Swank in The Arts; 143; Lili Kraus

Lili Kraus has been a pianist for nearly 63 years and an international concert artist for most of that time. While she was in Fort Worth, where she is artist and resident of Texas Christian University, she came to KERA for a playing and talking session that's part of a special we want to do on her later this season. This evening I'm going to share with you a little part of that lively conversation. We'd already spoken of her childhood in Hungary, her training in Budapest and Vienna on the early successes of her brilliant career. We came very soon to talk about Mozart, a composer with whose music she has long been closely associated. Well you must have been preparing an enormous amount of repertoire then if you were doing that much concertizing or did you already

have it. No darling, Chad, this grew as one organically develops but you see it is so interesting. I am again and again asked, what made you choose Mozart? Why do you play Mozart? Period. When I was 18 I was known as the Chopin player. I had a forest on my head like this, big bridge. And no matter how many he had been switched, I still was, although the hair is diminished, that big. I had in that hair, but I didn't see of the effeminate fantasy of Chopin, I don't know how polonese, they were all on the floor, the hair, all down, and I'm sure the citizens thought, God, if that isn't romantic, what is. So I was known as the Chopin

player. Then when I played with Simon Goldberg, we played the Ten Sonatas for Piano Violin. I don't know, there was a season, I remember we had 108 concerts and mostly it was the cycle. I was the Beethoven player, but I also played an enormous amount of Beethoven by myself, solo. For instance with Magnorberg, the G major concerto, which really, first the Schumann, then the G major Beethoven, which created the head in the reputation of the head. But after that, when the Mozart records came out, this was it, Mozart player. And then, time passed, came the best centennial celebrations of Mozart. I was asked by this coffee

in France to record everything that Mozart has written. And it is much easier for the agents, and perhaps even for the public. To play safe, so I am the Mozart player, and tagged the Mozart player, must be good. Mind you, when I began to play Mozart, like Schnabel, with Beethoven, or Kazal, with the unaccompanied sweets of Bach, it was a unusual manner of playing Mozart, in that it was not Rococo, and it was not a music box. It was what it is, a cosmic experience for myself, and therefore for the listeners. What do you mean? Can you show me what you mean by saying Rococo? Let's say, here is a sonata, which we composed in utter unhappiness, traveling for the

one and only time with his mother, in service his father, found himself in Paris, and within days she died. So we composed this sonata, among the seventeen, there are two in the minor key, this is one of the minor key, okay? It is an epitaph of the greatest depths dig the tragedy, name it. Now, if you play that... That's musical box, in reality, isn't it? Respectively, it speaks, in other words, it speaks, it lives, imagine a singer singing Mozart,

as he would recite that poem like that, no except now soft, now loud, now fast, now slow, but not identified. However, a real singer who knows what Mozart is, would never sing Mozart as he sings Wagner. I would not play that, like I would be better, not a wooden dream of it. There is one way that is a combination of fire burning within, not on your sleeve, restriction in accordance with the style he wrote, which was his way of expression, the nature of today's piano very far removed from the one he used, and your utter identification

with the spiritual, intellectual, and emotional contents of the piece, plus something that you cannot express, the ineffable glory. At what point in your career, these are the words of maturity and understanding. At what point in a young career does this begin to happen? This is a very interesting thing. Do you know that throughout my studies at the Academy, which was one of the best seats of learning in Europe, in Budapest, I didn't hear one note of Mozart being played, nor did I play him. Why ever now? It was not fashionable, a pianist had to play Chopin, Schumann, Rachmaninoff, ever where Schumann, Schumann, up to every degree, Beethoven, whatever, yeah, of course, Bach,

but Bach was studying material, absolutely regarded as such, the two-part invention of the World Employees' Club, yeah, all of that, but you didn't play there in concert. You didn't play that in concert. I can't remember if the Academy ever having heard anybody play Bach in concert. Anyway, so really the first time that I made the acquaintance of Mozart at all was when the orchestra played in Budapest, the Lince symphony, and I thought I died there and I was shattered, but I didn't start to play Mozart yet. I began to play Mozart really well, and I went to Vienna, very high, it was really bread, Mozart was known, not that he was appreciated in his life, nor yet at all as a really cherished and abundant concert repertoire. You know that Ipsen Tille, but I'm Tille,

