Andras Schiff

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety nine, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is a pianist. Born and brought up in Budapest, he decided at the age of twenty-six that Hungary might suffocate him and emigrated to the West. He's won many prizes, made many recordings, and been acclaimed as one of the world's foremost interpreters of Mozart and Schubert. But celebrity and glamour hold little interest for him. It's the music he loves, and he approaches it in a spiritual manner. Great music, he believes, is sublime, beyond everyday materialism. When it's going properly, he says, the whole body is playing, and my fingers are directed by higher forces. He is Andras Schiff. You make it sound Andrash as if you're almost once removed from the process, as if the music is playing through you, is that right?

Andras Schiff1:14

It should be, right? We are all aiming at that. We don't always succeed. I mean we are human beings and uh this is something that you might call inspiration. But you cannot just wait for inspiration. It takes a lot of work and a lot of discipline and sacrifices.

Presenter1:19

Yeah.

Speaker 21:20

Uh

Presenter1:36

So obviously it's not entirely a a mystical business then, which is w what that suggests when you say, you know, that that that you're directed by higher forces. An awful lot of work goes into it in the first place.

Andras Schiff1:47

A lot of people only see the glamorous side of of being a musician and it's not all that glamorous. Music is not a job, it's not even a profession, it's a it's a total dedication and I consider it a a great privilege. If I was born a hundred times again I wouldn't really want to do anything else. Except within music I would really love to be a a great composer because I consider composition the highest art of music making. Unfortunately I I have absolutely no talent for it.

Presenter2:26

So you settle for being an interpreter of the great composers?

Andras Schiff2:29

That's the second best thing.

Presenter2:31

How much do you need to know and to care about the man as well as his music before you can play it well in your view?

Andras Schiff2:40

in my opinion, as much as you can. You have to get under his skin. Good actors also have to do that. And we cannot uh forget our own personalities, but we are dealing with great minds, with great composers.

Presenter2:58

But do you have to like him?

Andras Schiff3:00

Yes, I do. I have to n not just like him, but to passionately love him, adore him.

Presenter3:08

That must mean that there are people you don't play because you don't like them.

Andras Schiff3:11

Certainly. And I I'm very specific about this. First and foremost, Liszt. I can't stand Liszt. Not the person and not the music. And on the other hand, I'm fully aware of of his importance and his significance. And he probably was the greatest pianist ever. And I really can't stand the music.

Presenter3:12

Poop.

Speaker 23:31

Ever

Presenter3:35

What about Wagner?

Andras Schiff3:37

Wagner is a difficult case because he's an even much more important composer than Liszt. But I find it very, very difficult to come to terms with him. So you see there is a certain

Andras Schiff3:53

No, no, no, it's not even if I didn't know anything about Wagner's life, there is something so.

Andras Schiff4:02

Egomaniac about his music. You see,

Andras Schiff4:06

You cannot play everything and everybody. You have to make your your choices and your priorities.

Presenter4:12

So priorities. Who is the composer, the great composer, who touches you most closely?

Andras Schiff4:18

I would say that the divine figure in my life is certainly Johann Sebastian Bach, and I admire Mozart more than anybody. But if you ask me who touches me most and purely emotionally, it uh the answer has got to be Schubert.

Presenter4:38

We should have your first record. Tell me why you'd take this to a desert island.

Andras Schiff4:42

This is not a very original choice, the slow movement of the C major string quinta. Many people have chosen this in this program, I know. But to me it's a it's an obvious choice.

Andras Schiff4:57

It's also something I would like to hear at my own funeral. And this recording is uh something that not many people know. It's Pablo Casals, but not with Isaac Stern and Company, but with the Wegg quartet. Shandor Wegg was a fatherly friend to me and a a great partner. I played a lot of chamber music and s sonatas and trios with him, and he was one of the greatest musicians I ever met.

Presenter6:27

Pablo Casal's and the Vague Quartet playing the opening of the second movement of Schubert's string quintet in C major. That was recorded in nineteen sixty one, live. You you prefer live performance, do you?

Andras Schiff6:38

Certainly, yes. They are less perfect, but it's a unique document.

Presenter6:45

You don't like music to be over produced.

Andras Schiff6:48

No, absolutely not.

Presenter6:50

Does that mean you fall out with record companies?

Presenter6:52

I

Andras Schiff6:53

I do have my problems with record companies, but over the years I I learned to to appreciate and even enjoy recording.

Andras Schiff7:03

There's something a deep and intense concentration that you can achieve there, and an absolute silence, because with live performances sometimes you have a very distracting audience.

