Season 5 Episode 13: Composing with Humanity – Nimrod Borenstein on Music, Expression & Legacy - The Piano Pod - a global hub for innovation, education, and connection in classical piano music

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វ្ ព្្្្្្្្្្្្្...

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Piano Parts
Welcome back to another episode of the Piano Parts, everyone. Today, I am thrilled to welcome
Nimrod Bornstein, a renowned British, French composer, and acclaimed conductor,

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whose works have captivated audiences worldwide.
From monumental orchestral pieces to evocative solo piano compositions,
Nimrod's music showcases a distinctive voice that pushes the boundaries of classical music
while remaining deeply expressive and accessible.
Born in Tel Aviv and raised in Paris,

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Nimrod was a child prodigy violinist before shifting his focus to composition.
He studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London,
where he developed his signature style,
blending intricate counterpoint, rich harmonic textures,
and a deeply lyrical sensibility.

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His music is widely performed and recorded by top orchestras and artists,
with over 150 compositions spanning solo, chamber, and large-scale symphonic works.
His career has been marked by prestigious collaborations,
most notably with legendary pianist and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazi,

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who championed Nimrod's work and conducted his music with major orchestras worldwide.
His piano compositions, such as Shirim and his series of Etudes for Piano,
showcase his deep understanding of the instrument
and his ability to balance virtuosity with emotional depth.

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In this episode, we will explore Nimrod's journey from child prodigy
to an internationally celebrated composer,
the creative process behind his celebrated piano works including Shirim and his Etudes,
his collaboration with the legendary Vladimir Ashkenazi,
and the challenges and triumphs of composing for piano, orchestra, and beyond.

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Before we begin, I want to share something new with you.
Every Friday, I publish a blog on Substack where I go beyond the podcast,
offering personal reflections, behind-the-scenes insights, and thoughts on music,
creativity, and the evolving role of classical musicians.
If you enjoy these conversations,

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I invite you to subscribe at the pianopod.substack.com
for exclusive content and deeper discussions.
We can't wait for you to hear Nimrod's incredible story,
his dedication to contemporary music, and his innovative work
that redefines the boundaries of classical compositions.

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Now, without further ado, let's welcome Nimrod Borenstein to the pianopod.
Please enjoy the show.
Nimrod Borenstein
You are listening to the pianopod where we talk to the brightest minds in the industry
about how they are bringing the piano into the future

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and thriving in a complex, ever-evolving world.
Welcome to the pianopod, Nimrod.
It's such an honor and pleasure to have you on the show today.
Thank you so much for being here.
My pleasure.
So, where are you actually joining from today?
So, I'm at home in London.
London?

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Because now I'm staying for a little while in London.
Not too much trouble.
Okay. Are you currently based in London?
Yes, I've been living in London for over 30 years.
Oh, wow. Okay.
I understand that you grew up in France, right?
Yeah. From age 3 to age 17, 18, I was in France.

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Before that, you were originally from Israel.
Yeah, I was born in Tel Aviv.
But I only got to age 3.
And then I grew up in France.
And now, the majority of my life, I've been in London.
I've been over 30 years.
Oh, my goodness. Wow.
That's quite an international, beautiful life that you have.
So, anyway, I've been really enjoying listening to your recordings

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over the past several weeks.
And I'm truly, truly amazed by the breadth of your work,
spanning from orchestral, chorale, you know, instrumental,
and of course, piano solo, and even ballet work that you've done.
And it was such an extensive catalogue.
It's clear we can only cover so much in the limited time we have today.

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And since this is the piano part,
so I'd love to focus on your piano works in particular.
And of course, later in the episode,
we'll briefly touch on your other works as well.
But before we dive into the details of your compositions,
let me just start with a question that has become customary
for our guests this season.

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So, even with a distinguished artist like yourself,
we rarely get the chance to truly get to know the person behind the music.
You know, you usually have this beautiful profile photograph
and then the CD album cover,
but you just don't get to hear the personal story.
So, one of the purposes of this platform is to connect art with humanity.

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So, I think we all want to get to know you in a more personal way.
So, my first question for you is,
if you were to capture the essence of your artistry, mission, passion,
in just a few sentences,
how would you define who you are as an artist today?

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I see that for me it's quite important to say that too many people
spend too much time to explain their art.
I usually say that if you have to say to explain your art,
it means that there's not very much in your art.
My art is what it is.
And I'm not a philosopher.
So, everything that I'm going to say is in music.

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But that's the first thing, but I'm not going to avoid your question.
So, I'm saying as well that for me,
I'm looking for absolute beauty.
But beauty in the novel, beauty, something that was not there before.
And that would be a novelty, yes, novelty and beauty.

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Wow, beautiful.
I think that shows in the music.
So, let's dive deeper into your compositions.
So, as a composer with such a diverse catalogue,
what draws you to the piano as a medium of expression?
So, we're now talking about piano writing.
It's a complex question.

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I think that first, I really love the instrument.
But it's possible that it comes from my love of music itself.
Because the repertoire of piano is immense.
And you formed the, when I was young, from the Bach, Prelude and Fugue,

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to Mozart piano concertos or Beethoven sonatas, Brahms, Chopin, Schumann.
And you name them, sort of you...
For me, the most important thing is always the essence of things.
So, music comes first, above anything else.
And I think that in a way, maybe that's what attracted me for the piano,

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because the repertoire is incredible.
But I think that if I'm honest, it's over that.
Your first question asked me how I would define myself.
And I think that actually, I can continue on that, saying that when I was younger,
and people ask me in interviews, I mean, 20, 30 years ago,

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who were my masters and my teachers, whatever, I would always say that I was very inspired.
Even if my style is not like that exactly, my Bach and Beethoven, these were my gods.
And of course, I mean, not of course, but I love Mozart and I love Schubert.
But 15 years ago, I found that this definition was not right for many reasons.

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One of them is that it's not... I'm not old-fashioned, so it's not that my music sounds like Bach.
There is a lot of counterpoint, there is a lot of power like Beethoven, but it's not the style.
And I found that in all genres of music, there are two different types of composers in my point of view.
The composers that have, in a way, one thing to say, and the ones that are very extreme.

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So like the one that I would call the maniacal-depressive, like Mozart, Schubert,
that can have the real joy on things that are light, on total depression, on darkness.
And I'm a member of this group.
And I think that that is important because it's a distinction that you can find,
because I suppose that whatever you do, you somehow, who you are, goes through your music.

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Even if you are not trying to... I'm not a romantic, so I'm not trying to express myself,
I'm trying to find beauty, but you can't escape that if you are honest, who you are will come through.
And hopefully, because we are all human beings and we share the same problems, that's why we like the same things.
But that, on piano, because I'm coming back to the piano, is an instrument that has got both.

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So it's got high twinkly sounds that are like out of another world, and peacefulness,
and you can imagine where... I mean, you've got a lot of them in my music for piano,
and that you find this type of sounds in Mozart.
You think about the piano concertos, these things that are high on the right hand, just like a dream.

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You also have the power on the basses, on the drama that piano creates as well.
My music, it seems that for me, contrast is the essence of art and the essence of life in general,
and so I love the piano because of that. One of the reasons.

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Yes, yes. I understand the reason I'm asking this, because not only because of your expansive work,
but also I think you originally started as a violinist.
Yes, I thought that I would have a dual career as a soloist, as a violinist and a composer.
And there are not enough hours a day for both if you are going to be extremely hard on yourself

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and you want to play well.
Playing an instrument well, it's like being a sportsman to the highest level.
Even to the tips of the level, it's just so many hours a day.
I thought that I would do that until I was in my early twenties and it started to be practical,
the travelling and everything.
And then I was very depressed because I worked something like 15 hours a day,

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which I don't mind because I'm a work colleague, but it was not enough.
And I thought, because either I was frustrated that I was not writing enough or not practicing enough.
And I thought quite wisely for a 19-year-old, I thought if it's like that when I'm 19,
I don't have children, I don't have anything, it's not going to work.
But I couldn't find a solution and I was driving, no, I was outside, I was not driving yet,

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but I listened to a radio podcast or something and they were talking about Chopin.
And in his entire life, apparently he gave something like 31 concerts or 30 to his life.
Not in one year. And suddenly, I thought, I understand why I can't keep up with his career.

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But having said that, I'm a violinist, I played the piano and I played roughly half of the Chopin etudes,
played probably half of the Beethoven sonatas.
I can play the piano, not like the violin, to a much lower level, but I can play.
Yeah, totally, I understand. But I think coming from soloists, violinists,

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I think it also shows, especially in the higher range that you compose in the piano,
I can really hear the soaring, beautiful violin-like melody that I hear.
For me, music is abstract. When I was young,
it's one of these things that people repeat one after the other and people just don't doubt it.

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So my violin teacher told me, oh, you know, you must listen to some singers
because the human voice is the ultimate or whatever the example.
And I thought it was rubbish then, and I still think the same.
Somehow, all of these things are instruments for a higher purpose.
And the higher purpose is abstract music. That is not nothing to do with a physical world in some way.

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Well, it is, but not in that sense. Both singers or instrumentalists are trying to get to that.
They're not trying to become singers. And the singers are trying to...
And it's interesting that the way that you get these special things with all instruments,
it's quite similar, actually, that you cannot have tension.

