Yulianna Avdeeva on Metanoia

Yulianna Avdeeva's new album Metanoia, is a consistently engaging exploration of piano works by Liszt, and is Recording of the Month in the October issue of BBC Music Magazine. I enjoyed talking to Yulianna about the inspiration for the album and her deep love for this music that explores the full range of human emotion, from the darkest depths to a belief in miracles.

Did the title or the programme for Metanoia come first? 

The choice of repertoire came first, although for me the entire feeling of Liszt is of a transformation, and 'Metanoia' is another word for this, in which he succeeded in his life as a human being. 

Starting from a superstar who loved life with all its aspects, somehow there was a turning point in his life when he decided that all this is no longer him. He turned very much to other things, including religion of course, which had always been part of his life and intensified, but also he travelled less.

We can speculate why it happened; he had to take hard hits such as the loss of his son and he couldn't marry in the end his great love. I think it’s very obvious in how his music changed and, for me it was indeed a revelation when I discovered these late pieces, a long time ago.

There has been endless debates about the inspiration and structure of the sonata. What are your thoughts?

Liszt was quite precise in his marks, and when he wanted us to have a real clue what the piece is about, he always left something. Even in the first Mephisto Waltz we have the text, so we know what it is about. He didn't leave a single word about the sonata, so I think he probably wanted us to discover this piece for ourselves, and everybody will find something different. We can take Beatrice from Dante, we can take Marthe from Goethe, but there is definitely some anti-hero to these diabolic forces of dark and light, and I think that's all Liszt wanted us to know about, and the rest is indeed something very personal to the interpreter and the audience.

I see the sonata as one single movement, and what is magnificent is the way he uses similar thematic material throughout, and literally turns every stone and it becomes transformed. This is something I think that's again his genius, that he was able to create such a great piece out of, let's say, two or three motifs. 

I love the journey Liszt takes us on, from those opening stabs in the dark, through that glorious D major section and the fugato at the end before returning to the darkness of the beginning with the experience of everything in between.

The arc is exactly the way I often think about it, but this is the second ending he wrote, and it's still possible to see the original ending in the manuscript. It's crossed out, but still you can read the notes, and it was a really bombastic ending. 

I believe he made the right decision.

For sure. The original would not have the same effect somehow, because the second ending comes back to the beginning, and it again leaves us nowhere, but with some light. In the beginning, we started nowhere with only darkness, but in the end, we have a little perspective.

It is for me one of the greatest pieces ever written for any instrument, and I wanted to show the sonata also from the perspective of the late pieces. Once you know the late pieces, you see this philosophical and extremely progressive way of composing.

It's very sad, because in his last years Liszt's new music was not acknowledged at all. Very few people could feel what kind of window he was already opening to the music of the future. I know it from his letters that he was saying that he would be extremely grateful if all the next generations would remember him as a composer who created these late pieces and not the pieces from his youth.

Is there a particular edition that you favour for the sonata?

Yes, I always use, for all these pieces, the Budapest edition, because this is the most modern and approved one, and very nice to read. This is the closest to the composer's will, because of course all editor’s marks can be interesting, but it's not so pure like the Urtext.

La Lugubre Gondola II, which is quite a bit later (1882), makes sense after the sonata because it's got some similar qualities, but also a slightly Wagnerian feel. What are your feelings about that piece? 

Indeed, many of the late pieces are connected directly with Wagner because Liszt was visiting him often in Venice when Wagner was already quite ill, and he saw many shrouded gondola which made a huge impression on him. We have the very Wagnerian chords, this very special type of writing, but somehow from above. It's not like being in it, it's already like a reminiscence of something from the past, and this is very beautiful for me.

How do you achieve such clarity of sound when the writing is so low in the piano's range? 

I try to connect the notes only with fingers and take some pedal, but very little, so I don't go to the bottom of the pedal, just a little so that the dampers are still close to the strings. Most of the things I try to connect with the fingers, and I think this helps, but I'm not really thinking about this a lot because it's the melody and balance between the parts which has the priority, and where I try to focus. 

Also, the piano which I'm using in this recording is the same piano I used for Chopin Voyage. It's a very special instrument because it allows you to play very, very soft, but only if you feel very relaxed, like Horowitz, who didn’t accept tension in his body when he played. It's one of Horowitz's recording pianos: It's very special with a very long sound, and the sound also in the middle of register, you have a feeling it never stops, it just goes and goes forever. 

The Bagatelle sans tonalite feels like a dance with the Devil.

The waltz rhythm gives this kind of charming feeling, but it's a very special charm, exactly as you would be walking on the edge of a knife, because it's very light and it's full of surprises. Is it a dream? Is it reality? 

I love this piece because with the title it's absolutely clear where he's heading to, and he completely leaves the tonality behind him. This is the time when Brahms was composing his great works, where tonality was still tonality, but here it's something already completely different. It's extremely chromatic, so it's pushing the boundaries in that respect. 

It's a nice contrast to the funereal feeling of the other pieces.

That was my big concern when I started to make the selection for the album, because many of the pieces from the last period, they are very dark. Of course, it's also because of his depression, but I didn't want to focus only on that, because in some ways he was the same Ferenc he used to be. 

And of course, the Csárdás macabre! Brendel was an amazing Liszt interpreter, and I'm sure the first time I heard it was with him, and I was determined that ‘I want to play this piece’. Liszt literally breaks all rules that composers usually kept to, with all these parallel octaves, parallel fifths, and chromaticism. You can hear the pitch D maybe as a core of the piece, but he walks across so many tonalities there, still keeping this amazing Hungarian spirit, not only in the dance, but also with the scales he uses. It’s an amazing masterpiece.

Another contrast on the album is St François de Paule: Marchant sur les flots, with those wonderful cascades of notes which you play so beautifully.

Thank you, it's such a moving piece. Every time I play it, I feel such an excitement, because the story itself is already inspiring. If you are religious or not, there is something about how you as a human being can get over serious troubles if you believe in something or in yourself. Not necessarily walking on water, but this quality of belief is so strongly put in this music.

Do you ever listen to your recordings after they’ve been released?

No, because I think it's still something that was created in that particular moment, and I'm sure that today I would do many things differently, so that's why there is no sense for me to listen to them. Why should I frustrate myself?

The rest of us are still enjoying them.

I'm very happy to hear that, because I put everything into them and always enjoy making my albums, and working with the wonderful sound producer Bernhard Güttler to share this amazing music.