Pianist Nelson Goerner anticipates his long-awaited return to the Teatro Colón stage

“The question is to prioritize your intimate relationship with music,” says pianist Nelson Goerner, on the phone from San Juan, where he is part of a tour in Argentina that will conclude on Monday 5 with his presentation at the Teatro Colón for the Mozarteum season.

And immediately he expands: “My teachers have instilled me not to think so much about ‘career’, which does not occupy a predominant mental space. The path to success in things like this leads you to distort or move away from the essential, is questionable. Of course that recognition makes you happy and you have fun. It is a formidable engine to move forward, it generates good energy to get a little higher every day. ”

His thoughtful rather than exuberant interpretations with a careful choice of his repertoire are reminiscent of Edward Said’s differentiation. According to him, there are two styles of pianists, the first based on extroverted demonstration, with a repertoire in which the topics are fundamentally pianistic rather than musical; and, the second style, of a more introverted musicality, where the pianist reveals himself by revealing the score.

Nelson Goerner belongs to the latter style.

“A long awaited reunion”

-How do you find this post-pandemic tour personally and in your artistic career?

-This tour for me is a long awaited reunion because there are already two reschedulings we have done. The date of Monday 5 is the third rescheduling. Long awaited and looking forward to it. Also the tour inside.

-Always make room on his agenda for an interior tour.

-Yup. I often come to San Juan, also to the ProArte Foundation in Córdoba. They are places that I love very much and I love to be there and to come and play.

-Do you feel different when you return to the stage? Is there a before and after?

-Yes sure. I think that all of us, to a greater or lesser extent, and according to each one’s priorities, have been forced to rethink certain things. Fortunately, I have a well-stocked program this season and next. This is important to the artist because it gives you the confidence that you can bring what you do, what you have worked on all your life, to the public.

-Without that, there would be a part of him that would not be realized.

-Yup. And he shouldn’t be underestimated. It is also true that in each of us there should be spaces of silence and calm regardless of whether or not there is a pandemic. I feel a need. I always try to have space to continue to deepen. If you are in a continuous whirlwind of concerts, from one city to another, and you never stop, I don’t know how far you continue to grow.

It is necessary to have moments of silence, study, even mental study, not only in front of the instrument. You have to have holes for all of this to regenerate. It is a process that cannot be accelerated.

-A little calm is needed after an intense period.

-Of course. It allows everything to blossom without it being a forced march.

-This is very consistent with the way you approach your concerts: they are very intense emotional experiences and to be able to offer that, precisely, what you have described must happen.

In short, what is happening in a recital or concert is a manifestation of one’s interior. It is a mirror of what you are experiencing, of countless things that make up life itself. There are many factors – we will not list them all – but I think that having those periods of certain abstinence and then going out again, brings out what you really have inside.

-You can’t do what isn’t there, and to pour that inner life into a concert you had to cultivate it a lot, right?

-Yes, you have to cultivate it, cultivate it, look for it. It is an encounter with oneself. I once read that an artist is not someone who really works. Sure, he works a lot, like a convict, but in reality, more than that, he is looking for himself. And he does it in the works he is doing.

The works of the program

– Let’s talk about the works of the program that you will present at your concert. What links did you find between Chopin’s ballads, Debussy’s “Estampes” and Albéniz’s “Cuaderno IV” from “Suite Iberia”?

-Between Debussy and Albéniz, especially among these works that I have chosen, there is a strong component in common. The second of the pieces Prints (La soirée dans Grenade) It’s an incredible vision, fantastic everywhere you look at it, of a Spain that Debussy didn’t know because he never set foot in Spain. It is a vision that only a brilliant artist can evoke without knowing. How did this come about? It’s a mistery.

Manuel de Falla said: Debussy was a great admirer and one of the first to recognize the genius of Albéniz. He left it in various writings in his work as a music critic. He said Iberia it was a revolutionary work, which made the piano sound like it had not yet been done. He was very impressed with Albéniz’s sonic imagination.

-And the connections with Chopin’s ballads?

-There are links because Debussy has always felt that Chopin was one of his favorite composers. There is a relationship because, although Debussy’s sonic world later indicated other research, Chopin foreshadowed it in various ways. There is an underlying connection in the program, at times more evident like Debussy and Albéniz, at other times more hidden, but also present.

-Is there also a dramatic component in the ballads that distances Chopin from Debussy and Albéniz?

-Yup. The dramatic, the epic. But also the underwear. It is an extremely complex world. I would also say that the four ballads form a kind of cosmos in themselves when played as a whole. It is one thing to play one separately, or two, and quite another to play all four.

– Albéniz’s “Iberia” is quite new in your repertoire. How is the process of incorporating new works?

-I had never touched the four notebooks of Iberia suite Before. He had done very little Spanish music, some works by Falla, but that was enough. During the pandemic, one of the positive aspects – there were some – is that I was able to study Iberia deep inside. I’ve never done this before. It is a colossal work. They are four notebooks of terrible difficulty and complexity. It takes a lot of time. It could not be learned and played in the middle of touring.

-Where does Albéniz’s pianissimo come from?

-If we listen to the first issue of Iberia, SummonsI think it is very Chopinian in his way of dealing with the instrument, even with very important Debussian components. And in other works Iberia there is a very Lisztian component.

He even went a little further than Liszt, because he wrote such bold and almost untouchable things, if he really wants to play them as they are written. He has acrobatic things but they all make sense, he obeys an idea, a content and a structure that are incredible. Iberia is a very well thought out work, with countless indications in each piece. Albéniz had a very precise vision of what he wanted.

-What is the revolutionary component that Debussy sees in Albéniz?

-Sometimes it makes the piano sound like a guitar, it has that kind of sounds like guitar strummed, even extreme dissonance. At other times she gives the impression that the pianist is making bunches. She has an originality and a modernity for the incredible time.

-A broad tonal exploration.

-Yup. The timbre, the color, the sonic exuberance.

– Do you think there is progress in acting?

-In the progress of oneself, yes. In progress in general, n. The past has brought us a number of incredible artists who have not been surpassed, in my opinion. I think that each generation contributes with its lot or with the number of interpreters who mark it, who put their signature, but I don’t think there can be any progress.

when

Fifth function, Season 70th Anniversary of the Argentine Mozarteum. Nelson Goerner.

Program: four balladsFrederic Chopin; printsClaude Debussy; Notebook IV from IberiaIsaac Albeniz.

Monday 5th September at 8pm, Teatro Colón.

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