BD: You play quite a bit of music which is non-standard; it’s newer, it’s more difficult. Do you find that you’re getting through to the audiences who either have come for a new piece, or perhaps have come wishing it was all Beethoven and Haydn and Scarlatti?
UO: [Thinks a moment] I’m not sure. You try to get through to everyone. I don’t like to think of classical music as an area where people who are adventurous in the rest of their life look for something safe and predictable. I don’t think that’s what the music ever was in the first place. So in that sense, no matter how much I love Beethoven and how much my audience member loves Beethoven, I don’t want Beethoven to be seen as that which is comfortable after a hard day’s work. That that isn’t the Beethoven I love. I think one function of having some unfamiliar music in a program is to just wake up the ears, make someone listen slightly differently than they listen to something they know already.
BD: Well, we’ve kind of danced around it a little bit, so let me ask the big philosophical question — what is the purpose of music?
UO: Whoo! I wasn’t expecting that! I think music is an expression of our soul, and I think it might be some of the proof that we have a soul, or the definition of it. It’s the meaning of ourselves — or it’s part of it. We have objective meanings and meanings of relationships within society that are very, very important. But then we have the capacity to feel and to enjoy and to laugh, and I think that’s the soul. I think that is it.
BD: So you’re baring your soul each night out on the stage?
UO: Yes, for better or worse. I mean that for sure! One is naked. You’re trying, and sometimes you do well, sometimes you do less well, but I think what makes it is the concentration of the performer that actually gets through to the audience; the fact of how unified you are and how much you’re trying to have everything you are somehow be focused in this one form of making music. The clearer your focus is, or the more focused it is, the more something will communicate to a listener.
BD: You’re a woman pianist and you play a lot of new music. Do you try especially to play new music by women composers?
UO: I haven’t done anything special. I’ve played a fair amount of wonderful music by women composers, but as it came my way, just as I’ve played other music as it came my way. I would like to be more active. One problem is simply I always feel I’m playing a little too much repertory, you know what I mean? [Both laugh]
BD: Exactly!
UO: But it’s a wonderful time because there really are a lot of interesting women now who we are all getting to hear.
BD: Have you been wanting to commission Ellen Zwilich or Joan Tower, or one of these other composers?
UO: I’ve been playing a piano concerto by Joan Tower that she wrote for someone else. It’s a very nice piece but it’s slightly small-scale. I know lots of her work, and in this case I’m just dying to be able to commission another piece because she’s a pianist and I’m a pianist and we’re friends. I think it would be a different piece. Very often when someone’s written a piano concerto, you feel that this is THE piano concerto that they’ve written, and the only one that they’re going to write for a ten year period surrounding it. But in her case, I do have a very strong desire! So there’s a specific one you hit on.
BD: With all of this new music that you play, do you have any advice for someone who wants to write music for piano today?
UO: Write for somebody you know, and find out what they would like. I don’t mean what they would like aesthetically, but for instance, if you know a pianist who really would like to play a piece on their concert, find out in this case what the rest of the program is, or what they have in mind. Is it a piece that would open the concert? Is it the sonata that would be before intermission? I’ve had wonderful experience working with composers. There used to be a lot of fear and a lot of shyness, thinking what if I don’t like his music, or what if she doesn’t like my playing. But that would be the main thing. One thing that’s really interesting is that for a while, let’s say between 1950 and 1976 or so, there was not all that much piano music written in this country. You would find many composers writing fantastic string quartets and brilliant pieces for mixed ensemble, and nothing for piano, or something that was not nearly up to the rest! Then starting in ’76, when there were all the commissions to celebrate the Bicentennial, there seems to have been a real revival of music for the piano. Now almost every composer I can think of has written lots of wonderful stuff! And it’s very good because we also used to be afraid — what if the piano’s going to become obsolete? It was just the repertoire wasn’t growing! Now that it’s growing, the piano seems absolutely not obsolete at all.
BD: Do you have some advice for young pianists coming along?
UO: Same advice — find a composer you know, and ask the composer to write something for you. And try to be able to commission a piece, which actually means to pay for it, whether it’s with money of yours or money from a foundation or a Meet the Composer grant; or if you’re both students, a spaghetti dinner! [Both laugh] But realize that it’s work and to work with someone you know. There’s also a kind of emphasis on fame and wanting to play the music of a famous composer, and a composer wanting to be played by a famous pianist. That’s not very interesting because everyone is, first of all, limited in how much they can do, and second of all, fame is fifteen minutes — or if you’re good, it’s thirty minutes! [Laughs]
BD: But you’re not encouraging people not to play Beethoven and Mozart?
UO: Oh, no, no, no, no! I’m just saying that if you’re thinking of playing a new piece, if you want someone to write a piece for you, think of the composers who are living in the city you’re living, where you could work with them, for instance. That’s what I mean. Don’t necessarily think it must be either Elliott Carter or John Corigliano, or nobody. Think of someone whose work you admire. For one thing, if you want to play a new piece, go to the new music concerts that everyone says don’t attract a wide audience. They are the most wonderful resource for people trying to get to know the music of different composers! That is the best way. Of course play Beethoven; I just meant in new music, really try to be adventurous all the way, but also try to take advantage of being able to work with a composer. Work together and find out. Even listen to what the composer says about something else; it can give you insight.
