A Conversation with Fortepianist Daniel Adam Maltz (Part One)
A Conversation with Fortepianist Daniel Adam Maltz
I am delighted to present Part One of a three-part interview with Daniel Adam Maltz. Excerpts from IF MUSIC BE THE FOOD OF LOVE will resume next week.
Part One
Today’s concert grand piano is a heavy, enormous instrument with a steel frame. The popular Steinway D-274 is roughly one millimeter shy of nine feet in length; the Blüthner Model 1 is two inches longer, and at nine feet, six inches, the Bösendorfer Model 290 Imperial is the largest instrument used on the stage. [Of course, larger pianos have been built, including Adrian Mann’s “Alexander Piano,” which is reportedly 18’-4” in length.]
However, the pianos with which Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven were familiar were far smaller and lighter. We now refer to these instruments as fortepianos, and their resurgence in the past four to five decades has prompted a reevaluation of the way we approach the scores these giants left us.
I have long been baffled by some of the musical indications, particularly those found in Beethoven’s piano music. An endless string of sforzandi (or accents)…a bizarre instruction to hold the pedal an unreasonably long amount of time…other surprising indications of articulation: these often make little sense and (in my opinion) seem almost perverse distortions of the music.
The only way I could “solve” these problems was by deliberately ignoring parts of the score, and I was by no means the first to attempt such audacious gestures. Glenn Gould, the great Canadian pianist, once went so far as to suggest that after all the decades of scholarship, “we … know more about Beethoven’s piano music than he did.” Perhaps, but at the time, we also knew far less about the instrument for which it was intended.
Some months ago, while researching the mystery of Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved” for my series (The Passion of Elena Bianchi), I stumbled upon a fascinating installment of Classical Cake, the podcast of Daniel Adam Maltz. In that episode, the host interviewed the late Rita Steblin.
I soon learned that Maltz is a fortepianist. I was delighted to discuss my dilemma (and ignorance) with him, and he graciously shared his thoughts over the course of a lengthy interview. Below are highlights of our conversation.
Lenny Cavallaro: What developments do we observe from Haydn to Mozart and then from Mozart to Beethoven, whose life ended almost at the same time as Schubert’s. What (overall) is happening with the development of the piano, or perhaps more accurately, the fortepiano?
Daniel Adam Maltz: In late 18th-century Vienna, the harpsichord, the piano (fortepiano), and the clavichord lived peacefully side by side. In fact, Mozart doubtless performed far more on the harpsichord in his early days as a touring child prodigy, and Haydn’s preferred instrument was the clavichord, on which he often improvised, and which formed a significant aspect of his musical language. However, the fact that these instruments co-existed means that there was some sort of harmony between them, and composers would have expected certain things from each of them. Moreover, there are certain constants: all three are light, and the keyboards have extremely responsive actions. The weight on the key of the classical fortepiano is roughly one-tenth that of the modern piano, and this facilitates the extremely quick, tangible articulation of the era.
In addition, the sound is much smaller. The fortepiano does have the capacity to offer different dynamics (unlike the harpsichord), but the sound is lighter and more transparent, and the range is far shorter than what we’re accustomed to today.
At some point, the fortepiano began to gain traction in Vienna as a fashionable keyboard instrument, and it was quickly adopted by Mozart, who really was an early proponent. We can say that he did, indeed, become a fortepianist.
There were many fortepiano builders in Vienna at the time. People may recognize names like Stein and Walther, but there were a number of others. In fact, the city was truly a center for fortepiano construction. However, this was an instrument quite different than the modern piano. It usually had a range of only around five octaves, and it initially featured a couple of knee-pedals or hand-stops for the moderator [a layer of felt that goes in between the strings], and the dampers.
[NB: Maltz discusses knee-pedals more extensively on a video presentation.]
It is important to realize that this Haydn and Mozart piano was also the Beethoven piano. His first fifteen piano sonatas are written for an instrument with a five-octave range, and since the “Tempest” Sonata [#17, Beethoven’s Op. 31, #2] was actually written in 1802 or 1803, it seems half of the thirty-two published sonatas were written for the smaller range.
