I said, With greatest respect, great piano technicians.
are about as rare as great pianists. Please treat this one with respect.
Víkingur: yeah.
Brian: And he did, um, because it's really amazing what a technician can do with an instrument and how, you know, the relationship, if you ever have a chance to read, uh, the book, Romance on Three Legs, which is about Gould's search
Víkingur: have, I,
Brian: piano.
Víkingur: I have read it. It's a, it's a great book.
Brian: I had the pl, the pleasure, the privilege of the late Verne Edquist and it literally was like he was inside Gould's head. He didn't need to be told what Gould wanted, he could hear it and be out on the, on the floor of the, of the hall where the recording was being made, making the adjustments before Gould even had to ask for them.
So it's, it is kind of an art in itself.
Víkingur: I mean, they are underrated, the piano technicians. And sometimes I think also for the big concerts, when you have a great technician, their names should be on the program, to be very honest with you. Um, and they, they never are, but it's a, it's a thing, you know, with. Gould and his particular setup of the piano, which is wonderful and very unique, uh,
it's maximum velocity to the utmost, uh,
resulting in the famous double schlag when you've done, you know,
this, when when the,
the, hammer hit, the hammer goes so fast that it bounces back up and re hits the string, you know.
Um, it's, it's, uh, in a way it's that, that That's, it's so interesting that, that, that, that didn't bother him, but it didn't, you know, because he wanted that, he wanted that immediacy of the fingertip, you know, to respond to his, you know, the smallest, you know, sort of neurological, you know, signals that he sent.
Uh, and, and, and I, and I, I can relate because what Gould does on those recordings is that he brings the microphones closer in on the piano
than anyone had ever done. To this day, I think, almost,
Brian: Well, until until you recorded your upright
piano.
Víkingur: that's true, that's true, but, but, but, but, that's true, that's true, but, but, but, but, uh, touche, okay, but, but, but, but you know what I mean, there's, there's a feeling when you listen to Gould that, that, that, that he's whispering something.
And you are sitting on the piano bench with him, you are absolutely next to him at the piano, that creates this sort of intensity that you described here earlier, and almost a domestic feeling of music making, as if you are sort of at home with him, um, and that is something that you really need to have You know, a great piano technician to be able to have the keys respond like that.
It's, it's no easy task, uh, to accomplish and I, and I think that is, you know, what I like so much about Gould and what I try to do in my own recordings is that I try to bring the microphones sort of uncomfortably close also on my recordings. Grand Piano Recordings. Um, so they are considerably more close mic'd than almost any other recordings that I know of are here today, you know.
Because, but what you get, even if it's, can be painful in the studio, because every little micro decibel, you know, is, matters on every single, Voice in the polyphony but what you get when you get it right Is you get this kind of three dimensionality of the music sort of coming and going and and and this kind of Feeling of someone someone speaking to you like that whereas I think the majority of piano recordings are placed a little bit Microphones are too far away today.
With microphones just, just take it, you know, a few inches too far back or centimeters, and you get of course a completely different result, where you feel the sound hits you, and doesn't, doesn't invite you in. And that is also something that became. You know, a little bit in some of the Deutsche Grammophon recordings of the 80s, you know, and, and the 90s, you know, um, a sound that was just kind of like really bright, very brilliant, but, but never invite, never invited you
to take part, you
Brian: I.
Víkingur: you to sort of meet it, you
Brian: I completely agree. I, I call it karyonitis. Um, but that's perhaps mean of me. Uh, but the, the, uh, that actually probably also reflects a lack of appreciation of the inherent differences between the concert experience and the recorded medium, which of course, I think you have shown an enormous sensitivity to.
I mean, you are, of course, a great concert artist, but you are I think someone who really has grasped the potential of the recording medium to be a distinct art unto itself. Um, how do you approach the two as distinct experiences, as distinct things to prepare for?
Víkingur: It's interesting, I think the studio actually helped me become a much better, uh, concert performer because the studio, you have, the palette has to be so fine tuned and the dynamics are so often extreme to get your right results, you know, the softness in the studio, uh, and, and, and, you know, the kind of clarity of the counterpoint that you then bring onto the stage with you.
And sure, you might play everything, you know, slightly louder than you would. Play for the microphone, but it still teaches you to adapt your, you know, your dynamics and, and sort of to find the proportions in your sound, for instance, in the studio, I think I learned that how easily the lower pitches, the lower frequencies cancel out the violas and the second violins and the clarinets and everything else in the texture, you know.
