Cathal Breslin's Stories and Soundscapes

Transcript:

Michael Keelan: This is KBACH’s First Take and I'm Michael Keelan. I'm talking with pianist Cathal Breslin, who is on the faculty of Arizona State University. He's released a new album titled "Stories and Soundscapes." Welcome to First Take.

Cathal Breslin: Glad to be here. Thank you.

Michael Keelan: This album has composers from the past and present. A couple of them are fellow folks from Ireland—John Field and Linda Buckley separated by hundreds of years. If we just go in order, John Field is somebody who is famous for his Nocturnes and you chose a couple of them for this album. How did you choose those two?

Cathal Breslin: It's difficult to make a choice with such great music, but I felt that these are the two that I've connected with over the years. I've played most of those Nocturnes. I wanted something powerful enough in its simplicity and purity to sort of sandwich the four Ballades by Chopin which are the total opposite. They're kind of monumental works, virtuoso works, and I needed something that's quite simple and pure and beautiful to surround such monster works. So that was the reasoning behind taking these particular two. They're the most peaceful, I would say, of the set.

Michael Keelan: Field is someone that I almost feel a bit sorry for sometimes because his name doesn't get mentioned outside of the context of Chopin. It's almost like the warm-up act historically for Chopin. What is there to appreciate about him that's completely independent of Chopin?

Cathal Breslin: It's really bizarre the comparison to Chopin because they're so far apart in terms of decades. So these pieces, for example, were written whenever Chopin was one year old. So you can't really compare works that are 20, 30 years apart. That's a lifetime in terms of musical style. I prefer to think of Field and his innovations and the amazing creativity that he had in the context of the late classical period. So he was really a groundbreaker in those ways, whereas Chopin was very firmly in the middle of the romantic tradition and the language of music was different at the time. So the only real comparison that we can find is the fact that Chopin wrote Nocturnes, Field wrote the very first Nocturnes by name and the comparison kind of stops there because they're 20, 30 years apart in terms of musical style. So of course we're going to say Chopin's style is more complex, it's more ornamental, it has more adventurous harmonies, but that's just natural for music that's so far apart in terms of decades. So I always try to kind of just highlight that because there's no purpose to compare them side-by-side.

Michael Keelan: You do include all four of the Chopin Ballades and they are probably his largest scale music aside from the Sonatas and Concertos. Do these longer pieces present interpretive challenges that Chopin's shorter music doesn't present?

Cathal Breslin: I think it does. It's really miraculous music in terms of both the timeframe it covers—his entire life from whenever he was in his early stages as a composer to his very final works. So you can kind of see this evolution of the style. It's fascinating for me, but also just the virtuosity, the emotional content—everything comes together in these pieces. I think more—I wouldn't say they're better than anything else Chopin wrote, but for me, as a set of pieces that can be played both as a complete set and individually, they are kind of unmatched. Each one is perfect in its creation and so whenever we can put four of them together in that way, it's kind of a snapshot of his whole life. You can just really see how he changes his style throughout time, so it's always a set that I go back to quite often, more than other sets by Chopin. Maybe because I'm attracted to the kind of monumental journey that it can be. Also the fact that number one and number four are bigger than the two in the middle, it sort of just gives you the symmetry. So it's a great set, it's a fascinating set. I've been with this set for many, many years, so I've kind of brought it back so many times and I'll probably keep doing that because I love it so much.

Michael Keelan: Was there one Ballade that was sort of your go-to Ballade prior to this album? I assume that pianists tend to have more of an affinity for one than another oftentimes.

Cathal Breslin: That's a good question. Yeah, absolutely. If I talk about what I played when I was younger, it was always the first Ballade at every competition, every program. The first Ballade was kind of my first taster, if you will. But whenever I was a teenager, I had a record enthusiast who delivered lots of different recordings by pianists I'd never heard of playing the Ballades. So I was introduced to all of them at that point. But I focused on number one in the beginning and then number four—its thickness, its complexity, and it's a little bit darker or more sad. It has more of that quality. I was fascinated by that next after number one and then I came to number two and three later. So I didn't play them in order and I didn't always conceive them as a set. I think I first presented them as a set in concert, it was kind of an all-Chopin program that I had to create and what I did was I put the four Ballades and then I put other pieces by different composers in between them. So they kind of they made this structural like the structural pillars and then I had short works in between. I thought that worked really well as a program and I've enjoyed doing that type of thing because you can put different composers from totally different styles in between each Ballade and then you have three spaces to fill in the program.

Michael Keelan: Right, it changes the perception of the Ballades too.

Cathal Breslin: Definitely, yes.

Michael Keelan: You have some modern music on this album too. How did you come to know the composer Linda Buckley?

