An Interview with Andrew Le, conducted by Andrew Le
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Andrew Le:  Good afternoon, Mr. Le, and thanks for agreeing to do this interview!  This is an interesting program you have for us.  I see you have some Debussy -- your staple diet, of course -- but Poulenc?  And Corigliano?

Andrew Le:  Ha!  Yes, ever since our first interview last year, I've really come to enjoy conversing with you about music, so thank you for allowing the opportunity to do it once again.  And yes, Poulenc and Corigliano: composers whose music I've never played before…except for Poulenc's Sonata for Violin and Piano, which I've played with my lovely wife.

AL:  Poulenc’s piano music is difficult, and Corigliano’s is probably even more so.

AL:  I don’t disagree.  Essentially, I really wanted to challenge myself.  I needed to challenge myself, artistically and technically.  First of all, the lack of contemporary music in my diet is inexcusable.  Secondly...I was getting bored.  No, wait -- that's not right.  I was becoming complacent.  It's easy for me to go back to the same composers again and again.  It's comfortable.  It's safe.  And sure, I'd be fine playing nothing but Debussy for the rest of my life.  Yes, my Debussy playing would undoubtedly improve, but there is so much more out there.  I want to better myself.  Imagine if Ferdinand Porsche had said in 1938 that the VW Beetle was as good as it gets -- the epitome of automotive perfection -- and somehow the rest of the world believed him...we'd all still be driving underpowered, unreliable hunks of scrap metal.  That'd be no fun.

AL:  No fun at all.  Interesting analogy...

AL:  My student, John Donkersloot – it’s his fault.

AL:  Aha, of course!  John is full of interesting analogies.  Of the many contemporary works you could have chosen from, what was it that brought you to the Corigliano?

AL:  Good question.  I first heard the Etude Fantasy in 2003 in New York City, and was totally awe-struck.  Contemporary music rarely moved me, but this piece was something else.  Its raw savagery is adroitly balanced with sublime beauty.  Very satiating.

AL:  You probably also wanted to exercise your intellect.

AL:  That's true.  I always stop thinking when I play, and let my emotional instincts take over.  I never think, Oh, what's the next harmony?  Which fingerings did I decide on in this passage?  Should I tilt my pelvis to the right more?  I let it all go.  Which is what one should do, I believe, but I almost do it to a fault.  It's necessary to exercise some calm, assertive control in my playing.  (Cesar Millan has convinced me of this.)  But this Corigliano -- whoa.  It forces me to think.  There's no way for me to play this without thinking all the time, because the language in which it is written is completely foreign to me.  With Debussy, Beethoven, Chopin, etc., their music is based in tonality.  There's a heirarchy of organization of tones that my brain can wrap itself around.  In this [Corigliano's] writing, every note of the chromatic scale is equally important, so, in a way, I have no waypoints on a roadmap to rely upon.  I can't think, C major, A minor seven, Five Thirteen flat-nine sharp-eleven.  Nope.  I'm not saying that the Etude Fantasy is a serial work, because it isn't.  Yes, the entire piece is based upon the six-note tone row you hear in the opening, but the pitches aren't arithmetically manipulated as they are in the music of, say, Schoenberg.

AL:  Schoenberg!  Now, there's a composer who'll force you to think.

AL:  You're not joking.  I wanted to push myself to the brink of insanity, but not to actually go insane.  I'll save Schoenberg for a later day.

AL:  We can't wait.  In your teaching, Mr. Le, don't you stress the reliance of gut instinct over intellect?

AL:  Yes.  No.  Well, I ultimately want my students to enjoy what they're doing, and not have their experience on stage become one of suffering.  Performing shouldn't be like taking the LSAT.  In my lessons, I go over the many ways one can exercise their thinking, in the way of effective practicing, before a performance.  I perhaps do it in excess, but the more one analyzes and thinks and solves problems in the practice room, the easier it becomes to "let things go" on stage.  It's a weird process, but it seems to work, at least most of the time.  I have a dear student who perhaps thinks too much as she plays, and we constantly try to work on ways to assuage that.  In a way, learning the Corigliano puts me in her shoes, as it forces me to have to think when I play.  I need to understand this more in order for me to better address the problem.

