Minsoo Sohn on Bach

Korean-American pianist Minsoo Sohn released his debut recording for Hyperion on 2nd October, a deeply communicative journey through the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier. He spoke to us about the value of Bach's music in a world of information overload and quick answers, and about the importance of asking the right questions.

Why did you choose Book One of the Well-Tempered Clavier for your Hyperion debut?

It's a big question. First of all, it comes from my pedagogical heritage. When I was a teenager and my teachers first saw me, I was playing virtuosic romantic pieces, and it was my dream to play all this bravura repertoire.

I had two teachers, Russell Sherman, and his wife Wha Kyung Byun, both amazing musicians, and they saw something in me and they just kept asking 'Why don't you bring me Beethoven? Why don't you bring me Bach suites?'. So, it grew within my system and that's how I put my thoughts into the music of Bach and Beethoven particularly. 

Living in a society with AI and limitless information which is very hard to comprehend: it feels as though we are required to respond immediately. Bach's music stands alone. The music asks us to pay attention and to step away from this busy mindset, to have a time for self-reflection and what's important as a human being.

It became sort of a routine for me to wake up in the morning, lay down my hands on the keyboard and feel the music instead of just tackling all the difficulty. It became part of me, and I thought that it was maybe the right time for me to leave my own footstep with these monumental pieces, not to mention the importance of this repertoire for any musician who came after him. It became their own universe. They were able to get the inspiration from this tonal palette, and then they were able to create their own universe.

Bach gave us as a great gift for humanity, and the older I become, the more layers and more variety and richness within this music I discover, and that's what really compelled me to tackle this project.

So, ‘why not?’ is my answer. 

The Preludes and Fugues are rarely recorded as a full set these days. Why do you think they're so often viewed as a training ground rather than from a musical perspective?

One of the purposes for Bach to compose this was to explore the possibility of all twenty-four different keys, and it was for educational purposes as well, but it's important for us not to limit the possibilities, because then the music becomes mundane - what's left is questions, unanswered or answered, but questions. 

As a musician especially, but for any person in this world that we're living in, it's important to not allow our imagination to be faded away. I think to play and listen to Bach's music, it takes us to the ground and makes us taste the greatest fragrance and dream about the forgotten world; to look up for heaven and get through even the greatest tragic moments.

All too often, The Well-Tempered Clavier is reduced to the first prelude, in often quite heavy and romanticised performances. Does this undermine the journey?

Yes, you are right; probably anyone will remember the opening of the C major prelude, but he's only raising the curtain of the greatest journey with a heavenly embrace in C major.

You couldn't even imagine ending the whole cycle as a B minor fugue. For me, B minor represents the cross of Jesus Christ and the unimaginable suffering, and then it somehow becomes transcendental, and it's a passionate outcry leading to redemption. One could imagine how Bach suffered, thinking as a religious man himself about the journey of Jesus Christ, and imbue that feeling of his own tragic lows, including his childrens' deaths.

Would you agree that the first fugue is a wonderful introduction to the form?

It's a stretto fugue and to bring the clarity to crossing over all these voices and at the same time this pure innocence of C major was for me one of the most difficult things to do.

Bach showed us how to find the questions, and to bring fresh life into every subject or counter subject is the key. I had the greatest influence in my student days, one of the musicologists in my school, New England Conservatory in Boston, who described Bach's music as musical democracy. 

That is the key; to know and to pay attention to each voice throughout the whole thing. No matter whether you're threatening or whispering, complaining or in your rage, you have to know how to put this music together so that every voice counts.

Playing this music on a modern concert grand presents many choices, and your approach strikes a lovely balance of singing, warmth, clarity and shape. How do you set your intentions?

Essentially, when playing Bach's music on the piano we are playing some sort of a transcription. It's not the sound that Bach heard when he was composing this music, but we are putting our faith into believing that probably Bach would approve of us playing the piano, because we have this instrument which can be sometimes like an oboe, sometimes a bassoon, or we could resemble the warmth of string playing and it could be symphonic, it could be choral... At best, I hope to achieve the unapproachable, which is to make it seem like a human voice. That would be my ultimate dream.

I often thought of the cantatas that he was composing; his faith, his human struggle, and every aspect of human predicament is there, and he uses the variety of all the resources he could find in his time, so I try to combine it all in my imagination. There is no fault in doing something else, but it's my take at this point of my life.

You had Russell Sherman's scores passed to you, and you studied those as part of preparing your interpretations. How important were his markings to your journey and relationship with this music? 

It's just the way he approached every single day and how devoted he was to get to the core of the music that he was studying. He would use all the scholastic influence and find every possible resource first, but then it was left for him to really identify and resonate certain moments of music with what he had experienced before, and that whole way of being as a musician was something that I learned more than anything.

He sometimes wrote his own poetry in some of the preludes, and the markings that he left in his score were really amazing. Sometimes I try to put my hand around his unorthodox fingering but he had a huge hand, and probably it's not for me to even try to attempt, but what I get is how much he had thought of this music and how much he went through so many different questions to get to it. Such a fingering could only work with the mind of somebody who's desperate to connect these two dots.

When I look at the score I start by asking how would Mr. Sherman go forward; how would he answer the questions the music is asking? That is the ultimate start of my own journey of discovery. I'm eternally his student, and he encouraged this person who just was so impatient to attach my heart to music, and allowed me to discover this process. That is the greatest thing that I inherited from him. 

You referred to Sherman using every source he possibly could in his process. Alongside his score, is there a particular edition that you use in your preparation? 

I try to explore any resource I can, but it's important for me to not become too influenced by one particular musician's opinion. These musicians may say something completely different if we could ask them today. In the best approach to performance we cannot just stick with one interpretation; as we grow old, maybe our thinking, senses and sentiments change, and that is the beauty of music I believe.

We are lucky to have our own thoughts, hands and ears in our particular moment of playing, but we have to know that we cannot own this, and that is the importance of being the interpreter. Music theory is also partly interpretation; it's not something you can just say formally, that 'this is it, this is the immovable way of looking.'  It's just not in my language. 

The journey of The Well-Tempered Clavier is one of overwhelming variety and richness: it's a sketchbook into Bach's own musical universe, and that's what I try to represent.

You're also very active as a teacher, including of Yunchan Lim. How important is teaching to you and to your own playing?

What I do as a teacher maybe it shows how limited I am, but I try to show my students what my teachers gave to me.

There are things that I try to explain to my students through my own experience and at the same time, I try to put thoughts into their minds to understand what made them to play such a way. It's always starting with the question: 'Why? What's the reason?'.

Ultimately, it stimulates what I stand for as a musician, because I'm dealing with different minds all the time and sometimes they bring something that I probably could have never imagined or thought of myself. I would even say that it's an extension of how I exist as a musician; it's just different questions.

Everything starts with a question. 'Why?' or 'Why not?'.