By
THIRSTY
Daniel del Pino is one of
the leading Spanish concert pianists. Winner of First Prizes at both national
and international competitions, he holds a Master’s Degree in piano performance
from Yale. He has performed in concert halls on all five continents and is a
frequent performer at music festivals around the world. In addition, he has
eight CDs to his credit and this coming July, he will be appearing at the Newport
Music Festival in several venues, including a very special performance entitled
2,3,4 Pianos at the historic
Vanderbilt mansion, The Breakers.
Stay
Thirsty Magazine was thrilled to visit with Daniel del
Pino at this home for these Five Questions.
STAY
THIRSTY: You have appeared continuously at the Newport Music
Festival for the past nine years. What is it about this Festival that keeps you
coming back? What do you have planned for your July 2019 appearance?
DANIEL
DEL PINO: I have appeared almost continuously at the Newport
Music Festival for eighteen years. The only year I missed was 2016 because we
were expecting our second child around the same time and I didn’t want to miss
his birth. Only that type of reason would make me not go to Newport.
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| Daniel del Pino |
Why should I keep coming
back? Well, the first reason is that they keep inviting me (to my great
pleasure and honor). I love going to the Newport Music Festival. Not only
because the amazing musicians I have met over the years, and keep meeting, are
among the top in the world, but are good friends. The music that we get to play
is excellent. I have discovered lots of great music I didn’t even know existed.
I also love the town. It is a very unique experience to share music, breakfast,
lunch, stage and rides on the van to the venues with about thirty amazing
musicians over a period of two weeks. This July brings great music for me to
play, Après une lecture du Dante by
Liszt, his Spanish Rhapsody (which I performed several times in Newport over
the years), Bach’s four pianos concerto, Schubert’s Fantasia for four hands, and a lot more.
STAY
THIRSTY: You have given concerts on five continents, from Spain
to Japan, from the United States to Morocco and beyond. How does the audience
at the Newport Music Festival compare to audiences around the world?
DANIEL
DEL PINO: A great thing about Newport is that you end up knowing
and meeting the audience. After so many years, you see many familiar faces and
it gives a very nice feeling of family. On the other hand, there are different
types of audiences in Newport, depending on the program and the venue. You find
real experts that go to concerts all year long. You find also music-lovers that
are not experts. You find professional musicians. In general, it is a very
selective audience, quite warm and supportive of our work. There is a very
special feeling that was created over the years with the audience. There are
not many places an audience member can get to hear you play 15 times in less
than two weeks, with different combinations of chamber music colleagues and
pieces.
STAY
THIRSTY: What is it about Chopin that led you to record the
album entitled Looking Back over Chopin?
Do you feel closer to the composer or to his music?
DANIEL
DEL PINO: Chopin was always my favorite composer. He was there
all the time, from the very beginning. My father, who is an amateur pianist,
taught me how to read music with a score of Chopin’s Étude. I remember when
living in Morocco (where I started piano) listening back and forth to the
Pollini recording of the complete Chopin Études. The CD is one-hour long and we
use to drive to Ceuta to buy supplies (it took at that time more than 5 hours),
so, basically on each trip, I heard that CD five times on the way there, and
five times on the way back.
When I started becoming
serious about piano, I decided that I wanted my first commercial CD to be the
one with Chopin complete Études, and so it happened. Looking Back over Chopin was an experiment with my dear colleague
Andreas Prittwitz, the jazz-baroque musician. I love jazz and this was the way
I could attempt to enter that world. It is a mixture of Chopin transformed with
some jazz in it.
STAY
THIRSTY: In addition to performing, you also give Master
Classes. How to do find the work ethic of today’s students vs. when you were
doing your studies? Are these students realistic about their chances of
developing sustainable musical careers?
DANIEL
DEL PINO: It is difficult to generalize. The feeling is that the
system (in Spain at least) is not helping. Students are required to do more and
more subjects that take a lot of their time and concentration from the “real”
instrument. And this happens unfortunately at the age when they would benefit
more by having time to practice. When I was a student, I could practice seven
to eight hours per day. Nowadays, that is just impossible. They have so many
theory classes. Also, students are pushed to pursue further studies that most
of the time have too much academic weight.
Kapustin Étude Op. 40 n. 8 – Daniel del Pino
I think that when a
student applies to a school there should be a field of musicology, where the
practical interpretation of the instrument is not strong, and the other way
around too, when a student wants to study piano or violin, not to ask him to
dedicate so many hours to academics.
There are great talented
musicians as always, but students don’t have much time and have a hard time
concentrating because of all the information that is given to them. They lack
curiosity because things are too accessible. The problem is that, most of the
time, the education systems are done and organized by people that have a lot of
time, and usually a “real” performer doesn’t have that much time to dedicate to
paperwork.
STAY
THIRSTY: If you had your choice of any concert hall in the
world and could assemble the “dream” team to accompany you, where would it be
and who would be on the stage with you?
DANIEL
DEL PINO: This is a tricky question in many senses. I have
performed in great halls sometimes, but nobody took care of me, and sometimes I
played in a not-so-great-hall where many loving people in the organization made
you feel at home. It is a mixture of elements that make you enjoy the
experience. I would never dare listing names of musicians that I would love to
join me in a concert, there are too many, and at the same time, I am sure that
I would leave some out by mistake. But one could say that one of my favorite
venues is The Breakers in Newport and one “dream” team is the family of
musicians from the Newport Music Festival!
(Daniel del Pino photographs credit: Michal Novak)
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