Alexandra Dariescu on A Child's Dream

Earlier this month I attended the Romanian Cultural Institute for the launch of Alexandra Dariescu's new album on Signum Classics, A Child's Dream, having had the opportunity to chat with her about why this album is particularly important to her and the story behind it. Inescapable throughout the interview, event and the album itself is Alexandra's unstoppable passion for sharing music, and for inspiring people of all ages to follow their dreams.

A Child’s Dream is a very personal album, isn't it?

I don't want to disrespect my other albums, but this one feels like such a milestone. It's my tenth, and I'm going back to the very beginning, the Mozart Rondo. It was the very first piece I ever played with an orchestra, and I was nine.

There's a beautiful story attached to it, that I tripped over when I walked in, and the conductor thought that was the end of it; my mom was in the front row thinking 'Gosh, she'll never recover from this'. I think it was such an amazing lesson, because one way or another, we all fall, physically or not, and it's about that ability to be resilient and pick yourself up, keep going and focus on the music.

Recording it with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, I had tears in my eyes when they started playing. We did a concert the day before we recorded as well. I just couldn't believe that from being a little kid in the northeast of Romania that wasn't born into a family of musicians or anything like that, and growing up with the recordings of the ASMF, I was recording this incredible album with them. I'm a very grateful person, but this was one of those moments when you feel everything you've worked for is really coming together.

I think it's so important, especially in today's world, for young people to follow their dreams, to know what they want, first of all. That is a blessing. And to be able to say at some point in their lives: 'I'm really fulfilling my dream'.

I was reading recently about Sir Neville Marriner, founder of the Academy, and it is said that he instilled team spirit in the orchestra. How does that fit with your experience? 

I knew a couple of the musicians from other orchestras who are now principals or members of the Academy, and when we started playing together, it was as if we had been friends forever. And it was that beautiful collaboration that, you know, the bassoonist said 'Hmm, I think we should do this phrasing differently', and then the oboist said 'Well, how about this?'.

In the midst of an orchestra with a conductor, you can't necessarily hear every musician's voice, but this was such a democratic process, and it's beautiful. Everyone has such respect for one another; you get heard and you are listened to, and it's an incredible collaboration.

That’s the spirit behind Signum Classics as well, isn't it - having the freedom as an artist to plough your own furrow. 

Well, I love working with them.  We've collaborated for years and the trust I get from them and the fact that they go with all my wacky ideas is wonderful. They see that it's coming from the heart and every album has such a different story, and with this one, it's been such a joy to work together on it. You might have seen that I've written my own programme notes, and I wanted this not to be too academic. I'm not much of a writer, but I just wanted the person who opens the booklet to get a glimpse into the story that was attached to each piece. That's another thing from Signum as well, that they encouraged me to do that, and it's a beautiful thing because as artists, we are storytellers.

Harlequin is a great example of storytelling. It's a magical short piece that bursts with character, and yet it could so easily sound throwaway, but it doesn't. How do you achieve that? 

With this album, you will have seen that there are a lot of female composers, unknown voices, and world premiere recordings, and for me, one of the greatest discoveries was Emmy Schäfer Klein’s A Child's Dream. Although it's a tiny little piece, it conveys so much.

You have to take every single piece of music so seriously - study it and look at the dynamics, the textures, and interpretation. Of course, the instrument is your greatest ally, and I had a beautiful instrument that I felt whatever I did it responded, and we had a terrific dialogue. Every single piece just requires so much careful attention to the little details that can make it sparkle. 

And I always find whenever I'm doing premieres, and my goodness me, how many I've done, it's that double responsibility that I'm there to sort of showcase my musicality and the talent I have at the piano, but also I am the voice of that particular piece. And especially if it's a premiere, people will think that's a reference point for that piece. 

It struck me that we know Nadia Boulanger mostly as a teacher, which is a wonderful achievement in itself, but then we discover, through these three pieces for cello and piano, what a wonderful composer she was.

