Nimrod Borenstein Interview
Below is the transcript of my interview with the composer and conductor Nimrod Borenstein. The podcast and video versions are linked here along with the show notes:
Nimrod Borenstein is a brilliant composer, who was a child prodigy as both a composer and performer. His often complex music is beloved by performers and audiences alike, and has been widely recorded and performed internationally. He is also a renowned conductor, and he spoke to me about his difficult decision to cut short his career as a violin soloist in order to find alternate career options as he developed his career as a composer. Vladimir Ashkenazy has been an active champion of Nimrod’s music, and you’ll hear the charming story of their first meeting.
Nimrod shares his insights about interpreting music for performers and conductors, the development of his compositional style and his views on creativity in general. Nimrod has an infectious energy in his enthusiasm for the pursuit of beauty. Nimrod has exceptional parents, and you’ll hear how they met, and we start with Nimrod’s close relationship to his father the renowned painter Alec Borenstein.
Nimrod Borenstein (00:00:00):
I think that it made more people aware of my music. The way that careers should go. It's normal for a composer that the performers really like it and that's why they play it. Not by the top down that festivals or the performers to play something that they don't like, which is very much what happens these days. But I don't think, it's not the way that, it can never work. And in my career I had it's only musicians that have liked my music and even when it was difficult, when I was not known they played it, they tried to play it and it started by being 50 people, 100 people, 1000 people and that Ashkenazy helped because people that may have liked my music suddenly, but didn't know it existed. Suddenly were aware that was a big help.
Leah Roseman (00:00:49):
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. This podcast strives to inspire you through the personal stories of a diversity of musicians with in-depth conversations and great music that reveal the depth and breadth to a life in music. Nimrod Borenstein is a brilliant composer who was a child prodigy as both a composer and performer. His often complex music is beloved by performers and audiences alike and has been widely recorded and performed internationally. He's also a renowned conductor and he spoke to me about his difficult decision to cut short his career as a violin soloist in order to find alternate career options as he developed his career as a composer. Vladimir Ashkenazy has been an active champion of Nimrod's music and you'll hear the charming story of their first meeting. Ashkenazy first conducted Borenstein's orchestral work, The Big Bang and Creation of the Universe, Opus 52 to great acclaim, and the Chandos label released a very successful album devoted to Borenstein's music conducted by Ashkenazy featuring his Violin Concerto and some orchestral works.
(00:01:49):
Nimrod share his insights about interpreting music for performers and conductors, the development of his compositional style and his views on creativity in general. Nimrod has an infectious energy in his enthusiasm for the pursuit of beauty. He also has exceptional parents, and you'll hear how they met. And we start with Nimrod's close relationship to his father, the renowned painter, Alec Borenstein. You'll be hearing excerpts from a couple of recordings with thanks to both SOMM recordings and Naxos. And please note the links in the show notes of this episode.
(00:02:19):
Like all my episodes, you can watch this on my YouTube channel or listen to the podcast on all the podcast platforms. And I've also linked the transcript to my website, leahoseman.com. The podcast theme music was commissioned from composer Nick Kold and you can use the timestamps to navigate the episode. It's a joy to bring these inspiring episodes to you every week, and I do all the many jobs of research, production and publicity. You can support this independent podcast through both the collection of merchandise with a unique and expressive design from artist Steffi Kelly, as well as through my Ko-fi page. This weekly podcast is in season four and I send out an email newsletter where you can get access to exclusive information about upcoming guests. Have a look at the description of this episode where you'll find all the links. Now to Nimrod Borenstein.
(00:03:09):
Hi Nimrod, thanks so much for joining me here today.
Nimrod Borenstein (00:03:12):
My pleasure.
Leah Roseman (00:03:13):
It's been a wonderful thing to discover your music. You're such a great composer and it's really an honor to meet you.
Nimrod Borenstein (00:03:20):
Thank you. Well, I've been to blush on camera, but what can I do? Thank you very much.
Leah Roseman (00:03:27):
I thought it might be very interesting to start this today about the fact that your father's a great artist and the discussions you had with him growing up about art and creativity. So if you want to get into that, it might be very interesting.
Nimrod Borenstein (00:03:41):
Oh, that's wonderful. I think that I couldn't ask for a better introduction because for me he has been my greatest teacher all sorts of ways. Not only as an artist but as a human being. He is my hero if you want. He was himself a child prodigy in the sense that when he was about eight years old or nine years old, he had done about a thousand oil paintings. He was a very special child and he became a special adult and he's my dad, but he always had time for me and I've learned from him if maybe sort of one good way to get into the depths of what I learned from him is he never used an excuse for saying, well, sort of I couldn't do that. I don't have time for you because I'm very busy sort of, I've got lots of exhibitions, I've got to paint, or the opposite way.
(00:04:49):
I couldn't finish this painting because of course my child cried. There was never any excuse, never complaint, and I learned from, I don't want to put words in his mouth because now we are both adults and sometimes we have different ways to look at things. I think he is a lot more tempered than me. I'm more extreme as a person. But what I felt that I learned from him was he really disliked academism on pretentious ways, which is sort of totally the opposite. It's not means being modest because actually being modest could be an excuse to be pretentious so that you should aim for very high but not take it personally if you want. It's not something egotistic. You do it for the sublime for something that you really love. You don't do it for yourself, you do it for your love of something. But in it, I know that for example, for the history of music or the history of art, there's always what in French we call "la petite histoire." So that person in that year, he did that. He did that, which I really don't believe in that at all. I think that the only thing that is important in an artist is what he left. And actually you've got everything that you need that is in there if you really, really look for. And that I think that I learned from him, I became maybe sort of more allergic to it. That is, it doesn't, because I think that it's interesting as an intellectual exercise, the more knowledge you have, the more interesting it is. But you've got to place it for what is going to give you In a way, I think that knowing that such an artist knew this book or was happy in his life or divorced his wife or it's interesting, but it doesn't have a direct influence on the work that you're creating.
(00:06:55):
And in a sense we create, each piece is a different world that has got its own rules. It's because of that that I think that the present of what you're living or even in some way you believe either the materialize in your work or there is no point in them. Sometimes you create things that are extremely cheerful and happy because you are cheerful and happy and that here and sometimes you create it because you crave that and you are living a real tragedy in your life. And sometimes it's got nothing to do with that. But the real goal is somewhere else. I think that if an artist can say precisely what he wanted it to do, then he's done nothing in a way, it's beyond words. Sometimes when I teach composition sometimes, and most of my pupils are professional musicians that are very good pianists and my first lesson, usually I give the first page of Beethoven's first sonata, piano sonata and the first page of Hummel's piano sonata and I ask, why is Hummel less good? And it's really interesting because in all the centuries, and I suppose that in all the history of humankind, the composers that are not brilliant, not great, have all the same defect. Things are symmetrical.
(00:08:33):
And in a way, whether we do it philosophically and we try to understand why is there a problem for things that are a bit predictable, I think it's because maybe it's less human. Human beings are very complex beings, so to convey real emotions, you need complex way of doing it because otherwise not true. It sounds false. So I think that all these type of discussions add them from the age that I can remember, from age eight or maybe even before with my father. And we didn't always agree and before about ideas, but it forced me to refine my thinking and also to learn things that of course when you're a child you also respond, you try to get everything. But I always thought that the greatest teacher that you can have as the great masters in your field. So as a composer I would say it's better than Bach or Brahms. It doesn't necessarily need to be of your style of your time because greatness is temporal and in a way, if you study something that is closer to you, you've got more chances to copy the outside layers in a way that are not important.
(00:09:56):
And then you become totally academic, whether sort of if you study, I don't know, a piece of Beethoven, I mean some people now that pretend to be composers, write things that sounds like Vivaldi or something like that, but that's ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense. But for me, when I was a child and I looked at Beethoven, I tried to see the greatness of it and to try to understand what makes it great. And that is temporal.
