Simon Tedeschi in conversation

Thank you for coming in to College Street, Simon. You’re someone who has achieved considerable renown as a concert pianist, and not many Australians have scaled such lofty heights in the classical world. What do you think are the secret ingredients to making it as a concert performer?

I think humility is very important, but also a mixture of humility, strength of character and strength of vision. Durability, too. And an ability to communicate with people of all kinds. But also a hunger to want to probe deeper into interpretation, while accepting that there is no such thing as “perfection” per se – the music that we play is so immense, and there’s always so much more to learn. So, it’s again that humility, but also that restlessness. They are things that often rub up against each other.

We have plenty of talented young performers at Grammar, some of whom might hold aspirations of musical careers. What qualities, in your experience, augur well for professional success as classical performers?

At the very highest level of concert performance there’s a strength of rhythm, an emotional conviction. It’s an X-factor thing that can’t really be reduced to a set of variables – but you just know it when it’s there, often after only one note. It’s an ineffable quality. There’s a boldness there, even a boldness that you might not agree with. And this boldness might defy a lot of what’s correct theoretically. But it’s just something that causes an emotional reaction, often a very powerful emotional reaction.

So, something that transcends the purely mechanical you think.

Yes, certainly. But at the same time, something that incorporates the purely mechanical, to the point where the mechanical is no longer seen or noticed. At the very highest level, what we’re all aspiring for as performers is a sense that we’ve transcended the purely technical – the effect is akin to a beautiful Maserati where you’re not even worrying about the engine or the muffler or whatever; it just moves with that grace of a swan. And then you need all the usual professional attributes, too: good communication, reliability, and curiosity all help.

You’re a flexible pianist in the sense that you’ve traversed different genres and styles; in recent years you’ve played some jazz, but you started out as a classical pianist. You don’t seem bound by musical categories; today, for example, you performed Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo à la Turk” in the Alastair Mackerras Theatre – a jazzy version of Mozart. What are you thinking about when you play that kind of music?

Well probably lots of things, but in the case of the Brubeck there’s a particular feel that involves thinking more through the body than the mind; it requires shutting off the mind to some degree, and that is a difficult thing to do for someone who has a classical background. I’m trying to relax and remove all thoughts from my mind in the Brubeck.

Before, when I played classical music, I was terrified of making mistakes. With jazz, it’s different. Miles Davis used to always leave the mistakes in his recording because he thought that was the human aspect – and I thought that was great. But not all mistakes are good mistakes.

So, do you think the best performers typically win competitions?

Certainly not. I think often the most confident artists win competitions. Even just on a basic level. Most people who win competitions are men because they tend to have bigger hands – a distinct advantage. And I’m a man with small hands, so that’s a disadvantage. But there are people who literally specialise in winning competitions. That was certainly not me. I mean, I’m not that type of performer, even though I grudgingly admire those who are. However, you also get the rare person who is both an extraordinary musician and wins competitions. Martha Argerich is one.

The older I get the less I focus on competitions. Also, I’ve learned to really appreciate and celebrate the skill of other pianists – something that you’re not raised to do when you are starting out as a concert pianist. I’ve discovered over time that there’s room for many wonderful pianists and some of them do things much better than I could ever possibly do.

The Olympics have recently been on, and obviously athletic excellence is comparatively easy to quantify, in most cases. You run the 100 metres in the quickest time, you win the gold medal. But in the arts, it’s a bit different. How do you measure who’s the most outstanding performer?

It’s so difficult. Some of the greatest musicians of all time never won a competition. Arthur Rubenstein, in a big prank, failed himself to get into the Rubenstein Competition. And then there’s the well-known case of Ivo Pogorelić who was eliminated in the 1980 X International Chopin Piano Competition, causing Martha Argerich to resign from the jury in protest. Then there’s all today’s pianists who are incredible but just don’t win competitions. So it’s a lottery – it’s as much a lottery as human beings are a lottery. And it can come down to the personality of the judge, the prejudices of the judge. It’s like a jury and a trial – we’re all human beings with our own little kinks and our own little weird fixations. And so, it’s brutal in that respect for someone who’s determined to have a career to be reliant upon a person who is just a person like us.

Photo Credit: Keith Saunders

You’re someone who reads widely and thinks deeply about the notes on the page. I studied music composition at Sydney University in the late 1990s, with Peter Sculthorpe, Ross Edwards and so on, and many professors and students there were quite proud of the fact that they were the so-called “intellectual” department, whereas the Conservatorium was more known for prioritising the mechanical aspects of music-making. Richard Gill, in his memoir Give Me Excess of It, argues that most instrumentalists are akin to tradespeople – they need time to practise, more than anything else, and serious intellectual endeavour can be a time-wasting digression from that fundamental task. Where do you sit on that? Do you think the best performers bring a certain intellectual depth to their performance, or is that not necessary?

When you’re talking about the very greatest performers, yes, inevitably they’re great thinkers. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Miles Davis or a Evgeny Kissin, musicians of that calibre are always thoughtful. But yes, there is a tendency for elite performers to be quite tunnel-visioned and immune to any wider experiences of life, and that’s not really their fault – it’s just the life that they’ve led. And I am unusual in that respect, and I always have been, just in terms of my sense of humour and the fact that I was always quite questioning. That, I think, is just an inborn trait.

Our Form IV boys study an Australian novel, Maestro, by Peter Goldsworthy, the father of Anna Goldsworthy.

Anna Goldsworthy – such a wonderful pianist and writer. A few years ago she wrote a review of Fugitive [Tedeschi’s first book of poetry] in The Monthly, and I remember her writing something hilarious – she pointed out that I’ve become “used to [my]self as an object of fascination”. I laughed so hard at that because it’s so true – as a young performer you literally just walk into a room and people are interested in you.

The Fugitive book cover Courtesy of Upswell Publishing

Pictured: Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818), oil on canvas. This painting is a prime visual example of German Romanticism and a representation of the Romantic sublime.

You said that German Romanticism is probably your favourite music nonetheless.

Yes. The richness of it, and the sublimity – the sense that the whole history of classical music was travelling to this terrible point just before the emergence of the “modern world”. It’s the most ecstatic music, in my view. But I love Bach, Mozart, Brahms. I think what I love about Brahms is that he took from the classical and baroque composers so much in terms of fabric and craft but he added a truly Romantic sensibility. So, Brahms’ music is universal in that respect.

Given this love of Romantic music, is there something deficient in modern music for you, say, since the Second Viennese School?

No, not at all. I adore it all. I love Webern, I love Stockhausen. Xenakis… I don’t play much of it, but I love it.