Presenter7:18

You were apparently put to the piano as a small child because you were a wild child. How wild were you?

Andras Schiff7:25

Very wild. I am I was an only child?

Andras Schiff7:29

And I was not put onto the piano, but uh simply there was a piano at home because my mother played the piano and she was trained as a pianist. She didn't become a pianist because the war interrupted that and as Hungarian Jews they were all taken away to concentration camps.

Andras Schiff7:52

However, there was a a piano at home and as a very lively child I sh expressed interest in in this little box. It was just a small upright piano. And my mother started to take me to concerts and I remember hearing Richter and Rubinstein and these people and that probably that has uh inspired me.

Presenter8:16

But then along came someone who was to be a very major influence in your life, I think. Um George Malcolm, the harpsichordist. How did you meet him?

Andras Schiff8:25

At the age of eleven I came to Great Britain for the first time. And this was very important because during the times of of communism Hungary was sealed off and isolated politically but also culturally. And I had family here who escaped during the nineteen fifty six revolution. And here in England through mutual friends, I met George Malcolm, who then came to play a harpsichord recital in Budapest. And he was always playing from the music and he asked me to to turn the pages. And I don't know about my piano playing, but my page turning was was really first class.

Presenter9:17

This was this was public performance.

Andras Schiff9:19

Oh yes.

Presenter9:19

Well, he obviously trusted you.

Andras Schiff9:21

Yes, yes, and he this this was the beginning of a of a great friendship and I never formally took lessons from George and never studied with him, but he taught me so much about style and taste and ornamentation, but never dogmatically.

Presenter9:42

We should have your second record.

Andras Schiff9:45

I didn't want really to play any anything of my own in this programme. It's a matter of principle. But this is an exception because it's a duo recording with George Malcolm. We are playing Mozart sonatas for piano four hands, and it's on a very special instrument. It's on a Walter Forte piano, which was Mozart's own forte piano.

Presenter11:08

George Malcolm and my castaway Andras Schiff playing Mozart's sonata in C major K five two one, and that was played on Mozart's own forte piano. It's the kind of duet where you get your cufflinks tangled if you're not careful, hm.

Andras Schiff11:20

Yes, you have to get out of the way some of the time.

Presenter11:23

Schubert, of course, wrote some lovely piano duets, and I think you believe it was out of an amorous motive, don't you?

Andras Schiff11:30

Yes, certainly. He was teaching the Countess Caroline von Esterhadi at the Castle of Gelies, and he fell in love with her. And I feel there is no other explanation for the wonderful quality and quantity of piano duets that Schubert wrote. So many people claim that that Schubert was homosexual, and to me this is questionable and irrelevant.

Presenter12:06

Could you feel in any case that he wanted to sit close to the beautiful young countess?

Andras Schiff12:10

I think so, yes, because being being from a different social class, there was no other way of proximity.

Presenter12:12

And cross hands with her.

Presenter12:16

Hmm.

Presenter12:20

Mm.

Presenter12:21

You said that uh you learned very early on that um as a Jew, um despite the fact that Hungary

Presenter12:29

was your country and you love its music and its poetry and you understand its jokes, that somehow you can't call it your own, that that was that's always been plain to you. Why do you say that? What how are you made to feel that?

Andras Schiff12:41

To me this is this is very clear.

Andras Schiff12:44

Look, I'm.

Andras Schiff12:46

I am a Jew born in Hungary. I can't help that. And the fact that I was born in Hungary is an accident. And even the fact that I was born is an accident too, because the the Hungarians did everything to to kill my parents.

Presenter13:06

How did they survive?

Andras Schiff13:08

Well, they survived by by a miracle. I mean, uh the I find that I'm sorry to have to say this, but one talks so much about the the Holocaust and and blaming the Germans, but I don't think the Germans could have done this alone. It was done with the help of of the local population.

Andras Schiff13:31

But do you

Presenter13:31

But do you feel that antipathy still then when you play?

Andras Schiff13:34

Yes, I do.

Andras Schiff13:36

And uh

Presenter13:37

You know.

Andras Schiff13:38

When when you ask me where I feel at home.

Andras Schiff13:42

Almost anywhere in Europe.

Presenter13:44

but not hungry.

Andras Schiff13:46

No.

Presenter13:48

How did you get out of you virtually defected, didn't you?

Andras Schiff13:51

Yes, I virtually defected. I mean those days it was this was in nineteen seventy nine things were getting much better, but they were still not liberal and not free. So

Presenter14:03

So one day you just didn't go back after a concert?

Andras Schiff14:06

Yes, I had a memory slip, I forgot to go back.

