"The piano is my best friend, but I love to complement it with electronic instruments"

Francesco Tristano (Luxembourg, 1981) is known to the Barcelona public in his dual role as a classical pianist and DJ: performer, but also creator of his own works, in both areas. Over the last decades he has regularly performed at the Sónar Festival, as well as at the Palau de la Música Catalana or L'Auditori. We took advantage of his recent visit to the Catalan capital for Bach & Beyond, the solo piano recital presented at CaixaForum in which he establishes dialogues in several directions ---between Bach and his Baroque contemporaries, and between Bach and our contemporaries---, to talk about the connection between Barcelona and his career, the dialogue he establishes between classical and electronic music, and his affinity for Baroque polyphony.

Some of these interests are reflected in his latest proposal presented in Barcelona, where elements can be appreciated that show the timelessness of the musical experience and dissolve, with fascinating coherence, the compartmentalizations by genre. The work also evidences his approach to Bach, a composer to whom he is currently dedicating an ambitious project: to record the complete keyboard works, composed of twenty-two albums, of which he has already completed five.

--- Although you are Luxembourgish, you know the city well. How did you come to establish the current link?

--- I have been discovering the Catalan lands for many years, partly because of my mother. The idea of spending some time in Barcelona came about in a somewhat crazy way when I was living in New York and finishing my studies at the Juilliard School, where I did my Bachelor and master's degree. In 2002 all my friends went to Berlin —it was the mecca of music and graphic arts— and precisely for that reason, because I wanted to make tabula rasa, I chose Barcelona. I came in 2003 to do a postgraduate degree at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC), where I worked with Jordi Camell, who is a very good friend of mine today. Do you know him?

--- Not personally, but it's true that we have mutual acquaintances.

--- Yes, like Joan Cortés. He was my first friend in Barcelona. We met in a bar in New York: I was doing some sessions, and when I told him I wanted to come to Barcelona, he told me to call him. I arrived in August, and he barely remembered me. For him, I was "the DJ," my thing was electronic music. So when I told him about my album of the Goldberg Variations, he was a bit bewildered. One day walking through the city, we passed in front of the MACBA and he told me: "Sónar is held here." I replied: "I want to perform at Sónar." For me, it was the best festival in the world. And he helped me: we organized a meeting with Enric Palau, after playing at the home of the architect Oriol Bohigas, where Jeff Mills was also present. That was my real entry into Barcelona. I ended up participating in six editions, with six different projects. The last one was two years ago at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion: music for piano and AI, in collaboration with the Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya (UPC).

"I don't like to repeat recipes, it bores me. Besides, if I don't surprise myself, it will be difficult to surprise the audience"

--- In the end, no matter how much we try to compartmentalize music, the ingredients are the same: harmony, melody, rhythm, instrumentation. It doesn't matter if we're talking about classical music, folk, pop or techno. Depending on how you combine those ingredients, the result changes, like in cooking. I don't like to repeat the recipe; if I do, I get bored. Besides, if I don't surprise myself, it will be difficult to surprise the audience. In this sense, although the piano is still my best friend, and I don't need anything else, I love to complement it with electronic instruments.

--- I understand that for you, who seek novelty and to surprise yourself with your own discoveries, electronics is an ally.

--- Of course, but the connection goes back centuries. It's no coincidence that the synthesizer has a keyboard. The 16th-century organ is a proto-synth: a machine for making sounds without electricity or oscillators. Two centuries later comes the piano. And then, two centuries later, the synthesizer. Everything is connected.

--- It must also not be a coincidence that the classical music that interests you most is from the Baroque period. It gives the impression that rhythm and counterpoint are essential for you, not only as a performer but as a composer. I'm thinking, for example, of A Soft Shell Groove, your opening piece on the album Scandale with Alice Sara Ott. And also, in a more peaceful and minimalist way, in your Piano Circle Songs.

--- The piano is usually associated with Romanticism, with the 19th century, but for me —let's see how I can put it diplomatically— it's the least interesting century for that instrument. There are great works, very virtuous, yes, but the priority is usually in the right hand; the left accompanies. It's rather monophonic music: there's no democracy between the hands. The Baroque, on the other hand, is pure polyphony. The foundation is the basso continuo, which provides rhythm and pulsation. That's the same thing we find in electronic music. That's why the connection between techno and music from 400 years ago is not trivial. That's how I experience it... Of course, this is something very personal.

"To play the piano interestingly, the left hand has to lead"

--- Genius, Glenn Gould! You have to be someone of his stature to dare to say something like that. Just yesterday I saw a video of Paco de Lucía —one of my biggest influences, along with Gould, Ryūichi Sakamoto, and Joe Zawinul— in which he was asked about the difference between the left and right hand. His answer seems totally applicable to the piano: "The left hand is the one that commands, it's the one that makes music. The right hand executes." All the basis and depth of music comes from the left hand. On the guitar it's more obvious, because each hand has a role. But I make Paco's statement my own: to play the piano in an interesting way, the left hand must lead.

