„Beethoven has an unbelievable number of faces”

- It was about half a year ago that you mentioned that your old plan of playing all Beethoven's piano concertos was coming closer to reality…

- … and then you said, that means five different composers…

- …you agreed.

- And I now agree even more. And this is not just the lesson from my work on the piano concertos. These days I am working again on the piano sonatas, the ten violin sonatas and the trios. Beethoven has an unbelievable number of faces. And not just from the musical perspective, the human associations behind them are fantastically interesting...

Dénes Várjon (photo: Balázs Böröcz)

- Perhaps it is the concerto in C minor which best conforms to the public's notion of Beethoven as a person and a personality. This work seems the most approachable.

- Can I ask something in return. What does this image comprise of?

- I'm thinking for example of the image that has developed due to the Eroica, the Fifth Symphony, the Pathétique sonata, or the Kreutzer sonata. From the perspective of these pieces, it does not appear an easy task to perceive the striking „personality traits" of the two early works (the piano concertos in B flat major and C major), or the E flat major piano concerto.

- It is a difficult question because I have, for example, many personal favourites that I feel are very Beethovenian but I realise audiences rarely encounter them, for example the piano sonata in F sharp major or the violin sonata in A major from the opus 30 set. The heroic-pathos of the works you listed are just one type of many. And that is not to discuss just how many shades we find within this particular mood either.

- It is interesting that there are pianists considered Beethoven specialists who have not played all five concertos.

- The concerto in B flat major is often omitted. It has had a hard fate, regarded as the second work when in truth it is the earliest of the five. One can often hear it said that the first two concertos are essentially Mozartean allusions and that the B flat major is the weaker. In my view this is a mistake: I regard it as a fantastically mature work, the cadenza of the first movement is quite individual and places the whole movement into a different dimension.

- We really do often hear that the Beethoven piano concertos derive from the Mozartean world and so assessments and analyses somehow always slide into a comparison with Mozart: they establish how and in what way Beethoven further developed the Mozartean model. I believe this less and less. There was so much music  surrounding Beethoven and so much he reacted to of which we know virtually nothing; we do not hear it in concerts or on records, it seems hopeless that we will ever, even fragmentally, reconstruct the Beethovenian perspective.

- Additionally, music after Beethoven very much influences our value judgements. For example Hungarian musicians are most certainly influenced by Béla Bartók's image of Beethoven, and that Beethoven's compositional style and methods are reflected back in Bartók's music. But I could mention Bartók the performer: I am certainly deeply influenced by the performance by Bartók and Szigeti of the Kreutzer sonata which I feel is quite superb. By the same token, we should not ignore the extent to which Beethoven sticks out from the public thinking about music of the time. If the Beethovenian perspective could be successfully reconstructed – and it never will be – it would transpire just how much he made himself independent of everything.

Dénes Várjon (photo: Liszt Academy / Balázs Mohai)

- So Beethoven cannot be fitted into the puzzle? Can you communicate that even today?

- I believe so, yes.

- With such intensive work with Beethoven, in this current period of your career, how much does it shift the centre of gravity of your interests? Every pianist, at a young age, goes through a Beethoven period, they feel the necessity of playing the emblematic works, then they somehow move on...

- …and that is precisely what happened with me…

- …then they cyclically return to the composer.

- At about forty, the pianist starts to get excited again.

- In terms of the development of your life, your experience, your musical career, is Beethoven the composer most preoccupying you?

- Most definitely yes. And interestingly I am now more open to Haydn as well.

- And what was the reason (if you can remember) why he receded into the background?

- I don't really know. Certainly as a youngster there was something that excited us in Beethoven which later seemed secondary. There are difficulties, for examples technical ones for which one only feels sufficiently mature later in life. I now am finding Beethoven compositions for which I still do not feel myself sufficiently mature, so I am dealing with it as a long term project. And perhaps this distance is what is not so obvious as a youngster.

- Is it easier to become saturated with Beethoven?

- Yes because the picture is so narrow. Schumann is known through a very narrow cross section, as is Beethoven. We can list those works which fundamentally define the image of certain composer. It is no surprise if the image is a distortion.

- The situation is strange in that this is one of the greatest composers…

- …and one of the most popular

- …that we are talking about.

People love to think in categories, they needs pigeon holes and boxes. The aim is for these boxes to be ever more spacious.

- In a sentence, what would be the most optimal audience reaction after playing all five Beethoven concertos? How would you know that your intentions had become reality?

- I cannot now really answer that. For the time being I feel that I am very much enjoying my work with these pieces, they keep me continuously excited. If I can somehow succeed in communicating something from my experience, then that will satisfy me.