Simply a Performer: A Conversation with Zora Mihailovich

Fanfare Magazine, September/October 2000

By Peter J. Rabinowitz

Although she has lived in the country for a decade and has made a number of recordings - including recordings of Rubinstein and Chopin for Centaur (see 19:2 and 20:1) - onetime child prodigy Zora Mihailovich is not yet especially well known among the American record-buyers. But with new recordings of Mozart (the first release on a new label called Virtuoso Classics) and Rachmaninov (Centaur) poised for issue, with plans for a Schumann recording in the works (probably the F#-Minor and the G-Minor Sonatas) and with the visibility of a new teaching position at the Eastman School in Rochester, Belgrade-born Mihailovich seems ready to move to a new stage in her distinguished career.

I talked to her in early June, just as she was finishing unpacking her boxes after the move to Rochester - and it's characteristic that she insisted that she wouldn't feel that she'd truly moved in until after the recital she had scheduled for June 20. "I am very happy to have this recital next Tuesday at the Eastman School. One of the ways I feel at home is when I know the audience where I'm living and I present myself to them." It's characteristic, too, that she chose the kind of program that she did. Nowadays she especially enjoys the programs that mix a variety of little pieces with some bigger works - and this program fits that description, including as it does the Rachmaninov Second Sonata, one of her specialties, along with one of the Moments musicaux and a Rubinstein romance on the second half; short works by Liszt, Scarlatti, and Chopin on the first. "These little pieces like the Scarlatti sonatas and Liszt etudes, people love that - and, at the moment, I love that. I choose what I love. If I enjoy it, the audience will enjoy it. There was a time when I played only sonatas. Especially if you play Schumann Sonatas, Brahms Sonatas, Chopin Sonatas - it's really long. Sometimes I think that the audience cannot focus, and they don't know what is the point. Some of them may be enjoying it as listening, but as nothing else."

If this sounds like a powerhouse recital - well, Mihailovich is nothing if not a big pianist. Even in Mozart, she resists delicacy, although that hasn't always been so. "You change your interpretation; you change your attitude over time." In particular, her Mozart used to be "more conservative, more traditional, whatever you can call it. But I changed that four or five years ago. Now I treat him like a more Modern or Romantic or whatever composer. It gives me much wider possibility to interpret. Mozart was a genius, and he deserves to…you can really express yourself in many, many ways. Now I like my Mozart to be more talkative."

More significant than the size of her tome or the solidity of her technique, though, is her concern with communication. For Mihailovich, it's crucial that the members of the audience feel as she feels, even if they don't end up agreeing with her interpretation. "Even if someone doesn't like what I'm doing, that's fine. You cannot expect that everybody loves what your are doing." And certainly, the centrality of communication comes out when she talks about her teachers Carlo Zecchi and Arturo Benedetti Mechelangeli.

"I loved both of them," she says. "But Michelangeli was more closed, not so open." Zecchi, in contrast, was "an artist who liked to share everything with you, except if he was in a really bad mood. He had to share. He was great, especially for Mozart - also for Chopin. He taught me a lot about phrasing." She had worked on phrasing before, of course, but Zecchi taught her more about control in her phrasing: "how to think, how to sing, how to make the beauty of the tone. He was really great."

To the extent that Michelangeli was a great teacher, it was not because he shared but simply 'because he was a great pianist." Certainly, he was less close to his students: "He was pretty alone, an introvert. I remember a summer course in Sienna: He closed the window, he wanted to be in the dark. It's great, you hear him, you're listening to him play." But he was missing "something which is necessary" for a really effective teacher, a certain reciprocal relationship with his students. "He cared very much about himself"; what was important "was what he needed, not us."

Still, Mihailovich has no regrets: "He was absolutely great; the experience was wonderful." Her own teaching is obviously closer to Zecchi's than to Michelangeli's. "I think that what is most important is for the student to believe in you and to really trust you. They have to know you very well, how you play." For that reason, "it's very important for you to be a performer. But even when you are a performer, you have to be open. IF they don't understand what you're saying you have to play a lot, a lot, a lot, and really be open to understand them and what they like. Sometimes they have their own kind of imagination or interpretation, what they like to do, but they don't know how to reach it. That's your job, to tech them how to reach it." And you can get them a long way toward achieving that end by giving them the basic skill necessary to put one interpretation completely together. Once they can do that, they can do everything else. Because once they pass all the way, once they know how to make one interpretation, how to do it technically and with regard to other aspects, once they finish that, they can do anything they want, really. They have formula for how to do that. I think it's very important to teach them how to do that, to teach them what to do with their bodies, their fingers, and the necessary things that belong to the art and the sound."

