Pianist Alan Mandel
A Conversation with Bruce Duffie
Mandel, Alan (Roger), gifted American pianist
and teacher, was born in New York on July 17, 1935. He began taking
piano lessons with Hedy Spielter at the incredible underage of 3-1/2,
and continued under her pianistic care until he was 17. In 1953 he entered
the class of Rosina Lhévinne at the Juilliard School of Music (B.S.,
1956; M.S., 1957), and later took private lessons with Leonard Shure (1957–60).
In 1961 he obtained a Fulbright fellowship and went to Salzburg, where
he studied advanced composition with Henze (diplomas in composition
and piano, 1962). He completed his training at the Accademia Monteverdi
in Bolzano (diploma, 1963).
He made his debut at Town Hall in New York in 1948. In later years, he
acquired distinction as a pianist willing to explore the lesser-known
areas of the repertoire, from early American music to contemporary scores.
He taught piano at Pennsylvania State University (1963–66), was head
of the piano dept. at the American University in Washington, D.C. (from
1966). He founded the Washington (D.C.) Music Ensemble (1980) with the
aim of presenting modern music of different nations.
As a pianist, he made numerous tours all over the globe. One of Mandel’s
chief accomplishments was the recording of the complete piano works
of Charles Ives. [CD re-issue is shown below.] He composed a Piano
Concerto (1950), a Symphony (1961), as well as piano pieces, and songs.
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In October of 1992, Alan Mandel was in Chicago, and graciously agreed
to meet me for a conversation. He was very good-natured, and along
with the deep understanding of the repertoire, there was much laughter during
our chat.
Needless to say, we spoke of many things, but he discussed the works
of Charles Ives at great length. As usual, names which are links on
this webpage refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website.
Portions of the interview were aired on WNIB, Classical 97, and now [2025]
I am pleased to present the entire encounter.
Bruce Duffie: You’re a pianist, and a teacher, and
an artistic administrator. How do you balance those various sides
of your career?
Alan Mandel: It’s very difficult, but somehow
it all works out. It’s a matter of being organized, and not allowing
the administration to erase time to practice.
BD: In your head, you’re primarily a pianist?
Mandel: Yes, I’m a pianist more than anything
else, but I try to do as well as I possibly can as a teacher and as an
administrator.
BD: What kind of courses are you teaching?
Mandel: I’m the head of piano, in addition to
being the head of music at the American University in Washington, D.C.
I teach piano lessons, but I’ve also taught a lot of courses on
Ives, and Beethoven, and theory, and so on. I did graduate work
at the University of Pennsylvania with George Crumb and George Rochberg, and
I want to say after all the people you’ve told me you’ve interviewed,
it is an honor to be interviewed by you.
BD: It’s my pleasure. It’s nice to find
a performer that plays a lot of these composers that I have interviewed.
You’ve made somewhat of a specialty of seeking out modern living
composers to play their music. [Vis-à-vis the recording
of Ives songs shown at right, see my interviews with Evelyn Lear, and Thomas Stewart.]
Mandel: Yes. While it’s wonderful to play
the millionth performance of the Appassionata sonata of Beethoven,
it’s much more exciting to do unusual music, and to present it to audiences.
BD: Is it more significant to play the first performance
of a new work, or perhaps the fifth performance of an almost-new work?
Mandel: That’s immaterial. I enjoy giving
either the first performance or the fifth performance. Very often,
if I give the fifth performance, it might be in a different city, or in
some other year.
BD: A number of composers have mentioned that
getting first performances is not too hard, but it is that third and fourth
and fifth performance which are more difficult.
Mandel: Yes, I totally agree with you, but I feel
I can be of most service and give the biggest contribution if I play
music by living composers, and by unusual nineteenth-century composers.
BD: Do you always seek out the non-standard repertoire?
Mandel: Yes, of course. I live in Washington,
the city with the greatest possible library in the world. The Library
of Congress has, for example, a better French collection than the Bibliothèque
in Paris. Take my word for it!
BD: When you get a piece of music in your hand,
how do you decide if it is worth the time and effort to learn it, and play
it in public?
Mandel: That takes experience just like a conductor.
I have the ability of looking at music and being able to hear it.
BD: Then what are you looking for, or what are
you listening for in your mind’s ear that will touch you?
Mandel: That’s a very good question. I think
it was Artur Schnabel who said that preference is a very mysterious thing.