Yes, and she's famously quoted as saying she was not a good composer and that it should be left to other people, but I think that was the society and how she was brought up, although everyone considered her sister Lili a genius composer. I think Nadia had instilled in her own heart and mind that she was not supposed to be a composer, and I think the early death of her sister completely shut off any composition world that she could have been part of, because I don't think she ever wrote after Lili died. It’s extraordinary to bring to life these pieces that wouldn't otherwise be known, and I think you will agree that they really deserve to be heard.

There are these pieces with cello and some with violin on the album: Was playing with other musician part of your childhood dream as well as playing solo piano? 

Yes, I think having a solo career is a wonderful thing, but in every single concerto I play, there's so much chamber music in there, and I think chamber music sits at the heart of any musician. Those pieces actually, both the Clara Schumann and the Nadia Boulanger, I performed them a lot as encores, at the end of a big concerto. I collaborate either with a leader or with a cellist or another member of the orchestra, and it's such a beautiful connection that you make with the musicians and you get to know them a bit better.

I play a lot of solo recitals, a lot of concertos, and I collaborate with musicians, so it's very much me looking in a mirror with this album.

You could play some of the album to a young person and it might inspire them to want to make music, but how do we get it in front of young people? 

Well, it's interesting, and it's reflected in the social media content I created for this album: I thought 'You know what, we have quite a bit to learn from other music genres', and I started doing little video clips instead of just putting the music out there. So the way we announced the album was to have me collaborating with a little girl who is only nine years old and plays the piano.

The same as you were when you first played the Mozart.

Exactly that. And we're both sitting on a bench with a little red balloon, and I'm asking her, what's her dream? And her dream is actually to become a concert pianist. I give her the balloon and then we walk together towards the Royal Albert Hall, which is everyone's dream. 

I'm hoping that this sort of content creation helps a little bit, and that clip was one of the most popular that I've ever had on social media. It shows that you can announce these albums in a very different way, trying to encourage the younger generation to be interested in piano and inspire them. I think my whole purpose with this album was to awaken wonder and for people to be curious about, oh, I've never heard of Florence Price, or Amy Beach, or Kashperova... And then when they start digging into it, they're like, wow, this is amazing! Some of these pieces can be played by young kids or older ones.

It’s the same with Mozart, you know when we're little, we think Mozart is so easy. And then when we grow up, we think that's the hardest thing that you can perform. So I think that's exactly what we wanted to do with this album, just to inspire everyone.

This campaign, What's Your Dream?, was not only aimed at young people, but people young at heart because everyone must have a dream at some point or another. And it's such a blessing to be able to fulfill that dream in this lifetime. And so many people give up on any dream they might have.

So all I'm saying is it's never too late!

Some of them now might actually start with composers like Florence Price and Clara Schumann, and that may become their baseline, their normal and their launching pad to start exploring.

I'm really hoping so, and I think things are really changing because when I grew up, I honestly did not hear of any female composer until I got to the RNCM. 

Things have changed so, so rapidly, and I'm so happy to be part of that movement of equality. If we play pieces by Kashperova, it does not mean that we are thinking the music of Mozart and Beethoven is less genius than it is, it's just about giving a voice to those composers who have been completely neglected for one reason or another, and reflecting the society that we live in.

Looking at your teachers there's some big male names there, but there's also Imogen Cooper and Dina Parakhina, both of whom are formidable. How important was it to have these inspirational female teachers to look up to? 

Well, I have to say I am so blessed with the mentors that I've had throughout, and I've learned so much from every single one of them on a human level. I started with two female piano teachers when I was in Romania. I started playing the piano when I was seven and I went to the specialist music school where I had an amazing teacher, and she introduced me to the conservatoire one when I was nine, just before I did my concerto debut.

The most inspiration that I've had from this teacher was to always think in colours and about the story behind the music. I'm not going to lie, I had some really poor pianos that I played on, because this was post-communist Romania and it was very difficult. I only heard recordings of people like Brendel and Argerich when I came to study in Pocklington in Yorkshire when I was 17, and until then, I only had some cassettes of Rubinstein playing some mazurkas and that was basically it. I think it’s important  that the curiosity and imagination was switched on from such an early age. Every other professor that I had afterwards built on that. 

All my teachers, they're all about the sound and the images that you create. I've learned so much from all of them, and you can hear all that imagination and sound come through in this new album, which really is a distillation of all of those things.