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28 Fall 2006 Early Music America

Jouez le Fortepiano!An Interview with Malcolm Bilson

W i t h h i s n e w t e a c h i n g v i d e os u c c e s s f u l l y r e l e a s e d o n D V D ,

t h e c e l e b r a t e d f o r t e p i a n i s td i s c u s s e s h i s c a r e e r a n d

t r a i n i n g w i t h A n d r e w W i l l i s

Early Music America Fall 2006 29

WILLIS You are best known as a performeron early pianos. How did you first get interestedin playing them?BILSON When I came to Cornell Uni-versity in 1968 from the University ofIllinois – where I had been teaching forseven years – I had a lovely old Mason& Hamlin, and the tuner in Illinois hadrecommended Leonard West in EastRochester, New York. The companythere at that time made Mason & Ham-lin, Weber, Knabe, and a few others, andWest was their chief technician. When Iwent up to see him about my ownpiano, he showed me what he called a‘Mozart piano’ that he had bought at anauction for $100 and that he had beenhoping to restore. It was, in point offact, a large Viennese grand fromaround 1870, straight-strung and heavilyreinforced with iron bars. It was com-pletely unplayable, but down in thetenor register there were one or twonotes that sounded very enticing. I gavehim the $100 he had paid for it andbrought it home to Ithaca. I had a friend, Kenneth Drake, who

knew about old pianos, and he referredme to a man named Philip Belt to seeabout restoring it. I wrote Belt and sentsome pictures, and Belt wrote back thatyes, he could do that, but it wasn’t at alla piano from Mozart’s time. And as amatter of fact, he had just built such apiano, after Louis Dulcken, c.1785, andhe wanted to take it around to show atcolleges and music schools. So I saidfine, bring it, and I’ll play a concert onit. He brought it and left it for a week,and I played an all-Mozart concert (theword fortepiano didn’t exist yet – Beltcalled it a “Mozart piano”) with K. 330and the B minor Adagio and the KleineGigue, [as well as] the G minor pianoquartet with some modern string playersat 440. I have to admit now that I reallycouldn’t handle the thing at all. I mustbe the least gifted person for the job;

my hands are too big, and I don’t havethe necessary technique such an instru-ment required. In trying to operate thislight, precise mechanism, I really felt likean elephant in a china closet. But I keptat it all week and practiced hard andafter several days began to notice that Iwas actually playing what was on thepage. What I had been doing before wassimply playing legato and pedalingthrough. I saw the slurs, but, of course,I didn’t want to create hiccups, whichcan happen so easily on the modernpiano. Suddenly I found that I really did-n’t need much pedal and that the articu-lative pauses actually made the musicmore expressive. At the concert at the end of that first

week, which was absolutely filled tooverflowing, there was great enthusiasm.Nobody had ever seen such a thing. Ithought to myself that this was anopportunity to do something useful withmy talents. This was in 1969, and Idecided to buy one of these pianos andto seriously pursue playing it. For severalyears I took the instrument around andplayed it in colleges and small venues. Itwas, of course, viewed as a curiosityback then, and some people thought Iwas a bit crazy. I knew I was doingsomething fringe-y, but I also thought itwas important and worth doing becausethere were aspects of this music thatnobody could hear any more.

AW What caused your involvement withfortepiano to become less “fringe-y,” as you say.

MB An important event occurred inthe late 1970s; there was a change ofdirection at Nonesuch Records. None-such had been a bit like Naxos is today:they were cheaper than the “Big Three,”and they recorded lots of contemporaryand Medieval and Renaissance musicthat you simply couldn’t get anywhereelse – it was an extremely importantlabel. I know that my name had beenproposed more than once to TeresaSterne, who was the heart and soul ofNonesuch, but she either didn’t like thefortepiano, or she didn’t like my playing;I never found out which. In any case,Warner took Nonesuch away from Tere-sa Sterne in New York (creating quite ascandal, actually), moved it out to LosAngeles, and put it under a man namedKeith Holzman, who almost immediate-

ly called me up and said, “My advisorssay I should make records with you.” Ithink that was the big turning point, notjust for my career, but for the “fortepi-ano thing” altogether, because thoserecords got a lot of recognition. Theywere heard by Nicholas Kenyon, who atthat time reviewed for The New Yorker.When John Eliot Gardiner came toNew York, Kenyon played him some ofmy records, and Gardiner then invitedme to play with the CBC Radio Orches-tra in Vancouver. This was a moderninstrument group that he had more orless gotten not to vibrate very much,and we hit it off right away. The follow-ing year he invited me to Aix-en-Provence to play with his original instru-ment orchestra, the English BaroqueSoloists.

