AN INCOMING TRANSMISSION
Pianist Kokits explains ‘the indescribable’
The young Viennese pianist Anna Magdalena Kokits is set to embark on a cross-Canada tour, from Halifax to Vancouver, that will include a free concert Wednesday in the National Gallery of Canada’s auditorium.
Below, Kokits, who is not yet 30, discusses the passion she’s had for music — which began in childhood — and her interest in presenting “buried treasures” as well as works by renowned composers.
Q How were you first exposed and attracted to music?
A My musical genes probably derive from my grandfather. He was a pharmacist with an abundant love for music. He used to work in the pharmacy during the week and play the organ in church on Sundays, always rising to the challenge of improvising intricate preludes and postludes with unprecedented spontaneity and virtuosity.
Since both my parents were musicians as well, it simply was the most natural thing for me as a child to sit at the piano and play for myself, just for the fun of it. I’m told I was about four years old when I started playing, but I actually didn’t have proper lessons until much later. My early years of music making were almost entirely playful and marked by an insatiable hunger for music. I learned to read music so early I don’t even remember it. From then on I just sight-read anything I could lay my hands on.
Q Beyond furnishing you with a career, what does playing piano mean to you?
A To be honest, I don’t focus on the career aspect. I make music because I feel the necessity to do so. It is my means of expression by which I am able to transmit something — let’s call it “the indescribable” — to other human beings. That is the greatest gift for me.
The piano is the only instrument by which a single player can emulate an entire orchestra. This gives freedom and independence. The piano is also fascinating because in a way it is both a string and a percussion instrument. This contrasting mixture resulting in endless possibilities of expression and sound provides a rewarding and exciting adventure with every piano I encounter.
Q Why are pieces by Beethoven and Gershwin on your program?
A I’ve always loved Beethoven and felt at home with his musical language. The 32 Variations in C minor are very interesting because, apart from the last two, none of them is longer than eight bars. Hence, the character changes often and abruptly.
Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is one of the first pieces for piano and orchestra I learned as a teenager. I included it again in my repertoire only a couple of years ago and have been playing it since.
It gives me great joy, both in its solo version and in the one with orchestra. The former allows even more freedom, whereas the latter has a very special energy, rooted from the orchestra.
Q While in Canada, you’ll present works by lesser-known composers too. Why?
A I try to compose programs that would be attractive to me as a concert-goer. We are blessed with a repertoire for piano or piano with any combination of other instruments that seems to be almost endless and even more so once you look beyond what is considered the standard repertoire.
There is so much wonderful music yet to be discovered. Therefore, I always try to slip in at least one lesser-known composer. It is true that some concert organizers are afraid to lose their audience if, for example, a living composer is played. But it is equally true that in most cases once you have lured the audience into the concert hall, even the most unknown and unheard-of music casts its spell and often turns out to be the most exciting part for the audience. And of course, many people also come to listen to unusual programs precisely because they are curious to discover something new.
Q Beyond Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Strauss, Austrian classical music has a contemporary face. Tell me about that.
A During the inter-war period, the arts in Austria and Germany flourished. With Hitler coming into power and the resulting wave of emigration, as well as the many artists perishing in the concentration camps, a lot of music got lost or forgotten. For me, this period of the 20th century is full of buried treasures.
A few years ago, I discovered Ernst Toch through a CD project and was so taken by his music that I decided to record his piano works. Luckily Toch survived the war, but unfortunately his career was cut short through his emigration. What has always fascinated and impressed me about his music is the reduction to the essential and substantive. Every note conveys the impression of being absolutely necessary and not one is superfluous or replaceable. Ernst Toch’s music is convincing and his story moves me in such a special way that I feel a great need to make his music accessible to a broader public again and to contribute my share towards reintegrating the “most forgotten composer of the 20th century” — as he often called himself in the final years of his life — into musical life today.
Q Why have you chosen to play a piece by Canadian composer Vivian Fung?
A I spent a lot of time researching Canadian contemporary piano music before I found Vivian Fung’s piece Glimpses. It really was “love at first sound.” I knew immediately that I had found the piece I wanted to add to my program as a Canadian contribution. Vivian Fung manages to extract sounds and colours from the piano that I have never heard before. I am extremely excited about her music. She has an absolutely unique voice.
Q Is it important to you to promote the work of young female composers like Vivian Fung and Manuela Kerer?
A It is important for me to promote the works of young composers in general. I do think that women are sadly still heavily under-represented in the world of composing as well as conducting. So yes, it is also important to me to bring female composers’ music to life and I’m grateful for having the opportunity and the freedom to do so. What matters in the end, though, is always just the music, what it transmits, what it lets us experience, what colourful, adventurous, magical worlds it opens. phum@postmedia.com twitter.com/peterhum