Um, you know, so, so in a sense, you know, you also think you're a little bit from a physics perspective, your dynamics have to, you know, come from the, from the lower, lower register and sort of be built up from there, you know, if you want to have sustain and singing, that's just one, one basic here, but, but that's something that That no one taught me and the studio taught me, you know, and I lament the fact that we don't have lessons, or at least I never had a lesson in the recording studio with a piano teacher during my studies.
How is it possible to go through these wonderful universities and with all the tuition and everything and you're never
taught to become friends with a microphone?
Brian: it's a huge, Um, lack, a huge, uh, um, area of, uh, that needs to be addressed. Again, we would sometimes work with, with young artists, you know, fairly fresh out of conservatory who we saw something special in, and we would actually take an extra day to help educate them a little bit about the, the medium and how to work in a recorded environment in a way that would be different from the preparation they had.
And it was really like a jaw dropping revelation to them. You mean I can do that? You mean I shouldn't do that because it will sound not the way I intended to? And, you know, the thing is, The thing that we would always do is basically make them come up and listen, listen, listen, listen, listen to playbacks, listen to the way we were creating the sound.
My partner was our engineer, and he was kind of a genius at that, and, you know, if it wasn't sort of the sound that they ideally had inside their head, we'd say, alright, back on the stage, we need to keep working.
Víkingur: it's very beautiful, I mean, to hear this, and I wish we had more A& R people like you and people, you know, teaching young, you know, students in the studio. I think that, basically, um, if people knew the kind of dynamics, That you use when you're playing for the microphone that's just a few centimeters away from you.
It's like you're telling someone the most confidential thing in the world. You can't play like you're on the stage of Carnegie Hall. And I think that the magic of the studio is in the piano and the pianissimo and the pianississimo and even lower in the dynamics. And how much Differentiation can you have inside those softer dynamics, because the louder the decibels, uh, the less specificity you get in the sound, and the less inviting the recording becomes.
And that's, that's a great point. the sort of paradox of it that, that, that you have to, uh, that you have to play sometimes so softly and sometimes the best results are achieved on a relatively bright piano with the most fragile and sensitive playing. Because if you want to help yourself too much with, uh, with a sort of beautiful dark and soft piano that sort of, you know, does much of the voicing work for you, um, the results can be very pleasing for 10 minutes, but then you might get tired of the
record and it might start to sound a bit
monotone.
Brian: Yeah, exactly. Although I have to say, you know, I think you need a really Full, rich, bassy piano to play Brahms. Um,
Víkingur: Yes, I agree.
Brian: yeah. Uh, I, you've been very generous with your time, and I know that you have a plane to catch, but I, I did have three more questions that I wanted to ask if you, if you can, can manage it.
One is about the idea of, of the album, because you have shown an enormous amount of creativity and adventurousness in the programming, as we've talked a little bit, uh, so far.
At the same time, you have had an enormous amount of respect success with streaming and streaming kind of is the antithesis or can be of the album experience because people can choose individual tracks that often do, you know, construct their own playlists, listen to things in isolation. Whereas, you know, the idea of the album as a journey, something that, you know, really evolved during the golden age of pop and rock music, right?
You know, the idea of Choosing a song and pulling it out and taking it in isolation was really alien to the concept. Do you see a kind of a tension? You know, obviously we have to be grateful that, you know, we're bringing new listeners in and getting a lot of, a lot of audience, but do you ever feel a sense of loss that people may not be quite getting the point that you're trying to, to, to work towards?
Víkingur: Yes, you can usually feel a little bit sad when, when you realize that, you know, the, the lowest streaming number track is usually the last one on your album. Um, you know, it's really hard to keep people, for any artist, uh, listening to your song, because people don't treat the streaming platforms like record stores.
You don't treat it like, you know, they, they treat it like, you know, it, it, it, it. They're made for playlists where you create your own playlist and and you have an immediate reaction to something and then that enters your little playlist and becomes a part of your world and then the algorithm will then, you know, make a recommendation based on that taste and then you will have something else, you know, so, so yes, we are always, I'm always in competition, a losing competition, I have to say, uh, with, uh, with the playlists and with the editorial playlist and with, uh, with the way people actually, you know, consume the music today.
Having said that, um, there is still a remarkable amount of people who are listening through to the records still, so they're basically there. choosing, choosing to go with me and to trust me with this, even if they might have less of a reaction to one song on the album than the next, but it's a little bit like reading a book or seeing a movie and expecting every scene of the thing to have the same immediate, you know, Instant gratification to your senses.