Presenter14:10

How long had that been in the planning?

Andras Schiff14:13

Oh, I had to plan that carefully and and very secretly because I couldn't share this not even with my mother.

Andras Schiff14:21

My mother

Andras Schiff14:22

She's a wonderful person, but she never really understood this. Maybe now she does.

Presenter14:28

Record number three.

Andras Schiff14:31

Miela Bartok is one of my idols, a wonderful musician and composer, but also as a human being, somebody absolutely spotless, with a great integrity. When he left Hungary in nineteen forty, it was a very brave and very courageous decision, a political decision. I mean he didn't have to leave, he was not Jewish, he was not a Communist, he could have stayed like most of his colleagues did, but he felt that this was just intolerable and he couldn't face such injustice. And he left and went to the United States of America, which was a real cultural wasteland at that time. And here he wrote very little music then, some wonderful pieces, the concerto for orchestra, the third piano concerto, but he really started to die in America and in nineteen forty five he died in leukemia.

Presenter16:41

Baylor Bartock playing Diary of a Fly, part of his Microcosmos. What was the first piece of music you ever played in public? Do you remember?

Andras Schiff16:51

Well, certainly with orchestra I played the D major rondo of Mozart. That's what I remember.

Presenter16:58

And then you competed in the Leeds piano competition as a young man. I think you'd have been about twenty-two at the time, and you played Bach against everybody's better judgment.

Presenter17:08

And um they were right, weren't they?

Presenter17:11

Bach doesn't wink up.

Andras Schiff17:11

What's wrong with Bach?

Presenter17:13

He doesn't win competitions apparently. Or does this say more about the judges?

Andras Schiff17:15

No, yes, I went into this competition because there was no other way of being heard and being recognized. And I thoroughly hated every minute of it. And I still think very negatively about competitions. I would be very happy to see them disappear from the face of the earth.

Speaker 317:29

Hmm?

Presenter17:43

Why? Why don't you approve of them?

Andras Schiff17:45

They are wrong.

Andras Schiff17:47

You know, they are promoting something that that cannot be compared. Art and music is is very much a matter of taste.

Presenter17:56

But but it's good for promoting classical music. But you don't like the idea. Well, um perhaps if I mean the Leeds Piano Competition is on the television, people watch it, people then hear bits of music they haven't heard before, and maybe they go out and buy it. I mean but somehow you don't seem to to like that popularization.

Andras Schiff18:01

Like the

Andras Schiff18:13

I have a problem with this whole question of popularizing and the argum the political arguments of pop culture and things for the masses. I am very much against that and I might be called an elitist, which is a dirty word, but I'm I'm pr proud to be an elitist because I fight for quality.

Presenter18:38

What's wrong with the quality of, say, the three tenors, or Nigel Kennedy playing Brocco Vivaldi?

Andras Schiff18:44

Well

Andras Schiff18:45

If I may say so, I don't think it's good music making.

Presenter18:51

Why not?

Andras Schiff18:53

While the the three tenors

Andras Schiff18:57

You know, I mean, if if you see Pavarotti singing Ave Maria of Schubert, I think it's a disgrace.

Andras Schiff19:06

'Cause he sings it so badly.

Presenter19:08

But are you suggesting he can sing it well, but he just sort of knocks it off?

Andras Schiff19:12

No, no, these are

Andras Schiff19:15

I mean, Pavarati has a great voice and Plathido Domingo among the three tenors is is a great artist. But I I think it's a shame that

Andras Schiff19:27

They prostitute themselves. The same about Nigel Kennedy, I think.

Presenter19:32

But but that, again, as you say, is a subjective judgment. If a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise appreciate that the Bruch or the Beethoven violin concerti are are drawn into classical music because they've heard Nigel Kennedy play them, then isn't that a good thing?

Andras Schiff19:48

I think it's it's very dangerous what's what's happening in the world today, that the standard is lowered and I think it's insulting not just to us musicians but also to the public. We should trust the intelligence and the sensitivity of the public and and give them really the the very best.

Presenter20:18

Record number four.

Andras Schiff20:20

Johann Sebastian Bach is the most important composer to me.

Andras Schiff20:26

I start every day by playing Bach. It's a cleansing proc procedure. It's like taking a bath or a shower. And Edwin Fischer is one of my very favorite pianists. And this is some of the most beautiful piano playing I know. And it also proves to me that that Bach can be or should be played on the modern piano and not just on the harpsichord and the clavichord.

Presenter22:00

Edwin Fischer with his chamber orchestra playing part of the second movement of Bach's piano concerto number five in F minor, and that was recorded in nineteen thirty eight.

