LDV100

25 MICHEL DALBERTO You recorded this album on a piano by Carl Bechstein. The Sonata was premiered by Hans von Bülow on a Bechstein instrument in order to launch the firm’s grand piano on the market. Can you tell us why you chose this particular piano? To record on a Bechstein was already a nod to a different way of doing things. I like its sound and I had made a Fauré disc on a Bechstein, remembering that Perlemuter once told me that Fauré had a Bechstein in his home. Debussy was also extremely complimentary about these pianos. The long decay time, the clarity in the bass of the instrument, its blend of smoothness and sound projection are all very appealing to me. That said, I wasn’t making an attempt to go back to the sources of ‘historically informed’ performance. The only truth that connects us to music is the truth that’s in the score. On the other hand – and I regularly tell my students at the Paris Conservatoire this – I take great care over the performance and expression marks, which are directly related to the instruments played at the time the pieces were written. Nikolaus Harnoncourt was quite right to say that composers want above all to be played, and therefore write for the instrumentarium at their disposal. No musician of the past or present would ever imagine specifying such and such a dynamic for hypothetical future instruments . . . In fact, the sometimes ‘unrealistic’ markings that you read in certain scores are often psychological in nature. It’s up to each of us to integrate them into our musical approach.