I might like something and somebody else might not. Again,
that comes with experience, and audiences will have to trust me. They
might like it, or they might not. It’s a matter of emotional appeal,
expressive appeal, and communication, perhaps in that order.
BD: Can I assume that if you do take the trouble
to learn it and work on it and present it, it has touched you?
Mandel: Very definitely, yes. That’s the
first order of business in my opinion.
BD: Are there some specific things that you look
for, or do you know immediately just reading through it once that it will
work or not work?
Mandel: I don’t know. Pieces I have performed
have had such a broad range of styles. I don’t know what turns me
on to a piece, but it’s that mysterious ‘je ne sais quoi’. [Both
laugh] I’ve performed a huge amount of American music. American
music used to be my specialty, and perhaps it still is, but as the director
of the Washington Music Ensemble, we’ve given quite a number of festivals
of music of different countries, such as France, Germany, Scandinavia,
and Canada, as well as three festivals of the music of the United States.
BD: Was the music all by living composers from
those countries?
Mandel: Almost all, yes. Sometimes it was
by dead composers, but they live through their music. Sometimes
we go back. Most of our festivals have included music by unusual
composers. Lately, we’ve been doing some standard repertoire because
we’ve got to keep our audience, although we have built a name for doing
unusual music.
* * *
* *
BD: With your experience of new music, you don’t
need to give specific examples, but are there pieces which either fairly
soon or in the future will take their places alongside other standard pieces?
Mandel: I don’t know. I hope so. It’s
too early to tell. I have found some great composers as a result
of my research both in the twentieth century and in the nineteenth century.
It all started with Charles Ives. My father-in-law, Elie Siegmeister first played
for me the Ives ‘Concord’ Sonata, and at that time I didn’t much
like it. But some months later I looked at it again, and I decided
I liked it. I scheduled it for concerts, and in New York the head
of a Desto Records happened to be in the audience, and he asked me to record
the complete works of Charles Ives. That’s how it all started.
From there I did forty pieces by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, who, in my opinion,
was the first great American composer. [CD is shown at left.]
BD: He is sometimes called America’s First Super-star.
Mandel: That’s right.
BD: [Being quietly skeptical] If he was
such a great composer, and was a super-star, why has his music essentially
been forgotten today?
Mandel: He had a renaissance in 1969 with the 100th
year of his death, and some of his pieces are better forgotten. [Laughs]
But there are definitely some minor masterpieces by him.
BD: Minor masterpieces, and also some major masterpieces?
Mandel: I would say so. The Banjo,
which he wrote when he was sixteen years old, is extraordinary, and the
Souvenir de Porta Rico is also a masterpiece, as well as Bamboula,
and some of the other piano pieces. His most famous pieces were The
Last Hope and The Dying Poet, which were very well made pot-boilers.
When I was a little boy, my mother used to play for the silent movies. She’s
ninety-four years old now, and I remember as a little boy hearing her
playing those Gottschalk pieces, as well as rags.
BD: Your newest record is of Rags by various composers.
[CD is shown at the bottom of this webpage.]
Mandel: Yes, that’s right. I think I was
the first pianist to combine in concert serious music and ragtime.
BD: Do they really go together?
Mandel: It works with American music. It
doesn’t work with late Beethoven, certainly, but with Siegmeister, or
Ives, or other such composers, it works beautifully.
* * *
* *
BD: You’ve worked with a number of composers who
are still living. When you’re working on their music, do you help
them as much as they help you?
Mandel: Sometimes I would say so. Sometimes
composers need to hear their music, and they might make changes.
It’s very interesting to work with living composers. Some of them
have a very, very clear idea of what they want, such as Elie Siegmeister,
for example. He knew exactly what he wanted, and George Rochberg
in a different way, knew exactly what he wanted. With some other
composers, such as George Crumb, or Robert Starer, it is like
pulling teeth to get them to criticize and make suggestions.
BD: Does working with living composers give you
additional insight to those who are no longer alive?
Mandel: I think so. Partly from experience,
and partly from my own interpretation, I try to ascertain to the greatest
possible degree, as much as possible what the composer would have wanted.
BD: Is there only one way of playing any piece
of music?
Mandel: No. It might be different on Monday
or Tuesday, but I have a very clear idea of what I want to do, otherwise
I wouldn’t do it. Some pieces I’ve been playing for many, many years.