Presenter22:09

Bach, you say, can be played on a a modern piano, Andras Schiff, um b but ideally you like to play Mozart not on a modern Steinway grand, you like to play him on something more Austrian.

Andras Schiff22:22

Ideally I would play Mozart on my own Büsendorfe piano because it has the advantages of the modern piano, but it has a more singing sound. And Mozart's music is is very vocal. He is a par excellence opera composer. All his melodies and themes are derived from operas and their characters. So I find that the Steinway is an excellent piano, but it's it's a more objective instrument. It's a more Germanic piano.

Presenter23:07

So that if you play it on a Steinway, are you in a sense holding back? If you are trying to pull back because the the the the the instrument has got too much volume for you?

Andras Schiff23:16

Yes, the volume has to be controlled because after having had these experiences of playing on Mozart's own piano, I know exactly the volume of that. And Mozart was very pragmatic. He wrote exactly for the possibilities of of that instrument. And there you you can really go to the limits. You don't have to hold anything back. And this was a very valuable experience to me.

Andras Schiff23:45

Yeah.

Andras Schiff23:47

emotionally.

Presenter23:48

And being in his house too must have been quite an experience.

Andras Schiff23:51

Oh, that was spooky. It was wonderful. But uh it's beautiful to to play in in that house, in that room. We just had to be very careful with the recording because there were small children in the apartment above who were very noisy, so we had to buy them cinema tickets to to go out during our recording.

Presenter24:15

You're obviously you know and quite understandably and rightly very purist about your music, so much so that when you left Hungary at first you went to live eventually in New York, and you began to find it, I think, quite difficult to play the great European composers when you were there, didn't you? It just wasn't the right place for you.

Andras Schiff24:34

America is not my world. I couldn't take this nervous tension and and the the very rapid tempo of life in in New York.

Presenter24:45

And the music didn't fit.

Andras Schiff24:47

The music somehow doesn't fit and I I always had to think of Bartuk and his destiny. That somebody with very strong European roots is somehow completely lost there. And to me m music and and language and culture and even the the countryside, when when when you look out of the window, it has to be connected.

Presenter25:13

Number five.

Andras Schiff25:17

Mozart again and Cosifantutte, probably my favorite opera. And this is uh not a secret anymore, but in a few years' time I I'm planning to conduct Cosifantutte. I'm I'm not going to abandon the piano, but uh this is something that had been offered to me and I've always wanted to to do Mozart operas.

Speaker 325:54

Hallelujah

Speaker 325:59

Uh

Presenter26:35

Louisa Helletzgruber as Dora Bella, John Brownlee as Don Alfonso, and Ina Suez as Fiodi Ligi, singing Suave Silvento from Mozart's Cosi Fantute, with the Gleinborn Festival Chorus and Orchestra conducted by Fritz Busch in nineteen thirty five.

Presenter26:54

Andreas, if you hate flying into a concert venue in the morning, playing the piece and saying goodbye and popping off again back to where you came from. I thought that's what professional soloists did. I thought that was what was required of you. What's wrong with it?

Andras Schiff27:08

Oh, it's completely wrong. I would never do that.

Andras Schiff27:13

I really take a lot of time.

Andras Schiff27:16

When I go to to America, I wait at least uh four or five days before playing the the first concert.

Presenter27:26

Not least because you like to get into the hall and practice.

Andras Schiff27:29

Oh, also that, but it's also that the time change, the jet lag. We think that travelling is very easy today, but but it isn't, and the more I travel the the less I like it.

Presenter27:42

But how difficult is it to get into the hall and get your three or four hours of of silent practice, which is what you like to do?

Andras Schiff27:49

It's very difficult.

Andras Schiff27:51

But you have to insist. This is something that you cannot learn at school. You can learn playing the instrument, you can even learn the the pieces of music, but how to play on stage and how to play in different concert halls and to deal with the problems of acoustics this takes an enormous amount of knowledge and experience. And even in a hall that I know very well, like the Wigmore Hall in London,

Andras Schiff28:25

I would always go in the morning and play at least three hours.

Presenter28:31

even though you know it well.

Andras Schiff28:32

I know it very well, but two or three nights before I might have played in a hall with two thousand seats and it's totally different acoustics and and dimensions and you have to change certain things. Your tempe, your your timing, your dynamics, they have to be slightly altered according to the requirements of the hall.

Presenter28:40

Hmm.

Speaker 228:40

Yeah.

Speaker 228:46

And then

Presenter28:59

And during that rehearsal time you don't want anybody else in the hall. Nobody can vacuum, clean, or pick up the letter.

