BD: Are you trying to seduce your audience every time?
UO: In different ways.
BD: What kinds of ways?
UO: One of them could be with this kind of rhythmic feeling that is not easy, but not remote, either. It’s just sort of inviting, and very different from what one has heard, as opposed to the other ways of seducing with sound effects — which he really doesn’t do so much, but it’s a different type of seduction, really.
BD: [With a sly nudge] Do you find ways of seducing your audience no matter what you are playing?
UO: I hope so, if you mean seducing them in that you’re getting them into the frame of mind that makes you want to play the piece. In other words, somehow to experience whatever it is that you experience about the piece that excites you. So I try to seduce them in that broader sense, yeah.
BD: Do you then feed off of the audience as they send vibes back to you? And then you are able to react to that?
UO: You can’t really tell. It’s a mistake, I think, to worry too much about it. Let’s say there might be some place where people don’t applaud as loudly as some other place, and if you really thought about it, you’d say, “Oh, they don’t like it. Now what am I to do?” And that may be nothing; it could just be the norms of the place. So it’s best not to be concerned. One shouldn’t worry about it at all, you know! If it happens, it’s great! But it isn’t like a concert where they really do give; it isn’t like some sort of a program where people do shout and yell, so you shouldn’t try to force something that can’t be.
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BD: Do you adjust your playing at all because of the size of the hall — if it is a great big huge barn, or a very small, intimate hall?
UO: Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, very much.
BD: How so?
UO: [Ponders a moment] Well actually, not very much. The main thing that changes is what one feels to be the resonance one has. If you’re in a large, wonderful hall, a place like Carnegie Hall, it’s very resonant and there’s a gorgeous piano there. You can do anything you want; you can play as softly as you like! I remember playing a concerto there, and people who came to the rehearsal kept saying, “You know, you can play softer.” And I just couldn’t believe it, because you can’t do that in every hall. As a soloist you usually can, but with concertos you can’t always. I guess it’s the question of what do you feel is the sound world you have, more than the size of the hall. And I think very much everyone loves playing in a place where you get a lot of sound coming back to you. Then you feel wonderful and that you can do anything!
BD: I would think, though, that you’re almost in the worst place to hear balances and sound being at the keyboard. It would be better if you were out in the tenth row.
UO: Well, I don’t know! When you’re a soloist, it’s not that much of a problem. When you play with orchestra, really different things can be happening in the tenth row than what you hear, especially if the winds are twenty feet behind and you can barely hear them. Someone in the twentieth row might say, “They’re drowning you out!” But as a soloist within the world of the piano itself, I think what your balance is very much what comes out because it’s all starting from one spot.
BD: Do you have any problem adjusting to each different instrument? You’re plagued with having a new instrument almost every time you play.
UO: There’s no difficulty adjusting to beautiful instruments! [Both laugh] Really there’s infinite difficulty adjusting! There are many different kinds of beauties, and it’s really fun, actually, especially if you can have some practice time not on the day of the concert. You can find out what a piano can do and you do change a great deal! If a piano has a very beautiful register, you will really make much more of the music that’s happening there because you just can’t resist; at least I can’t resist it! There are many different kinds of beautiful pianos.
BD: Do you try to make the piano sound like you, or do you try to get the best out of each instrument?
UO: I would try to go for the best of each instrument. If it’s a good piano, I love the difference, and when I have a series of good pianos, I like nothing better than playing on a different piano every time! Then you get a series of dogs, and you sort of wish something else would happen! But it is fun, how different they are.
BD: Going back to the idea of seduction, is each new piano like having a series of lovers?
UO: Oh, goodness! [Pause] Or at least making love with lots of imagination to the same person! [Both laugh]
BD: Coming back to my original question about the selection of repertoire, what is it that you look for in either an established piece or a brand new piece that will make you decide yes, I want to spend some time with the piece?
UO: It basically happens the other way around. What I will feel is I’ve got to play this piece, and it’s the putting them together where the decision is. If you say, “I’ve got to play this piece,” then you say, “What goes with it?” Sometimes the original impulse is just that, and it becomes an obsession or something you really have to do. What happens now sometimes is that I played a piece twenty years ago and came to a dead end on it. Then I’ll be talking to a friend who’s a musician, and they’ll say something in a fairly offhand way about that piece, and I’ll suddenly begin thinking about it in a new way! They like some aspect of it, and then you realize you haven’t thought about it for fifteen years! That’s very exciting! It happened, actually, with the Brahms. That’s one reason I went back to it. I began thinking about it in different ways from how I had thought about it before. So that can be one thing. Another can be hearing it. With the Rachmaninoff it was quite by accident. I realized that there were the Rachmaninoff preludes and etudes, of which I knew some but I didn’t realize how little I knew of the ones I didn’t know. I was just reading through them and was originally going to do a selection. So I started the series. I started with the first one and thought this one’s really terrific! Then I got to the second one and felt I’d really have to do this one, too! And so on it went.
BD: You wind up with a concert that’s ten hours long!
UO: Well, yes, and then you curse yourself and say, “How could I be such a fool?” But with the Rachmaninoff, it really just happened just by reading them and not believing that there was such wonderful music by such a popular composer that I had never heard! So it really happens all kinds of ways. It also has very much to do with ideas you have when you think you’re not thinking about it at all.
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