However, we know that the piano went through a significant evolutionary process during Beethoven’s lifetime, which was effectively also Schubert’s lifetime. We definitely got an expanded range, the instrument became heavier, and the tone became more rounded and romantic. Moreover, the piano got much louder during the first decades of the 19th century. This evolution of the instrument was driven by volume, not by musical taste. The halls got bigger, and more people wanted to be able to listen to the concerts, so the piano had to become better able to accommodate them.
Nevertheless, I always remind people that the piano of late Beethoven or Schubert, let’s say around 1820, remains much closer to the instrument of Mozart forty years earlier than to the Steinway of today. Yes, the piano had gotten bigger, heavier, louder, and more romantic, but the lightness, intimacy, and transparency of the texture were still what drove the music-making of the time, and these qualities are reflected in the music Beethoven and Schubert wrote.
LC: That brings up an interesting question about dynamics. I have often felt and, in fact, been loudly criticized for insisting that Beethoven’s dynamics, as given in the printed score, were not necessarily well-suited for the music he had written. For example, look at the closing theme of the E-flat sonata, Op. 7. It has a magical moment when it is understated, and yet the composer wrote a clear, unequivocal “forte.” Better still, let’s take something that’s even harder to fathom: the recapitulation of the Op. 109 sonata. Beethoven has scored the right hand way, way up in the treble register. However — and I state this having performed the work on quite a few instruments over the years — at that portion of the modern keyboard, the sound seems almost too brittle. I got much better musical results when I underplayed the passage down to perhaps a mezzo-piano or at most a mezzo-forte. This prompts my obvious question: how does the forte sound in that passage on the fortepiano?
DM: Let me preface my response by returning something you had mentioned earlier: the famous (or infamous) remark by Glenn Gould. Of course, I must take exception to his comment. Nevertheless, I remember thinking much the same things before I switched to fortepiano: “Why on earth did the composer write that?”
LC: My point exactly: With the instrument on which I play, some of those dynamics simply don’t work.
DM: However, in the fortepianos manufactured even into the romantic period — though this is especially prominent with the classical fortepianos — we still have “registral differences.” The bass registers have a really deep, almost harpsichord-like sound, the middle register is somewhat closer to the sounds we associate with a piano, and the upper register has this really thin, transparent, almost angelic sound.
LC: I love your adjective: angelic. That is truly the way I hear some of these passages!
DM: Right! And given the instrument Beethoven was using, a forte in that upper register is a lovely effect. However, the modern manufacturers, especially the Americans, tried to balance every tone and make the timbres more even. The pitch changes, but everything else stays more or less the same. Unfortunately, what we lose with that evolutionary development is a lot of the character the original instrument provided. When we understand what the dynamic sounded like on Beethoven’s instrument, we realize that the sound balances naturally and appropriately.
LC: Of course, I am not going to defend everything Gould said, since he clearly made many statements simply for their “shock value.” Nevertheless, I think we see other things on the printed page that simply do not “work” on the modern instrument. One example is found in the contemporary una corda [soft] pedal. In Beethoven’s piano music we sometimes see an una corda indication followed by due e poi tre corde [two and then three strings]. Of course, when a pianist puts the soft pedal down today, the action has slides over, and the hammer strikes only two strings, rather than three in the major registers. However, there is no way to reduce the contact to a single string. It would be impossible for me to go from one string to two and then three, but not for you.
DM: Well, not exactly, because those instructions date from the time of a later fortepiano. They appear with the 4th piano concerto, Op. 58, which was completed in 1806. My fortepiano, which is a copy of an Anton Walther instrument built in 1792, doesn’t have una corda. It has the moderator, which puts a layer of felt between the hammers and the strings, and creates a lovely, ghostly effect that is otherwise lost for the ages. It also has another knee-lever that controls the dampers. Thus, I have two knee-levers, but no pedals whatsoever. However, the later fortepianos did indeed have a pedal that could reduce hammer contact to one string, then two, and finally return to all three.
We could certainly open up a whole discussion on the role of pedals. These knee-levers started as hand-stops. For example, on Mozart’s Anton Walter piano, we had hand-pulls rather than knee levers, and this tells us a lot about how they were used. They had to be operated by a hand, which means during a passage in which at least one hand was not playing. Thus, the stops were generally employed for entire sections of music, and not in the “up-and-down” manner of the pedals on contemporary instruments.
