'The composer’s wishes come first' is a catchphrase many classical musicians have used over the years – but pianist Steven Osborne thinks that’s a cop-out.
For Osborne, who’s in Aotearoa to play Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G with the Auckland Philharmonia, the performer’s ultimate responsibility is to themself.
He says there are plenty of examples of composers performing their own work where they disregard their own instructions.
"It seems to me that the fundamental thing about performing music is your passion for it and your sense of ownership of it, and that you're really expressing something that feels very true to you. I'm actually not sure it's very helpful to have a very respectful attitude."
"It's not a question of 'oh, you can do anything to music' - there's a lot you can do to music that really harms it, which makes it less effective. But if you love the music and if you want to make it expressive and communicative then you're not going to do those things which harm it. You're going to try and bring it as fully to life as you can."
Steven Osborne spoke with Three to Seven host Bryan Crump about authenticity, the joy of improvisation, and working and living with tinnitus.
Scottish pianist Steven Osborne Photo: Supplied
On the first time hearing Ravel’s Piano Concerto
"Somebody put on the slow movement. I didn’t know anything about it and I heard this beautiful melody, wasn’t sure of the composer and then after a minute and a half, suddenly a flute comes in which was a complete shock. It made such an impression on me hearing that slow movement for the first time, I just thought it was something really sublime."
On creating his own edition of a Rachmaninov work
"I’ve had some people say they feel like it’s almost disrespectful, or almost blasphemous, to take a composer’s work and decide you know better than them, but it takes a view which is completely out of keeping with the time in which the music was composed. Certainly as you go a little bit earlier back into the 19th century, which Rachmaninov’s music comes very profoundly out of that style of music, improvisation was expected of all performers.
"And it would not be unusual for performers to do their own thing in subtle ways, or not so subtle ways."
On Rachmaninov's self doubt
"He did a concert tour in the US and he did his last piano piece, the Corelli variations, and he wrote a letter back to Russia saying he never played the entire piece because when people started coughing he missed a few variations out, so that’s a sign of how much insecurity he had about his music."
Steven Osborne Photo: Benjamin Ealovega 2015
On being "loyal" to the composer
"Honestly, I think that attitude is a cop out, because actually nobody does that, if you did that, you would sound like a MIDI file, there wouldn’t be any emotion, I think it’s much better to be honest that the performer brings a huge amount of their own personality.
"For me it’s like a wedding, or a marriage of what the composer’s put into the score and what that instinctively arouses in you, and in any relationship, there are always compromises of some kind or another.
"When you listen to composers play their own music they never play exactly what they wrote. Rachmaninov’s recording of his concertos, follow with the score and how the tempo changes or differs from what he’s written."
On growing confidence as a performer
"The older you get your sense of music gets deeper and it becomes more painful to give up your instinct of how you feel the music should go. So that compromise becomes a compromise of what’s written on the score, it can also be a compromise in terms of your instinct about something; you want this tune to go a certain way, but you recognise it actually doesn’t quite fit with what comes after.
So, there’s this very complex dance of trying to create a line that goes through the whole piece which is coherent, and which is satisfying emotionally and dramatically."
His love of Keith Jarrett
"I was really influenced by Jarrett because Jarrett would give these solo concerts and he would sit down with no idea what he was going to play and then play for 45 minutes and then take a break and do it again.
"I think it’s clear listening to those solo concerts that he’s at least got an idea what the first tune might be, but it’s not a self-contained thing, not like a jazz tune that he then improvises over the 16 bar or 32 bar chords. It’s just a starting point which then spontaneously goes in whatever direction it wants to go in and that had a huge impact on me."
On his tinnitus
"I don’t think about it at all, when I first got it 25 years ago I was completely freaked out, I had no idea what to expect with it, I thought it was going to keep getting worse, in fact it has very gradually got worse over the years.
"I was very helped by a specialist that I went to see because my real concern was that it might get so loud it would overwhelm what I was actually hearing, and the guy basically said that doesn’t happen, that’s not the mechanism, always the auditory input is going to trump what the tinnitus is doing."
Steven Osborne and the APO perform from 7.30pm tonight, Thursday 17 August, in the Auckland Town Hall.
Listen live on RNZ Concert here
Watch live video on the APO’s website here
Liadov: The Enchanted Lake
Ravel: Piano Concerto in G
Shostakovich: Symphony No 5
