Alexis Weissenberg (Sofia, 26 luglio 1929 – Lugano, 8 gennaio 2012), attraverso le sue parole e la sua musica
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| (Foto: Associated Press) |
«[…] Io amo il rischio perché dà vita, risveglia. Un artista ha il dovere di conoscere se stesso. Non si scopre la musica, ci si scopre nella musica»
«Non capisco perché il mio modo di suonare turbi tanto. Ricordo quando a scuola, da bambino, imparai che la luce di una candela è fatta della luce gialla, che brucia, e della luce blu che le sta dentro, che è ghiaccio. Così è per gli esseri umani. Forse è la luce blu dentro di me che spaventa certa gente»
Alexis Weissenberg
«[…] uno dei migliori pianisti dei nostri tempi»
Herbert von Karajan
«Io non posso esserci, ma vi mando un ragazzo che suona questo concerto meglio di me».
Vladimir Horowitz
The Award: an autobiographic essay by Alexis Weissenberg (http://www.alexisweissenberg.com/)
It was actually Mr. Vladimir Horowitz who suggested I enter the Leventritt Competition. He thought it would be a good experience regardless of the results, and a privileged occasion to test oneself under stress. The Leventritt was by far the finest competition in America. It was certainly the most prestigeous. Choice and taste were important ingredients, quality its basic condition. It is difficult to put in a chronological order the qualities that are essential to musical performing, but I would say that in the case of a competition the most important one is the quality of the Jury. It is the quality of the jury that will establish the temperature of the competition. I was born in Sofia,Bulgaria, on July 26th 1929. An only child I shared my musical joys with my mother, listening to concerts and recordings. “The Radio Hour” as I called it. My mother’s syblings (two sisters and a brother) had studied music and piano at the Vienna Conservatory during the pre-war years, and brought back with them the wonderful habit of playing and sight-reading a lot of chamber music (one hand, two hands, four hands, two pianos, cello, violin, voice) and more than welcomed visiting artists in need of an accompanist, a bed, strong coffee, or a massive piece of an unforgettable chocolate cake (Vienna again), or all four needs into one. This very quickly became a chronic ritual. I must have been four, five at the most, when my mother decided to share the piano bench every day for half an hour, regularly, upon my return from kindergarten, and later from school. Hand position, wrist flexibility, touch, above all sound, tempo control, technical evenness, legato, staccato, all this too distant from the frustratingly missed pedal. But thinking in terms of teachers, yes, my mother was my initiator; my first teacher indeed. The best memories of my mother will forever be linked to this presence, the intensity of her listening, the love in those silent eyes. My second teacher was a dentist. Dr.Ben-Susan didn’t particularly enjoy pulling out teeth, but he had even greater disrespect for people who produced regularly a series of unprinted material. Precision was his obsession, however poorly one played otherwise. One day someone in the family had the good idea to take me to Vladiguerov for consultation. We stayed longer than expected. My third teacher then was Pantcho Vladiguerov, Bulgaria’s leading musical authority and its best and most famous composer. He was an intuitive, flexible teacher, rather than a square pedagogue, and gave us, his pupils, an early awareness of temperament as a tool rather than a spice. Master classes, in those days, did not enjoy the popularity nor the glamour of to-day’s happenings, but Vladiguerov made sure we heard all important artists many of whom we met at his house. The first great artist I heard “live” was Dinu Lipatti. I gave my first recital at the age of ten. It was also my first physical connection with the stage. I loved it. If I remember correctly I played three Bach Inventions, a few pieces from Schumann’s Album for the young, Beethoven’s Capriccio for the lost penny, an Improvisation by Vladiguerov, and, as an encore (I was so proud ) an Etude of mine in G major, which I transcribed, at the last minute in E flat major “because it sounded better”. This was the year 1941. Bulgaria was forced to play a modified, adult, version of one of the most popular games among children, “Hide and Seek”, except that it substituted the main rules and purposes of the game with an inhuman blessing, a portion of insanity. The War. The undercurrent that dominated progressively the cancerous contamination of antisemitism and deportation. It was difficult to explain to an innocent child a necessity to flee, let alone the meaning of persecution. So we left, my mother and I, without my father, with a small bag, a large cardbord box, a few sandwiches, an imaginary piano which appeared every time I closed my eyes, and an old accordion given a few years