Leah Roseman (00:10:29):
You are about to hear from Nimrod's multi movement work for solo piano Shirim Opus 94, this is no. 5 Un moment de sérénité , performed by pianist Clélia Iruzun with thanks to SOMM recordings. (music)
Nimrod Borenstein (00:13:24):
One of the big secrets if you want for me of art in general is the contrast of things. I give you, let me give you quickly an example. So for example, between the slow and the fast you take, you are a violinist, so let's take Beethoven violin concerto. So it starts with (singing), so short and on rhythmical, and then you got the melody (singing). If it didn't have the (singing), and it started just by (singing), it wouldn't work. But is that different from something that is very different? You take another concerto, you take Bach A minor concerto, (singing) short, (singing) short, and then (singing) the same concept
(00:14:22):
And then you could find it in Stravinsky. So conceptually it's this change of time of how you play with this. Well, as a composer, I always think that basically the two really things that are very precise in the notations are the notes and the rhythm. And when I finish composing a piece, I do the thing. Since I'm very, very happy, I finished composing the piece of that and then my wife knows that I'm going to be sort of annoyed because I've got to do what I call the editing. And the editing is putting all the dynamics.
(00:15:06):
And dynamics are not precise. And it's interesting because I think that is one of the interests for performer to collaborate with living composers because then they start to look at dynamics in the past differently. So for example, the premise dynamics that normally you hope at least that the performers will look at the dynamics on the score like word of God. So you've got to be careful that they are not too narrow. And in most places that do not have dynamics written in, scores are the places that do need dynamics. Why it means that because there are two options that are equally good, but there's no option of doing the same. So if you go back to the Bach example where you have short long you have and then answer, it would equally work well as let's say the first two measure forte and the last one forte (singing) and then on top (singing) but equally well it's the opposite. You got (singing) and then (singing) because the structure on the meaning of it is the same. If you've got that in your score, you cannot write anything and you hope that the person will do something. So I think that this collaboration is interesting and the difference between painting, a huge difference between painting and music is that painting like literature is not a work in collaboration. The artist, the artist is basically both the performer on the composer.
(00:17:03):
It's got to have the ability of doing it physically, but then the work is done. And the same for a writer. My wife is a writer. You finish your novel, it's done. In my case, I think that it, is there something similar? I think that the work, when it's done as composer, it's done, but for the audience to be able to hear it, there are the musicians, the live musicians, or even if it's you doing it yourself. In my case, sometimes, I mean in three days I'll be conducting in Finland and I'll conduct my work, but also the works of other composer like Sibelius and Elgar. And when the work is finished, I don't find any difference in conducting Beethoven or my work.
(00:17:52):
It's the same. It feels, it's like it's an object. It's something,
Leah Roseman (00:17:57):
Yeah. Outside yourself.
Nimrod Borenstein (00:17:59):
Yes, really sorry I went far from your question.
Leah Roseman (00:18:04):
No, you didn't. That was fascinating. There's so much to talk about, but I do like to include some music pretty early in the episode so people who don't know your music can get a taste. And I thought we could go over to your 24 Etudes project, which has been so much a big part of your life.
Nimrod Borenstein (00:18:20):
Actually, to be honest, I've got big projects and it's one of the medium sized projects. I would say. One, I think that before we can enter in this project, which is interesting, but I think that it'll be useful to compare it to other projects and then we'll go into that one. Sure, yes knows that actually my wife, she's a writer, but she's also a translator. She translated to Italian, she's Italian, all the letters of Mozart, I mean thousands of pages. But she also recently translated a book of musicologists about Bach. And I think that as a composer, I'm not really Bach in terms of as a person who I am. I think when I was in my twenties and I had interviews, people asked me, who are your influences? And I would sort of say my gods are Beethoven than I would feel that I was in that way.
(00:19:24):
And this age I came to think that I'm more of the composers that are capable of creating total darkness, but also fairic beauties. So the people like Mozart or Schubert and they always exist. It doesn't depend on the style. And I'm more of this so people that can be in total despair or elation, and I suppose I'm like that in life too, but on the other hand sort of these people can be organized. And in that sense I'm a bit like Bach with some projects in some way. So there are a few things that I decided in my life as an idea. So when I was in my twenties, I thought, like Brahms, that I would do write a lot of chamber music,
(00:20:21):
My goal was to have chamber music. That was my mission. And then after that in my thirties, I think that I was without a mission, it was more, yes, I had a mission. I thought that my opus number should overtake my age because I started to write very, very young when I was six or seven and I had pieces performed when I was eight or nine, but I decided to put my opus one, which was probably, I had written a hundred of pieces before when I was I think 18 or 19 because it's when I saw that piece, that's it. I can put opus one. And so when I was 25, I had a long way to go to get to my age. That was my goal. Of course when you get older then you don't want to get older, but when you are 25 you do. But more from age 40. Then I started to have this big project. I think that the first one was concertos.
(00:21:30):
I had the feeling I loved because when I was young, I thought that I would do two careers. I would be a soloist as a violinist on a composer. And I persuaded this idea until I was maybe 16, 17, and I thought that it was starting to feel even if sort of when I was 13 I met with Daniel Barenboim and he told me, it's not going to work. You've got to decide it's not. And I thought, he's old, he does not know, ignoring. But when I was 20, it became impossible. It was always frustrated. Either I was feeling I was not composing enough or not practicing enough and I was working 15 hours a day and I decided, no, it's not going work. But anyway, coming back to the concertos, that was a side subject concertos, because even now I think that probably I know by memory you give me a violin and I can play you at least 25 concertos by memory from the beginning to the end, at least.
(00:22:37):
But I've got a good memory. So I got also lots of symphonies I know by memory, but I think that the concerto form is a very interesting form and I felt that in the past 50 years, well basically nothing has been done, nothing that compares to when I was young, I learned Prokofiev violin concerto or Stravinsky, and that is not less good than Brahms. It's an amazing works. And I thought there is nothing that is remotely comparable to that. So when I was 40, I decided, okay, I'm going to devote the next 10 years of my life to write concertos. My first goal was to write for the main instruments for piano, violin, and cello. But of course life always decides otherwise when we have plans and then there's life. And so it didn't go like that. I did write a violin concerto and the cello concerto, but then there were bassoon, saxophone, you name it, lots of things.
(00:23:45):
And it's only three years ago that I wrote a piano concerto that actually I recorded with, I think it's one of the recording that you heard with I was conducting the Royal Philharmonic with Brazilian pianist, Clélia Iruzun. And so that has been a big project and it's still, I mean this year I had three premieres in the same year I had mean more premieres, but as concertos goes, I had a mandolin concerto that was premiered in Germany in December then I had my Oboe concerto that was premiered by the Belgrade Philharmonic in March. And before that I was conducting an orchestra in France for a new work of violin and string orchestra. So it's still in, I think I feel happy that I've done enough now in that I like the medium, so I will do more. But my dad's always said that I'm a bit extreme like that. I say I can die happy you have a mission before you die, but there's always another mission.
(00:24:51):
But the Etudes came in a different way. I was always, I loved the Chopin Etudes. I'm more of a violinist. As a violinist, I can play anything. I played all the Paganini Caprices, something like that. And I'm less of a pianist, but I still good enough, I played, I would say half of the Chopin etudes. So I can manage on the piano, not like the violin. And I think that there are a monument of writing and that no one else has managed to write such a quantity because you've got things like Scriabin, some beautiful etudes, and you've got Rachmaninoff. But again, and you could say at least beautiful, but only 12, it's easier to do 12 than 24 and so on. But it was not a plan at the beginning because I don't think that I would've thought even if I'm sort of, I am very self-confident, but I think that it's not something that I conceived to do first because piano solo was not my strong. I thought that it's not exactly what I do, even if I wrote many, many pieces for piano in the chamber music. But piano solo was not something I thought. But then what happened is that a day, maybe 10 or 11 years ago, there was a pianist, a performer that wanted to play one of my pieces in France in a recital. She was doing, I can't remember, one of the big halls in Paris.
