BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
It’s not often a musician has the opportunity to perform a “dream piece” with an old classmate.
That’s what pianist Aura Go is looking forward to this weekend when she hits the Metropolis New Music Festival stage with long-time collaborator Tomoe Kawabata.
Helsinki-based Aura first met Tomoe, also a pianist, when they were students at the Australian National Academy of Music in 2007. Their collaborations have resulted in their first CD release Five Rocks in a Japanese Garden, and a mutual interest in bringing rare music to light. In her own right, Aura has studied and performed across the globe and studied at institutions from Yale to the Sibelius Academy. She talks us through her love of Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen ahead of the pair’s Melbourne Recital Centre performance on May 21.
You have a tendency of bringing new music and rarely performed compositions to light. What inspires you about works that haven’t (yet) made it into the mainstream?
One of the things I love about being a musician is discovering new things. Music is a living art form, so it seems a shame to only focus on a tiny selection of mainstream repertoire. It’s exciting and rewarding to explore some of the wonderful music that is rarely performed. I also find it inspiring to collaborate with composers on new works, and this is something I’m continuing to do in Finland and Australia. Working on new music informs the way I approach old music, and vice versa – it keeps me fresh and open-minded. When playing well-known works from the mainstream repertoire (which I really enjoy doing as well!), I always imagine what it would be like to experience the piece as a brand new composition. This alleviates the heavy burden of performance tradition, which often creates preconceptions about pieces, and blocks performers from discovering aspects of the music for themselves.
So why the Messiaen? What about the work has made it a “dream piece” for you?
This piece has been on our wish list for years! Apart from Messiaen’s incredibly effective and colourful piano writing, what makes this piece so special is that it takes the listener on an intensely moving journey. From the mystery of its opening to the unbridled ecstasy of the final movement, I find it a powerful and mesmerising work that always leaves me feeling emotionally uplifted and cleansed. Tomoe and I are are so thrilled to have the chance to perform it for the first time.
You met Tomoe Kawabata in 2007 when you were students. Back then, did you think you’d still be collaborating for a decade to come? What’s most important to you about the musical relationship you share?
Finding a special connection with another musician is a gift, and makes for some of the most memorable and fulfilling experiences. Tomoe and I became good friends when we were both students at ANAM. We started playing together for fun around that time, and only later started taking on bigger projects, such as a CD of contemporary Japanese music that we made a few years ago. As I moved to the USA and then to Finland after studying at ANAM, it’s been a bit of a challenge to get together as often as we’d like. But now we are planning concerts in Australia and Japan and already have a concert lined up in Finland, so we are looking forward to developing our collaboration even further. Working together is intense and also a lot of fun! I learn so much about my own playing and about music from rehearsing with Tomoe, who also happens to have two of the best ears I have ever encountered!
What are some of the challenges of having a second pianist perform on stage with you?
I think two pianos is the most uncompromising form of chamber music, due to the fact that the piano attack (i.e. the beginning of each note) is so precise and exposed. It can be easy to fall into the trap of playing rather vertically, out of fear of not being exactly together. But this actually makes good ensemble even more difficult to achieve, in addition to producing boring playing! So for me the challenge is to maintain a natural approach to the instrument and to avoid allowing fears about ensemble to affect musical decisions. This is something Tomoe and I are discovering now while preparing the Messiaen. There are certain ‘easy’ solutions for the sake of precision, but they are not necessarily the most inspiring musical choices, so we want to avoid them.
You’re revisiting Australia from your home in Helsinki. Why did you leave – and what’s it feel like to come back? Will you ever call this your home again?
For a while, I was undecided about whether I wanted to pursue piano or orchestral conducting as my main focus, and that’s when I found out about the Sibelius Academy in Finland, which has a great reputation for its conducting program. But as I started devoting more and more time to conducting, I realized I missed playing! It’s funny that I ended up at the Sibelius Academy after all, but it happened almost 10 years later than I expected, and I’m there as a pianist rather than as a conductor.
I loved my years of studying in Melbourne, but I also had an urge to travel and experience life and music in other parts of the world. It’s always fantastic to come back home, and I’m so impressed by how much the classical music scene in Melbourne has thrived over the past few years – especially for chamber music; there are a lot of wonderful things going on now. Living overseas has also made me see Australia in a completely new light; each time I come back, I notice and appreciate things that I had always taken for granted. I tend not to plan too far into the future, since life has already taken many unexpected turns! But I’d certainly be very happy to call Melbourne my home again sometime in the future!
You’ve studied across some major music institutions – from Yale to the Sibelius Academy, Australian National Academy of Music, and Victorian College of the Arts. How have you found the differences in the ways various countries teach music?
I think we are living in such an international age that at its core, the music education I’ve experienced in Australia, the United States, and Finland is basically the same. The main difference is perhaps how music and the arts are viewed within different cultures. For example, in Finland, music is a normal part of the elementary school curriculum. Even though the population is only about five million, there are many professional orchestras, opera companies and music festivals throughout the country, making music a much more central part of the culture than it is in Australia. Having said that, one important thing I have realized from travelling and studying in different parts of the world is that Australia’s highest standard of playing absolutely stands up to the highest standards of playing at major institutions around the world. Imagination, creativity and heartfelt music-making are the same everywhere!
Image supplied.