AW And the Mozart concerto recordingsfollowed from those concerts?

MB In 1976, my Cornell colleagueNeal Zaslaw, in London on sabbatical,gave a talk to the Royal Musical Associa-tion on the orchestra in the 18th centu-ry. Christopher Hogwood and DeccaRecords happened to be present and gotthe idea of recording all the Mozartsymphonies on period instruments. Thatwas, of course, a very risky proposition,and many thought they would lose theirshirts. Yet those records, to everyone’sastonishment, sold like hot cakes. By thethird or fourth year of the project, itbecame clear that this was the wave ofthe future – why record Beethoven witha modern orchestra unless you have amegastar conductor?The next logical recording project, it

seemed to everyone, was the Mozartconcertos. People knew who I was, but Iwasn’t the only one playing on theseinstruments at the time, and I thought itmight be nice to have several pianistsinvolved. But my manager, Lynn Glaser,was determined and quite fearless. On atrip to Europe, she set up meetings withDecca and Philips and Deutsche Gram-mophon. I was having dinner one nightat home when she called from Londonpronouncing, “I caught one of the com-panies: DG!” I said, “Don’t be silly.” Ijust couldn’t believe it. That’s how thatproject got started. I was very, verylucky.But I’ve been very lucky on a number

Jouez le Fortepiano!An Interview with Malcolm Bilson


of counts. It wasn’t just that the earlyinstrument movement was growing, butthe LP disc was on its way out, and theCD was a new and exciting medium.When it appeared, the whole industryjust exploded, the classical divisionsright along with the pop. And of courseto meet up with John Eliot Gardinerand start on that great adventure togeth-er was simply a dream. Those recordingshe and I made between 1983 and 1989are still available, and I am very proudof them. Yet I am also very sad when Ithink of my friend Robert Levin record-ing [the Mozart concertos] in the 90swith Christopher Hogwood. They gothalfway through the project only to havethe contract cancelled: the CD bubblehad burst by that time, and we enteredthe era of the “Three Tenors and LittleElse” in the classical field. You cannotget Levin’s and Hogwood’s version any-more, and it’s a crime because they’rewonderful recordings, adventurous and,to me, very inspiring. Theirs are theones I was so happy to see next to ourson any display....

AW Sometimes it’s just a matter of circum-stances. Your recordings were influential far andwide, opening doors for people like me who wereabsolutely new to this. How did you have yourformation as a pianist?

MB Well, I grew up in LA in a verylively family. My father was in the moviebusiness – actually a lot of the family isstill in the television and movie business.We had a piano, a Kranich and Bach itwas (some would call it a “piano-shaped-object”). I started playing by ear,and they finally realized that I shouldhave some lessons. This was during thewar, and my parents were working in asort of nightclub, the Hollywood Can-teen, where glamorous movie starswould come and dance with the service-men and put on shows. They met awoman there who said she knew how toplay the piano, and they got her to comeand give me lessons. We started withJohn Thompson’s Teaching Little Fingers toPlay, and within 10 minutes I had putthe first few pieces together (the first

was for the right hand and the secondfor the left hand) and started transpos-ing the piece all around the keyboard.Poor thing – she was a nice lady, and Idon’t think she really knew what to dowith me. She had had a few lessons butwasn’t really a pianist. (She appearedbackstage at a concert I gave a few yearsago, well into her 80s – at least sheremembered me….) I never practiced because there was

nothing for me to practice; I would justlearn all the pieces in a few minutes. Sothey stopped the lessons because itseemed like a waste of money. It’s ratherimportant to know that there’s no onein my family who is interested in seriousmusic. I seem to be all alone in that.Nobody in my family ever went to con-certs or listened to serious music. Butwhen I was nine, I started to work witha woman named Norma Brown, whowas a serious musician and a very finepianist. I stayed with her until I was 17,when I left Los Angeles to go to college.She also took me to many concerts; Ivividly remember hearing Clifford Cur-zon play the Brahms B-flat concerto andSolomon playing Carnaval.

