[silence] On Another Day

[Glenn Freeman]

http://www.cnvill.net/mfkotik.htm

PK: I have no analytical interest to study a piece when I decide to  
perform it ... All I do is take the music, sit down, and play it from  
the beginning to the end. And that's the end of it, really, that is  
the way I work.

WZ: Listen to the Mozart of the fifties. Listen to the Mozart of the  
sixties. Listen to the Mozart of the seventies.
PK: Sure, there are differences. So will Feldman be different. So will  
Cage. You are bringing up a question of authenticity, and I like very  
much what Boulez says about authenticity. He thinks that it is a  
fraudulent idea.

***

PK: It's not at all a game. It happens when I play, or when I conduct.  
There are moments when something happens, and it is as if I become the  
music as well as the people who perform with me. It's almost a  
telepathic unity.

WZ: But this you can also say about Furtwängler conducting Beethoven's  
Ninth Symphony.

PK: Yes, exactly - there is no difference.

WZ: I mean, what about Cage? Who, who . . .

PK: The same thing with Cage. It is the same thing.

WZ: Nonsense! I mean, at the end of his life, Cage wrote orchestra  
pieces without conductors. He didn't need this bunch of people anymore.

PK: That was his misunderstanding. He had very little understanding,  
and in a way very little interest for these matters.

WZ: He didn't need this authoritarian symbol anymore! The conductor  
was for him a symbol of an authoritarian society.

PK: A conductor is just a conductor, who does not symbolize anything.