Maria João Pires / Daniel Harding / Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra BEETHOVEN Piano Concertos 3 & 4

The role of interpreter is a delicate one: he, or she, is faced with the score as the sole point of contact with the composer. It is the interpreter’s job to bring a work to life, across distancesin time and space, by making a connection between a personality – often an exceptional one – and ordinary mortals. To achieve this he has to put mind and body at the service of a considerable task: the transmission of art. In music, the word ‘interpretation’ is prone to a number of misconceptions, frequently with unfortunate consequences. Thus we often see two positions set against each other: either the performer must ‘project himself’ in order to give life to the score (to ‘show personality’), at the risk of betraying the spirit of the work; or, on the contrary, he must show the score the utmost respect, so trying to suppress his own personality to give a reading of the work which may well be perfect – but lifeless.

Logically speaking, one might think that the correct approach would be halfway between these two extremes, but such logic would be crude compared to the subtlety of the question. Indeed, these two approaches both fall prey to the same fallacy, through the disproportionate importance they attach to personality. Whether through excess or shortage of personality, this concept gets in the way of music’s essential power to bring out a primal simplicity, so often forgotten, which is present deep inside each one of us, waiting to respond when summoned. Music’s capacity to suggest a stretch of time and yet still exist in the moment amounts to the capacity to reshape every aspect of our sensibility anew. So the act of ‘interpreting’ ceases to be one of simple personal will, to become that civilized conversation where composer and performer lend each other their ears, so to speak, across centuries and borders, with the aim of achieving an eminently simple miracle: for the work to open up, yielding to the source of all music. (Maria João Pires)