--- A final note on Mozart: even if today his music sounds easy, in his time it seemed complex (besides also having a rich polyphony in certain passages of his operas, last piano concertos or in the quartets dedicated to Haydn). In any case, his revolution has more to do with the variety of affective registers, with that unmatched and mysterious "spontaneity."

--- When we listen to Mozart, it seems like easy, jovial, "good vibe" music. However, playing it is not easy at all. Making it sound that way is the hardest part. Since you mentioned Piano Circle Songs: that album was a somewhat Mozartian exercise. The director of the Sony record label asked me to compose a melodic album, and I accepted the challenge. It's not exactly my thing, but the idea was to create themes that could be remembered. And that's Mozart: melodies so simple they seem impossible to forget.

--- I love that album for its magnetism... it has something immemorial about it, like it's prior to time. But, beyond solo recitals, will we hear you with an orchestra in Barcelona? Do you consider that the creativity of the "possible worlds" of the Baroque is limited in concertos for soloist, accompanied by ensemble and conductor?

--- It is true that in Barcelona I have not played much with an orchestra, although I do so from time to time, no further back than this summer. Playing with an orchestra is wonderful: think that it is a machine of 70 or 80 people, which must be conducted. Imagine the psychology required for it, how difficult it is to manage… The conductor is, to a large extent, responsible for the result. Glenn Gould used to say that it was not a concert "for piano and orchestra" but "of piano against orchestra." For him it was always a struggle. And he hated it. He liked to play with few conductors.

--- I remember a speech by Bernstein prior to a concert with Gould, when he explained ---to an inevitably stunned audience--- that neither soloist nor conductor had managed to convince the other, nor reach an intermediate agreement… and that this very fact made the musical interpretation so interesting. What is your relationship with ensembles?

--- It depends on whether we are talking about a chamber orchestra or a large symphony orchestra. It is always a challenge: as a soloist, you have to make your sound stand out above the ensemble, but also understand it, listen to how it sounds and be part of that element. Sometimes there is barely time to rehearse: a mini-rehearsal to specify a couple of tempi and that's it. The result can be unsatisfactory, for the audience and for the musicians. But extraordinary experiences are also lived, like when last year I played with the Bamberg orchestra. An ensemble with musicians who know each other very well, and function as a single organism, each section playing with the same intonation, the same dynamics…

"On this tour I not only focus on Bach, but I do so by dialoguing with music from his era and also from ours"

--- A project of mine called Technophonic. It starts with acoustic music and progressively becomes electronic, almost turning into a party. We've been doing it for two years, and there will be several editions. Hopefully, we can present it here.

--- Regarding your last recital in Barcelona, Bach & Beyond, how did the connection with CaixaForum come about? How would you describe the proposal?

--- I knew CaixaForum from the exhibitions, but I didn't know they had a concert series. One day they called me, and we ended up organizing a tour through most of their centers. I started in Madrid, and before Barcelona, it was in Valencia. As the concert title reveals, I am very very much into Bach. I've been working on it for a while, and it's going to be a long journey. Because my idea is to record the complete keyboard works: it's twenty-two albums, and I've done five.

--- Twenty-two? I thought it would be… about ten or twelve?

--- The thing is, there's practically no complete recording like that. Glenn Gould, who recorded a lot, didn't record everything either. I've had this project in my head for years; it's a dream coming true. We've just released the Toccatas, pieces very different from the best-known Bach, that of the Partitas or the Goldberg Variations, and we're going at a pace of two albums per year. But on this tour, I don't just focus on Bach; what I do is put him in dialogue with music from his era and our contemporary music. In an hour, we hear that exchange, like in a game of ping-pong: Frescobaldi, Gulda, Scarlatti, Sakamoto…

"Bach was not especially modern in his time, but today he can sound more modern to us than contemporary music itself"

--- Exactly, just recently I was explaining on the radio that Bach was not especially modern in his time, as he continued making music from another era when his sons were composing according to the aesthetics of classicism. He didn't innovate too much; rather, he compiled compositional styles, taking them to excellence. And, even so, today he can sound more modern to us than contemporary music itself. That is the idea of the program I have designed: to discover Bach in his most avant-garde, or rather timeless, mode.

--- It is true that he often tends towards abstraction, almost like "music of the spheres," endowed with a mathematical logic. Paradigmatic of this is The Art of Fugue, an exercise in infinite counterpoint in which Bach does not specify the instrument...

--- Each voice of a fugue could correspond to a string, for example. In fact, in his compositions for solo instruments, no great differences are appreciated, even if it is not the same ---of course--- a keyboard as a violin or a cello. His language is very personal, and at the same time universal. That's why Bach can be played on a synthesizer, as Wendy Carlos did, or with a marimba... The potential of his transversality is inexhaustible.