Ivo Pogorelich, Madrid 2020. Bach, English suite 3. Chopin Prelude Op. 45. Ravel, Gaspard de la nuit

00:00 -- warm up
06:57 -- Bach, English suite 3
31:01 -- Chopin Prelude Op. 45
38:29 -- Ravel, Gaspard de la nuit

" Fight and find the substance, then go to the higher spheres.

Music takes you to another universe of eternity that remains with you after the concert is finished.

Fight to achieve quality, go deeper... find the origin of the sound.

Technique is not just fast and slow...is the sound, the long sound, the palette of colors, is entering a different space, reaching the diversity of sound.

Rachmaninov had arthritis at the end of his life, he was so weak that his sound was very short, that is the reason he played fast, to fill the vacuum.

If you have long sound you are in command to achieve clarity and the hypnotic sound between the notes.

The problem was always the conflict and the difference between the absolute and the relative quality.
Beauty in music is like in diamonds, the purest diamond in the world is the Koh-i-Noor, it is the absolute beauty to which others with relative beauty are compared.

Most music I could hear was just an ostentatious circus act of virtuoso pieces for up-and-coming pianists, tests of finger dexterity, not art.

You have to get into the phycological frame of mind in which composers wrote their works in order to discover its secrets.

Work as hard as a galley slave.

I do not practice excercises.
When I practice a piece, I do a few variations around it, inventing my own excercises to help in that particular place.
Technique is the art of variety, the art of knowing how to adjust your hand to a particular group of notes to produce a particular sound to fit the particular expectation of the ear.

Sound becomes metaphysical only when you have completely explored all physical possibilities. You should explore until reaching the absurd.

One should always try as much as possible to rediscover music as though one is hearing it for the first time, searching everywhere for new meanings and new depths.

The highest function of the artist is to release the spirituality and the emotional immediacy that lie within the score.

Be constantly engaged in research, I am not only looking at things the way they appear but also trying to find the labyrinths, the secrets of music.

A composition can only be performed well if it is entirely yours, not only every note from memory, but the notes have become you, and you have become the notes.

Nothing happens by chance. Call it a force that some people think controls what happens in the future, and is outside human control, call it preordination, but sometimes happens.
After all, the human element brings total happiness."
Ivo Pogorelich.

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Ivo Pogorelich was born in Belgrade in 1958 as son of a musician. He received his first piano lessons at the age of seven and went to Moscow at the age of twelve to study at the Central Special Music School and then at the Tchaikowsky Conservatory. In 1976 he began intensive studies with the renowned pianist and teacher Aliza Kezeradze, with whom he was married from 1980 until her untimely death in 1996.

Mme. Kezeradze was able to transmit the spirit and matter of the school of Beethoven and Liszt, the tradition of the Liszt-Siloti school, originated in Vienna and than carried through to the Conservatory of St. Petersburg, flourishing towards the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th. Century.

Pogorelich´s sound, concerts and recordings pay homage to this exceptionally refined, visionary, and truly revolutionary woman, who so lovingly made Pogorelich a unique artist of genius.


Ivo Pogorelich is not only an artist of the highest caliber, discipline and musicianship, but the archetype of the modern artist, the isolated and courageous master, who finds his own way to new heights of expression, no matter the prejudices or the barriers of misunderstanding raised against him. He stands alone at the beginning of a new epoch like a prophet, mapping the routes that art would take.

Pogorelich´s cathartic and mystical sound, is concerned with the ultimate mysteries that transcend this world. His grandiose, colossal and majestic art, symbolizes the struggle of the human soul to find release from the bonds of its material body. His exquisite and overwhelming music continues to echo throughout the entire performance and beyond, so the action is at once momentary, eternal and complete.

Pogorelich´s interpretations are indescribably beautiful and irresistible. His sound is pure poetry and extremely emotional, yet entirely unsentimental. We are hypnotized by his new and radical naturalness, by his nobility, dignity, severity and sobriety; transporting us to states of wonder, ecstasy, meditation, love and compassion.

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-- Sound and Silence, Life and Death, Time and Space; collapse into the Eternal moment of Infinity. --