There is nothing quite as exciting or challenging for me as preparing for recording sessions. There is often a mistaken idea that a recording session means less nerves than concerts, that you can play something a thousand times until you’re happy, or if you don't get to a point of being happy, then you just  “Frankenstein” something together in post-production. Nothing could be further from the truth as far as I am concerned! Those statements are only true if you have a) Credit Suisse bankrolling your sessions or b) if your musical values are a bit dubious...

 

In fact, preparing for sessions is the most demanding activity I know and the stakes are actually much higher than in a concert, despite the opportunity of multiple takes (never nearly as many as you hoped for!). In front of an audience, I can try to persuade with my musical convictions in myriad ways. The audience listens in real time (exciting in itself!) and is as emotionally invested as the performer. The added visual and personal elements afford a subliminal, spiritual communication between those on stage and those in the audience chairs. Everyone knows there is only one chance to hear something so they listen with a different attitude, usually with more forgiveness and less attention to detail, not to mention that acoustics obscure details and shift perspective for each listener. 

 

There are many things I would do spontaneously in a concert with great conviction, but I would never in a million years stand by them in an official release. Recordings are not ephemeral moments by definition. And hearing recordings of a live concert can also highly surprising; some of the greatest concerts I attended were so disappointing to hear on recording when I had the chance to do so. Actually, I regretted it and it convinced me that recording and performing are two different animals.

 

The magic of recordings is simply a different kind of magic than concert magic! Microphones are incredible things, but they are microphones. They pick up what they pick up: sound. There is no visual suggestion, stage charisma, or excitement of chance that will impress those stoic tubes on a stand. They are brutally inflexible. In the right room, however, with a great piano, they can create an idealized view of a piece of piano music which captures more layers, clarity, detail, and texture than a live performance is ever able or meant to convey, in a sense a richer portrait of what an artist wishes to share about a piece of music. When the microphones are accepted as the buffer between the artist's soul and the audience's soul, rather than resisted, the potential for something new and entirely different than a live concert unfolds. 

 

Going into the sessions is in a way like going into a boxing ring because of this. There is no way to prepare for exactly what kind of canvas you will have to work with from the marriage of a piano, microphones, and acoustic. Once the setup is finished, the clock is ticking and within that planet created for you must persuade yourself that your message about a piece of music is coming through in the sound world which you are temporarily inhabiting. Playing one’s heart out over and over to the impassive set of microphones can be deeply fatiguing and disappointing. You need every tool you can muster up ready at your disposal and great flexibility in your approach, which means layers of preparation for various scenarios. If you hate what you hear in the booth between takes, which is inevitably often the case, you will have only moments to gather your thoughts together and try something different or new, and hope that your body and the piano are able to deliver what your inner ear demands.

 

Everything in the session is about timing, and surprises are always around the corner. First of all, the piano must be in exquisite shape at all times. That means stopping the musical flow constantly to address every little dirty unison or twang that arises. Even a short three minute piece, with pauses for piano tech issues, listening in the booth, and lying down to breathe, ends up taking almost an hour, on a good day, depending how many takes are done. Sometimes it takes a while for the music to really flow. For the 145 minutes of music I am planning to record, accounting for every minute becomes life and death, especially given that unforeseen mishaps sometimes bring sessions to a stop. I have had sessions stop because of outdoor construction, because of noisy weather, and because of unforeseen major piano malfunctions. It can be scary!

I could not possibly dream of a better or more professional team than the partners I have asked to join me on this important endeavor. Florian Schmidt, of the Berlin-based Pegasus Musikproduktion, is a consummate engineer who works with major artists and orchestras, such as Deutsches Simphonie-Orchester Berlin, Vladimir Jurowski, Christoph Eschenbach, Jörg Widmann, Frank Peter Zimmermann, and Isabelle Faust, to name a few. More than that, he is a good friend after collaborating together in live concert recordings at the Krzyżowa Music festival for seven summers.

I spent one week this past summer traveling around Germany in search of a gorgeous Steinway Model D to ship to the Kulturstiftung Marienmünster, a cloister highly recommended to me by Florian Schmidt for its excellent sound. It is primarily used for concerts and recordings and even boasts a historic piano collection (but alas, no Model D, which I need!). I am happy to say that after a fun week of trying rental pianos in Berlin, Hamburg, Münster, and Düsseldorf, I fell in love with “D9” in Düsseldorf. It is not only wonderfully even in its tone across all the registers, it has a simply unbelievable sustain in the soprano registers. It is so strong, rich, and warm, with infinite shades of sound and touch, and it really really sings. If what I experienced of its sound in the Steinway showroom was any indication of what’s to come, I can only imagine what the old cloister with its beautiful high ceilings will bring out from me and the piano! The piano will be arriving in Marienmünster from Bonn, where it will be “performing” as one of the main pianos of the International Telekom Beethoven Competition.

The icing on the cake is that the piano technician who happens to care for "D9" is by chance a close friend of one of my dear friends, which makes me very happy. There is nothing like having great energy and great company around you when you are giving it your all for hours and hours without end!  Luiz Passagli does concert work for major artists such as Grigory Sokolov, Evgeny Kissin, and Yuja Wang, to name only a few. We hit it off immediately when I visited the Steinway showroom in Düsseldorf. I liked how he described his concert work; he talked about how he sometimes has to not only tune the piano, but also “tune the pianist." A big aspect of his work is dealing with palpable pre-concert stress of artists, which manifests itself in making impossible demands on the tuner just before doors open for a show. Going along with them and even the occasionally illusory demands is part of the job as far as he is concerned!

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