AW Was this a result of your asking forlessons at that point?

MB Well, you know, I simply playedthe piano all the time. I composedthings; I tried to play by ear what Iheard on records or on the radio. Ofcourse, since I composed, my fatherthought it a natural that I would becomea movie composer. Everybody in thefamily was in movies then, so thatseemed a foregone conclusion. I alsogot theory and composition lessonsfrom several very fine teachers, so Iacquired a good solid background.In the summer of ’53 I was at the

Music Academy of the West in SantaBarbara, preparing to go to Juilliard thatfall. I had auditioned for Irwin Fre-undlich, who had agreed to take me. Iwas happy to go to Juilliard but not par-ticularly happy to go to New York City;I have never been a big city person andfeared I wouldn’t like it there. (In retro-

spect, I was probably wrong, by theway.) But then I met a young man whowas studying at Bard College, a smallliberal arts college 100 miles up theHudson from New York City. Webecame very, very good friends, andBard really seemed like the perfect placefor me, so that’s where I went. There was a pianist-composer there

named Paul Nordoff, who was anextraordinary musician. He was a verygood composer, although his music isn’theard much anymore, which is really toobad for much of it is truly deep andmoving. I think he was one of thebiggest talents that had ever beenthrough Juilliard by the 1930s. He stud-ied with Olga Samaroff, who took himto Europe and introduced him to allkinds of important musicians. In 1932,on a jury exam, he played the Prokofieffthird concerto with Samaroff at the sec-ond piano. The work was new at thattime, and the faculty was appalled,declaring that such a cacophonous piecewould never be tolerated at Juilliard! Nordoff was, among other things, an

anthroposophist – [a follower of] thespiritual philosophy of Rudolf Steiner –and was also sort of a recluse. He mighthave been in the mainstream with peo-ple like Copland and Barber and Cre-ston, but he wasn’t. Among my favoritesof his compositions were his settings ofpoems by e. e. cummings. Cummingswas notorious in not liking his poems tobe “meddled with,” but these he appar-ently liked. Once we went down toGreenwich Village, and I played oncummings’s old upright piano whileNordoff sang some of these songs. Itwas a wonderful experience for me, asyou can imagine. Cummings told me,“these poems don’t belong to me anymore; they’re his now.” Nordoff was anunbelievably intense musician, and hereally brought me to the inside ofmusic, if I could put it that way. Heunderstood flexibility, and he playedabsolutely wonderfully and could sightread anything upside down.After graduating from Bard, I got a

Fulbright and went to Vienna, where Istudied with a woman named GreteHinterhofer. It was she who taught mehow to practice and how to think clearly.I had another year abroad with Reine

Jouez le Fortepiano!


Gianoli in Paris, who was also quite ter-rific. She had made many recordings forWestminster – she recorded all of Schu-mann, I think, and all the Mozart varia-tions. Then I went to the University ofIllinois, where I stayed for seven years. Iwent in as a graduate student but thengot put on the faculty and became afull-time faculty member. In 1967 I took

a year off to finish up the DMA degreeI had been working on (why not, afterall?), and then in ’68 I was invited hereto Cornell, where I have remained eversince.

AW You must have had some memorableexperiences studying abroad.

MB When I was studying in Paris,the army draft still existed, which meant

that if you could show that you were ina degree program you could get a defer-ral. So I enrolled at l’Ecole Normale,where Gianoli was teaching and wherethere were two degree programs onecould get. One was the Licence de Con-cert (only the French suppose youshould get a license to play concerts!). Iwasn’t interested in such a degree, andbesides, it would have meant learningsome terribly difficult piece the lastmonth before the exam (the year beforeit had been the Don Juan Fantasy, and Imust admit that I have always been asort of Liszt-less pianist). But there wasalso a Licence Libre d’Enseignement,basically a teacher’s certificate, for whichyou could play whatever you wanted,and I decided to do that just to stayenrolled.At the end of the year there was an

exam, in the main concert hall, conduct-ed by Cortot and other members of ajury, and that was just a God-awfulthing. Some hapless young studentwould tiptoe out on the stage and sitdown and Cortot would say (he had afantastic resonant voice, you know)“JOU – EZ LE BACH!” And the poorkid would just set off playing like maduntil the buzzer went off—