who this is one of the greatest agencies in Europe, certainly the greatest in England, told me that before Mozart concerto is asked to be performed, the Greek is asked 40 times, the Tchaikovsky, 45 times Rachmaninova, et cetera, in this order. Indeed, this has changed tremendously, but chiefly so the bicentennial, because it was business, and therefore it had to be sold, records, et cetera. Was the same true of the Schubert? Exactly the same so-of Schubert, verse, in a way, because to this day Schubert hasn't come into his own. For instance, the Schubert E minor sonata, this tremendous piece in here. I first recorded, then people began to do it, not even Schnabel ever played it. I brought it for him to listen, and he knew it because he has read it,

but he hasn't ever played it. And out of the many works of Schubert, a few are known, for instance, the posthumous B flat major sonata, which I just recorded, and possibly, not sure this sonata, the Fantasia sonata. Do you know it? So beautiful, good godly. Isn't it interesting? So it's that chord. Cannot be anything else but this sonata be has this chord. Cannot be anything else but a false concerto. It's a bandot difference. So, in the same way as among the six hundred songs of Schubert,

certainly not more than the Winter Reise, the Winter Johnny and the Schoenemühlerin, the beauty formulas, the millas notes, are known if, if, a great, great amount of his songs are not sung. There is, for instance, one song called Do Liebsnisch nicht. You don't love me. Now, if you wouldn't have written anything as it is whole life, just that one song, already you would sit right in the bosom of the Lord, because I don't think that anybody, I include my Mozart, Enba, was able to so suffuse the word with the most subtle possibilities of modulations in an instrument like in this case the piano, that the madness, the obsession,

so you don't love me. So, why are there stars? So, you don't love me, but there's a sunshine, but you don't love me. You say it yourself with these words. Why do the flowers, bosom? And every time, when this thought comes back, it comes in a different key. The whole thing is on two pages, and there are, one can't see a billion modulations because it just happens, this lesser composes when there is a modulation. You are pointed out there is a modulation, and the lesser composes, the more connived it is, of course, but here they happen, they happen like the tides, or the way of the water, or birds, like they happen. And therefore, they have such power, such a terrible power,

that you are really shaken into a very beam when you're eating. Well, then why is that? That so much of this literature is not widely known. I certainly was not aware that there was this much of a body of Schubert work that was not other played or sung. You can ask, why is it that the mediocre is so embraced by humanity? And why is it that Stendahl's Lujenuar, black and red, red and black, sold 13 copies, and his publisher taught him so, and said that the rest will be used for paper as such. And he said, it doesn't matter. There will come a time when that book will be read everywhere. In fact, in Japan alone, 14 versions of translations exist. Yeah, it is, why is Schubert, why is King Lee difficult to attend?

It is, unless you follow it with your whole attention, ear, brain, heart, and that which belies beyond it, you will be brought to death, and or displeased. In the same way, depending, of course, enormously on the performance, a Mozart sonata can be deadly boring, just that, so can any great work, any great work depending on the behold or the listener, of course. Does it change your sense of Mozart to have known everything that he wrote, played it, performed it? Of course, but above all, you see, if you know the Mozart operas, know them properly, have identified with them and adore them,

as you should, you know how to play Mozart. There is no, no two ways about it. And then here, everything was an integrated synthesis, here's written, of his operas, complete with the Arya, the tuti, the boofa, all this, all appears in every work. Now, when he writes, for instance, very rare, but he does, a movement was called Andante Amoroso. Who's Amoroso is and mine, because I have to project it? Now, how could you, how could you not think of the millionaire you had heard and play? And so on and so forth, it all is a language that,

