Interview: Michael Tracy talks to pianist Reed Tetzloff

Reed Tetzloff, a lauded pianist who tours internationally and also is known widely for his writing of musical commentary, will play a concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 4, at Vashon Center for the Arts.

Tetzoff came to international attention at the XV Tchaikovsky Competition when Russian media dubbed him “the lyric hero of the competition.”

He has performed with the Cincinnati Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Moscow Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic, and the Tbilisi Symphony, among others.

His debut album, “Sounds of Transcendence,” was noted for “kaleidoscopic colors” and “fervent rapture” by Gramophone Magazine. And his 2021 Schumann recording was hailed for its “originality and uncommon perceptiveness” by Voix des Arts.

On Vashon, Tetzloff’s program will start with a 20th-century work by the American Charles Tomlinson Griffes, “The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan,” then follow with Beethoven’s sonata Op. 90 no 27. The second half of your program is devoted to the B Minor Sonata of Franz Liszt, the quintessential 19th-century masterpiece.

Tracy: “The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan,” by Griffes, was a work and composer I had never known until I watched your performance on YouTube. Griffes died in 1920 at age 35, which explains its obscurity. How and when did you come across Griffes’ music?

Tetzloff: I came across Griffes music as a student and fell in love with his Piano Sonata. Griffes studied in Europe, absorbed post-Wagnerian trends of the early 20th century, then returned to America to take a more modernist direction in his compositions right before his untimely death.

The earlier “Pleasure Dome” was an epic tone poem for orchestra, perhaps Griffes’ most famous. I was delighted to find out that the piece exists in a solo piano version, which Griffes wrote first but rarely performed. I included the “Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan” on my debut recording in 2017, along with Scriabin and Franck — whose music I felt paired well with Griffes.

Beethoven’s No. 27 has only two movements, rare among the sonatas. In the score, Beethoven gives the pianist of this piece interpretive advice: “With liveliness and with feeling and expression throughout” for the 1st movement; then for the 2nd movement, “Not too swiftly and conveyed in a singing manner.” As the performer, how do you interpret Beethoven’s direction?

When examining Beethoven’s output as a whole, one can see the music becoming more personal, subjective, and inward. This Sonata is not quite a “late” work but from the period of masterpieces like the 7th and 8th Symphonies and the Archduke Trio.

While the directions in this sonata may seem obvious, as an interpreter I push myself to define exactly what I want to say, exactly what it means to play “with liveliness and with feeling and expression throughout.” Sometimes musicians tend to take such concepts for granted. This should be avoided to find a more specific type of expression, one that is unique to each composer one plays.

Franz Liszt’s B Minor Sonata is a work that Bela Bartok, the Hungarian 20th-century composer, said was the most important composition of the late 19th century. Do you find that the B minor sonata is on another level — beyond other Liszt works, and of the 19th century? Or am I exaggerating?

Not at all; the B minor Sonata is probably best seen as the summation of Liszt’s piano music. After retiring from his career as a touring superstar pianist and settling in Weimar, Liszt devoted himself more fully to composition and produced this sonata — the only sonata he wrote. The B minor Sonata provoked fierce disagreements from the moment it was published. Wagner extolled and stole from it, while Clara Schumann and Brahms lambasted it as an assault on art itself.

Time has vindicated Liszt’s masterpiece without taking away its ability to shock. Listeners have always tried to assign extra-musical narratives to the B minor Sonata: Goethe’s “Faust” and Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” but Liszt leaves the sonata open-ended: it’s a sonata and we’re on our own after that.

It is the perfect synthesis of Liszt’s fascinating personality: nobility, virtuosity, demonic energy and spiritual apotheosis, all come together in 30 minutes of the most passionate and dramatic music ever written for the piano.

Michael Tracy will host a pre-show discussion with Reed Tetzloff at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 5, before Tetzloff’s concert at 7:30 p.m. Get tickets and find out more at vashoncenterforthearts.org.