With the ‘Concord’ Sonata, I must have given over a thousand performances
of that.
BD: [Somewhat surprised] Really???
Mandel: Yes, and every time I go back to it,
I learn something new in it, and something changes.
BD: Does your interpretation always grow?
Mandel: It always grows. That’s what I
think makes a great piece, because it can never be complete.
BD: Are there some pieces that you can get to
the bottom of right away, and then there’s nothing more?
Mandel: Yes, sure, and after one or two performances
it becomes a little boring, and I go to something else.
BD: [Playing Devil’s
Advocate] It becomes boring for you, would it necessarily become
boring for an audience that’s not heard it before?
Mandel: If it becomes boring to me, then inevitably
it will eventually become boring to an audience. But I wouldn’t
find it satisfying to play it any longer.
BD: You have to have the sparkle in order to convince
an audience?
Mandel: Yes, sure. I have to have the sparkle,
and the emotional charge, and the challenge. Then, hopefully, the
audience will respond.
BD: Again, without necessarily naming names, are
there some pieces that you looked at twenty years ago and felt they had
nothing, and then you come back to them and found there was something
really interesting?
Mandel: Yes, I would say so. The first time
I heard the ‘Concord’ Sonata I didn’t like it, and then the second
time, some months later, I loved it. For many years, I didn’t
like Elie Siegmeister’s First Piano Sonata, the ‘American’ Sonata,
although I played it a few times. Then lately I played it in a few
different places, including Washington, and I decided I really like it.
[CD of all 5 piano sonatas is shown at right.]
BD: Is it not unreasonable to expect a reaction
to it by the audience when they only get to hear it once in a concert?
Mandel: [Thinks a moment] I hope that I
communicate with them, and I hope they like it. It’s my fervent
hope that they like it!
* * *
* *
BD: As a performing pianist, how conscious are
you of the audience that is sitting out there to your right?
Mandel: I try to think of them as a living entity,
and I try to communicate with them. However, at the same time I’m
concentrating as fully as possible on the music. I’m at the service
of the music, and the audience is the service of the music.
BD: When you’re concentrating on the music, is
that technically or emotionally?
Mandel: Emotionally. The technique is just
the means to the end. Hopefully the technique is all there.
BD: Once you’ve got all of the technical problems
solved, that’s when you really begin to learn the piece?
Mandel: I begin to learn the piece right away
as a concert performance. If I do that, then it’s much more interesting.
Believe it or not, then the technique is much better.
BD: Do you play differently in a small hall with
a couple of hundred people, and a large hall of two or three thousand?
Mandel: I enjoy playing more for two or three
hundred people, but if I play for two thousand people, that’s fine, too.
Even if there’s just one person, I enjoy it. I have a wonderful time
giving concerts. I’m very lucky in life to be able to give concerts.
Some people hate their jobs, but that doesn’t include me!
BD: About how many concerts do you give each year?
Mandel: Around fifty. That’s about as much
as I can handle, because I also have teaching responsibilities towards my
students, which I take very seriously.
BD: Are you impressed with the talent that you
hear coming out of the fingers of your students?
Mandel: Yes, I would say in Washington, sure.
I have a couple of very fine students every year, and some others that
are quite good.
BD: I assume you encourage all of your students
to work on new music as well as old music.
Mandel: As much as possible, however I also enjoy
very much giving classes. It’s a different kind of experience, and
giving a class is just like a performance.
BD: You prepare for it, and rehearse, and then
deliver it?
Mandel: Yes, but I don’t read from notes.
I have main works from which I discuss different ideas.
BD: You have notes but no script?
Mandel: That’s right.
BD: That’s the same way I do it when I’m giving
a lecture. I’ll make some notes, and then refer to them just to
make sure that I’m talking about the next sequential topic. But I
don’t have a written script.
Mandel: That’s right. But I’ve also been
very lucky to be able to do a lot of traveling in connection with giving
concerts. I’ve enjoyed very much being in fifty different countries.
BD: When you go to other countries, do you take
a lot of American music with you?
Mandel: Sure. That’s what I’m known for,
so that’s what I do, and that’s what I’m asked for. I’ve played in
very sophisticated countries, and very unsophisticated countries.
BD: Do you tailor your program at the sophistication
level for the audience, or for the country?
Mandel: To a slight extent, but mostly I
play whatever I’m very interested in at the moment.
