I would love not to miss that octave.
That's a hard thing.
How can I be sure that I'm gonna get there?
If I open in- in advance...
That's what I'll do. I'll open my hand in advance.
Okay.
I keep hitting, and I keep overshooting the runway here.
See? It will-not right.
So something has to go.
Okay.
I have to get there in advance.
And here we go again.
Got it.
Good.
Now less.
You don't want to play a staccato that sounds...
Like you're jogging through the park.
See, the most important thing-
One of the most important things I would say-
although some people think it is the most important thing-
is an even pulse,
a pulse that never stops.
It's never going to stop.
You know how the gurus train us to say,
"Om. "
This-like a drone of sound, right, that never stops?
# Pa-ro, ro #
# Ta, rum, pa-rum #
We have to modify the pulse there.
# Rum, pa #
But the eighth notes never stop, see?
Float your right arm more.
See, move over.
So even though it's a staccato-
You can sit.
Even though it's a staccato...
Pedal, pedal.
So why don't I tell you why I've asked you all here?
I have been
struggling recently
with finding why it is that I do what I do.
I knew that, uh, the superficial things-
uh, material wealth, the world thinking you're a big shot-
I kind of knew that that was phony,
that there was something inauthentic to build on.
But I didn't know what was authentic.
My friend Tony Zito invited me over to dinner,
and Seymour Bernstein was sitting next to me,
and I immediately felt kind of safe around him
to talk to him about some of these things.
And at this one dinner, Seymour helped me
more than anyone in my own profession had been able to.
Don't let go of this E...
Until it's time...
Until it's time to play it.
And then it'll sound perfect.
Ah.
Oh, now, a dream.
That was better than mine.
You're not allowed to play better than I do.
One day, a Dr. Kimmelman called me up
and asked if I would teach his son.
I asked him, how old is his son?
He said, "Five. "
I said, "Five?
Well, I never taught anyone at the age of five. "
He said, "Oh, my son is very bright.
Yeah, I think you'll enjoy him. "
And his mother, during the lessons,
she has a little pad, and she's sketching.
One day,
she brings me this beautiful sculpture of my cat.
Michael, you didn't know I was going to bring this, did you?
No, I didn't. I-
- Do you remember... - Of course.
That your mother gave this to me?
Of course. Yeah. Of course.
Well, Michael eventually became incorrigible.
He wouldn't practice.
Well, I don't think it was "eventually. "
I don't think I ever practiced, do you?
You always would more or less say, "Listen, Michael,
"I love you dearly, but, you know,
maybe you don't want to be doing this. "
I begged my mother for piano lessons.
We didn't even have a piano.
So somebody gave us an old upright piano when I was six.
There was no music ever played in my house-ever.
We didn't even own any records.
Right?
I got up early on a Sunday morning,
and I couldn't wait to see what was in this book.
I turned the page,
and there was the Serenade by Schubert.
It seemed to me that I always knew that piece.
My parents were sleeping on the second floor,
and my three sisters were all sleeping.
So my mother heard the piano playing.
She came down. She found me crying.
"Why are you crying?"
"Oh, it's the most beautiful piece I ever heard," I told her.
I remember your Alice Tully Hall recital very well.
Really? Were you there?
Yeah, I was a boy.
Do you- There is something-
It was a great experience in my life.
This was seeing somebody I loved deeply
play in a way that I cou-
I still remember it vividly.
You were phenomenal.
The Tully Hall had just opened.
And there were other- other mitigating circumstances
that made me crawl the wall with nervousness.
- I was a total wreck. - Hmm.
In those days, you know,
the review came out the next day.
I'm walking on 76th Street,
turning the pages, prepared to see the worst.
- It was by Donal Henahan. - Mm-hmm.
Boy, he was so terrible to pianists,
but he gave me a rave review.
"Seymour Bernstein triumphs at the piano. "
My friend Sheila Ohlendorf made a reception for me.
Yeah.
I came to the reception,
and I said, "Sheila, could I speak to you in the back room?"
I looked at her very sincerely,
and I said to her,
"If you love me,
you'll never let me play in public again. "
When I was around the age of 15,
I remember that I became aware
that when my practicing went well,
everything else in life seemed to be harmonized by that.
When my practicing didn't go well,
I was out of sorts with people, with my parents.
So I concluded
that the real essence of who we are
resides in our talent and whatever talent there is.
