Maria João Pires was expecting to play another concerto
“When I started the first bar of the D Minor she kind of jumped and panicked like…
like an electric shock, I think. She couldn’t consider even moving ahead playing, you
know? Then we talked a moment… and the miracle is that she has such a memory
that she could within a minute switch to a new concerto without making one
mistake.”
–Conductor Riccardo Chailly
Playing a Mozart concerto
is very much like
riding a bicycle.
But she looked desolate:
kept plucking
her hair out, saying
she couldn’t. I knew I had
the other one somewhere but if
we swapped it now the audience
would notice. When her part came
she treated the keyboard
like it might be trapped.
I never worried, though.
As I implied before,
playing a Mozart concerto is like tapping
into the latent until it
remembers you. She knew the piece
beyond pulse and muscle.
“When I started the first bar of the D Minor she kind of jumped and panicked like…
like an electric shock, I think. She couldn’t consider even moving ahead playing, you
know? Then we talked a moment… and the miracle is that she has such a memory
that she could within a minute switch to a new concerto without making one
mistake.”
–Conductor Riccardo Chailly
Playing a Mozart concerto
is very much like
riding a bicycle.
But she looked desolate:
kept plucking
her hair out, saying
she couldn’t. I knew I had
the other one somewhere but if
we swapped it now the audience
would notice. When her part came
she treated the keyboard
like it might be trapped.
I never worried, though.
As I implied before,
playing a Mozart concerto is like tapping
into the latent until it
remembers you. She knew the piece
beyond pulse and muscle.