But it won't work if you're distant - or if you teach by the clock. "You have to be very, very careful to make yourself a person that they love. With some teachers, I know that one lesson lasts 45 minutes or half an hour or one hour, but my lessons have never been like that. I always work until I get what I like."

Most of her students are 18 or older. But, perhaps because of her own backround as a prodigy, Mihailovich seems to have a special appreciation for younger students too. "You can find kids who play wonderfully. I remember having students 12 years old playing like…It's not age. You couldn't believe what they do. Young students are very good because they accept everything fast and they can change fast. If the have really good schooling, if they have capability to play technically very well, they can do many, many, many things. Also, you can teach them to play very well technically."

But of course you can't teach everyone. How does she deal with students who simply don't have talent? "I let them know, but in a very nice way. Because I think it's much more honest not to give them too much hope. Sometimes, not so often, you have people playing piano who are already 25, let us say, and they realize that it is very difficult for them to play, really. It is difficult because they don't feel. I don't know why they play the piano, but they like to play for some reason. I always ask them, "Why, why do you play the piano? Because you can do so many things much better than other people can, but your piano-playing is not better - it's a much lower level than even the average student are doing." I had a few who gave the same answer, which was very, very strange: 'We are playing the piano because we know that we cannot do it very well but we are expecting the day that we will be better than anyone.' But this day will never come, because it's too hard. It doesn't depend only on your sitting at the piano and practicing. But you cannot argue with them: They have a strong belief that they can do something which they cannot."

Even with the talented students, though, there's often a problem with lack of experience. "They don't have experience and they don't listen too much. I strongly believe that you have to have a collection of interpretations, a big collection, because this is part of our culture; it's how you build up something." Of course, she's not interested in having students mimic: "You won't play like Michelangeli or like this one or this one." But hearing other pianists gives you a wider experience, and it makes you "think a lot."

But it's not only experience that's necessary for good performance. Mihailovich points out that it's also hard to teach students to play pieces that they really don't like. "If they love the piece, that's how they play. If they don't like it, it's hard. They usually don't have a feeling for that; they just don't like to play, don't have any relation to it. Maybe someday they will." Yet her own experience as a young pianist - which clearly informs every aspect of her teaching - has certainly shown her that you can learn a piece and come to appreciate it later: "In my younger days, I didn't have a feeling for drama. I was very sentimental. I found that I could not express some emotions in some sonatas. But I learned those pieces anyway. I have pieces in my repertoire that I never liked to play because I thought I played them badly. But later, when I got a little older, maybe three or four years, and I played other repertoire, I came back to them and saw how many good things there were.

"So it's not bad to learn even pieces that you don't like so much, But," she admits, "now I don't have the nerves to do that anymore. I just learn what I like. It's hard to learn something that I don't like." She puts less time pressure on herself too. When working with Zecchi, for instance, she learned the Schumann F# - Minor Sonata in five or six days. But nowadays, she says, "I don't push myself so much. I don't' say that I have to play that next month or in the next five months, but …I love to learn. Especially when you play new things which require a lot technically. It makes you very happy just to see what is going on." "I started to build up my repertoire a long time ago, " she continues.

"I started very early, I was onstage very early. I learned many very important works when I was 12, 13, 17 years old. Now I know the benefits. I think the longer it stays in your repertoire, the better, even if you don't play it, because you mature, you grow as an artist. Sometimes you come back to it: You don't' play for an audience: you just come back home and you practice: you like to see what is going on with that. And especially at that age, whatever you learn, you never forget. It's so easy to renew, to play again. As for the big part of my repertoire I learned after I was 20 or 30 years old - its' different. Maybe t becomes yours very soon, but it feels different."

So the pieces she learned as a teen are somehow deeper inside her? "You're with them longer, so you have more opportunity to think and to change them." She elaborates: "You have a completely different approach when you are very young. You just get everything very spontaneously; you don't think about it - you just play how you feel. That's a treasure; it's not bad." Later on, you tend to think more about the music. In addition, you have more power; ""you can do much more than you could before. That makes a big difference. As soon as you're more powerful, you're technically much better; you start to figure out that you have much more emotion inside than you could express at that time when you were young. That also helps to improve that when your fingers are working much better."

