The Performers; 3; The Loneliness of Work

what you do is behind stage alone without people they're sitting by himself at the piano without that having many many people around you and having cheering audiences that is the heart of their work with the loneliness of the loneliness of work i'm omar sharply with a conversation with lauren hollander and this is the performer the performance series concerned with the act of performance as this performance of the audience and those who prepare the way for a performer i need at the time of this interview lauren hollander was a pianist with over fifteen years of touring concert rising and critical acclaim behind at the time of this interview lauren hollander

was twenty one years old sen barbara dominant west side he had this to say about the earlier portions of his career the problem with child prodigies is mainly how they are handled and all parties have turned out badly or attended and tragedy have to do when i firmly believe how they have been handled polls apparently end the manager lee and the way in general that their career has been lead and they're even more bored and how their lives have been let out a few generations ago even last generation it was policy to take the prodigy out of school to supply tutors to but in generally i manage his life according to libya by cancer european but as in awe a little bit different than the normal american child a normal child would be handled up picking ones friends making the family attitude and family surroundings very

much to the prodigy and his life and consequently i feel that the child did not have a chance and would not have a chance to grow up in a normal surroundings with the normal joys and the sorrows of of a child which i think is so important to growing up most is how old were you at the time her first public for a while i was giving performances where when i was a baby when i was five i gave her cat in kindergarten how about it was never led to believe that this was something special and i stayed in public schools train arm through seventh grade i then skipped eighth grade and went through a private high school meant for gifted or professional children but throughout my very early childhood i did everything that the other children did i was allowed to play baseball and allowed to go to classes and you wanted to do i wanted to do these things cause i felt that oh why should i skipped very much that other children would be having i was up encouraged to practice very often i would want to be doing

other things i would want to be out playing ball playing games with my fellow children but it also knew my time i'd already no but i am i was six or seven it was a very standard procedure in my life to practice in the morning and practice in the evening and my schoolwork fit him accordingly and i was forced to do the homework and do everything else we had a wonderful family life but our everything in general was rather normal out of the fact that i've put already for five hours a day but it would appear that that played a child in order to reach the level of training necessary become a prodigy well that the torso that have been made for him in most cases no one has the head of the vision of the beethoven's father of the holdings took over him and so forth in the end determined to make a prodigy of them than all the sun because of course grew up in a very musical house so that they're not and i certainly did this is the age old question of her energy and environment feel feel many times that a mother will come

over to me and say i want my child to be a pianist what should i do and if a child doesn't have it then he's not going to be a piano sonata how much the parents want it and i have a feeling that it is the parents duty to introduce a child to everything possible within the parents means to introduce a child to and then see which areas a child shows a special talent for and which didn't even more important shows an interest in because children to be talented in one field and don't have the interest in that field and the interest will develop later event is not forced and consequently are forced to build up a year and enmity towards that particular field i know many of my contemporaries who hate music and hate the idea of work because they were just for us to practice when they were young my dad is a very fine very a famous violinist who are now has again his string quartet the american string quartet and consequently there was music in my

family as far back as i can remember if my dad was a butcher possibly we have heard nothing but discussions of maids in my family i went and a butcher however are the piano was there the music was there i saw my father was a violinist and consequently i thought ah my life would have to be in music and it's flowed very naturally from there i'll be other children my family will introduced to music and art neither my sister or my brother have taken a serious interest in it and my sisters got on the psychology of my brother although he plays a guitar does not show a serious interest in our serious music you carry the family that in this particular case our that that the point yes i have a feeling my brother make gentle beetle and then consequently the men will be carrying all sorts of history oh listen to world mention this question of of the child's interests are being necessary ingredient most people when they speak this

way of thinking of the whole philosophy of education but they're speaking about children are individuals when they're about ten years older that is the question of choice the question of attitudes are making themselves felt on this is still brings us back to the unusual circumstances that the very early age involved and and the extent to which such a very young individual i can feel such a strong inclination strong sense of choice do you think there is possible to such a such a feeling at that age i didn't really feel the compulsion to play it when you from spilling yes i can remember already now are really trying to think about this in our although it seems to me that in my mind there is really no choice because this was a field which i loved i really love music when i was a child and would get great pleasure out of listening to symphony concerts and listening to music are listening to string quartets and i thought that that anyone who enjoyed listening to music would naturally become a musician but only now i'm realizing when i