BD: Okay, then what are you interested in this
moment?
Mandel: At this moment I’ve been playing
a lot of music by Ives, Gottschalk, Siegmeister, and Irwin Bazelon. I did
something last year which was very unusual, and which I’ve always wanted to
do, which is the last three sonatas by Beethoven, along with the ‘Tempest’.
BD: Eventually will you wind up with all thirty-two
in your fingers?
Mandel: At one time or another, I have played
almost all of them. You never know... it will be however the spirit
strikes!
BD: Is it particularly refreshing to come to a
known Beethoven masterpiece after playing all kinds of American music,
and being away from the Beethoven style for a long time?
Mandel: The process is very much the same.
I just study the music, and do whatever I think is right. However,
the style might be completely different. I grew up in New York City,
in the Bronx, and so it’s part of me. There’s no getting away from
it. On the other hand, I’ve studied Beethoven since I was four or
five years old, and so that’s also very much part of me.
BD: I read that you started taking piano lessons
at aged three and a half.
Mandel: That’s right. My mother took me
to The Wizard of Oz, and I came back and played music on the piano.
So she took me right away to some teacher that had been recommended.
BD: Is three and a half too young to really start?
Mandel: It all depends. No, not necessarily.
My brother who is seven years older than I, had to be forced to
practice. I laughed when he made a mistake, and he didn’t like that!
[Both laugh]
BD: But you just had to be dragged away from the
piano?
Mandel: Pretty much, yes. I had piano teachers
who were really fascist. You can’t imagine, but it all worked out
well in the end.
* * *
* *
BD: You travel all over the country and all over
the world, and in each place you are presented with a different piano.
How long does it take you before that instrument is yours?
Mandel: A couple of chords. You just find
your voice, and you do it. I’ve played on wonderful instruments.
At Cornell University [in Ithaca, New York], they had a wonderful Bösendorfer
that Badura-Skoda
had given them. It has two different actions. One of them
was very brilliant for contemporary music, and the other was soft and
velvety for Schubert and Mozart. It happened that the first half
of my concert was Schubert and Mozart, and the second half was contemporary.
So then I asked them to change the action, which they did.
BD: [Surprised] They came on stage and pulled
out the old action and put in the new one???
Mandel: [Smiles] Yes. So that was
heaven. On the other hand, when I played in Lebanon, the piano
tuner tuned the lower half of the piano, and forgot to tune the upper
half. I played George Crumb on that, and whenever I made a histrionic
gesture, the audience applauded. So that was fun too, even though
the piano left something to be desired.
BD: Your left hand was okay, but the right hand
was not?
Mandel: That’s right. You do the best you
can, that’s all. Some years ago I told my mother about something
bad that had happened to one of my friends. At her age, she can
be philosophical, and she said that even if it’s snowing today, one of
these days the sun will come out!
BD: Just like Annie!
Mandel: That’s right. [Both laugh]
BD: Having been a pianist herself, is she particularly
pleased that you have become a performer on the instrument?
Mandel: Yes. She’s proud of me, and I’m
proud of her.
BD: Would she have been equally proud if you’d
been a violinist or an oboe player?
Mandel: I think so... after all I’m her son!
BD: You mentioned that the Lebanese audience
would react when you made a gesture. How are audiences different
from town to town, and country to country?
Mandel: Sometimes they’re more or less demonstrative.
Scandinavian audiences are a little bit less demonstrative, but underneath
it all they’re very warm. Although it doesn’t appear that way, they
really are. Some audiences go wild, and being a performer, I enjoy
that. I just think of them as an enthusiastic positive mass of
people. I try to play for a particular person in the audience who
seems to be sympathetic, but that’s a personal thing.
BD: What advice do you have for audiences that
come to hear one of your recitals?
Mandel: Please don’t cough! [Both laugh]
Try to be positive, and try to be open. I don’t seem to have
any problems with audiences. I enjoy them. I have a ball when
I give concerts.
BD: How do you design your programs? Do
you try to include some old music and some new music?
Mandel: Sometimes chronologically, sometimes according
to idea. I’ve tried out all kinds of different ideas.
BD: Some work and some don’t?
Mandel: That’s right.
BD: Of the ones that don’t, might they work in
other places?
Mandel: They might, but if they don’t work, I
usually don’t try them again. Sometimes I’ve given concerts that
are decidedly non-chronological. If something is a real blockbuster,
or it’s very profound, it could work very well as a last piece no matter
when it comes from. Sometimes I like to put contemporary music
in the middle, so that the audience has to stay for it.
