So, it’s taken me somewhat longer than planned to post this follow-up, but I needed some time to process the extraordinary experience I had two weeks ago.

I was excited at the prospect of making this recording, but it’s fair to say there was some trepidation as well. In addition to being my first ever live recording, it was my first orchestra recording. And since Orpheus plays without a conductor, that was another element of unfamiliarity inserted into the process. (I had played conductorless before, but not with anything approaching the frequency with which I’ve played concerti with conductors.)

There were also logistical differences between this and my previous recordings: until now, I’d always recorded in London, which meant sticking - obsessively, some might say - to a routine. I stayed in the same hotel, ate the same things for breakfast, ran in the same park, left at the same time every morning. This time I was in New York, which meant that I was at home: nice, but psychologically different. (In my life, being at home usually means not working - or at least not performing.)

All of which is to say that the element of the unknown was very, very present. The details of the recording had been more-or-less in place since the summer, so I had a long time to think about the implications of all this. I’ve written in the past that a recording, to me, simply represents a snapshot of my thoughts about the piece on the day, but the truth is somewhat more complicated: however impossible it might be, the permanence of recording has always caused to me to fantasize about an idealized performance of a piece. And because I always record a piece after I’ve played a series of performances of it, there’s an urge to see the recording as a kind of summation of the process - a chance to meld all of the prior performances, and hope for a “the-whole-is-more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts” kind of result.

There’s a big downside to this attitude: not only does it discourage spontaneity, it is anti-spontaneity, as it carries the implication that everything that will happen in the recording studio has been experienced already. It also, I believe, leads to the making of a recording whose value is more theoretical than real - a recording that can be admired, but not loved. The snapshot analogy still holds, but the question becomes: is a photograph a document of a moment, or a highly posed creation?

Needless to say, I’ve given this issue a lot of thought, and in previous sessions I’ve felt that these two concepts of recording were doing battle with one another. I would have liked to have let go entirely of any expectation of perfection, or idealization, but the foreverness of the CD was often in the back of my mind. (Schnabel used to talk about the process of “verplattung” - which in German means both “disc-making” and “flattening out.”)

One of the advantages - or challenges, depending on your point of view - of recording live was that the decision as to which attitude I would take towards the recording was made for me. While the dress rehearsal was also recorded, and we had a brief patch session after the concert, the number of hours devoted to recording this album was a tiny fraction of what I spent making the Schumann and Beethoven CDs. The opportunity to play things over and over until I had found - or at least approached - what I had in my ear at the beginning of the day was simply not there. In its place was a very different opportunity: the chance to make a recording in which spontaneity was not only not shied away from, but actually the primary element involved. It’s not that my preparation for this recording was any less thorough: if anything, the mental and physical preparation for this disc was more intense than ever. It’s that the goal of the preparation was not to eliminate the element of uncertainty, of chance, but to free me to take chances. As cliched as it may be, my goal for this recording was to meet the moment.

As luck would have it, several elements combined to ensure that the odds were stacked in my favor. First of all, the music itself asked for this approach. Whereas in a Beethoven movement, creating a sense of the architecture of the whole is perhaps the biggest key to making the performance work, with Mozart, a sense of the mercurial - the sensation that the character of a phrase is being determined as it is played, as a reaction to the provocation that was the previous phrase - is of utmost importance. And that cannot be faked - you can only give the impression of being in the moment by actually being in the moment.

Second, I had the huge fortune of playing with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. In addition to their fantastic playing, their energy and enthusiasm were incredibly contagious, and the level of involvement each of them had in the music-making is something I will not soon forget. And any fear I may have had about playing without a conductor in a recording session proved unjustified: the lack of conductor - and the security one brings - forced everyone to listen that much more intently, which changed everything. It made the ensemble tighter, facilitated greater flexibility, and most importantly, it meant that whenever I tried something on the spur of the moment - a different dynamic shape, a slight leaning on a note - the orchestra not only accommodated it, but responded in kind. Never, playing this repertoire, have I had such a strong sense of a conversation being written on the spot.

Suffice it to say, the experience on the whole was memorable, and the concert itself had a joyousness - a pleasure in music-making - which I wouldn’t have imagined possible beforehand, given the pressure created by the circumstances. I’ve yet to listen to the tapes, but the making of the recording was so gratifying, the end result somehow doesn’t seem so important. (Another sharp contrast with my previous recordings, when the arrival of the first edit was a momentious - and nerve-wracking - moment.) What is important is the way the week confirmed my deepest-held feelings about music-making, so often compromised, and occasionally even obscured, by the pressure of recording and performing to the standard that great music demands: that it is all about communication. That if you strive to play in the most open, egoless way possible, you can reach people in a way that only music can. That it is, at its best, a more wonderful means of communication than speech.

I am very, very lucky to do what I do. Making this recording, I felt that as strongly as I ever have in my life.

