ALICE SARA OTT ON… RECORDING BEETHOVEN

The Beethoven album was designed to coordinate with the Apple project, so it was quite spontaneous! I recorded the Piano Concerto No 1 last October in Hilversum, with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Karina Canellakis [pictured, with Ott]. It was my second project with Karina, after I’d very much enjoyed working with her a couple of years ago, but we had just half a day to do the concerto. It had been difficult to get everyone together in the same place at the same time and we went through everything the day before on a video call.

It is always challenging to find a mutual language in Beethoven’s music, because you can have endless discussions about every single note. I have a very strong view of his music, Karina has her own very strong view of his music, so it was a challenge to us, coming to it from very different directions. The task is to find a common path, and the joy of that – and why I think music is so exciting

– is that you come up with a new approach, which can result in something very beautiful.

I’m so happy with the result. Although the circumstances were maybe not the same as a normal recording, it was an amazing experience, thanks to the tension and the awareness of the immediacy in that moment in the recording studio. Everybody knew we only had limited time, so the teamwork was incredible.

I recorded the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata as a companion to the concerto because it was written in the same year. It’s a piece I’ve known for a long time and it was a treat; I hadn’t expected to record it in the near future. I’ve paired it with some short Beethoven pieces, some of them almost unknown, and the simpler they seem on the surface, the more challenging they become. As for ‘Für Elise’, the better I got to know it, the more I grew to love it. Now it’s one of my favourite pieces and I often play it as an encore.