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That if you want to play very high sounds on the violin or in singing or on piano,
it's interesting on the piano from, let's say, sort of the C2 octave above middle C,
to the point at which if you hit the keys louder, the sound that comes out is softer, actually.

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Because to get a loud sound, you need to... It's like dropping a stone on a lake,
and when you drop the stone, suddenly the round appears.
And it's the same as with the high note, it presses and the sound draws.
Because I don't know the reason physically, I'm not a scientist.
How if you address a small string at that high, it doesn't work.

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But it's the same in singing, it's the same in flute.
So it's quite similar. So in that sense, I don't think that...
But I was thinking because you said that because of the violin, I'm not sure that it's...
I think that it's the music that influences all the things somehow.
But the piano has got these sounds... There are a few instruments that have got these

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beautiful, pure sounds like cold water in a very hot day.
You know, you've got the piano, you've got the vibraphone, you've got a few of these dreamy...
And I think that there are two reasons why it's so difficult to transcribe pieces for piano,
at least two reasons, to other instruments.

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One of them is that this type of dreamy sounds are very difficult to find a way that is similar.
Unless you go to sort of harmonics in string instruments, but it's a little bit of the easy way
as a composer to transcribe that in harmonics.
And then there is the pedal, of course.
That is something very specific to the piano that you probably have as well

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automatically with instruments like the harp.
On the piano, it's interesting.
When I was in my twenties, I always thought, and it's probably something to do with also the way that I was writing then,
that when I wrote a piece for one instrument, it's just there was no other way to transcribe it to something else.

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But it changed when the first crack in that idea was maybe 20 years ago.
I had a conductor that came to one concert that I had with a full concert of my music,
and he earned a piece for Sepet.
He contacted me after saying, you know, I'd like to commission from you a transcription for orchestra.

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My first reaction was, I'm not doing it. You can give me a million pounds.
I'm just, you know, I was 20 or something. I said, I'm not doing it for no money.
It's not working.
But the man was a bit older. He was, I think, in his 40s, 50s, so he understood the use of the extreme.
And he said, why don't you think about it?

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Because I think that it could work, that piece.
It was a piece called The Shell Adagio.
It became The Shell Adagio.
It was the central movement of a piece that had three movements.
I put the phone down and I thought about it.

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I thought maybe it could work. I could imagine it.
So I gave him a call back and I said, you know, let's do a deal.
We'll agree on a price that you pay me.
I will try it. If I don't like it, I don't give it to you. You don't pay me.
There's no way that if I don't like it, you have it.

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And then it worked. And the piece was nice.
So I thought, oh, that's interesting.
And then after that, consciously, I, when I was commissioned a concerto for saxophone and orchestra,
I said to the commissioner, you know, why don't I do it? Because it's unusual.
Two versions, one for full orchestra and one for string orchestra with exactly the same solo part.

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And it became white.
And I thought, why is he nervous about that?
Because he saw that you had to pay twice for the commission.
So he said, I'm sorry, I can't pay.
That's my artistic problem. I think that it's interesting.
It was a lot of work.
But I thought, so that was something.
And more recently, and that's total extreme,

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and this piece that was commissioned by Carnegie Hall and another foundation,
part of the Lullaby project was the Lullaby.
And when they contacted me, I can't remember, it was maybe 10 years ago,
you know, we really love your music and that's what we would also like,

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but it's important for us that it will be played a lot.
And we can see that your music, a lot of pieces are played hundreds of times.
So it's, we care about that, that it will have a legacy in some way.
And I said to them, you know, I've got an idea if you want the piece to be played a lot as well.

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And it's a really big challenge for me.
I will do two versions.
I will do one version for solo piano.
And to make life very hard for myself,
I will make a second version for string quartet.
And that's, you put more different.
It's just like two worlds.
Same piece. Same number of bars. Same piece.

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And I did that. And it worked very well.
And after that, I had some friends from the,
they said, oh, you know, could you do a version for trio on then?
So string trio.
And now I think I'm on version 13.
It's just a bizarre thing, but it's like, you know, like there are sort of,

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you know, Ravel did this for him.
It was an exercise in orchestration in the Bolero.
But for me, it was almost like an artistic challenge to do this piece in various manners.
And I think it's continued.
And how you transcribe the piano to a different world,

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I think that there is hardly anything that is more difficult because it's so specific.
And it's part of when you ask why I like the piano, I suppose that it's part of it.
That it's got this specificity that it's difficult to transcribe.
Can you maybe describe a little bit more about the specific challenge, the specificity you mentioned?

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I think the specificity is in the sound, the color of the sound.
But I suppose that, you know, when you go to orchestra, whether you're a conductor or you listen to a concert,
it's not by chance that the groups on the page, you've got the woodwind on top of the score,

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then you've got the brass, then you've got the percussion, soloist, and then strings.
All the strings, they sound the same, more or less.
So of course they are cello, doesn't sound like a violin, but it's the same family, same color.
The brass definitely sounds very much the same in some way.
The woodwind, it's not true, they each have their very, very strong individualities.

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The flute doesn't sound like an oboe, doesn't sound like a clarinet or a bassoon.
But they have something in common.
You could almost put one of these groups, piano, and that's it.
One instrument for a group because there's nothing else that sounds like it.
Now, I think that people, even musicians don't always realize that,

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I mean performers rather than composers,
that the hardest thing to compose for is one single instrument.
If you have a choice between composing an opera, an orchestral piece, a ballet,
or let's say a piece for piano, a piece for piano is definitely harder by a long way.

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On top of the tree, the most difficult thing ever is one single instrument that is not a piano.
Like it's a violin or... I mean it doesn't get harder.
You just have to look for solo violin. Mozart didn't do it, and he was a violinist.
And Petterman didn't do it, Brahms didn't do it. It's so hard.

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They did it and it's very impressive because it's so hard, one single instrument.
So piano is still very, very hard because it's one single instrument.
And the reason because of that is because one of the very important tools for a composer is counterpoint.
A counterpoint has many, many melodies going on at the same time.

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And of course on violin you are limited.
Even on piano, you can have maybe four voices at the same time,
but that's about limits really.
And they are not as free as if you had a string quartet.

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Because then each voice can do whatever it wants.
So when we talk about the piano as an orchestra instrument,
I mean an orchestra by itself, it's not really that.
And it's in between. It's a maximum that you get.
Apart from the organ that has got even the feet, so you have more voices.

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But it's almost a maximum that you can get as a single person playing one instrument.
But it's still very, very far away from even a string orchestra where you would have five voices.
When I write for orchestra, there are 16 voices going on and I love melodies.

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And I sometimes have 12 different melodies going on at the same time or more.
There is no way that you can do on the piano whatever you do.
So in my case, when I started to write for piano,

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I wrote many pieces when I was young.
I don't count them because I started to compose when I was about six years old.
At some point you decide what is your opus one.
It's an arbitrary decision.
I suppose that it's when you think, okay, that's a work that I can die now and it can be next to Beethoven, it's okay.

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For me, it was when I was about 19.
I had written maybe hundreds of works before that.
But this first work was a sonata for piano and violin.
And then there were other pieces with piano from the start.
My opus four is called Suite, it's for solo piano.
But in general, in my 20s, I wrote a lot for piano, but not piano solo.

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Piano as an instrument is another one.
So piano and violin, piano and cello, piano.
Because I found that it was easier because I had more melodies.
And it took me some time to find.
I was afraid of the piano as a solo instrument.

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And it changed when I wrote a piece called Remembrance of Childhood.
It's my opus 54.
I suppose that at the same time, my music started to go a certain way in terms of polyrhythms.

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And I found a way to have my own writing for the piano.
But that would have more counterpoint and that would be my own world.
And from there, we'll probably talk about that later, about my etudes that are even one step.

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Right, right, right. Yeah, I was going to ask you that.
So I think the reminiscences of childhood became sort of, I wouldn't say bass,
but sort of the start of your writing for piano solo works, no?
Yes, absolutely.
And it's interesting because the piece was not at the beginning conceived as a reminiscence of childhood.

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It was a commission for a single piece, which is the first one of the Reminiscence of Childhood, called Chilla B.I.
And when I wrote it, and a lot of pianists liked it, they said that it's a four-minute piece.
Why don't you write a couple more or something so that it's easier for us to program it because it's just four minutes.

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And that's how I composed the three pieces of Reminiscence of Childhood.
And I found somehow the first piece was quite easy, I think, to write.
I mean, relatively, you know, when I mean quite easy, I mean that it took me, I don't know, 70 hours or not, 200.
Or at least it felt, which was something good.

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And the two next pieces of Reminiscence of Childhood felt easy to write to.
Wow. So, you know, I want to focus on your Etudes and then the Chiron.
OK, so they're both in many ways share the similarity of series, piano series and shorter pieces.

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However, they serve contrasting purposes in audiences.
One is, of course, with the challenge of technical demands and also interpretation, you kind of have to have the ear for it.
And as a, of course, performer, you have to be the certain level of being a pianist.

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Now, as opposed to that, I wouldn't say Chiron is less in, well, maybe technical demands, but quality wise, I wouldn't say less or more.
So, but let's start with your Etudes.
So mastering a concert etude is often regarded as one of the pinnacles of achievement for pianists.

