TRAVELLER'S TALES
Whether she's exploring the 20th century's lesser-known repertoire or fulfilling a stream of international engagements, Ewa Kupiec brings spirit to everything she does, as Colin Anderson discovers.
'If I didn't enjoy travelling I would change profession,' smiles the Polish pianist Ewa Kupiec. 'You can't sit at home and play for yourself.' Kupiec's relaxed approach to the rigours of international performance has already caught me off-balance. Arriving at the London hotel where I've been told she is staying, I'm greeted with bafflement by the desk staff who have no record of her. In the midst of my consternation she sashays into the hotel foyer and, perhaps recognising the panic in my voice, guesses who I am. Retiring to a corner of the hotel to talk, Kupiec's friendly, upbeat attitude soon puts me back at my ease.
That same positive approach is evident in her playing career. She says it was an 'instant decision' to want to become a professional pianist. But she was twelve - was it really that easy? 'Yes, it was that easy in my case. The decision is the first step and then you follow a very difficult path.' Until that point, she says, 'learning the piano had been fun. I was in Poland where there is a system of special schools with a boarding house. It started as an impulse: I went to [the Polish town of] Katowice, and I visited my parents just twice a year. I really wanted to achieve something. Music opened my eyes to the world. I loved going to concerts and I really wanted to explore music more. The piano happened to be the instrument I played: a medium.' She wasn't only interested in the piano: 'I loved orchestral music. In fact, I related much more to the orchestra; I didn't listen so much to piano music and pianists.'
As a student, Kupiec says that she had 'a really hard training. I was very determined then, am I still am today. My way was, and is, very unorthodox. I never wanted to consciously plan and I had no help in making my career like this.'
Kupiec counts a performance of Saint-Saens's The Carnival of the Animals as her concert debut. It was in Katowice with the radio orchestra and she was 14. Two years later she played Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. 'I had to substitute for someone at two week's notice. I said I could do it better - with the ignorance and arrogance of a 16-year-old girl. I played a lot of Polish music, too, like Szymanowski, but not so much Chopin. I was very fortunate because my teacher didn't want to prepare me for the Chopin Competition. For that you just play Chopin all the time whether you love or hate it - a split relationship. I was never a favourite student so no one really led me.' From her studies, however, Kupiec remembers with affection a visiting professor from Russia, Viktor Mershanov: 'He had this tremendous warmth and helped me to build up my confidence.'
Freed from her early studies the young Kupiec began to spread her wings. 'It was very important that I left my country: we have a fantastic education but the management system had collapsed. I found a niche for myself where I felt comfortable, which was chamber music, and I had successes both inside and outside Poland. I was married for five years to a Polish cellist, and we won a big competition in Munich [the 1992 Internationaler Musikwettbewerb der ARD München, with Andrzej Bauer] but unfortunately we divorced three months afterwards. We didn't know what to do with the prize when half of the partnership was not there.' Kupiec found other chamber music partners and played less solo work: 'I was more comfortable with that, less inhibited.' Her successes included a scholarship from the Polish composer Lutoslawski that allowed her to study chamber music with the cellist William Pleeth, who counted Jacqueline du Pré among his students. 'Then I started to develop musically and felt that I had something to say as a soloist. I was based in Germany and a lot of people helped me. From there I went to the Royal Academy of Music to study with Nelly Akopian.'
With a recorded repertoire that includes Paderewski, Bacewicz, Janácek and Schnittke, Kupiec appears to be driven by the music she wants to play. 'Being inspired is the key. I don't want to see the boundaries.' Does she enjoy recording? 'Sometimes. I enjoy recording new pieces or works that have not been on disc before. There's a lot of satisfaction in that. The tape recorder is my best critic - I hear myself while I'm playing and I hear myself differently when I am recorded. I trust my instincts. The Polish School does not teach you that; you are taught how to play a phrase - that is very limiting. Free yourself from the text; I'm much more concerned with how I hear things, and I'm not afraid to change something according to what I hear and not what I see.
'I have to strongly identify with the music that I play. Some pieces that I had to learn in the past have turned into fiascos because they were foreign to my personality. There should be a personal relationship between the interpreter and composer. I like to explore and experiment. I'm ready for surprises.' Does this apply to concert performances as well? 'I separate concerts from recordings; concerts are a social thing to enjoy your favourite piece.'