see thousands of people out clamoring to get tickets to concerts and sleeping on the streets to get tickets for concerts i realized that there are music lovers who enjoy music of music as much as i did asked to be introduced to other fields i was as i mentioned earlier my father encouraged me very much in the fields of medicine in the field of mathematics because both of them i was very interested and still am and still it seemed to me that my life's work would be music there was really no choice but there is always a choice because in school one is exposed to so many different things i was exposed to is just as many things as my contemporaries were but i guess there really is no choice when the one's mind and the body and feelings are gauged towards one career you could not talk me into music but you could not agree on that led me and i change the attack of that approach on the same subject as for the world and the question of the quality of performance that actually

happens and performance five eight year old child do you think this is primarily a matter of technical marvel or whether there's something whether or is a real performance incentive interpretation sense of genuine feel for the music itself you know there's always the target of our child how can he play something musically alchemy up with feeling into it and when i was younger and i used to hear this i would say what you mean i have i'm trying to put feeling and i'm trying to do this but only now i'm realizing when i take a work which i hadn't heard or done several years ago and now i see so much more into it and it's quieted down so much and there's so much inner beauty and you know motion that comes from it which not that you skipped over for over when you're young but i think you just don't feel it as yet and i see no reason why a young person can operate

things musically audio minnow and at the age of eleven to do that there's another beethoven i had my father said where the performance that it was deeply musical in every way that possibly can be thawed out also a person who was very young thirty eight years old nine years old is usually if he is lucky as i was under the tutelage of a great man here's a man who has many many years more experience than the child himself and if the child is people willing to learn and eager to learn as i was then one absorbs a great deal of what about one is told by a member having many different opinions around me a lot of my father when he heard me play that of my teacher but even at the early age of eight or nine i knew that i could not do and would not do a verbatim what i was told was good and my teacher's never work this way telling me this is how i should do this phrase in this is how you should do this trill a witch so what up to me and see how it would strike me and consequently i would have my own interpretations

and work out my own interpretations even at the young age of nine and ten although i really did not start playing a concert seriously until i was eleven years old when i gave my carnegie hall debut but up till then i was exposed to many different ideas and many different reputations and if you learn one thing at that age you suddenly learn that there's not one way of doing anything there is really no comparison as to what i do now when i did when i was fifteen i the only comparison is what i did fifteen compared to what i was able to do it at fifteen but what i can do now compared to what i am able to do the most important question is what i do now compared to what i will do tomorrow because with each performance i tried to add to or change or grow or re inspect and try to do more with their losses in the important that ad all these stages there be something in addition to the the technical virtuosity that is even of the very youngest that that would've had to have been some

sort of intuitive grasp of what was happening in that even if this was not to say on the same level as radio there are no life there are too many people who can do things technically perfect and there are very many young prodigious talent who can this all very important because technique is vitally important and i never minimize it because i didn't spend eight hours a day working for something that's not important technique is very important well thank you but the point is that it's not enough and consequently because there are so many people who can do it technically prodigious things that there has to be another criteria and that has to be within the sensitivity and musicality and this is what makes it important at the age of eight or nine it's fine that somebody can play out fast and clean them out and i'm not minimizing it because if anything desperate somebody forward it's the excitement of the technical feat however already the age of sixteen and seventeen they start asking well let's see what else he can do and that is usually the places where the party

start dying out unfortunately is the fact that they start relying on making the same effect that they did when they were young and not having the cuteness of somebody who was a four feet tall playing on the stage and pass what we are they do not generate the same interest or excitement and the same outfits that they were able to do for five years earlier when we are preparing a concert which includes a worker to have never performed in public before the assailant how long does it take you on average repair oh you can never have enough time really to prepare anything because you always working for deadlines and you always have the various things that come in between your deadlines ideally you can say i will need so much time to repair work but it never works out that way a professional and if you are a professional you have to repair things in the time allotted you to our plus keep your old works in conditions are some work on other new things in and do whatever you have there is a compromise reality of buses arrived and so i have steak taken time i have spent for just two years

repairing the emperor concerto and i have taken a work like the progressive second which in all sanity i say would need six months to prepare and prepared it in that i was a cortex in order what in the us three to four weeks and that's been eleven hours a day and spending it many many hours away from the panel studying the work listening to recordings discussing it with people and putting through a rush job on it as like the old story of the man going in to get a fitting for a jacket and the teller said well you'll come back every week for the next six months and we will measure the arms and the sleeves and we will have a bit of fibbing actually perfectly for you an answer but that's impossible and you tomorrow and says he'll have a beloved theme you can say and blackout that you have to spend so in so many months but if the work has to be performed at a certain time you can exert yourself to bring out into when you mention the fact that you listened to recordings of view were presented as an