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And then I'm sure as a composer as well. So you're currently working on a full cycle of 24 etudes?
Yes. So that may come.
And as you know, the number 24 for music is an interesting number because it starts from a purely tonal point of view.

(30:53):
You've got 12 major and 12 minor scales.
So that's why you've got the prelude and fugue of Bach that are 24 and then you double it, you've got 48, but it's basically 24.
And then that's part of the magic of the number 24.
Then there is the second part, which is the Paganin Caprice, a capriccio for violin solo, which influenced, of course, Chopin

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and everybody that came after.
And it's interesting because sometimes I get asked as a question whether a performer influenced my writing or in such a way.
And I think that it cannot really be true for composers.
The reason why Paganini really influenced Chopin on list is not because he was a fabulous violinist, but because he was a fabulous composer.

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Because to write these works, I mean, of course, he was probably one of the most outstanding violinists of ever.
But it's a little bit like, if you think about the 20th century, Rachmaninoff, he was a very great pianist.
Probably Paganini was this type of people. But the reason why the piano writing of Rachmaninoff stays is not because he was a great pianist,

(32:20):
but he was a great composer for piano.
So he found a way to develop the instrument on the same way Paganini found a way to develop the violin.
And then Chopin on list, well, let's do the same on the piano.
And since then, there was this will of developing the instrument in such a way.

(32:41):
In my case, I didn't have a plan. I mean, sometimes in life, you know, the best plans are without a plan.
It's like, you can try to find, you say, oh, I want to get married, I need to find a person, and it doesn't happen.
Or it just happened that you meet the right person.
But in my case, I always loved the 24 Hits of Chopin. I think that they are unrivaled in the sense that they are all beautiful.

(33:10):
On 24 beautiful pieces, one after the other, it's quite something.
I mean, even if sort of in my eyes, let's say Bach is a greater composer than Chopin,
it's amongst the pinnacles of things that you can't get better, like I would put better than at the top as well.
But if you think about the Prelude and Fugue, I think that Chopin wins because out of the 24 Prelude and Fugue, they are not all incredible.

(33:41):
In my eyes, they are not all masterpieces, whether Chopin is there, each of them is quite something.
And that is magical by itself. And so I always loved them.
And as I said, I play the piano as well, so I played also the Debussy etudes, I played the Rachmaninoff, and things like that.

(34:03):
But they don't get to the 24, apart from anything else. 24 is quite a challenge.
But I did not have a plan. And like you said, Renaissance of Childhood was, if we look at numbers, it was my Op. 54.
And the etudes started Op. 66. It's interesting that they somehow started thanks to the Renaissance of Childhood.

(34:32):
I'll tell you the story. I remember that when I was at the Academy, I had a friend that played the horn.
And he told me this story about Mozart on the Horn Concerto, that if the hornist had not abused Mozart, saying I really want you to write and things like that, Mozart couldn't cope anymore with it.
So he wrote the Horn Concerto. So lucky for the horn.

(34:58):
And welcome for the hornist. But in my case, I had this Russian-Belgian pianist that phoned me, or got in touch with me, probably an email, I can't remember.
And said, look, I want to perform the Renaissance of Childhood. I have got a concert at the Salgavaux in Paris. And I want to perform the Renaissance of Childhood.

(35:28):
But it's not going to be a premiere because, I mean, the Renaissance of Childhood, by now I think it's been performed probably by two or three hundred pianists.
Even at the beginning it was already performed. So she said, but you know, for me it's an important concert.
I'd like to commission a work if you got the time from you, so that I have a premiere too.

(35:53):
And her concert was something like four months ahead. So very, very short.
And I said, oh, well, look, I'm never late and I like to take my time. I don't quite see it.
But then I had the idea, I said, let me think, but maybe, I always wanted to try to do an etude, so maybe I could write an etude.

(36:22):
And I said, but give me, let me think about it. So at that point I used to have my office on top of the house. So now it's in the middle.
But I went on and I talked to my wife, you know, it's Kenny, she's playing, she wants to play the Renaissance of Childhood.
She plays very well. And I think maybe I can write an etude, but I'm not sure if I've got the time because it's only, and I said, oh, come on,

(36:55):
put an opera in three weeks, you can't do it. And I said, okay, let's jump in and let's try. Because I was still, after Renaissance of Childhood, I was still very afraid of writing for solo piano.
Even if that worked, I thought, okay, maybe it's a flaw, you know, it just happened, but maybe the next one is going to be failed.

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So I say, okay, and I write an etude, it came so easily. I mean, I think it took me maybe something like 50 hours, which is not very much.
The first etude you wrote?
Yes, to write an etude.
Ostinato etude?
Yes.

(37:52):
And I was very, very pleased. And I said, oh, that's interesting. And then after that, I think that there was an Italian pianist, I think that he heard the etude maybe on YouTube or something like that, but that was just literally months after.
And he said, you know, I loved it, would you write an etude for me? I'd like to commission an etude.

(38:14):
I said, well, let's try it. And I thought, okay, the second etude, the first etude was about for me the ostinato, and I thought the second etude, what I'd like to do is something about, you know, when the left hand goes over the right hand, all this idea, that would be an etude of that.

(38:35):
And that's why I called it Half Moon, because the shape. And that went well too. Oh, too. And it continued like that for a few etudes where I didn't have the plan to do the 24.
But I was very pleased that it was working well. And I think that it's around when I was about six or seven etudes that I started to believe that I could do it. And then it became a plan to do it.

(39:10):
And it's a challenge. It's a very big challenge to do two of each one being very, very special. You know, it's interesting because human beings are not perfect.
Well, that's, but because of that, even the greatest of geniuses like Bach or Mozart or Beethoven, not every single work that they write is great.

(39:43):
Because they are human beings. I mean, what is already incredible that some can be because someone that is not great, because human beings are not great, that can create something that is absolutely great, that's already strange by itself.
But so the challenge of doing all the pieces that would work in that way is a big one. And for myself, I thought maybe if I give myself many years, in between the pieces I write something else, I will always come fresh to it.

(40:17):
And that's why it was a long, you talk about long time project, that was a long term project. I mean, now it's been more than 10 years, maybe 13 years, and I've done 15.
Sometimes it comes a few, one after the other, and then I needed a break. And sometimes I've been a longer break because I've written a lot of things for full orchestra or something, but it has worked well for me.

(40:44):
And in a way, the more advanced you are in the numbers, the more difficult it becomes. Also because each of them has their etudes.
So etudes are not only for the performer, but etudes for the composer. To find new things. That's the purpose of etudes.

(41:10):
I don't know if it's true, but when I was writing Contra Meifit's Meille etude no. 8 or no. 9, I was talking to my friend the pianist Clélia Yéroussou, that commissioned me the piano concerto.
And we were already talking, she was talking of commissioning me the piano concerto. And she said, you know, and I'm not sure if it's true, but she said, you know Chopin wrote his etudes in preparation for his piano concerto.

(41:41):
And oh, I thought, oh, that's really interesting. Actually, in my case, I didn't do it like that, but when I wrote the piano concerto, I used all the tricks that I have found in my etudes. So that's why it's so tremendously difficult.
Because almost it's like in one piece the piano concerto has got a lot of the etudes combined. I mean, the new techniques that I found in the etudes that were not there before me.

(42:11):
There are certain things that don't exist before Chopin or before Liszt or before Rachmaninov. There are certain things that I found that makes the piano different.
And so this is a big chance to find novelty.

(42:52):
Well, the etudes are tremendously difficult.
It means that to perform in concert, many good pianists wouldn't be able to do it. It's technically very, very, like, you know, sort of you can be a good violinist and not being able to play a Paganini Caprice in concert.

(43:30):
It's specific. And my etudes are amongst, they are difficult, really, really difficult. Not on purpose, because it's not, it was not my purpose, but because to create a new world that has got this, it's necessary.
There are just so many things happening in them at the same time that are very difficult.

(43:52):
So I thought I'd like to do something that is the opposite.
So that's the shirim, right?
The shirim was to write a piece that is playable not only by any pianist, but also that would be playable by amateurs. So when I started, my idea was that I was going to do 18 of them, and that I was, that all of them should be playable by a good amateur.

(44:29):
But as I was composing them, and I think that I was around number three or number four, I found that I wanted to write something that was a little bit more complex, that wouldn't be playable by an amateur pianist.
Or in case I've got a young daughter, I've got two daughters, one that is 21 and one that is almost 14. On the 14 year old, well, she's almost 14, is at the moment practicing the Petravena Passionata Sonata, but she's not a pianist and she's not a musician.

(45:09):
She just likes the piano.
So I knew that a few of the, my idea at first was that all the pieces of shirim, she should be able to play it.
Because that should be that type of level. People that like the piano can play the piano well, but are not professional.
But when I was around number four or five, I can't remember exactly, I found that if I continued like that, it might be boring. And so I had a look to understand if it was possible, if somebody had done it before.

(45:41):
And actually, if you look at any work that is about 30 minutes long by any, as far as I know, great composers, you won't find one that has got null, that is entirely playable by an amateur when it's that length.
I think that because it becomes boring if it's that long and there is no, it's not enough contrast. So you will have 30 minutes, maybe you could do it on a piece that was 12, 13 minutes, but not 30.

(46:10):
I thought, okay, so I will allow myself a few of the shirim to be a bit more difficult. But in general, my idea would be to do something that was easier.
But it's not only that, I think that it's also that I really love the Mendelssohn's song without words. That are this type of pieces.

