Awards and ballads

JW: First of all, congratulations on your award nomination from BBC Music magazine

JD: Nomination, yes, for the CD with Christianne… let’s hope it wins [laughter]…

Click CD cover for details and to vote

JW: So that’s on top of many other CD nominations recently…

JD: Well Gerry and I won two Gramophones in a row, so that’s good, yeah

JW: You’re recording next week with Gerry aren’t you? [JD: I am] Are you allowed to say what you are recording?

JD: Yes I can, it’s a disc of ballads

PH: Loewe?

JD: Yes. There are two Loewe ballads. It’s an all ballad disc, it’s going to be called the Ballad Singer, and it’s going to go from Loewe, Schubert and Loewe – or Beethoven, Loewe, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Wolf, and then on into the English repertoire like Stanford and Sullivan and some other sort of… he loves those Victorian ballads, so it goes right the way through…

JW: No Rodgers and Hart though?

JD: No, no, but I think we might end it with Cole Porter [laughter] but no Rodgers and Hart

PH: But Loewe Balladen that’s wonderful

JD: No one sings them better than him [PH: Yes, I believe so.]

JW: A good story-teller

JD: Mmm, a good story-teller, exactly yep

Peripatetic lifestyle

JW: So, you’re hot-foot from Italy with Ian Bostridge [JD: Yep, good] and you’re about to go off again with Ian and with Alice Coote…

JD: Well I’m going to Lille with… yes that’s right I’m going to Lille with Ian, and Munich and then I’m going to Amsterdam with Alice, and then here again at the Wigmore Hall with Alice…

Julius and Ian Bostridge in Munich. Click photo for details

JW: So how do you cope with this peripatetic lifestyle?

JD: OK, well I’m used to it. I think that’s the best way of putting it. But actually on the whole I’m fine just going off doing a concert and coming home, going off doing a concert and coming home. I find it much harder going off and doing a tour, even a week in Italy, although it’s always lovely to be in Italy [JW: Yeah] I’d still much rather after the concert just come home, and then go off again.

JW: How do you prepare yourself for a different concert with somebody with a completely different programme every night?

JD: Well the key is preparation isn’t it. And I can feel unprepared, not prepared enough… but I try, especially now that I’ve had so much experience, I try to get it so that I am properly prepared, and that just means practising enough in advance, getting the music and keys sorted out enough in advance, erm… just so that I feel comfortable when I go on stage. And usually I do. Not always, but usually I do.

JW: So what’s your working day like? You must rehearse every day, or practise every day?

JD: I practise, I try and practise every day, and I need to practise every day. but if I’m in London it’s a very different day to if I’m – I’ve just been in Italy for instance – and then I’m in the hotel in the morning, probably get up late, and I might do some work on the computer, then I might do a bit of sightseeing, then in the afternoon I’ll go to the hall, and I usually stay in the hall all afternoon practising, usually practising for other concerts and doing a bit of practise for the concert you’re doing that night, so I always have a lot of music with me, so when I’m travelling I’m practising for the concert next week because the one tonight, hopefully, is already sorted more or less [JW: Well that’s interesting] I’ll spend a short while on the one tonight but I’ll have done several hours on the other concerts.

But when I’m in London then I practise, I practise between rehearsals because often in London I’m rehearsing, but when someone’s not coming to rehearse I’m practising, or if I’m not teaching somebody I’m practising. But I try to get a couple of hours practise every day, sometimes more, too often less… but that’s what I try to aim for. But you know the day doesn’t have 9 to 5 boundaries and can often start at 7 o’clock in the morning and it can often go on until 10 or 11 o’clock at night, depending on what’s happening. But not all that often, you know, on the whole if I’m rehearsing, the rehearsals will be in the morning and the afternoon, and I’ll practise around them. That sort of thing. And try and have a family life as well. [laughter]

JW: And it’s what you love doing as well isn’t it so it’s not a job of work.

JD: Yeah. It’s definitely what I love doing, yeah. I feel very lucky. I like going out on stage, and I feel comfortable and I feel, most of the time, this is something I can do… I can try and get better at it, I can try to do it as well as I can. But most of the time I feel it is something I really… I can do, and can do it… try to be as good as possible at it. It’s worth persevering at. Like Jane Austin said, working away at her little piece of ivory, meaning she’s constantly working on the job in hand, just trying to get better all the time. So I’m a very, a very lucky person.