LC: Fascinating, but let’s look at the more familiar damper pedal and consider Beethoven’s pedal indications. Take, for example, the recapitulation in the “Tempest” Sonata. On today’s concert piano, the resultant sounds are much too blurred for my taste, but the question is whether the pedaling Beethoven has marked works well on the fortepiano.
DM: Absolutely! Remember that we’re dealing with much lighter, more transparent sounds. With the small hammers and the thin layer of leather, the sound decay is much quicker. On the modern piano, there is the initial impact, and then the sound swells, after which it diminishes. However, on the fortepiano, the decay begins immediately after the hammer strikes. Because of that, the performer has much more flexibility with the pedal. One can play harmonies together and blend dissonances, because they don’t become a muddy jumble, as they would on a modern piano. I find this a lovely effect, and I play with it all the time — and Beethoven explicitly asks for it all the time! I love to give the example of the third movement of the “Waldstein” Sonata, where the score indicates that we should hold the pedal for long periods. I’ve never heard this done on a modern piano, but on fortepiano, it’s a lovely effect.
LC: Well, the “Waldstein” was a “no-brainer” for me, as was the “Tempest.” I studied the latter more than fifty years ago, and I remember that it was among my first major rebellions against the score. Instead, I held down some low keys with my left hand and let the notes with the right hand exploit the overtones.
DM: Oh, I agree; you were right to reject the pedaling Beethoven gives us, but the effects of what you described, with the overtones is what Beethoven had quite naturally with the fortepiano for which he was writing! When I release the dampers, that melodic line does not become too thick or heavy. An even better example is found in the first movement of the “Moonlight” Sonata, where he indicates that the performer should never change the pedal. You might take that with a grain of salt, but on a period instrument it’s quite effective.
Moreover, here’s an interesting post-script. In the early 1860s, Anton Schindler [an early biographer of Beethoven — ed.] wrote that the “Moonlight” Sonata could no longer be performed as Beethoven wanted it performed, because the instruments had become too heavy.
LC: And he was surely not the only person to hold this opinion!
DM: Correct. This means that pianists and critics knew about these problems as early as the 1860s. True, Schindler was not always a dependable source, but on a matter of this sort, he should be taken seriously.
LC: Why and when did you decide the contemporary instrument was unsatisfactory. What prompted you to make the transition to fortepiano?
DM: It began when I came to Vienna. The music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven always spoke to me the most, because I am a classicist at heart. This was what was dear to me, and I knew I had to put myself in Vienna. By walking the streets these composers walked and visiting sites that were important in their lives, by experiencing the culture, and by immersing myself in their language and philosophy, I could deepen my understanding of their music, and my interpretations would come “straight from the source.” As part of that journey, I also immersed myself in the world of their instruments. At first, I merely thought to become better informed as a modern pianist, but once I began, the music came alive in a way I had never experienced before. Please note that I am not an Evangelical historical advocate who insists that the music of these composers cannot be played on a modern instrument. Nevertheless, for me, the historical instruments were the medium through which the compositions of these giants made the most sense. Their musical language came alive, and I realized that this was how I was going to express their music.
I should append that it really takes years to immerse oneself in these instruments: to learn the techniques, the sound world, and what is artistically possible, and to expunge that last bit of “modern-ness” out of one’s heart and fingers. Indeed, it is long process of breaking down technique completely and then rebuilding it in a historical way.
LC: I remember studying the harpsichord — and this was back in the 70s, when the musical journals published many of the great debates about how Bach, for example, should be performed. I became aware of the limitations of the piano and found Bach on that instrument extraordinarily challenging. However, I did not switch to harpsichord, but instead asked how a harpsichordist might express a given passage, and how I could make the dynamic nuances secondary to articulation and phrasing. I thought I found a reasonable compromise, although the question of whether I succeeded or not is open to conjecture.
Half a century later, I still have some reservations. For example, look at the opening Allemande of French Suite #3 in B Minor. Even when I look at it on the page, it screams “clavichord”! I cannot “hear” it on the harpsichord, while on the piano the entire dynamic scope seems dead wrong. Here again, I think the problem is perhaps what you have already expressed: that the sound lasts longer than it should.
Now, that said, permit me to drag you out of the classical era. Does Bach “work” on the fortepiano, or do you think it might?
