'It took me 18 years to make a new recording,' Croatian pianist Ivo Pogorelich (1958) says with a modest smile. 'Just as much time as it takes a baby to come of age.' It is Wednesday, November 2. A special moment, because that day Pogorelich's CD-less new recording of Beethoven's Piano sonatas no. 22 and no. 24 via the Online-Klassik-Musikportal Idagio the web. Idagio is in 2015 set up by Till Janzczukowicz to 'New and exclusive recordings by the world's greatest musicians' disseminate in contemporary ways in the form of streaming. Supposedly, there is more listening potential among the estimated 5 billion Smartphone owners than among the steadily shrinking audience that enjoys classical music the old-fashioned way.
Digital leader
Pogorelich, whom I speak to briefly that day before his concert in Eindhoven Music Building, is proud to be a frontrunner with streaming to be. He himself has absolutely nothing to do with the digital world of smartphones and laptops. He wears a wool cap on his shaved head, mountain boots, a folkloric scarf around his neck, a thick knitted cardigan and an orange backpack. He looks like a backpacker, who wants to go jam on both Steinways, one of which he has to choose for the evening concerto. He waxes lyrical about the superb recording technology of his cutting-edge Beethoven recording: 'Compare it to high-resolution photographs. You hear and see everything infinitely sharper, the colours are extra bright and nuanced.'
According to Pogorelich, it is high time to tap into new audiences: 'To reach the younger generations, we need to distribute art through the platforms they use. Idagio offers me as a musician the chance to make my recordings available worldwide in a split second. I find it alarming that young people are constantly staring at their smartphones and speaking through headsets. But they are also busy developing instincts to follow their intuition in that virtual world. They are an impartial and attentive audience. They represent great potential for classical music. Moreover, they make Idagio using state-of-the-art recording techniques, which adds to the viability of the music.'
Sound beauty
Pogorelich's enthusiasm proved justified, as the sound quality of his streaming–debut proves crystal clear on listening and comes across so direct and natural that it is as if the pianist is sitting in your own living room playing Beethoven. Even more important is the surprising musical quality of this new Beethoven & Pogorelich document. All objections to Pogorelich's extreme interpretations disappear like snow in the transparently resonant radiance of this new 'recording'. Which is nice, because things went downhill after the death of his wife and teacher Aliza Kezeradze in 1996. He remained silent for several years, took up jewellery design, learned Spanish, wrote poetry and, on his return to the concert stages, started playing so eccentrically that he usually drives his audience and critics to despair.
Pogorelich sounds on Idagio still quirky and sometimes contrarian, but his fascinating Beethoven nevertheless sounds balanced and coherent. The tempi and rubati are believable, the dynamics are contrasting without being in fortes hurt your ears. The musical lines flow through rather than stagnate and the tonal beauty is extraordinary at many moments. As if Idagio succeeded in giving the tormented pianist the confidence and security to experiment with his 'deconstructions' in the studio in the best possible way, without being blocked in advance by the scathing criticism he has been exposed to in recent years.
Head off
It will happen to you. First, you get made global declared piano hero, then you get sidetracked by illness and personal problems after 16 years of success, then you pluck up the courage to give concerts again after all, and then everyone sabres your head with merciless pleasure. Pogorelich's comet shot up, when he won the Chopin Competition in 1980 not won. An excited Martha Argerich, Nikita Magaloff and other rebellious judges quit because such a genius piano talent as Pogorelich should have at least made it into the final.
Vladimir Horowitz declared after hearing Pogorelich play: 'Now I can finally die in peace.' Deutsche Grammophon immediately smelled money and dived on it sensationally. The label launched him as the contrarian 'pop idol' among classical master pianists. That was clever, because with the fourteen CDs of the then stunningly beautiful and revolutionarily well-playing Pogorelich, Deutsche Grammophon is still doing good business today.
Integrity and authenticity
Born in Belgrade to a Croatian double bass player and a Serbian mother, Pogorelich proved to be anything but self-centred during his golden years user. With the much money he earned, he supported a hospital for mothers and children in Sarajevo. He helped the Red Cross rebuild destroyed buildings and founded an idealistic competition for adult pianists in Pasadena. With his Pogorelich Festival in Bad Wörishofen, he helped young musicians get started in his and he supported the fight against diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis.