But I don’t look forward to being away for 5 weeks in America, which is what will happen in March, and I… you know, I would much rather come home after the concert than… Fortunately I’ve got very good friends in New York so usually in American tours I go to and from New York, staying with them or seeing a lot of them. But it’s still not the same quite as being at home is it. [JW: No, of course]

Recital programmes

JW: So when it comes to actually planning a recital tour, how does it… I’m sure there are all sorts of ways it can come about, but is it primarily the agent…

JD: Well it’s usually the agent… for instance for the three concerts in Italy, there’s an agent, an Italian agent who’s a great friend of ours, called Mario Ingrassia, a wonderful man, and he goes to Askonas Holt who are Ian Bostridge’s agents and they say you can have this week in… he’s free in that week we’ve just been in… January… and then Mario goes to the Italian promoters he thinks will be interested, in this case it was Turin and Genoa and Modena, and they work out to do the concert that day, travel that day, concert that day, however many days there are. On a six day tour, three concerts.

PH: Is there in Italy really an audience for German Lieder?

JD: There is. There is, yeah. I mean, there’s an audience for classical music and you’re right it’s not a major following for Lieder, but people come to the concerts and they’re very appreciative. My feeling is that there’s an audience for German Lieder everywhere, in any place of any size, erm… if you can build up a series, build up an interest in it. I think if you just do one Lieder concert in a blue moon that’s more difficult. But if you have a series where people know they will hear a Lieder recital there regularly, and that the best people will come, erm, then people do come, yeah. I mean what’s not to come and hear Dichterliebe [JW: Hmm] or Schubert or Brahms or, I mean the repertoire is so amazing [PH: Yeah, of course] amazing.

JW: So who chooses the programme?

JD: That depends on the singer, but in Ian’s case he always chooses it

PH: So it is really the singer’s the one, not that you are asked to come to a city and they say I want you to do Schubert, or I want you to do…

JD: No on the whole it’s that they ask the singer to do a concert and the singer asks me to do it with them and often I’m as involved in making up the programme as the singer is, sometimes I make the up programme completely myself. But um, it’s just that in Ian Bostridge’s case he makes up the programme. He’s very, he’s passionately interested in making programmes and he knows exactly what he wants to sing and he makes up the programme. When it’s with Gerry [Finley], the two of us make it up, you know it’s just different people… with some people I’ll make up the programme completely and say we’ll do this, this and this… this programme tonight for instance with Angelika and Simon, it’s my programme.

Angelika Kirchschlager, Julius and Simon Keenlyside at the Wigmore Hall. Click photo for details

PH: No but I thought sometimes the agency or… let’s say Schwarzenberg, tells you that we want you…

JD: Well Schwarzenberg’s a special case, yes. Because it’s one of those places you visit every year… more than once… and er yes often Nachbauer will come up with… he’ll go to… he wants Ian Bostridge, or he wants Simon, but he wants him to do something different, or Angelika. So they have to go through their whole repertoire so that they don’t repeat themselves too much. And then sometimes he’ll come up with special projects, for instance the four singers two pianists project, which was all Schumann… that was Nachtbauer’s programme. He put it together.

PH: But Schwarzenberg is very special? It’s nowhere else?

JD: No, it’s unique, it’s unique. It’s an amazing achievement [JW: Yeah][PH: Mm] Amazing

Concert-going

JW: Do you listen to other recitals? I know when you’re in Schwarzenberg you listen to other performers…

JD: I do, I love going to all the recitals in Schwarzenberg I go to as many…

PH: Do you relax simply as audience or…

JD: Yes. I love concerts, I love going to concerts, yeah, and um I go, in Schwarzenberg particularly I go to chamber concerts, but also to hear the other singers and pianists, so yeah, yeah, I love going to concerts. There was a wonderful concert here last night which I wish I could have stayed on – because we rehearsed here – Stephen Osborne and Paul Lewis were playing Schubert piano duets, and I would have loved to come to that, it’s fantastic, fantastic…

JW: But you don’t sit there thinking I wish I was on stage playing that?