Motivated by a love of music
and possessed of a clear understanding
of the reasons for practicing,
you can establish so deep an accord
between your musical self and your personal self
that eventually music and life will interact
in a never-ending cycle of fulfillment.
Now let's-let's talk about the first slur.
The second notes have to be softer.
No, the second notes are too loud.
Okay, now in time, in time.
Now, there are three statements.
# Ta-ra, ta-ra, ta-ra, rum #
# Ta-ra, ta-ra, ta-ra, rum, ta-ra #
- Right? - Mm-hmm.
So start the first one less.
Does it say to do that?
Of course not.
- But we have to- - We know to do that.
We have to do that.
Easy, easy.
Good.
And now go for it!
That's very good. Now play the opening slur.
Okay, now, before I discuss that further...
See those two notes?
There's no slur.
We both agree the second note should be softer, right?
Do you connect that note to the next note?
Well, here you have a repeated note, so...
- Mm-hmm. Do you connect it? - No.
You make a separation?
- Yeah. - You didn't.
Do it. Play the opening.
- You didn't do that. - I didn't do that, no.
Of course not.
You're thinking we're never gonna get past
this first measure.
But don't leave the key.
Now play the left hand first with the soft pedal.
Let's see, so- That's right.
Halfway down.
Don't always play keys to the key bed.
The escapement level is halfway down.
Right? Right here?
- See? Right here? - Mm-hmm.
Play that. Play that just...
With the pedal.
Too deep.
Okay. Okay, and now play.
Good.
Same. Now go softer.
Now crescendo.
Okay, very, very good.
Oh, this is the most beautiful piano.
It's mine, and yet I find it's one of my favorite pianos.
The sound seems-
You know, pianos' tones die.
You go like this...
And the-and the sound dies, but this one seems...
This one seems to grow somehow.
This piano, by the way, stood at 9 East 72nd Street,
which is a famous mansion.
And guess who owned it.
My patroness.
Her name was Mildred Boos.
And the music room was patterned
after the music room in the Palace of Versailles.
It was unbelievable.
It seated easily 250 people.
Mrs. Boos was a spiritualist.
She had a religion called "I Am. "
She believed in contacting all the masters:
Jesus, Moses, Bu#ha-
the-the whole gang there.
And-and so- and she had students there
who followed this religion.
I said to her one day,
"Do you have anyone playing the organ?"
She had an organ.
And I said, "I'll do it for you. "
Well, that did it.
That's what made me the special person in her life.
She sponsored my debuts in Europe.
She phoned after very concert to find out how it went,
from New York to Paris,
from New York to London,
from New York to Hamburg- wherever I played.
When I came home, well, she said, "Come to Scarsdale. "
She gave me the key to this ten-room Tudor mansion.
And she said, "Here, dear,
it's yours for however long you want it. "
Every day, practically, when I was there,
the doorbell would ring,
and another delivery would take place:
a TV,
a silver tea set,
a velvet smoking jacket.
She was drowning me in luxuries.
When I went through that door and she gave me the key,
I got terrified.
In her living room, on every table
was my photograph.
It would seem very obvious
that she was falling in love with me.
I lived there for a year.
I started to feel trapped.
And one night, it came to an end.
I'm sitting here because I'm out of the-uh, the spotlight.
It's very warm,
and spotlights blind me
so that I can't see your wonderful faces.
During all of this time of giving workshops,
I never felt that I had a good opening sentence,
so I created one for tonight, and here it is.
The most important thing
that music teachers can do for their pupils
is to inspire and encourage
an emotional response
not just for music
but, more importantly, for all aspects of life.
Well, then after I felt good on the stage,
when I was around 50-
It took all that time to feel good,
to be able to play what I wanted to say on the stage.
So at the age of 50, I didn't tell anyone,
and I arranged a farewell concert
at the 92nd Street Y.
And I didn't even tell my mother.
That was the last public concert I ever played.
- Direct question. - Yes.
On some level, though you were nervous on the stage, you were-
It was difficult to do; the career was hard to develop-
- Well, yeah- - Were you-were you-
Nervousness is part of what we do.
Of course.
But do you feel on some level you were just-
uh, I don't know-
just couldn't take that anymore?
That aspect of it, the pressure of it,
the anxiety of it...
I hated the commercial aspect of it.
Right.
- I hated the nerves. - Right.
- I wanted to create. Right? - Right. Right.
Those are three major reasons why I quit.
But, Seymour, you were a great player.
