Saturday, October 19, 2024
8:00 PM
Xian Zhang makes her Symphony Hall debut leading a work she premiered with the New Jersey Symphony in June 2023: Pulitzer Prize-winning Chinese-born composer Chen Yi’s Landscape Impression. Then, Jonathan Biss is the soloist in Robert Schumann’s lyrical and powerful Piano Concerto, and the program closes with Mozart’s elegant Symphony No. 39.
Xian Zhang, conductor
Jonathan Biss, piano
CHEN Yi Landscape Impression
Robert SCHUMANN Piano Concerto
MOZART Symphony No. 39
To hear Jonathan Biss describe the centrality of Schumann's music in his artistic life and how that's reflected in the composer's Piano Concerto, use the player below, and read the transcript underneath.
Jonathan Biss talks about the relationship of mental health, music, and performance:
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT (lightly edited for clarity):
Brian McCreath I'm Brian McCreath at Symphony Hall with Jonathan Biss, who has returned to the Boston Symphony. It's been a little while, but it's really good to have you back, Jonathan, for the Schumann Piano Concerto. Thanks for a few minutes of your time today. I appreciate it.
Jonathan Biss Yes, of course. Happy to be here.
Brian McCreath Well, Schumann and you are a very close pairing, and so I'm really delighted that this is the concerto you're playing amongst all the concertos that you have done here and could have chosen. And I know that Schumann is very personal for you, to the degree that you even wrote a book about your relationship to Schumann [A Pianist Under the Influence]. So, before we even talk about the concerto, I wonder if you can just sort of describe for me the place that Schumann holds in your life currently as an artist.
Jonathan Biss It's funny, I haven't thought about this in probably the ten years since I wrote it, but there's one sentence in the book which I think still really applies, which is that, "Schumann's music is what I would write if I were braver and a genius." The genius doesn't need any further explanation, but I do find that there is a tremendous bravery in the way in which his music is soul-baring. I feel that it is the expression of a psyche in a way which is different from... I want to say Mozart and Beethoven and Schubert, because those are the other composers that are probably closest to me. I mean, they're all different from one another. But somehow Schumann's music is the most personal. I have the feeling when I play his music of a person who was not terribly easy in his own skin or in the world. And music became the medium through which he could communicate himself fully. And I find that so touching.
Brian McCreath And so much of your book and your work has revolved around many of the solo piano pieces, the Fantasy and the Davidsbündlertänze. And the way you describe the intimacy of this music is so compelling. So, I wonder, from the perspective of all those solo works, if you can even say more about what it is that Schumann is doing in the music that does reflect that sort of interior life.
Jonathan Biss There are two things I would say. The one is he has a certain talent for digression. You know, you play a piece by Beethoven, and he chooses the path and the first two notes, and the path is laid out. And he will not go off the path, come hell or high water. In Schumann, sometimes the most beautiful and moving moments are the ones where he actually allows himself to veer off the path and to sort of say something which is not central to the argument of the piece. There's a wonderful moment in the Davidsbündlertänze where - Schumann writes very often these very poetic indications - he says, "superfluously, Eusebius," who was one of his alter egos, "added the following." And there's something so beautiful about idea of a musical idea being superfluous. It's not necessary. It's there because he loves it so much. So that's the one thing.
The other thing, again, is to go back to this word "poetic." I think Schumann, more than almost any other composer, is moving not for what he says, but for the detail of how he says it. The turn of phrase is so precise and so personal and so specific and sometimes so surprising. The choice to go up a third instead of just a simple rising by a step, which seems like a difference that shouldn't matter, and yet that tiny little, again, sort of divergence from expectation becomes just life changing.
Brian McCreath And you just referenced Eusebius, whose counterpart is Florestan. And now we're connecting to some of the writings of Schumann, the musicology of it. But again, it does come back to the very personal, the very interiority that he's writing about. Do you feel these competing and collaborating personalities within your own work as an artist?
Jonathan Biss Probably. I mean, I think we all, as people, contain not just multitudes, but sort of multitudes who are in certain conflict with one another, which, you know, there are parts of our personalities which coexist sometimes a little bit uncomfortably. And I think that's another thing that Schumann expresses so beautifully and, again, so bravely. Probably it's more extreme in him than it is in me or in most of us. And I think possibly also there was a little bit of safety in him giving names to these sides of his personality. It was a little bit like having a little bit of armor. You know, it's not quite him. It's Florestan or it's Eusebius, although they are both him. But yes, I do think that the contradiction of the actor and the dreamer is something that I and probably most people can relate to.
Brian McCreath When it comes to the concerto, this one big piano piece that he wrote with orchestra. I mean, there's other pieces, but this is the big sort of masterpiece, right? Does all of this skew one way or another, or is everything we're talking about - the vulnerability, the love that's involved with it, the characters that are in his mind - do these present themselves just as vividly in the concerto, or is it a little bit more of one way or another?
Jonathan Biss Well, what I think is so wonderful about the concerto is that it is a grand piece in the way that so much of the solo music isn't. It was not just by virtue of the fact that it's an orchestra piece, but also because it was written to be a vehicle for his beloved Clara, his wife. So, it has grandeur. It has euphoria, total euphoria in parts of the last movement. And yet there still is, maybe not to the degree of some of this solo music, but an enormous amount of poetry. And so much of that poetry actually comes in the dialog, not so much between the full orchestra and the piano, but the way in which the piano really talks to the oboe or the piano talks to the clarinet almost as if person to person. So that yeah, I do think that he balances the elements in a very moving and very successful way.
Brian McCreath And what you describe about this relationship between the orchestra and the soloist in this piece, I mean, in other concertos, there's dialog. That's how they're set up in general. But yes, a very special quality, especially in the second movement, you and the oboe playing together. Tell me about the quality of this particular orchestra when you play with them and what it means for a piece like this.
Jonathan Biss One of the things that I'm always struck by with the Boston Symphony is the sheer beauty of sound, as a massed ensemble and also the individuals within it. I think some of it has to do with the hall. I think that orchestras do take on the character of the halls they play in. I think playing week after week in a sound that envelops you like Symphony Hall, of course, ends up sort of shaping the character of the orchestra. But I think some of it probably also goes deeper than that, and in this concerto, before I even play the theme, I have the sound of John Ferrillo and of the whole wind section in my ear. And that, you know, if you're paying any attention at all, that shapes your approach. And my antennae are pointed differently just because of that beauty that this orchestra has, which is a rare and treasurable thing.
Brian McCreath Well, Jonathan, it's really fantastic to have you back here. I think it's been about ten years since you've been here at Symphony Hall with the BSO, so it's wonderful to have you back. A special gift that you're playing Schumann. It's just always wonderful to hear you play Schumann. So, thank you so much for your time today.
Jonathan Bisss Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.