A interview with Pianist Matthieu Idmtal He is 25, lives in Brussels, and things are going well for pianist Matthieu Idmtal. He just organised the second edition of the ‘Brussels Chopin Day’, next month he goes to France and Switzerland to perform with his violin partner Maya Levy, and his concert agenda for the future looks full. ‘I try to find my way’ he says almost laconic. We sit in a bar in Ixelles, the town where he lives, and during our conversation he will order three coffees. Nevertheless, the calmness of this young man will never disappear.
How did you start playing the piano?
I always found that I walked a rather atypical path to come where I am now. I don’t come from a musical family, compared to many others I started relatively late with playing the piano, I never went to a music academy and so on. I remember that we had an old upright piano standing in our house to which I was always going to as a child. On a good day my mother kind of decided that she may be had to do something with the kid that was always plucking that piano, and she searched a private teacher for me. I must have been 7 or 8 at that time. Thinking about it back, I believe that she was a very good teacher. A Russian pedagogue, able to give me a good base. She noticed a certain talent, but I had no clue yet that playing piano could or would become my profession. May be the people around me noticed faster than myself my possibilities and my need to play music. I remember how I would walk to school, and midway just decide to walk back home because I considered playing the piano a much nicer way to spent my day than sitting the whole day in a classroom. The problem was that I took these decisions more and more often. And that is how I entered to the Kunsthumaniora Brussel, a high school in Brussels that offers you, next to your basic subjects, music courses as well, which prepare you for entering conservatory. From that moment, there was no doubt anymore. Music took me every day more and more. Till now. Who do you consider as your mean teachers?
Without any doubt I mention Vitaly Samoshko. I could say that he learned me how to play the piano. Of course we’re all made out of our lived experiences, what we hear and see, how much we invest in our art,… but Samoshko is the one I refer to. You’re not studying in conservatory anymore. Do you still work with him or you’re on your own now?
We still see each other. Less often than before, but I regularly visit him as a kind of…touching the floor, the base. It is true that I work much more on my own, but that is what we all will have to do. At a certain moment you must become your own teacher. And it makes you think hundred times more about each note and decision you take. When after a concert, someone comes to you and asks ‘why did you play that piece that way?’, you can’t answer anymore ‘because my teacher wanted so’. Everything I do now is my own decision. I follow my intuition. You also teach yourself. What advise do you give to your students? T
o give you the best answer you should actually ask my students how I teach, but I believe that it is a mix of my own experiences as a student, together with my own personality and ideas that I formed myself during the years. I see my role as a teacher a bit as a sounding board. I prefer to suggest than to oblige, I like to see a lesson as a moment of two friends that try to work and search together for the best possible solution to play a certain piece. Of course, some things can be radically wrong and I will say them, and I have some general ideas. Never to imitate for example, search your own way. I also encourage them to experiment, try something, dare. If it’s wrong, it’s wrong and you will learn from it, but dare to do something wrong. Take a risk, surprise me and yourself,… and at the end of the trip, remember and take all the best of these experiments. Sometimes I will ask a student to exaggerate something, to make something more clear, or just to give it all a bigger dynamic range. I also notice that I speak a lot about pulsation in the lessons, or to see a piece orchestral, or to imagine a singer. And of course, sound is crucial. It goes a bit together with your last question. When teaching yourself, you’re very much faced to questions that force you to think how to play a certain thing very concretely. That helps yourself tremendously. For example, last lesson, some of my better students asked me how to position the fingers on the keyboard, flat or curled. Honestly, there is not one answer to me. Everything depends on the sound you wish. When I will play a Scarlatti sonata for example, I can imagine myself playing with curled fingers, but I would never do that which a Chopin nocturne. It all depends on sound. Play with your nose if you wish, if it sounds fantastic, do it. What about your chamber music collaborations, I noticed that you have two fix duos?
I do. For many years I form a pianoduo with Ukranian pianist Anastasia Kozhushko. We met years ago in the class of our teacher, and started playing together. We won some competitions, mostly in the Netherlands, and most of the time we perform there. We made an aim of it to always add not too familiar pieces and composers to our programs. In combination with the more known works we play pieces of Cui, Rosenblatt, Vilensky, Clementi, etc. Absolutely amazing music but unfortunately underplayed. And next to this I form a duo with violinist Maya Levy. I consider her as one of the young upcoming top talents in the field of violin. We work together for about a year now, and some nice projects are coming up. Playing chamber music is a real joy to me. You know, being a pianist is a lonely profession most of the time, you sit hours a day alone behind your instrument - something that other instrumentalists nearly never do because they all need a pianist to play with them! – and than it is a very welcome change to collaborate with someone. To have some interaction, to search together, to find compromises. And the repertoire is also fantastic. Do you have any favorite pianists?
This generation has amazing pianists, absolutely amazing. But for most of them, the individuality of them disappeared a bit. Before you could hear two bars of a piece, and nearly say: ’ah, that is Gould playing!’ Or, ‘no doubt, that’s Horowitz’. To answer your question, the last name I mentioned is absolutely one of my so called favorites. I generally like the old generation. I think of Cortot, of Friedman. No one plays Chopin mazurka’s like Friedman. Do you have your system how to learn or pick the pieces that you will play?
Good question because I wondered about it myself recently. I have more and more the idea that a work chooses me, and not the other way around. What very often happens is that a work is…floating in the air for a very long time. The work attracts me, in a free moment I will open the scores and play it a little, I listen to it, it is…present in my life but I don’t study it. That process can be very long, even years. And than, at an inexplicable moment, it’s like the work is calling me. And there is no way back, I just have to learn it. And I will lock myself in my flat and study all days long that one and only piece. That happened very often to me. It’s a bit like a love story, when you fall in love with someone, there is nothing to do about it anymore, your whole being is focused on that one and only person. Besides playing the piano, do you enjoy other kinds of music or activities?
In every genre you can find good music. But I must admit that I’m not very often listening to non-classical music. I feel a big affection to the work of Jacques Brel, and I regularly listen to his music. And I enjoy jazz music. In my younger years, my even younger ones, there were periods that I listened more to Oscar Peterson than to anybody else. Considering real activities, I’m afraid I must disappoint you. Music became my life, and my life music. Recently I enjoy playing chess more and more, or having a coffee on a terrace in the sun with some nice company, that’s a perfect activity to me. What would you have been doing in life if you weren’t a pianist?
(thinking) I don’t know. May be I would have been a writer. I enjoy writing, and I’ve always wondered what I would be able to do when fully spending time at writing a book, or poetry. But that’s not for now. In my younger years I thought, like many children I guess, of becoming a tennis player. When I’m into something, I am quite fanatic. So also with tennis: when I had my period of playing tennis, it was the only thing I could think of, doing it from the morning till the evening. But I don’t see the period of music ever stop. It’s a gift for life. May I conclude that you consider music as the most beautiful thing in life?
No, that is love. But music is more faithful. Thank you very much for this chat. With more than pleasure.
by Guy Rademaeker
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