No great movie or book is ever gonna do that to you. You can't expect every single vegetable on your dish to do the same thing as the first bite of the steak. You know, but in the end, it creates something that is, you know, a sense of completeness and a sense of, uh, you know, Context that that I think people are starting to appreciate more and more now that the streaming services are no longer just 5-year-old.
I mean, when was Spotify and Apple Music? When did they start? It's about 10 or 15 years ago. 15 years ago. Probably. Maybe, maybe even more. But, but we are still in the very early stages of this and I think we are still sort of as consumers and, and as listeners and music lovers, we're still learning to, to live with it and find our own ways with it.
And I think people are becoming. You know, more interested in alternative approaches than just having the algorithm governed based on instant gratification, you know, but you're right But but but you know and sometimes I do tracks or I do things on the albums that I have a feeling will Become sort of super streamers and then they don't and then there are other tracks that I would never have thought And then all of a sudden they have 50 million streams or something.
You know, it's it's a it's it's a strangest thing sometimes
Brian: Yeah. Yeah, it is. But again, you know, considering that, you know, one of your first three records, when you actually had your own record label, uh, was Vinterheiser, the idea of, you know, pulling, you know, individual pieces out when they really belong as part of a cycle, as part of a larger whole, that must be something that you have a very strong affinity for.
Víkingur: I, yes, I am old school in that sense, absolutely, for me it's impossible to listen to, you know, Die Krähe, The Crow, from Winterreise, if it's not sitting exactly where it sits, or to listen to Liar Man, I mean, how ridiculous, what a ridiculous idea actually, yeah,
Brian: Yeah, exactly.
Yep. So, um, your French record, the Debussy Rameau, um, that is really an interesting concept. And, and particularly, Rameau, I've heard you speak in such,
Passionate terms about Rameau as a composer, and that leads me to reflect, you know, considering that, you know, particularly in the world of the keyboard, you know, there's been so much emphasis on Bach, you know, on the German school. Um, what is it about French Baroque music? It really kind of occupies a space unto itself, and I think not only about that.
But, you know, we, I had the privilege of doing a program with Jordi Savall. So we talked about Thule Matan Dumond and, you know, and Marat Marais and the, you know, Michaud de Saint Colombes. But then I thought about, about Richard Strauss and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and his, you know, his embrace of Lully, who was, you know, Probably, at that point in history, completely unknown by most people.
There is something that is really distinctive about the French Baroque, and obviously some of the towering figures in a couperin we should mention as well.
Víkingur: Well, they're free spirits, and I think it's, you know, sometimes the Germanic approach to Baroque and music in general is quite systematic and structural, and I think the French approach can be so wonderfully unsystematic and sort of rhapsodic and spontaneous, and I think, you know, when I did the Debussy Rameau, I mean, I, I had played a lot of Debussy in my, in my life, but not so much Rameau.
And, you know, I decided to look into Rameau. I, I, I had played Le Rappel des Oiseaux, The Recall of the Birds. And it's, it's one of the masterpieces of the Baroque era. And I thought, how ignorant of me. To have played this piece as an encore now for a few years, and somehow I haven't given myself time to look at what else this incredible composer has really written for the keyboard, apart from some of the greatest hits.
So I just, again, went through all that I could find with Rameau, and the more Rameau I played, the more I started to think about. I thought Rameau was the, you know, visionary and the futuristic one, and Debussy, to me, was always the Baroque composer. Uh, because I think, in a way, we think of Debussy and we think very much about the harmonic inventions and, and, you know, the sort of, the basics that, that, that you will find in the, in the short text at the bottom in the history books.
But, you know, people, Forget the fact that Debussy was a fanatic when it came to the French Baroque, and he loved Rameau more than any other composer, and you know, when he went to, when he won, what was it, Prix de Rome, you know, he wasn't studying the music of Verdi or looking at what Puccini was doing, he was studying Palestrina, you know, so in a sense, you know, underlying in Debussy's music and so much of his when you have these harmonic inventions is actually very often a baroque structure He's often sort of like laying a very structural foundation to his then incredibly fantastic flights of fantasy when it comes to the the harmonies and and the textures in the instrumentation everything else that makes him what what what he is With Rameau and Debussy I found the same thing that you never know What is you can never predict what's around the next You really don't know where the music is going, and they love to make sure that this stays that way.
