Talking to Portuguese early keyboard specialist Fernando Miguel Jalôto about his work and on the subject of Portuguese Baroque repertoire

Fernando Miguel Jalôto © Michal-Novak

 

On July 22nd 2025, I spoke to Fernando Miguel Jalôto at his home in Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal.

 

Miguel Jalôto holds Bachelor- and Master of Music degrees from the Department of Ancient Music and Historical Interpretation Practices of the Royal Conservatory in The Hague (Netherlands), a Master’s Degree in Music from the University of Aveiro and a PhD in Music Sciences/Historical Musicology from Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal). He collaborates with specialized Portuguese and international groups and is the founder/artistic director of the Ludovice Ensemble, one of Portugal's most active and prestigious early music groups. He has recorded widely, has appeared on Portuguese-, German-, Estonian- and Czech radio and on the Mezzo, Arte and RTP television channels.

 

PH: Miguel, you play harpsichord, clavichord, fortepiano and Baroque organ and you are a musicologist. Where do you see yourself primarily?

 

FMJ: First, I see myself more as a performer than a researcher, because the musicology and research came out of my need to understand and know more about my job as a performer. And, as a performer, I consider myself, above all, a harpsichordist. The harpsichord was my first instrument, the instrument closest to my heart and the one I play most regularly. But once you are in the world of historic performance practice you understand that it is very hard to draw a line in terms of repertoire, because we share so much repertoire with other keyboard instruments. Also, as a continuo player, you feel the need to study and play the organ and not just be a harpsichordist. One thing has always led me to the other. Of course, as a keyboardist in a Catholic country, you always play a bit of organ - it is part of your DNA. The fortepiano is like a continuation of the harpsichord. I feel that many fortepianists come from the modern piano, but, going from the harpsichord to the fortepiano, I feel I followed the more logical historical process. As to the clavichord, it is such an important instrument, bringing all together, forming a bridge between the organ, harpsichord and the fortepiano. I feel that, with my interest in historic keyboard instruments, they complement each other and give me more tools as a performer. I really love to play the organ and I love to play the clavichord. I also play medieval keyboards. I have an organetto and recently bought a clavicymbalum – it looks like a baby 15th century harpsichord. Its design is based on a manuscript from the late 15th century, drawn by a theoretician who produced the earliest depiction we have of a harpsichord. The maker built the copy based on this drawing. It is interesting to see that our repertoire goes back not just to the 16th century.

 

PH: Do you come from a musical family?

 

FMJ: Not really. I come from a humble family. My father was a taxi driver and my mother a stay-at-home mum. We four siblings all studied music, as our parents felt that music was really important to our education. They didn't send us to study music in order to become musicians, but my older sister did become a solfege teacher. My other sister studied singing. Both sisters played the accordion, a very popular instrument here in Portugal. My brother played the guitar. My maternal grandfather played the guitar and was a good singer. Music is in our family, but not as a family profession.

 

PH: What was your earliest musical experience?

 

FMJ: My mother always loved to sing to us; those are my earliest musical memories. She would sing folk songs, a lot of fado (typical Portuguese music) and she would make up words to adapt the songs to us children. And then, of course, there was church music. Because my sisters were already playing the piano, I started studying piano when I was five years old. I hated it because of the piano teacher, who was not very encouraging. I stopped at age ten. But I loved to sing and sang in choirs until my voice broke. By then, I felt very connected to music and my sister, who was studying singing, suggested I take singing lessons. At that time in Portugal, you could not enrol in singing lessons at a state school before age 18. I was just 16. At the Porto Conservatory, they suggested I start with all the other music subjects. Music education in Portugal offers a very rich curriculum: in addition to learning an instrument, you get solfege, music history, acoustics, choir, chamber music and composition. So, I started with these subjects. One of the subjects was keyboard practice for three years and I was expected to learn piano. With not such good memories of my former piano lessons, I said "no!"  At the school they said you could also take harpsichord. I knew what a harpsichord was, and requested to enrol to do three years of harpsichord study. It was easy to get accepted as the harpsichord teacher didn't have many students. Her name was Maria de Lourdes Alves.  From the very first moment, she was extremely kind and an excellent teacher. I immediately fell in love with the instrument and its repertoire. I recall that, after my first lesson, I already knew that the harpsichord would be a very important part in my life. That's how I started playing harpsichord and my journey to becoming a professional musician. With the Porto Conservatory considered high school level, I finished there at 21.

 

PH: That seems late.

 

FMJ: Well, I started at a later age. But, at the same time, I was starting a degree in architecture at the university. Not absolutely sure of what I wanted to do, I requested a year off from the architecture course to study music in the Netherlands. I never returned to the Architecture Faculty. I stayed in the Netherlands for seven years to do bachelor- and master's degrees, taking one year longer, because, during my masters, I became ill with a neurological disease and needed time to recover. 

 

PH: Where did you go from there?

 

FMJ: I returned to Portugal. That's when I decided I was very happy with early music. As a performer, I had received a very good education in the Netherlands. But, because of my background in architecture, I felt I also needed something more academic. So, I enrolled at Aveiro University (Portugal) to do a (second) master's degree, this time in Music Research and then a PhD in Historical Musicology.

 

PH: Would you like to mention some musicians who have influenced you?

 