(46:34):
I suppose that in the 19th century, there is also most of the Schumann pieces were like that, made of all sorts of small pieces.
Schumann, you have to play all of them, as opposed to songs without words, for example, or even Edward Grieg's lyric pieces. They are comparable, right?

(46:57):
So I think in my case, I was thinking more about Mendelssohn that you could pick them. That they are conceived in a way that they work well in the right order.
If you play all of them, but you should also be able to pick and choose.

(47:40):
I think that in the 19th century, there was a lot of work that was done in the right order.
I think that in the 19th century, there was a lot of work that was done in the right order.
It's very, very difficult to write good music, whatever it is.

(48:24):
There is no reason that... I mean, it's different to write something simple.
It's not simple to write something simple. If you think about the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata, it's not difficult.
You can give it to pianists that have done a year of piano or something like that. But it's an amazing piece.

(48:55):
I think that it's just a certain type of pieces. In general, they tend to be slow.
Pieces that can be very complex, but not that difficult. But also it's a certain type of pieces.
It's a big challenge. My father, who is an artist, is a great artist, told me that when I was young,

(49:25):
he was saying that at the Beaux-Arts, they were making a mistake because for the entrance exam,
they were doing something that was a bit ridiculous. They were asking young painters to give them 12 studies on, let's say, a lampshade or whatever.

(49:49):
He said that... I remember because I was in my twenties then, he said that there is nothing more difficult to do variation on one topic for a young artist.
Because that's a pinnacle of difficulty for any art. And that's what you can do in a way when you are much older.

(50:11):
Actually, I went for... Usually I don't have very much time for... I mean, especially at the moment it's so busy for holidays.
But this time I went to... I had four days of rest and we went to Florence with my wife.
In Florence, there is this incredible church where all the paintings that he did of Fr. Angelico.

(50:33):
And in each room that he did, because he was working in this church covenant, he did paintings of the crucifixion, something like 60 versions of it.
But to do that, you need a certain age, a big imagination, on a big palette.

(50:54):
These are things that I didn't do when I was younger, but like Chirime or like the Etudes, taking something, making 12 or 18 versions of the same thing, basically two minute pieces, that is very, very tough.
I suppose that it's also, apart from that, it has got something about the short story compared to the novel.

(51:21):
It's a bit like people like Stephane Svage or Tuguenyeth, or were masters, or Maupassant of the short story.
And you kind of people that can be masters of both.
And I think that in my case I feel very good in big, big forms, but I like the small forms too.

(51:44):
I suppose that it's true, even though it goes when I was making comparisons with the type of psychology of with Mozart, that it's the same for him.
He can do very, very, very large operas or long symphonies, small pieces that are equally beautiful.
I think that simplicity are things that are not difficult to do, are difficult for the composer, because it's like if you told the painter,

(52:11):
look, you can do a painting, but you're allowed only four colors.
Of course it's difficult, but it's the same way that I was saying at the beginning, that it's easier to write a piece for a full orchestra than for three instruments.
The more you restrain what you are allowed to do, and in some way, especially when you are young, it's helpful to give yourself some rules,

(52:37):
because it means that you are not in the void, but it has both aspects.
It's also difficult to keep within the problematic of the piece.
I think that also it's like food, that if you think about culture where you eat a lot of small foods like Lebanese or Indian, it's a different challenge than, let's say, a French cuisine,

(53:11):
where you have sort of a big starter, a main, and then a dessert, and that's it. It's different.
The difficulty of when you do a lot of small dishes is to keep the interest, and at the same time, probably create a feel of the whole.

(53:51):
I really love the series of Sherem. So Sherem is Hebrew, right?

(54:15):
Yes.
I love the way you put the word in songs. Is there any inspiration coming from your early childhood or the culture?
No, it's for me. My wife is always joking to me about that, because I'm a purist, or at least I appear to be, or I think of myself as a purist.

(54:37):
I always say that I don't believe in ideology, so I think that music is pure and it's just about music, so I don't care about the title.
Sometimes when I give an interview, I can't even remember the titles of my pieces. I remember all the notes, I could write them down, but sometimes I can't remember the title.
It tends to be that pieces need a title, especially the pieces in one movement, because you write a piece in several movements, you call it sonata, symphony, whatever you want, and then you call it symphony number one, symphony number two, you write a piece that is one movement to give it a title.

(55:19):
I wrote a lot of pieces that are one movement, and almost every single time I wrote the piece first, and then I tried to find a title that would not put the performer in the wrong idea.
I hate doing that because I'm not a writer, it's not my field.
But in Shirin, I wrote the pieces first, some of them I gave the titles before I started, because I knew what I wanted from the piece in the context of the others, and most of the time it was after I wrote the piece.

(56:08):
I tried to define the atmosphere, and it's a weird mishmash of languages, because when I had to give the titles, I had to find 18 titles, in general in my music if you look from all the opuses from opus one to now, all the indications, I don't write them in Italian, I write them in English.

(56:34):
Because I think the point of musicians to be understood on these days, English is a language that most people, so why would I write them in French or in German, but when it came to give poetic titles to Shirin, they came to me more easily in French, because I grew up in France.
So I wrote all the titles in French, then I thought about giving a general title to the thing, but I thought I cannot call them, because in a way the title of Song Without Words was already taken.

(57:10):
I thought if I give the same title, I'm not someone, for me novelty, I don't like academism, and so the idea of writing something that would be like Mendelssohn and Being A Spy by Mendelssohn, but in such a way, is against my belief in what is art.

(57:31):
So I thought if I give it the title of Song Without Words, people are going to think that I'm looking backwards, which is not what I'm doing. I couldn't call it that, and I thought if I call it in French a poem, then you immediately think about Chauson poem.
All the things, associations, like these days I did call some of my pieces Nocturne, knowing full well that people were going to think about Chopin, because I thought it doesn't matter in this case.

(58:05):
There was one actually, only one, but in general I think that it's dangerous, so I thought Chirime is basically Hebrew exactly what Song Without Words is, because it's like a lot of the, I don't speak Chinese, so I've not checked,

(58:26):
but some of the very ancient languages, they have less vocabulary, I've got often words that mean several things compared to more recent languages. So in Hebrew, Chirime, you use the word both for poems and songs, it's the same word.
And I thought that worked for me, and I also like the sound of it. It sounds nice. When you write it down in the Latin alphabet, I think it looks nice too.

(59:01):
I don't know. But that's how I can do it. So the title is in Hebrew, and all the insides are in French.
Wow, I absolutely love all of them. I've been listening to them. So for our wonderful listeners, be sure to visit nimrod-bornstein.com to explore these incredible piano works and purchase scores. We can also purchase scores from the website, right?

(59:32):
Well, the scores are on my website, there are links to the publisher. You can also, on my website, I try to do, if you go to the page with the works, you can click on, listen to a YouTube version, or you can go on, so you can listen to the piece straight away, and you can also go to the publisher to buy the piece. So I try to make it easy.

(59:54):
It's very easy. Just one click and it directs you to wherever you want to go. And all the recordings, most of the recordings are available either on YouTube or any other major music streaming services.
And then Spotify, I think that some of the more recent pieces are more available on things like Spotify. Sometimes pieces like Reminiscence of Childhood, you can Google it and then you'll find maybe at least 20 versions of different people having played it different places.

(01:00:27):
Reminiscence of Childhood is a more recent piece. So I think at the moment you can only find some on YouTube, some of the pieces, but all the recordings are on Spotify, on Apple Music, all the streaming services, because it was recorded with my piano concerto. It's in the same CD.
Because I thought it was an interesting combination. On the CD there is a piece for piano quintet, Light and Darkness, and then there's the concerto. So three ways that I like to use piano.

(01:01:02):
Piano has been a companion for a long time. I'm so glad to hear that. Now, so just briefly, I want to talk about the piano concerto because that's a massive, really large piano work, one of the large piano works that you've written and I absolutely love.
And the second movement is extremely emotional. So can you introduce us to all these three movements, moderato, adagio and allegro?

(01:01:32):
Yes. So first I think that maybe I'll say something about where it fits. I decided about 10 years ago, a bit more now, to write concertos for each instrument, not all of the instruments.
At the beginning I thought I would write concertos for the three main instruments, piano, violin and cello. And because I think the concerto form is a very great form.

(01:02:04):
And when I was very young, I played, as a violinist I played all the concertos, and now I still know by memory you could give me a violin and I could probably play 20 or 25 of them by memory, completely, from beginning to the end.
And I know the piano concerto very well. And I think that it's a pity that in the past 50 years, well, in my eyes, not been written anything that is comparable to the past.

(01:02:29):
So if I think about Shostakovich, Prokofiev, the amazing concertos, on half-man enough of course.
After that, I think partly because if you think about Messiaen, who was a great composer for piano, but concerto was not his...
To talk about psychology, he was not someone that the concerto was one person against everybody, that's a sort of Beethovenian feel. I like that, it was not Messiaen.

(01:03:00):
So we didn't get any really important contribution. And I wanted to do that, it was one of my projects to write concertos.
But it did not happen in the order that I thought it would. It started with a cello concerto, but after that some people loved it, so they commissioned me concertos for saxophone, for bassoon, then I had the violin concerto.