AW They had a buzzer?MB Oh yes, a buzzer. Then “JOU –

EZ LE BEET – HOVEN!” thunderedfrom the balcony, and the frantic playingwould start all over again for a while. Ihad seen it all in action and was quitehorrified by it. Now, I had eaten something bad the

evening before and had been up sick allnight and hadn’t slept and really couldn’tcare less about the whole thing; I wasmerely doing it to stay out of the armyand have my nice year in Paris withReine Gianoli – it had been a wonderfulyear, and that’s where I met my wifeElizabeth! But the day before my exam,Reine Gianoli had called me up and toldme that apparently I also was requiredto have a concerto. I had played theMozart K. 595 the year before in Vien-na, so I practiced the first movementand got another student to play the second part. When I went out on the stage for my

exam, I had, among other things, thefirst series of Images. Cortot said,

Knowing the ScoreMalcolm Bilson Cornell University DVD90 minutes plus special features Reviewed by Sylvia Berry During the 30-plus years he has spent as an

indefatigable performer, scholar, teacher, andproponent of the early piano, Malcolm Bilson hasruffled a few feathers. This DVD might well ruffle somemore, for the basic question behind the aptly namedKnowing the Score is, “Do we know how to readurtext editions?” and the answer, according to Bilson,is a resounding “No.” A lot of ground is covered in this engaging lecture,

which was filmed before a live audience at CornellUniversity. Bilson begins by saying that the key wordis interpretation; it is not enough to use an urtextedition if you don’t know how to interpret it. Hemakes clear at the outset that his assertions arebased on principles found in treatises of theperiod, reading passages from two of the mostimportant of the 18th century, by C.P.E. Bach andJohann Joachim Quantz. This is followed by whathe calls a “Reader’s Digest course on how to readmusic,” in which he provides examples of verybasic notation and illustrates how the treatisestell us to play them in a way that is different from the way they are usually played.

Bilson makes two important observations here: the sources tell us to never play “evenly,”and Western musical notation is in fact not precise but suggestive. There are many thingsthat are seemingly absent from the score that are inherently there but are only recognizableonce one knows how to interpret the notation.

This is just the beginning of a stunning array of revelations that are illustrated by examin-ing numerous musical examples and by listening to recordings of famous artists who, moreoften than not, don’t read the score properly. Bilson’s infectious joy and humor infuse theseproceedings with many enjoyable moments.

Bilson turns this around by presenting recordings of Sergei Prokofiev and Bela Bartokplaying their own works. He says we shouldn’t ask, “How do they play these?” but rather,“How did they notate what we hear?” This is fascinating and fleshes out the idea that nota-tion isn’t precise. The composers play more freely than anyone would today, but Bilsonasserts that if we understand how to read the music, “It’s all there.”

One-third of the video is over before Bilson begins showing us that most of what is askedfor in late 18th- and early 19th-century Viennese music is not realizable on modern pianos.It’s obvious that he wants the thrust of this lecture to be less about instruments and moreabout reading music properly. With this video, Bilson hopes to bring this message to main-stream musicians at conservatories that don’t broach these subjects. Early music peoplemight feel that he’s preaching to the converted, but anyone interested in these topics willfind this presentation riveting and inspiring; in fact, it is a must-see for anyone in the field.

Fortepianist Sylvia Berry is a founder of Boston Hausmusik and wrote the liner notes for Bartvan Oort’s 14-CD Brilliant Classics box set, The Complete Keyboard Works of Mozart.


“JOU – EZ LE DE – BUS – SY!” So Isaid, “Maître.” (It’s the only time in mylife I ever said “maître” to anybody. Idon’t even know how it came out of mymouth, but that’s what you were sup-posed to say to a distinguished artist.)“Maître, which movement would youlike?” A shudder went through the jury,for nobody had ever spoken from thestage to Cortot before. He asked whichone I would like, and I said, “‘Hommageà Rameau,’” and he said, “Good, that’sthe one I’d like to hear too.” So I playedthat, and then we got to the concerto,and after he had let us play the entirefirst movement (no buzzer), he said,“JOU – EZ LE DEUX – I – EMEMOUVE – MENT.” I looked at myaccompanist and said, “Can you dothis?” and she nodded, so we playedthat, and then Cortot said, “JOU – EZLE TROIS – I – EME MOUVE –MENT.” And I said, “Maître, I’m sorry,we only found out about this yesterday.”Later, I was called into his office, andeverybody was trembling because hehad the reputation of being pretty muchof an ogre – but it turned out he want-ed me to stay there and study with him.I had to explain that I had a boat ticketto return to America in three days. Hedied a few months after that, so itwouldn’t have worked out, but he wroteme a very nice letter – une attestation, asthey call it in French – that still hangs inmy office at Cornell.

