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PASCAL AMOYEL
You’ve had the opportunity to play pianos of Chopin’s time. In the end,
what would be the ideal instrument?
Yes, I did a tour with Anima Eterna and Jos van Immerseel, playing an 1836 Pleyel.
Finally, these period pianos don’t have a great deal in common with our modern
pianos – they really are different instruments, different worlds. Because of their
physical characteristics, you can’t force anything on them; there’s a form of fluidity
that’s typical of Chopin’s playing, and you immediately understandwhat is intrinsic
in his music in relation to this Pleyel, but you can’t go beyond those capacities.
Emmanuelle Bertrand said the same thing recently when she played a cello by
Gagliano: as soon as you ask too much of the bow it doesn’t work any more. So
you can learn a lot about Chopin’s music by playing the instruments of his period:
a natural resonance, a halo that you don’t get immediately on modern pianos but
you have to knowhowto coax out of them.You also realise that you need to respect
Chopin’s pedalling marks – he’s one of the few composers of his period to indicate
them so meticulously – and to deduce something from them about the use of the
pedals on modern pianos. What seems very important to me from my experience
of playing the Pleyel is the awareness of the different layers of sound. If Chopin was
a bornmelodist, his polyphony and his skill in counterpoint call for a very subtle use
of the keyboard, which makes it possible to bring out dynamic nuances within a
single chord, to reveal the background to landscapes or emotions. You have to try
to find as much flexibility and subtlety on a modern Steinway.