BD: Put it last before the intermission?
Mandel: Yes, or right after the intermission,
so they’re refreshed. It all depends. But the main thing is
that I have a wonderful time giving concerts.
BD: Do you also play chamber music and orchestral
concerts?
Mandel: Oh, very much so. As my career has
worked out, I haven’t given as many orchestral concerts as solo concerts
and chamber concerts. Being Director of the Washington Music Ensemble,
that has been a wonderful experience. [Pauses a moment] Let
me say a few things about Chicago. You have a wonderful city.
I had a terrific time going to the Art Institute. It has a terrific
American collection, as well as a wonderful French Impressionist collection,
and a few others. I enjoyed the Art of the Ancient Americas very
much.
BD: This is all very visual, and yet your music
is purely aural. Do you try to get some kind of visual into the
aural presentation of your music?
Mandel: Sometimes, but the audience can take what
they like from it. That’s something which is silent and personal,
and has nothing to do with what comes out. At home I do have an art
collection, so in addition to a piano they’re both sides of me. I
feel that there’s some union there.
* * *
* *
BD: In the music that you play, where is the balance
between the artistic achievement and an entertainment value?
Mandel: I don’t know the answer to that. That’s
for you to figure out. I just do something that’s uncomplicated
and simple. I find the music, and by some mysterious process I like
it, and I work on it as hard as I possibly can. Then I perform it,
and I hope it’s both expressive, and communicative according to the highest
values of Western civilization, as well as being entertaining.
BD: So you want it all!
Mandel: Yes, sure! I want to have fun, and
I’ve been told that I’m a very athletic and visually
interesting pianist when I perform. So I hope it’s entertaining.
BD: [Gently protesting] But I thought
that the entertainment should come from the spirit of the music, not the
gestures.
Mandel: Yes, that’s right. The gestures
are totally unconscious. Different people have different styles.
When Arthur Rubinstein played the Ritual Fire Dance [Falla], his
hands went up and down very high. He said he could play it with
his hands going not so high, but audiences wouldn’t like it that much.
So that was conscious. I’ve tried to play consciously in a very
demonstrative way, but somehow it doesn’t work as well... at least I
don’t think it does. It could be just my feeling...
BD: It would be interesting to play exactly the
same concert two nights in a row, one very quietly and the other very flamboyantly,
and see what kind of reaction you get.
Mandel: Of course, when I play an Adagio
from a late Beethoven sonata, I don’t go all over the place.
BD: Let me ask a big philosophical question. What’s
the purpose of music?
Mandel: The purpose of music to touch people,
to communicate the highest possible poetry and drama, as well as excruciating
pain and passion, and to express the highest possible values of Western
civilization.
BD: Always the highest?
Mandel: No, sometimes the lowest. There
is a broad range of emotion.
BD: Once you’ve got the highest and you’ve got
the lowest, what about everything in between? Do you want all of that,
too?
Mandel: Everything, yes. It’s a universe
out there.
BD: Can you bring all of this in one concert,
or is this over a series of concerts?
Mandel: I try to bring it every time. If I
play the ‘Concord’ Sonata or the ‘Hammerklavier’, that’s
a very wide range of emotion. Of course, if I play Webern, then it’s
a very narrow, but perfect range of emotion.
BD: I would think the ‘Hammerklavier’ on one half
and the ‘Concord’ on the other would be a gut-wrenching program.
Mandel: Oh yes, and I’ve done that. I know
that Rudolf Serkin played the Diabelli Variations on a concert, and
then, after the concert was over, he didn’t recognize his own wife! [Both
laugh] I try to give everything I possibly can in a concert, because
otherwise it’s not worth doing.
BD: So that’s the measure of success. If
you recognize people, you haven’t quite made it.
Mandel: That’s right... What did you
say your name was? [Both have a huge laugh]
* * *
* *
BD: What advice do you have for composers who want
to write for the piano?
Mandel: To just write music that’s true to themselves,
and to write with the greatest possible emotion. That’s the most
important advice I can possibly give. But I would be extremely loath
to give advice to composers. Composers have to do what they have
to do. There are so many composers. When you get known for
playing contemporary music, you get millions of scores in the mail or in
person. Hardly a week goes by when I don’t get a packet from Scandinavia.
