How’s Project 48 going?

How’s Project 48 going?

I’ve been asked this question many times in recent weeks/months by kind friends and colleagues, checking in on how this mad undertaking is evolving. I invariably find myself replying in terms of the admin and logistics: the performances dates are coming together, people are being really helpful, the jigsaw puzzle of diary planning is just about working, my inbox is slightly out of control, my colour co-ordinated spreadsheets and post-it note lists are just about doing the job.

But actually, the single biggest challenge of this project is the music. I realise there is lots of solo repertoire that is more obviously virtuosic: the feats of Liszt and Rachmaninoff, or Messiaen, or the extended techniques demanded by more recent composers. But Bach has very distinct challenges. The clarity needed to show everything that’s going on in the texture. The evenness of fingerwork needed to fire off flashy semiquavers, or create seamless tranquility. The perception and contextual knowledge needed to decode the composer’s clues about what tempo and mood will work, when neither are indicated in words. The mental understanding of the detailed structures Bach generates, moving left to right through the page, and also of the interaction of the different voices, top to bottom on the stave – none of the music makes sense without this. 

And within Bach’s wider output, the fugues are particularly challenging on the brain. The joy of spinning multiple lines of counterpoint and shaping the dialogue between the different voices is matched by the other side of the coin: the density of the work needed to prepare this repertoire well.

Preparing four hours of music is a lot, but no more than I might often be working on for a few different concert programmes simultaneously. I think, however, that if the four hours were made up of a few big sonatas, each with three or four movements, it would weirdly be more manageable. Here there are 48 different plates to keep spinning (or, really, 96, as each of the 48 has a prelude and a fugue). That’s a lot of plates. I’ve coded them all by how hard they are and how confident I am with them, and I keep lists of the ‘hot spot’ phrases that need revisiting carefully every day. I’ve spent time making sure that potentially ‘similar’ pieces have distinct character identities, so they’re each painting something different – but it’s a lot to juggle. 

One of the most obvious challenges of the set – the fact that it features music in every single major and minor key – is also one that is currently driving me round the bend. As a musician you expect to use all the keys, some frequently, some more rarely: they’re all languages you have to be comfortable communicating in. And yet, even the best linguists sometimes struggle to adjust immediately from one language to the next. Although I’ve played music in every key before, I don’t think I’ve ever done a concert (apart from my one previous performance of the whole of Book 1 of this collection) which features every single key in quick succession. There are 24 of them! It’s surprisingly tiring on the brain.

There are lots of psychological traps in all this too. Performers are (by and large) notorious self-doubters. Interested parties comment that they are looking forward to hearing ‘my interpretation’. How can I ever claim to have ‘an interpretation’ of a collection that’s widely held to be one of the greatest masterpieces of all time?! My thoughts on the music keep changing, and will definitely do so over the coming months, and hopefully for years beyond. I’m not ‘a baroque musician’ (actually, I don’t think there’s any such thing, but we all have days when our minds feed us unhelpful thoughts). Will others suss me out as being a fraud? I’m not ‘a solo pianist’ (again, not a thing I believe in, but tell that to the voice on my shoulder on unhelpful days). In a normal year perhaps 10% of my performing, if that, is solo work. I love musical collaboration for the sparks that fly and the magic that happens between musicians, and that’s why I mostly work in song and chamber music – I don’t think of myself as ‘hiding behind the piano’ – but this project means spending much more time alone on the stage than usually in my work. (Incidentally, this music is chamber music really, I just get to play all of the parts…) Lots of these pieces have appeared on Grade 7 or 8 exams syllabuses over the years. What mark would I get in those exams now?! I have played two concerts to audiences in the last fourteen months, and have in that same time played only a small number of different pianos. Will I remember how to do any of this?

Many times in my practice in recent weeks I’ve found myself dishing out to myself the advice I know I’d give students of mine. Practise this slowly, take the lines apart, hear it in your head first, remember to breathe. Stop and have a cup of tea. But maybe the most important concept that I hope to impart to all students, including myself is this: we are all just people, with something to say. As musicians we say it through sound. But we’re just people, with something to say.

That much I can do.