<<  -- 6 --  Bill Newman    TOTAL DEDICATION AND ACCORD

BN: I talked about my personal experiences and knowledge of certain artists' 'covering their tracks' -- 'improving' the recorded performance by using the tricks of editing.
HD: I know only too well. Recording Schubert's F minor Fantasy -- which is particularly difficult -- we aimed at two complete takes. We made a tape that had a few mistakes, so another take was made and we noticed a further two errors. After more corrections, we left it with the producer to effect a compromise after comparing with previous efforts. Twenty years before, we played the piece too fast, but experience has taught us otherwise. According to the mood of the moment, sometimes what we thought about an earlier performance turns out to be rather good, instead.

BN: Switching from one composer's works to others might be problematic in concert.
IB: We don't think about it, but just get on with performing the programme.

BN: But how do you prepare new repertoire?
IB: Each artist rehearses on their own, and gathers new ideas in the process. Then they meet up and try and find out what has happened.
HD: This is fine, but rehearsing on your own you imagine the other part, which is subservient (naughty!) ... When we meet up, we may find things dreadfully wrong, and this is no good. Isabel starts by preparing her interpretation. I don't, but prefer to leave it until it gradually dawns on me. She might argue that it should be slower here; and I will disagree. Isabel also likes slowing down the end of the phrase. Again, I don't -- but like to keep the flow over the phrase. If I slow down at all, it will be near the end.
IB: According to what we both want, it happens anyway. It becomes a habit.

BN: In Schubert's music with its accents, emphases, rubato slowings and so on, should these occur at the beginning, middle or end of the phrase?
HD: Listen to your question, and you will realise that you emphasized all sorts of different words. There was no one place where they actually became emphasized, and some people believe that the first beat of a musical bar is the point of emphasis. I avoid this like the plague because it starts to become metrical, and I do everything I can to bend the phrase so that the climax is always at some other point. In every phrase you are allowed one accent.
BN: This is not a form of thought process, but more an instinctive thing.
IB: It's like accompanying a singer, and feeling the way they phrase the musical line.
HD: The composer Richard Rodney Bennett said of another pianist: 'He plays the piano as if he knows the words', which means that he is emphasizing the melody as if there are words.
IB: Like Ashkenazy, when he makes the piano sing at the start of Rachmaninov 3.
HD: Paul Hamburger used to take phrases and describe them as 'down-shape'. You play the melody to the top, then proceed down again in a single movement. That's all very well, but that can also be a mannerism as well. So, one has to find a new way of phrasing, and I can remember breaking my neck during the final movement of Mozart's C major Sonata, and trying to find new ways of playing six repetitions of the same phrase.
BN: Surely, this is also governed by the way you vary the left-hand accompaniment?
HD: Yes, but you might resort to make the first phrase weaker, the second stronger -- or the other way round -- perhaps altering the pace slightly. You have to be resourceful and interesting at the same time. Then, your partner picks it up -- you decorate the same way, it provides spontaneity, and it's part of the fun.

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