Leading Swiss pianist Francesco Piemontesi recalls his best and worst performances...
Francesco Piemontesi - Concert Heaven
Brahms Piano Quintet
Francesco Piemontesi (piano); Emerson String Quartet
Geneva (February 2016)
Heaven for me is succeeding in making music with absolute integrity and inviting the audience into that experience. Especially when you play with others – you feel you are not just with people on stage who are playing together; something is happening and you are one with them and the music. When that happens it’s a feeling which is difficult to describe; it’s as if you are being played. You don’t think about your fingers, you don’t think about anything anymore and you just let go. On the one hand you’re engaged, because of your feelings, but on the other hand you are sitting back and just letting it happen. You are transmitting it.
Sharing beauty and honesty in music
There have been moments like this, and I would say playing Brahms’s Quintet with the Emerson String Quartet was absolutely gorgeous. That sound and that unity: I was asking myself ‘How do I get this sound with them?’ But we did it… They were listening very well; I was, for instance, playing a phrase and they would phrase it differently, the four of them, and this was like a message. So it was then up to me either to adapt or suggest that it goes in a different direction.
It’s as if you are actually talking to each other, but you talk and tell each other about what is going on in the piece just by showing some things in the performance; they react and then you react. I think we never spent more than two minutes talking; in the end we solved everything through music. To join this ensemble that had been there for so long was quite an experience. You are a foreign body which has to work and try to be part of them.
In the end, what I’m describing is about sharing this beauty and honesty in music. You can have virtuosity, technique, you can be speedy, you can have everything, but this is not the point. Sharing this honest message is what makes it so wonderful.
Francesco Piemontesi - Concert Hell
Beethoven Piano Sonata, Op. 110
Francesco Piemontesi (piano)
Queen Elisabeth Competition, Brussels (May 2007)
I was probably never really in Hell, but there are, of course, moments where you feel the world is falling down around you. The first I can recall was at the very beginning of my career, when I was still doing competitions. The last one I did was the Queen Elisabeth Competition. In the semi-final I played Beethoven’s last-but-one Sonata, Op. 110, and in the second fugue I completely lost my way, and completely lost my memory. There’s a repertoire of about three hours that you have to practise, and for the semi-finals they pick the repertoire a few hours before you play it. I wasn’t imagining I’d be playing that sonata – I thought it would be something else – and then I managed somehow to improvise and get out of it. I thought, ‘I’m out!’
I lost my way in the music... but managed to find my way back
I heard later from the jury that, actually, they found it quite impressive that I could manage to get my way out of it without stopping or anything. So in the end it became a plus point. It was quite a trauma, though. I thought in that moment, please can I just die… At the same time I thought, later, that it was a good lesson, because in the end it happened and it wasn’t what decided my career. It was just an episode, and mistakes are allowed – they can even be funny.
A funny one which happened in the UK was when I was touring with the Hallé Orchestra; we played in Cheltenham and had only planned a little rehearsal, but I arrived very late, because there was a huge traffic jam on the M5. We couldn’t rehearse, and when I tried the piano I realised the mechanism wasn’t working properly! There was a very clear decision to be taken: either to play the whole Mozart concerto with a finger legato with no pedal, or cancel the concert. I chose the first and, believe it or not, there was a review saying I played that concert with too much pedal!