(00:26:31):
And she said, well, I'd like to play one of your pieces, but this piece has already been played many times. I think like that it would be great if I could do a premiere and I would commission. And I said, when is the concept? And the concept was I think four months or six months ahead. And I'm never ever late for anything. My wife complains that we are too early at the airport or something like that, but I'm definitely not late for composing because I want the thing to be perfect. And so I don't take, if I need three months, I ask for six.
(00:27:13):
And I thought it's a bit too close. And I said to her, to the pianist, well, maybe I could write a small work because I've always been intrigued by writing etudes, would you want an etude? Because that I feel that I could attempt. And she said yes. And so I said, okay. And so I wrote the etude, being scared, thinking, oh my God, what I got myself into anyway, I talked to my wife because I asked my wife for advice, shall I take this commission or not? And she said, Mozart wrote an opera three weeks. I thought, she's right. Let's do it. And so I started to write an etude and surprise. It was quite easy. So I wrote the etude in, I would say maybe something like 50 hours, which is not that much. Okay, you would say the etude it is three minutes long. But I think that to give an idea of people that don't know about composing, when I write for example, concerto or symphony, something like 30 minutes long, the scope is between 250 hours of work to 600. So being never late, I always imagine that it's going to be 600 worst case scenario. That is this type of numbers. And actually small pieces like media for when you write a short story as a novelist takes longer than what you would think, because they're complete. So it takes some time. But anyway, I finished this etude and I was very happy about the result and I thought, oh wow, it's not too bad. And then I had another pianist commissioned me, another etude, and the second etude, I did something. So the first etude was Ostinato etude.
(00:29:19):
And then the second etude I thought, okay, I'll do something very different. And I thought, what can I do about? And I thought that I do something that is about hand crossing, and I called this etude Half Moon because already I thought they need to be able to play one after the other. So the first etude was very, very big on grandeur like that. And the second etude is strong, magical and still difficult with poly rhythms, but different. And after that I did a really terribly difficult etude. If I write in order I had that was called Tango etude. It's a very exciting one, terribly difficult.
Leah Roseman (00:30:02):
You're about to hear the Tango Etude Opus 66, number three on the Naxos label with pianist Tra Nguyen. (music)
Nimrod Borenstein (00:32:31):
To be honest, I can't remember if at that point I already decided to write the 24, but it was around then that when I thought, oh, they're each really, really something. And I feel it that I started to have a goal of doing 24. So it was, and now it has been organized in my head. So first I thought I would do like Chopin two sets of opuses. He did opus 10, Opus 25. So I said my first opus number was Opus 66, and I thought I do 12 of these and then 12 of another opus. But what happened is that two, my main point of writing this 24 was that each of them had to be a jewel, something amazing. And for that, I take more time in between. So what happened is that by the time that I was finishing my etudes of the opus 66, that was actually because it was 6, 6, 6, I called it the Mephisto etude, but then I was at the same time composing works that was Opus 80. So I thought it doesn't make sense. By the time I finished Opus 66, I'll do 12, I'll be on Opus 90 something, and then the opus number doesn't mean anything. So I thought mathematically I'll divide them in four sets of six.
(00:33:56):
And so far I've done six of the opus, 66, 6 of the opus, 86 and three of the opus 93. So I more than halfway, it had slowed down because I, I've written quite a few concertos last year. But it is a project, a long-term project. And now to add to another project in terms of when you think about a few of the same thing, now I've just completed my first symphony that has got a symphony name because before I wrote a piece that is like a symphony, but it's not called symphony, and it's called The Big Bang and Creation of the Universe, which is basically a symphony in 3 movements at this one that was commissioned by the Svetlana charity that I just finished is my symphony number one. And I would like at least to be like Brahms and Schumann to do four. That's my goal. If I can go to the next step after that, it's nine because the next number that is, I don't know why composers are, so there's always a link between mathematics and composition or something like that. They tend to be that composers like mathematics. And so also the numbers
Leah Roseman (00:35:24):
You were mentioning Chopin, we were talking about the etudes, and I remember in one of your previous interviews you said something interesting that you had heard something on the radio about Chopin that actually he didn't perform that much. He was mostly composing.
Nimrod Borenstein (00:35:38):
Oh, that I owe it to Chopan because or to his life exactly. When I was desperate, I was 20 and I've got a lot of willpower. If I decide to do something, I will work myself to death. If I think it's right, if it's a moral thing or if it's a work thing, I just will do it. And I was in my early twenties and I was like I said, desperate because I was working 15 hours a day and I thought it was not enough and I was rational. Okay, now I'm 20, I'm not married, I don't have children and I don't have enough time. I mean, it's not going to work. Obviously there is a problem, but I couldn't quite bring myself to do anything about it. And then I was listening to the radio and I couldn't remember which radio station and they were talking about Chopin that in total in his life, he gave something like 31 or 33 concerts.
(00:36:41):
And then I thought, oh, that explains things somehow. And that really helped me to decide to stop. But I was a very good performer on many people that were behind me. For example, I was a new Cziffra, György Cziffra the pianist, and he thought I was a great composer, but he thought I was a great violinist too. And I mean basically everybody was against it. They all told me, don't stop playing the violin. You play so beautifully. And when there are people that are great performers to you, you think, okay. But that thing with Chopin, I thought that's it. I stopped. But then I had the same problem a couple of years later is conducting,
(00:37:34):
I suppose that I think the composers are, if they are great composers, they will be very, very great conductors unless they don't feel well on stage. And there are people that are shy, but otherwise it's not surprising that Mahler was a great conductor or Bernstein was a great conductor because it's so much harder to create something from nothing. And then you understand what is in the something and you will, it makes sense. Part of my memory I think is intuitive understanding. So for example, in life, I don't remember names, I remember hardly anything. My wife, sometimes in the morning she says, so what's my name? Because I can't remember names. But really truly when I was in my, because I told her, so when I was 20, I had a girlfriend and before we lived together and before we came home, I had a little piece of paper where I had her name because I thought, what if I forget? So that's bad. But for music, I hear music twice. I know it by memory for my piano lessons, or violin lessons. Every week I put everything in my memory because I read it once, it's finished.
Leah Roseman (00:38:48):
Wow.
Nimrod Borenstein (00:38:49):
But the reason why it's like that is because I feel what it should be. So I had this exercise that I used to do for myself when I was six or seven. There was a radio, it was not like these days with the internet of course. And I would play on the radio a piece that I did not know because when you're six or seven, anyway, luckily you don't know that many things I would write down because by the time I was six or seven I was very advanced in terms of theory. So I could write down anything that I heard, but I would write down the first, let's say 30 seconds of the piece, then switched off the radio and what I thought would be the next bit. And usually I got at least the next 10 bars perfectly like what it was. So for me, music makes sense.
(00:39:39):
I think that the real knowledge is intuitive. Of course a lot of things come intellectually, but the secret is somewhere else, otherwise it'll be boring anyway. But coming back to the conducting, so when I was 20, I thought maybe I can do some conducting because it's like, because it's not like an instrument, you don't need to practice because it's not being a good instrument. It's like being a top sportsman. There is a problem of being able to do it. But I find that conducting is very different. It's almost when it's entirely intellectual. So if you understood the music, you can do it. It doesn't mean that it doesn't make some time to really get into it, but it's not comparable to especially the fact that when you've got it, you've got it.
(00:40:42):
So for example, I'm conducting a Mahler Fourth symphony in two weeks time, and now I know it entirely by memory on every single note. And I feel it and I understand it. I really feel every single note on why other things. And now that's done now for the rest of my life, if I have got to conduct that symphony, I don't need to go back to it or maybe a few minutes, that's it. If I was a performer on a pianist or a violinist and I had to play a concert concerto that I know there's no way that you can stop working. There's a physical aspect that's impossible. So what I thought is that I would go to conducting, but then again, there's a reality of life. When I was 20, I saw that it would take, I didn't want to have a life like Mahler only in the summer.
