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AN INTERVIEW WITH KRISTIAN BEZUIDENHOUT
Did you come from a musical family?
My maternal grandmother studied piano in Leipzig for a while,
but after getting a job as a governess and moving to Angola in
south-west Africa, any hopes for a career in music where pretty
much dashed. My parents, although not musicians, made a point
of filling the house with music and played LPs from their vast
collection constantly. Interestingly, Mozart was one of the
composers played most often; the last three symphonies (K. 549551) were particular favorites of my father, who passed away
last year—every time I hear them, treasured memories of
discovering this extraordinary music for the first time come
flooding back.
When did you first become interested in early pianos and period performance, and what drew
you to that world?
Honestly, I was a huge recording nerd back in Australia (my family emigrated there in 1988) and
it was there that I really started following the trends of the field as a whole. As a 12-year-old in
1991, my mind was completely and utterly obsessed by one thing: the celebration of the Mozart
bicentenary—you might remember that, among the many tributes, was the release of the Philips
complete Mozart edition on 180 CDs. Needless to say, it was all I dreamt of; it also instilled in me
a love of recorded music and of collecting CDs. Listening to recordings remains a very important
element of study and reflection for me. What struck me was how exciting the world of early
music and period performance was—after all, this really was the time when the major figures
made their names. You can’t imagine the excitement, living in Australia, eagerly awaiting the
new releases of celebrated artists like John Eliot Gardiner, Frans Brüggen, Christopher Hogwood,
and indeed Tafelmusik (I think the first Tafelmusik disc I heard was the Zelenka Missa dei Filii
with Frieder Bernius on Deutsche Harmonia Mundi). Used as I was to the sound-world of the
traditional symphony orchestra and modern piano, these recordings had the effect of a lifechanging shift in sensibilities. One memory that will never leave me—sitting in the listening
room of the State Library in Brisbane—was the experience of hearing Gardiner’s 1989 recording
of the opening chorus of the Bach St. Matthew Passion for the first time: what was so moving and
illuminating was how much more meaningful and emotionally satisfying this new—and yet at
the same time old—sound was. All of this to say that I was dying to be a part of this world, where
enormously gifted, adventurous but deeply knowledgeable artists directed their attention to a
thorough re-evaluation of this glorious repertoire. Sadly, I had no access to historical keyboards
in Australia, so my first encounter with these instruments had to wait until my Bachelor degree
at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY. It was there that I began harpsichord lessons
with Arthur Haas and also the study of the fortepiano with Malcolm Bilson; later, too, continuo
playing and performance practice with the Paul O’Dette.
Do you continue to play modern piano, or do you specialize exclusively in period
instruments?
Yes, absolutely. Although it only happens once or twice a season, I’m always delighted to join
modern instrument orchestras on the modern piano. There can be a special atmosphere in these
projects with modern orchestras: one has the sense that they’re really yearning for hands-on,
detailed guidance and stylistic information when they work with a Brüggen or Herreweghe or
Gardiner. I do however believe very strongly that the combination of soloist and director has to
be just right—what doesn’t interest me is simply touring around with the same Mozart piano
concerto and working with hundreds of unknown conductors working out the details of the
interpretation in the mandatory ‘meeting’ with the maestro and then one rehearsal. Thankfully
all of my experiences have been very positive ones. Beethoven Piano Concerto, op. 19 with
Gardiner and the Concertgebouw Orchestra was an absolute highlight; so was a Beethoven Triple
with Giovanni Antonini and the Basel Chamber Orchestra.
What is the latest period piano you have performed on, and what repertoire?
A really gorgeous 1870s Blüthner in an all-Brahms programme that included the Op. 117
Intermezzi. Admittedly these were written in 1892, but Brahms’s fondness for Blüthner
instrument is well documented. I hope very much to explore more Brahms and Schumann in the
coming years.
You also play harpsichord. How many keyboards do you own?
Space is always such concern for early keyboard players. I’ve decided that I’d like to avoid
having my living room look like a keyboard warehouse, so right now I have a particularly
beautiful 5.5 octave Viennese-style Walter and Sohn copy by Paul McNulty that was built for me
in 2008; as well as a lovely little upright piano that’s light and delicate enough for work on
Mendelssohn or Schumann, for example.
You have performed with orchestras around the world, both with conductors at the helm, and
with you yourself as director. The experience must be quite different: being led, or leading.
There’s a terrific sense of freedom and calm that comes from working with a really experienced
conductor in repertoire like a Mozart or Beethoven piano concerto. They can point up telling
details in the band, or act as a referee in matters of balance and texture; all things that can make
for particularly stylish and colourful readings sometimes perhaps a little too "planned." Directing
from the keyboard on the other hand is thrilling and tremendously exciting, but one has to jump
so quickly between the vastly different roles—of musical cheerleader on the one hand to the
person who is responsible for playing the notes of the solo part. This can be daunting. But there is
a certain magic that exists in the covenant between soloist and orchestra when things are being
led by the soloist. It conjures a world of maxi-chamber music, where all members are responsible
for the success of the enterprise and therefore play in a more live-for-the- moment fashion. It also
wipes out the tendency—which I think has crept into Mozart performance particularly—for a
kind of "corporate" approach to rhythm and timing. I’m always struck, playing Mozart concertos
without conductor, that the collective approach to timing—particularly the ability to move in and
out of various tempo brackets and the possibility of small scale rubato and subdivision
flexibility—is often more sophisticated and delicate than when one has the "security" of the
conductor standing at the front.