(01:03:27):
But in a way, it's really lucky because like that it matured the way that I was writing concertos and also in the other instruments I didn't quite need that, but for the piano, the fact that I started to write the etudes.
Like I said, when I arrived to the piano concerto, I was ready, it was mature, and so I decided that it's been sort of quite something that I've done a few times now already.

(01:04:02):
I think that one of the mistakes of, or mistakes, it's difficult to say mistakes or not mistakes, but of a certain type of contemporary music, let's say 50 years ago, that is very old fashioned, was to think that to write something new, it was enough to, let's say you wrote a new piece, you were a contemporary composer,

(01:04:26):
if you wrote a piece for 12 trombones, one clarinet, and that made you original. And I never believed in that, I thought it was just totally stupid and too simple actually, that the real novelty should come from what a composer plays with, which are the notes and the rhythm.

(01:04:48):
These are, and you need to be strong enough that that would be enough for you. And so it was a rational way of doing it, I always believed in that.
And in a different way, I did the same with, in a bigger form for the orchestra. So a few years ago when I had Askenazi, I was writing a piece for him as a conductor.

(01:05:14):
Askenazi as in the Askenazi, right? You're talking about Vladimir Askenazi. I'm just saying clarifying for my audience. It's a big, big name drop here.
So I was writing for him an overture, and we were talking, it was for the Philharmonia Orchestra, and he had a concert in mind, and I said to him, so what are you performing on that day? And he said that I'm performing Tchaikovsky's Thieves, and I confirmed with something else.

(01:05:44):
And I said, you know what I like to do? I mean, I'm going to write a piece that's got the same orchestra as Tchaikovsky's Thieves, so that people can see that it's not about the orchestra, it's about what you write.
The orchestra will sound totally different with what I'm writing. And at the end of the day, because it was two years in advance, when we got closer to the time, he got fed up with Tchaikovsky's Thieves, he said I conducted it so many times, let's change it.

(01:06:09):
So it was, it was playing well done first. But never mind. So to come back to the piano concerto, so my idea was, it was going to be a concerto that was going to sound very, very big, but the orchestra is the one from Beethoven's Emperor, or you could, it's the same orchestra as Schumann also. Schumann and Beethoven's Emperor concerto have got the same orchestration.

(01:06:33):
So it's not a huge orchestra. And if you listen to my recording, you see that it feels like it's a malaria orchestra, but it's not.
The power comes from something else, but the number of things that are happening at the same time.
So, and I thought, a few years ago I was giving lectures, because I like to give lectures, lecture recitals about the concerto form. And how you start, you basically have different variants of how you start.

(01:07:03):
Let's say the old way, sort of a long introduction, and then the stories come. Or you can have sort of more, more modern, I mean, what came after, like straight away, like Schumann or Mendelssohn, or Mendelssohn's Vibing Concerto, Schumann's Piano Concerto, it's straight away, or Beethoven's Emperor again.
Or you can have in between Tchaikovsky, but there are a few different ways that you can do it. And then you can start with both together, or you can, and I thought, in general, if it's not the piano, and it's the first movement that is big,

(01:07:46):
you cannot start with a violin concerto, a first movement that is flamboyant, with a violin solo. It will feel like nothing. I mean, you can start with a violin solo like in Prokofiev No. 2, but it doesn't start like that. It starts gradually.
With the piano, big and smooth, you can start with the piano. So I decided to give myself the idea, it's going to start with a beginning, you know, like in a way, but that's not piano solo.

(01:08:21):
Or when you think of Tchaikovsky's first big beginning, or Rachmaninoff, I wanted this type of beginning, with a piano, big, it feels like a... So that's the first movement. After that, there are lots of different things in it, it's got this peculiar beginning that brings the orchestra.

(01:08:43):
That was the idea of the first movement. Of course, it's not... No piece of art can be according to the plan. It's like some writers say that when they write novels, their characters decide to do what they want to do.
It's a little bit the same. I'm trying to find the perfection, and when it goes as it goes, it's like a story, and I find where it needs to go. So I've got an idea before I start, but after that, it goes where it needs to go.

(01:09:16):
The second movement, I wanted to do something that I tried to do in my violin concerto, but in the violin concerto when I was... The violin concerto is in four movements, not three. But before I was writing the third movement, I said to my wife, now I'm going to write something that is like this Mozart piano concerto, slow, very slow and serene, this sort of thing that is out of this world.

(01:09:44):
And then I write this movement that is as dark as... It's very slow. It's so dark, it's just like you've lost all your family, you're dying. It's just the end of the world. It works as well, because it was what needed to be there. I felt it needed to be slow, but that's what it was.
But I wrote the piano concerto a few months later, and I said, yeah, this time I'm going to dance the magical second movement Mozart type. And that was my goal for this second movement, this dreamy movement, and this time I got it.

(01:10:18):
It's a dreamy movement, kind of like it, because as I said, contrast is important. So even if the main atmosphere of the movement is that of peace and sort of twinkly things, but of course it's got very, very dark moments.
It's like, you know, at the moment I've got a commission for guitar solo for in two years time, and I was asking the guitarist that he said, oh, you write whatever you want. I said that, you know, it's a seven minute piece.

(01:10:53):
I've got basically two options. I know it's going to be a piece that is in general fast. It's a fast piece, but there will be beats that are slow. I know it's going to be a slow piece, but there will be beats that are fast.
You cannot write something that is that long that is in one color. So it's a little bit the same in a concerto. Inside the second movement there are various things, but the second movement has a feel of, for me, what I think that is proper to the piano as well is this feel of clear water.

(01:11:30):
If it's really hot on a hot day and you're outside and you walk and it's very, very hot, I think 35 degrees Celsius, you know, and then you get into the air conditioning and you have a glass of cool water.
That's the high sound of the piano, this pedal, dreamy. It's such a well-being. That's my second movement. And the last movement is very fiery and more so than the first one, but I've got a lot of lyrical passages.

(01:12:07):
What is in common with all the movements is my writing of polyrhythms in the piano. And it's there inside the piano part, apart from being with the orchestra.
Probably, I would say it's one of the, I think that it's the hardest piece I've written in terms of conducting. I know because I conducted it. It doesn't feel like that when you listen to it.

(01:12:37):
I like to play with rhythm. If someone that is listening to your program is not a musician, I can simplify it. Let's say that you've got a pattern that has got seven notes.
That's your melodic pattern, seven different notes, but you put it above something, a rhythm that plays five notes per beat. So where you feel is the beat is every repetition of the seven notes, but that's not a real beat.

(01:13:12):
If you do that in various ways, different instruments at the same time, the feel of where is the beat and where it is, is totally different. As a conductor, you really want to be on the right beat.
And it's true for the first movement and the last movement, they are tricky for that. But I think that it's part of the novelty. I suppose that all that, I don't know what we started with.

(01:13:48):
I think that all this explanation of what you want to do, they don't have any importance if the person that listens to them cannot feel it. It's just words. Of course it's my kitchen, but it's like to go to a restaurant.
If the cook brings you something and you start to eat it and say, oh my god, it's awful, he can touch you, but no, it's really interesting because I tried to do that, who cares? It didn't work.

(01:14:16):
You need to understand all that. If you want to be a cook, you need to understand what you're doing. But in a way, from my point of view, the performance also needs to understand what I'm trying to do. But the audience needs to just feel it.
Because it's not their job. The job is to, it's like you listen to a story. You feel the story.

(01:14:42):
Wow. So you're quite, I compare you with being an architect. Build something that people can live inside, but also enjoy the aesthetics.
But to be who you are, I think I want to talk about two big influences in your life. One is your father, who is Alec Warnstein. I've seen his works online. Wow. What a talent. What a gift. Right? He's an oil painter?

(01:15:22):
He was a child prodigy. I mean, and then as you are too. So I'm curious. And also, I want to later talk about, of course, Maestro Brazimi Arshkenazi. We mentioned, so we can't ignore that. But first of all, I'm curious to know what sort of conversation you had as a young person, as a child, you were with your father.

(01:15:49):
About everything. My parents, both my dad and my mom, always treated me as an equal, as an adult. In terms of intellectual, not in terms of, I was a child, I was allowed to be a child.
My parents were very protective in the sense that I think the first time that I really left the house and went alone was when I was 17. I left for London. I was totally alone. But I think because I received all the love when I was young, so I was perfectly okay.

(01:16:23):
But I mean, you know, they never believed in... they were very intellectual. My mom passed away, that's why I put it in the past. But on the discussion, sort of, they didn't believe that they would say it's like that because it's like that.
So if they told me something, they had to prove it to me and to explain it. So things had to be discussed and explained. And you couldn't disagree. It's not... they didn't say, no, it's right because we are older, we know. That didn't exist.

(01:16:56):
Even if it's... in most cases it was true. But it was not the reason that was given. In terms of art, I think that if you talk to my father, he would probably have...
When we talked together, he was not exactly aware of what I picked up. You know, like when you have children, you say a lot of things and some things resonate with them, some things less and they don't have their own personalities.

(01:17:27):
For me, I think that it's like any education. It's... what you say is almost less important than what you do or who you are. My dad, for me, is a big hero and he's a very, very moral person in life.
Which that is a plus, but not necessarily as a great artist, but in art. And that I admire enormously. And this is a part that he probably doesn't agree because he's not like me.