Andras Schiff29:04

Oh my god, that's that would be terrible. But very often I have these problems that just when you arrive at the hole, even if you made all the necessary arrangements, but just then the cleaning lady marches in with the vacuum cleaner, and when you tell her to stop, then she's insulted because you are disturbing her vacuum cleaning with the stupid piano play.

Presenter29:09

It happened.

Presenter29:30

Next record.

Andras Schiff29:32

Beethoven string quartet opus a hundred and thirty, the cavatina. This is the most transcendental and metaphysical music that I know. I stayed away from this music very long, deliberately, because I didn't understand it enough.

Presenter30:48

Recorded in nineteen forty one, that was the Busch string quartet playing the cafetina from Beethoven's string quartet number thirteen in B-flat.

Presenter30:55

You couldn't live in the States, Andras. You didn't want to go back to Hungary, so you settled here in London and in Italy. London because of its cosmopolitan atmosphere, cultural life. Why Italy and where?

Andras Schiff31:08

This was a long procedure. I tried to live in several places. I always had this idea of of Italy and going south and this fascination and interest in in Italian Renaissance. And if it's Italy it's it's got to be Florence. So that's where I am now and it's a great uh inspiration to me to to live in in the midst of of Renaissance culture and nature. It's it's wonderful.

Presenter31:46

Record number seven.

Andras Schiff31:51

Czech music had always been a great

Andras Schiff31:56

Passion to me, the music of Smetana Dvorczak and later Janacek.

Andras Schiff32:05

They have given me a lot of pleasure. And the key figure was Rafael Kubelec, who was a wonderful, wonderful musician and conductor, and he became a great friend. He was a man of the greatest integrity, artistically, personally, and politically. So when he left after the Second World War, his home country, he was determined not to return into a communist Czechoslovakia. So when Communism collapsed, Kubelek already retired from conducting, but he took up the baton again and went back to Prague to conduct Mavlast, My Fatherland by Smetana. And I was at that concert, and if I would have to single out the greatest and most uh emotional concert experience of my life, then this was it.

Presenter34:06

The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Rafael Kubelik playing part of Smetener's Mavlast, My Fatherland.

Presenter34:12

Are you looking forward to being cast away?

Andras Schiff34:16

Not really. At times it's a pleasure to be alone, but I'm not not such a solitary person. Luckily much of my activity can be done in in solitude. Music making, reading, contemplating. Yes, to to that I do look forward, but I'm doing that anyway.

Presenter34:32

But could you say that?

Presenter34:36

Uh

Presenter34:40

But what about finding your own food and building your own shelter? Any good at that? I'm a practical chapter.

Andras Schiff34:45

No, I'm very unpractical. I'm terrible at tools, terrible with technology, with machines. I don't know how to drive. I n will never drive.

Andras Schiff34:56

And I will never have a computer.

Presenter34:59

So, escape is the only thing for you if you're going to go on living, really?

Andras Schiff35:02

Well, anyway it's it's a crazy world. Um I mean, we wa it's the hardest thing today is to find peace and quiet. And that you could find on the desert island.

Presenter35:15

What would you most miss then about civilised life? Nothing by the sound of it.

Andras Schiff35:21

Apart from people that I love.

Andras Schiff35:26

Not much.

Presenter35:28

Last record.

Andras Schiff35:32

Humour is very important to me in in life and in music. Uh maybe when you asked me what I would miss, it would be jokes, telling jokes and listening to jokes, because uh that cannot really be done in solitude. And we have heard so much deep and moving and profound music, and this is equally deep and profound, but to me nobody got the feeling of humour in music like Joseph Haydn did.

Speaker 336:11

Uh

Presenter37:04

Part of the final movement of Haydn's Symphony in G major, number eighty eight, played by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwengler. If you could only take one of these eight records to your desert island, can you can you possibly choose one?

Andras Schiff37:17

Hm, that's very difficult. Probably the Schubert Quinton.

Presenter37:22

What about your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Andras Schiff37:25

I think it will be La Divina Comedia of Dante.

Presenter37:30

And what about your luxury? Something of no practical use whatsoever, something that we can do.

Andras Schiff37:35

I'm afraid it's got to be a piano.

Andras Schiff37:38

It's not even my favorite instrument, I much prefer the cello.

Presenter37:43

Good hands.

Andras Schiff37:44

But what about the repertoire? So I could play all the piano repertoire and all the other things on the piano.

Presenter37:52

Andras Schiff, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Andras Schiff37:56

Thank you.

Speaker 238:05

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.