Interview, Alessio Bax plays Beethoven

Pianist Alessio Bax has been making waves with a series of critically acclaimed recordings for Signum. For his latest album, he combines the very familiar with the very new – pairing Beethoven's well-loved and time-honoured Moonlight Sonata with the formidable Hammerklavier, and rounding the disc off with the world premiere recordings of two of his own Beethoventranscriptions – adaptations of orchestral works with an excitingly exotic tinge.

I talked to Alessio about the thinking behind this album, the new arrangements, and the physical demands that the Hammerklavier places on the performer...

Both of these sonatas are extremely well represented on disc already; indeed the Moonlight is arguably over-exposed and in danger of being reduced to a musical cliché. How did you approach the challenge of performing such a ubiquitous work, and making it sound fresh and new?

I try to approach a very well known work the same way I would approach a lesser known one or, for that matter, a newly composed work. I try to look deeply into the score and decipher what the composer wanted to convey. If it is great music, and I am able to do it justice, it will shine. Of course, when we're in front of a work as popular as the Moonlight Sonata, it is very hard not to pay attention to tradition. Other musicians' interpretations and traditions are very important, so one must not ignore them, but the challenge is to integrate them with what the composer actually wrote and with one's own voice. If done successfully, I really believe that you can craft an incredibly fresh but true performance and not one that is different just for the sake of being different.

The Hammerklavier is one of those pieces (like Schubert’s Erlkönig) that places genuinely daunting physical strains on the performer, and a performance of it is rightly compared to scaling a mountain or running a marathon. Do you think the mindset of a musician preparing to tackle such works is (or should be) similar to that of of a high-level athlete?

I would definitely agree with that statement. You really cannot perform the Hammerklavier Sonata successfully while out of shape, pianistically speaking. A pianist's mental well-being and deep knowledge of the piece are also of the utmost importance. It is a very long journey, and I have to say that on the day of a concert performance of the Hammerklavier, I feel very different from any other day. I have lived with the Hammerklavier for twenty years now, yet every time I have the score in front of me, I find something new and incredibly exciting to say. The best part is that I know that the Hammerklavier is so much greater than any of us and that the challenge will be forever renewed.

The two arrangements from Die Ruinen von Athen are an intriguing choice of repertoire; most people would perhaps have just rounded the disc off with a third well-loved sonata or an encore! Where did the idea come from to stray off the beaten track, to the point of effectively creating two new piano pieces by arranging orchestral works?

I always like to go a little off the beaten path with my "encores" on disc. My Bach Transcribed, Rachmaninov and Brahms discs all included something I have transcribed myself and the Mozart Concerto disc had some of my cadenzas. I am not a composer and I decide to transcribe a piece of music only if I cannot find a transcriptions that is very faithful to the atmosphere and sound world of the original. I was always intrigued and a little obsessed by the exoticism of "The Ruins of Athens", especially the Turkish March and the Chorus of the Whirling Dervishes to a point that I could not believe that Beethoven had written this piece in his late years. They are his Op. 113, and thought they would be the perfect and most unusual encore to Op. 106!

Do you see yourself committing to any extended projects (a composer sonata cycle, for example) in the future, or do you prefer standalone discs of this kind?

I do like to study in depth single composers, performing their solo works in conjunction with chamber music and concerti. I have done that with Beethoven at the time of this recording and it was an incredibly rewarding experience. On the other hand, we pianists are very fortunate to have so much great music written for our instrument and I constantly try to have many interests at the same time as far as repertoire is concerned. I remember a couple of months spent studying deeply the music of Mozart and Bartok at the same time. It was an incredibly fulfilling journey for me. Yes, I am sure I will make a second Beethoven Sonata album at some point, and maybe a third, and if it happens that slowly I will cover all the sonatas so be it, but I wouldn't think of that as a goal. So far, with Signum, I have had the luxury to record only repertoire I am deeply in love with and I felt ready to record, and I would like for that to continue as long as possible.