(01:17:59):
For him, he thought that you should dissociate the two things and that it's otherwise a little bit like... it's too simplistic to think that the human being and what you create is the same thing.
I think that it has some similarities and I learned to... even when I was... when I started to write music when I was six years old, my dad told me, you know, the most important thing of all is... one of the most important things is that it's new.

(01:18:30):
Nobody has done it before. And that's... because some people say, oh, it's... sometimes they say, oh, someone writes music and it sounds like Vivaldi, but it's good, it's good.
I don't agree with that. If you write now and you write and it sounds like Vivaldi, it's not music, it's not creation. It's the opposite of creation. Almost. Because the essence of creation is that you try to do something that's new.

(01:18:57):
If you write like Vivaldi, but because you never heard Vivaldi and that's what came to you because you lived in a grot for... who knows? Okay.
When I was eight years old, I started to write with twelve note music and I thought that I discovered it. So I remember I was very excited because I thought about I'm going to use twelve tones and I had never heard about Schoenberg.

(01:19:30):
By chance, I don't know, I think that there are certain things that lead you to certain ways you write. But my music didn't sound like Schoenberg. Even the twelve tone music. It was very much my own.
But that is important because I think this lesson that art has to be new, and most important of all, it's not that it's new so that everybody agrees. Because these days, you know, when people talk about avant-garde, they talk about avant-garde and they all do the same.

(01:20:05):
And they say that's new. That's not new. If everybody is doing the same, that cannot be new. I mean, that's obvious in some way. But it's not. And that's what's really different.
That's not enough because it has to be interesting, of course, and beautiful. But what type of beauty you try to create differs according to the artist. Maybe because of who I am, I am someone that is striving for the absolute.

(01:20:39):
I believe in absolute beauty. I believe my dad says that he's not like that exactly. I'm not sure. But at least it's how he feels about it.
And that he likes, he thinks that it's interesting, some perfections as something that is a perfection by itself.

(01:21:09):
I think that it's, you know, to give an example, when people talk about writing great melodies or something like that, people, you write great melodies but you can write them like Rossini or Beethoven. Beethoven writes great melodies.
Very great melodies. I don't think that great music without great melodies. But it's not always what you think. And for me, yes, this idea that you shouldn't follow everybody and that you and that academism was bad.

(01:21:47):
But that's the negative things. There's also the positive things. But, you know, discussion, continuing discussion, but it was not only about music. It was about, I tried to understand what he was doing, his own art, and then transposed it to my own.
And it was a dialogue, so that he will tell you, he started a series, he's a very virtuosic artist, and he started a series of paintings on clothes that are with, and he called them caprices.

(01:22:27):
They are very virtuosic. He says that he was inspired when I was practicing the Paganini caprices.
So the influence went, by that time I was 14 years old. So there was, it was an intellectual family where we took politics with my mom that was a teacher at university.

(01:22:48):
And politics like you talk about history, not in terms of I believe in that, but discussing ideas. So that was interesting. I think that in my case, it was very, if you compare a composer to, let's say, an artist or a writer, they've got a lot in common, and they deal with the same things.

(01:23:11):
But a composer on a performer, that's very far away. It's a totally different thing. An artist will understand a lot more what I'm doing than a musician normally.
Because it's creating for nothing, it's a different experience. So in that sense, that helped me a lot. Even if I think that in some way it's not direct, because music and paintings are two different things, and so the practical aspect of it is really, really different.

(01:23:45):
Even on certain things, I think that when I tried to listen to my dad and try his best, I went into sort of a dead end because in music it didn't work, or it sort of distracted me because I couldn't quite hear them.
So it was very, very fruitful. And I suppose that if I had to put two influences, the biggest in my life would be my dad and then the great composers. So Bach, if I go in order probably from Bach and then Mozart, Beethoven, the big ones I think.

(01:24:24):
And then probably in a different way, people, because of the sounds, Debussy, and each of the big ones, because the secrets are in their music.
Yeah. And can we talk Mr Askenazi?
Yes!

(01:24:45):
So he is known as a pianist to begin with, but he is now a well-known conductor and he premiered your two orchestral works, no? As a conductor.
Yes, I think three.
Three? Oh my goodness. The one is the big band and the other one is, if you will, it is no dream.

(01:25:06):
I have a writing concerto.
Oh, and did he also produce the album under, it's called a Chandos?
Yes, Chandos is a label, yes.
Okay, okay, that is a label, and so he performed your pieces, no?
That was right.
That's a big monumental achievement, I mean one of the many achievements you've made, but this is a big one, no?

(01:25:37):
Yes, I think that for me there are two different things that are very different as an artist.
There is what you are really looking for that has got nothing to do with practical way, it has got nothing to do with fame, it has good.
The real achievement is what you write, and that's it.

(01:26:00):
That's what will be there in 200 years or something like that, and it doesn't matter.
It's like, you know, whether you are famous or not famous doesn't change anything.
Mozart, you don't know where he is buried, Vivaldi is the same, and you are…
I mean fame is fickle and it's not the point.
I think it's not something that I'm really interested in.

(01:26:29):
But on the other hand I think that it's because if you write music it means that you really love it above anything else, and then it's like a love in life.
Let's say that if you love, in my case if I love my wife, of course I want other people to love my wife as well, because I want people to see that she's wonderful.

(01:26:50):
So it's the same about my works. If you really love what you wrote, you want to share it, but it's not something about ego.
It's not the ego. And I think that in some way there are two aspects with people like Ashkenazi.
There is the aspect of the career, that is a big one, but there are other aspects.

(01:27:11):
For me, I listened to his recordings as a pianist all the way since I was a young boy.
I knew all his… one of the reasons why I really love that much is the Chopin etudes are through his recordings.
I was listening a lot to his recordings of the Chopin etudes.
Then after that I listened to Courtauld, to all sorts of different people.

(01:27:33):
It started with Ashkenazi and Beethoven sonatas. When I was young I used to… because it's not like now that you've got YouTube, you can compare easily.
We were not rich, my dad was an artist, so we couldn't afford to buy lots of different recordings.
So I used to, when it was played on the radio, you had this tape and you could record the radio and I used to have six, seven different performances of the same works

(01:27:57):
and listen to them and try to understand what they did different. So it was true for all of that and for the Beethoven sonatas.
There are many, many different versions of them, Ashkenazi was one of them.
Even the older one of Schnabel, of Bachhaus, all these people, Rubinstein, Orbit, some of them.

(01:28:22):
But you know, Ashkenazi, when I was… I think not, I got in touch with him when I was 30 years old, around 30 something.
And by then he was like a… well he was a legend to me, someone that I had lived with the way that he did music for a long time and that I had great respect.

(01:28:47):
I loved the way that he played. But it's not because of that that I contacted him.
I heard an interview, he was talking, someone asked him about his relationship with Frostakovich.
And he replied about what he thought it was to be a composer or something like that.

(01:29:08):
And I don't know, I had the feeling I thought if I managed to get in touch with him I'm sure that he will love my music.
I had no doubt, I was not sure how I would get in touch with him because that's difficult.
Because the more people, the more well known are people, the less time they have, the more difficult they have to…
They have no choice, so it's difficult. So I wrote to his agent, Jasper Parald, thinking, oh my god, it's just…

(01:29:37):
I had some career, I was 30, I was not 20. But I said okay.
And the next day I received a reply saying he's listened to some of your music, he's very, very busy but he'd like to meet you.
And I met him something like two weeks or three weeks later when he was conducting a concert in London, so we met him.

(01:30:04):
And it started from there. It's great respect and it's interesting.
I wouldn't say that any of this influenced my music because music cannot be influenced by…
I see that I can be influenced by other composers but not by performers in that sense.

(01:30:28):
But on the other hand, when you've got someone that is such a great performer, you realise what…
I always thought so but it makes you… I think what makes great performers…
It's nothing technical, even if technique is part of the thing, but it's the capacity of when you play the music or you conduct the music,

(01:31:00):
to be in the music, not to perform it, be the music. Like if you are an actor, you perform your Hamlet, you are Hamlet.
I find that it's quite rare. I always felt… I think that composers normally, if they feel comfortable on stage, that's how they perform,

(01:31:23):
because otherwise you wouldn't be able to be a composer. Music means something for you that is very, very strong and every note means something.
But this is the secret of music and it's quite rare actually when you can like the style or dislike the style,
you can have people that you think, oh it's vulgar or something like that.

(01:31:45):
But if they are great soloists, when they play, they really play. They mean it. They mean every note.
On Ashkenazi, there was that, of course, but there was also something of… because we worked together,
I remember the first time, the first he performed one of my pieces as a conductor, he said,

(01:32:08):
okay, let me work on it for a couple of months and then we meet and we can have a look together.
Two months later, I go and meet him and he used to give, I don't know, maybe 200 concerts a year or something crazy, a crazy time table.

(01:32:30):
We met and he opened the score on every single page. There were so many annotations on so many chords.
First I was pleased because I do the same. I colour my scores when I conduct. I do scores.
So I was quite happy to see that I was not alone. But I looked at the amount of work.

(01:32:55):
I mean just to colour the same stuff, it probably would have taken 30 or 40 hours.
There are just so many people that are nowhere as busy as him, that are smaller carriers or something like that,
that conduct my works and will have spent insufficient time.