DM: In recent years, some performers have been experimenting with Bach on the fortepiano, and as you know, he had a relationship with the Silbermann firm. However, I am more interested in hearing music on the instruments for which it was written. Yes, he knew of pianos and played on a Silbermann fortepiano at the court of Frederick the Great —
LC: …for whom he wrote The Musical Offering…
DM: …but Bach was far more familiar with the earlier instruments: the harpsichord, the clavichord —
LC: …and don’t forget the Lautenwerck.
DM: Yes, that “lute harpsichord,” which imitated the sounds of the lute. But let us turn to the “great debate,” the discussion of Bach on the piano. The classic question concerns use of the damper pedal. What would the composer do if he sat down at a contemporary Steinway? Of course, some would insist that Bach would use the pedals, and especially that pedal, but I would argue that Bach would then write very different music than what he did write. Thus, I must return to my point about the instrument for which a given piece of music was written, and for Bach’s keyboard compositions, we must surely think about harpsichord and clavichord. Of course, one can also argue that Bach’s counterpoint is so wonderful that it might indeed work on any number of other instruments.
LC: I agree, and as a pianist, I must also concede that some number of his pieces really don’t work on the piano. Of course, I cannot quantify my subjective appraisal or back up such a sweeping statement with empirical data, but that is simply how I feel. Similarly, some of the French Suites — the B minor, the E-flat Major — seem better suited for clavichord.
Moving on from Bach, let’s turn to Mozart. I have much the same problem here, as the sounds often get too “heavy.” I have heard what I thought were wonderful performances of Mozart on piano, but when I listened to the same compositions on period instruments, I readily concluded that the latter came much closer to what Mozart must have intended. I remember vividly a performance of the Sonata in D Major for Two Pianos on Walter fortepianos. This, by the way, segues to my next question.
Some of the old instruments have been restored, while contemporary builders are making replicas based on the designs of old fortepianos. What is your opinion? Do the modern fortepianos hold up well in comparison with the originals? Is a restored 1826 Graf, for example, as good as a replica modeled on such an instrument?
DM: This is a complex question. Let us consider the case of an old instrument that has been refurbished. Can such a fortepiano still be considered an “original?” Realistically, it has been modernized, and we must concede that it is only the wood around the new parts that is “older.” I am very fortunate that I am able to go to the great historical instrument collections here in Vienna and play on fortepianos that are truly as “original” as they can be. They can teach us a lot, and one can easily fall in love with these instruments. But even here, we must remember that a fortepiano that is over two hundred years old no longer sounds the same way it did when Mozart or Beethoven might have played on it. Nevertheless, it is wonderful that the instruments have been preserved and kept in curated spaces with good conservation, so that we can continue to learn from them.
On the other hand, I need something quite different for my concerts: a very faithful copy. The first attempts at building fortepianos were, unfortunately, not the most successful, although the builders’ efforts were admirable. However, we have some truly great builders today — my favorite is Paul McNulty, who is very faithful to historical designs. Thus, we probably get something that is very close to what the instrument would have sounded like when it was built.
LC: On what will you be performing on your tour of the United States?
DM: I travel with my own instrument, which is a copy of an Anton Walter fortepiano from circa 1792, built by Paul McNulty.
LC: Do you perform exclusively on your own instrument, or do you also play on others if they are available?
DM: I learned the hard way that I really must travel with my own instrument. Many concert halls do not have a fortepiano, and even if such an instrument is there, we face the inevitable questions of its quality and how well it has been maintained.
LC: I can understand. I wish there had been some good fortepianos available for students when I was in graduate school. I think even one semester at the instrument would have been immensely valuable, greatly enhancing my awareness and knowledge of what Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert had in mind.
DM: Well, I won’t go so far as to say that one “must” do so, or that there is only one instrument for every composition. However, I do believe every serious student should spend a semester or perhaps even a year studying the classical fortepiano, because the effect on the performance will be profound — even if the pianist has no desire to become further involved with the instrument.
LC: I agree completely. I would never call myself a harpsichordist, but my brief exposure to that instrument opened my eyes to so many more possibilities in the performance of Bach’s keyboard music.
[To Be Continued]
*****
Daniel Adam Maltz’s website:
https://www.danieladammaltz.com/
His US Tour (already in progress): https://www.danieladammaltz.com/tour
His YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/danieladammaltz
His Podcast (Classical Cake): https://www.danieladammaltz.com/classicalcake