BD: Have you done any writing at all, any composing?
UO: It takes me half a day to write a four-note ornament for Mozart, which I love doing! I’m just proud as a peacock if I’ve come up with a good ornament, and I really love it, but I don’t think I’m very good.
BD: With all of the new music coming at you, I just wondered if maybe you had a couple of ideas that you just wanted to get down?
UO: None. None. Because it’s the area where you have to do it, I have become very interested in the question of ornamenting and expanding lines, and seeing what I can learn about it. I’ve also done some improvisation within pieces, but I haven’t done an improvisation in Mozart, for instance. There I really work out what I do, and the larger cadenzas I play someone else’s, but it’s worked out. I had a wonderful lesson with Anthony Davis once. He had written a piece for me, which at one point had a fermata. I said, “What am I to do here?” I told him I was interested, but then I got to it and I hadn’t the slightest idea what to do! So we went over the rest of the piece and he said, “You see this motif here? You could do this with it; you can expand it this way. You can go backwards, you can go upside down. You can make sequences.” And I thought, “That’s what Mozart does in the development sections!” Then I began realizing. So I’ve gotten to the point that if someone else provides some thematic material, I am interested in manipulating it. I don’t have the courage yet to do it all!
BD: Then there is this continuity between an eighteenth century Austrian composer and a twentieth century American composer!
UO: Oh, absolutely!
BD: There’s this thread that connects everyone!
UO: There is an absolute thread. But it’s not even a surprising thread! The thread of improvisation was just broken for a moment, really, in a little tiny part of the mid-twentieth century. Here is an anecdote with a Chicago connection. My mother is a woman who grew up in Hungary and Austria. Some years ago I was playing Easley Blackwood’s Piano Concerto,[See Bruce Duffie's Interview with Easley Blackwood] and as I was practicing, she said, “That reminds me a little bit of the improvisations we were doing in Webern’s class.” I never found out more, really, but when did this thread get broken? It must have gotten broken ten minutes ago, or something. Why don’t we know that?
BD: I can’t imagine the thread is broken. Perhaps we’re just ignoring the thread.
UO: We just ignored it! It just got frayed for a second, or we looked in the other direction. I was rebelling against having musician parents, and I didn’t really study music very much, which I regret greatly now. But even at this time the music education does not make every performer do composition. Most did until very recently, and at the Paris Conservatory, you still do! If you look at the musicians of a slightly older generation, they all composed. Most of the performers decided that they didn’t compose well enough to make a career of it, but they all composed! It’s just our generation that missed out on it.
BD: Do you encourage your students to compose at least a bit?
UO: I don’t have students, but I encourage everyone I meet to do that.
BD: Where is music going these days?
UO: In all kinds of directions.
BD: Too many directions?
UO: No, no. Actually, that’s one of the other things that’s really wonderful about it — there’s really wonderful music being written in many different styles, and I think people are beginning to be able to hear that. There was a time when you either believed in one style or another, and I think by and large that has changed. In New York it used to be called uptown versus downtown music, and then at some panel discussion John Cage mentioned that maybe it should be considered a matter of zip codes, at which point the subject was clearly defined and came to an end! There’s music I don’t like at all that many other people do like, but I, probably more than others, like music in different styles. But I think this is expanding. For instance, for some people where minimalism might be hard to take, someone like Louis Andriessen, who’s extremely witty and funny but still uses it, becomes someone they can appreciate, even though there will be that element of minimalism. So, I think it’s a really wonderful period!
BD: Your new record has music of both Carter and Adams, and I couldn’t think of two more divergent styles.
UO: That was the point I was making, really. Not only the point, but I do feel strongly that this is a time where there are many styles that can coexist. It’s funny, because coexistence means it’s just a period that’s fertile for many kinds of music.
BD: I’m glad you’ve come to Chicago. I have looked forward to it, and thank you so much for speaking with me.
UO: Oh, that’s very nice. It’s been wonderful talking to you, really. I like your questions! Radio is where it’s happening in America now. Actually I think one of the reasons that new music and the diversity is flourishing is because of radio, which has exactly the freedoms that the large record companies don’t have. The music does get disseminated, and the people who are interested in that kind of variety are themselves drawn to radio.
BD: One last question — is playing piano fun?
UO: For me it is. Actually, it’s funny because when I practice more than a certain amount, it’s great fun, but when I practice less than a certain amount, I get worse and it becomes frustrating. But I wouldn’t do it if it weren’t fun. It really is fun! What I mean about practicing a certain amount is that when I am practicing a certain amount — basically I average five hours a day — things really get better every day and that is fun. It’s better than it was yesterday, and you can do a little more than you could! That’s a great joy, and it’s a physical joy because you can do it and it sounds good. Even if you can get something from half-tempo up to fifty-three percent of tempo, you can hear that difference and you can be pleased by it. So it is fun, yeah.
© 1990 Bruce Duffie
This interview was recorded in Chicago on April 29, 1990. Portions (along with recordings) were used on WNIB in 1994 and 1999.
Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.
Used by permission.
Listen to Ursula Oppens play Elliott Carter's Caténaires (Two Thoughts About the Piano) here.