JD: Well no I don’t – I mean when it was my birthday concert, I mean I apologised in the programme for playing for everybody [laughter] but I, you know I would have been miserable just sitting in the audience I mean however good the other people were I would have been miserable not sitting up there playing with everybody because they were a whole selection of favourite people, so I would have been frustrated, not miserable, frustrated.

Click the cake for details of Julius’s Birthday Gala at Wigmore Hall

JD: I love, you see I love playing, so… It’s fun, I mean I’m looking forward to tonight, but you know, a bit apprehensive about parts of it, but it should be fun

PH: But I thought when it’s somebody else at the piano you could not relax in the audience without thinking what’s he doing there, why is he doing it that way…

JD: But that’s the interesting thing, what other people do, isn’t it. You can learn a lot, or you can feel I don’t want to do it that way, or I hadn’t thought of that, or that’s a good idea, yeah

JW: I remember Gerry saying that if he’s at a concert, a choral piece, he just wants to be in the choir, he just want to be out there singing [JD: Really] joining in [laughter][JD: A similar thing you see. Yeah. Yeah].

JW: So do you… well, I know that you like opera as well…

JD: Well yes, but I’m certainly not an opera aficionado, I know very little relatively, considering how much I work with singers it’s amazing how little I know about opera, and I would never have been able to earn my living as a répétiteur. I mean as some people can. Roger Vignoles for instance was a very successful répétiteur, before he… before he stuck to recital work. I could never have done that, I don’t have the right talents or the right… I don’t… I just wouldn’t… I like performing, I like going on a stage, I wouldn’t have liked… I’m not so keen on… I want the piano to sing and as an imitation of the orchestra it’s a very different way of playing the piano, it’s a completely different thing… but erm

JW: It’s more anonymous as well of course

JD: Yes and also you don’t… as I say, I like chiselling away at the piano. The trouble with being a répétiteur is that it doesn’t encourage you to get better, it encourages you to make the piano sound like the orchestra as much as you can so that the singers can learn their notes. But that’s a different thing… I’m trying to make it as true as I can to getting the music alive on stage. But that’s not to say, I mean I have enormous respect for brilliant répétiteurs and coaches, it’s just that I could never have coped. That’s another reason I feel very lucky I’m doing this.

Collaborative pianist

JW: That sort of leads on to the next thing – this awful thing about being called an accompanist [JD: Mm hm] what makes someone beyond that, to be a partner? Do you think it’s in some way personality driven? Being gregarious…

JD: No no no, I think it’s a difficult… I think it’s a misnomer, you know, pianists who work with singers are called accompanists and it’s very hard to find another description for them which is as… simple and straightforward. You know, pianists in America are called “collaborative artists” or “collaborative pianists” which is fine, except it sounds very American [laughter] it’s hard to find something that isn’t American… but it’s much more, it’s much more accurate, but what I believe is if you play the piano in chamber music, whether it’s with a violin or cello or a voice you are effectively playing chamber music and that’s what I love. I love the bouncing to and fro of ideas between two or more musicians. So chamber music is the thing that I love and I think song is chamber music in the same way. It’s got different things about it because everybody’s looking at the singer’s face for the words, which they should be, and you’ve got these words, and the words dominate the rehearsal and how you interpret the music, but I believe passionately that it is a branch of chamber music and that therefore accompanist is not a suitable term, so I’m just Julius Drake, pianist. I’m very proud to be called a chamber music pianist, because I don’t play solo, and I don’t really have any desire to play solo, but erm, I don’t really like being called an accompanist. [JW: No, but there’s more to it...]

PH: My question is really, the students who learn to do this the same as you, well they know the scores and you can learn to play the piano and to be able to play the score, but to be more than the accompanist, to be the chamber music pianist there has to be a talent. What can you teach them of your experience?

JD: To think of themselves as equal partners, and to make the piano sing like they’re singing, the singer’s singing so you need to sing at the piano erm to be constantly listening so that the sound the singer makes and the sound that the piano’s making are one thing, one and the same, rather like a string quartet you don’t hear four different instruments [PH: no, you shouldn’t…] you hear just one sound and I think if you do the job well with the singer it should be one sound that’s coming out. So you know, it’s using your ears and trying to get something, after all pianists… any sound you want you can conjure out of a piano to a certain extent, a good piano or a bad piano, because it’s something that is in your ear that you are trying to find in the piano, so that’s why it’s amazing in a competition you can hear ten pianists play the same piano and it sounds like a completely different piano each time because they’ve got different sounds in their ears about what they want to do.