You were an amazing player.
You got fabulous reviews as well, so you-
It didn't help, though.
What do you mean?
- It didn't help to... - What didn't it help?
Allay the horror
that I felt before and during a concert.
So I wasn't gonna let it go at that.
This is a challenge I have to meet.
Right.
If I'm gonna be that terrified
of walking across the stage,
what am I going to say about facing the vicissitudes of life?
Exactly.
- It's the same. - Right.
I had te-terrible blocks.
I had physical blocks in my playing itself.
I had blocks whenever I was on the stage-
having a fear of memory slips.
I felt inadequate as a pianist.
Now, you understand that if we're talking
about the correlation between a musician and a person,
if you feel inadequate as a musician,
then you're going to feel inadequate as a person.
You know, I-I have a memory of you being
more angry at the music world in years-years past.
What, I was angry at the music world?
Yeah, I think so. I think so.
And I- I should say so.
And I think that came across in the classes.
There was a little bit of a, uh, you know...
Resentment?
Yeah, a little bit. Something like this.
Like, well, we're doing this thing here, and this is good,
but those people over there at Juilliard,
they're just a bunch of, you know, sort of careerists.
I haven't changed.
No, I think you have, actually, but...
No, I haven't changed.
I just think that-
I'm not so sure that a major career
is a healthy thing to embark upon.
I see my colleagues who have major careers
suffer terribly.
There are a lot of examples of extremely talented,
extremely selfish, horrible people.
Isn't that so? So-
Is there some connection
between the monsters and the-and the gift?
The contrast between
the unbelievable attainment of art
and the unpredictability of the social world
is so great-
the contrast is so great-
that it makes them neurotic.
They can't equate this.
Jackson Pollock and Marlon Brando
were all pretty notoriously horrible people.
They were.
And there are musicians who are monsters, yeah.
Glenn Gould, for example.
He was a total neurotic mess-
total.
No chair could be low enough for him.
I-I heard him play in Carnegie Hall several times.
And they put the piano on cinder blocks this high.
So-now, I can't screw the chair down to demonstrate,
but I can ima-show you.
The keyboard was up here.
See? Look. He was playing like this.
Well, everybody knows that he was a genius.
And technically, he had few equals.
He was so extraordinary.
But what peeves me about him-
he was so famous for Bach, right?
But when I hear his Bach,
I'm not aware that I'm listening to Bach.
I'm only aware I'm listening to Glenn Gould.
He's infusing the music with his own eccentric nature.
I remember seeing him once in Carnegie Hall.
He crossed his left leg over the right,
and he pedaled with his right foot.
I told Clifford Curzon about that.
I said, "You know, I have a feeling
"if he didn't act so eccentric,
he wouldn't play so well. "
And Clifford said to me in his English accent,
"Laddie, I'm so sorry to disillusion you,
but I know an intimate friend of Glenn Gould's. "
"And one night, Glenn Gould called his friend and said,
"'I wowed them last night.
I crossed my left leg over the right. "'
So you see, he did it on purpose.
Yeah, but then- then your idea of an artist
is that you isolate yourself more,
and you exist in some safer place
but also one less connected to maybe your talents, even.
I love to, uh, ascribe
to be like amateur musicians-
namely, to do it for love
and not just for commercial purposes.
To me, it's partly about your desire to find a place,
a safe place disconnected from,
you know, the-the hurly-burly of-of the real world,
which does buffet every person who's trying to make a career,
whether they're doing it on Wall Street
or whether they're doing it in Carnegie Hall
or whether they're doing it on a stage or whatever.
But don't you think somebody who's very talented
and has something to say as a performer-
you say this to your students; you've said it to me...
Yes.
Has a responsibility that transcends
whether or not it feels good to them
or whether they don't like, you know,
the-the machinations of the music world
or-or the- the business side of this?
Isn't there some responsibility
which you abdicate when you leave the stage?
I'm hearing you, Michael.
So go really soft.
That's it.
Now disappear.
Okay, you have the most noble posture when you play.
But when you get very emotional, as you just were,
'cause you play very emotionally,
you do this.
Watch.
Right?
I'm exaggerating, right, right?
The energy gets pulled right out of the keyboard.
All right, so do you see this slowly gliding towards that E
and then gliding away?
Now do it.
Good.
Now, first of all, that was exquisite.
Secondly, you looked gorgeous.
57 years ago...
This month, as a matter of fact,
in April, 57 years ago...