quote for the weaker ones, is controllable through the texts used, through the ways people have sung them, through the orchestras have accompanied them, and through the creative, recreative genius of the conductor who has to pull the whole thing together, you do the same thing. If you have the God-given insight, imagination, the diligence to search, research, compare, link, you arrive at a synthesis as clear as if I see my palm. That's it. So, I will not allow, for instance, my students to play Schubert, unless they know the Schubert songs or Bach, unless they know the cantatas,

the passions, et cetera, et cetera. It's all there. What comes back to you about the music of your, of your native country? Do you have a special feeling for Hungarian music? Because I have. In the way, as I'm sure La Rocha plays Spanish music differently from anybody else, and more genuinely, and Victoria De Los Angeles sings Spanish music, and Segovia plays Spanish music in an absolutely authentic and true way. So, I do, indeed, play Bartok, in a very special way, in that the meet room of the Hungarian language dictates you what to do with music because we have, contrary to French, the accent or the very first syllable. And even if the bird is from here to fourth verse, it still is on the first syllable.

Azerd, Mertén, Mekkápostási to Talán Hátok. Tegna pálőtt, Jajdejúvó. That occurs all the time in Hungarian music. The accent on the first note. This. This is not something I have to study. I couldn't do it otherwise. It is every five. But there comes a song, Sey Bartok. The song is the first.

I can't do it. It's just a piece of paper. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. And so forth. I mean, the reasons are so in my blood. And the text I saw irresistibly here, incidentally, Bartok when playing to him these folk songs, whichever, said once. It's absolutely true that in no other manifestation is the Hungarian genius, so much in evidence, as in their folk songs, because of the unity, the tune forms with the text.

The accents of the language are permanently present and expressed in the tune. There is one melody which goes... And the text to this is... A triplet. And that means sadly rushes the leaf. And this triplet, that bends so softly to the music and vice versa, is quite inimitable. You can't want the folk song, embraced the language together with their tunes. And yet it's taken quite a while for it to be understood that this goes a long way back into the past.

Most people for an awfully long time thought of Bartok as a terribly, almost amalgad composer. But my sweet Bart you mean who was avant-garde? I guess you're... It's an academy. It's an academy one didn't play Bartok. If you wanted to play Bartok, you asked your teacher, me, I played that Bartok piece, permission was given either gradually or not given. Of course he was so crazy. But this was really more his own music, but mind you also the harmonizations of the folk songs. But of course not almost he was avant-garde. And how the familiar mind you, the quartets for instance, will never be a popular or easily understood music ever. However avant-garde rest of the world goes, very difficult to access. This word never troubles you.

You are still fascinated in what's ahead in this repertoire. But you see this is like this. Why do we always think that because something is contemporary, it must be good? Why? I don't know, I'm always very bad in figures, but I would say that a vast majority of humanities output, no matter which domain, is trash. Then comes some good, some very good, some excellent. And in his grace and mercy, then the dear Lord puts one or two geniuses into the world. Now it is not possible for the contemporary to judge, is this a genius? Because they are far ahead of their time, of course. But that's not quite true. I heard the other day, this music, the music of George Crump, written for the piano, microcosmos,

and really all the, quote, known tricks of contemporary music are employed, and much more than that circular writing, mistakes, illustrations, plaque, chain, name it. Yet, I heard it three times running, three different days. There is no Bach, no Beethoven, no Mozart, no Schubert, no Heiden, that has shaken me, enchanted me, fascinated me, more powerfully and irresistibly than this music. So contemporary music, if good is good, there ain't no nothing else. If it is really outstanding, it is never mind what means I employed, if they are not connived, but are coming from a compulsive vision and are so employed that it enables the player

to totally identify and therefore the listener involved, doesn't matter what means I employed. But, of course, the cerebral attempts that make use of the material as if Shakespeare would have been great because they use the word this or love or end because we have electronics etc. It doesn't make music great. The source that triggered it, the depth it goes to, the heights it reaches, the form it finds, the passion it manifests, these are the criteria. Yesterday, today, forever. Thank you.