In 1988, he was appointed UNESCO's Goodwill Ambassador. That Pogorelich naturally has a gentle and social disposition is obvious. But the pain of the many sufferings that have befallen him soon becomes apparent in his shy gaze. His manner of speaking is kind and very intelligent, but also shows an extraordinary vulnerability, which seems to be exacerbated by the loneliness and lack of understanding by which he has been surrounded for years. After all, the once saintly Pogorelich is now portrayed as the unbalanced village idiot among great pianists.
Perverted
His musical quest is not understood, his intentions are not heard, his intentions of integrity are pre-empted en masse perverted. If only he shouldn't have become so famous at the time, if only he shouldn't have been so vain and so arrogant... This is doubly hurtful to Pogorelich, because he deep down has never been out for his flamboyant star status. At most, he joked a little about it.
Time and again, he has stressed in interviews as far back as 1980, that for him, making music is "very hard work", that "everything depends on good teachers" and that he is all about "discovering the treasures hidden in the score", which stands like a "dead book" in the cupboard until a musician revives all the notes it contains.
Mooispeler
In that lifelong search for truth and authenticity, Pogorelich is utterly honest and authentic. He does not want to shock, but to expose structures. He wants the beauty hidden in music to be heard in more contemporary ways. Like Pollini and Michelangeli, Pogorelich has never been a 'beauty player'. He belongs to the 'new businessmen' among pianists. He wants to break with traditions to give classical music a second chance in a new era. He is a constructivist, a modernist in a world where classical music became trapped in an elitist world of plush, velvet standards and values, which sooner or later threaten to suffocate music.
And admittedly, in fighting that tradition, he sometimes strikes out quite a bit in recent years. But if, as a listener, you manage to put your expectations on hold, Pogorelich at times transports you into a fascinating world full of fascinating constructions, biting colours and extreme sounds. If you compare it to painting, you will hear that Pogorelich, like a Picasso - who really could paint as beautifully as Rubens or Renoir - pulls the music apart, as it were, precisely to give it a new face. Be it Beethoven or Rachmaninoff.
Talented chaos
How now did the controversial maestro sound on the day his disarming and moving Beethoven recording on Idagio came out live at Muziekgebouw Eindhoven, where he indulged in Chopin, Schumann, Mozart and Rachmaninoff? Almost like a sleepwalker, Pogorelich made his way in jacquet to the chosen grand piano, placed Chopin's dishevelled sheet music on the grand piano stand, gestured the leaf turner to sit down right next to him and cradled the remaining scores on the floor at her feet.
Chopin's Ballade no. 2 in F, op. 38 was launched with a delicate lyricism, which was soon contrasted with the deafening tumult of unapproachably hammering basses (question: is it a coincidence that Pogorelich's father was a double bass player?) in fortissimo passages. It seemed as if every harmonic turn had to be dissected and indicated in its bare essence, which in turn came at the expense of coherence, flowing movement and sometimes beautiful singing melody lines.
Traumatised
The whole thing came across as a chaos, from which beautiful moments kept lighting up like drops of water reflecting in sunlight. Also during Chopin's Scherzo no. 3 in c-sharp op. 39 and Schumann's Faschingsschwanck aus Wien op. 26 in particular, there was an almost unbearable tension between Pogorelich's extraordinary talent for piano playing and his at times bizarre "lack" of overview and coherence. Pearly lyricism was punished by pounding drama, romantic melody lines went down in dark marshes full of terrifying structures and ominous sounds, heavenly songs became disturbed by demonic dismemberment, as if they were a permanent battle between good and evil.
All that got better during the Fantasy in c, KV 475 by Mozart, who, like Pogorelich, had far more understanding of heaven and hell than the average world citizen. It was as if Mozart's profound and spiritual notes soothed the traumatised pianist. They carried him away to metaphysical vistas, naturally soothing his inner tensions. The musical match between Pogorelich and Rachmaninoff was naturally fertile and somewhat reassuring, so that the heady interpretation of his Sonata no. 2 in b-flat op. 36 still required the audience's open-mindedness. At times, Pogorelich, with his huge, reassuringly capable piano hands, seemed almost a kind of free jazz with Rachmaninoff's notes-but all in all, it was also quite enjoyable.
In line
Bowing mechanically, the sheet music on his back, Pogorelich thanked his audience and gave an encore, unfortunately from the Romantic corner. Had he played Scarlatti, Bach or Haydn, his very peculiar solo recital would still be with ONEone wave of his pianistic wand could have transformed it into a memorable highlight. For one thing is certain: Pogorelich can still play fantastic piano, as long as the clear structure of the music itself or a wise musical guide keeps him formally in line. His wonderful Beethoven on Idagio is highly recommended and gives hope for the future.
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