FMJ: That's a nice topic, but I must say I am not a person to have big idols or huge admiration for any one person. I can admire someone's work in a particular field or in performance, how someone deals with a certain repertoire or style, but I don't remember finding any artist so amazing that I wanted to imitate the person. As a harpsichordist, my biggest reference for performance and musical understanding is Gustav Leonhardt. He would come to Portugal quite often and I had the opportunity of taking three masterclass lessons with him. He was already very old and no longer officially teaching. Of course, my main teacher, Jacques Ogg, was very important to me in many aspects. He was a student of Leonhardt, so I feel I am a "grandchild" of Leonhardt. Of course, when you study in the Netherlands you have the chance to meet amazing people. I had lessons with the Kuijken brothers – Sigiswald, Wieland and Bart. My closest friend, and co-founder of the Ludovice Ensemble, Joana Amorim, is a flautist and she was a student of Barthold Kuijken. You had the opportunity of contact with all this "golden" generation of Dutch and Belgian early music people. In general, they all make up part of my references. I'm very passionate about French music - I grew up listening to Christophe Rousset, Olivier Beaumont, William Christie and Les Arts Florissants and they were important to my education. But, as I said earlier, these are people I admire in certain areas, but I don't think that everything they do is perfect. A musician I would like to mention is the Italian violinist Enrico Onofri. I met him in Portugal on my return from the Netherlands. He is a fascinating person. I had come from all the rules and strictness of my studies and the importance of reading the treatises and sources. Enrico is very well informed, but he has this very Italian, passionate and free approach to music. I think what I learned from him was to always have the human voice and cantabile sound as my main objective in harpsichord-playing. I do think that what makes me a little different from many (or most) harpsichordists is that I really go for a very vocal, singing approach in my playing. The harpsichord is an instrument that doesn't naturally sing much, but that is my aim and something I learned with Enrico – to imitate the human voice or, sometimes, the violin, the oboe or flute. Amazingly, Gustav Leonhardt had said that when you are playing the harpsichord, you should always imagine you are playing a different instrument or even leading an orchestra, because if you play the harpsichord just thinking about the harpsichord sound, it will end up sounding very dry, mechanical, unmusical and with very serious limitations. Well, I love the instrument's limitations as one loves a person, still accepting their character faults. Enrico was very important to me, and he opened my mind to something which was already there from Leonhardt, my teacher Jacques Ogg and the Dutch school. I don't like the idea that the Italian southern approach to music is completely different from the northern European way. I don't think there is a conflict, but it's true that each of these schools stresses different aspects of musical interpretation. 

 

PH: A major part of your work is your research into- and performance of Portuguese composers. 

 

FMJ: Yes. There is still a lot to do regarding studying, recognizing, evaluating and spreading Portuguese music in Portugal itself. Portuguese classical music and musical heritage, especially relating to the 16th-, 17th- and 18th centuries, are not yet a real part of Portuguese people's lives. There are studies, there are researchers and books, but still our own people have not succeeded in making us proud of this heritage. Something very Portuguese is that we always highly value something coming from abroad, anything that is foreign, but we don't value our own repertoire or composers enough. It's funny, because, when I was studying in the Netherlands, I was also not so conscious of this heritage, of the importance of our music. But, as a Portuguese artist, you start to think it might be interesting to include a Portuguese work in a recital, and then people start asking you about the composers and the music. So, feeling I wanted to find answers for the people enquiring (and to myself) I slowly got more and more into this musical world. We have an amazing repertoire, an amazing heritage. It is not huge, of course, by comparison to other cultural and sociological communities. Portugal had a huge earthquake in 1755, one of the biggest earthquakes in human history. It completely destroyed Lisbon. It destroyed the Royal Palace, the Royal Chapel, the Cathedral and most of the monasteries and palaces of the nobility. We lost a lot of our music; for example, the whole of the music library established by King John IV in the 17th century. He himself was a composer and had created the richest music library in Europe. We know that because part of the catalogue survived. He had decided to publish the catalogue, so we know how much music was in the library. It was incredible because, besides thousands of works by Portuguese composers or composers working in Portugal, he was very interested in everything going on in Europe at the same time, collecting music from England and Poland, not to mention works from Italy and France (more standard repertoire). This explains why we have some restrictions to our repertoire. Our sacred repertoire is huge, because we had music libraries in all the cathedrals and old monasteries. Of course, many of these volumes were lost in the 19th century due to the huge persecution of the Catholic church in Portugal which culminated in the 1834 suppression of the religious orders. I have realized there are still a lot of things to discover, a lot to be done. Many of these archives are now being explored. We vaguely know what they contain, but not precisely. This music needs to be studied, transcribed and performed. What has generally happened until very recently is that Portuguese performers (again, because of this lack of belief in the quality of our heritage) have not been the best "defenders" of our own repertoire. Amazingly, the few recordings you will find of Portuguese Renaissance- or Baroque music up to the early 21st century are by foreign groups. As to my generation, let's say, we as performers want to be more aware of this repertoire, of this patrimony, and to defend it. For me, it has become essential. And I’m very happy to do it now, not only with my own group, but together with other outstanding, specialized Portuguese groups, such as Ensemble Bonne Corde (director: Diana Vinagre) and Real Câmara Baroque Orchestra (director: Marta Vicente, and with Enrico Onofri as its main conductor) with whom we have already performed and recorded a vast amount of Portuguese Early Music from the 17th and 18th century.

 

PH: Would you please outline some unique features of Portuguese music?  

 

FMJ: Yes. Something very interesting about Portuguese music history is that, because the country was small but at the same time quite important in our connections with the discoveries with Brazil, with India and Africa, we have always been a melting pot, a meeting point between Europe and all the extra-European worlds. (I have just performed some Portuguese music that has African influences - African rhythms; even the text imitates the pronunciation of the black people in Portugal in the 16th- and 17th centuries.) So we have this exotic side, let's say, but we also have always had an interesting and strong musical relationship with Italy, especially in the 18th century, because our King John V was absolutely obsessed with Italy and Rome, mostly for political reasons, but also for artistic reasons. Imported art forms have been important in modernising the country and adding cosmopolitan aspects to Portuguese culture. I am very interested in Portuguese music per se, not just in music written by Portuguese composers, but also in music related to Portugal - music by Italian or Spanish composers who had lived in Portugal, by Portuguese composers who travelled or studied abroad, composers who made their careers abroad, also in Portuguese works you can find in German or Italian libraries. I have always been interested in these ties and do not restrict myself to any one nationalistic view. In the end, it's not where you were born that makes you Portuguese or not - it's your contact with Portuguese culture, the language, etc. I don't want to create the impression that nothing is being done about researching Portuguese music. There are some very good Portuguese and foreign musicologists doing amazing work on this history and repertoire and I feel I need to contribute to that. 

 

PH: What was the subject of your PhD?

 

FMJ: My PhD was on the Neapolitan composer-singer-poet Antonio Tedeschi, a very interesting person and absolutely unknown. I first discovered him because he was writing opera librettos for a "real" Portuguese composer called Francisco António de Almeida, who was the first opera composer in Portugal. I was transcribing one of Almeida's pieces and I saw that the poet was Antonio Tedeschi. I then discovered that Tedeschi was also a composer and a singer in the Royal Chapel. I discovered 86 compositions of his in total. It was very challenging to study this person, of whom nobody knew anything. I did research in Naples, in Aversa, in Rome and, of course, in Portugal, in order to discover who this person was, to study his music and understand his influences and style, thus adding another brick to the construction of Portuguese music history.

 

PH: Miguel, on what are you focusing at the moment?

