[Music] tetron I want to play you something [Music] we spoke about it but I think I don't think you know it [Music] [Music] [Music] where where did you go with this um it took me away it was very beautiful I was thinking about it what I was thinking about was what was going on in your head and I was
wondering what's your internal conversation what I wanted to play for you is uh music that was sort of composed collectively it's a folk song from Iceland I love it it's so beautiful yeah um it is called uh where life and death May dwell and it's basically the the lyrics are the old farmer who sewing
seats into the ground and contemplating that when the the seats will have grown know he himself will be under that Gage wow it's so beautiful and uh and you know this this idea of folk songs being composed generation after generation after generation and the fact that in
Iceland and such a dark place you know in difficult place especially in those times fact that that that that that people would be singing and half the songs are about death and the other half is about femine you know it's fantastic but there's something about that yeah the melody [Music] know can't compose
[Music] it you know it's it's a thought [Music] process but you're kind of stuck and he goes back [Music] there kind of you know out of time in in time and out of time you know [Music] um no uh [Music] music that nobody knows you know just just a farmer somewhere in Iceland sang
this to his children sang it to their children and then at some point in the 20th century these people went you know from Farm to farm to farm yes like really sort of basic I don't even know what kind of recording equipment that they recorded these Farmers singing and these things these 2,000 recordings of 2,000
songs they exists there in the archives in Iceland it's where this comes from you know so beautiful right yeah I love it yeah but listen to this [Music] I play this because of the of the birds I don't know if you're going to hear that on the recording but I hope so that's uh that's another FK song written
not written I created collectively with by Hungarian people it's uh somewhere deep been well I guess Romania now but that's the same thing you know [Music] how unexpect affected right it's sort of like yeah it's so far away from you know yeah the kind of like the structure
I love the structure but that's why I sometimes go into into this music to sort of like to open up yeah I'm excited for your album of Folk Music as well that's another added to the list yeah yeah yeah right at some point I mean now that you're 50/50 you're going to make more albums many more yeah
it's true you I mean [Music] sometimes we go variations that open of it sometimes it's nice to go into that FK song mood and then go to go back to structure yes you know it's very interesting yeah it opens it up yeah for [Music] instance how do [Music] you what I was thinking recently is the
kind of like [Music] yeah the the relationship of just every two bars you know so the the tension and the the release again nothing up to and then release but goes on and those are my my my three actors you know [Music] you understand what I'm talking about I'm talking about feeling like a theater
director almost you know the polyphony and the kind of transparency of it yes that's interesting if you take the next uh variation which is using the [Music] same but going into so you're going into basically you know so you're basically going into all exactly the same chords but you're doing
something so different in the next variation and the chords remain the same through the whole cycle absolutely and you can take this variation do it that slowly and it's just a different different thing you know completely different that's in the writing does it say this next one is faster than the
last one or no just nothing about it open just says variation to yeah so so I mean this just to take sort of an extreme example here you know and you could do this you could do it you know you could you could do that you know uh who's to say what what what what you can't do you know yeah but uh
that's basically to give sort of extreme examples of how how open the and you said 15 is the one where it turns dark what's 15 yeah so beautiful goes into it's funny to play it here in the sun with the birds and and everything I know but [Music] it goes on yeah [Music] beautiful but but you also you know that
that thing you could also do [Music] it faster you know [Music] and in that process the voicing changes all of a sudden Your Bass character comes out and just the music takes on another dimension but those are just like there are just very basic examples and you can go into full mode and really
explore with in each Tempo yes the kind of variant for sure you have to record it again oh yeah for sure I sure you I mean the greatest moment in the goldic variations is this variation um 25 that's where he sort of expands time you know because they're all two or three minutes and then all of
a sudden you have 10 minute long variation so if where we began with the [Music] ARA here is variation 25 [Music] that's like we to it's a Tempo yeah but it's incredible that this is indeed the same coure progression just taken into the negative and expanded you know almost three times in time amazing you know
[Music] [Music] ran have you heard lonlier music it's fantastic and the way he plays with dissonance you know you know how he makes these seven and he just puts a knife in your heart and then he you know yeah rotates it amazing it's unbelievable but that that that moment in the piece I sometimes
think about how is it in the world premiere if there was such a thing indeed you don't know what's coming what if you don't know what's coming in the gold variation you have the ARA and then you have variation one and then you have 14 variations and they're all in GM and everybody's happy it's a great and then
you have the big shock of the 15th variation and you bounce back and there you are you know at Hour end to the piece variation 24 is done and then this hits you and all of a sudden you have a 10minute long variation at that point in the structure what are like structural