Do you know anybody who has been living in one-room apartment
for 57 years?
Not who's not a monk.
I'm very close to being one.
'Cause I loved my solitude, of course.
I thrive on solitude.
I have to be by myself
in order to sort out all the thoughts
that course through my mind.
Our social world is unpredictable.
Someone who may be the closest to you
can one day say something,
and somehow the relationship dissolves.
I have to tell you that our art is totally predictable.
Music will never change.
When Beethoven puts a B flat down,
that's there forever.
Because of the predictability of music,
when we work at it,
we have a sense of order,
harmony, predictability,
and something we can control.
Your initial response to music occurs
without intellectual analysis.
Gifted children, for example,
often project deep musical feeling
without being aware
of musical structure or historical facts.
It is this kind of innocence
from which adults can learn.
Therefore in practicing,
avoid excess of analysis,
and allow the music to reveal its own beauty,
a beauty that is answered by something deep within you.
A Zen philosopher put it this way:
"If you would paint a chrysanthemum,
"look at one for ten years
until you become one. "
It-it seems to me, in America particularly,
there is a great contempt for craft.
I'm sorry.
The story that Americans want is,
"Oh, I had so much talent, I just went out there. "
What they want is the Flashdance fallacy,
that talent is it.
They don't like to think about craft.
They think that's boring or something.
But, you know,
unfortunately, in certain fields,
craft is necessary.
I get that comment a lot.
When I- after I play, after concerts,
they go, "Oh, it's so great.
You can just sit down and play that piece. "
And it's like, you can't just sit down and play it.
That's, like, a thou-
That's thousands and thousands of hours of-of practice.
Without craft, there isn't any real artistry.
I try to actually educate people.
And I talk-recently when I've been playing the Chopin Etudes,
I'll actually play it slowly first.
Yes.
And demonstrate what it's like to practice
at a slow tempo.
And then I tell people, you know,
this is what goes on for hours and hours
for months and months until you can perform it like this.
Now, that's making a real contribution to your audience.
Seymour hasn't played in front of people
in 35 years, and I'm gonna make him wait a little bit longer
while I tell, like, a really long story.
I decided to confide with him
my most terrifying secret,
which was that I've been,
for the last, like, five years or so,
performing with a sometimes really crippling
stage fright.
I mean, it was a longer conversation,
but the bottom line of it was that,
"Most people should be a lot more nervous," he said to me,
that a great many artists are not nervous enough.
And you-and you didn't tell them what I told you
about nervousness and Sarah Bernhardt.
She went to her dressing room
to dress for a- for a performance,
and in front of the door,
there was a young actress
with an autograph book.
With a trembling hand like this, she signed her autograph.
The young actress was just amazed at the trembling hand,
and she said,
"Madam, I don't mean to be presumptuous,
"but I see that you're nervous.
Why is it that I never get nervous when I have to act?"
And Sarah Bernhardt took her hand like this and said,
"Oh, my poor dear.
You will get nervous when you learn how to act. "
Do you know how many men tried to subdue the feminine in them?
Well, look, here's Beethoven.
Right? I mean, that's a man doing this.
Right?
Picture this.
He's playing this for the first time in the world...
To a room filled with his colleagues.
The Moonlight Sonata, right?
He finished playing, and they were all crying.
So the story-
This story is probably spurious, but somebody wrote it.
Beethoven stopped, said, "Men don't cry.
Why are you crying?"
This sensitive guy, you know,
he-he-he had the feminine in him,
but he tried to subjugate it.
I was called into the army,
but I had never been away from home at that time.
I was- led a very sheltered life.
And I remember that ride.
I thought if somebody told me I was going to my death,
it would have been the same trauma to me.
When we would go on forced marches
and the temperature was zero
and we had to go walk 20 miles
and the guys around me started to faint
and the ambulances were following us,
the guys came down with pneumonia,
Seymour went merrily on his way to the 20 miles.
I said, "Now, this is so strange.
Why am I surviving this?"
I knew immediately
it was the mind-set that I developed as a musician.
Suddenly an order came through.
Seymour was shipped off to Korea.
I was with a wonderful violinist
by the name of Kenneth Gordon.
I went to the lieutenant of that company
that we were assigned to.
I said, "Can we give a concert for the guys here?"
He said, "Classical music? Are you kidding?
Nobody's gonna listen to classical music here. "
"Let us try. "
So I went to a Korean MP school
and borrowed a grand piano from them.