You are particularly renowned for your performances of Mozart. What draws you to his
keyboard works?
Mozart is the most important musical figure in my life: there’s absolutely no question about that.
The more I study his music the more I’m struck by its richness, boldness, and subversiveness;
there are moments in almost everything he wrote that are seismic in their portentousness. Often
these are subtle or easy to miss, but they happen constantly and they remind me that Mozart’s
music is not just the embodiment of perfection and grace—that much is very clear—but that in
the right hands it can move one on the profoundest level.
More specifically, Mozart is at heart a theatre composer. David Cairns writes that “knowledge of
his operas has illuminated our whole view of his art. We see that his approach to composition
was that of a dramatist through and through. The piano concerto, in his hands, becomes a form of
theatre; the great string quartets and quintets are human documents, not mere patterns of
perfection...”
I felt that similar things could be said of Mozart’s writing for solo keyboard: although the
parallels to the world of opera are perhaps not as vivid as in the piano concertos, one must be on
the search for a sense of theatre in Mozart, even in the most innocent or genteel of settings. I’ve
always tried as much as possible to dispel the notion that Mozart’s music for solo keyboard lacks
drama and narrative. Indeed, it seems to me that there are unbelievably vivid, human, and
passionate elements that lie just beneath the surface of this extraordinary music, and it’s my hope
that, with careful attention to variety in timing, sound and nuance, we can redefine our notions of
what it means to play Mozart expressively.
How did you go about choosing the programme for our performances this week, pairing J.C.
and C.P.E. Bach with Mozart?
It is easy to forget that the keyboard works of Johann Sebastian Bach were largely unknown in
Vienna during the 1780s, and it was only through Mozart’s contact with Baron Gottfried von
Swieten—for whom he arranged and conducted Sunday morning concerts and who was one of
his most ardent supporters—that he became acquainted with works of the great master, not to
mention Handel and C.P.E. Bach. Nowhere are the effects of this new-found fascination more
vividly on display than in the extraordinary Prelude & Fugue in C major, K. 394 of 1782 which
opens the second half of the programme. According to Mozart, his wife Constanze was delighted
by fugues: one can imagine she might have been puzzled but no-doubt amazed by Mozart’s deft
(and highly dissonant) handling of such an ostensibly simple subject. If the fugue has gravity and
a certain Handelian lyricism, then the kaleidoscopic Prelude certainly owes a great deal to J.S.
Bach, reminding one of the improvisatory excess of the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, BWV 903.
It’s clear too that both C.P.E. and J.C. Bach were enormously influential figures for the young
Mozart. This is especially true of Johann Christian, the so-called London Bach, who met the eightyear old Wolfgang during his 1764-1765 London visit; the two remained in close contact until
Johann Christian’s death in 1782, when Mozart laments that the world has suffered a great loss
(in the Andante of the Piano Concerto in A major, K. 414, Mozart’s quotes a particularly touching
theme by his older colleague as an homage). The J.C. Bach symphony that opens the programme
(Op. 3, Nr. 6 in G major) has ebullient and fizzy outer movements—full of Mannheim-style
dynamics—but is notable for a G-minor middle movement that is deeply Mozartian in the grace
and poignancy of its melodic style, G minor here being emblematic of the suffering and
lamentation we associate with Mozart’s writing in this key in his mature operas (think of
Constanze’s “Traurigkeit” from the Abduction from the Seraglio; or Pamina’s “Ach, ich fuhl’s” from
the Magic Flute).
The connection to C.P.E. Bach, while harder to document, is undeniable. It’s easy to see what
Mozart found so attractive in the music of J.S. Bach’s second eldest son: wild, rhetorical contrasts,
extreme changes of dynamic and mood, the use of instrumental recitative (the most notable
example of this in the slow movement of the Harpsichord Concerto in C Minor, Wq. 31, and its
parallel use in the C-minor middle movement of the Piano Concerto in E-flat Major, K. 271) and a
generally mercurial landscape of gestures that is at times grotesque, at other times sublime (in the
true 18th-century meaning the word, as if being struck by lightning).
The Symphony for strings in B Minor, Wq. 182/5, opens with a first movement of turbulent
dynamic contrasts, manic unison playing in the fiddles, and uncompromising virtuosity—these
string symphonies are notoriously difficult—but quickly melts away into a central Largo that
seems to presage Beethoven in its intense pathos. The final Presto acts as a sort of blow to the
head with its frenzied diminished seventh chord arpeggios and gruff, father-Bach counterpoint,
here made to sound like angry discourse.
All in all, the contrasting worlds of the two Bach sons—J.C. with his lyrical warmth and sunny
disposition, and C.P.E. with his fantasy and madness—are elements that can be found in almost
all of Mozart.