The interpreter is really an executant, carrying out the composer’s intentions to the letter. He doesn’t add anything that isn’t already in the work. If he’s talented, he allows us to glimpse the truth of the work that is in itself a thing of genius and that is reflected in him. He shouldn’t dominate the music, but dissolve into it.
Perhaps I simply started to play with greater freedom as I threw off the shackles of existence and rejected the superfluous and all that distracts us from the essential. It is by shutting myself away that I’ve found freedom.
… It was in this way, and no other, that it had to be played. Why? It’s very simple: because I looked closely at the score.
‘Not only can he play well, he can also read music.’ That wasn’t such a bad way of putting it.