 

FMJ: I am busy with many things. I am working on 18th-century instrumental music, sacred and vocal music and, of course, keyboard music.  My recent CD is dedicated to some works of Manuel Rodrigues Coelho, a composer from 17th century Portugal. In 1620, he published a collection for keyboard instruments (organ, harpsichord, clavichord) and harp. A huge, expensive publication, it included some free works referred to as "tento" (an Iberian form close to the ricercar or fantasia). He wrote 24 of these big keyboard fantasies. The other part of the book consists of liturgical music. He also composed some beautiful variations on Orlando di Lasso's "Susanne un jour". Coelho's collection was dedicated to Philip III, the Portuguese king of the time (he was also king of Spain). An exact contemporary of Frescobaldi, of Sweelinck, of William Bird, Coelho wrote amazing music. I don't understand why this music is not better known or why it is not a regular part of programs. It is as good as any repertoire of these other composers. He certainly deserves to be better known. My CD is part of a collection that encompasses the complete works of this composer, and was recorded by different Portuguese musicians - on harpsichord, organ, clavichord and harp, a rare example of collaboration between different artists.

 

PH: I am interested to hear about the Ludovice Ensemble.

 

FMJ: This is the group I created when I returned to Portugal. I always explain that I didn't feel the urge to create my own group. I had just finished my studies, was interested in performing with different groups and thought I might form my own group after becoming "older and wiser". But I quickly realized that in Portugal the early music scene was very small and the level of performance very low. I had come from the Netherlands, where the level was amazingly high. I realized that once you moved back to Portugal, you ceased to exist! Geographically, we are not in the centre of Europe and, mentally, we are very far away. We don't exist for northern European festivals. The few Portuguese performers who want to be successful must move away - to London, Paris or Switzerland. So, it became clear that I should start creating my own group and that is how the Ludovice Ensemble came into existence. It started as a small chamber group - often a duo or a trio. It was created with my friend Joana Amorim, who is a traverso and recorder player. We started with- and still perform a lot of duos together (for flute and harpsichord: we play a lot of J. S. Bach, C. P. E. Bach, Graun, Couperin and other French composers), but we also wanted to do works with singers and other instrumentalists. Starting with German and French repertoire, we slowly moved to different repertoire and bigger works: we have performed the Monteverdi Vespers, oratorios of Alessandro Scarlatti, full operas of Lully and Charpentier and large works of Handel and Bach. It's a very flexible group, so we do what we feel like, but, also in Portugal, we perform what we are asked to do. In principle, we never say no to a challenge unless it is music in which we really don't believe. And, of course, we have started to do a lot of Portuguese music. For Joana it is a pity that there is not so much Portuguese music for flute, so she doesn't take part in all the projects we have. Our most recent recording, however, has some very interesting Portuguese music with traverso by Pedro António Avondano, one of our finest 18th century composers. As a group, we very much value our goal of service: we don't see ourselves as the main reason for what we do, but want to serve the public, to promote the heritage of Portuguese music and to present music which people in Portugal have never had the chance to hear. Last year, I discovered a beautiful oratorio by Gaetano Maria Schiassi, an Italian composer living in Portugal. An impresario, he came to Portugal to open and direct the first public opera theatre in Lisbon. We know this oratorio was composed here, although written for his native city, Bologna. We were so happy to perform this music for the first time. We love to perform these lesser-known composers, musicians on the fringe of the mainstream. Then, two weeks ago, I did a program of French Baroque music written for women's monasteries - music by Charpentier, Lully and Paolo Lorenzani (a little-known Italian composer who lived in France at the same time as Lully and Charpentier. He was court musician to Queen Maria Theresa.) These composers have all written music for female voices, music to be sung by nuns in the convents. I am not much into some of the newest trends, but we are aware, for instance, of the importance of music by women composers and the role of women in the construction of modern society. I belong to a research group which studies the role of women in Iberia (Portugal and Spain). Of course, we don't come across a lot of women composers, but there were women who were very important performers or sponsors of music, in particular, queens and ladies from the nobility. In October 2025, we will perform a concert of music that was written and performed by nuns in northern Italy, nuns living in convents around Milan, Brescia, Venice, etc. We like these challenges. We also love to play the big standards. Next year, for example, we are doing Bach's B minor Mass. 

 

PH: Do you produce editions?

 

FMJ: I have edited and transcribed thousands of pages for Ludovice concerts, and occasionally for other groups; many times, they are for first performances, but I have never found any editor who would be interested in publishing these pieces. When I retire, I think I will send a lot of this music to IMSLP, the website sharing public domain scores. You don't make money from it, but I have received so much great music from there, that it would be my way to pay back and share some of the music I have edited.

 

PH: Dare I ask you your views on the historical performance practice movement?

 

FMJ: Throughout my musical career, I have always been interested in historic performance practice and in things related to it. For me it's my life, my way of understanding music. I cannot understand music in a different way from the historical performance practice movement, even when I play contemporary music. My approach is to try to get as close as possible to the composer's intention, to know as much as possible about the context of the music. Of course, the older the music, the less we know.  The only way for me is to do research and exploration. But I must say that I don't like to "do archaeology" on stage: I like to collect as much information as possible, to get as close as possible to the style, and 99 per cent of the time that's what I need and it's more than enough. But, as a 21st-century musician, if it doesn't serve the music and the public, I am then ready to change it. Again, one thing is what a scholar/researcher must do and the other thing is what a performer must do. The performer should not be a slave to facts or of information, but to make real music. I tell my players that when we are on the stage. I don't want the audience to "listen to the score" but to feel moved - to cry, to laugh. I am quite conservative. In the early music world over the last 15 or 20 years, you have people going for crossover performances between early- and folk music, lots of percussion, inviting musicians from the world of jazz and world music to collaborate. I am not particularly fond of performances that combine, for example, a clarinet with a theorbo, claiming it is "historic" performance". That is not my vibe at all.  I'm a bit old-fashioned, but that doesn't mean that, if there is something clever that really serves the music, I would not accept the challenge of building these bridges between different musical worlds. For example, in 2022, we went to the Felicja Blumental Festival (Israel), where we were asked to create a kind of "panoramic" view of Portuguese music history. We presented music from the 12th- to the 21st centuries. Of course, when you do something like that, you cannot assume or tell people that you are doing everything historically correctly. To do that, I would have needed not just one harpsichord but maybe six - one for each time period. And, following that logic, a recorder player would not be able to play a 20th-century piece that was not written for the recorder. But the challenge was so interesting, and the concert was very good. We also added some folk music to give a fuller vision of Portuguese music, in which art music and folk music are so interconnected. For instance, in the late 18th- and early 19th centuries, there was a certain song genre called the "modinha", which developed simultaneously in Portugal and Brazil. It developed from so many different influences, like from folk songs and from African dances, so it was important for us to include this music. I am not against a good project that puts together world music and early music.  