(00:41:38):
I'm very quickly talking to agents. I understood that they would take me only if I accepted all concerts that they gave because for them it was an investment. So they couldn't say, oh no, no, sorry, now I don't want to go back for three months. Very sorry. So I put it aside and I did conduct all my life from time to time, but not too much. But about three or four years ago where my wife told me, now you are very well established as a composer, maybe you can find a balance and do more conducting, but you'll have more to say. You can say you have people that are interested even if you say no to several things. So that's what I'm doing now, which is a balance. But I like, and it's very important for me, maybe it's to almost, well sort of people like Chopin or this age didn't have that because there was no way of recording. But for us now we can leave something behind. And I think that for me to leave good recordings of my works that I conduct is very important. And actually I've got quite a few friends that are conductors and they say that it's a lot easier to conduct a work of mine if they can have a look at what I did.
(00:43:04):
So even if it doesn't mean that each person has his own emotional, so they've got their own job, but it helps. So for me, most of the conducting that I do will always have, well, not always a concept where I conduct only pieces that are not mine, but usually there's one piece of mine in a concert amongst pieces of the great composers that I love.
Leah Roseman (00:43:34):
You're about to hear an excerpt from the third movement of the Borenstein Concerto for piano and orchestra, Opus 91 performed by Clélia Iruzun and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with Nimrod himself conducting. (music)
(00:43:46):
I have two questions about conducting, Nimrod. So I've been a professional orchestral player for more than 30 years, and I can assure you conducting is not easy because so many people struggle just with the technique of communication. So I'm curious if you took conducting lessons and just my second question as you get going, I was wondering if there's a sense of isolation as a composer and being on the podium, if that helps you feel connected to other musicians.
Nimrod Borenstein (00:47:36):
First of all, I think that the truth is that the conductor on the podium, so they struggle more with understanding of the music than the communicating. I never found a conduct that massacred my music, that massacred because he couldn't communicate that he didn't understand. It just doesn't exist.
Leah Roseman (00:47:57):
Okay,
Nimrod Borenstein (00:47:58):
Why are exactly the notes? Why are there such so that it feels natural and that you really - The truth is, it's very funny that if you really feel what is in the music and you know exactly what you want to hear, it's almost magical. It comes out of the orchestra as long as you really know.
(00:48:24):
But by that I mean that every single note of, every single player where it goes up and where it goes down and where it's going on, why there are certain things that are objective and certain things that are subjective. So objective. And you always should start from that. And if we go back to what we said at the beginning and when I was giving the example of Beethoven Violin Concerto, when you write a work, there are works that starts with what I would call a little introduction. It could be two bars, three bars at a bar or something like that. And when you write this, sometimes you start by the real thing and then you go backwards to find, for example, in Beethoven's case, I don't know how he did it, but it's possible that he wrote the tune (singing) and he thought it turns out exactly right, he felt, he felt doesn't really, it's a bit flat to start with that. And he found the (singing) afterwards or it could be the opposite that he found (singing0. And after that he felt that he could have something that was like that. If you understand that the human, the relaxation that you got after something that has got some tension on that, the speed, the loudness, everything else will come. It's like when people sort of play some pieces, some musicians, they tell me for me, dynamics, whoever writes them, it's always about feelings on not loudness.
(00:50:10):
You could say if you got an exclamation question mark at the end of you feel that it's like a question. The question could go de crescendo like ah, or it could be crescendo, but exclamation mark is always crescendo if that's the meaning. And there are certain things. But if you take sort again, okay, now I'm in there, you take Mahler's Fourth symphony that I'm conducting the beginning (singing) and then you got the (singing) and Mahler writes Fortissimo on the flute. I've not heard yet any conductor do it. And he writes it specifically and he writes specifically. But for me it's obvious because it starts with something that is sort of like magical also.
(00:51:12):
And then you got (singing), and then it builds tension (singing) and then (singing) and it melts and then it starts (singing) and then (singing). Now why is there no cellos on the first beat of the (singing), because suddenly it feels like it's suspended. So you got all the things that was very, (singing) but that's a short example. And then also when he writes to slow down or to slow down a little bit on why it's all human things. So it's like you wrote a novel and if you are a great composer, everything will make sense, will be natural in some way. And you are a bad novelist, like a bad composer. As imagine that you write a novel and it talks about this character is called Paul and he's got a nice life, nice wife, and he does his own thing and suddenly page 35, he goes in the supermarket and kills everybody with a machine gun.
(00:52:32):
You are a bad writer. That wouldn't happen. There would be reason why that character sort of that's that is equivalent in composers where the things are random. It's very, very difficult to get there. But in my opinion, it's why it's a lot easier to perform masterpieces than non-masterpieces. I know that a lot of teachers these days think the opposite, but they are wrong and it's why we have bad performances. Because if it's a masterpiece, actually if you do the thing right, it'll be magical. And if it's not, you can make it better, but it'll never be sort of the perfect thing that it's magical. So it's in that sense, I think. But it doesn't mean that it, it's not a lot of work, especially because if you've not written the work, you need to first know all the music really by memory. I think that memory is, it doesn't mean that you perform by memory necessarily, but it has to feel natural.
(00:53:51):
It has on every single note of it has to feel natural. So you would say that, I'm not saying that it's easy to be a conductor because actually it's very difficult in that sense because it has a lot of work behind, but there's not the sportsman conductors can be 80 and be at extraordinary. I mean you can ask sort of any violinist, even the greatest of all times to play Paganini caprice at age 80. It doesn't work, just doesn't work even sort - You take a Rubenstein, that was probably the eldest pianist ever. So okay, he could play amazing things when he was 88 on, I can't remember if, I think he was 88 when he played Beethoven Emperor Concerto. But there is a difference between playing that and playing Chopin Etudes or something like that. There is an element that is physical and extraordinary mastery of the physical that I think that as a composer you cannot maintain. You can get there when you're young, but if you want to maintain that there's just, there are not enough hours per day. Maybe some instruments. I think that violin is particularly in my case, is lethal for that because you have of course sort of, you take Rachmaninoff. He was an incredible pianist and he was a great composer. But I think that for string instrument, the amount of hours to just being able to do it is huge.
Leah Roseman (00:55:35):
Hi, just a quick break from the episode.You may be also interested in my episodes with Jessica Cottis, Thomas Cabaniss, Rebeca Omordia, Omo Bello, James Ehnes, Stephen Burns, Julia MacLaine, Frank Horvat and so many others. It’s a joy to be able to bring these meaningful conversations to you, but this project costs me quite a bit of money and lots of time; please support this series through either my merchandise store or on my Ko-fi page; you’ll find the links in the show notes. For the merch, it features a unique design by artist Steffi Kelly and you can browse the many items printed on demand. You’ll also find the links to sign up for my newsletter where you’ll get access to exclusive information about upcoming guests. Please check out my back catalogue, with weekly episodes going back to 2021. Now back to Nimrod Borenstein!
Nimrod Borenstein (00:56:20):
Yes, so I've got this exciting new collaboration with the English Chamber orchestra, both as a composer and conductor, and it'll start this season in March 25. I'll be conducting a big concert that will have the premier of a new song cycle for soprano and orchestra on Shakespeare songs. It's called, Shakespeare Sonnets and it's called Shakespeare Songs and it's my opus 101. Then it's the beginning of long-term relationships, British, English Chamber Orchestra, which is I always listened to their CDS for when I was young with all these times with Barenboim, with Zukerman, Jacqueline Dupre all that. So it's quite a dream to do something with them. And then we are going to record the CD of my works in July. It's exciting. Nice things.
Leah Roseman (00:57:16):
It might be interesting for the listeners to hear, I thought it was quite a nice story when you first met Vladimir Ashkenazy and he's been a great champion of your music.
Nimrod Borenstein (00:57:27):
Well, I listened to his CDs when I was young, mostly as a pianist. And again, when I think about the 2r Etudes of Chopin, I used to listen to him playing it again and Beethoven Sonatas, I remember his duo with Perlman Beethoven Violin and Piano Sonatas , lots of things. And then I was in my thirties and I heard him talk on television. He was asked by a journalist or maybe it was not an interview, but maybe it was something about him, but I don't know. And he was asked about his relationship with Shostakovich and he said that for him, it was composer special group that he didn't quite understand, but he said what he thought about what it was to be a composer. And I thought immediately I thought that man is going to love my music. I don't know I'm going to get to him, but I've got a feeling that it's what he's looking for in music is we are going to get on.