interesting to note how other people interviewed a specific reason aipac recordings and the various strange way i listen to a recording as if i am playing and then i criticize accordingly how can i improve myself in that performance i'd never look at a performance to emulate what the artist does no matter how much i would admire that i've heard recordings of pieces that i've done not only by the great so called masters of two generations in front of a lot of my contemporaries and of the generation directly in front of me while greatly admired and have says no i've said that some was recording it i am absolutely astounded at excited by that recording but not allowing myself to be stimulated by it in any other way as to say well that's an interesting interpretation how can i improve upon it if that was me playing i once a day or fly list of us conductors of a listen to recordings by other conductors me immediately replied about depends upon the degree of the malice it alleges that that is a remarkable man

this question about working on the specifically mentioned that you spent two years working on the emperor concerto is there any particular patterns of actors do require technical mastery of the work and then begin getting down into its intestines such as big a power we're told what it means what it is it again depends on the map of time that you have very often i would prefer if i say i have a piano concerto band which usually three or four movements i prefer working on all of them at once even in learning the notes i will start a bit of the first movement a bit of the second movement a bit of the third movement and worked on them as if they're three different pieces technique is very important because you cannot start putting a musical ideas and to shape unless you can play them and then you keep working technically up to the moment before performance because things can always be improved an hour i do not have what i would call a natural

technique in as much as i'd have to work for it constantly you know is i've had to work for it and i think anyone can really have a natural technique because playing the piano and moving once fingers and our natural work a phenomenon us to be worked out but i would more in view of the technical problems in their white as musical problems i explain this as if you have to do something musically and you have to bring about a naturally by a technical our performance you work technically towards your musical ideas and in the light of your musical ideas and consequently you were both musically and technically when it comes to orchestras concertos you have to know what the orchestra does i insist upon knowing what every instrument is doing at every moment of every concerto and i play what about the conductor soloist relationship this is something that that i think that many labor myself included are very curious about when you have to possibly quite different creative forces coming to work on the

conservative side is a girl who weren't who was the final adjudicate and that's a very very interesting question i found that if you follow the score if you follow what was printed in the music and if you run across a conductor who generally does the same thing which was fine musicians do i there's very little to argue about i've come across in life i would say two hundred odd pages i played with different conductors i've come across exactly know arguments with the conductor i've never had a disagreement there have been slight lot of differences of opinion as to this run on that run if the conductor feels that what you're doing is right then it is his duty to allow you to do it if he wants to tell you what he feels is right and if i feel that it is an interesting idea i am more than happy to to do it the way that he feels more as a compromise between the

two if you are doing something which is very unorthodox which is usually not my way of doing something if i do something that's unorthodox i have a great reason to do it very often something is unorthodox only to the fact that it has been often done otherwise and it's become generally accepted as being done in this fashion but that is not what was meant in the composition the composer had no good reason to allow his son is laid before was to believe that that was his intention for the very fact that he didn't write so i will very often go back to the original which is very often an unorthodox as performances go and that can be really i think no serious argument against this however if i run across him and white deeply respect such as a masterminds offer mr max would also needs to sell who has an idea and something that is different than what i had thought about i am only too happy to learn from them because i

mentioned earlier there's one thing you learn in this visit there is no one right way and it is always possible of doing something slightly different how long to take to synchronize your views of those are conductive is about twenty minutes right before the rehearsal so usually get these are very serious about that i've come to do performances with the conductor who i never had a rehearsal when i came backstage and he said this is it you know slows the thief his finances that as a little bit in the wrong direction for the most part unique to conduct a once very often right before performance for twenty minutes discuss what do you do usually you played through for him or just a few passages or the trouble spots going to go on the stage and you work and though the rehearsal usually run for women breaking up the hippies into the various trouble spots tempe you discuss the phrasing here and there but in general you have a wanderer so in one quick went through with the conductor then there's a little bit of discussion over coffee a little bit of discussion on the telephone will be a discussion in the dressing room and then it's

to the windsor the book isn't what gets on unified a totally adequate on when i did the book roughly a fifth so many times very often i felt that i was going out on the stage and not a man of the opposite of what he was going i just quite frankly because it's extraordinarily a difficult an intricate work but nothing every series has happened on the stage and you always feel gee i wish i could've had a little bit more so when you work with a great conductor and the men know him in they have done so many different works in a sense find that people then there's really no question as a weather you could happen or you could always have more but whether it is that necessary to give a fine performance i want to ask you about his state's question of the clips of when the head of the youthful artist must suddenly realize oh when his parents suddenly realize oh when will probably when he suddenly realizes that but he is going to commit

