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SEEN AND HEARD INTERVIEW
One of the most intriguing pianists his country has
brought forth over the past decades, Gergely Bogányi
agreed to discuss his
Chopin Marathon in Budapest
and his recent
Athens recital
on the occasion of this year's Liszt bicentenary,
proving that his pianism is much less based on
showmanship and acrobatics than meets the eye.
You recently performed Chopin's complete works
for solo piano on one single weekend. Why in the world
would you want to do such a thing - was it a publicity
stunt?
The short answer to your question: because I love the
music. That was the main reason for this craziness, the
fact that I adore these pieces by Chopin. But you may also be interested in the long answer:
for about ten years, I have been practicing and playing
the program you heard in Budapest, consisting of
Chopin's entire solo works divided into ten recital
programs. Playing that much Chopin often put me into
another state of mind, it was something like an
addiction, and a process that gave me more and more
energy rather than tiring me out. As I say, I had the
recital programs at my fingertips, having performed all
ten over a period from March to November in Hungary in
2001, and then in Finland in 2002, as well as more
recently, last year in Guadalajara, Mexico in five
weeks, and then in ten days at the Newport Festival in
July in the US - one recital per day, that is, which was
already really tough.
From all of this, the idea was born to endeavor to
achieve an even more intense state of mind, to swim in
the music, to reach a very controlled and spiritual
state which at the same time contained an exciting
element of craziness, and to convey this to my
listeners, by playing all of these pieces on just one
weekend. I never had a concert hall in mind, I just
wanted to play at home for some friends, perhaps 30
people at most, who would be free to come and go during
the whole weekend. But then someone told the director of
the Budapest Palace of Arts about my plans, and he
suggested their concert hall as a venue. This made it
into much more of a challenge, since that hall is
difficult to fill even for just one recital in a year,
so the thought of having to fill it ten times in just
two days was quite daunting. I agreed reluctantly, and
by the time I began having serious second thoughts, it
was too late, because the publicity was already in full
swing.
Certainly the feeling of addiction was one you
successfully passed on to your audience. I remember
thinking on the Saturday morning that I would just
attend a few of the recitals, but I ended up going to
all of them.
That is something I am very glad of, and many people,
almost everyone I spoke to, reported the same thing,
whether they were at the concert hall or listening to
the radio broadcast: that they started out listening
almost casually and then got hooked. This corresponds to
the development of my state of mind as I played, and I
still feel that it was nothing short of a miracle that
everything went exactly as planned, and by that I do not
mean that I was able to play through the entire program
- that was never the most important thing - but that I
was able to express the musical essence in a deeper
sense and that those listening could partake in it.
Do you intend to do a repeat performance?
No I don't, but this was a profound experience which
I will not forget (nor will his audience!).
After the 2nd or 3rd recital, I
was "out of my mind", but in a positive sense, neither
tired nor fed up, but deeply in touch with myself and
the music. Since I was in a mental state unachievable
under normal circumstances, there are some pieces I will
never play like that again, and here I am referring
above all to the 3rd movement of the Sonata
no. 2. It was as if angels were producing the music, and
I was just wandering.
How did you prepare for this major undertaking?
The Malev in-flight magazine proclaimed that you had
summoned "transcendental powers"?! Or did you read then
scores and practice "Roman Catholic fasting", which is
reportedly what Chopin himself recommended to his
favorite student in preparation of a concert (albeit of
the piano concertos)?
To be honest, I had a physical exercise plan but
didn't stick to it in the end because I simply didn't
have the time to do them. If there were transcendental
powers involved, they were summoned during the concerts,
not while preparing them. As to the "Roman Catholic
Fasting", that is very interesting, since I was not
aware that Chopin had recommended it, and I did not fast
before the recital, but I certainly did during it: on
the Saturday I ate nothing at all, not even a grape from
the plates of snacks prepared for me backstage. And even
on the Sunday, the second day, I had nothing but a few
bites, but I drank a great deal of water. I enjoy talking about these things, by the way,
usually I am only asked questions like "How much do you
practice?"…
So how much time do you devote
to practicing…?