(00:58:36):
I think that usually it's often in love that if you truly admire someone, it's often the case that it's they admire you too. If it's not, you think, okay, I should get in touch because that person could help with my career. That's different. Personally, I could just never do that because I was not good at it. Some people can do it on say nice things, I don't feel right, and so I don't do it. But in the case of Ashkenzay, I really loved the way that he played. And so it was a true thing. And so the main problem was out contacting because I was 30 and I had a career, but not like now.
(00:59:24):
And these people are very, very busy, very busy. And so I wrote to the agent Ashkenazy to Jasper Parrot expecting that I would just never hear for him that I had to find another way. And then two days later I get email back from Jasper Parrott saying, Maestro Ashkenazy is very interested in meeting you, but he's super busy and he can offer you five minutes on that day after the rehearsal, I think great, super. And it was, well 20 years ago or something like that. So it was not like today with all our phones. We were in the modern age, but not quite like now. And so I had this portable CD player and I said, okay, what am I going to bring to him? And I made a select five minutes, it's really nothing. So I brought a CD player and several scores and I played the five minutes and what I liked because I think it's an interesting test as a composer, it's an interesting test also, I think psychologically music is not like literature. So even if you are the greatest genius in the world, like Mozart or Bach, if someone gives you a score, you cannot read it and open it and read it on air, everything in your head straight away. That's impossible. No one can do it never. Because there are just too many lines. The eyes can't do it.
(01:01:11):
It's as simple as that. So you've got the conductors that you bring them the scores and the recording and they tell you, oh, I don't need the recording. I can hear in my head, it's just so funny because I know that they can't and how can they think that I don't know that they can't. It's just bizarre, but it exists. But when I arrived to Ashkenazy anyway, he said, I said, do you want the score or do you want to listen to, he said, no, no, play the music. And I thought, that's exactly what I thought about him.
(01:01:45):
A man that has no problem is just wants to three hear the music. And so we play the five minutes and after the five minutes I say, thank you very much Maestro. And I'm glad, he said, what? That's it. You don't have something else? I said, but your agent said, oh, I said I just. No, no, we can continue. So we played the music for an hour and a half or something like that and suddenly he looks at his watch, oh my God, I've got to dinner with my wife, I forgot. And then I drove him to his wife, to his hotel and I think it was two weeks after I started to drive. And I was a bit of afraid because it was in London and it's not like this days that you got Sat nav and you can put it. And I thought in some part of mine I thought, it's quite funny. I have got a big break of my career and I'm going to kill the conductor by having a car crash. But no, he was really good. He told me to turn because he always used to go to the same hotel.
(01:02:56):
So he knew the drive from the rehearsal all to the hotel. And after that he was really nice. But I learned something because I was in my twenties and I know that, I mean, I experienced if you are really, really very great composer, you are not going to win competitions. It's not going to happen because it's not like playing, even in playing, it's not always easy. But in composing it's almost a no because what makes you great is what makes it impossible for you to win because you are not going to be like the others. You are really not going to be like the others because part of being a great composer is to do something that is really new. We live in a funny world these days where people say that they are avant garde, they all do the same thing. It's pathetic. You cannot be avant garde if you are 90% of the people do the same. But anyway, so I did attend competitions when I was 17 or 18. I didn't go through and I saw, okay, I'm in a good line of people, but it happened, but Ravel, Debussy and many more.
(01:04:12):
But then when Ashkenazy told me, I can help you if you want to do a competition, I'll write an opening letter for the competition. I said, well, why not? Let's have a go. And I remember he wrote me this letter saying that it was short. I mean saying that I was a great genius like Shostakovich and something like that. And I didn't go through the stage one of the competition that I applied to, I did not even go to stage two. And then I thought, okay, that's it. I have competition. But he was very supportive. So after I failed the competition, he asked me the next time I saw him and I said, and he said, then he told me, he always used to tell me terrible story about what happened to great composers. So he always had this instant, he thought it was good for me, but sometimes I felt funny, depressing because you think there's almost no escape going to, but in the competition things it was useful.
(01:05:24):
But after that, what really helped me is when he started to conduct my music himself. And that really helped. And I think that it made more people aware of my music because I think that the way that career should go is it's normal for composer to be done by performers. That the performers really like it and that's why they play it not by the top dawn that festivals order the performers to play something that they don't like, which is very much what happens these days. But I don't think, it's not the way that it can never work. And in my career I had it's only musicians that have liked my music. And even when it was difficult, when I was not known, they played it, they tried to play it. And it started by being 50 people, 100 people, 1000 people. And that Ashkenazy helped because people may have liked my music suddenly, but didn't know it existed. Suddenly were aware that was a big help.
Leah Roseman (01:06:38):
So I love your solo violin pieces and I got a couple of scores I bought them from your publisher. And it was very interesting to see because of your rhythmic complexity, just to see it written down. And I'm curious, is that element like using cross polyrhythms, was that always part of your writing?
Nimrod Borenstein (01:06:57):
It's an excellent question. Always. It's a difficult world.
(01:07:03):
I think that, no, not to that extent. I would say it's a thing. You know that it's when you look at yourself in the mirror every day and you don't see the changes, but 10 years later you can see it. I think it's a semi style. It's not something that is forced. When I was, if you talk about style, because it's a good point. So when I was a young child, when I was eight years old or something like that, I had at that point my heroes were Prokofiev and Shostakovich. But I had never heard about Schoenberg, which is fair enough for eight years old because there's not, I mean especially in violin, there's not much to play.
(01:07:54):
And I came up with 12 tone, I didn't know it existed, but I found the theory for myself and I started to write, I remember I showed to my composition teacher, I mean he was not really a teacher, he was the head of the Conservatoire and he must have been 50 or something that, and when I told him I invented this 12 tones , he just smiled at me. Not the first. But anyway, I was really upset about that. But I continued to work in a way that had a 12 tones system. But my own way of doing it, it was very melodical, but Melodical, in the Beethoven sense, not sort of nice melody like Rossini. Not that I've got anything against Rossini, but I think it's not some extent as Beethoven. And I did that until I was in my twenties and several other things came to play like clusters, tone clusters and all sorts of things that I explored.
(01:09:01):
But the main thing that I think that for me and that when we started a conversation about my dad, I think that an artist, the main thing, one of the main things is that he has to be new. And it was always, even when I was six or seven, creating is not pastiche. It's not that you do something. If you do something that resembles from another composer, you are not the composer. And that is a very important point. And so it was very important for me to find my own voice on that age when I was 15 or two. This way of doing it was the only way that I could find something that sounded different. That was my way out When I was in my twenties, I found that actually set up a problem with that I found with this 12 tone on cluster is that I thought that I could have worked that were very powerful on even beautiful melodies and things like that.
(01:10:03):
But I would say that they were all in black on gray because all sort of diferent dissonances. But I saw that they could not, for example, they could not express. I'm not sure if at that age I would've put it that way, at a happiness or certain type of emotions. Of course, as a composer, it's like you've got millions of ways to be happy. And if you are human, you are happy in a different way that if you're Beethoven and that's a given. But you should be able, if you're a complete composer, you should be able to express this emotion, your emotion at least in music. And I felt that there was a problem with that. And I was writing my string quartet opus 11, if I'm right. And suddenly I wrote something that I thought, oh my God, it's tonal. It sounds like Mahler.
(01:11:06):
And I thought, that's it. It's horrible. I am writing like Mahler. I felt really bad. So I went out, it was a long time ago, there were no mobile phones and my parents lived in France. I lived in London, and I needed to talk to my dad. So I went to this. It's only in all the films, there were still the red boxes where you could phone from that. In London, I, I knew I did not have very much money, so I put a bit of money and I phoned my dad. I say, listen, something dreadful has happened. I'm in the second movement of this string quartet and this sounds like Mahler. And I said that sort of like, I've got cancer. I'm going to die in three months, this type of, I felt like that. And my dad asks the first good question, he said, maybe you feel like it because you are so much against anything that is tonal, that the fact that he's got some type of tonality makes you think about that.