himself the moment as the one the moment that little lives now in your case it seems to ride very early other things you watch for is there a way that you can tell that this is going to be alive and at a certain point i received literally hundreds of letters every year from mothers who asked me does this question how do i tell what is the way of telling if my son has touted because very often it's a serious problem for the parents if they were in a small town do they pack up the father's business and the family and moved to a city where they may have to start from scratch just to give the child a chance to work with a good teacher is it was that does he have enough talent does he want to do it it's a very serious question i really have no answer for it how you tell if a child has touted how does you learn how is he compared to other children his age in order to be a concert artist which is of such great great

rosales rat race and the competition that was involved in this field it's the chavez to be really something extraordinarily because even a mature artist has to be something extraordinary in order to get ahead though many many fine artist only i had a few make it to the so called top and although his party room they just don't make it because of public is finicky and there's much more to a profession than just playing the piano you have to be able to deliver on the fire with a minimum of time with a minimum of an opportunity there are many many different things that are involved when you're at a performance and i with a concert career i imagine it also that one has to be a parent to load to be a failure that is not a problem of failure but potentially huge i'm not accepted and still keep up with it appeared to work to take

low depths of exactly right and also even further prevented even have to be a success to have to continually sell yourself the fact that you did a wonderful performance a few months ago and had rave reviews means app absolutely nothing because you have to be able to do it again and again and again and this is where the old the proverbial eliminating the men from the boys are it is very very difficult and i would not advise it as a career because it is so difficult unless you are willing and able to give yourself one hundred percent to this committee this is something that almost everyone in the performing arts as to say we're conservative voice to the i don't go into it it's made i can't think of any career which requires more work than that of a performing artist i love the ballet dancer the musician there's no other career where you have to start the age of five or six and work so the night eight hours a day also your youth and the young manhood

and then maybe be able to get a career when you were older and even when you have a career rubenstein still works hours and hours hours a day and it never stops on how old and how well known you get because you have to continually work and continually keep itself out there as possible that some parents who returned to commit their children to a musical career or when they are very young because they seem to have a great deal of aptitude for a great deal of love of it are sometimes committing themselves to something that they themselves are not fully honest absolutely absolutely and very well put they don't know what goes into it and i think they go to a concert and they see the concert artists on the stage with a black suit and a white carnation anna and the cheering loving audience around for something on the right but that is again if there's so much that happens beforehand and so much a goes behind stage and so much a deep frustration and the loneliness of work another of of

alone work in and the problems which i think most people don't understand they see the wonderful side of it and believe me there is a wonderful side to it they see the instant friends whether you travel people adoring you for the race factor that you bring the music of the world travels i'm going around the world next year will be in places such as japan and china and out of the near and far east i've been to europe twice in the last year i will be of meeting people and going places for the rest of my life making recordings associated with great people in great great friends this is the side they see but whether they see the work and the sofa beside backstage in the the performing and all conditions and there when you're feeling well and when you're not feeling well i'll when you're fully prepare maybe not quite so prepared doing seven different caricature it and then two weeks that there is a difficult side of it to use the phrase that loneliness of work that's interesting since over all performance is in one sense a social app and act involving many

people yourself and an audience and and yet it seems paradoxical that that in a sense the the heart of that word comes from visitors over a lonely commitment has to be you can't create in there with other people again the performance is very small part of the life tiny part of the korea and therefore the the whole problem is what do you do to get the performance ready what you do is behind stage alone without people there was sitting by herself with a piano without that having many many people around you and having cheering audiences that is the part that's the word and this is the way the loneliness sets and an aura that's the real satisfaction that comes from those it was only up by the congress in the statement doesn't come from the instant friends and so forth that they have mckeough much susan wachter says and presumably the actual art of this rosemary does it does i would say places where you

play in after concerts and meeting people and having the year the walls of people who we've just met in traveling and being something more than just a tourist it's it but the rewarding is there it actually ward comes first and foremost on the music itself being able to perform a great works in dr the beauty from and i have had more enjoyment playing for a few select friends for a special friends and enjoy music together with them but the problem is it i would think that where you get the reward in the life itself in the fact that you are your own master that you do travel with the respect of people that you have a chance to perform for people which believe me out many fine artist do not have the chance to perform that you have the opportunity of doing the thing that you've been trained for and enjoying it and being a world traveler and getting the excitement from that i

will have the loneliness of our conversation with moore in harlem i'm all my shampoo and this has been the performance reviews for wypr the fm station of the riverside church in new york city it's been