(01:33:21):
Because I think that there is no shortcut if you want to conduct a piece that is 30 minutes long.
If you are not going to spend 50 or 60 hours, wherever you are, it's not going to be good.
Even if you are malor, it's just because if someone, sometimes you could say that there is almost a relationship

(01:33:49):
between how long it's taken to compose it and how long it takes to learn it.
It's not equally, but if you spend 500 hours writing the work, there is no way that someone can learn it in 10.
Just absolutely none. Impossible.
I mean in a month and a bit now I'm conducting a new piece of mine that I'm writing for the English Chamber Orchestra.

(01:34:14):
We are doing the premiere in six weeks or something like that. It's a song cycle on Shakespeare's sonnets.
It's about 20 minutes long, five sonnets.
And I think that I've spent already learning it for the conducting part, at least 50 hours.
Starting from a point where I know all by memory before I even start because I wrote the work and I know what I need to do.

(01:34:40):
So that's quite a good point to start, but still to...
I suppose that in life anything you do, if you want to do it well, it needs to feel like it's a matter of life and death.
And I think that that is... In research, Kenazi, he had that.
When he was on stage, when he was rehearsing, it mattered.

(01:35:05):
And he was not... I mean when we started to work together, he was not that old.
He was probably 60 something. So that's not old for this day.
Towards the end, when he was 75 or 76 or more, I mean that's not that young anymore.
I suppose that it was impressive and there were...

(01:35:29):
And it's also... I think that it's interesting that you, as a composer, when you write works,
there are two things that are absolutely precise and that you can write, are the notes and the rhythm.
And that is precise. The dynamics are not precise.
First, because you can probably do a range of thousands of dynamics, but you write only six or seven.

(01:35:58):
From pianissimo to fortissimo, it's not enough.
On top of that, also because there are more... In many places in music, there is more than one option.
So if you've got an option where there is a contrast, it would work equally well by being loud and soft,

(01:36:22):
but also soft and loud, as a composer you cannot write anything at all.
So those are places in music where you see nothing written as a place that needs a dynamic,
because the only thing that could be wrong is not to do the contrast. That would be wrong.
So this type of thing, you try to, with experience, to learn how you write dynamics.

(01:36:46):
Over time, you can see in Brahms or in Beethoven that the way that they put the dynamics,
the way they put the age and the experience, changes.
I have not escaped that. I write dynamics a little bit differently than I used to do, I think, over time.
Whether you get better at it or different, it's difficult to say, but you change.

(01:37:13):
And working with great musicians is interesting because sometimes they didn't get it because they should have,
because everybody is human, and sometimes they didn't get it because maybe you were not...
Maybe you needed more... Because for you, as a composer, music is very obvious.

(01:37:37):
It's what you do, but you don't write music for other composers to perform you, even if it happens.
You write it for great performers to perform you. So you need to also understand how...
From the other point of view, it goes both ways.
The performer needs to understand what's the problematic of notation for the composer,

(01:38:02):
but the composer also needs to understand how to best convey...
It doesn't change the word, because in Bach there is nothing written.
That's partly because in the music of Bach it's so much about contrast.
In many times it doesn't matter which way, so of course you can't write anything.

(01:38:25):
That's the main reason why there is nothing written.
Better than it's a little bit more... Sometimes there is only one way, and that's why you can write dynamics.
Sometimes you can't. I would say that in my case it's medium, it's in between.
I think in general the atmosphere is one, but not always.

(01:38:48):
I learned a lot with Abstinazzi, for example, when we started working together, maybe 20 years ago.
One of the pieces he conducted was the piece If You Will It.
When we did the rehearsal I told him louder, and he said that you wrote 40.

(01:39:15):
For me it was obvious that all dynamics are relative.
I thought the softer dynamic in the piece is piano, the louder is forte, piano should be the softest, and forte the loudest.
But he thought in a different way, he thought that there are fortissimo, so forte is less than fortissimo, even if there are no fortissimo in the piece.

(01:39:42):
I thought, okay, it's a point of view, it's just notation.
So I understood that maybe I needed to write it a bit of a different way.
He also suggested sometime that it would be useful to put a word about the type of emotion.

(01:40:10):
Not only the dynamics, if you got something that comes from a really big fortissimo, and then there is piano,
the piano would be a sort of relief from the forte.
But is it peaceful, or is it mysterious?

(01:40:31):
So if it could be either, and I'm happy with either because myself if I was conducting it sometimes it would be that, sometimes it would be that, then not write anything.
But if, for me it's quite obvious that it's mysterious, then maybe write it.
One option, it's a specific color, even if, because when you write a music you spend so long on it, that of course it's obvious for yourself.

(01:41:02):
And the performer will, first it's not you, and each person is different, but also will not have that amount of time.
So I think that I learned things about, as a conductor, I learned how he was dealing with rehearsal time, which was interesting, I liked that.

(01:41:29):
And also that I found sort of, in that he was very very similar to my dad.
I think he's a very nice man, and he hated people that were not modest, and that were other people.
He would treat the porter or a very rich person exactly the same, and I think it's important for me too.

(01:41:55):
And it doesn't mean that it's, I think that in a way it's nice to be nice, but it's also not that the person is not confident.
But he's so confident that he doesn't need to pretend that he's happy with who he is, and he was really, he was very nice.
It's just with people, and it was, I don't know, it's just, you know, when you are, you try to be like that yourself,

(01:42:24):
and not many people are in a business that is so hard to achieve, and you see someone else that, and people tell you, you are too nice, you are too nice, you are too nice,
and then you see someone else that is nice to you, and you think, oh, he's nice.
That was, you know, you want me to, I think that it's, that was, because my dad is my dad.

(01:42:47):
So that's something that somebody else that would give well, and with kindness, and with, it was, and he shared also some other things, like I'm never late for anything.
And so I'm never late for my commissions, so I take enough time.
Also, because I want the things to be good, I tend to arrive early for rehearsal, something like that.

(01:43:17):
When we did a concert in Leicester, he was conducting the Philharmonia, one of my pieces, and I left early, and I said to my wife,
she said, no, I'm not arriving two hours before, or something like that, it's you, crazy nurse, just, I'll come with your dad on Philharmonic letter.
I arrived two hours early, but actually he was already there, because he was like, he was there, so we shared a sandwich, because he was there three hours before.

(01:43:48):
Oh my God.
So he said, do you want, I've got the sandwich, do you want to share the sandwich?
Really? That is...
As I said to my wife, you see, I'm not totally mad.
Wow.
I think it's the same thing if you want to do well, and you want to give yourself the chances to do well, you don't do it at the last minute.

(01:44:14):
I think it's a psychological thing, some people that are great are last minute people, so I mean, you can't categorize, but in this case he was very much like me.
And he traveled, what I liked as well is that he traveled with his wife most of the time, they had a nice relationship, which that's something that I learned from my dad as well.

(01:44:39):
You know, it's so easy in life to find excuses.
So you are a bad person because art is difficult, so you betray your wife and things like that, but you are an artist.
All sorts of excuses that have got nothing to do with it.
I mean, what has got to do with it?

(01:45:00):
You can be a really great composer or a terrible human being like Wagner, or you can be a good human being like Mozart or Schumann.
It's got nothing to do with your art.
So yeah, I think that that's something that I like to see.

(01:45:23):
And it was over many years with R.S.K. and A.Z.I.
So I can't remember all the examples, but it's also, yeah, I think that it was also,
for example, when we recorded the CD and he was conducting my violin concerto,

(01:45:46):
and I had a violinist friend of mine that played my music very, very well, and she was not very well known.
But I was convinced that she would play it amazingly well because she's a fantastic violinist.

(01:46:07):
And I thought, I'm going to ask Ashkenazi if he's okay with it because it's his CD, his idea, you know.
So I went and I started by trying all sorts of, you know, I don't know, but maybe, and I said,
so he said, come on with it, what do you want to say?

(01:46:29):
And I said, well, there's this violinist, she's played my music, she's commissioned some pieces,
she's a very, very fantastic violinist, but hasn't got the career that she deserves.
But I would be very happy if she played my concerto on the CD.

(01:46:52):
And he said, well, you're the composer, you think she's good?
That's it.
So that, yes, that I think paints the person well.
Quite a good example.
But funny enough, you know, for me there are two Ashkenazis.

(01:47:18):
Ashkenazi of all the CDs that I released when I was young.
And it's one person, and there's another one that I know.
I just don't manage to.
It's like that when you know people, there's a real human being.
And the construction, the legend that you had when you, you had two different things.

(01:47:45):
But, you know, this is exactly what I'm trying to do.
Like, you know, you as a composer and performer, what I see from all these beautiful photos
and the websites and everything, and then Spotify, and then now you as a human,
and then telling me about all these beautiful stories and backstories.
So it's really fascinating.

(01:48:32):
So now let's go back to you.
What do you hope your audiences and the performers who would perform your piece take away from playing your pieces?
And also, what do you hope to leave a legacy as a composer?
I know you're very young.

(01:48:55):
But, you know, it's nice to think about these things.
Yes, I always think that it's true that when I started to write music when I was six,
my goal was to be as good as Beethoven or Bach, my heroes.
And I think that it's a different, I always thought that I don't write music because I like it,

(01:49:20):
but because something else.
But so your question about legacy is something that I always thought about even when I was six.
I think that, you know, my dad has told me that a lot of people that are amateurs,
in his case in painting, say, oh, I like painting.