back as a birthday gift by a rich aunt. Plus the “original” of the transcribed Etude. False identity papers, when discovered, are never misleading, an unauthorized visa to Istambul and faked diplomatic papers certainly did not help a dead situation. My mother was interrogated during two infinite hours, after which we were placed in an improvised concentration camp (mostly for people who tried to cross the border illegaly) with a probable design to a final destination, Poland and extermination. It is unnecessary here to describe the three months we spent there, it was no different from other camps, except that there were no tortures and no murder. Only three elements remained constant: silence, singing, and crying. The german officer who was given the responsibility of our bunker happened to like music enormously. Luck is a nasty miscalculation which sometimes produces tiny miracles. Our unexpected piece of luck was a musical instrument, the dear old accordion. The german officer adored Schubert. He let me play in the late afternoon, and would come and listen from time to time. I remember him seated in a corner, near nobody, stone faced, expressionless, suddenly getting up and leaving with the same abruptness as when he walked in. It was the same officer who decided one chaotic day to come and fetch us hurriedly, bring us to the station, push our belongings (still the cardboard box) through the door, literally throw the accordion through the window of the compartment, and say to my mother, in German “Viel Glück” and vanish. Half an hour later the train crossed the border. Nobody asked for a passport. We were bound for Istambul. We arrived in the early evening the following day. My mother’s brother Ferry had been living in Istambul for several years. We took a taxi directly to his house. Although the reunion was of great emotional impact I had a single fixation and urge, hardly greeted Ferri and his wife Irene, and ran to the music room where a piano seemed to have the same appointment. I had not touched a piano for several months. During the time we waited for all our legal papers to be straightened out, my mother thought it would be wise to continue to have professional advice from a good teacher. After several hesitations we stopped at the name of Mr Sommer, who had been recommended with great enthusiasm. So Maestro Sommer became my fourth teacher. A not very reliable teacher who played sloppily, mostly because he hardly ever practiced, but who was an expert womanizer, and who openly and often said that women were very much more musical than men. It is not surprising that the “Salon” where he taught looked more like a fashion boutique, with divinities walking all over the place. But I did work with him for several weeks; mostly fast pieces of course, and short whenever possible. Finally one sunny day the passports and the transit visas arrived. My mother and I left for Haifa, immediately, by train, with a stop-over in Beirut. The Red Cross had organized a welcoming humanitarian meal: my mother baptized it “immigrant Strogonof”, even laughed, but then went quickly away trying to contact and connect people who might agree to share the expense of a taxi heading for Haifa. It had seemed impossible for her to believe that a second train would carry the same moral standards and keep unpaid promises. It rained, of course. It had to rain as it usually rains in biblical films; upon request. The taxi kept on producing new sounds, the driver, dispensing a mixture of cigar tobacco, prayers in Hebrew, and international swearing, kept on promising in phonetic new Russian and old German that we would succeed in finding Oscar and Fini in the middle of the street. Private communication, let alone telephones and telegrams were hopeless during the war. It was practically impossible to pinpoint an address or someone’s private number. All we knew was that my mother’s younger sister, Fini, had immigrated with her husband to Palestine just befor the outbreak of the war. After several unsuccessful attemps at different jobs (it was near impossible to find employment of any kind) they decided to take a chance and rent a bar in the outskirts of Haifa. That first night of our arrival my mother decided, had already decided, that we shall not go to a hotel but have our sentimental driver take us to the Fishmarket place where most of the bars, despite the late hour, were still open. After making sure that our driver was bleeding with empathy and was certainly not convinced that we had enough money to cover the costs of the night, we entered the first bar on our way. It was relatively empty, and like the successive ones smelled of smoke, beer, fish and urine. The customers were the usual collection of marines, fishermen and prostitutes. The next two bars were the same, filthy and loud. The fourth had just closed. We approached the fifth when my mother, with a suddenly demoralized