AW Cortot was one of those pianists whoseplaying was completely infused with imaginationand color.

MB Yes, it still is a kind of ideal formany, including me. I think that with allthat imagination, he sometimes veers offin funny directions, but when he hits thetarget, it’s sheer magic.

AW You’ve recently released a video projectthat explores many of the concepts you’ve devel-oped during your years of working with earlypianos.

MB Yes, the full title is Knowing theScore: Do We Know How to Read UrtextEditions, and How Can This Lead to MoreExpressive, Even Passionate Playing?

AW But no artist since the Second World

War who wants to be taken seriously in theclassical repertoire would think of learningnotes from anything but an urtext.

MB Yes, but do they know how toread them? In the video lecture we lookat a few scores very carefully, and Iendeavor to read them as I think Mozartand Beethoven would have expectedtheir public to read them at the time. Ido believe that composers write for apublic who can presumably understandtheir notation. Then we listen to some

recordings, often by quite well-knownpianists. Now, I don’t think it’s a good idea for

one pianist (in this case, me) to pointout another pianist by name and claimthat that person is reading the scoreincorrectly. On the other hand, it won’tdo to simply assert the fact that nobodyplays certain things that are in the score,because invariably some listener willclaim that they have a recording thatdoes. So, for the examples, I assembledall the recordings from our library, adozen or so of each, and I listed thenames of the players on the screen. Ithen asked an assistant to select, at ran-dom, any three of the recordings toplay. I don’t even know which they aremyself, for I had asked someone elseput them onto a tape. Of course, someof these performances are moreinspired than others, some faster orslower than others, but I think it’simperative to show that, in spite ofartistic differences, absolutely no oneplays what Mozart and Beethoven haveso carefully indicated. Naturally, I thinkthis has something to do with instru-

ments, but it’s more than that; it also has to do with traditions that havedeveloped over a long, long time.

AW What about traditions and the passingdown of culture from generation to generation?You, for example, have told me that you studied with two people who studied with Schnabel. Now we know that Schnabel studiedwith Leschetizky, Leschetizky studied withCzerny, and Czerny with Beethoven. Don’t youbelieve that genuine traditions have been handeddown through such a distinguished lineage?

MB The answer is “maybe,” at best.Look, there are recordings by Adelinade Lara, who studied with Clara Schu-mann as a girl and made recordingswhen she was 80. What can this reallyshow us about Clara Schumann’s playingor teaching? When I was 18 or 19, Iplayed the music of my teacher, PaulNordoff, and he told me that he likedthe way I played it very much. I alsoheard him play quite a bit, so I wouldsay that if anybody is interested in play-ing Paul Nordoff ’s music, I’m likely thebest person to come and see. But it’s so-o-o many years later; I’m a very differ-ent person after the intervening 50years. And then, suppose I teach you a“Nordoff tradition,” and 40 years lateryou teach somebody else, etc. That’show these “traditions” get transmitted.Of course I do claim that changing

instruments play a role, but not onlyinstruments – just look at the differencein the way pianists, violinists, and evensingers interpreted music before theSecond World War; we have recorded documentation!

AW Are you suggesting that a combinationof reliable sources, historically relevant instru-ments, and historically informed, self-reliantthinking can lead to the liberation of the performer?

MB I couldn’t have said it better. Isuppose what I believe most strongly isthat to express music with confidenceand passion, the first step should alwaysbe to see clearly what the composercommunicated through his or her writ-ing, and that most certainly requires allof the above. Pianist Andrew Willis performs in the United Statesand abroad on pianos of every period. His record-ings include the “Hammerklavier” and otherBeethoven sonatas for Claves, as part of the firstBeethoven sonata cycle on period instruments.

Jouez le Fortepiano!

“Cortot still is a kind of ideal for many, including me. I think that with all that

imagination, he sometimes veers off in funny directions, but when he hits the target,

it’s sheer magic.”– Malcolm Bilson


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