But - and this is the key point - even in your more mature, more thoughtful performances of music you learned early, "that spontaneous approach is somehow with you," and that mixture of feelings gives the performance a special quality. In addition, when going back to pieces you learned earlier, "you're more free. You think, 'I have played this piece for such a long time, I dan do this, I can do that.' I just think, so many times, 'It's mine; I have a right to do that.' It's a kind of ownership." What does she feel when she listens to old performances? "Often, when I listen to something that I made when I was maybe 14 or 15 years old, It makes me in some ways happy. I can recognize that it is almost the same person. Less controlled, of course, and many, many things are different. But I like what I was trying to do, even if didn't come out."

Sometimes, in contrast, "you're listening to yourself, and you say, 'My goodness, I cannot believe that I played like this. I don't like it. It doesn't sound like me'". But it's not only performances from the distant past that can unsettle you. Performances change day by day: "Your are emotionally attached; you have a special kind of energy when you play." And occasionally a performance doesn't quite come together: "Sometimes, if you didn't really end, you still have to finish it." That is, you have to keep working on it until you get it right - at least, right for that period in your life. "And if you finish it, it's good. But if you're not completely satisfied, you know that you have to do that and for yourself. It doesn't matter if anybody noticed it." What matters is that "you didn't have complete control." In fact, sometimes, after a concert, she has to play something again to herself just because she was dissatisfied with the performance. "Not very often, but it's happened to me. Fortunately, when you have some recitals or some concerts to play very soon after that, it's good. It helps a lot."

More generally, Mihailovich says, "You need to play to mature something. Playing for an audience and playing as much as you can is part of the art." No surprise, then, that playing the piano is a way of life for her. Normally, she's at the keyboard four to five hours a day. "If I plays less than two or three hours, then I don't feel very well. I feel much more comfortable when I play more." -4- She used to be able to stop playing at least when she went on vacation, but she can't even do that anymore. "Less and less it happens to me like that. Now, when I go on vacation, I usually find some piano somewhere, like I can't live without it. I find some store or friend with a piano. I don't go every day, but at least every three days."

It is hard to imagine Mihailovich without a piano; and , in a sense, she never was. Her debut came at the age of five, and she was the youngest person ever to graduate from the Academy of Music in Belgrade. And unlike, many prodigies, she has only good things to say about her early start as a performer. "I feel very good when I perform. Of course, there are always different situations - you may be nervous for no reason. But it happens to everybody. But I think that when you start to play early, you live with that; it's nothing for you but pleasure. It's not bad; you don't have a feeling that - oh, what is going on? Oh my gosh! Am I going to do that? You just naturally…you are doing everything just like at home." Still, she wonders whether it was the fact that she stared young - or whether it's simply something in her nature: Maybe it's not one's history that matters but rather simply "it's because you're designed like that, you like to play, you're simply a performer."

Certainly, she has found students who are not by nature performers. "they play nicely, so well, they're such good pianists, but the moment they start to play for an audience everything is gone; nothing is left. Others play better for an audience even if they didn't start early. So maybe it's just how we are made."

Can you teach someone who freezes before an audience how to avoid stage fright? "You try to do that. If someone is nervous, you always try to find out why. Is it because you don't like to make any mistakes, or you think that you are the best and you don't like to spoil this, or yo are insecure because you didn't practice enough, or you aren't sure in this particular piece because you just don't know it very well? You're nervous - and if you find out why you are nervous it's very important. But many times, it's not only that. You have students who simply don't like to play for an audience; they are not so attached t the audience inside. They love music, they love art, they're wonderful - but they don't like to expose themselves. At the same time they like to try. It's not too helpful, but you can teach them to concentrate, how to feel when you sit, what to think, what to do. They have to be trained every day on a regular basis, until it becomes part of their nature and they can play with no difficulties. But it's not easy." And it doesn't always work: "I have some wonderful students, but when they play for an audience, they're shaking. They try, but nothing helps." They're simply not made for performing, even if they know everything, what to do, what helps. They have a fear of people; they cannot accept being exposed.

"This is awful; I couldn't stand that," says Mihailovich; and one can well understand why, for pinao-playing is simply a part of her nature. "Now what I feel more and more is that I love to play, I love my practicing, I love to watch the score, music, notes, whatever…no matter how many times I've played it, I always think I'll discover something new." And she'll always want an audience to share it with.

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