(01:49:42):
But real artists don't like it in that way.
It's not a hobby.
You must love it. Love and liking are two different things.
Because in love you can have a lot of misery.
Oh, you love something. So there's that.
So in the legacy, I think that until I was, for me, there was a point in my music where until then,

(01:50:12):
I always thought, because it's got nothing to do with what other people think.
It's what you think. And it's when I composed the piece, Magic Mountain, which is my Op. 30,
I thought I can die now.
Because that piece is great. And even if I die, there's one piece that is...
And after that, it never felt the same.

(01:50:36):
And then I had, but ten years ago, I had lunch with a pianist that was playing my works.
And she said, you know, I think that you are in the golden age.
There was Schumann, a time when all the pieces that he wrote were great.
And you are lacking your time.
So it felt like that. You can't write one piece after the other.

(01:51:01):
I don't know.
So I think that for me, it's more now I'm not that young.
I've gone over Op. 100.
So I don't have this thing about...
I think the legacy, even if I died now, is there, because it's a lot of work.

(01:51:24):
But I have my own... You know, it's like sportsmen.
In that sense, it's a human thing. You want what you don't have.
So, you know, like a tennis player that is born sort of...
Like Djokovic, that he had won all the Grand Slam, but he never won the Olympics.
So he always wanted the Olympics, because even if he was the greatest player of all time, he didn't get it.

(01:51:47):
So for me, it's... And also I feel naked, because I think that's something that will suit me very well.
I want to do a few operas, which I have not done.
And probably a few more pieces for orchestra.
So it's a practical sort of certain thing that I feel that are immediate points of call.

(01:52:11):
But if you ask for what I want people to get from my music, I would suppose that it's what you get from any great music.
I think that life in general, as I've said, I'm very, very smart, but life is hard.
Mostly because whoever you are, never mind how much money or luck you have, we die.

(01:52:36):
And even more problematic, people that we love die, because when we die, we are dead.
But death is a very, very difficult thing in life, not talking about the others.
And I think that art helps us.
I mean, when I lost my mom, the only time where I could feel okay was when I was composing music.

(01:52:59):
Any other time the pain, the horrendous pain stops.
And I know from friends that are not musicians that it helps also.
It's the beauty of it. I think that Freud, the second analyst, said that it's the sublimation, the role of art.
And so we make things that are painful, beautiful.

(01:53:20):
So I would hope that the world that I create in pieces is so beautiful that it takes art out of...
I mean, it's not only that, because music can be a sabre when you're happy, but it has got a special role when life is hard.
And so I would like my music to be listened to so that when people feel really that they have a difficult time, that they listen to mother better,

(01:53:51):
but also mine, in the same sense, not different, that it gives a feel of...
That's when I say that I want to create beauty in art. It's not beauty in terms of it's just pretty.
It's beauty in terms of... in the Greek philosopher's sense, that beauty and moral, all these things are one thing.

(01:54:14):
I think that's how I would turn it.
Even if it's not something that you think all the time for yourself, you just...
But when I write music, I want to write... every time that I go and I work on my piece,
I want to write something that is the most beautiful that I can possibly do.

(01:54:38):
And that has got no vulgarity whatsoever, that it's all that I give, all that I could to the maximum of my ability.
Wow. Wow. I can't top that. I mean, what else can I say? Beautiful.

(01:54:59):
And I think right now, you know, people are... so many people are suffering in all parts of the world in many ways.
And so I think I hope that the music is something that they can really easily access to.
And as musicians, we can be just part of... little part of their small, maybe happiness or maybe something that...

(01:55:26):
As a composer, you can even sort of hope that people will, as amateurs, play your music for the pleasure.
Just to be more the case in previous centuries, but it's still happening.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is still happening.
Well, thank you. Well, this has been a really, really meaningful conversation, but also I've learned a lot.

(01:55:48):
What a master class. And so thank you so much, Nimrod.
So before I let you go, two things to do. One is I would like to promote your works and also maybe any upcoming events you have or maybe productions.
So Floor is yours. So take it away.
I mean, for my works in general, there are just so many, like you say, people can go on my website and just explore.

(01:56:13):
They can click and listen to various things. But in terms of content, the one that my immediate big thing that I'm doing is the one that I talked earlier.
That's why I talked about it, because I was just in the middle of preparing it, is this concert in London where I'm conducting the English Chamber Orchestra.
And we are doing an incredible program. I love Elgar.

(01:56:35):
It's beautiful. And I'm doing these Shakespeare songs with a fantastic soprano, Sarah Fox.
And we are doing that on that song, the 9th of March. So if anyone is in London, I know you are in America, so it's a long way.
But who knows? I mean, we have the Internet.
Right. Oh, wow. That's exciting. Yes. So whoever.

(01:56:59):
I was just in Paris. I was conducting in Paris in December. And after that, I mean, my works have played all the time, but not always with me.
I think people want to meet me in person. And then I go to South America in August or something like that. And then things move all the time.

(01:57:21):
Hey, if you are in America, United States, or especially in New York area, please let me know.
I would love to really see you in person, but also love to hear your music live.
So and then I think a lot of musicians should play your music more. So, yeah, thank you.

(01:57:43):
And I'm going to buy your what is it? The Shireen and I'm going to play it.
And it too stupid, especially Shireen. I want to really try immediately. Yes.
Of course. So this has been an incredibly fun and inspiring conversation, then, but before I let you go, we have one more thing to do.

(01:58:05):
Remember the beautiful rapid fire questions. So let's start.
So I will start with the easier questions and then and then it gets a little bit more advanced as always in life.
Yes. So I would I wanted to answer them as short as possible.
And then you don't have to explain anything unless if you want to. All right.

(01:58:29):
All right. Question number one. What is your comfort food? Oh, I love all food. So my comfort food is food.
Food. OK. Yes. You do. Really. What do you like to cook?
My wife is Italian, so I cook a lot of Italian food. I'm good in risotto. I do a mean risotto.

(01:58:50):
Wow. Wow. That is amazing. Oh, that sounds amazing.
How do you like your coffee in the morning?
I make it myself. You know, the Italian things that I do, things that you put on most of the time I grind it.
And it's not only in the morning. My wife is Italian, so we drink coffee all day long and it's just nonstop.

(01:59:13):
I can't drink. OK. Yes. That's black. No sugar. No milk.
OK. Oh, wow. Sounds great. Are you a cat person or dog person?
Oh, I love cats. I'm obsessed with cats. I like dogs too, but cats are an instrument for musicians,
an animal for musicians because they are so beautiful and so impressive.

(01:59:38):
They are incredible platter and their gestures are exactly, just so fluid.
Wow. I never thought that way. That's a beautiful way to say it. Do you have a cat or?
No, because I think it's not fair when you travel too much. Animals, they are intelligent.
They suffer like human beings. I think it wouldn't be a good a visiting cat.

(02:00:00):
It lives not for every day. Really? Oh, that's cute. Oh, that's great.
You love them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wonderful. Summer or winter?
Winter. The mountain. Summer in the sea. OK. Sounds good.
Now level two, it gets a little harder. What skill have you always wanted to learn, but haven't had a chance to?

(02:00:26):
To a higher level, tennis. I play tennis, but if I had more time, I would have spent many more.
I love tennis because it's like a solo instrument. I would have spent more time, but I play tennis.
OK. Wow. What is your word or words to live by? Oh, beauty.
What is the most important quality you look for in other people? Kindness.

(02:00:53):
Name three people who inspire you, living or dead. This is hard. My dad? Beethoven? No. My dad? Oh, yes. Beethoven?
OK. I know three is hard. I know. All right. Now level three. Two more questions to go.

(02:01:18):
Name one piece in your current playlist. I don't have a playlist. OK.
So it's because I always listen to music in my head, looking at scores. At the moment, as a conductor, you conduct a lot of things.
So it's a thing that it's really hard, but it's my own music. It's either my own music or Elgar's Siren Head for Strength, because that's the next...

(02:01:50):
OK. Sounds good. Last question. Fill in the blank. Music is blank.
And dispensable.
Wow. I have never heard that answer before. Beautiful. Thank you. Ding ding. That's it. So you win. Yes.
So this concludes this episode of The Piano Pod. A heartfelt thanks to you, Nimrod, for joining us today and sharing your incredible stories, insights and expertise.

(02:02:20):
So to our wonderful audience, you can learn more about Nimrod and his work by visiting his website at nimrod-bornstein.com and start listening to his wonderful piano solo and chamber orchestral works on all streaming services.
And of course, thank you to our faithful fans and listeners for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the YouTube channel.

(02:02:45):
Don't forget to share and review this episode on your social media and tag The Piano Pod. It's one of the best ways to help us grow. And then we'd love to hear your feedback.
For the latest piano news and episodes, be sure to follow The Piano Pod on Substack, TikTok and LinkedIn. I will see you for the next episode of The Piano Pod. Once again, Nimrod, thank you so much.

(02:03:06):
Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye, everyone.

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Season 5 Episode 13: Composing with Humanity – Nimrod Borenstein on Music, Expression & Legacy

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Season 5 Episode 13: Composing with Humanity – Nimrod Borenstein on Music, Expression & Legacy