(01:12:04):
But easy to really, he said, go back home. And what you do, you listen in your head to what you've done, and then you listen to Stravinsky, for example, I don't know, the Sacre du printemps or something like that. And you think, is it more modern or less modern? And then you also listen with Mahler and things like that. I said, wise man, I say, okay, let's go home. I go home, I open my score, I open a score of Mahler and I compare it in my head and it's definitely more modern. And then I say, okay, Mahler passed, went down Stravinsky. And I think, okay, it's more modern than Stravinsky, but I can't exactly put the finger on it. Why? But there is something that is different so I can let it through, even if I don't, I'm not a musicologist. I don't need to really, I should maybe, but sometimes I think that it can be sort of doing this type of psychoanalysis of what you are doing may stop you from doing it.
(01:13:12):
So I thought, I leave it as it is. And so that started something. But I think that the reason can gradually, I think that for me, the way that I think that there is truth and sort of the philosophy, I'm probably like the old Greek, like Aristotle or I think that there is the truth, whether we see it or not. And whether I see the truth in what I have done, it's another point. But for me, if I look at it from now, I think that one of the really great secret of playing or composing is what I would call the pleasure of. I think that that's why actually Freud understood art more than a lot of philosophers, that it's all about tension and release. I think that's an essential part of art on sole contrast.
(01:14:20):
And I will come to the rhythm because they have got something to do with that. And in the same way, because I think that if you go into small examples, it's easier. So if I come back to the only two examples that I given of Bach or Beethoven, it's the same. It's a short and the long, loud, and the soft. But in my case, I think that, I wrote a ballet a few years ago called Suspended. That's a piece for the ballet. And I was really lucky it got more than 300 shows and something like that. And there is one of the, it's basically eight long pieces that go one after the other. And one of them is called Suspended. Because I think that this feeling, it's a little bit like you are on a bicycle. You pedal, pedal, pedal, then you stop pedaling and it continues.
(01:15:13):
I think it's the same pleasure that we got when we do surfing or when we do skiing human beings feel good about this type of things. It's magical. And now how do you create that in music? So it is there in all the great composers and it's what makes it that they don't do things that are symmetrical, whether small composers do. In my way I started to devise gradually rhythm that created that. So for example, I've got almost trademarked rhythms that are the dotted quavers that you've seen like four dotted. So if people we are talking and they're not musicians, it's difficult, but basically there are three quarters of a beat. So if you've got four of them, it makes three beats. And if you've got a bar that is four beats, you could do this three quarter beats and then one beat after that and the one beat feels like suspension and then you go to the next bar. So you could do (singing) then (singing). Now for me, this note that is slightly longer, it's leading. So I find that when the rhythms are complex for the performance, sometimes they don't manage to play them because they play them like it was mathematic like (singing)
(01:16:39):
I say that for me these rhythms, there are rhythms that I found music to leading somewhere. So you can either imagine them as a crescendo and then or the descrecendo like (singing) that's on the one line. But what happens if during the same time you've got rhythms that are different and if the phrases don't start at the same time and don't have the same meter. So it creates more of this feeling of what I would say wellbeing when time stops but not when time stops because there is no reason that when time stops with rhythm that I think that rhythm became that important gradually. But to be honest, maybe if I had to look at my pieces from Opus 20 and things like that and then we had another thought, then I would be able to really analyze it. It's days at a point where it was conscious. I think that the research in rhythm to find a way to do it in the piano, on a piano solo instrument was when the piece that was before the Etude for solo piano called Reminiscence of Childhood, and that is opus 54 I think. And that it started and through the truth I explored it a lot.
(01:18:19):
And in the solo violin of course writing for solo violin, there is nothing harder for a composer I think apart from maybe writing for solo flute because then you really have only one voice. But I mean it's not for, I used to joke saying that Mozart was not stupid, he didn't do it. He understood it was too hard, Beethoven neither or neither Brahms. And Mozart didn't have the excuse that he was not a violinist because he was a violinist. Brahms could hide himself saying, oh I don't play the violin and Beethoven couldn't; he played. But it's very, very tough and I had to find, because I'm a violinist, find ways to apply this rhythm to this instrument. When it's in a big orchestra it's easier because you got so many voices but then the real virtuosity comes from the conductor because you are not an octopus and you might have the brain of an octopus or with your nine brains or something like that, but you have only very few things that you can do physically and you try to communicate with your arms but maybe also your shoulders so that the rhythm feels right.
(01:19:33):
And it's then that the conducting of my pieces can be very, very difficult because it's very virtuous in the conducting in that sense if you do it properly, not like a machine.
(01:19:46):
And I find that when I got to conduct some, probably one of the most difficult piece to conduct that I've written was a piano concerto because there's just so many times where how you feel that's a beat where is the beat how you feel it and where it is, it's not the same and you have to be very cautious. It's really, but that's part of what gives the feel of the concerto and some beats that feel and subtle because of that feel. If you got melodies that are fast playing and you got a motif that is seven notes and you play quintuplets, so they change. So you've got the feeling that every time that the motif comes through on the beat, but you're not because the beat is every five notes, not every seven. And if you do that in a few instruments, one doing it with six, one doing it with nine, a feeling of where is a real beat starts to feel a bit like on the board when there's a lot of tempest.
(01:20:57):
But it's how sort of sub rhythm can be an at the moment a big part of my music. But to be honest, I think that reason is an essential part of music and it's really, really interesting because when I was 20 I had to talk with a friend that a clarinetist and she said to me that people professional musicians fall into two categories. So when they're really young, the ones that are very good at rhythm and the ones that are very good at notes when there is dictation and I thought she had a point because when I was five or four you could do me any dictation with how many voices you wanted, the notes I had perfect pitch, I could hear anything. That's why I could listen to the radio and write it down. That reason I was not good in rhythm. And it's funny that now so good.
(01:22:00):
It's just funny how you turn something that was your weakness into your strongest point. But I think that it's because it's a communication urge. What I find interesting musically, but, and I always say because I do sometimes some teaching masterclass in terms of what I would call interpretation. So I teach professional musicians that would come to me or young professional musicians how you should play better than or something like that rather than my piece because it's the same. Music is music and I think that the most important thing is to have the right feel on the right gesture because if you have that first then the notes, then it'll be right. So that it's like why we don't, the real mistakes are these mistakes and these mistakes you can be sure that if you've done the right work they won't be there. So Rubenstein might make some mistakes of notes, but there's not one single mistake that is artistic because that you've got control about that and that's reason the right type of how you slow down That is exactly right and it feels right. That's a secret, but it's also the secret of writing. So that's a transitions are not, it's a little bit like when you watch a bad film or on tv, some of this series of, and if it's done and it's quite cheap in advance what's going to happen. It's so clear cut and nowadays this and they can do the TV advert in the middle because it's obvious that it's but to do it stuff, it happens naturally.
(01:23:53):
It's a magical piece.
Leah Roseman (01:23:56):
You're about to hear an excerpt from the second movement of the Borenstein concerto for piano and orchestra Opus 91 performed by Clélia Iruzun and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with Nimrod Borenstein conducting.(music)
(01:24:07):
I wanted to ask you, we haven't discussed identity at all and it might be interesting. Your name Nimrod is Hebrew and then when you moved to England to study your experience of that and being French and all of that.
Nimrod Borenstein (01:27:45):
It's an interesting thing. I think that it's a type of thing that you answer very differently given the period I think that you are made of experiences and I was born in Israel but I didn't grow up there. I was there the first three years of my life and then after that my parents were in France. My mom was French and I was in France until I was about 18 years old. No, I was 18. And then I came to England to do a master degree at the Royal College. And since then I've been in London for over 35 years.