 

PH: Do you teach?

 

FMJ: Not regularly…unfortunately. On my return to Portugal from the Netherlands, I did teach children for seven years but was not happy doing it. I love children and consider working with young people to bring them close to classical music very important. There are some children studying music not because they want to, but because their parents think it is "fancy".  I would love to teach on the academic level. In Portugal, there are very few schools that are interested in teaching serious historic performance practice. So, I teach through my group. In 2021, 2022 and 2024, we ran a summer academy project. It was for advanced students and young professionals, but we also had a program for 13- to 17-year-olds, in which they could have their first contact with Baroque instruments and Baroque performance practice. The course also included Baroque dance and Baroque theatre, because I see them all as existing together. We had daily concerts or recitals, so the young people could hear a lot of repertoires. We ended each course with a small but fully staged production: one year we did “Les Fontaines de Versailles”, a chamber opera by Michel Richard Delalande; another year we did Monteverdi's "Il ballo delle ingrate". What was very special was that the teachers always played together with the students, showing them how music is made, rather than just telling them how they should play. The staff also prepared the students for real situations - what to do if a violin string breaks in the middle of a concert, or if the reed of an oboe is not responding, etc. 

Here, in Portugal, I get invited to run some master classes - organ, harpsichord or musical interpretation. And in England, I regularly collaborate with a training programme for both young professionals and advanced amateurs at Benslow Music Centre (Hitchin, Hertfordshire), which offers teaching of historical performance practice in the fields of Baroque opera and oratorio, and again, not just music, but also dance and acting.  

 

PH: Would you like to mention something of your future plans?

 

FMJ: Yes. To keep surviving and doing what I love to do. Every day is a fight to get more concerts and to do what I believe is beautiful. I am a very pessimistic person, but I have future plans about which I am happy - the B minor Mass next year in Portugal; a French music concert at the prestigious Valletta Baroque Music Festival in Malta in 2027; a few other concerts and also some articles I am soon publishing for my research work, as well as seeing if there are some teaching opportunities. I am going to Brazil next week, which is exciting. It is the first time I will be crossing the Atlantic. We will be doing a program of Iberian dance music there, a project involving myself and three Baroque dancers. Again, combining music with other arts.

 

PH: When it's not music, what interests you?

 

FMJ: I don't know if it is because of my past in architecture, but I am very much into the visual arts, mostly Baroque art, and am always trying to further my knowledge in it. If I am not reading about music, I often read about Baroque painters, about perspective, visual rhetoric, about architecture - Bernini, Borromini, Guarini, etc., and about Portuguese art history. One of the articles I am soon publishing in Rome is cross-information on music and visual arts. I am also very passionate about reading religious history and about religion in general. The only physical activity I like is walking. I take long walks. I have done three different Santiago pilgrim walks. I like to go to the beach nearby. I also take care of my 90-year-old mother and there is my cat, Mimi. A typical Sunday afternoon will see my mother and me both on the sofa reading books, there will be some music playing in the background and Mimi, of course, will be present.

 

PH: Miguel, many thanks for your time and for sharing so much of your knowledge and musical experiences.

 

Talking to Omer Meir Wellber about "Proximity or Closeness", the Raanana Symphonette's upcoming project - Mahler, Schnittke and dance

Omer Wellber (photo:Wilfred Hoesl.Courtesy Raanana Symphonette)

The domains of music and dance meet and intermingle naturally, with the initiative for connecting the two arts usually coming from dance companies. However, such a meeting of the two in "Proximity or Closeness" is the initiative of Maestro Omer Meir Wellber and the Raanana Symphonette Orchestra, of which Wellber has been music director since 2009. This project, featuring Mahler's "Quartettsatz" and Alfred Schnittke's Allegro (from “Piano Quartet in a minor after Mahler) will be presented to the public in two concerts (February 7th, 8th, 2023, at the Raanana Centre of Performing Arts). The piano quartet will consist of three members of the Zori family - Carmit Zori (violin), Nitai Zori (violin) and Hillel Zori ('cello) - with Omer Meir Wellber at the piano. Two dancers - Giorgia Leonardi and Emilio Barone will perform to the works, as choreographed by Ermanno Sbezzo; all three dance artists hail from Italy. The concert will conclude with Beethoven's Symphony No.5 in C minor. 

On January 16th, I had the pleasure of talking to Wellber in Milan, Italy.

 PH: Maestro Wellber, I have noticed that, throughout your career, your music-making has had connections with other art forms. 

OMW: Yes. I am presently doing a lot in conjunction with dance. My relationship with dance started when, as a young adult, I worked as a pianist for ballet lessons. Today, I make a point of involving dance in my productions in Palermo and Vienna. For some reason, dance is considered a "secondary" art (with conductors often being paid less to conduct for dance productions than for concerts of music.) I see great importance in bringing the status of dance to the level of concert music. 

 PH: And your collaboration with choreographer Ermanno Sbezzo? 

OMW: This is a new connection. We wanted someone young and to bring the younger generation of artists to Israel, especially as Israel has an interesting dance scene. I met with Ermanno Sbezzo before the summer. We talked, I introduced the music to him and then left it with him. I want him to do what he chooses to do with it. He is very young. I like to see what these young artists can do. 

PH: The music you have chosen is certainly very different from more familiar concert fare. 

 OMW: Yes. Audiences will be in for a big surprise. They are used to hearing Gustav Mahler's symphonic works for very large orchestras and some might have heard his songs. However, together with the dancers, we will be performing the Quartettsatz (the first and only complete movement of his Piano Quartet in A minor) followed by Alfred Schnittke's original reworking (and not completion) of Mahler's sketches of the quartet's second movement. Schnittke starts off with fragments of one of the main themes from the quartet, proceeds with music of his own taste and style, then finally bringing back the mood of Mahler’s quartet before ending the movement. I am a great admirer of Schnittke. For me this production is a dream. It is a discussion between time and between two sick men who find themselves on the same canvas. 

PH: Why did you decide on Beethoven's Symphony No.5 to end the concert? 

OMW: It is also built on one motif. And Beethoven is another giant. 

PH: This is a very unique program! 

