It was in 1966, when he was a relatively unknown pianist of 19, that Murray Perahia spent the first of four summers at the Marlboro Music Festival. There, at Rudolf Serkin`s enlightened summer retreat in the bucolic hills of Vermont, Perahia got his professional baptism in chamber music-collaborating with such eminent artists as his teacher, pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski, cellist Pablo Casals and members of the Budapest Quartet. And it was there that he struck up a friendship with Shmuel Ashkenasi, first violinist of the Vermeer Quartet.
”I was a chamber music player before I had any idea that I wanted to make a solo career as such,” the now-celebrated American pianist recalls.
”In those days, I really was doing more chamber music than anything else.”
Seven years later Perahia, came away from the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition in England with a victory that led to more than 50 engagements in Europe and the United States, a CBS Masterworks recording contract and one of the most notable solo careers of any pianist of his generation.
Now the siren lure of chamber music has once again called, prompting the 40-year-old Perahia to come full circle. On Monday evening at the Civic Theater, the pianist will make his local chamber music debut in collaboration with his colleagues of the Vermeer Quartet, playing works by Faure and Brahms in a concert sponsored by Chamber Music Chicago.
The program marks the first of five Perahia performances Chicagoans will hear this season. At 2 p.m. Sunday, WTTW-Ch. 11 will telecast, via tape delay, a PBS ”Live from Lincoln Center” program that features Perahia playing the Beethoven Fourth Concerto, with Colin Davis conducting the New York Philharmonic. Thursday night at Orchestra Hall, Perahia will present the Schumann concerto as part of the opening concert of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra`s 1987-88 subscription series, Sir Georg Solti conducting.
Perahia and Solti will merge talents once again at the CSO`s 75th birthday gala for its maestro Oct. 9, playing Mozart`s Concerto in E-flat for Two Pianos, K.365, with Solti again on the podium. An Allied Arts concert with pianist Radu Lupu, Feb. 10 in Orchestra Hall, will bring him full circle as a chamber musician, at least as far as the local concert calendar is concerned. ”This year, I think I`m going to live in Chicago,” Perahia laughs.
Several of today`s most notable pianists have pursued chamber music performance as a logical extension of their other keyboard activities. But few are delving into this area of the repertory to such high acclaim as Perahia.
As it turns out, he and the Vermeer are old musical acquaintances. Four years ago, he invited them to perform with him at England`s Aldeburgh Festival, of which he is a co-director. ”We had a wonderful time together,” Perahia reports, and this led to further collaborations, including Monday`s concert, which will mark their first team effort in the United States.
”When playing chamber music with people you respect, you learn there are many valid ways of interpreting a piece,” Perahia explains. ”At the same time, you must have a point of view; you must know what approaches you can accommodate, also which ones you cannot. And that`s how I regard chamber music-as a kind of dialectic among friends. You go one way, they go another, but somehow the two ways merge on a higher plane.”
Perhaps it is Perahia`s eagerness to seek out new intellectual approaches to music, along with his uncommon pianistic gifts, that makes him so highly sought-after by so many eminent musicians, Solti included.
”I guess my collaborations with Solti began with my playing with him as guest artist in Chicago,” the soft-spoken Perahia says. There is almost no need to discuss interpretative points because ”we get along so well and read each other`s thoughts almost intuitively.” Despite their differences of training and temperament, ”we are very complementary musicians.”
It was the prospect of working with Perahia that encouraged Solti, who had not played the piano in public for 29 years, to perform a Mozart concerto last year at a gala charity concert in London, where both musicians make their homes.
”I had the chutzpah to conduct Solti!” exclaims the younger pianist, who had studied conducting at the Mannes College of Music in his native New York.
Then the two switched roles, with Solti conducting for Perahia in another Mozart concerto. Following the interval they repaired to separate piano benches for the Mozart K.365 concerto they will be presenting next month in Chicago.
So mutually satisfying was that outing that Perahia and Solti filmed two other collaborations this year for British television. Last June, they presented Bartok`s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion during a whirlwind four-day tour of London, Paris and Zurich, ending at the Aldeburgh Festival. Immediately afterward, they recorded the work for CBS.
Perahia finds a direct correlation between his solo work and making music with small instrumental groups. ”Performing with other people immediately adds new dimensions, outside influences,” he has said. ”Suddenly another mind is drawing your attention to aspects of a piece that you had maybe never thought about before.”
Perahia is quick to tell you he is decidedly not one of those highly competitive young lions who began their careers with a firm list of goals to be reached before the onset of middle age. He has only one objective as a musician, and that is to grow. Although he enjoys a remarkably wide-ranging repertory from Bach to Tippett, he confesses that ”I don`t always know why I choose what I choose to work on.”
Through a process of musical free-association, he made his way from the 27 Mozart piano concertos (all of which he has recorded with the English Chamber Orchestra) to the five concertos of Beethoven, which he has recorded with the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bernard Haitink. For Perahia, this was a logical step ”because I wanted to see how Beethoven treated the same formal ideas on a more sophisticated level.”
From there his inquiring mind took him to the Beethoven sonatas, then to Brahms, all the while refining and rethinking the Chopin-Schumann works that are his core repertory.
He is consistent in the stringent manner with which he prepares an unfamiliar work. He will generally study a new score during three separate periods before he feels he is ready to play it seriously. Each season he will take as much time from his schedule as he can to study new works-whether or not he plays them in public.
Perahia devoted the latter half of the summer to learning the mighty
”Hammerklavier” sonata of Beethoven. ”How successful I`ll be, I`ll find out in a month when I have to play it,” he sighs.
”There`s a lot of repertory I really would like to do now before it gets too late. After 50, when your technique is less supple, it gets harder to learn.”
This sort of painstaking preparation is not likely to endear a promotable young artist to most artist managements and record companies. But Perahia reports that his manager, Frank Salomon, and CBS Masterworks, with which he enjoys an exclusive contract, understand his need to do things at his own pace. Whether he`s playing a recital or a taping a recording, ”it`s important that I be creative, that I don`t sound mechanical.”
Coming from one who insists that ”music is all-consuming for me,” it is comforting to learn that Perahia has his domestic side after all. Last July 2 his wife, Naomi, gave birth to their second child, Rafael. By interesting coincidence, Ashkenasi and his wife celebrated the arrival of their new baby one day earlier. Could this be another chamber duo in the making?