And I requisitioned a truck with six Korean laborers
who never spoke a word of English.
I never moved a piano in my life.
The lieutenant sent for special gabardine uniforms for us
and sent us on a concert tour.
Where?
On the front lines.
We played for soldiers
who had never before heard classical music.
And some of the guys would cry.
We played serious music for them.
We didn't play down to them.
The guys wouldn't let us off the stage.
I kept a diary.
I hadn't looked at that diary for 20 years.
So one Sunday, I took it out,
and I cried the whole day.
Because I remember body bags.
And I b-I blocked it out.
I didn't want to face it.
And there it was in my diary.
I tried not to cry. I knew this was gonna happen.
My teacher, Clifford Curzon-
for him, the only important thing
is how softly the piano will play.
No good.
So Clifford Curzon only tried-
Clifford Curzon played so soft.
They were, like, worried.
They said, "You know, are you gonna-
are they gonna be able to hear you?"
He said, "I don't care. "
He plays to himself. That's it.
Do you know what he did?
He blindfolded me once down here.
He sat me down, and he went from piano to piano,
and sometimes he rattled the chair
so I thought he was going to another one,
but he was at the same-
The same piano. Wow.
And he said, "Which one is the best?"
I always knew which one was the best.
Horrid. Horrors.
It's gonna be even worse.
Better.
This is not bad.
Is this a Hamburg Steinway?
No, this is- this is a New York Steinway.
- This is a New York Steinway? - Very new.
There it is.
- See those two chords? - Mm-hmm.
You can't do that on most pianos.
So if you voice a chord...
Whoa.
That's just gorgeous.
The soft pedal is so good.
Oh, it's just heaven.
I don't-have never, ever in my life
played on a piano like this.
- Really? - Yes.
I have to tell you the truth.
Wow.
I can't- It's too good to be true.
Clifford Curzon was one of the great English pianists.
Well, you know, he was always my hero-
not only my hero.
I think almost all the pianists
who heard him play
thought that he's-
he's the model of what you should be,
especially when you play Mozart and Schubert.
I asked him if I could study with him.
He said, "Well, come to London.
I'll teach you for six months. "
So I got a grant-
the Martha Baird Rockefeller grant-to study with him.
So now I'm in my 40s, I think,
and he came to New York every two years.
While he was here, I saw him every night,
usually in the basement of Steinway.
I would play the orchestral accompaniment
for his concertos
that he had to play with major orchestras.
So one day, I thought,
"Other great English musicians were knighted.
Why don't they knight Clifford Curzon?"
So one day, I penned a letter to the queen.
"Dear Majesty, we in America
wonder why Clifford Curzon has not been knighted. "
I addressed it Buckingham Palace, London.
One day, a beautiful white envelope arrived
with a lion red coat of arms
on the back of it.
I opened it up, and the letter said,
"Her Majesty the Queen
"has commanded me
to send your letter to the prime minister. "
And the next month, Clifford was knighted.
Now, whether my letter did it
or whether it was a coincidence
can't be confirmed.
I have to find out if you're breathing correctly.
Do I have permission to touch you?
Okay. Okay.
'Cause, you know, you have to ask permission.
Otherwise, you get arrested.
This is a balloon,
your diaphragm right here, right?
Okay, ex-exhale.
Empty out. Empty it out completely.
Now inhale.
Not bad. Not bad.
Whoa!
Very good.
Exhale.
Inhale.
Uh-ah-uh.
Most of us breathe so poorly that it is a wonder
how we stay alive.
I joined a physical movement course.
I did exercises, which I strongly advise you to do.
I moved my head
clockwise very slowly
and then counterclockwise.
d La d
The important thing to learn about the soft pedal
is that it changes the quality of sound
on the piano.
Let us shed our guilt
concerning the use of the soft pedal.
While no one has ever successfully defined music,
we can, at least, permit ourselves to say of it
that it is a language of feeling.
Music, therefore, has often been referred to
as a universal language.
Maria Callas said that there were two people inside her.
One was Maria, and the other was Callas.
Maria was the rather ordinary woman
who wanted rather ordinary things.
Callas was this archetypal shamanic force.
There was a war between these two beings.
What's so wonderful about you,
why I love you so much, is that in you,
there is no separation
from the friend you are
and the master musician you are.
I didn't used to feel this way.
I didn't used to be integrated.
I began to feel this way, I believe...
when I started to survive on the stage.