JW: It’s an extension of yourself really…

JD: Yes, it’s an extension of what you want, you know, pianos don’t just play themselves, the pianist makes it… doesn’t just play the notes, with a piano you mould the whole sound of it, and that’s why different pianists have such different sounds. So all those things, yep.

The other thing that’s difficult about it is that often people will come who actually are good pianists and who can make the piano sing, and who do really play properly, but then it’s getting them to mould the sounds to the singer. It’s not just playing the piano it’s making the piano and voice just one sound and I think that’s largely our job. The singer’s sing and you get them to make a sound, to sing quietly, to alter the dynamic, but again when you’re on stage it’s the way the balance works so that you’re not too quiet, not too loud, it’s got a sort of unity about it is up to you at the piano [JW: OK]

No canary fancier

JW: I might have got the wrong end of the stick, or you might have been being ever so diplomatic [JD: Mmm] but in one of your interviews with Sean Rafferty you said you are not actually nuts about the singing voice as such.

JD: Well I would never call myself a voice… I’m not a… not a… [laughs] canary fancier [laughter] No, I wouldn’t… I love beautiful singing voices, of course I do, but I wouldn’t er… I wouldn’t fall for a voice… Of course I do – I mean how could you not fall for a voice like Simon’s or Gerry’s, you know, it’s just… Of course I do. But I wouldn’t call myself a… I think it goes with the opera thing, I’m not a great… you know there are people who only love opera, that’s what they, it’s the only part of classical music they like, and it’s a lot to do with the personality of the singers, and I’m not like that. So even though I work with singers all the time I’m not somebody… I’m not a frustrated singer myself [laughter] I’m not longing to be a singer, and singing is by no means for me the only thing, you know I’m passionate about chamber music altogether… in fact I’m passionate about music altogether, all forms of chamber music, I adore string quartets for instance, or piano trios, or piano duets… that’s all I meant, that’s all I meant… The voice isn’t the be all and end all for me. But I love working with singers, I love singers and I love working with them, and I love words, I love the fact that you can… yeah, I’m very happy doing what I’m doing, very lucky…

JW: And the language means a lot?

JD: I love languages, yes, I love the sound of it

JW: …and the poetry?

JD: …and the poetry. The meaning, you know, the expression behind it and sometimes the stories, like in ballads. All of that adds an extra element that chamber music couldn’t offer me, pure chamber music, so in a way it’s a perfect… intellectually I’m very stimulated by that as well as musically…

JW: I think we can understand where you’re coming from [laughter] [JD: Hm]

Role reversal in Tokyo

No regrets

JW: So you never regret having specialised, having gone down the route [JD: oh no] it’s been a natural…

JD: Oh no, absolutely not. I’ve been amazingly lucky. You know it’s a very precarious way of trying to earn a living… I think my parents were very brave in never questioning that I wanted to do it. I think if one of my children was desperate to be a musician I would want to be absolutely sure that they couldn’t bear to do something else, and that’s not because I haven’t had a wonderful life as a musician – I have – but I do know it’s… I’m one of the lucky few. I know how competitive it is, and you need so many things. You’ve got to be very musical, you’ve got to be passionate about the music, you’ve got to somehow work out a way of technically coping with the technical demands, erm you’ve got to be ambitious, you’ve got to be hard working, you’ve probably got to be pretty easy to get along with [JW: Yeah, that’s what we were thinking] there are so many things, so many things that make up someone who’s actually employable. And you could be the most gifted pianist in the world and not be employable doing what I’m doing. On the other hand you could be the most lovely person to be with but not quite give on stage, you know. It’s lucky that I’ve been able to work… that it fits me well.