Among Kupiec's newly released recordings are solo works by Janácek (for Hänssler Classic, to be released in February) and the concertos of Schnittke for Capriccio (scheduled for release in early 2007). The latter includes a piece that 'Schnittke composed as a student and which sat in the closet and was performed once in Moscow in 1964.' Kupiec describes it as 'a really good concerto with a full-blast orchestra and lots of energy.' And although she has reservations about recording some more established works (she says it would be 'complete nonsense to record another Rachmaninoff concerto'), Kupiec has set down a Chopin collection for Solaris. It's a personal collection embracing opuses 58 to 62. 'I find these compositions fascinating, especially the visionary Polonaise-Fantasy. The Nocturnes (Op.62) are my favourite - there's so much complexity in these miniatures, then the Mazurkas with those mesmerising modulations. These opuses give a broad scope of Chopin's experimenting with different forms. It is a journey for me and the listener.'
The Solaris collection also makes an intriguing complement to her recording of Chopin's concertos, for Oehms Classics (OC326), made at the behest of a senior conductor. 'I had the honour of recording them with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. He's somebody I admire and I am very lucky to work with him; he saw a quality in my playing that he liked. It worries me that the world doesn't recognise these really grand people. Maybe it's because he's not so occupied with his career: he's much more concerned with his music. He's a very disciplined person who deserves so much more attention, and he's also a very good composer.' Such a comment sounds like hype, but Kupiec doesn't have room for that in her world. 'I wouldn't be able to put up with a lot of hype; you have to prove yourself all the time, to show that you are up to the image that's created of you. You have to do so much more to be popular. That's fine for publicity but it can burden you. Some great pianists like Sokolov and Zimmerman don't even have websites.'
We get onto how Kupiec studies music and what she believes it to be. 'It's a pure exposition of all your emotional life through the piano. You have the composer's indications; you hear the sounds an then you make your own picture of the piece. Sometimes what I hear and what I want to create are not the indications of the composer who wrote this tempo and that tempo. But in my opinion it is better. I study the pieces at the piano. I am very much a tactile pianist - I like the body experience, getting the piece into my hands and muscles. The more images and symbols you apply to music the better. I'm very interested in the scientific approach.' And the process, pr responsibility of learning a score? 'We have this big duty to memorise pieces - there's a burden of absorbing so much. [But] Richter played from the score at the end of his life. Life has forced me to learn music fast. It's a technique that is kinetic and tactile and creates images - you can turn the pages in your head, you can develop a photographic memory. Then it's a matter of trust. When you go into a stage the tension is so high that you must believe in yourself and a vibrant connection with the audience is essential.'
I read somewhere about her interest in martial arts. 'I have not trained since May last year, therefore I cannot talk about something that is not present in my life at the moment. However, I remain being a big enthusiast of martial arts - a discipline that ideally unites body and mind. When the chance arrives I will continue doing it. My recent studies have been very intense because, without wanting to sound pompous, I always look for a deeper meaning in my discipline of piano playing. I spend a lot of time in the country in Italy, where I can study without distractions. That brought me to science, philosophy and Buddhism. I delved into the world of quantum theory and and energy fields - just check the amount of books published by scientists about the nature of reality and the number of Buddhists interested in science!'
Does this really relate to being a musician and pianist? 'It's trying to see myself in a bigger perspective. I do not deny that I like having a career and success, but there is much more behind it. It has to do with my role in society, with the responsibility towards my gift.'
The 2006-7 season brings numerous international appearances (from a British perspective, Bournemouth, Liverpool and Newcastle are on Kupiec's itinerary), and future plans include meeting up again with Skrowaczewski in Japan and a tour of Australia. 'I used to just ride with it and now I am more choosy about what I am doing. You feel that life is in your hands instead of being pulled around like a marionette.' Does Kupiec have any ambitions for 2007? 'That I have the strength and ability to overcome my own insecurities and experience the state of an unimpeded flow during my performances.' And what extensions of repertoire are planned? 'More Bartók and more French music, which I love and relate to and play much too little of. And 20th-century music will remain a core. I am very interested in music that deserves to be played more widely - recording it and making it available. The first interpretation is so important because it sets a tradition for the piece. I live so much in the moment. Things are planned but I don't know what will fascinate me tomorrow. I don't follow an ideal: I am open to everything.'
Interview taken from International Piano magazine, January/February 2007 edition