When I placed tremendous challenges before me,
only to be cast down,
something in me said,
"Really, you're inadequate?
Well, then stop beefing about it and make yourself adequate. "
Instead of practicing four hours a day,
I turned it to eight.
The struggle is what makes the art form.
I go to war for my art form.
Prenatally, I guess I knew immediately
that life- that's how life is.
It has conflicts and pleasures,
harmony and dissonance.
That's how life is. Can't escape it.
By the way, the same thing occurs in music.
There are dissonances in harmony
and resolutions.
I believe that you won't enjoy the resolution
unless you have that dissonance.
What would it be if we didn't have the dissonance?
We wouldn't know the meaning of the resolution.
Hey, Seymour.
When your father would say that he had three daughters
and a pianist,
what did you think?
Everyone laughed when he said that.
I felt insulted.
I felt that he couldn't say
he has three daughters and a son
'cause he couldn't identify with the son that he had.
After a while, when I was adult enough
to sort of-a little mystic, what I'm going to say-
I create a translucent dome around myself,
a protective dome.
Outside are flying all the ravens,
who symbolize all the people
who are detractors in my life,
who don't really want me to succeed
for their selfish reasons.
Even though I can see them, they can't touch me anymore.
Guess who my father is.
He's one of those ravens.
He's picking at the translucent dome,
but he can't get in.
Our culture deliberately drives people to focus outside
so it can control them.
Because if you can make people
slaves of consumerism, slaves of success,
slaves of status,
you can manipulate them completely.
So the role of music in our culture is crucial,
because music is the art most sacredly capable
of helping us get in touch
with the deepest passions and compassions
and deepest understandings of ourselves.
Well, the ancient Greeks knew that because,
you know, they had a quadrivium.
- There were four subjects... - Yes.
Without which they felt that the human could not develop.
One of the four subjects was music.
Somebody asked me about, um, taking piano lessons, right?
Suppose a child doesn't feel like it,
isn't drawn to music.
So I said to this person,
"Now, let's compare this with going to school.
"Little Harry wakes up on a Thursday morning and says,
'Mommy, I don't feel like going to school. "'
I said, "It's unthinkable
"that Little Harry can't go to school.
"He has to go to school whether he likes it or not.
"There will be no TV.
"There will be no meeting with your friends.
"You take your pick.
"You're going to practice one hour every day.
"And I'm going to supervise it.
How do you like that?"
Well, now, do parents talk to their children that way?
Of course not.
- And what happens? - Except the tiger moms.
They're half-developed children when they become adults.
I think the key is that music can produce ecstasy.
And once you experience ecstasy,
you can't be sold a shoddy load of goods.
You can't be sold success.
You learn to reject.
You know that this is the core of life.
You have the touchstone
from which you can judge everything else.
One of the ways in which philosophers have said
music is most divine
is that music, like God, is invisible.
- You can't see it. - Right.
- It's intangible. - Right.
And yet it has this most penetrating of effects.
Yes.
And so it is a direct emanation
of the transcendent beauty
of the beloved.
And one of the things that has happened to me in my life
is that through my mystical education,
I did actually have an experience
of the music that is creating the whole universe.
I heard everything in creation...
You heard-
Singing ecstatically the name of God.
- You heard that? - I heard it.
And I heard the whole of reality singing together
in an unbelievable polyphony of glory.
Really?
For me, the difference between religion and music
is, religion requires faith.
Right.
Because you can't prove certain-
You can't prove that God exists.
No.
It's faith that tells you that.
You can experience it, but you can't prove it.
Right.
But in music, there is the language
written out for you.
So I asked myself, "Why are there so many
huge pieces in B flat?"
I mean, do you think it's a coincidence
that Beethoven's longest and most-
in terms of length and scope-
Piano Sonata, String Quartet, and Piano Trio
are over 50 minutes long and all in the key of B flat?
And then Schubert writes a sonata like that.
Brahms has major pieces in B flat.
Yes.
On the NASA website, they discovered
a black hole that was resonating
on the note B flat, 57 octaves below middle C.
- Oh, that's fascinating. - This is on the NASA website.
No, no, I'm sorry.
I knew this was gonna happen. Go ahead.
Okay, first of all, as you know, pitch has changed
since the time of Schubert.
His B flat is not our B flat.
If you're gonna relate it to this NASA thing...
Okay.
Then we've got to be scientific.
- So you reject this? - No, not necessarily.
