Sergei spoke to us about how the project surpassed his wildest dreams, two of the pianists who have inspired him in his approach to transcriptions of symphonic repertoire, the early proposed recording of the Suites which was rejected by record-executives in the 1930s, and why he believes that teachers often learn just as much from their students as vice versa...
When did you and Daniil Trifonov first perform together?
It was shortly after Daniil won the Tchaikovsky Competition in 2011. He was already performing a lot and his agent at the time (who later became my agent too) was Luca Nicoli, a wonderful Italian from an agency called Studio Musica. He first heard us together at Yamaha Hall in New York; Daniil was having a lesson with me on Ravel’s Miroirs and some Stravinsky, and I was demonstrating some things for him as we worked. Luca noticed that something special happened when we played together, and he suggested that we might think about doing some performances...
It was an interesting challenge to create a programme which would be good for both of us, and we started by thinking about Prokofiev. At that time I hadn’t yet done my Romeo & Juliet transcriptions, but my teacher Mikhail Pletnev had made a Cinderella transcription for Martha [Argerich] so we included that in our first concert alongside the Rachmaninoff Suites for Two Pianos.
It was a stunning programme, with so many interpretative possibilities. The Prokofiev was a very fresh and interesting score to study: even now I think people know it less than his other ballets, but it’s an absolute masterpiece and what Pletnev did with it was incredible. When I studied with him he would often accompany us on second piano if we were learning concertos; one day a student forgot their score and Mikhail played the orchestral reduction by heart, with all the details! He has an incredible memory, and as a composer himself he can read the score diagonally. That was something I never forgot.
Rachmaninoff, Pletnev, Babayan, Trifonov…there seems to be a dynasty of composer-pianist-transcribers emerging here!
It’s an extraordinary feeling when you see these things passing between generations. It’s funny to think that Daniil was very supportive of my own teacher’s transcriptions, and now we are playing his transcriptions together! The fact that Pletnev made and performed transcriptions of orchestral works as a young man was also a big inspiration for me. He was 21 when he won the International Tchaikovsky Competition, and one of the pieces which he played was the Prologue and Horse-Racing from Shchedrin’s ballet Anna Karenina; in his later recitals he liked to programme The Nutcracker, which he also did fantastically well.
I remember Martha saying that doing transcriptions is a labour of love, because it requires so much time and attention: there are all kinds of details to transfer from the orchestral score to piano, and it takes a lot of experimentation to figure out what works best. A transcription is not just a copy: you have to attend to so many things.
Apparently someone once asked Rachmaninoff why he never orchestrated those Suites, and said ‘But I did – I orchestrated them for two pianos!’. But in the case of the Symphonic Dances he did decide to make a two-piano arrangement alongside the orchestral version, and he also did wonderful transcriptions of Tchaikovsky and Glazunov for piano duet. I wish he’d done a whole book of them!
Arcadi Volodos helped us all by doing phenomenal solo arrangements of the songs ‘Melodiya’ and ‘How Fair This Spot’, and his transcription of the Andante from the Cello Sonata is absolutely mind-blowing. He has such an intuitive gift that it feels like the composer himself did those transcriptions.
The Beverly Hills party where Rachmaninoff and Horowitz first performed the Symphonic Dances must’ve been quite some evening! Are there really no recordings of the two of them playing together?
Indeed! I remember reading that they really wanted to record the two Suites together, but their record-label RCA had some idiotic board-meeting where they decided it wouldn’t sell very well – can you believe it?! They simply did not vote for Horowitz and Rachmaninoff to record them. But perhaps that stupid commercial director did us a favour in a way, because their recording would have set the bar so high that the pieces would be closed off for everyone else!
I feel like that about quite a lot of pieces. Rachmaninoff, for instance, closed off the Schumann Carnaval for me – I don’t want to hear anyone else play it, and if I do then I invariably think they should have left it alone! Dinu Lipatti did the same with Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso, and Martha and Radu Lupu did the same for Schumann’s Kreisleriana and Kinderszenen. When recordings on that level exist you should only throw your hat into the ring if you genuinely have something new, fresh and hypnotising to say about the music: if it’s just going to be another pale copy then why bother?
Which work on the album was most challenging?
I think the Symphonic Dances, because the language is much more difficult for the audience. There are some pieces by Rachmaninoff that you don’t have to explain or spell out – the music speaks for itself at such a level that the audience will be very taken by it in any half-decent performance, and I would count the Piano Concerto No. 2 and the Suites for Two Pianos among them. But the Symphonic Dances need a lot of attention and many hours of work in order for them to speak: the challenge is to bring out all the polyphonic language, and they’re so harmonically dense.
We both spent a lot of time on the Finale, not least because in each hand you have three or four voices going in different directions! And we play it much faster than any orchestra, because no orchestra could imitate that tempo – but equally we shouldn’t imitate an orchestra, because I don’t think that’s what Rachmaninoff would want. It’s similar with Ravel: La Valse sounds completely different on the piano, and I think Alborada del gracioso simply sounds much better!
