Interview with Jonathan Biss
Interview by Sarah Walters
Q: You grew up in an incredibly musical household surrounded by inspirational artists in your own family. How important was that in terms of the artist you’ve become?
I certainly think that growing up surrounded by music is the most important thing that ever happened to me because I heard music from the beginning of my life. There was not a time when I didn’t know music as a language or a means of communication. But having said that, I have an older brother who didn’t gravitate towards music, so I certainly don’t think it made it inevitable I would become a musician; I think that there still has to be something inside you that responds deeply to music.
I have no memory of this, but when I was four I asked to play piano. My brother played, and I think it was just a fantastic looking toy! My parents thought four was too young, and at six when I was still asking, they said: ‘Go ahead. Let’s start the piano.’ It was my own choice, but it wasn’t a mindful one!
Q: Is that how you came to understand that there was room for the classical and the contemporary to sit so neatly together in dialogue on stage?
I can’t imagine deciding to play a piece of music unless I loved it and felt that it was interesting enough that I would want to spend a lot of time with it, and then be continually stimulated by spending a lot of time with it. Of course, when you commission a piece, that’s a different story because you just don’t know, you take a gamble. But I think that my interest in new music and particularly in commissioning music is also philosophical. I would be very, very troubled by the idea that the genre of music that I love and that I live for is only a thing of the past; I’m not fundamentally OK with that. So, because of that, I’m just interested in getting to know as many composers who are working today and in lots of different idioms.
In terms of my approach, whether it’s sort of an interest in both old and new music, or the way I programme, or the way I think about music, or the way I work in general, I think I have to give my parents a lot of credit. I could easily have felt compelled to continue in their footsteps; many things about my parents have been very inspirational to me, but I think it was really important to them that, if I was to become a musician, I’d know that I was doing it for myself and not because I thought it was what was expected of me. They gave me a lot of room – I have very few memories of them even practicing with me! I don’t ever remember them telling me what repertoire I should play, it was more about encouraging me to find my own way and my own voice, which I feel very lucky about.
Q: Do you recall a moment or a piece of music that ignited something inside you and made you realise music was what you wanted to pursue?
I remember there are a lot of moments that were critical. The first concert that I can remember going to, and I would guess I was around six, was when my parents played the Mozart clarinet quintet. And I remember it so well, very specific moments of it; I remember that the second theme of the first movement stunned me with its beauty. Whether that is the moment when I knew that I would be a musician, I don’t know, but that was one of a series of moments really early in my life in which I understood intuitively that music spoke to me in a way that nothing else did.
Q: Is that still true – after all your life experiences, that music is your true love?
By far. It’s interesting because I am a musician who has chosen to write, which many musicians don’t do, and I love writing, but I still absolutely feel that performing music accesses all sorts of things that language can’t. I find that music is a way into emotions that I could never express with words and sometimes it’s a means of revealing emotions I didn’t even know existed.
Q: What makes particular repertoire continue to connect with people and allow contemporary music to connect with it across the centuries?
Great music transcends fashion. If you read the history of music, you can read about the kinds of music that was very in vogue in Vienna (and I use the example of Vienna because I’ll be playing Schubert at the RNCM) in the 1790s, and the kind of music that was in vogue in Vienna in the 1810s, and the kind of music that was in vogue in the 1830s – that has to more to do with surface questions of style. Schubert, who is the quintessential example of someone who transcends time, his music is asking deeper questions and it’s speaking to human experiences, which are not things that go in and out of vogue. It’s about life and death and about what it means to be a human, about the pain of being human and the potential beauty in living a life. If someone does that, and does that at the highest level, then their work will never stop having the capacity to be moving. Those are the composers that are timeless.
Timeless art talks across centuries. I commissioned a piece by a wonderful American composer, Leon Kirchner, and he said: ‘Art responds to art no matter the time or chronology.’ One of the really striking things I find when I play Schubert as well as a piece that was written for me is that they talk to each other – it’s not just the newer work in response to the older one, the older one also is responsive to the new one and sounds different from being heard in the context of a new piece of music. That’s only true with great music. Forgive me: Johann Strauss, it’s lovely, but I don’t think it has a thing to say about Tyshawn Sorey, or vice versa.
Working with composers changes the way I work on old music because, to state the obvious, I will never have the chance to meet Beethoven or Schubert or Mozart, and because I’m not a composer I don’t naturally have a very sophisticated understanding of how composition works. So, it’s really, really revealing to work with someone who has confronted an empty page; I come away with a slightly more intuitive understanding of what the process is like and that gives me a certain kind of freedom when I play older music, that I can be imaginative and I’m not likely to desecrate it!
Q: Do you think that young musicians are encouraged to explore a broad enough repertoire, or would you like to see educators take a slightly different approach?
I think that young musicians are fearful, and I don’t know if that has to do with the nature of teaching or not, if it has to do just with the nature of being young, or if it has something to do with the time we’re living in, which is precarious in all kinds of ways – particularly for musicians.
The greatest wish that I have for young musicians, and this goes beyond just the question of repertoire, is that they be encouraged to latch on to the aspect of music that really attracted them in the first place, to really drill in on what that is and to work outwards from that. Young musicians feel such an enormous pressure to do what they think is expected of them, what they think might be successful, and that makes me sad in a way because you have your whole life to be cynical. When you’re young, it should be the time to be really idealistic, and especially for someone who chooses the life of an artist, who is choosing to do something which is profoundly meaningful to them. I want for young musicians to feel the permission to use love as the starting point of their work.
Q: What can you tell me about the programme you have chosen to perform at the RNCM as part of our Inspirational Artists season, on 25 March 2025?
