not too tied in with facts, if that makes sense, not
too tied in with stuff that you can read in the
dictionary, but I wanted to have an emotional truth.
As a mathematician, when I'm approaching a
piece of work or a calculation, it's very easy for
me to know when I've reached the end - it's a
logical process and I've come to a conclusion. I
guess this question extends to most of the arts,
but including this piece: how do you know that
you're satisfied and you've reached a version
that you're happy with?
The frustrating thing about my job is that there is no
end point. It's never good enough, the music will
always be greater than the interpreter, and that's
why we hear about this stereotype of the artistic
impulse, the artistic temperament. There's a kernel
of truth in that because it's never good enough, and
with a piece like that I think of what Daniel
Barenboim said about playing Brahms: he said it's
not going to get any better by not playing it. Which
is true, but similarly, you're never going to get it,
there's always going to be something wrong. With
music as complex as this, the older you get the
wiser you get, and simply the more life experience
you have, the deeper you'll be able to get into the
music, get into the intricacies, get into the nuances,
get into the gestures. That's both a very beautiful
and very daunting thing.
It must get very emotionally tolling, to know
when to stop...
Well you know me Lily, I'm pretty emotionally
tolling...
Yeah.
Thank you Lily, you're meant to say no... but it is
true, that's why it is a very difficult job in that sense,
because we have to dig deep into parts of ourselves
and recesses in ourselves. One of the last
movements in the Mussorgsky is Baba Yaga, which
is the Russian demon of old, it is a demonic old
woman who eats children. I have to go into a part of
myself that is a demon who eats children, and that's
not a good place to be, but it's also an incredible
place to be. That's the quandary that an artist faces.
I hope there are no children in the audience!
Now Pictures at an Exhibition depicts an
imaginary tour of an art collection, is that what
you imagine in your mind's eye when you play?
Are you walking through some kind of art
exhibition, or do you envisage something else?
Portrait of Mussorgsky by Ilya Repin (1881)
It's gone through different stages. With this piece
initially I wasn't so much, I was thinking of course
in the learning about it, the learning of the piece about notes, and then I was thinking about textures.
But when I was performing here with Yvonne
Kenny I saw a painting by Francis Bacon, and I
suddenly thought wow, that's it - I have to go
straight for the jugular. I'm one of these pianists or
musicians who doesn't see colour, I'm not
synaesthesic at all, so I have to hear colour,
whatever that means, and you have to somehow...
the amazing thing about Mussorgsky, and very few
can do this, very few composers, is that he can with
the intervalic, with an interval, create a physical
manifestation. Again in the Baba Yaga there's a
diminished interval which is this amazing sort of a
tritone sound. It's very, very dark and you can feel
the claustrophobia just from that. Only the true
masters can do that.
Audience question: You mentioned the tritone
sound, which has been called the devil in music...
In Baba Yaga it is this constant tremolo which is
basically a wide trill, a constant thing so it's like a
death-rattle. You have to sustain that, which is
technically difficult enough, but it has to be
effortless. And if you do, there's this incredible
sense of foreboding, but the most grievous
foreboding is controlled foreboding - so you can't
let your hand of cards be revealed too soon.