(01:28:27):
When I was 30, when I interviews and people ask me about my, well the first time that it happened was actually I think 20 more than 20 years ago, I was commissioned a piece for the Jewish Music Festival. It was at the South Bank Royal Festival hall. And the woman that commissioned with the piece that was the head of the Jewish Music Institute said, so what is Jewish about your music? And I sort of said that if there was Jewish about my music, my music wouldn't be worth anything that what I was trying to do was to do great music. Beethoven was not German music, it was just great music because that annoyed me. But I think that if we look at it on a more broader sense, I think that you choose who are your God.
(01:29:29):
For me in music it was very much, I suppose still is the German School of Music, so Bach or German or Austrian. But the German world Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, Schubert Brahms doesn't mean that I'm not very close to others as well. But this were really what I would put on top of everything. And I thought like that and I thought that that's my main influence. And I thought like that until I was in my forties and it's not through the music itself that I started to sing differently that through when I was showing performers how to play it.
(01:30:21):
And then I realized that many, many times I would say to people, I would give example, I say that here I want of course here I want to sound to like better than piano, things like that. But here the atmosphere is a little bit like Debussy, this type of ephemeral saying, and sometimes I say I think about Shostakovich or something like that too because for musicians if give they're good musicians and you give them an image, a quick image, sometimes it can be that. Sometimes it can be. For example, for my string quartet, my first string quartet I had first violin was playing it not with right feel. And I said, well imagine what it would be if your Grandmother just died and you have the feeling that you couldn't do anything about it and then straight away play with the right feel. Sometimes you can do that like that, but sometimes it's more a stylistic thing then. So because of that, I think that my so many years that I grew up in France between the edge of three and 18 add a big influence that I thought. And also that is probably why it is the only language in which I don't have any accent. I speak French, people think that I'm French. My daughters have two daughters that are totally British because they were born here. They have no accent actually they have an accent in French.
(01:31:55):
So I think that all the literature that I read in French from my, whether it's Flaubert or Balzac or it's I love Proust has got a big influence. But having said that, I was so convinced that it was German because in literature, for example, when I was obsessed with Russian literature between age of 12 to 18, I read all Dostoevsky, all Tolstoy all, Turgeniev, you name it. Dostoevsky, My mom thought that I was too young to read it, but I loved it because extreme feelings and France I've got something that I disliked was that the fact that it was too polite to not in a way decorative I would say, and I reacted to that. But of course there is a very great French art and I think that I have some attraction to that and it is in me and for the UK.
(01:33:06):
When I came to the UK to London, from France, well close to 40 years ago, it was such a multicultural place. London, there were people from everywhere and France was very much France and that I felt was very, very exciting and there was just so much energy. And I arrived, I was 18 and I saw two things. I thought, oh, I love the women. They look pretty because I like women with blue or green eyes on red hair. And suddenly they were everywhere. It was not very Latin, so not in French. And then I thought, I love the music. So after two weeks I knew that I was going to stay.
Leah Roseman (01:33:53):
But you'd never heard of Elgar, for example, like the Nimrod?
Nimrod Borenstein (01:33:57):
No, because in France there was this that was weird sort of, would you believe it? Until I was 17, I had never heard about Elgar and I came here and one of the first thing that I wrote to my parents because we wrote letters because phone was too expensive, my dad is an artist, I wrote letters like a good boy every day when I arrived and I wrote about that, I discovered the English Brahms.
(01:34:30):
Because it was so strong. And normally when you're 18, it's very rare to discover someone that is, I mean it should be rare in somewhere these days people, I think that in many countries, schools don't do the right work. I mean when you come out of school, you should at least know the existence of the top artists that you shouldn't come out of school and do not know with Kafka that school has failed you. Yes. So people used to whistle the Elgar Nimrod in the Royal College when I was walking by, and I must say that I think that he's a far greater composer that is given to him. I think that, I don't know, I've never thought about it, but some composers like him or maybe Mahler in a different way, Mahler was unlucky, but probably because also he was Jewish so it didn't help, but very, very, very difficult time of beginning of career on even sort of, it's not long ago that it start to be very popular, different because he was very popular in England. So it's easier life in some way. But on the international stage, I think it could still improve his standing for me for example. I think that tend to, for myself, I think it's very useful to have a gradation of who I think are the greatest composers. And so that's the one that I think that are as the top for me. The one that has the top is the one that it doesn't matter what you listen after, you're not going to think that it's less. So you listen to Mozart and you think, oh, it's amazing. It cannot be better than that. And then you listen to Bach and oh, and then you can go back to Mozart. But it doesn't matter. It's not better. Then there's the composers of the second category that for me that when you listen to them you think, oh wow, it's incredible. Like say Chopin. But if I listen to Beethoven after Chopin, I think it's better.
Leah Roseman (01:36:45):
Okay.
Nimrod Borenstein (01:36:46):
I think that there is something I can't point again, it think it says something more. I would put in that the Chopin, the maybe, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, it's already to be in that second category. And then there the people of the third category that are below that, I would put people like Saint-Saens that for me, I'm not quite there with Chopin or Tchaikovsky for sure, but are still great composers. And I think that Elgar belongs to the second category on not the third for me he's a bigger composer than Saint-Saens and he's not recognized as such I think now, even now.
Leah Roseman (01:37:32):
So Nimrod, if we could go back to your childhood a little bit, I'm curious. So in the summers you'd go back to spend time with your grandmother in Israel?
Nimrod Borenstein (01:37:39):
Yes.
Leah Roseman (01:37:40):
Did you speak Hebrew with her or Yiddish? What were you speaking?
Nimrod Borenstein (01:37:44):
Nobody speaks Yiddish because Yiddish was from, it's not a very Israeli thing, it's from people in Diaspora. When I was really young, my mom met my dad at the concert when she was because would you believe it, there were still antisemitism. I mean now it's a nightmare. But she studied at Science Po, which is one of the grand ecoles they call in Paris for political science. It's like the Ivy League in America or but top, top. And there was a lot of antisemite, anti people, anti Israel. And there was a Spanish student that told her that because she was Jewish Jewish, she was evil and she was going to go to hell. But anyway, she decided when she was 20 something to organize a trip with some students to bring them to Israel to see the country and not have this prejudices or something like that. But she had some family. My mom was an orphan because her dad ended up in the camps and her mom died of cancer when she was 11.
(01:38:59):
Very courageous woman, but she had some family in Israel a bit removed and she did the trip with a fellow student and then stayed and there was a concept of chamber music organized in a home. And she was invited there because she liked music and so was my dad. And they met and my dad had arrived with another girl. No, that's not true. It's not my dad fault. My mom had arrived with a boy that had invited her to go to the concert and she went back home with my dad. But I'm saying they fell in love immediately. But my mom lived in France and they had 10 days in Israel. And then my dad proposed after 10 days.
Leah Roseman (01:39:50):
What language did they have in common? At that point,
Nimrod Borenstein (01:39:55):
My dad didn't speak French, my mom didn't speak Hebrew. They both spoke broken English,
(01:40:02):
Really broken English. And then sort of my mom answered. So when my dad proposed, she said she was very modern. She said, why don't you come and live with me in Paris for one year? And then we'll see. My parents told me that when they were living together without being married, it sounds strange these days, but the neighbors were looking at them like committing something wrong. But anyway, so after that they got married and my mom passed away a few years ago. But it was one of the greatest love stories that I know. My parents were very, very happy in marriage. But my dad, he had been to the Beaux-Arts. He was a child prodigy before, but he spoke a little bit of French, but he learned French very, very quickly. And so what is strange is when I was born, even if I was born in Israel, there was this story at that point that you do not confuse children in speaking several languages.
(01:41:09):
They bought this book by Dr. Spock, spoke about raising children, and it said, whatever you do, don't speak two languages. So they spoke French to me because they were expecting that we were going to stay in Israel, but they stayed only three years. So I didn't learn Hebrew. And when we came after that, they were a few years where we couldn't come back because my parents didn't have enough money because they were make three flights to Israel and back. So between the age and three and nine, we didn't go back. And my grandmother used to come, but then she would try to speak French to me. French was, she spoke six languages,
(01:41:50):
None of the languages that she spoke, well, she spoke sort of perfect in read books in German, Russian and English. And because she was from Poland, but she or she spoke many many languages. So when I started to go to Israel at the beginning, I didn't speak Hebrew, but children, you play on the beach. And I think after one year I spoke Hebrew, maybe beach Hebrew. But I don't know, it was fine in terms of managing. I never learned to read or write. It's really funny because if I speak to some Israeli people, we can know each other for years and then they write to me in Hebrew, not having a clue that I'm totally analphabetic because in Hebrew, I'm totally fluent now, but I can't write, or read. So that's how it happened.