Back in August, I wrote about the experience of making my Beethoven recording. As I said then, one of the aspects of recording which I always find challenging - and interesting - is the lack of an audience. Or, at least, the lack of an audience that is palpable while the playing occurs. So, as I’ve often said, my greatest goal for a recording is creating the feeling of a live performance. This has often led to the question, “how do you feel about live recording?”

Well, I’m about to find out. This weekend, I’ll be recording two Mozart Concerti live, with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, at Queens College. The process of preparing for the recording has been extremely fascinating - it has challenged, and in some cases altered, my beliefs on what recordings are for, and how they differ from live performances.  It has also forced me to examine, to a greater extent than I ever had before, how I listen to music, and what qualities I consider essential to great music-making.

Big questions, those. I’m going into recording hibernation now - I’ll be back with a full report on the experience next week.

“What a humiliation when one stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard the shepherd singing and again I heard nothing, such incidents brought me to the verge of despair, but little more and I would have put an end to my life - only art it was that withheld me, ah it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce…”     - Ludwig van Beethoven, from the Heiligenstadt Testament, 1802

I think this explains, far better than I ever could, why playing Beethoven - doing him justice, or at least coming as close as one can - feels like a matter of life-or-death.

Or perhaps even his words are unecessary: the force of his personality, the intensity of his need to say what must be said — these are made plain in his music.

My Beethoven CD was released earlier this month. Just my most recent attempt, in a series which I hope will last a lifetime, to come to terms with the most life-affirming, yet unfathomable music I know to exist.

(A further attempt to explain what this music means to me can be found here.)

in which I am back, with a vengeance. Partially by design, and partially by chance, my busiest-ever season was followed by one of my un-busiest summers: as of August 30th, I had gone a full five weeks without playing a concert - my longest hiatus, if I’m counting correctly, since I was 16 years old. It’s not that I stopped playing - the vast majority of my time was spent learning new pieces and getting reacquainted with old ones. But being off the stage - and in my apartment with some regularity! - allowed me to temporarily live a life quite different from my normal one. Since my return, the pace has been quick - 11 pieces in 4 countries over the last 10 days - allowing me to make a kind of direct comparison between these parallel existences. Some early conclusions:

* Time off is good. Anyone who’s delved this deep into my site probably already realizes that I am, ahem, enthusiastic about what I do; passion is a quality that I tend to value more highly than balance. That said, the benefits of being away from concert-giving life for a while turn out to have been enormous. Most importantly, I’m finding that coming back after a long break, my emotional receptivity is greater - to music, in general, and to the rather extraordinary dynamics of the concert hall. The first thing I performed after my time off was Schoenberg’s Six Little Pieces, and the meaning of each interval - the way in which each note conversed with its predecessor and its follower - seemed not just stronger but more specific than it ever had to me before. (This is, quite apart from the vicissitudes of my schedule, a quite extraordinary aspect of Schoenberg’s music - but that’s a topic for another post.) And my awareness of the electricity in the room - the silence which follows the initial applause, and the way the first notes of the concert rise out of that silence - was sharper than ever.

* Traveling on a regular basis involves internalizing a great deal of stress. However great the value of having a break may have been, I did miss performing. I also missed visiting familiar and unfamiliar cities, going to museums, seeing old friends and meeting new ones. Things I did not miss: packing my suitcase; unpacking my suitcase; discovering, upon unpacking of said suitcase, that I have forgotten to pack hangers/cufflinks/toiletries; being asked to remove my shoes and belt, in the manner of a patient in a mental institution, in the security line at the airport; phoning everyone I know in the United States when it’s 4:30 a.m. in Europe and I’m up, jet-lagged; asking airline employees why, 45 minutes after the scheduled departure of a flight, no announcement of a delay has been made; airport food; the price of airport food; the gnawing feeling that an airplane has not been cleaned during the last few presidential administrations. I’m ending the list here only because I can feel my blood pressure rising…

* This is not strictly related to my time off and its effects, but it’s been much on my mind the last week: one huge fringe benefit of making a recording is what it does to the experience of playing the piece subsequently. Recording forces you to be remorselessly clear about your musical intentions - any hint of uncertainty about the shape of a piece is magnified by the microphone. In the studio, this can feel a bit constricting, but in the concert hall, it has almost the opposite effect: knowing precisely how a phrase fits into your larger conception of a piece gives you the confidence that no matter what direction you choose to take with it on the spur of the moment, it will retain its inner logic, which in turn gives the feeling of immense freedom. Playing Beethoven sonatas last week, for the first time since recording them, I felt them moving in unexpected and exciting directions, which I’m sure is at least partially the result of the experience of playing them in the studio, and which makes the prospect of playing them - living with them - throughout the coming year all the more thrilling. Which brings me to my last point:

* One of the pieces I played for the first time last week was Beethoven’s strange and wonderful song cycle, An die ferne Geliebte (To the distant beloved). The opening of the cycle’s final song is quite faithfully and extremely movingly quoted in the first movement of Schumann’s Fantasy. (The words are: “Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder/Die ich dir, Geliebte, sang.” Roughly translated: “Take these songs, then, which I sang to you, beloved.”) The first movement of the Schumann begins with a nearly shapeless version of the Beethoven theme - more a searching for it than a rendering of it - and gradually, as the movement progresses, we move increasingly close to it, until the near-quotation comes at the end. Having lived with the Schumann for so long, it was, then, very touching to finally play the Beethoven itself - a sort of reunion with the distant beloved, which I had previously seen only through a dense fog. And given that the last year of my life was heavily tied up with Schumann, and that the one I’m just embarking on is equally centered around Beethoven, the song represented a very apt and very beautiful transition.