They love to make sure that they are absolutely unpredictable, a little bit like having a good, you know, French meal with a French person. You know, it's never entirely predictable where the conversation is going. And, uh, and, uh, yeah, so in that sense You know, that was, that was my goal. I wanted to show that, how anachronistic, in a way, both composers were, and, you know, Debussy, who was, uh, famously thorny.
Critic, uh, for a certain period in his life, writing about, you know,
concerts, and I'm very glad he did not review my concerts, because he was the toughest, I mean, the most horrible critic. It would destroy you, and he, he, he, he was like the only person in history that I think I know who, who really didn't like Johann Sebastian Bach, for instance, but Debussy loved Rameau more than anything else, and in a very famous, uh, Uh, review from, what is it, 1903 or 1905 or something like that, when he heard Custer and Pollux at the opera, or an excerpt from it, or, you know, an act from it or something, you know, he wrote that, you know, Rameau's music is so wonderful and it had a long list of beautiful adjectives, and then he said that he seems to be our contemporary, and I just wanted to actually put them in the same room and have a dialogue and see if I could find a way to do that.
to have people almost question who is who, because when I was playing through the Rameau pieces, uh, certainly the more progressive of them, I just kept thinking, how is this written in the 17? You know, 50s or 40s, I mean how, and the sense of program music and the sense of evocative titles, you know, and everything else that, that I think Rameau was so ahead of his time with that you really see them coming with Schumann and those guys in the early 19th century, but I want to really, you know, give emphasis to Rameau because I think he deserves a much bigger role in the, on the concert stages today than he currently has.
I mean, you know, My much bigger role it's it's amazing how rarely you see him
programmed and if you if he's programmed it's usually the
same five pieces.
Brian: Yeah, and there is a spiritual quality in this music that I think people tend to overlook. It's really quite interesting, but very different from, you know, perhaps it's a Catholicism versus Lutheranism. kind of, uh, kind of, uh, uh, contrast, but it, yeah, I, I feel it very intensely. And it's also very interesting because I think, you know, again, you know, back to an observation of Gould's is that the greatest music is the music that stands outside of time, out of, outside of any one period that isn't of its moment, but of all times
Víkingur: Amen That's very good. Yeah, but I think with Debussy as well and and Rameau the other thing that also brings them together is that they They, they wrote their own rule rules. I mean, they created their own rule books and literally did, I mean, the Ramo comes from the provinces and he writes, you know, sort of a, a big lexicon on, on, on music theory and what music is and, and how harmony works and everything, you know, and, and Debussy basically does the same, you know, so they, they sort of like, they, they don't, they, they do exactly that, which Google describes there.
They, they don't just go into the, the norm. They, they always make sure they stay outside of
it. you know, from an outsider's perspective.
Brian: Right. Okay, two more questions. Um, and this is going to be a big one.
Um, I think we're living through a golden age of classical music, and actually it's been an extended golden age, you know, from perhaps about the beginning of the 20th century, but we're still in the midst of it. Um, And it really raises the question, what is classical music, because in the 19th century you could say, feel a direct kinship between all of the composers, even as the music became larger and freer and so on, they were still, you know, part of, of a whole, but If you don't mind my reading this list, which I just picked at random, think about the, the incredible diversity in this collection.
Igor Stravinsky, Charles Ives, Arnold Schoenberg, Luciano Berio, Henry Cowell, Pierre Boulez, Toru Takamitsu, Edgar Varese, Jan Svelius, Vaughan Williams, uh, Harry Parch, Philip Glass, Alan Hovhannes, Aaron Copland, Dmitri Shostakovich, Jennifer Higdon, Paul Hindemith, Giacomo Puccini, yes, he's a 20th century composer, Karl Heinz Stockhausen, Alexander Skryabin, Florence Price, Carl Nielsen, Arvo Pärt, Terence Blanchard, Howard Hansen, George Gershwin, Sergei Prokofiev, Kaikosru Surabji, Samuel Barber, uh Sarajejo, um, Bartok, Rachmaninoff, Britten, Addis, Carlos Chavez, John Corleano, and so on and so on.
In other words, it is so, and the entire world of film music, which in many ways is an offshoot, is the orchestral part of classical music. So what is classical music today?
Víkingur: Well, just take the word classical out and you have the answer.
Brian: Yeah.