Only about a fifth of the amount of time I should.
Seriously, though, and to get back to Chopin, to
you have any intention of recording Chopin's complete
works after this concert marathon? I seem to remember
that when Glenn Gould was once asked to consider the
idea, he thought it "perverse". Why do you think that
was?
As a matter of fact, my recording of Chopin's
complete works for piano is coming out in May! And in my
opinion, the reason Gould made that comment is that he
did not have the slightest clue about Chopin, he didn't
understand him at all. Just think for a minute of the
extremely low-level parodies he did of Mozart and
Beethoven's music. Who is making the mistake here -
these two great composers, or Glenn Gould? I believe he
is grossly overrated as a pianist. I would be the first
to concede that his Bach recordings are masterful, at
least some of them, but that does not mean that he also
understood the work of those he ridiculed.
Besides sheer talent and virtuosity, what is the
difference between an amateur and an artist at the
piano, in your opinion?
It is the immediate understanding, the grasp of the
music that makes the artist.
What do like best about being a pianist, assuming
it is more of a vocation than a profession to you, and
is there anything you don't like about it?
It is a way of life and I could never have chosen
another. I have my cross to carry just as everyone else
does, but it is a good cross! And I do so with
dedication, if not always with pleasure, and this I say
because I encounter much resistance to my old-fashioned
attitude, which is that you cannot get around really
interpreting the music. These days, everyone is after
money, pursuing sponsors, it is a global phenomenon, and
I find myself almost alone swimming against this stream.
The proof of this is that even world-famous artists
often no longer care about the message of music.
Audiences are powerfully manipulated, something that is
sad to see. I am being frank about this because I have
had enough of not speaking the truth. Living in today's
world is like being in a performance of "The King's New
Suit", only that in this version, no one has the courage
to say: "By the way, the King is naked".
What do think of pianists who market their image
as does Lang Lang?
I don't like seeing a machinery product from a
factory on a stage meant for musical performances.
Nothing could be further removed from my way of thinking
than to become a product of something, particularly of a
factory.
But you do seem to be cashing in on your
resemblance to the young Liszt? Do you often play
recitals with a portrait of him in the background, even
wearing the same sort of coat he did (as you did
recently your recital on behalf of the Hungarian Embassy
in Athens )?
Certainly not, and I was very angry at the Embassy
for putting up that portrait. I do not try to dress like
Liszt did when appearing on stage. I happen to be
Hungarian and own a Hungarian coat, and I like to wear
it, and that is all there is to it. If there is
something in Liszt that I would like to emulate, it is
not his appearance, but rather I would aspire to become
more like him musically, spiritually, to understand his
unique generosity and his uniquely religious touch. I
feel almost personally offended when Liszt's music is
performed without the slightest modesty (and here I am
not necessarily alluding to Lang Lang). An attitude so
arrogant is an insult to such deep and phenomenal music,
and indeed the one thing Liszt hated most was
superficiality, even with respect to popular pieces like
the Hungarian Rhapsodies.
At this point, I decide to dispense with one last
question I had in mind:Was the position of his hands
above the keyboard at the end of the Liszt Sonata at his
Athens recital meant to be a allusion to the
famous cartoon drawn of Liszt by Maurice Sand…?
(I'm sorry, but that is exactly what it looked
like!)
For it is impossible to doubt Bogányi's genuine
sincerity, especially after having experienced him as a
teacher earlier that day. The way he conveyed what he
referred to as the "inexorable" quality of the first
movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" (a popular
piece if there ever was one) or the to-die-for feeling
in the few simple chords near the beginning of a
Schubert's A Minor Sonata D784 (around bar 60) was
utterly convincing and spoke for itself. As he remarked
to one student who was working on Chopin's Ballade no.
1: "You can play this piece in a hundred different ways,
but never without the meaning".
This interview was hosted by the Athens Kodály
Conservatory (www.kodaly.gr),
in connection with Gergely Bogányi's recent master
class.
Find out more about the artist at
www.gergelyboganyi.com
Bettina Mara