Over eight years ago pianist Jonathan Biss embarked on an ambitious project to record all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas and to release one new recording each year. Eight of the discs have already been released. With just one more recording, which will be released November 1st, Biss is currently on a recital tour performing many of the composer’s sonatas.
I spoke to Biss last week in advance of his arrival to Los Angeles where he will perform tonight and tomorrow night at The Soraya. Each performance will be a different line-up of Beethoven’s sonatas.
Such a comprehensive project, lasting for as many years as this one has, means Biss has been asked pretty much every conceivable question about the project and about the composer. With that in mind, I attempted to find some new ground.
You have released eight of the nine recordings. How has your relationship with these works evolved over the years you have been recording them?
I think that what the experience of recording all of them has really driven home is how unalike they are. I think before I delved into this process I had the impression that the late works are unique, the big middle ones stand alone, but outside of that there are 15-20 that follow a broadly similar model or template. But I was wrong. What’s really amazing in terms of form, language and emotional concern, he starts from zero each time. I think that has made me more aware of their compositional dazzle.
If you were to go back and listen to the first recordings of this cycle, what advice would you give yourself about how to approach these works?
First of all, I wouldn’t. When you finish making a recording, you can throw it out the window. It’s a snapshot. I don’t like looking at old pictures. What this music demands is you throw yourself in headlong. You make an attempt to match his intensity of feeling. You commit to it as fully as he committed to the idea. I hope that I’ve become, in the recording studio, more fearless. I think, even without listening to them, if I had to redo the earliest ones, I would hope that with age I’ve become more fearless.
Isn’t that the opposite of what you would expect? Wouldn’t a younger performer have more bravado, perhaps out of naiveté, than a more seasoned one?
I’m the opposite. When I started the enormity of the task in front of me was daunting. The experience of so many hours, every day over a period of years, spent with this music has given me confidence that my choices aren’t going to be bad ones. I’ve tried to live in Beethoven’s head for so much of my life now. I would say I’ve become less cautious.
How did you choose the order in which to record them and by extension, how do you choose which you want to play at a given recital?
One of the things about the sonatas as a cycle I find most remarkable is the variety. I try to convey that within each disc and each recital program. If someone only hears one disc or concert, they come away with amazement of how different they are.
In a very recent interview you stated that you relate to the human side of Beethoven’s writing and that’s what you love about him. What does playing Beethoven allow us, as an audience, to understand about the human side of you?
I am probably the last person to be able to answer that question. I feel like what I try to do when I a play a concert is to present something which is as honest and unfiltered as possible which reflects my relationship with the music as honestly as possible. It’s up to the audience to decide what that says about me.
You seem to fiercely protect your privacy.
I think playing in front of an audience is an unbelievably vulnerable experience and I treasure that. I find it difficult to be exposed in that way and I wouldn’t choose a life without it. I think because I do that, there’s some part of me that needs to keep to myself.
Are there any modern composers who inspire you at least half as much as Beethoven does?
Beethoven is a really special thing in my life. I play a lot of new music. I’ve commissioned five new piano concertos in the last five years. They are companion pieces to the Beethoven quartets. György Kurtág has played an important role. On one hand it is necessary to think of music as a living and breathing thing and Beethoven exists in a continuum with the day. The mastery of Beethoven is a once-in-history phenomenon.
How tough is it for these new works to get programmed?
It is tough. That’s why with these pieces I’ve commissioned I’ve been very committed to them being played. If after the premiere someone asks me to play them, I say yes to give them a chance to enter the repertoire.
I do think, and I don’t meant to sound pollyanna, but the great pieces will survive. The amount of music written in any era that’s truly great and should survive is a tiny fraction. That was always true and it’s true now.
A frustrating thing about classical music is how far out it is planned. If I had the power, I would change that. It’s been done that way for too long. Orchestras are big machines. It’s not easy to be too flexible.
Beethoven wrote in 1802, “It seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce.” Now that the recordings of the complete sonatas are over, what else must you produce?
Getting to spend my life touching these pieces – and I’m not just talking Beethoven, but Mozart, Schubert and Schumann – touching these pieces and knowing that every day I get a little bit closer to an understanding of them until one day I die, that’s enough for me actually. If I fully understood them, I would stop playing. But that’s unfathomable to me.
Photo of Jonathan Biss by Benjamin Ealovega