I’ll have to get a new house...
BD: When you get all of these unsolicited scores,
are there some that you decide yes, you will play?
Mandel: Yes! I’m fantastically committed
for the next couple of years, but there has existed an occasion when I get
a score that I thought that I had to play, and then I played it right away.
I’ve been very lucky to be able to play all of this music that nobody
else has played.
BD: You play a lot of music from America. Is
there an American sound, or is music, is music, is music? [Vis-à-vis
the recording shown at right, see my interviews with Robert Palmer, Benjamin Lees, Virgil Thomson, and Lou Harrison.]
Mandel: Certainly there is an American sound.
However, with the explosion of communication in the world today,
the American sound is universal. I have found the American sound
in certain European composers. In La Création du Monde
by Milhaud, there are very definitely American elements.
BD: Even though the Milhaud is really a French
piece, and has a very French sound?
Mandel: Yes, that’s right. Nevertheless,
he used jazz elements one year before the Rhapsody in Blue. But
I find the American sound very attractive partly because I’m from New
York.
BD: Are you optimistic about the future of music?
Mandel: Sure! As long as there’s hope in
the world, and as long as the human spirit endures, there’s going to be
music.
BD: Are you at the point in your career now that
you expected to be, or that you should be?
Mandel: Who knows? I’m doing the best I
can.
BD: You don’t have a pre-set program of where
you should be by now, and that you should be playing in certain places
at certain times?
Mandel: I have a five-year plan. However,
that’s purely in my mind, and I do the best I possibly can in life.
* * *
* *
BD: Are you pleased with the recordings that you
have made?
Mandel: Yes! It’s
quite a different thing to make recordings than to give a concert.
BD: Do you play differently?
Mandel: Yes, sure. It is known that Vladimir
Horwitz did a Chopin Nocturne seventy-six times before he was happy
with it. I usually get it on the third time, or sometimes the fourth
time. But in any case, when you give a concert, you do the best
you possibly can. Inevitably there are mistakes, but the mistakes
evaporate into thin air. They don’t exist anymore. But with
a recording they’re permanent. I was talking to somebody from the
Foreign Service in Washington, who said that he heard some of my recordings
in India years ago. A recording is permanent, and it exists forever,
so it had better be right. That’s why you don’t hear any mistakes
in recordings.
BD: Are recordings too perfect?
Mandel: [Thinks a moment] I don’t have any
problem with not making any mistakes. Of course, as you know, for
recordings you can do sections. Some performers do separate notes,
and I don’t approve of that. I do sections. If I do a piece and
one section of it is not acceptable, then I do that section over again and
they splice it in.
BD: Is that not a fraud?
Mandel: No! I don’t think so. First of
all, I have to approve of it before it goes out. Therefore, if you
do a section, then that’s a musical entity. Perhaps it’s a fraud
if you just do one note at a time. That’s an illusion. But
on the other hand, if it does make a musical whole all together, then I
guess that’s all right. But I don’t do that.
BD: If you’re playing a piece in a concert
that you’ve recorded, do you feel that you’re competing against that record?
Mandel: No. Sometimes it’s totally different.
For example, I did the Ives way back then, and subsequently played
it many, many times. Sometimes it is totally different than on the
recording. There are many ways of looking at music, just as there
are many ways of looking at life.
BD: Would you then want to re-record the
Ives now with your more recent thoughts?
Mandel: One of these days I certainly will, but
there are so many other things for me to do.
BD: When you record the Ives for a second time,
people will start to compare. On the first he did this, and on the
second he did this. How do you reconcile the two? Is it just
the elapse of time?
Mandel: One is one way of looking at it, and the
other is another way of looking at it. There are so many ways of doing
Hamlet, or the Beethoven Fifth, or the Ives ‘Concord’ Sonata.
BD: They’re all right?
Mandel: I think so. They’re all right if, indeed,
they’re right. I have no apologies for making a recording of
the Ives in 1965, but now [1992] there are certain things I’d do differently.
There’s an interesting story about William Masselos, who recorded
the First Sonata of Ives. He recorded it many years ago,
and when I was going to make my recording, I had dinner with Bill about
a week beforehand. He said to wait and not record it. There
was another version Ives put down on paper just before he died, with many
different changes in it. He said that John Kirkpatrick gave it to
him a few days before he made the recording, and he made, in my opinion,
a very valid decision to go ahead and record it the way he learned it.