bold Master stroke really bold right yeah yeah changes what this piece is about you know and then you have the the concluding variations and and the the great surprise of the of the area at the end when it sort of Fades in like like on the mixer board like I said it just it's it's always there it's just and
does that represent that that it's like it's coming around again and is the ending the beginning do you know what I mean like are we starting over essentially the thing is that like once you finish [Music] it and everybody is sort of with you after 80 minutes and then they up plot
and then you come back on stage and then again and again and again and then they're like is there no Ancor and then you're like well the only Ancor you can play after this solar system of piece is to go back into variation one yeah but then you have to play variation to yeah yeah yeah and then I don't know how long
your parking is yeah you know like and and then you go into this kind of infinity sort of cycle um but to me it feels like you can't can't add to this in the act of playing it you know it's it's it's this thing and it's this it's a solar system you know it's the ARA and the 30 planets and so yeah but the only
thing you can do is to then take another cycle but then maybe you go from LA to San Francisco yeah tell me about the your relationship to Dei oh yeah I mean complex because he was a complex thorny man you know but I don't know anything about him uh he was uh he came from the outside which is
always I think good and bad you know but good mostly but he was an auto DCT which and he basically wanted to push the music world away from the kind of governing power of Germany which had Vagner and Browns and betan and all of them and he wanted to find what is but it's French he was a very nationalistic
guy I think he was amazing but who thorny you know and and the music you [Music] know not exactly Thor [Music] very often with him you know like the [Music] beginning and something about this represents a change you know you just have you just have a composer sits down
and he goes into just goes into the Cor and explores it you know sometimes it's almost sonority for the sake of sonority space yeah instead of that driving Narrative of course he does that narrative but but he it's got a gentleness it it comes in with a gentleness and like a a curiosity
yeah but listen to the other guy on my French Album Jean philipo this is music that he wrote when Mard was just a boy and listen to this [Music] for [Music] I [Music] can you believe like 1762 unbelievable right so beautiful an arrangement I made from um his last opera just this great music that people
don't really know yeah I called it the Arts and the hours just an English title I so beautiful you know it wasn't I think premiered until in its full version until 1963 it was only like that like 200 years later but that's what I like I like anacronismo who sort of don't go with
the tides of their times so interesting it's like you rad St and ser rahmanov and and Bak in a way was considered extremely oldfashioned when he was writing the music of the future the gold variations it was considered like old news uh nobody cared for the kind of Barack structures they wanted the light
classical you [Music] know so so so craft like this you know that that's what the the general public was after but of course he just did what what he wanted but those those those composers you know it's like Carlo Galo with with his magicals I think in the 16th century that that are like so
futuristic that like even Richard Wagner couldn't write something on that scale of of sort of wild Harmony um you know it's it's so nice to to look back on music history now and realize that it's not quite quite as linear as we sometimes think of it do yeah what was do you remember the first piece you ever
played in front of people when you were a child God it was no I don't actually but I imagine it was something like [Music] this something something in that region but I do remember one of the first pieces I I composed yes when I was eight I think it goes like I have not played this for years
but [Music] that was like 8year old has it sounds like a Eastern European um Melody yeah [Music] S I like yeah like that yeah it could be like one of those sad Soviet cartoons or something you know it could actually come from from that you know I was probably listening to but it
also has a nursery rhyme aspect to it you know it it it's very [Music] beautiful yeah sad beautiful I had a you know we had we had a grand piano I'll tell you something beautiful my parents had a s thing happened to them in 1980 four years before I was born my father's father passed away quite suddenly and
they got inherited a little bit of money um and they were then studying music in West Berlin and they had nothing they lived in a tiny little student flat mom studying piano that composition they decided to take a loan and to buy a Steinway grand piano with all their money before they had even a
modest apartment so they brought this glorious piano into their little student flat in West Berlin and then moved back home a few months before I was born and then for the first seven years of my life we had this tiny little basement apartment where the living room basically was the piano you know I had a
room with my two sisters we had no space my parents did this unbelievably irresponsible thing in an economic sense you know spend it all on music yeah and then piano was the apartment yes you know and that's where we were gathered that's what I would play and and and I sometimes think about
that now and I'm you know I have my pianos so I think about the root of all of this being this sort of romantic decision of my parents to yeah to not just spend all the money but take a loan and you know really put all their money into a piano and then come home and be like hm where are we going to
live where where are we going to put this piano yeah it's not an accident that you're you well the piano cost at that point basically the same as an apartment in Iceland yes and I'm so grateful for their sort of ill advised finances right now at least you know and I think about it and then what I want to
say as well is that when I we moved into a bigger apartment finally when I was seven my parents actually got me an upright piano very old Danish upright piano which totally broken but I would have that in my bedroom and then this would be the kind of Glorious piano in