But before I answer that question, we have to-
See, I think it appeals to the universal language of music.
And if the universe is resonating on the note B flat
and that's the note that Beethoven
and Schubert and Brahms choose to create
their biggest monumental masterpieces-
Well, now, wait a minute-
Don't you think that's significant?
And see, this is what I would tell an audience
who's never heard it before
to get them in some kind of mental space
where they're contemplating the cosmos
and into this, you know,
metaphysical realm that I believe
the Schubert First Movement lives in.
People are searching for some answers,
some stability
that will make them lead a happier life.
It says in the Bible,
"The help cometh from the Lord within. "
I call it a spiritual reservoir.
I don't call it God.
Most people don't tap that resource
of the God within.
What upsets me about religion
is that the answers always seem
to be apart from us
in the form of a deity.
And we depend upon the deity for salvation.
But I firmly believe that it's within us.
Okay, now, when the orchestra comes in,
you can't play the same.
You-this is wonderful now.
Now you have to minimize it.
- Yeah. - Now do it that way.
Hush.
Good.
Oh, now you're sounding better-
ten times better than the last time I heard.
- Isn't that some piano? - It is.
- It's extraordinary, right? - Yeah.
I chose it for the rental.
We're gonna give a concert for Ethan's theater group.
Whatever that B flat is,
this is a decoration of it.
It's just a decoration of it.
Not...
See, every note can't be passionate.
Now do it all. Do it all.
That a boy.
Music is just, like, my being.
Like, everything that I do is somehow related to music.
Just, like, the way I act, it's all music.
When I'm playing the piano,
I have to listen so carefully and so-
with such precision to what's coming out of the instrument.
- And love. - And love, yeah.
And when you apply that
to listening to someone speak,
you can really catch a lot of their emotions.
So just learning to listen to yourself
makes you able to listen to other people.
During the romantic period, it was unthinkable
for anyone to study an instrument
who didn't compose.
- Creativity... - Oh, absolutely.
And re-creativity went hand in hand.
There were no computers. There was no television.
- Right. - There were no distractions.
And I'm going to say the unsayable:
general education.
We have to waste all our time in school
learning all this stuff.
They were specialized earlier.
And as to whether that's a good thing or bad thing,
I'm not gonna say, but it's completely different.
Specialized in a certain sense.
You specialize, everyone's gonna get
really good at one thing, and then it should be better.
But it's not really like that.
And you told me when I was 15 I remember you saying this,
because I had started composing then.
You said, "You should always have a piece
that you've composed for each concert. "
And actually, now with my 88-concert tour,
that's exactly what I'm doing.
So that's another thing about your aesthetic
that I've definitely am very aware of,
the idea that you should keep composing.
- If you do it yourself... - Absolutely.
Then you get closer to the creative process
of the music that you're playing.
Right.
When you reach my age,
you stop playing games.
You stop lying to people,
and you just say really what's in your heart.
And you find out
that it's the greatest compliment to someone
when you really say the truth
and don't just say what they expect you to say.
Every piano is like a person.
They build them the same way.
They never come out the same way,
because human factor of putting everything together.
Then the soundboard, the wood is alive.
Every tree is different.
So the soundboard vibrates.
Each soundboard has different wood.
It can never be the same.
299.
299-well, do you think that's gonna be our selection?
Is it available for April the 5th?
April the 5th? I'll have to check.
Just going right upstairs, you see.
Right.
Oh, it will be terrible if it's rented.
- For April the 5th? - Yeah.
Did you hear how beautiful it sounds?
It's unbelievable, huh?
All right, good.
Well, is this one gonna be available
for his show, you think?
I wouldn't have shown it if it wasn't available.
Okay, great.
- April 5th? - Yep.
It's gonna be up in the rotunda.
- If you want it. - I want it.
Well, take it out of my commission.
Okay. All right. Very good.
How much is it to rent?
We don't charge. You're a Steinway artist.
We don't charge rent.
Oh, that's good. So it'll just be rolled up?
It'll just be rolled up.
Oh, how wonderful. See? Free.
I think a lot of people spend the bulk of their life
not trying to play better
but by trying to gain more things.
For me, personally,
I can look around, and I can see that
that doesn't actually make people happy.
I'm looking at myself, and I'm saying,
"You have the second half of your life ahead of you.
"If it's not for material gain,
"if I don't have a specific religious calling,
what is it that I'm living it for?"