OMW: Yes and no. One hallmark of the Raanana Symphonette's repertoire is that it is enterprising and different; so, you might say that "Proximity or Closeness" is yet another unique program of the orchestra's repertoire and the direction in which it is going. 

PH: But don't you find the conservative taste of Israeli concert audiences limiting for such different programs? 

OMW: No. I think the problem lies with those in charge of programming concerts. 

PH: So, what is the secret to attracting audiences to different programs such as this? 

OMW: Trust. Once you gain the public's trust, you can do it. That is the main issue. It's like telling the truth. 

PH: Maestro Wellber, many thanks for your time. 

Born in 1981 in Beer Sheva, Israel, Omer Meir Wellber began his musical training at age five, playing the accordion and piano, taking up composing by the age of nine. He studied conducting and composition at the Jerusalem Academy of Music. He was assistant to Daniel Barenboim for two years. Today, in addition to his role as director of the Raanana Symphonette, Omer Meir Wellber serves as music director of the Volksoper Wien, music director of the Teatro Massimo Palermo and artistic director of the Toscanini Festival.

Talking to pianist/fortepianist Shuann Chai about her career, pianos and her thoughts on music and on performance

Ⓒ  2019 Shuann Chai

 

On September 15th 2021, pianist/fortepianist Shuann Chai and I spoke at her home in The Hague, Holland. The Chinese-American artist is an active and engaging performer, critically acclaimed for her interpretations on both modern and historical instruments. A soloist and chamber musician, Ms. Chai has is also increasingly in demand as a teacher:

 

PH: Shuann Chai, I see you started off with an undergraduate degree in both biology and piano performance at Oberlin College. Were you on your way to making a career in the sciences?

 

SC: Well, I was very interested in studying medicine, but also biology, anthropology, and languages! So, Oberlin was a great playground for me. I was able to take a variety of different classes, scratch all of those itches and see what I wanted to do. Gradually, I realized that, despite my fascination with other subjects, I didn't feel compelled to make a life in those fields, but did feel compelled to make a life in music. 

 

PH: Are you from a musical family?

 

SC: Both my parents are musical and love music very much, but neither are musicians. My father was a physicist and my mother a restaurateur.

 

PH: What were your first musical experiences?

 

SC: Saturday morning cartoons! I remember hearing some music on the “Smurfs” that was so exciting and my mother said it was written by a man called Beethoven. I was so impressed that someone could have a job writing music for my favourite cartoon. I think I’ve always really associated music with narrative, even if it was just an internal one. I was also lucky to have had a really wonderful piano teacher named Jack Radunsky, who was almost like a grandfather to me. My mother ran a restaurant at that time, so I brought him lunch most school days. Some days, to be honest, I never went back to school! He would play recordings and we would chat for hours. (This was back in the days before mobile phones. I don't think it I would be able to get away with it today!) I learned so much listening to Cortot, Rachmaninov, and all the ‘Golden Age’ pianists. Jack encouraged me to be a critical and open listener, and he had a lifetime full of stories to share. As a teenager he heard Ravel play in Chicago, ran into Rachmaninov on a snowy NYC street, and also once found himself seated next to Leonard Bernstein on a flight. All these things made an impression on me and gave music some three-dimensionality far beyond just sitting at the instrument and playing. It was kind of a whole-life philosophy. Those were really meaningful influences for me when I was young. 

 

PH: Where did you grow up?

 

SC: In the Cleveland (Ohio) suburbs. When I was 11, we moved to Oberlin, which was great. I was just on a bicycle in a small town and could go to the Conservatory, the library, or hear some concerts. As a young person, I had a lot of autonomy to just follow my whim. 

 

PH: And your higher music education?

 

SC: I went to Oberlin as an undergrad, and for my Master's I went to Boston - my first experience of a large city. The Boston Symphony Orchestra was right on the doorstep of the New England Conservatory and I made use of that. It was such a completely different world, to be surrounded by musicians in a conservatory setting as well as a whole community of professional musicians. It was an eye opener for me and a lot of my friendships from that time have endured.

 

PH: When did your interest in historic keyboards begin?

 

SC: I became interested in historical instruments in high school when. I attended a master class of Malcolm Bilson. I was totally hooked right away and went to his master classes as often as I could.

 

PH: Are you more at home with the modern piano than the fortepiano?

 

SC: In the beginning, I felt a lot of pressure to choose one instrument or the other, to identify myself as an early keyboard player or a modern piano player, but I stopped worrying about that a while ago. I think of pianos as more of a family tree, without a stark ‘historical/modern’ division, and I feel it is my task to get to know the piano that is in front of me and play my best on it, whatever it may be.

 

PH: Have you played harpsichord?

 

SC: Unfortunately, I was never able to make the time to do so.

 

PH: I understand that a major project of yours has been performing the Beethoven Sonatas on period instruments.

 

SC: Indeed. Well, that has been a big stop-and-start thing. I started having the idea in 2012 and was hoping to finish all 32 of the sonatas around mid-2020. (That was, of course, derailed by the corona crisis.) It has been a fantastic journey for me because this repertoire and Beethoven's life just happen to span the development of the piano from an early five-octave instrument to a six/six-and-a-half octave instrument at the dawn of the Romantic Age. By the end of Beethoven's lifetime, the piano was going in all sorts of directions. He couldn't hear these last steps, but he could feel them. I think that's a powerful statement and we're so lucky to have one repertoire that encompasses the gestation and the growth of our instrument in this way.

 

PH: On what pianos have you been playing them?

 

SC: I’ve been able to perform many of the sonatas on the 6-octave Rosenberger piano (1820) that I’m fortunate to have on loan. Some other excellent instruments I’ve been lucky to play on have been 5-octave originals from the collection of Edwin Beunk in Enschede as well as a 5.5-octave Broadwood piano that was the direct predecessor of Beethoven’s Broadwood at the Cobbe Collection in England. Recently, I made a video recording of the “Appassionata” on a Broadwood from 1808; what a wonderful sound, so illuminating! (I’ve also performed the sonatas on modern pianos, of course.) Every fortepiano is so different, depending on the maker, the geographical origin, whether it is original or a copy. It's a little like chemistry - that you have to calibrate and re-calibrate every time you meet a new instrument; there are things that they teach you. For example, with the five-octave pianos you really get the sense that Beethoven is trying to push through a sound barrier, an instrument barrier, an aesthetic barrier. The excitement generated by this tension often gets lost on the modern piano, because, of course, the modern piano can do anything, mechanically; and our 21st-century ears have been challenged by plenty in the meantime. But I think if you are clear about that sense of challenge, of trying to break through boundaries, you can bring that idea to any instrument.  

