Харуки Мураками - Absolutely on Music

OZAWA: Now that you mention it, I heard him play a Brahms piano concerto with Bernstein in Vienna.

MURAKAMI: I didn’t know they did that. But in the Beethoven concertos they recorded together, Bernstein is the one who sets the pace virtually all the way through. Zimerman’s piano is formally perfect and quite wonderful, but he is not the kind of musician who takes command, so the orchestra is pretty much in control—or so it sounded to me, as if Zimerman was in perfect agreement with Bernstein.

OZAWA: I got very friendly with Zimerman in my Boston days. He liked Boston a lot, too, and he was talking about buying a house and moving there. I thought it was a great idea and urged him to do it, but after two fruitless months of looking all over for a house, he gave up. It was really a shame: he was saying he’d rather live in Boston than Switzerland or New York, but he just couldn’t find a house where he could freely play the piano without disturbing the neighbors.

MURAKAMI: He’s a tasteful, rather intellectual pianist. I went to hear him once a long time ago when he came to Japan. He was so young! And his Beethoven sonatas sounded new and fresh.

OZAWA: You’re right, though, if you exclude the pianists who have already done the complete Beethoven concertos, I really can’t think of someone I’d like to record them with.

Mitsuko Uchida and Kurt Sanderling,

Beethoven Piano Concerto no.

3

in C Minor

MURAKAMI: Now, finally, let’s listen to Mitsuko Uchida’s performance. I love the way she plays the second movement, and we’re running out of time, so let’s take a different approach and start with that.

The movement begins with a soft, tranquil solo.

OZAWA [ as soon as the music begins ]: Her sound is truly beautiful. She has such a great ear.

Soon the orchestra steals in (1:19).

MURAKAMI: This is the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

OZAWA: That’s a fine hall, too.

The piano and orchestra intertwine (2:32).

OZAWA [ deeply moved ]: It’s wonderful to think that Japan has produced such a marvelous pianist.

MURAKAMI: Her touch is so clear. You can hear everything so clearly—every strong note, every quiet note. She plays with total mastery: there is nothing vague in her performance.

OZAWA: She’s utterly confident.

The solo piano continues with long, evocative pauses [ma] (5:11).

OZAWA: Listen to that, those perfect moments of silence. This is exactly the passage where we heard Gould using those tiny silences.

MURAKAMI: That’s true, now that you mention it. The way she puts in those silent intervals, is it? Her free spacing of the notes is somehow reminiscent of Gould.

OZAWA: Yes, very similar.

The piano’s incredibly subtle solo ends, and the orchestra glides in again. This is truly miraculous music making. The two listeners groan simultaneously (5:42).

OZAWA: What an ear she has for music!

The piano and orchestra intertwine again for a time.

OZAWA: Three measures back, the piano and orchestra were out of sync. I’ll bet Mitsuko is pretty angry right about now. [ Laughs. ]

Beautiful piano solo unfolds, like an ink painting in space. A string of notes, perfectly formed and brimming with courage, each note thinking for itself (8:39– 9:33).

MURAKAMI: I could listen to this part and never tire of it. The tension never lets up no matter how slowly it’s played.

The piano solo ends, and the orchestra enters (9:33).

MURAKAMI: This re-entry of the orchestra seems hard to do.

OZAWA: They should have done better.

MURAKAMI: Really?

OZAWA: It can be done better.

The second movement ends (10:27).

OZAWA [ deeply moved ]: Wow, this is just amazing. Mitsuko is an incredible pianist. When did they record this?

MURAKAMI: In 1994.

OZAWA: Sixteen years ago, huh?

MURAKAMI: I don’t know how many times I’ve listened to it, it never gets old. So graceful, so transparent.

OZAWA: Of course, this second movement itself is a very special piece of music. I don’t think Beethoven ever did anything else quite like it.

MURAKAMI: To draw out a slow piece of music like this takes tremendous power, I would think—both for the pianist and for the orchestra. Especially those moments where the orchestra re-enters. As an observer, those seem especially tough.

OZAWA: They are tough. The hard part is making the breaths match. The strings, the woodwinds, the conductor, everybody has to be breathing together. It’s not easy! You just heard an example of what happens when it doesn’t go very smoothly.

MURAKAMI: I suppose you can work all that out in rehearsal—“We come in here, with this exact timing”—but a different flow takes over in the actual performance. Things like that must happen.

OZAWA: Yes, of course they do. And then the orchestra’s entry can be thrown off.

MURAKAMI: When you’ve got an empty moment and you have to glide into it, the musicians all watch the conductor, I suppose?

OZAWA: That’s right. I’m the one responsible for putting it all together in the end, so they’re all looking at me. In that passage we just heard, the piano goes tee … and then there’s an empty space [ ma ], and the orchestra glides in, right? It makes a huge difference whether you play tee-yataa or tee … yataa. Or there are some people who add expression by coming in without a break: teeyantee. So if you do it by kind of “sneaking in,” as they say in English, the way we heard, it can go wrong. It’s tremendously difficult to make the orchestra all breathe together at exactly the same point. You have all these different instruments in different positions on the stage, so each of them hears the piano differently, and that tends to throw off the breath of each player by a little. So to avoid that kind of slip-up, the conductor should come in with a big expression on his face like this— teeyantee.

MURAKAMI: So you indicate the empty interval [ ma ] with your face and body language.

OZAWA: Right, right. You show with your face and the movement of your hands whether they should take a long breath or a short breath. That little bit makes a big difference.

MURAKAMI: So the conductor has to decide how to proceed on a moment-to-moment basis?

OZAWA: Pretty much. It’s not so much a matter of calculation as it is the conductor’s coming to understand, through experience, how to breathe. You’d be amazed, though, how many conductors can’t do that. They never get any better.

MURAKAMI: Can the musicians and conductor understand each other through eye contact?

OZAWA: Yes, of course. Musicians love conductors who can do that. It makes it a lot easier for them. Say in this second movement, the conductor has to become the representative of the players and make the final decision of how they’re going to come in—whether it’s going to be haa or ha or, more ambiguously, with emotion, … ha … And then he has to convey his decision to everybody else. Doing it that last way is a little dangerous, I suppose. But you make everybody properly aware of the danger, and then you all go in together—you can do it that way, too.

MURAKAMI: The more you tell me, the more I see how hard it is to conduct an orchestra. Writing a novel all by yourself is way easier than that. [ Laughter. ]

Interlude 1

On Manic Record Collectors

OZAWA: Now, you might find this a little offensive, but I’ve never liked those manic record collectors—people with lots of money, superb music reproduction equipment, and tons of records. Back when I was poor, I occasionally went to the homes of a few people like that. You go in, and they’ve got everything ever recorded by Furtwängler, say, but the people themselves are so busy they can’t spend any time at home listening to music.