The last three Schubert sonatas, of which I’m playing two, have become the most important music in my life lately, they’re almost the centre of my life right now! There were all of these years when I was working intensively on the Beethoven Sonatas, and I was already becoming deeply interested in these last Schubert Sonatas but there just wasn’t room for it. I knew for a while that was the next port of call and I think that these last three sonatas are one of the greatest productions of humanity. It doesn’t feel like hyperbole to say that; this man, who was 31-years old, two months away from death, and living in a tiny room in his brother’s house, wrote in the space of a month these three works which have more to say about mortality than almost any other art in any form than I can think of. They move from absolute terror to a kind of acceptance by the last one in a way that is just unspeakably moving. The more I play these pieces, the more astonishing they become to me.
I’ve known them for much of my life, but I only learned the A major when I was in my early twenties and the other two I learned during the pandemic. At that time, when there was so little pressure on my schedule, I was working in a way that was impossible in the 10 years before that; I didn’t have concerts, I wasn’t going anywhere, and so if I wanted to spend three hours one day working on a two minute passage of music, there was nothing stopping me – and that was glorious! Especially for this type of music, which runs so deep; my relationship to it will be richer for the rest of my life from having had that beginning.
And Tyshawn Sorey’s For Anthony Braxton, it has been such a privilege to have a piece from him. I think he’s one of the most distinctive and strong voices among contemporary composers. The piece that I play, I find that it’s hypnotic. His music is very slow moving but the ratio of music to notes is incredibly high. There’s so much meaning in it, in every interval and in every, what I would call, composed freedom. I don’t want to say much more because Tyshawn really likes to let his music speak for itself. When I asked if he wanted to write a piece for the programme, he refused on the grounds the music says everything that needs to be said. I want to honour that.
Q: You once said that the expectations on a solo pianist are extraordinary – that audiences expect you to come out on stage and ‘slay the woolly mammoth’. You’ve been quite candid about the personal challenges and anxiety you have faced as a performer – what has become your approach for channelling the pressure of those expectations?
It has been a very long, complicated, often difficult process in my life and I think, ultimately, I could probably talk about it for hours, but it’s basically about acceptance – the understanding that you can only be who you are. Nor should you be anything else, and that’s tough when you’re starting out, when there is an enormous pressure on you, and there are so many external expectations.
There is something artificial about the concert stage. Usually, you’re literally on a platform, right? And traditionally you don’t interact with the audience at all: you bow, you play, you bow again, and you leave. There’s something almost inhumane about the effect of that; it can very easily take you away from your desire to express something that is true, and which should be the only point, into the feeling that you must not fail, you must not do anything wrong, you must not make a mistake, you must not do yourself any damage. That puts you in such a defended place. First of all, it’s very dangerous for your psyche, but it also makes it very hard just to make music.
It’s a lifelong labour to bring yourself towards a healthier view of it. But when you do, it’s amazing, because then you realise that nobody is there for any reason other than to share in this music with you. And when you can embrace the idea of it as a thing that you’re sharing, what could be better? As with most things, I think it’s really a question of your mindset, and the world conspires sometimes to really screw with your mindset, but it’s something that is ultimately in one’s power. The difference in me now is huge. I mean, it’s not black and white, it’s the kind of thing that one works on for a lifetime, but there’s no question that I feel different when I walk out for the first bow, and there’s a much greater chance now that I will then feel altered by the experience. All I want is to feel that I lived inside the music for the two hours that I was on stage.
I’ve talked to many colleagues, I won’t mention them by name, who have said the same thing: that all they were able to hope for is that they can leave unscarred by the experience. It’s so sad, right? You choose to do this thing because you love it, and then you allow the fear to rule. Vulnerability is not in itself a bad thing; it’s being vulnerable and then putting a wall up – that’s when the trouble starts.
Q: Are there still stages or rooms that do leave you awestruck or make your knees knock, or is it more about the experience of walking out in front of any audience rather than the building itself?
It sort of is more about the experience of walking on stage in front of every audience, and I do think about that; at this point, I only play music that I really truly love, and as I do I think about the possibility that someone out there might not know the piece that I’m playing and that they might really feel it changes them. That’s incredibly moving, wherever you are.
Of course, playing in a hall that’s very beautiful and that has great history behind it, like Carnegie, will always be special, but it’s about the people wherever they are, and having the chance to actually reach someone is a magnificent thing.
Q: As an Inspirational Artist, what would you say to young musicians who are starting their journey to find their place in the world?
Follow what you love and don’t allow yourself to be distracted from that. Do something every day that reminds you of why it is that you play music in the first place. Also, I do believe that curiosity can be practiced and that the way we live our lives can shrink our imagination or expand it. So, be interested in what’s around you, be interested in as much music as you possibly can be, be interested in people, listen to them, be interested in other art forms. Our society is not one that necessarily encourages us to open ourselves up; there are a lot of aspects of modern life that close us down, so be curious as much as you can be.
I grew up being very influenced by Arthur Schnabel, and Pablo Casals is someone who I find extremely inspirational, but literature for me is also very important. Presenting the music well is telling the story, guiding the listener through the narrative. I don’t think there’s anyone who would say that a great actor is the actor who has the best diction, full stop. But I do think there is a notion among some people that the job of a musician is to play the notes accurately and in time, which you do have to do, but if it’s without understanding of the grammar of the music, it doesn’t amount to anything.
Event Info
Jonathan Biss (piano)
Tuesday 25 March 2025, 7.30pm
RNCM Concert Hall
20 November 2024