 

PH: Would you like to mention the keyboard instruments you have?

 

SC: Sure. The earliest one is a 5-octave Stein copy made by Philip Belt.  It is a delightful, crunchy instrument, fantastic for C.P.E. Bach and Haydn. The 6-octave instrument is an original built by Michael Rosenberger (Vienna, c.1820) and restored by Edwin Beunk This piano is on loan to me from the National Music Instruments Foundation here in the Netherlands. It's a very lyrical instrument with a deep bass tone, a beautiful, silvery top register and a Turkish stop. Then I have a lovely French Erard (1862) and my New York Steinway D, which has been with me the longest. A big family of pianos! I’m incredibly lucky.

 

PH: Would you like to speak about your chamber music activity and collaborations?

 

SC: Yes. I have so many wonderful colleagues and very different ones, as well. It's inspiring. My husband is a violinist, so we do a fair bit together and that's always a pleasure. I am also very fond of playing piano four hands and two-piano repertoire, which is something I think pianists should do more often. We can learn so much from each other.

 

PH: I read that you have collaborated with dancers.

 

SC: I have, yes! One was with the music of John Cage; I hear so much movement and physicality in his music, even in his silences. I also put together a project around the music of Prokofiev, whose music I find uniquely narrative. With both pieces it was important to me that the musicians were a dynamic, interactive part of the show and not just accompanying the dancers from the side wings of the stage. Both experiences were fantastic fun and I learned so much. I really hope to do it again. 

 

PH: Do you engage in much modern/new music?

 

SC: Well, in my Boston days, I did a lot. There were so many universities in Boston with Composition departments and there was always new music to play. I have done less of that since coming to the Netherlands, but my chamber music connections bring me in contact with modern programming and that's wonderful. I love to swim around in new sounds, looking for that personal connection, that personal “way in”. That's important to me, whether it is music from a classical- or contemporary era. 

 

PH: Let's go back to early music. Where do you personally stand as regards the Authentic Performance Movement of the mid-20th century?

 

SC: I think the word "authenticity" has been applied in many different ways since the movement for historically-informed performance first began, but it has recently become a catch-all for performances on any historical instrument. When a concert is advertised, for example, with the tag line "This is authentic Beethoven”, I wonder what that’s supposed to mean. Authentic to whom, exactly?" A music critic, a teacher, a connoisseur in the audience, one’s own colleagues, perhaps? The only certainty is that all of those people will have their own views and standards of ‘authenticity’, which turns out to be yet another subjective label. On the other hand, the authenticity of one’s Self, when expressed in performance, is something that every musician can develop and aspire to. In this case, an authentic performance is an informed one, and the performer has to do the groundwork. That means that you have to think about the composer and his or her intentions, and there are many aspects to consider - the instrument, the aesthetics of the time, articulation, expression, rhetoric...all of these things.  And then, informed by all of this, the score becomes a message from the composer to you, which you then have to relay to an audience in your own voice, in your own sound. This is the process of interpretation. I am always mystified when people say the performer has to "stay out of it" or when a performer says "I don't want to get in between a composer and the audience." I suppose I understand the intention of a statement like that, but I feel it's my responsibility, my duty, to "join the hands" of the composer and the public. And then, to think about authenticity, you have to take a risk and there will be people who are going to say this isn't authentic. And I think: "If it isn't authentic to you, if it doesn't jibe with your vision of how Chopin should sound or whatever, that's absolutely fine." That's actually necessary. We don't have to like- or agree with everything we hear. But I think, as an interpreter, you have to put your foot down and you have to say: "This is my interpretation. I have done the groundwork to the best of my ability." And every performer also has to say: "As I grow and change, as I learn more and hear more, so will my interpretations of pieces change.”  I hope they do. I hope they grow. I think that's what we can best hope for ourselves, that, as musicians and artists, we continue to grow, that we continue to change, that we continue to learn from the composers, from the generations before us, from our colleagues. All these things can shape authenticity. The short version of that is that I believe authenticity should come from yourself and not from the idea that a performer cannot hope to meet some external standard of authenticity, because, frankly, I have no idea what that means, as it means something different to everybody. 

 

PH: Would you like to talk about your work in education?

 

SC: I love teaching. I absolutely love it. I think it is amazing that someone comes to play for you, that they open themselves to your musicianship in such a trusting way. Teaching is a synthesis that you make. I try never to come and say "This is the way I think this piece should go and here’s how you should play it." Rather, I try to hear what someone is offering and where they want to go with it and then I think of a lesson as a dynamic interface, of where your aesthetic and their intentions meet. I also find it interesting when students ask me for tips on practising or something and, after helping them, I go to the piano and realize that I haven't even taken my own advice! That can be very confronting, but I love moments like that and I have to ask myself: "Why haven't I done it?” I love seeing that the tradition of teaching and learning still goes on and seeing the energy and enthusiasm of young musicians who are really stepping onto the stage and putting themselves out there out of love for this craft and the love for music. I think it is so moving and I absolutely love being a part of that process. 

 

PH: And your future plans?

 

SC:  I have several some recordings that have been rescheduled multiple times because of the corona crisis, but I hope they will come around: Songs by Alban Berg, chamber music of Brahms, and a couple of solo recordings - the Schubert Impromptus and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”. And, of course, Beethoven is always on the radar!

 

PH: How has the corona pandemic influenced your thinking?

 

SC: It has been a really challenging time for everyone, and for the arts, globally, it has forced us to reckon with the fact that the place of arts in society is not where we would like it to be. It makes a lot of us question our place in society, which is painful, but personally it has forced me to focus and not just go through my agenda on autopilot. I’m much more intentional now. It's a silver lining for me and I think we have to try to find something positive in all of this, because positivity keeps our hearts open and open hearts are what arts need in order to thrive and grow. 

 

PH: When it's not music, what interests you?

 

SC: I love to cook; I love to eat. I love to read and I'm fascinated by my daughter, who is seven. I'm such a lucky mother (not that it is easy all the time) but I find her, and children in general, amazing. And I'm grateful for friends and the community that I have...also family. So, when it's not music, I'm wondering if there is someone I would like to call. Sometimes people just need a little lift, and I feel good about reaching out and letting friends and family know that I think of them and that they're loved. Keeping friendships and connections alive is really important to me...recommending books to each other, passing on recipes… It's all a part of enjoying life and finding your enthusiasm and just hoping for the best for everyone. 