PH: But isn’t there still any other piano part, some concert, some Chopin that you say that would be something…

JD: Well no I really don’t, I mean… I went to music school when I was 12 so since then I’ve been sure I was going to be a musician, and between the ages of 12 and 17 I played only the solo repertoire, I played all the Beethoven sonatas for instance, and when I went to music college I played chamber music for the first time and I thought “I don’t want to do solo. Now I know I don’t want to do solo”. Between 18 and 21 all I did was chamber music at the Royal College, as well as the solo music that I had to do, and then when I was about 21 or 22 I played with a singer for the first time, and after I thought “this is fantastic, this is what I want to do”. So I’ve done both those other things. And um I’ve always played chamber music as well… every year I do a certain amount of cello recitals and violin recitals, um even piano trios, just a very few. In a way I feel even less of a need to do it now than I did 10 years ago, you know… and I like to go and hear other people doing it as well. I know how hard it is. To be honest I suppose that to do anything really well it’s hard not to specialise. You do have to more or less to try to get as good as possible, unless you’re some God-given genius, like a Barenboim, who can do everything. On the whole, most of us have to find something that you say I could concentrate on and get as good as possible, and if I really get good at this, I’m probably not going to be able to do that as well.

The Steinway D

PH: Did you say something about you not being happy with the piano. How is it normally when you are not the lucky one with the instrument tucked under your arm [JD: Hm]. What kind of influence do you have as to the instrument?

JD: I’ve put it in my contract that it needs to be a Steinway D, so I know it’s going to be that. Steinway D’s vary a lot from the very good to the not very good at all, but they all have something in common which means if you are used to playing them, as I am, I have the feeling somewhere that on the whole I can get them to do what I want them to do… but you know, the concert in Modena for instance I wasn’t, I didn’t feel very happy on the piano. The concert in Genoa, I thought I was going to be very unhappy on the piano, because I really felt unhappy in the rehearsals, but in the concert it was fine, so you know, I could do what I wanted. But in Modena I couldn’t get the sound I wanted, and… so you just do the best you can.

JW: As with a singer, it must depend on the size of the auditorium [JD: Yes it does, it does] and does it make a difference if there are people in there?

JD: Yes, it’s amazing how the piano changes once there are people in the hall, it feels completely different, so… again that’s just part of your life, you get so used to it. pianos are all different. But they’ve got something about them all that’s the same and that’s why, to have to play a Bösendorfer or a Bechstein would be very different, but because it’s a Steinway D on the whole, we all of us know that in the limited time that we’ve got to rehearse we can try and give something of the best of ourselves out onto it. And a Steinway Ds are miracles, it’s an amazing instrument, and that’s why they’re everywhere, they really are amazing instruments, they’re so adaptable [JW: Interesting]

PH: Often you read the name Steinway, OK it’s the most famous, but I never thought the pianist might say “I want one of these”

JD: No, it’s THE piano, THE piano, the Steinway D

JW: I can remember vividly seeing you, with Gerry again, at Primrose Hill [JD: Yeah] with Dichterliebe and Tit for Tat, and even I could see you really [JD: was that a hired piano? That was one they had there wasn’t it, yeah] yes, [JD: Oh that was dreadful] and you could see you really milking it to get it to do what you wanted [laughter][JD: Yes to get the best, yeah] … it was very entertaining to watch…

St Mary’s, Primrose Hill

JD: But on the whole once you’re in a concert hall or in a festival they’ll have a Steinway D for you, and if they haven’t got one they hire one in. And for recordings, for instance, the Hyperion recordings, they hire one in

JW: You have two Steinways at home?

JD: I do, yeah, yeah

JW: One of them I believe was Joseph Cooper’s?

JD: yes one of them was Joseph Cooper’s the other one was Ivor Newton’s. Ivor Newton left me his first when he died and er, then Joe Cooper left me his. So I’ve got two. I’ve been very lucky. Gifted with two Steinways…

Music fanatic

PH: One last question [JD: Hm hm] With so much music around, do you in your leisure time do you still enjoy hearing music or do you want silence?

JD: No, I’m a music fanatic I’m afraid [PH: Ah ha][JW: No need to apologise. That’s good!]

PH: More chamber music or what kind of music?

JD: I often listen to what’s on the radio… radio 3… or in the car I always listen to it, and I have CDs in the car, and I have 1000s of CDs at home. It’s becoming increasingly more difficult to find time to sit down at home and listen to CDs, but I listen the rest of the time, I’m always listening in the car, and travelling… my ipod… yeah, music fanatic. One track mind I’m afraid [laughter]