AL:  Corigliano is a work that requires a balance of instinct and intellect.

AL:  Indeed.  It’s good for me.

AL:  The Etude Fantasy is composed of five, interconnected studies.  Tell me about them.

AL:  The first study is for the left hand alone.  It's dreadfully difficult.  Corigliano writes in a way that implies multiple voices...if you close your eyes and it sounds as if I'm playing with both hands, then good -- I've succeeded.  The technical demands are obvious, but for me the psychological demands are even greater.  Playing without the right hand makes me feel incredibly vulnerable.  Being right-handed doesn't help.  The left hand usually plays the subservient role in a two-handed texture, and when it is by itself it has nowhere to hide.  Finally, the right hand gets to sneak in after a few minutes, commencing the second study -- a study for legato playing.  Very opposite in character from the first study, this etude is frigid and static; the long lines descend slowly into the lower registers of the keyboard, allthewhile crisscrossed by fragmentary melodic germs.  Again, I don’t think its difficulty is as much technical as it is psychological.  Memorizing the two relatively short pages of this study proved to be the most challenging of the entire work.  It’s maddeningly disorienting.  There's nothing to help you remember what comes next: the scales aren't entirely chromatic, they're not octatonic, nor are they modal; the minor-second interval this study is based on is either always compounded or inverted or both; and any rhythmic patterns that may be initially discerned are immediately disoriented by constantly-changing time signatures.

AL:  Two weeks ago I heard you screaming in frustrated agony trying to memorize this study.

AL:  You're not kidding.  I was pulling my hair out.  It was because of these two pages that I had considered performing this with the score on Sunday.

AL:  Didn't you recently talk to a friend of yours who encouraged you to use the score?

AL:  Yes!  She's one of today's most successful and sought-after pianists, and to hear her say that she would use the score herself was a tremendous relief.

AL:  But you memorized it anyway.

AL:  Yes, because I am masochistic. [Pause] Anyhow, the middle etude is for fifths to thirds.  It has nothing to do with the local bank.  (Credit my wife for that one.)  Fifths to thirds is exactly that: rapidly alternating patterns of a fifth (fingers one and five) contracting to a third (fingers two and four).  Make some of those fifths diminished, throw in some minor and diminished thirds, leap around multiple registers, add constantly-changing articulation markings and you've got yourself a handful of a piece.  Its scherzando character is a sharp contrast to the seriousness of its surrounding movements; when in the right mindset, it can actually be kind of fun to play.  Fifths-to-thirds gently phases into the fourth etude, a study for ornaments -- trills, grace notes, tremolos, and glissandos.  The only other etude for ornaments that I know of is Debussy's, which I played on my very first recital here at Hope.  Debussy's conception is a gorgeous, elegant and delicious piece; then there's Corigliano's, which just stunning in its reckless, barbaric, and primitive propulsiveness.  In some ways, this study was the most complicated to learn.  Reading through it for the first time is akin to deciphering a lost language; much of it is written on three staves.  A tremendous climax marks the end of this study, after which comes the final etude, a study of melody. Marked "desolate", the goal is to connect (with clarity) a long, wayward melody as it weaves in and out of a grieving two-note ostinato.  The piece concludes with the six note row heard in the very opening, this time in retrograde (backwards).

AL:  You then plan to transport your audience to a different world with some Debussy, interspersed with poetry?

AL:  That's the plan.  The first two Debussy works are transcriptions from his song literature, written for my teacher Jerome Lowenthal for his birthday in 2004.  I don’t think he ever had the opportunity to perform them, and I myself forgot about them until very recently, when I performed The Fountain this past Valentine's Day.  I played Spleen just twice, both at Juilliard: once for a studio class, and then again as an encore to an all-Debussy recital.