 

PH: Shuann Chai, many thanks for your time and for sharing your thoughts and experience. 

 

An interview with Mahan Esfahani from 2014

Mahan Esfahani (vancouversymphony.ca)

 

On November 2^nd 2014 I spoke to harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani at his London home. Born in Tehran in 1984, his father gave him his first piano lessons. He then went on to explore his interest in harpsichord and organ in his teen years. In 2009, Mahan Esfahani made his Wigmore Hall solo debut, then making history with the first solo harpsichord recital ever at the London Proms of 2011. A celebrated soloist and recitalist, Mahan Esfahani has performed much in Britain, Europe, the USA, Canada and Japan.

 

PH: Mahan Esfahani, what are your earliest musical memories?

 

Mahan Esfahani:  My earliest memories are of my father playing on our upright Petrov piano at home in Tehran. I guess I have no memories that are not connected in some way to music. In 1970, Deutsche Grammophon put out a giant set of LPs, which my father bought. It included a lot of Beethoven works - all the symphonies (the bad stuff too, like the “Battle” Symphony) but also works of Verdi. So I grew up hearing a lot of recordings of Klemperer, Ferdinand Leitner (there was the great Leitner recording of “Fidelio”), Wilhelm Kempff, etc.  (This seems ironic today, as I recently signed a contract to record on Deutsche Grammophon!)

 

PH: So you are from a musical family.

 

ME: Yes, certainly. On my father’s side, they are all quite artistic: they played music and wrote poetry. My uncle was a painter and my mother is a painter.

 

PH: Would you like to say something of your early musical training?

 

ME: I was five or six and was always asking my father to teach me about music. He taught me some of the rudiments of piano – scales etc. I had such a strong desire to play the piano and could not get enough of it.  After listening to my father’s LPs, I remember once saying to him that I wanted to do “that”. So, he taught me to play melodies, like that of the last movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No.9. When I was probably around six years of age, my father sent me to a piano teacher for lessons. I never needed to be told to practice; in fact, the worst punishment for me was to have the piano locked! I also played the violin from age of nine.

 

PH: So you did not go to a music school.

 

ME: No. It was all private lessons. I studied piano throughout my childhood and teen years. At school, I was the musician-clown, playing piano for all the various occasions. However, what I really very much wanted to do was composition. I was really into it when I was about 9 or 10 and all through high school. I wrote a lot. Then I discarded most of what I had written, but kept a couple of movements here and there – a couple of movements for string orchestra I had written at age 14 or 15 when we were away on vacation, a few songs, a couple of pieces for piano, a small piece for piano and violin, and some other things. It is all charmingly mediocre.  I never took composition lessons and had nobody to guide me, but I did read books on theory, harmony, modern music and all that.

 

PH: What kindled your love for the harpsichord?

 

ME: I was very interested in music history and, at some point, I read a book about an instrument called the harpsichord, found a harpsichord kit, put it together and started playing on the instrument. At age 17, I went off to Stanford University, where I studied Musicology and History. (Actually, my parents were intent on my studying medicine, but I really did not want to…which was a bit awkward). In the Music Faculty there were a number of harpsichords. A student friend and I would always meet for dinner on Fridays. My lessons ended around three o’clock and he would study till six. While waiting for him, I would go to listen to the Kirkpatrick’s complete Bach recordings, to a lot of Landowska, Leonhardt, Koopman and Růžičková, George Malcolm and others.  And then I had some lessons. I would contact any harpsichordist coming to San Francisco and ask them for a lesson or two. Well, I was studying Musicology for four years, but, somehow, I was always at the harpsichord practicing. In the corner of the harpsichord room at the university, there was a virginal and I would also play on it. So, I just really found my own way into the field. Then there were some summer courses I attended, one of which I took with Ed Parmenteer in Michigan. He talked about ornamentation and that was quite interesting. I took an ornamentation table and put it up in my dorm room and studied it. Then I went to hear British composer Brian Ferneyhough; he lectured on modern music - Serialism and Stockhausen. And I met American composer Lou Harrison, who, of course, has written music for the harpsichord. So, I got into modern music, but just on a theoretical basis.

 

PH: So you finished your undergraduate studies at Stanford. Where did you go from there?

 

ME: I finished my thesis and moved to Boston, where I began to take private lessons with (Australian-born) harpsichordist Peter Watchorn. And then I worked with Alan Curtis. But of all the harpsichordists I had heard on recordings, I liked Czech harpsichordist Zuzana Růžičkova’s playing the best. She heard some recitals I played and was very encouraging.

 

PH: How did you start performing?

 

ME: In 2006 I played a recital in Berkeley, but my first really professional recital - my European debut - was at a festival in Tuscany in 2007. I played a big all-Scarlatti program. Well, I was just 23 and chose to play all the difficult pieces! My performing career just kind-of happened. If you give one concert, another concert comes along and then you get called for four concerts…and on it goes until you realize you are making a living from performing. I was, however, never really a part of the “harpsichord circle”.

 

PH: What does your performance diary look like at the moment?

 

ME: I play around 75 recitals a year. I’m a recitalist. That’s what I do. I do not really play much chamber music. I don’t play in ensembles but I have played a lot of concertos.

 

PH: Do you prepare editions?

 

ME:  Only for my own use. I did, however, orchestrate Bach’s “Art of Fugue” for the Proms a few years ago. I transcribe a few little concert pieces for myself. 

 

PH: How do you see the solo harpsichord recital stage faring at the moment?

 

MS:  I would like to see the harpsichord respected as a recital instrument the way the piano and violin are! That’s my goal. If your average concert-goer attends harpsichord recitals as he does piano recitals, I will feel I have achieved something. Actually, there have been no problems with the mainstream public. If there has been any resistance, it has been from the harpsichord community itself, which does not accept the harpsichord as a solo instrument…especially when it comes to modern music.

 

PH: How do you relate to the Authentic Movement?

 

ME:  I address it with much curiosity. I have always read sources and continue to read them in French, German and Italian.  I think “authentic” is a marketing trick. I believe in authentic performance, but the whole movement has led a lot of people to teach certain mannerisms, resulting in a lot of artists doing exactly the same thing! They seem to have a set of strict rules and anyone who thinks outside of them is shunned.  I think that reading the sources points to the spirit of what this music was supposed to be. I do not want anyone to stand between me and the composer. Well, when working on contemporary music, I often have the composer sitting right next to me by the harpsichord and that is such an advantage!