Bill showed it to me and gave me a Xerox of his copy of it. It
had many interesting changes. For example, one quote of ‘What a
friend we have in Jesus’, which is in the slow movement of the First
Sonata, is changed so that it is exactly the same as the original hymn,
and I used that. There’s also one place where he has special chords
that sound like bells, and I overdubbed that into the recording. It’s
absolutely impossible to do otherwise.
BD: Should it be labelled as ‘Ives
arranged by Mandel’? [Vis-à-vis the
recording shown at left, see my interview with Morton Gould.]
Mandel: No, Ives changed it himself. It’s
a different version done by Ives.
BD: But you’ve decided which changes you’ll use,
and which changes you’ll not use. It’s your
selection process.
Mandel: That’s right. Ives would have approved
of that. When he first worked on the ‘Concord’ Sonata with
John Kirkpatrick, who gave the first performance, Kirkpatrick said it was
particularly frustrating that sometimes he would play it for Ives, and
Ives would have a wonderful idea to change something, and he would give
him a new idea. There were many different ideas, and Ives thought of
his piece as never quite finished. They could always be changed and,
in my opinion, Ives was open to that sort of thing from everything that I’ve
read and everything I’ve been told.
BD: It sounds like a Chinese menu, with one from Column
A, one from Column B, and anything from Column C.
Mandel: [Laughs] What shall I say? They’re
all good, although one has to make a decision for one or the other.
I wouldn’t do that with other composers. Composers are different.
They’re all individuals, and they all have different temperaments
and difference preferences. For Elie Siegmeister, on the other
hand, I would play it exactly the way I thought it should be, and exactly
the way I worked on it with the composer.
BD: So then your recording of something of his
has a ring of truth to it because you worked on it with him?
Mandel: Oh, definitely! It makes a difference
to do that. On the other hand, it’s possible that some other performer
might have some necessity to perform it differently.
BD: Others shouldn’t slavishly imitate your
record all the time?
Mandel: Absolutely not! Every performer
is an individual.
BD: With the Ives, when you make the first decision,
does that influence all the rest of the decisions later in the piece?
Mandel: Yes, it could. With some Ives works
I’ve spent many years making decisions after great study. I found
some Ives pieces that were unpublished in manuscript, which, in my opinion,
are of the same quality as the ‘Concord’ Sonata. In Ives’s
manuscripts, his handwriting was worse than Beethoven’s, so it’s fantastically
difficult. It’s like hieroglyphics. It’s fantastically difficult
to decipher it, but with careful study you can. It takes a combination
of musicologists to decipher, and a pianist to play those particular pieces.
That doesn’t hold for the ‘Concord’ Sonata and the First
Sonata, which were published, as was the Three Page Sonata.
However, the ‘Concord’ Sonata was published in two different version,
both approved by Ives. The first is much earlier than the second.
I use the second version, which was the much later version. My recording
is quite different from that of John Kirkpatrick, who worked on it with
Ives. It’s perfectly valid, but I couldn’t do it that way because
I am me and he is he.
BD: Thank you for coming to Chicago, and for chatting
with me. I appreciate it.
Mandel: It’s a pleasure.
Notice that Mandel has recorded Volumes 1 and 3 of this series.
Volume 2 features pianist Ramon Salvatore.
© 1992 Bruce Duffie
This conversation was recorded in Chicago on October 26, 1992.
Portions were broadcast on WNIB in 1995 and 2000.
This transcription was made in
2025, and posted on this website at
that time. My thanks
to British soprano Una Barry for
her help in preparing this website presentation.
To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed
and posted on this website,
click here.
To read my thoughts
on editing these interviews for print, as
well as a few other interesting observations,
click here.
* * * *
*
Award -
winning broadcaster Bruce
Duffie was with WNIB,
Classical 97 in
Chicago from 1975 until its
final moment as a classical station
in February of 2001. His interviews
have also appeared in various magazines
and journals since 1980, and he now continues
his broadcast series on WNUR-FM,
as well as on Contemporary
Classical Internet Radio.
You
are invited to visit his website for more
information about
his work, including selected transcripts
of other interviews, plus
a full list
of his guests. He would also
like to call your attention to the
photos and information about his grandfather,
who was a pioneer in the automotive
field more than a century ago.
You may also send him E-Mail with comments,
questions and
suggestions.