All of which is to say: music is wonderful, and it’s very good to be back.

In April, I spent four days making a recording of Beethoven Sonatas; on the third day, at around 4:30 in the afternoon, I lost my mind.

(Lest this sound melodramatic, I should say that I don’t actually think it was all that remarkable under the circumstances. In fact, going a little crazy may be an essential element of the recording process. It is, I think, nearly impossible to be happy with a record after you have made it: your relationship with a piece of music does not exist in a vacuum - it is a living, evolving thing, touched by your life experiences, the context it is given by other music, and the way your Cheerios tasted that morning. A recording, however, does exist in a vacuum - it will never acknowledge the way your feelings about the piece have changed. So all a recording can do, really, is serve as a snapshot of your relationship with that piece, on that day. This is, in one way, a relief; in another, it makes the whole process hugely fraught with pressure - you want the snapshot to be simultaneously as pure and [more important] as vivid as possible. Separately, each of those desires implies a great responsibility; together, they represent an unattainable ideal. Does losing one’s mind seem as extreme as it did one very long parenthetical paragraph ago?)

I was in the process of recording one of the variations in the last movement of the Sonata Op. 109. This variation, on the most fundamental level, is not difficult - if making music were merely a question of playing the right notes at the right times, the first take probably would have been perfectly adequate. But it is one of those late-Beethoven moments where the composer, more than anyone before or after him, conjures an image of the infinite, and it is this sort of thing that is most difficult of all to record: if you smudge a passage, your course of action is clear - you play it again, and usually the problem is solved. But can simply repeating something bring you closer to that which exists only in your inner ear? It is in moments such as these that I find myself desperately missing the response of an audience - a silent response, the way the air in the room is made different by everyone ceasing to breathe it - and the recording studio becomes a very lonely place.

I had begun the afternoon by playing the movement several times in its entirety, after which I went into the booth to listen. On top of the intangibles, this revealed a number of all-too-tangibles that I wasn’t pleased with, so I went back to the piano to try that variation again. The first take, post-listening, is often very strange: having been just made aware of the discrepancies between what I thought I was doing and what was actually coming out, the result tends to be an improvement in some ways, but also overly self-conscious. So I played it again - a bit more natural, I thought, and yet…

My producer chimed in from the booth, “That one was very good. We definitely have it.”

(This phrase was used, conservatively speaking, 300 times over the course of the four days. On the one hand, it’s an awfully important phrase - there’s probably nothing more important when recording than feeling that you can trust the producer. At the same time, however, I’m not sure I have the faintest idea what it means. No wrong notes? No hideous rhythmic disfigurements? The absence of anything identifiably wrong, in my view, does little to compensate for the absence of something inexorably right. And in music such as this, the feeling of not having it - of searching for something unattainable - is an essential part of the music’s expressive DNA.)

And so, I replied, “I need to play it again.”

It’s difficult to say how many more times I played it after that. I’m quite sure that it was more than three, and less than one hundred. It was quite a remarkable experience, in one way, to play this music, which is so intensely spiritual, over and over again. It was also physically, mentally, and emotionally draining in a way I could never begin to describe. Playing Op. 109 once, in a concert, spends the whole body and soul. Over and over again, in an empty room, with a red light as the audience?

Finally, my producer, who has the patience of a saint, and if he were not so unusually good at what he does, should have been a psychologist, said, “I think that’s come very far - we should leave it.”

Through gritted teeth, I replied, “It’s just not good enough.”

A silence from the booth. Then, in measured tones, “Do you think you could identify any particular element you aren’t happy with?”

It was not a good time for me to vent my frustration, given what I’d just put the poor man through, but I couldn’t help it. With just a touch of derision in my tone, I replied, “You wouldn’t understand. It’s ineffable.”

The silence in the booth was crisper this time, and at its end, it was the producer, not the psychologist, who spoke. “Well, until it becomes effable, let’s move on.”

And we did. To say that I recovered my sanity at that moment would be imprecise: I returned to that neither-nor state, between reality and fantasy, that one lives in while recording. Just over a day later, I walked out of the studio for the final time. Four sonatas had been recorded: four photographs, with my smudgy fingerprints on the fronts, and my name and the date on the backs.