A few months back, I was asked by a music writer for an e-interview on \u201cmusic I couldn\u2019t live without.\u201d I thought it turned out pretty well, but never got published, so here it is….<\/p>\n
<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n What are the pieces you couldn’t do without?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n It depends a lot on how you define \u201cdo without.\u201d Some of the pieces that are most important to me are not ones I need to or want to hear all that often- the experience of interacting with them is so intense, and it\u2019s so rare to hear a really satisfying performance of the greatest music. These are works that I need to know are out there- if I didn\u2019t know the\u00a0St Matthew Passion, Beethoven\u2019s op 132\u00a0String Quartet\u00a0\u00a0or Mahler 9, I\u2019m not sure I could face life, but I don\u2019t need, or want, to hear them all that often. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve heard or played the Beethoven in 5 years, but just knowing that the\u00a0Heiliger Dankgesang<\/em> is something that I can turn to from my own experience playing it is a source of great comfort.<\/p>\n Which is the one you would (probably) have to keep if all the rest were consumed by fire?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve been trying to give the question a lot of thought. I\u2019m sure the answer changes depending on where I am in my own life. Sometimes, I think it must be something Beethoven 7, or Mahler 2- something really alive and hopeful and joyous. Every once in a while, I need to put on\u00a0Rite of Spring\u00a0really loudly and jump around the house like a madman.\u00a0Schumann 2? However, I guess that if I had to pick one piece I could contemplate and return to for a long time, it might be the Mozart Requiem.<\/p>\n Why? Are they\/is it ones you grew up with and have sentimental value, or are they meaningful for some other reason?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Of course, the pieces that have a place in your life are always going to be special. Shostakovich 5 could have been my last piece standing- it\u2019s the first piece of music I can remember listening to as a toddler (okay, a very intense toddler). I feel like it is literally been with me at every turn throughout my life. The 2nd<\/sup> Bartok Quartet is special to me because it is such an extraordinary piece, but also because it is a piece my former string quartet lived with for a long time, and one of those rare pieces where I can say that on our best nights, we climbed that mountain and did it justice.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve known the Mozart almost as long as the Shostakovich. It featured on an LP we had of \u201cThe great composer\u2019s stories as told through their own music.\u201d I had a whole set of these when I was little- Bach, Chopin, Beethoven and\u00a0Mozart- I\u2019d give anything to find them again! I just remember as a little boy that hearing Mozart\u2019s minor key pieces- the 40th<\/sup>Symphony, the D minor\u00a0Piano Concerto\u00a0and the Requiem affected me like nothing else I\u2019d ever heard. You\u2019d expect that feeling to wear off after half a lifetime, but it hasn\u2019t. The Requiem still effects me on this raw level, even more so for the fact that I\u2019ve spent hundreds of hours analyzing every motivic and harmonic twist and turn.<\/p>\n If you have a recording(s) which is your favourite interpretation?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I have dozens of recordings of the Mozart, but no favourite. I know it\u2019s lame, but the longer you live with a great piece, the more you prefer the image of it burned in your soul to the one burned on a CD. My favourite performances of any of these pieces are the ones I remember from the moments when I had transformation experiences with them. I remember my first experience of playing the St Matthew Passion with the legendary choral conductor Robert Fountain at the\u00a0University\u00a0of\u00a0Wisconsin. I\u2019m not sure I could enjoy or endorse the style of that performance anymore- it was very pre-HIP, even too much so for me now. A huge chorus, rather vocally plump singers, lots of vibrato in the strings. However, Fountain made the whole epic span of the piece (and it was an epic performance- by far the longest I\u2019ve done), feel like it was all done in one breath, in one thought. I felt so blessed to be playing the continuo part that night- I had a role to play in just about every harmony change. It was magic and transformative- no recording could ever have that effect, including the recording of that concert. I\u2019ve played it many more times since then, with some great musicians in a more \u201cappropriate\u201d style, but no conductor since then has ever had Fountain\u2019s spiritual gift for making that piece live and reach into your soul.\u00a0\u00a0On the one hand, that moment is gone- evaporated into the ether. On the other hand, it\u2019s an important part of who I am as a musician.<\/p>\n