voice said she was tired, we should go alone, then come back and try to find a hotel room for me. The bar stank even more than the others. Somebody was playing popular jazz melodies on an ageless piano, somewhere in the background. Something, (intuition), a sound, almost a pain crossed my mind, violently. I turned around and recognized her immediately, from the back. The same delicate shoulders, the same beautiful neck, the same aristocratic poise; only the black hair had turned white. By sheer instinct she stopped playing almost immediatly, turned around, and screamed. She screamed. We stayed together almost a year, then moved to Jerusalem, mostly because of the high reputation of the Academy of music. Professor Schröder, co-disciple of Schnabel was the unquestionable authority on the German repertoire, and all of us who were lucky to be chosen by him, owe him a lot. Frau Hermelin, of class and charm, ran a beautiful villa where she housed several teachers from the Academy and recommended pupils, gratis. There was an excellent Blütner piano in one of the larger rooms. My mother found a job in a travel agency.Soon after our arrival I performed the Beethoven 3rd with the Jerusalem Radio Orchestra. It was my first orchestral experience. I was 14. The following season I had my first major tour, in South Africa: 15 concerts with four different recital programs and five concerti. Upon return, (the war had just ended) Professor Kestenberg, a highly respected musician and President of the Palestine, and later Israel, Philharmonic Orchestra, accepted to have me audition as soloist for one of the orchestra’s subscription concerts. I got the engagement for three consecutive seasons, the last of which was conducted by Leonard Bernstein. It was my first experience to work with a great conductor. The concerts were repeated twice. I decided to move to New York. Just before I left Israel I played an open-air recital for thousand children in Degania Alef, Israel’s oldest settlement. As a token of gratitude for the joy they had given me I left them my old and devoted accordion. With that symbol I was begining a new life. I arrived in New York in the late summer of 1946. I had two letters of recommendation, one for Arthur Schnabel, the other for Vladimir Horowitz. One in each pocket, each one re-read 15 times. Both letters were signed Kestenberg. Both, separately, gave me the same advice. The teaching power and influential musicianship and enthusiasm of Vladiguerov, during the years in Sofia, had prepared me pianistically in the best pedagogical tradition. What I needed urgently was broader knowledge, much more cultural information, also maybe the experience of a school as opposed to private lessons, one or two competitions, why not, and patience, and listening to as much music as possible. I entered the Leventritt Competition, just for the experience and the challenge as Mr.Horowitz suggested. I enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music, certainly at that time (1946-1949) the best school in America with the most enviable staff of teachers and most gifted and interesting pupils, many of whom were already performing on the international scene. I joined the Olga Samaroff class, who, with Rosina Lhevinn, shared the top talents. I also enrolled in the composition and Musical Analysis classes of Persichetti, himself an excellent composer, who considered eccentric ideas and original thinking a must. How easy it is to confound remembering and thinking, imagining and seeing, when one is both tired and nervous, tense and preoccupied. I was sitting backstage trying to hear, even more, trying to listen, but everything sounded so confused in my head. At one point I thought I heard voices coming from the street, yet someone was playing quite wonderfully the slow movement of the Chopin B minor Sonata, or was it the Listz? The Liszt Sonata was programmed for to-day, actually now, but it all sounded so far away. At the same time films, invented and realistic, projecting flashes of certain concerts, certain sounds, the persistent memory of a certain bad performance, trying to forget, trying to dismiss, trying to recapture what had been right, what went wrong, still listening, but now the sounds were sweeping away from me, something must have happened, my heart missed a beat, I couldn’t hear a sound anymore, my mind was suddenly so blurred that I hardly heard the approach of the man who had apparently paged me after the bell, which bell? I never heard a bell. He bent over me and whispered (or did I not hear him correctly?) “You just won the 1947 Leventritt Award”. My brains exploded just before I put my hands on the keyboard. At this very second I woke up.
P. Tchaikovski, Concerto per pianoforte e orchestra n. 1, I movimento (video caricato su YouTube da 2111velvet)
J. S. Bach, Jesus Bleibet Meine Freude BWV 147 (caricato su YouTube da jormundgard)
Adriana Benignetti