Cathal Breslin: We're both from Ireland so we've known each other for quite a long time. Linda Buckley would be one of the most successful Irish composers alive today. She's always been taken seriously as a composer for large forces like orchestra and all the major European orchestras have recorded her music and commissioned her music. I initially got interested in some of these particular piano works. "Fridur," which was the first one, the sound world was just really interesting for me to hear. So the piano is not alone on stage, it's with electronics and the electronic track creates this magical atmosphere, especially in live performance. It just—it's both a shock to hear all of that extra sound and then it also it complements the piano. So "Fridur" was the first piece and then just a few years ago she wrote a piece called "Water Witch," which is the final track on this album and that was the—this is the world premiere recording of that work. I've probably played that piece in many different contexts with different programs over the last three years. I've played it along with Schubert's last sonata, for example, which you wouldn't think that's a typical pairing, but the breakaway from the sound world, or to refer to the album, the soundscape that's created from that is just breaking away from the actual sound of the piano alone and creating something that's sort of an environment. So "Water Witch" is in four very distinct sections and each one is very different and they also have a different mood for each one. So it's almost like a Ballade in a modern context that it constantly changes emotion. But it's almost like a flowing type of modern Ballade which breaks off into different atmospheres for each of the four sections. And of course it has a programmatic reference too which is also very interesting in Irish folklore. It's supposed to be depicting the different natures of water and most composers have gone into water music thinking like water is very peaceful or it's maybe it's a big wave. In Linda Buckley's music it goes from the very still water to the very violent crashing waves of basically where she grew up which was on the West Cork area of Ireland where the water is really very violent if you think of it. You don't—it's not the type of water you'll go for a swim in.

Michael Keelan: And in hearing that electronic track along with the piano, I wondered if that's something that you follow visual cues for or you have any role in starting and stopping that track, or what is your relationship when performing to that track?

Cathal Breslin: Yeah, this is a really good point. So with "Fridur," the first of the two piano and electronics works, I can do it by a click track or I can do it with a stopwatch. I have to line up with certain points, so there's certain structural points in that piece where I need to be together with the track. But that track is quite—it's quite free and it's not that I'm landing directly with it, it's more that it creates an aura underneath the piano—a rumble, if you will, or—so it's a little different. With "Water Witch" it's very, very precise and in that, if I don't have a click, then I cannot play those complex rhythms along with it in some parts. And sometimes you can hear this, so all I would need is an ear monitor and you've practiced with it so some of it is very rhythmic and has a strong beat. That is just practice and trying to fit the rhythms in. As long as I can hear with an earpiece I'm fine with that, but some of it is quite complex in terms of fitting together. So the two pieces present different challenges in that way.

Michael Keelan: As an orchestral musician who's played a lot of film scores with the picture above me, I know that feeling of having the click track in your ear and having to sync with it.

Cathal Breslin: Exactly, exactly. I've actually played that work in all sorts of places. I played it in Sao Paulo in Brazil, I've played it all over Asia, I've played it in Tokyo, in Seoul, in Beijing. It's had a journey, this piece, and it always creates this unexpected reaction from the audience because quite often classical music audiences, they come and they hear Chopin or Schubert or whatever and they've expected something and then when they hear that in the program they're kind of shocked, but in a pleasant way. So I think that that's what has led me on this direction to put all of these very diverse repertoire and all of the different sound worlds represented on one album. It makes perfect sense to me because I've had real-life experience in different countries and I've seen how breaking away is actually a powerful thing in a program and not that everything has to have the same theme. And just as a side note, the reason I kind of started to think like this was actually not in piano recitals but in modern dance shows. I was always fascinated with modern dance and how they take three parts to a program and present three different—very different styles. And so whenever I was in London when I was a young student, I was just so enthralled by that structure of three parts. There was always something traditional, there was always something modern, and then there was something that was completely in either the pop or hip-hop style and these are the same dancers doing all three styles. So maybe that implanted the idea of breaking into different sound worlds in one program for me, but I'm glad that I'm kind of doing that more in piano recitals because that's—it's fascinating for me to hear things that maybe should not go together in a traditional way, but it works really well as a program.

Michael Keelan: Any highlights close to home that our listeners could hear next season?

Cathal Breslin: We have a performance of Prokofiev Second Concerto, which is one of my, you know, that's one of my greatest sort of dream pieces that I used to play all the time. So we're actually programming that to open the ASU Symphony Orchestra season and that's in September at the Tempe Center for the Arts.

Michael Keelan: The album is "Stories and Soundscapes" and I've been talking with Cathal Breslin on First Take. I'm Michael Keelan. Thanks for joining us today.

Cathal Breslin: You're welcome. Thank you very much.