AL:  Both are your original transcriptions.  What prompted you write them?

AL:  I can't tell you how much I love his song writing.  As a young student, I had always loved the solo piano music of Debussy.  However, I didn't discover his songs until I stumbled into Borders in Ann Arbor and found Dawn Upshaw's first Debussy CD for $4.99.  $4.99!  I think I only bought it because I knew it was placed in the wrong bin (a new release shouldn’t have been on clearance), and I'm a sucker for bargains.  At any rate, I fell unexpectedly and deeply in love with this recording...not just the music, but also the text.  I felt that I had finally discovered the soul of Debussy's music: the words!  Finding singers to collaborate with was tough, so I just started toying around with them by myself.  I began by just playing the piano part, and started adding the voice part in different ways...and these transcriptions just started to write themselves.

AL:  The text does truly reveal Debussy's Symbolist soul.  Is that why you have decided to incorporate poetry into this concert?

AL:  Absolutely.  Granted, my French is abhorring at best, so I'll be reading the poems in their English translations -- which, now that I'm thinking about it -- is a transcription, as well.  It's all about adapting something to a new medium for the sake of accessibility.  If I (or someone else) were to read the original French text, then sure, all the musical nuances of the poetry would be preserved; however, my non-French-speaking listeners (which I imagine to be the bulk of my audience) would be somewhat lost.  (Lost In Translation!  Ha.  I never really understood the point of that movie.)  Anyway, the transcription as a genre has always fascinated me.  Liszt was arguably the first composer to thrust the transcription into the standard mainstream with his numerous opera paraphrases.  After all, operas were the rock concerts of his day, and audiences needed a way to bring that music into their homes.  No one had audio reproduction devices, but they all had pianos.  You still see that today: many of my students walk around with solo piano versions of Coldplay, Josh Groban, Ben Folds, and Phantom of the Opera.  Sure, we have advanced recording technology now, but there's something special about actually getting to play it yourself.  

AL:  Following your song transcriptions are two more Debussy works: Sounds and Scents Turn in the Evening Air, and Moonlight.  Are these new pieces in your repertoire?

AL:  Moonlight is new for me.  I have taught it a million times, but never actually played it myself.  It's one of those absolutely perfect gems in the repertoire that I never wanted to risk ruining.  However, the beauty of its text and music beckoned its inclusion on this program.  Sounds and Scents Turn in the Evening Air is one of my favorite from his Preludes, and I last performed it a few years ago on the same all-Debussy program that I had mentioned earlier.

AL:  Closing the program is more French music, but (again) of a composer you're not necessarily familiar with.

AL:  My affinity for Poulenc's music was born from working with my former student, Sam Adams.  As we worked on the A-flat Intermezzo the year before he graduated from Hope, I kept thinking to myself: Why am I not playing more of this incredible music?!  Over the months, Sam and I listened to pretty much all of Poulenc's music, read about his life, and I became helplessly infected.  I am dedicating this performance to Sam.

AL:  Poulenc openly detested much of his own music, and he was particularly bitter about Evenings in Nazelles.  What compelled you to choose it?

AL:  I had heard parts of Evenings in Nazelles through practice room walls at Juilliard, and because I conveniently owned the score, I decided to embark upon learning it.  I did not really enjoy learning it at first, only because it was terribly awkward and difficult.  However, as the notes fell more comfortably in my hands over time, I began to truly delight in the quirkiness of these little pieces.  Indeed, its improvisatory nature requires me to really let go and be in the moment.

AL:  Where is Nazelles?

AL:  Nazelles is a town about two hours southwest of Paris.  Poulenc frequently vacationed in Nazelles, and from what I understand, he was the life of the party.  Imagine an intoxicated virtuoso/wiseguy improvising at the piano with perhaps even drunker partiers gathered around, and this is what Evenings in Nazelles is like.

AL:  Sounds like fun!

AL:  I’m not advocating anything, here!

AL:  Oh, don’t worry, we know. [Grin]

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