 

PH: This brings me to my next question. Do you play much modern and contemporary music?

 

ME: Yes. I play a lot of modern music on the harpsichord. I think it is wonderful. I also commission works. So, I play works by such composers as Poulenc – modern music let’s say – but I also play music of living composers.

 

PH: What contemporary composers have you played recently?

 

ME: Well, I recently played a piece by a young British composer called Daniel Kidane. He won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Composer Award and received a commission from the society to write a work for clarinet and piano. He is very good. I have just had a piece sent to me by a German composer called Markus Zahnhausen and am learning a few works by Danish composer Axel Borup-Jørgensen. Then there is Sunleif Rasmussen, another Danish composer. And I have just recorded Steve Reich’s “Piano Phase” and Gorecki’s Harpsichord Concerto for Deutsche Grammophon, coming out in April. 

 

PH: Do you see playing the harpsichord in today’s concert halls a problem?

 

ME: No. It has not been an issue till now. Especially for recitals it is a non-issue, in my view.  Modern listeners’ ears become used to the fact that the harpsichord is quieter than a piano. The decay of tone of the harpsichord comes very late and a piano is not that much louder. The piano has a big contrast of sound, which is why you hear it so clearly in a piano concerto. The harpsichord, on the other hand, integrates with the sound of an ensemble.

 

PH: When you are playing a recital, are you in your own private world of deep concentration or do you sense you are communicating with your audience?

 

ME: It depends. There are times when a recital is all about communication and there are times when I want nothing more than the audience to just watch me play and I share with them what I am doing for a couple of hours. But sometimes it is a sort of voyeuristic act; the audience is just watching me practice, in a sense.  However, that is also a form of communication. And, of course, performance has got to be about communication. To some extent, I cannot resort to baby talk: I simply have to play the piece for what it is and the people will glean from it what they will, but, now and then, I will underline a point musically. One might resort to unauthentic means to point out something to the listener, and I think that is perfectly fine if the listener gets what the composer is saying.

 

PH: So how do you feel on stage?

 

ME: It is probably the only place where I am completely happy. You see, life is much more difficult off stage. On stage it is easy. You do what you want to do. There are no restrictions on stage…for me, at least. You know, I just do what I want. I take a lot of risks; sometimes they work, sometimes they really do not work.

 

PH: In which case, recording must be a very different ball-game.

 

ME: Of course, it is. You have got to commit something to disc which can bear listening to again and again and again. That is difficult.

 

PH: Do you find yourself compromising when you record?

 

ME: Rather than say “compromise”, I would prefer to say “I acknowledge that what you hear on the recording is simply the decision I made at that time”, whereas in recitals, I will make different decisions every time on some things; but there are some things that are obviously fixed – there are fixed variables, fixed posts and there are variables.  In recitals, some decisions depend on what I pick up from the audience and sometimes I might just decide to try something new that day. The performer, the interpreter, if you like, especially in Baroque music (but actually in all music) has a sort-of position of co-creator with the composer and that will change as I think of new things, discover new things or realize certain mistakes. I think there is a tacit agreement between listener and performer that there are no fixed interpretations. Unfortunately, in the age of recordings, we assume otherwise, but that is just not tenable.

 

PH: Let’s go back to your composing. Have you returned to it?

 

ME:  Yes. a little…for enjoyment.

 

PH: Do you do anything with oriental music?

 

ME: Yes.  Am very interested in Eritrean music and have been transcribing a lot of their folk music. I also like listening to Turkish music – classical Turkish singing, Ottoman court music, actually.  This is a new-found interest; I like non-western music. I am very keen on Bartok’s music and have started to write some music inspired by Bartok’s style but based on Eritrean music.  These are still early days of my composing, but one is always looking for new material.   And living in London means being in a diverse city; as it happens, I live in an area where there are a lot of Africans.  It is really interesting seeing and hearing their culture.  

 

PH: What composers are you performing at the moment?

 

ME: A lot of Rameau, whose complete works I recorded for the Hyperion label; that recording was released last month. Am also playing pieces of Johann Christian Bach, Friedemann Bach, Emanuel Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach… I happen to be performing the Well Tempered Clavier Book 1 tomorrow for the London Bach Society. I am also busy with a work by the modern Czech composer Viktor Kalabis and a concerto by Hugo Distler, which is really great; also, a piece by Jørgensen, whom I mentioned before, and some music by modern French composer Maurice Ohana. Oh yes, and I am transcribing a Bach concerto to be played by mandolin player Avi Avital and myself!

 

PH: I wanted to ask you about your conducting.

 

ME: I tried it for a while. It is not my thing. I could be a middling conductor, but as a harpsichordist I feel I could really do something.

 

PH: What does your average day look like?

 

ME: I get up around 7 or 7:30, have tea, practise, take a walk, practise, have lunch, practise, more tea, practise, go to the gym., have dinner, then play a concert or go to a concert or play for an hour to an hour and a half before bed.

 

PH: Do you play fortepiano?

 

ME: No.

 

PH: Have you totally left the piano?

 

ME: I would love to have a piano in the house at some point. Do you know what I would play on it? I would play show tunes – I have a couple of books of Warner Bros. pieces - and some cabaret songs. I would have friends over to sing them…and some Kurt Weill.

 

PH: What are your future plans?

 

ME: There are a few big commissions coming up. Then there is a big concert of modern harpsichord music. I shall be spending the next year working on (although not performing) some Scarlatti from a manuscript that has recently been discovered. I am also doing research for a book project on Landowska. And in April, as I mentioned earlier, my first Deutsche Grammophon CD will be issued - the Bach Concerto in D minor, Gorecki, Steve Reich…

 

PH: An interesting mix.

 

ME: Yes.

 

PH: When it is not music, what interests you?

 

ME: I read a lot. I really like Russian literature - Gogol, Chekhov, Turgenev, for example, As well as a picture of Bach on my wall I also have one of Tolstoy there.

 

PH: Do you read them in Russian?

 

ME: No. I read their books in English, but am going to be studying Russian pretty soon. I travel, also for fun. And I like other cultures. They have so much to offer, not just in language…but also clothing, cuisine, and so on. I like that. When I was a kid I used to go to the airport just to see different kinds of people. I am simply interested in other people.

 

PH: Mahan Esfahani, many thanks for your time and for sharing so many ideas and experiences.

 

 

 

Recital at the Israel Museum (Miri Shamir)