the living room but I had my own little private piano as well where I could play any hour of the day and just you know have these kind of intimate keyboard conversations with my myself and I sometimes think about that and two or 3 years ago we should actually have an upright here not just this fancy sway
because two or three years ago I recorded an album called from afar where I actually recorded the exact same music on grand piano like this and then on an AP piano beautiful like the one I grew up with you know beautiful it's amazing how that changes the how tell me the difference in the playing the experience
of sitting at a grand piano versus sitting at an upright for you well you know just the the response to these B vibrations you know and of course the acoustic affects everything about the way you narrate the music but the response on leard piano which is so much smaller and so much more immediate it's
much more like like like having that that that private conversation you know that very intimate conversation the grand piano you have to work a little bit harder to make it into that intimate creature so I think yeah my bedroom piano you know uh it's it's just two different worlds but I think the the
ight piano has a comeback I really think so you see in in pop in in in in so much music people are going back to it now and experimenting with it and sort of taking it further um which I think is a wonderful thing yeah and in a way very Democratic because the great majority of
people don't have parents who spend their money so so ill advisedly like like my parents you know most almost all pianist in the world have simple operations on on the operates you know tell me some of the things that you've done in terms of recording that are not typical for a classical pianist oh I
mean many many many many I love the idea of of of taking especially my bux recordings and and sort of taking them a little bit into an electronic you know more of a yeah just a different direction um we've done many things like that uh both on an uppr piano and and and on grand pianos but collaborating
with really different musicians you know one who did a fantastically beautiful Fantasy on one of my recordings was Sakamoto ruichi was fantastic incredible man yeah um and it's a little bit like reversing the creative process you know you I usually take the music of Bak or
somebody else and I redefine it for myself there I actually gave or give sometimes my recordings to to AR to my admire and sometimes do something with him myself uh to in a way use the the interpretation of old music as as sort of creative material for for new compositions yes that's what Sakamoto
did re and uh and it's been done a lot you know and I did a little fantasy um with my an anr producer Christian batura uh using basically B's most famous Prelude [Music] so I I recorded this on on an aparate piano actually and then we sort of created I'm not going to say much but we
created something something something new with it yeah um a memory of a memory I think and it was a memory of and then in deep s in our lives uh when Johan Johanson my compatriot Icelandic composer had just died in Berlin back in 201 17 I think it was did you know him yeah we were actually planning a project
together um we were going to take beta and and what deconstruct him yeah and I recorded some of his music as well but but he died so suddenly and then we did a fantasy to sort of heal ourselves on this Bak prelot called it uh and at the hour of death yeah um and there's another one [Music] um you know we should
go taking this prel but just using it as material for something for another Excursion you know that was called for Johan yeah I iess S when I when I think about that because he had so much more I had in music but yeah I think very often in times of like those I and so many other people go to
Bak I think it's sort of a good idea whether you're feeling happy or sad he someh balances you in a way that that uh is I think it's always a good idea but suddenly when I'm feeling sad there's nothing but B that can s of sometimes bring me back and give strength you know have you ever recorded Sati no I
shouldn't I wouldn't that be nice I love Sati [Music] no wouldn't it be [Music] nice he's doing something so similar to you just you just wanted to go on forever language but from that French school comes our friend Phillip [Music] [Music] as one cycle yeah and then it goes into
another cycle and then the third cycle that's called opening that's the first track on my never wanted to stop right unbelievable it goes on so beautiful but it takes on a life of its own in a way when you play it you you don't know when you start where where it's going to take you
when you're playing are you listening and like if you notice that the low notes aren't singing on this particular piano as well as they you're used to do you make adjustments as you're going based on what you're hearing yeah all the time you constantly constantly in a way that that back part of your brain is in a way in
that overdrive but hopefully it's a part of your subconsciousness and a part of your bigger listening rather than being like I need you know one more Hertz here uh you know it's it's uh but you're constantly constantly adjusting yeah how much um do you think of the left and right hand as to
different uh players not so much I mean they are but I think about like the different players in each hand so so maybe the right hand I'm thinking about the two or three different players in that hand and then the two or three whatever it is in the music in in that hand but just certainly
if you're doing like maybe in this music sure because it's relatively simple um but I don't think about the hand to the physicality I think about uh I think about it more in terms of inside the structure and music as this kind of organism like a biological organism almost a weap I
can't believe you just played here and I got to hear it it's like uh here we are looking forward to Disney tomorrow night but I feel like this is uh even better it's different don't compare it's different it's a beautiful place thank you for coming Happ to be here and thank you for playing music [Music] temp [Music]