Víkingur: You have music. It's music. Uh, I think Alex Ross wrote something that, you know, he would be happy to throw away the idea of classical because, and it's a completely useless term and I hate it too, uh, because I don't feel very classical when I play music.
I feel very contemporary or I just feel very much, you know, myself. Uh, so, yeah, it's It's simply music. Uh, and uh, I think that's the only answer you can give, uh, at this point. I, I'm not sure when, when it happened that classical ceased to be classical and just became music, but it has happened. And that is why we are having a golden age.
That's why never before in history have so many people listened to classical music as they did in the year 2023. Uh, that's according to the streaming services and you see it in the pandemic that, you know, once Concerts were, you know, sort of abandoned and shut down. Uh, the beautiful thing was that people at home sort of actively started to tune more into classical music.
So the streams went up, you know, very drastically, you know, for, for, for classical music in the pandemic. And that was a very active decision from the people. And in that sense, you know, even if the promoters Still to a degree suffering sort of post pandemic, uh, we cannot forget that, you know, it was an incredibly positive development for the music to prove itself in that sense that people actively wanted
it to be a part of their lives.
Brian: Amen to that.
Um Okay, final question. Looking over the, the arc of your career to date, but into the future, what are the, the other mountains that you'd like to scale? Are there, um, things that, you know, when you're 85 or, or 90, when you're, you know, Jerome Lowenthal's age, uh, that you want to look back and say, I'm especially proud that I did this, especially, you know, sort of big goals.
What, what are the big goals that you see ahead of you?
Víkingur: Uh, I have a few, uh, it's a little bit dangerous to share
your, your goals and your, and your sort of,
Brian: I won't tell. I
Víkingur: one day? Very good, very good. I mean, in my life currently, I have so many things that are just around the corner. Performances with the Berlin Philharmonic, or a tour with the Cleveland Orchestra of Europe, for instance.
Uh, uh, both Brahms concertos. My next record, which I'm certainly not going to tell you, because I love the idea of it, being a surprise for every record, uh, but something that ties very beautifully into the Goldberg Variations in my opinion, uh, I actually have a record plan now for the next 10 years in my life, uh, and I can, I can tell you at this point, there will be a lot of Bach coming your way, uh, but not the next record, but there's going to be a lot of Bach coming your way, but, but I mean, for me, The Goulds and Ambitions, uh, you can sort of split it in two parts.
You can have the working with the dead composers and the working with the living composers. And I am very proud and happy that John Adams, for instance, is writing me a new piano concerto and that I'll be playing then all of his piano concertos with him throughout the world in the next few years.
That's something that, for me, on a personal level, um, is a It's hard to put into words, but it's, it's something that I am, I'm very grateful for, uh, and I'm grateful for knowing people like Yuri Kuvtak, and, uh, having a relationship with him, planning a program for his 100th birthday, believe it or not, in 2026, I mean, he's the greatest musician alive, and then you have, uh, you Thomas Addison, all the, there's just a few, you know, but there are so many other great composers that I get to work with, and that is something that I always need to have, because working with the great composers of today makes the dead composers slightly more cooperative, I have to say, uh, when you come from a week with John Adams somewhere, and then you open the late Beethoven Sonatas, uh, perhaps, uh, Beethoven Become slightly more alive and the music becomes, you know, more more fluent and flexible in a good sense.
Um, so. You know, I, I hope at some point I will have time to write a little bit more music myself, that used to be a big part of, uh, my life when I was younger, considerably younger, and, uh, it's a part of how I approach the music of others, always, at least I try, uh, to understand it from a composer's perspective, uh, and, yeah, I mean, those are the, sort of, the musical goals, but, but, if I, you know, the one constant factor that will be with me is, is Johann
Sebastian, you know.
Thank you.
Brian: Well, that is a great set of goals. And I, I know that, um, Our listeners share my enthusiasm and sense of suspense about every future project because I think we've learned to expect the unexpected and, uh, and a special and unique experience with everything that you lay your hands on. Uh, looking forward to hearing your own music.
That will be a new experience for us. And, uh, I just want to thank you for, for sharing, uh, your ideas and your music and your time with us today.
Víkingur: It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for the wonderful conversation and for having me on that beautiful show.
Brian: Oh, thank you.
Michael: The Glenn Gould Foundation is a registered Canadian charity and we rely on the support of arts lovers like you. To keep bringing inspiring stories to life, please consider giving by visiting our website, Glenn Gould dot ca, and follow us across social media at The Glenn Gould Foundation.
Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of The Gould Standard.