Leah Roseman (01:42:55):
Very interesting. I noticed you wrote a piano book for beginners. You have these videos. Is that coming out of your experience as a parent? Where did that come from?
Nimrod Borenstein (01:43:07):
No, not at all. It's when I stopped being a violinist. And when I was a violinist, I would give a concert and I would get a thousand dollars or more for a concert and it was a good way to live. And then I stopped and suddenly there was not this income when we talked about being just a composer and I thought, I need to find a way to earn a living.
(01:43:35):
And for me, in terms of what I write, there have never been any compromise. I write what I feel is right and so I wouldn't write commercial music or something like that. I think that it's the worst thing that you can do for yourself. So I thought, okay, I'll teach. And also it's more flexible. So I had children that I taught piano on violin and there was these parents that came to me because I had heard that I made miracles. I find that conducting and teaching is similar. I was able to bring children that were just beginners to the level of eight years of piano in one year. So very quickly I got a lot of pupils and I got a call from these parents saying that they just arrived in London from New York, could I teach the child? And I said yes. And so what's her name like that? And they said she's three years old.
(01:44:40):
And then I had a look because I had not had this experience of that young before, if there was any method or anything to start and I couldn't find anything at all that was intelligent or I thought they're not. It's a human being, a three years old human being that was able to learn language and things that complicated. You can start to play straight away with both hands and you can read. There is no, it's quite impressive. But for that it needs to be to make sense. So I thought that I will have a method where you start with the right hand playing two notes on the left hand playing two notes because how difficult can read to four notes and then you would add one note every piece gradually. And being a composer, I wrote the 20 pieces in one afternoon because that's not really composing, that's a nice tune, sounds.
(01:45:45):
And at the beginning, every time that I was teaching someone, I would sort of sell them the self-published book. And then after that, for many years I didn't publish the book because I thought it would look bad. I thought if people will look at me and think, oh, he is a teacher or something, I don't know. I had this thing in my mind and my wife when we married, she saw that I was teaching our daughter with this book. She said, but it's fantastic. Why don't you have people benefit from it? And I said, oh, but people, and she said, what are you talking about? And so I decided yes. So I published it with my normal publisher of music just like that because I thought why not?
Leah Roseman (01:46:49):
Yeah,
Nimrod Borenstein (01:46:50):
I think that it's one of the benefits of age that you don't care that much. Maybe it's also that there's also probably a truth in it that when you're established people are less likely to work on you just because you've done something like that. If you're 25, any reason to put you down on, it's not easy being 20, I say
Leah Roseman (01:47:14):
Yeah. My last question for you, I was curious about accessing quiet because all musicians, we have so much music in our head, but for you it must be more of a problem. Well, for me it's hard to, I practice music, I play music, I listen to music and it's usually music going on in my head. So sometimes it's hard to quiet things down. But I was thinking for you as a composer, I'm wondering if it's very noisy in your brain.
Nimrod Borenstein (01:47:45):
I'll find to answer honestly, I think that when I found that a few of my French musicians that are not composers, you always found that you probably find that yourself are at least many people that I'm known. You have such a music illness, so let's say if you are ill, you've got temperature, then you've got this buzz of music that come run on, run on your head that you can see the notes that you can see yourself playing. But that's a musician problem when you are not, well, you are unwell on this thing happened. But that's not the normal situation, the normal situation. I would say that, no, I would say that I wouldn't like to say I'm in control, but yes, I have many things happening and I can decide what I want to hear in my head. But I think that it's a good, I like your question for something else.
(01:48:42):
That's the first time that it was some type of shock for me. It was maybe 10 years ago or 12 years ago, I was in the street and I was walking and I was singing a tune and I was really like it. So I said, but who is the composer? And I thought to myself, it's really painful. I can't remember who is the composer, that piece. It's amazing. And then I realized it was myself and I thought, well, that's the fact that I was singing my music for some reason I forgot it was mine. It was important for me. You know, I think that in a way to create something that people will have, you do something for people, you actually don't create it for people. You create it for yourself because you are all human beings. If you do it for yourself, other people have got the same humanity and will feel it too.
(01:49:50):
But for me, I always think that, my wife always tells me that I should say that because it's one of the essential message that having been with me 15 years. I say it's beauty, but beauty as I try to create beauty but not as something that is just nice and pretty nice and beauty is something different. Beauty has got something almost a moral element. And that's what on perfection something that it is something strange that we are whoever we are, we are imperfect beings. Beings sort of, we are just human beings with all our little things that can be annoying or table. But great artists are capable of creating something that is perfect when they are imperfect themselves, but the thing that they creates somehow is perfect. And it's a very, very, very strange, I mean philosophically it's an even sort of issue scientifically for scientist. It's strange.
(01:51:05):
If I take a composer that is a good composer to give as an example of that, you take a Wagner because terrible man and antisemitic and he stole the wife of his friend, you give it, he's not a nice man. And I think that, so how do you explain that for me? His music has got none of that. For me, the music of Wagner is moral. And when people tell me about the words, I think words are not music. You can put words in, but the real music is not the text. Even in an opera, it's not that you're not trying to do the best to write the music that goes with the text, but if you just wrote the text, Wagner wouldn't be, nobody would know that who is, it's not the text. That's the real, the expression of the music is in my, I think that there's nothing wrong with Wagner's music and I explain it that I think that there are two different types of morality and the artist, to be a great artist, you need to have impeccable artistic morality, which means that he would do nothing, you could pay millions of pounds, do whatever, and he'll not write a note that he doesn't consider. That's right. And that is essential for an artist if possible. It's good to have be also a good person, but it's not necessary for be a great artist. And Wagner is that he was not a good person, but he was moral in his art. I think that did this book by, I forgot the name, but it's called in French, but life is somewhere else. I can't remember how, because I read it first translated in French by Milan Kundera said that life is elsewhere. And I think that sometimes in art is like that. You create something that when it's created doesn't belong to you. If I was, I'm myself not a believer, I'm totally atheistic. But when I finish writing a work and sometimes it feels so much like I've not done it, it was just always there or that I can truly understand what sort of that someone like Bach would think that God gave him the notes. Because it's not that I'm expressing myself in the music, even if I do somehow, but I'm expressing a beauty that exists, but it's not mine. And that's what I'm trying to find andI think it's is magical. There are no tricks. Every time that there's a new piece and there's a piece of paper and it's white, or actually this days there not piece of paper I write straight on the computer, but it's the same. You can have 50 years of experience of that. The first few notes are a total mystery. There are not tricks for that. And I think that's the only explanation for why whoever, if you take the greatest composers of all times, so like Bach or Mozart, not all of their works are masterpieces. I think at most we could say 50%. And that's already a lot masterpiece because these first few notes are the things that are totally out of your hands. I mean, in some way. And if these first few notes are totally magical, magical, then and you are a great composer, the rest is full. You think, I don't know, Mozart 40 symphony (singing). It's just so magical. But not all the symphonies starts like that. And if it starts less magical, there's nothing that you can do it maybe very nice work, but it's not to be. And it's the first few notes. And when there's a white page, it's quite scary. The white page, I think it makes it interesting, but it's so scary.
Leah Roseman (01:55:14):
Well, on that note, I also say thank you so much for your time today. It was really inspiring to talk to you.
Nimrod Borenstein (01:55:20):
You're welcome.
Leah Roseman (01:55:22):
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed at leahroseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support this series, that would be wonderful. Or you can browse the collection of merch with a very cool, unique and expressive design from artist Steffi Kelly with notebooks, mugs, shirts, phone cases and more. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need the help of my listeners. All the links are in the show notes. Have a wonderful week.