The whole system of life
is geared to make you think about success.
Often, doing my art the best
and equating that with any kind of financial success are just-
they're just wildly at odds with one another.
- Of course they are. - And so-
They can even get in the way of one another.
- Yeah. - Yes.
So the most "successful" things I've done
have been some of the worst things I've done.
And sometimes I think that
just playing life more beautifully
is what I'm after.
But I don't know how to do it.
But don't you do it through acting?
Well, I don't know which-
Uh, I want to do it through acting, yeah.
- But you don't feel it? - But the world...
I can. I can.
So did you think in the end
that you found your creative identity
as a teacher?
Very much so.
Once I called my career to an end,
everything became clearer
and made me happier, fulfilling.
And many people said to me what you said.
Yeah. What's your answer?
Don't you have a responsibility?
Sure, what's your answer now, all these years later?
I have a wonderful answer.
I poured it into you.
Again, again, this passage.
Well, on the first day that I was in Korea,
when I was so scared to death-
absolutely scared to death-
I didn't know where I was.
They didn't tell us where we were,
'cause there was a war going on.
And I woke up at 5:00 in the morning,
and everything was covered with mist.
And I went into the mess hall,
and I got some peanuts and whatever there was to eat,
and I went outside, and I was eating the peanuts.
And out of the mist,
I saw a little nose appear.
And it was a fawn,
and it evidently had been tamed by the guys there.
It came right up to me
and snuggled in my palm for the peanuts.
And I just thought, "I must be in heaven.
"I must have been killed.
This has to be heaven. "
In contemplating my own connection to music,
I always return to the same answer:
universal order.
If the heavenly constellations
offer us visual proof of this order,
then music must be its aural manifestation.
Through its language,
we become one with the stars.
Music speaks concordantly
to a troubled world,
dispelling loneliness and discontent,
its voice discovering in it
those deep recesses of thought and feeling
where truth implants itself.
Music offers no quarter for compromise,
no excuses,
no subterfuge,
no shoddy workmanship.
And we sense in music
an extension of ourselves,
a reminder of our own potential
for perfection.
And when did you meet Seymour?
Uh, it was 1999 in Japan.
And then I just fell in love with him.
His music.
So if you don't understand technique,
you don't have an idea,
a conception of what it's supposed to sound,
that's just technique.
It's moving your arms this way.
It's moving your arm that way.
But he describes motions, and it connects
how the music is supposed to feel
along with your emotions inside.
And everything comes together and makes a lot more sense.
Seymour showed me what a musician could be.
'Cause I had no idea.
I mean, I hadn't heard it.
I hadn't encountered people in my life
that were serious about music in the way
that he's serious about music.
I feel like composer must be happy in heaven.
'Cause they should...
How should I say it?
Yeah, he gave every- every single message
hiding in the music,
bring up.
I mentioned Schumann before.
And this is the last movement
of his Fantasie Opus 17.
This piece was a kind of wedding present
by Schumann for his beloved Clara.
Well, this is one of the greatest pieces
that was ever written.
It's so beautiful that it's almost impossible to practice,
because you try to practice it,
and you're drawn from the beginning to the end.
You can't stop.
Schumann married Clara when he was 25.
She was 16.
And he chose a motto, "Throughout all music,
"there sounds the colorful dream of the earth,
"one quiet note
played for a secret eavesdropper. "
Then he sent this music to Clara,
and he told her,
"You are the note of my life,
and you are the secret eavesdropper. "
It's so gorgeous.
Over the bar now.
Mm-mm. See, one of them just ends.
This one ends.
And this one is a longer idea.
So have to remember to keep up the sound here.
And now the bass just rips me apart.
It's so beautiful.
It's just impossibly beautiful.
Then here's one of my favorite places.
Let's see. Where is that?
It's in octaves, you see?
So which hand should be more- I think the right hand.
And now the darkness of the left hand.
Whenever I play this passage here...
It's sort of like someone doing this
to my chest,
like, patting for comfort.
Now here comes one of the biggest climaxes
in all of music!
The end of this piece is very problematic.
Nobody-no two people- ever do the same.
The reason it's so problematic
is because the composer didn't leave any markings.
Suddenly, he just left it to our own devices.
So some people just whimper away here.
They whimper away like this
and play the coda, which is the end of the piece,
all soft.
And I do just the opposite.
I just keep the intensity going.
I never dreamt
that with my own two hands,
I could touch the sky.
Thank you.