BY CELINE CHONG, LEAD WRITER (QLD)
One pianist – check.
Oh, two pianists? If you say so — check.
Wait, 10 pianists?!
Make no mistake: Skerzo Music is bringing together 10 of Australia’s most passionate young pianists to form our newest all-piano chamber ensemble.
Seeking to showcase the excitement of piano duo and duet playing, as well as the breadth and beauty of the repertoire, Skerzo is undoubtedly one to watch. (And, with so many pianos and pianists in the building, they won’t be hard to spot!)
In their debut concert, all 10 pianists will perform — and up to four of them will perform simultaneously at any given time in the program. In the lead-up, we catch up with ensemble member Meyrem Ogutveren to talk about all things piano and the Skerzo journey so far.
Hi Meyrem, so lovely to chat with you! So tell us, what was the driving inspiration behind Skerzo? How did the idea of forming a piano collective come about (and how do you decide who plays with whom)?!
Skerzo was formed because we all had a desire to be performing musicians, but have a very competitive market to step into. We all started our music degrees at the same time back in 2015, and we were friends since the get-go. Since finishing, we’ve realised that we’re all still committed to performing, and we just need a stage to play on. It seemed natural to get together and make something happen for ourselves.
Actually, one of our members, Dayoung, was already in a musical group with a similar kind of aim, so we used that as a jumping-off point for our idea at the start. It’s pretty rare for a group of this size to be working as one musical entity; usually it’s either a band or chamber group who make music and promote themselves, or sometimes you might have artists collectives where there’s a larger number of people and they all kind of support each other with gigs. I think we strike a balance in between them.
We’re a really close-knit group, so it’s possible for our audience to actually get to know all of us, but we still get a lot of flexibility in who we get on stage playing what. It’s not all that hard to decide who partners up, we just go based on what music we want to play.
Ultimately, everyone always has a partner, and we can always make the best music we can with people we know.
Tell us a bit about the organisational process during your start-up. There must have been a lot to do! How did you make sure that all 10 (!!) of you were on the same page?
It certainly has been an interesting challenge. Having an ensemble this big means a lot of opinions, conflicting schedules, and a lot of compromise and patience. I think all of us underestimated how much work it would be to get this up and running, especially with so many awesome ideas for future concerts.
I think the most important thing for us has been that we all want this to succeed, and so we’re okay with trying things out, going back on them, redrawing plans, and continuously making changes to see what works. It’s been an exciting learning experience in the past eight months, and I think we’ve learnt to work better and harder together because of it.
What’s so special about playing in an ensemble of pianists? How do you approach having a unanimous timbre across the whole ensemble? Do you consider it a challenge?
It’s definitely a challenge! You’ve really hit the nail on the head about the timbre. In any other small ensemble, you have timbral stratification — the listener hears the instruments differently since they’re giving off recognisably different sounds. That way, you can have a cello playing one line, a violin playing another, and piano playing some figuration in the background, and it’s possible to comprehend everything at the same time.
In piano ensembles, especially duos, unless the listener is watching or has a really keen ear, it’s impossible to tell who’s playing what. So they have to be playing with the exact same timing and the exact same understanding of the shape, or it’ll be a mess.
On top of that, the action is so sharp on a piano, there’s much less room for error when it comes to timing than for a choir or orchestra. It’s like sticking two drummers in a rock band and expecting it to come out as one coherent beat. It requires a lot of time playing together and a real connection between the two pianists. You can’t hold anything back when you’re rehearsing. If you think something about the phrasing, or if a rhythm isn’t quite right, or you want a ritardando to be a little more dramatic, you have to say it, or it’s not going to come out together.
I think it’d be a lot harder for us if we hadn’t known each other for so long. We all know the challenge and we understand that you have to put your ego to one side and listen to your partner. Even if you disagree on an interpretive matter, you still compromise, because the most important thing is being on the same wavelength.
How about from an audience perspective? How do you think this differs from other chamber combinations involving piano, string, and wind players?
Pianists often don’t have the opportunity to work with other pianists or instrumentalists, especially as we’re usually known as the soloist. That’s why I think we’re special to have the close bond between the 10 of us to make something like this happen, not just for us but for audiences, too!
The difficulty of being a pianist is that we have to be all the instruments. In the repertoire for our concert, we have to sound like an orchestra or the soloist or the singer, usually at the same time. We have various pieces, some written for piano, some originally for orchestra and transcribed for piano, and some written for orchestra but made pianistic. It’s about getting past the idea of the piano and letting the music shine out.
When the music gets mired in the nitty gritty of timing and tone and notes, it all starts to become a jumble and the audience either has to strain their brain to try to seek some actual beauty out of it, or just turn off. It’s the same with any ensemble; the music is what we’re listening to, not the instrument.
I don’t think any instrumentation is inherently better or worse than another, just different. So long as you’re playing together, bouncing off each other’s ideas, feeling each other’s energy, then the audience forgets they’re listening to two pianos.
Your debut concert features works by Bolcom, Greenbaum, Khatchaturian, Saint-Saens and Prokofiev — not names you see together every day! How did you choose this program?
The repertory was actually one of the easiest parts for us. We had a lot of pieces in mind we really wanted to give a shot; about half the program is stuff we’ve performed before and kept in our repertory. It is a program that serves to kickstart Skerzo’s debut and set the tone for future concerts.
Our priority in curating the program is to be playing music which suits our personalities, which I think we’ve done. Once you’re playing music that you can really own, then the program writes itself. We have a keen interest to expand into modern genres as well!
Logistics of piano-moving aside, are there any crazy combinations on the horizon (more than two pianos, eight or 16 hands)?!
Of course! It would be a shame for us not to utilise how many hands we have available. As we grow bigger and are able to have access to more than two pianos, there is a lot of 16-hand fun that we’re eager to explore, commissioning compositions from anyone up to the task to even have all of us on stage at once.
We also have some avid composers and arrangers among our members, so anything is possible and the sky’s the limit!
See Skerzo’s debut at Trinity College Chapel, 7pm August 3. Keep up to date with Skerzo on Facebook.
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