I feel the same about Pictures at an Exhibition: I’ve heard all the different orchestrations, but for me even the phenomenal one by Ravel doesn’t beat the piano original. But I do think pianists can learn from conductors and orchestral players in these pieces, and vice versa: they can learn about freedom and rubato from us, and we can learn about layers of colour from them.
Did any particular performers/recordings make you fall in love with the two-piano repertoire?
My greatest inspiration was Martha and Nelson Freire on Philips. I remember them looking at each other in a very seductive way on the cover, and they both have cigarettes in their hands - which means it must’ve been in the late 1970s or mid-80s at the latest! The album has Rachmaninoff’s Suite No. 2, then Lutosławski’s Variations on a Theme by Paganini and Ravel’s La Valse. I listened to their recording of the Rachmaninoff over and over, with such obsession and love that I felt certain that I would play it with someone special one day. I never imagined that ‘someone’ would be my student who won the Tchaikovsky Competition, and that we’d end up recording it on Deutsche Grammophon: I was realistic enough not to have those kinds of dreams!
Martha Argerich has obviously been a huge inspiration to you, both on record and in person - what did you learn from her?
The impact she had on me was tremendous: I learned more from a month of playing with Martha than I did from years of studying with some other teachers, even though she doesn’t officially teach. It isn’t about formal tuition: it’s about travelling together, exchanging stories, listening to recordings, discussing technical tricks and pianistic problems, rehearsing late into the night (and when I say ‘late at night’ I mean until 4 or 5 in the morning!). I would note down everything she had to say - and of course that is teaching, even though Martha would never see it like that.
I hate that word ‘professor’: a ‘professor’ is a person who knows everything, who can tell you exactly what to do and how to do it. I don’t use that title and I never will: I prefer to be an eternal student, and I think Martha feels the same way. When you share a fresh idea with her, she reacts with this childlike openness: her eyes light up and she wants to go and try this new way of practising right away. She was like that in her 70s when we started playing together, and she’s the same now at 83. When we did those Romeo and Juliet transcriptions together in 2013 I remember seeing her as this Juliet character, eternally fourteen years old.
Martha has this risky, almost careless approach to pianism that’s somehow completely clean at the same time, and that’s what makes her unique. She’s not afraid to miss – but she doesn’t miss, not ever! A lot of people think her playing is all about intuition, but that’s not true at all: she can be very analytical and pinpoint exactly why something isn’t working. You try what she suggests and you see results right away: you begin to play with much more freedom, and you realise that she is your teacher.
Do you also find yourself learning from Daniil, your former student?
Absolutely - and not only from Daniil, but from all the young pianists who play for me. I remember both Martha and Nelson telling me separately that when you go on a competition jury you absorb a lot: you don’t just judge, you learn. Young people can do amazing things because they have fewer preconceived ideas; they can be very intuitive, and come up with things we can apply to our own playing.
One of my teachers was Vera Gornostayeva, and one day a young girl from Ukraine came into her studio and played Chopin’s Fourth Ballade in a way I will never forget: the sound seemed to come directly from her heart and go into ours like a knife. Afterwards Vera turned to all of us and saw that everyone was in tears. She told this girl: ‘Today I learned so many things from you, and this is what I’m going to take away from it’ - and she showed her exactly what she meant.
That experience made me realise that age doesn’t matter: the musicians who keep growing and developing are the ones who remain students all their lives, even once they’ve become highly respected teachers. Those dry, serious librarian-pedagogue types terrify me – I’m scared of anyone who thinks they know everything!
How did you and Daniil choose which specific pianos you’d play for the recording?
We like to play similar pianos because each of us creates our own palette of colours, so we sound different anyway. Both of us like Steinways, but we’ll play whatever is available as long as they’re the same model! I’d done an orchestral concert at the Konzerthaus Wien before we made this recording, and I completely fell in love with the Steinway there; the piano technician understood me on such a level that I felt that I’d met a real friend. A piano technician can be a poet: they can make a huge difference, because the instrument responds to the slightest movement which happens inside of your soul and mind.
Daniil has also played in the Konzerthaus many times, so he knows the hall and we both always feel so welcome there: there’s such warmth from the administrative team and the audience, plus the acoustics are fantastic. When Daniil was told to look for a piano for the recording he couldn’t find a Steinway which would satisfy him, but he did find a beautiful Bösendorfer. Initially we were a bit worried that the pianos were different, but in the end it wasn’t an obstacle – we quickly got used to it and the contrast was interesting. Hopefully the results speak for themselves!
Daniil Trifonov (piano), Sergei Babayan (piano)
Available Formats: 2 CDs, Hi-Res FLAC/ALAC/WAV, FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
Martha Argerich & Nelson Freire (pianos)
Available Formats: FLAC/ALAC/WAV, MP3
